negroponte'd (and other sordid tales)
While banging my head on the keyboard last nite, I discovered a couple of bits of crap from the start of the year that I hadn't realised I'd written. Now seems as good a time as any to shove em in yaw face:
negroponte'd
Somewhere between Bosnia and Baghdad, the cargo disappeared into the hands of unknown persons.
That's what happens when your countries been Negroponte'd.
The suspicion is that the arms have fallen into the hands of the insurgency, fallen, silly word, sold, stolen or donated are better. At least that's the underlying theme, there is simply no way to know where the guns are, they may well be sitting in the Green zone, bargain presents for Ramadan.
Suddenly, a new splinter group appears bearing strikingly similar arms and troublesome neighbourhoods begin to lose large swathes of their males between the ages of 15 and 65, all executed, tortured and mutilated. Death squads roam around in police and army uniforms indiscriminately killing, paid for with government money and directed from within by US friendly elements of the government. Each and every death is recorded as a victim of terrorists. Chaos gets that little more deadly.
Your country has been Negroponte'd, the enemy of my enemy is now an employee.
Donald Rumsfeld in a striking statement while on a friendly visit to Algeria, declared that this country could be the template for defeating the opposition within Iraq. Algeria had already been Negroponte'd, with some estimates placing the blame for 80% of deaths in the ten year civil war on the army or elements in league with and armed by the military. The war on terror becomes the war of terror where shadowy para militaries hunt and slaughter by night and by day hunt themselves. In all some 150, 0000 to 200,000 people died before a weary truce of sorts was declared, the opposition now buried and those left are given a choice toagree with the government or ..there is no alternative.
There's an inhuman, brutal reality to Rumsfeld's assertion, the Algerian civil war eventually morphed into an uneasy peace along similar, yet very different lines as Afghanistan. Years of war, where no family was left untouched by tragedy, simply wore down any resistance through the mathematics of attrition, torture, maim and murder as many 15-65 year old males from potentially rebellious villages and you must run out of willing opposition. The organism that survives this process to rule is at best a benevolent dictator and remains so for many years until an opposition reforms and what is an opposition if it knows that it cannot present an idea which the rulers object to lest it be wiped from the face of the earth and the cycle begins again.
Rumsfeld may well have been talking more of the ideals needed to defeat the resurgence of Islamism as a political tool, after all the rebellion began with the army overturning the results of a democratic election which the Islamic parties clearly won. Much was made of the chanted slogans of "one vote, one time" that rang in the capitals squares when the (PKI?) rallied in campaigns and at the eventual victory, justifying the armies overthrow and the brutal crackdown.
The "one vote, one time" has occasionally been adopted by the near perpetually underground movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, yet this pan arab movement has through its occasionally legal off shoots has rejected this line in favour of a genuine democratic platform and has done so for many years, yet the stigma remains. Its used as another tool of the oppressors to justify their oppression.
Chaos loves company and the biggest company in the world is the arms industry and it just loves it when a country has been Negroponte'd.
Myths are much harder to counter with inconvenient facts when the worlds dominant nation thrives on such myths and the worlds leaders themselves buy into the underlying lies through silence. History wars are fought on these topics, difficult questions need to be asked, and they certain are not at the moment, one only needs to notice that the only department in Australia to have its budget increased above inflation each year, to have never suffered a cutback, is defence. Its basis is still the idea of perceived threats cut from the template of the cold war, no matter how false the threat, or how inadequate the army is in genuinely facing or thwarting the threat, it is immune from the scrutiny the rest of the community is frequently subjected to.
One myth which has come through from the cold war unscathed is the idea of the briefcase atomic bomb, its been raised by dick Cheney, condelese rice and is in various American/British intelligence reports as a real threat if possessed by "terrorists". The myth stems from CIA think tanks of the 1970's, could an atomic bomb be miniaturised to fit within a briefcase? The answer from the boffins within theses agencies was that it was theoretically possible. There is a theoretical possibility that the US defence force built one or more, maybe, but that will never be confirmed or denied.
From this flowed the idea that if it was theoretically possible to build such a device, therefor the Soviet Union would also have thought of doing it, and once more like a raging river of thought, flowed the "fact" that the Russians must indeed possess such a dangerous, easily conceal able weapon. This ignores the real facts, that the soviets did not possess such a weapon, that the state of soviet science/manufacturing was incapable of creating such a device and that it was never more than a fantasy scenario dreamed up in a think tank. One only needs to look at the state of the pride of the soviet space fleet, MIR, to see the actual, as opposed to fantasy, state of the evil empires capabilities.
Despite the fact that the idea originated within the Pentagon and never really reached beyond the Pentagon, it was absorbed within the myths of the cold war as truth and has been repeated ever since as if it were an object which will wipe out a fair slice of humanity. One of the latest incarnations of this myth is that there are currently one and possibly three of these fabricated bombs floating around the planet unaccounted for just waiting to be sold to the highest bidder in the panoply of terrorist groups on the market.
I've heard this tall tale backed up by a retired soviet general, confirming there existence and there unknown whereabouts, no doubt seeking a fill up for his woeful Russian pension from the CIA or one of the newly spawned private terrorism expertise organisations. But then there are numerous Russian ex generals who seriously claim that the soviets have captured flying saucers and make a good living selling forged documents to ufologists throughout the world, they are as valid yet somehow dismissed a lot quicker.
Today's ex-evil empire is a hotbed of ex military types looking to profit from their once feared reputation, the truth of their poverty would simply shame their nationalist fervour. They did once claim ownership of half the world and yet the best piece of technology to come from the soviets is still the AK47. Name one other world changing Russian invention from the last fifty years, name one piece of technology you use which originated from the soviet empire? You have one hundred hours to complete this task before you give up in frustration.
The flow of the narrative from the cold war to the long war has been breathtaking in its audacity, spinning the same lies to the same ends with little change to the underlying need to produce a shred of non existent proof. In deed the very lack of any proof is used as a justification that it must be true, denial becomes a confirmation and reaffirms the underlying belief, why would the Russian's deny the existence of something unless it did exist. Throw in the above mentioned ex soviet military in need of cash and if you really are pressed they can provide on demand documents at very easy prices. Stolen Alien autopsies were one of the great growth industries after the berlin wall came down, secret soviet files from the rambling archives of a secretive regime only proves a large bureaucracy was needed to wither the state from within.
If you set aside the trillions of dollars recycled from the public purse into the defence/security/terror industry, much of it still geared for a replay fo the great battles of WW2 which will never be fought again, the problem with the narrative is that it allows real threats to be marginalised. At the very moment the US is vastly increasing its security/defence budgets, the Bush administration has radically cut back on programs that can defuse the threat of terrorists gaining control of a nuclear weapon. One in particular employed ex soviet nuclear scientists and techs has been slashed to almost nothing, another cleaning up and securing the ancient dilapidated soviet nuclear arsenal has been practically eradicated. These programs should be the responsibility of the former soviet union, yet since the system we all feared for so many years, disintegrated, revealing itself to be morally and fiscally bankrupt, we are forced to provide these facilities in order to ensure our own safety. We cannot do this if we chase fantasies while ignoring the very present facts of rusting warheads left in silos guarded by conscripts who may or may not be paid from one year to the next, the same goes for the myriad of scientists who are in much the same boat.
The mere fact that these programs exist must tell us something of the true state of fiction that was the cold war. Dilapidated infrastructure, scientist and soldiers who scrounge for money on the black market, a nuclear threat which is in near chaos and on the verge of collapse. Forty five years of being told that this was the greatest nightmare threat the world faced? Now we face another forty five years of the same with only the name changed, the American economy boomed with the introduction of the "Peace Dividend" under Clinton, budgets balanced and went into surplus with the fall of the wall, now they are back to record deficits and as I heard one economist say the other night the possibility that the US dollar within five years will be rendered worthless. Why? Because of 19 men with stanley knives, most of whom would have been on the CIA payroll during the afghan war of 79-90 had they been old enough? No, because the myths which have ruled our lives for the past sixty years have not as yet been challenged.
Ronald Regan despite what you may be told, did not win the cold war and the threat of the soviets did not exist in anything like the magnitude we were lead to believe.
negroponte'd
The runway would have been icy as the anonymous transport plane flew from Bosnia to Baghdad via any number of unknown pit stops, its cargo, 20,000 plus surplus AK47's.
Its January 2006, and just what Iraq ordered, more guns. Where is the last place on earth more guns are needed? Seriously, does Iraq need more guns? These had just been purchased from the mountains of left over munitions sitting in various dumping grounds and warehouses throughout the nominally peaceful former Yugoslavia, just waiting to be recycled into the next conflict.
Somewhere between Bosnia and Baghdad, the cargo disappeared into the hands of unknown persons.
It barely made the papers.
That's what happens when your countries been Negroponte'd.
The suspicion is that the arms have fallen into the hands of the insurgency, fallen, silly word, sold, stolen or donated are better. At least that's the underlying theme, there is simply no way to know where the guns are, they may well be sitting in the Green zone, bargain presents for Ramadan.
Suddenly, a new splinter group appears bearing strikingly similar arms and troublesome neighbourhoods begin to lose large swathes of their males between the ages of 15 and 65, all executed, tortured and mutilated. Death squads roam around in police and army uniforms indiscriminately killing, paid for with government money and directed from within by US friendly elements of the government. Each and every death is recorded as a victim of terrorists. Chaos gets that little more deadly.
Your country has been Negroponte'd, the enemy of my enemy is now an employee.
Those charged with keeping public order are now one of main elements in creating the mayhem, a viscous cycle begins and chaos becomes more chaotic. Once your country has been Negroponte'd, the population becomes hostage and victim to all sides, the insurgents/freedom fighters/terrorists on one side, the government forces on the other (and this includes insurgents/freedom fighters/terrorists acting under covert government pay and control, hence police officers dragging people away from road blocks and their bodies being found a few days later), only the dead prosper.
Donald Rumsfeld in a striking statement while on a friendly visit to Algeria, declared that this country could be the template for defeating the opposition within Iraq. Algeria had already been Negroponte'd, with some estimates placing the blame for 80% of deaths in the ten year civil war on the army or elements in league with and armed by the military. The war on terror becomes the war of terror where shadowy para militaries hunt and slaughter by night and by day hunt themselves. In all some 150, 0000 to 200,000 people died before a weary truce of sorts was declared, the opposition now buried and those left are given a choice toagree with the government or ..there is no alternative.
There's an inhuman, brutal reality to Rumsfeld's assertion, the Algerian civil war eventually morphed into an uneasy peace along similar, yet very different lines as Afghanistan. Years of war, where no family was left untouched by tragedy, simply wore down any resistance through the mathematics of attrition, torture, maim and murder as many 15-65 year old males from potentially rebellious villages and you must run out of willing opposition. The organism that survives this process to rule is at best a benevolent dictator and remains so for many years until an opposition reforms and what is an opposition if it knows that it cannot present an idea which the rulers object to lest it be wiped from the face of the earth and the cycle begins again.
Rumsfeld may well have been talking more of the ideals needed to defeat the resurgence of Islamism as a political tool, after all the rebellion began with the army overturning the results of a democratic election which the Islamic parties clearly won. Much was made of the chanted slogans of "one vote, one time" that rang in the capitals squares when the (PKI?) rallied in campaigns and at the eventual victory, justifying the armies overthrow and the brutal crackdown.
But this in itself was more a propaganda tool bolstered by the subsequent junta and a compliant western media much to afraid to have reporters on the ground. The slogan was not a policy that could be implemented without a referendum to change the constitution and as such, if indeed it was passed, a purely democratic process within itself. Would the people of Algeria have voted for a theocratic dictatorship, rather than the theocratic political party that they did vote into power? Its doubtful, a slogan at a rally in one square does not make forever, whereas a military junta potentially is.
The western world is struggling with the idea of democratically elected Islamic governments, it has no great problem with Islamic dictators (or most other dictators), it also strains at the idea of laws based upon Sharia as opposed to Roman law.
The western world is struggling with the idea of democratically elected Islamic governments, it has no great problem with Islamic dictators (or most other dictators), it also strains at the idea of laws based upon Sharia as opposed to Roman law.
The "one vote, one time" has occasionally been adopted by the near perpetually underground movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, yet this pan arab movement has through its occasionally legal off shoots has rejected this line in favour of a genuine democratic platform and has done so for many years, yet the stigma remains. Its used as another tool of the oppressors to justify their oppression.
Chaos loves company and the biggest company in the world is the arms industry and it just loves it when a country has been Negroponte'd.
...............................................................................................................
the cold war
Perhaps the only good to come from the falsehoods behind the Iraqi invasion will be a re examination of the underpinnings of the cold war. Not that this will happen in a hurry, but even a cursory glance at the facts reveals another sham "war" fought with false pretences and sexed up intelligence. Chances are it will only ever happen in the halls of universities and never reach the real world.
Myths are much harder to counter with inconvenient facts when the worlds dominant nation thrives on such myths and the worlds leaders themselves buy into the underlying lies through silence. History wars are fought on these topics, difficult questions need to be asked, and they certain are not at the moment, one only needs to notice that the only department in Australia to have its budget increased above inflation each year, to have never suffered a cutback, is defence. Its basis is still the idea of perceived threats cut from the template of the cold war, no matter how false the threat, or how inadequate the army is in genuinely facing or thwarting the threat, it is immune from the scrutiny the rest of the community is frequently subjected to.
One myth which has come through from the cold war unscathed is the idea of the briefcase atomic bomb, its been raised by dick Cheney, condelese rice and is in various American/British intelligence reports as a real threat if possessed by "terrorists". The myth stems from CIA think tanks of the 1970's, could an atomic bomb be miniaturised to fit within a briefcase? The answer from the boffins within theses agencies was that it was theoretically possible. There is a theoretical possibility that the US defence force built one or more, maybe, but that will never be confirmed or denied.
From this flowed the idea that if it was theoretically possible to build such a device, therefor the Soviet Union would also have thought of doing it, and once more like a raging river of thought, flowed the "fact" that the Russians must indeed possess such a dangerous, easily conceal able weapon. This ignores the real facts, that the soviets did not possess such a weapon, that the state of soviet science/manufacturing was incapable of creating such a device and that it was never more than a fantasy scenario dreamed up in a think tank. One only needs to look at the state of the pride of the soviet space fleet, MIR, to see the actual, as opposed to fantasy, state of the evil empires capabilities.
Despite the fact that the idea originated within the Pentagon and never really reached beyond the Pentagon, it was absorbed within the myths of the cold war as truth and has been repeated ever since as if it were an object which will wipe out a fair slice of humanity. One of the latest incarnations of this myth is that there are currently one and possibly three of these fabricated bombs floating around the planet unaccounted for just waiting to be sold to the highest bidder in the panoply of terrorist groups on the market.
I've heard this tall tale backed up by a retired soviet general, confirming there existence and there unknown whereabouts, no doubt seeking a fill up for his woeful Russian pension from the CIA or one of the newly spawned private terrorism expertise organisations. But then there are numerous Russian ex generals who seriously claim that the soviets have captured flying saucers and make a good living selling forged documents to ufologists throughout the world, they are as valid yet somehow dismissed a lot quicker.
Today's ex-evil empire is a hotbed of ex military types looking to profit from their once feared reputation, the truth of their poverty would simply shame their nationalist fervour. They did once claim ownership of half the world and yet the best piece of technology to come from the soviets is still the AK47. Name one other world changing Russian invention from the last fifty years, name one piece of technology you use which originated from the soviet empire? You have one hundred hours to complete this task before you give up in frustration.
The flow of the narrative from the cold war to the long war has been breathtaking in its audacity, spinning the same lies to the same ends with little change to the underlying need to produce a shred of non existent proof. In deed the very lack of any proof is used as a justification that it must be true, denial becomes a confirmation and reaffirms the underlying belief, why would the Russian's deny the existence of something unless it did exist. Throw in the above mentioned ex soviet military in need of cash and if you really are pressed they can provide on demand documents at very easy prices. Stolen Alien autopsies were one of the great growth industries after the berlin wall came down, secret soviet files from the rambling archives of a secretive regime only proves a large bureaucracy was needed to wither the state from within.
If you set aside the trillions of dollars recycled from the public purse into the defence/security/terror industry, much of it still geared for a replay fo the great battles of WW2 which will never be fought again, the problem with the narrative is that it allows real threats to be marginalised. At the very moment the US is vastly increasing its security/defence budgets, the Bush administration has radically cut back on programs that can defuse the threat of terrorists gaining control of a nuclear weapon. One in particular employed ex soviet nuclear scientists and techs has been slashed to almost nothing, another cleaning up and securing the ancient dilapidated soviet nuclear arsenal has been practically eradicated. These programs should be the responsibility of the former soviet union, yet since the system we all feared for so many years, disintegrated, revealing itself to be morally and fiscally bankrupt, we are forced to provide these facilities in order to ensure our own safety. We cannot do this if we chase fantasies while ignoring the very present facts of rusting warheads left in silos guarded by conscripts who may or may not be paid from one year to the next, the same goes for the myriad of scientists who are in much the same boat.
The mere fact that these programs exist must tell us something of the true state of fiction that was the cold war. Dilapidated infrastructure, scientist and soldiers who scrounge for money on the black market, a nuclear threat which is in near chaos and on the verge of collapse. Forty five years of being told that this was the greatest nightmare threat the world faced? Now we face another forty five years of the same with only the name changed, the American economy boomed with the introduction of the "Peace Dividend" under Clinton, budgets balanced and went into surplus with the fall of the wall, now they are back to record deficits and as I heard one economist say the other night the possibility that the US dollar within five years will be rendered worthless. Why? Because of 19 men with stanley knives, most of whom would have been on the CIA payroll during the afghan war of 79-90 had they been old enough? No, because the myths which have ruled our lives for the past sixty years have not as yet been challenged.
Ronald Regan despite what you may be told, did not win the cold war and the threat of the soviets did not exist in anything like the magnitude we were lead to believe.
The narrative of myth is so much more powerful than rationality and sanity, Christianity is the ultimate proof of this, the cold war, another, the long war just another which we may be able to change chanel on before it embeds itself as just another perpetual fragment of virtual truth endlessly regurgitated until it is true.
posted by the bluhamster at 11:37 AM
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