2006-12-10T00:44:35Z User 56 http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v56/ OrgSpace NewsLog

Had a rather weird and interesting marriage (28 years) breakup three years ago and I wrote this during the last days. Tis different from my usual stuff! TRUE STORY.... We met under seemingly fateful and auspicious circumstances. It was love at first sight. Meeting in the early evening and li...

My Story


We met under seemingly fateful and auspicious circumstances. It was love at first sight. Meeting in the early evening and living together by midnight. A mere five months later in Australia she became pregnant. The first of three. I delivered two of them. Over the next ten years we bought land and homesteaded, eventually I got sick of the isolation and wanted to join the mainstream. My partner reluctantly agreed to leave her piece of paradise. We eventually returned to the city (after a failed rural land based venture near the city and building a house at a beach resort) where I worked as a counsellor/therapist in A&D. After 21 years of the family thing (family: another story) and still with a deep abiding love for each other I left to go to the US for a working tour. I was on a road-show leading and co-leading Deep Ecology, Co gender, and emotional release workshops. I was feeling profoundly empowered and thought that I had finally found my calling. The lead up to feeling so empowered is a story on it’s own. Briefly: I had fallen in love and lust with a Californian woman. I had powerful desire to consummate this, and just incidentally my partner and I had expected this of me (acting out on sexual desire that is). By some means: I think it was through some sort of grace (or perhaps personal integrity, the grace came later) or something. In any event, I managed to navigate this whole territory with a great degree of authenticity and awareness. Honouring the feelings and doing a meaningful and profound ritual together that resulted in what I describe as an archetypal experience that left me loving all women. Somehow I had this sense that I was seeing the Goddess in them. This experience set me up to be able to do the co-gender work with a presence that I had never felt before. As well as placing me in a state of grace or so it seemed, with what I called spiritual monogamy as a feature. I was comfortable and at ease with my sexuality knowing that I had free choice and that I choose monogamy. The thought of acting out on carnal desires or notions of romantic love appeared to be a dishonouring of this newly found state. For the first time in my life I felt that I could trust myself.

What happened next was an event that changed everything. My partner was involved in politics and was standing as a candidate. She had become interested in a man that was part of her campaign team. She told me through email. I was magnanimous: “if you need to have some sex then go for it, however somebody in your campaign team might not be appropriate.” I subsequently gave my blessings with the campaign helper. What eventuated was a powerful sexual experience that was seemly ordained by powers greater than the two involved. My partner was transported in sex to realms that are only mentioned in the highest aspects of Tantric. I felt it in Massachusetts and knew that something very powerful had happened with my partner. I rang through and she was in the lush glow of the day after. She said that something very special and sacred had happened and that she was feeling great. I absolutely believed her, but I was stunned and slightly apprehensive, so I asked her if it was likely to happen again. She assured me that it was a one of event and that it couldn’t be repeated. She said that there were going to be benefits in our relationship. I can’t remember if we discussed the exact nature of those perceived benefits. I remember believing that to be true though. During the following few days I was experiencing a slight feeling of discomfort, but mostly thinking positively about my partners adventure. I rang three days later and found that she was in a distressed state. She requested that I return (a month earlier than planned), as she “needed me”. That was a first from her, and I had a sense that I had been waiting for that our entire time together (the; “I need you” that is)

I did debate whether I would return immediately or not, for about five minutes and then moved heaven and earth to get back as quick as I could. The first flight that I could get from LA to Auckland was three days hence. I booked it immediately and then flew across America next day. Which left me two nights in LA camped in a seedy Inglewood backpackers near LAX. I rang many times during those two days, spending ages on the phone. During one call she asked me if she could have sex with this man again. He was there asleep on the couch. She said that, “I owed it to her.” She was referring to the early years in our relationship where I had struggled with the effects of alcohol abuse and then the early recovery period. During this era she was a vital and necessary support. Her love and devotion was a pivotal factor in pulling me through. Anyway back to the story: I didn’t want her to, but couldn’t say no, I left it to her saying that “I can’t give you permission, it’s up to you, do what you think you need to.” She went there again. It was not as powerful as before but all the same very powerful. Going there again seemed to me a betrayal, not so much of me (that too though) but more so of the first experience. If it was such a high experience I doubted that going there again was what was called for nor did I think that much would be achieved by doing that. The initial experience was enough in my mind. She later said that the thought that she may not ever have that experience again was overwhelming to her and that she went there for that reason.

I have left out what happened the night before I left Massachusetts. During my months stay I had been sharing meaningful moments with a women whom had made her interest in me explicit and I had assured that I was monogamous. On that night I saw her late and from a place of pain relief asked if I could see her in her cabin. She said that she thought I would never ask. We shared a beautiful night together where I experienced the most detached, flowing connected sex that I had ever experienced. This is what I want in my relationship I thought. When I later told my partner about the encounter and she said, “Thank God for that!” Me having an event too I assumed allowed her to feel a little relief about hers. An interesting thing is that I broke my monogamy and the sense of seeing the Goddess in all women went either at that time or just after arriving back.

I got back to Auckland. She greeted me at the airport. I was very pleased to see her, she even in her stressed state looked so beautiful. I immediately noticed there was a different feeling about her than I had experienced before. Something girlish: cute and vulnerable, as well as something dangerous. She was somewhat high too. The whole drama was explained to me and I met the man involved (gave him a gift I had purchased in Fiji: a native war club) who turned out to be far from the glowing description my partner had provided. By this time I’m very worried. Over the next few days it was revealed that his life was chaotic, he had lied about a number of things, and he had grossly misrepresented the door-to-door polling results. The worrying thing was that my partner had sort of known all these things but it hadn’t mattered. Now I’m fretting. The difference in my partner was that she now had an additional persona alive and active within her whole personality one that was displaying chaotic behaviour and compulsive/illusionary actions. It was a shock to me to meet these characteristics as nothing like this had surfaced during the previous twenty-one years. She had always being solid as a rock. Midlife crisis stuff, we initially theorised.

I had returned thinking that I would bring my sense of empowerment for the work for the Earth and inspire my partner to join me in this adventure. I wrote a plan outlining periodic travel to do workshops in Australia and the US. I had the contacts and it would be amazing I assured her, she would love it and flourish with her musical talents and energy for environmental, social change and political work. However, my sense of empowerment left me early on after my return. Perhaps consequently my partner could not see herself doing what I had described.

I wanted to know every detail of my partner’s experience in order to understand what had happened. That was in hindsight probably masochistic, but definitely very painful. Even though it didn’t seem that it had anything to do with the human level performance stuff around sexuality I went through that mill. We both struggled to gain any sort of rational explanation. She was struggling with wanting to go there again and how to bring closure to seeing this man. During this time I asked her not to see him whilst I was away at a conference, she agreed. Racked with anxiety I returned two days early to find them on the verandah together. I insisted she not see him. She decided that it was all too much to handle and after months of processing the event together she put the lid on what it had opened up for her and went back to so-called normal life.

For me it was the most painful experience that I had had to date. I was confused and I had lost trust, not only with her, but also with me having a calling. We had done the inventory of unmet needs and I had come up wanting. I made efforts to be more aware of those needs in my partner. I addressed what I could and so did she, we were almost always openly communicative and loving. My anger did get the better of me on a couple of occasions though. I broke things. At some point my partner related to me that her problem had become my problem and that I was the one who’s suffering was recognised and sympathised with whilst hers was not understood nor acknowledged. My pain had taken priority over hers. Hearing this I felt that I had mismanaged her situation and not understood what it meant to her. I started to think that my pain had fucked it up for her. If I had allowed her to deal with it her self whatever that meant she might be in a different situation. From the time of the event my partner had taken up smoking cigarettes and cannabis. In a short time she dropped the cigarettes but has maintained increasing cannabis use since. Myself I again started drinking after fifteen years without using alcohol. Started up cigarettes (seven years off) and the occasional but increasing use of cannabis after twelve years not using it.

In time I was not comfortable about the lid remaining on. I maintained that what was possible for her to experience with this other man was possible for us. I wanted that. I worked on her to open up. I made it my mission; in fact it became somewhat of a periodic obsession. Eventually after several years and a second marriage (to her) primarily to strengthen our vows of monogamy, one night I had too much to drink and decided that I would engage in a sexual threesome (two men, one women). It happened and I felt terrible. My partner was devastated. The vow had been broken. I said that I had never felt that it was the right thing to do (monogamy), as we had not resolved the thing that had happed with her. I said that my acting out sexually was linked to the frustration I was feeling concerning her “condition”. This event was the trigger for many intense discussions about the meaning of my partner’s “condition” and what needed to be done about it. I was not happy that she had simply suppressed her primal response and her capacity to experience ecstasy.

Eventually due to my persuasion and her recognising some truth in my arguments she allowed herself to open up. Initially just to allow herself to feel her feelings of attraction. We had developed a whole pathology concerning my partners “condition”. At age seventeen she had a six-month episodic relationship with a man where she had experienced a sexual ease that she had never had before. She had experiences of sexual ecstasy. One day at this man’s place she saw a letter on the telephone table that she recognised came from her best female friend. She picked it up and read it. The content informed that her girlfriend had been having sex with this man and was now ridiculing my partner’s declaration of love for him. Jeering at her that she was so stupid not to know that they were fucking too. This was devastating; she put the letter down and walked out in an altered state. She had sex with several men in the next twenty-four hours. Giving herself away to the man that sunk the black ball in a pub on the way to her home. In reaction to this whole event she by some unknown means shut down her natural (primal) sexual response. What had happened some twenty-three years later was that it had opened up again and more powerfully than at age seventeen. After many discussions we came up with several theories: one was that she had to “return to the scene of the crime”. In other words go back to age seventeen and reclaim her sexual response by discovering the mechanism. She thought she could do it “out of the body” meaning without having physical sex with another person. I was unconvinced but went along with it at first. In fact I would have preferred that to be true. She had a couple of non-sexual encounters with other men where she worked hard at allowing her feelings and the sexual charge to be there. However what we discovered was that she would become delusionary and compulsive. She would project qualities that were just not embodied by these men. The men with whom the “charge” would happen with were always inappropriate. In that they were: not honest, not that caring, and often dangerous. We would discuss these events extensively and seek any new information. The fact that these men were inappropriate made us think that there was actually no threat to our relationship. During these episodes my partner would experience an internal energy that would grow in intensity as the encounter would develop. She would become increasingly compulsive and deluded as to the true nature of the event and these men. My pattern would be to initially encourage her to proceed, then react, then get back on board with the process and then depending on how long it took go somewhat crazy, but would be determined to follow through. Always we had the notion that my partners “energy” was serving a higher purpose. Holding the belief that when some sort of resolution occurred she would be healed and empowered. Thus enabling her to fulfil her “calling” or work for the earth as we often referred to it as.

I was deeply engaged in the hope that she was going to bring “the energy” into our relationship and we would have amazing cosmic sex. Later on I lost this desire only caring that my partner got what she needed. In fact I eventually started to think that the whole sexual ecstasy phenomena was an illusion, a free lunch, an endless perusal of pleasure for pleasures sake. To chase it was like pursuing the Holy Grail as if it was a real chalice. When its real power is as a metaphor. Besides, the question of the Grail was “whom does it serve?” My answer to that has always being some greater or common good. Losing sight of that was so easy when the compulsion got a grip.

During the active phases we would sit in highly charged emotional states discussing the best course of action. Myself tending more towards “acting out” and my partner to work with it without doing that. During the past seven years there has been eight men. Four she has been sexual with, one of these encounters didn’t really follow the pattern. The charge was there for a time initially but dissipated before the sex occurred. Resulting in a rather beautiful meeting of a young man and an older women. Something we have both felt good about.

The last three events (one is pending as I write) need some elaboration: It was almost three years ago. My partner meets this man through the course of her work. She feels a charge and he feels her charge. Nothing happens for some months. He comes into her office and is trying to extract some resources in a somewhat manipulate way, or is it? My partner has doubts and visits him in his residence whilst I am away. She feels a surge of energy. I describe it as such because we had come to discover that the initial charge was not necessarily a sexual response. I return home three days later and the following morning as I sit on the side of the bed pondering what I am picking up from her. I ask, something like, “have I got something to be worried about?” She relates the story of visiting this man. I get a profound sinking feeling, feel the power of the charge and say, “you love this man, he’s your lover isn’t he?” She reflects for a moment or two and then responds by saying, “yes I think you are right!” What follows is from most sane points of view crazy. We visit this man together where I proceed to give her away to him. Declaring that I see the high nature of what I am doing and trusting that I am following some higher purpose. I leave them alone together whilst I forlornly and in deep grief walk the nearby river back. Convinced that I have done the right thing. To this man’s credit he says, “Tai ho” a number of times. Although his interest is perceived. Don’t ask me how I got from a pathology of the “condition” immediately to following a higher purpose. All I can say is that I was myself in the grip of the energy that seems to have archetypal and spiritual elements. I was also convinced that if my partner was freely given and choose to return to be with me, then it would somehow complete the cycle. Once that happened our work for the earth together would be apparent. Whilst this re-occurring pattern was happening our work together couldn’t emerge I thought. The other part of this is that I wasn’t sure that we were supposed to be together and wanted that resolved. A feature of my partner’s encounters was that she would get a strong sense of sharing a higher purpose with some of these men. Social change, healing work, consciousness raising and political action were characteristic of what was she might see possible. All the issues she had been actively engaged with since early on in our relationship. Also where my mind was at in terms of what we would be doing together.

Over the next few weeks we meet as a couple and individually with this man. I mostly got back onto the therapeutic potential of an encounter with him. My partner is unsure of how to proceed. The man is not responding in ways that are patterned or predictable possibly trying to avoid but nevertheless maintaining an interest at his own pace. Meanwhile we in our whanau are struggling with my yeses than often mean no and my partner’s no’s that often mean yes. A reflection on this is that I would say yes to physical engagement thinking that was what she really wanted and needed and she would say no to that thinking that was what I wanted and needed. If this was the case then no wonder it was so fraught with confusion. It becomes a roller coaster of intense emotions and crazy thoughts. At one point (this is the point where my partner informs me that she wants to be with him rather than me) I become suicidal and have an encounter with insanity whom informs me that if I want to know what crazy really is follow him. I decide I don’t want to go. I snap out of it and subsequently have an awakening experience. I see this man clearly as a pathological liar, I see that I have been stupid to even participate in this weird and sometimes wonderful drama. I resolve to withdraw, and for an hour or two see what freedom looks like. I move into a spare bedroom. Finally the day arrives my partner decides she is going to consummate this thing. She leaves radiant and charged. I spend the night in the bedroom “tuning in” pining for my lost love and generally in a state of despair and utter confusion. I can’t help myself the next morning finds me at his door with some excuse to pass on a message to my “love”. He is in the shower; she greets me glowing. I feel so pathetic. She smiles radiantly and says everything is all right and there just remains one more thing to do.

I go off to work which just coincidentally is within a short distance of the house I have visited and fully visible. I spend the day thinking that she has almost completed her mission thus, “the just one more thing to do”. Have a good day and then return home. The one more “thing” is; that my partner and I have to sever all sexual contact in order to honour this new relationship. I’ve had shifted into the spare room to give her space but never to be intimate with her again wasn’t on the programme. I didn’t think so and she had assured me that it wasn’t either. I go crazy for a while threaten suicide and within three days my partner sees that the restriction is unworkable. She has one more encounter with this man and he is slightly hostile and bordering on abusive. She comes back crying and despairing. Days later she wakes up and decides she is a dangerous and bad person. I support her throughout saying that nobody experiments like we do and “working” with this energy in the ways that we do is bound to get us burnt. It takes months to get over and we declare that we shall never do that again. During this period I think that again I have fucked it up for her by going crazy. Again it is my fault that she did not get the benefits of the experience as I got so controlling, scared and crazy. I also know that this is not the whole truth as the man concerned did a couple of things that broke the delusion, one of which was refusing to wear a condom. The other was getting angry with her on their second engagement. However by this time I was thinking that there had to be delusion there for my partner to engage and get what the experience was designed for. Which was primarily, sexual ecstasy. (Yes, I was still there then).

At this point of the story I was still holding that she had to repeat the experience of sexual ecstasy in order reclaim her power. But was confused as to how she could do this within a delusion that seemed to compel her into handing over her power to the man involved. As she had not managed to have the reclaiming experience I was left thinking that it was only a matter of time before her energy would focus elsewhere. I even saw to whom it would go to. It did quite fleetingly, and a “safe” event occurred, and we were both left feeling good, and things settled for a time.

There is a lull and I start feeling like this stuff is over. I have been working away for just over a year seeing my partner at two to three week intervals. Things are good. She wanted space and time out from her occupation. I was pleased to be able to give her both and it felt good to me for that time. My major life issue was that I was earning good money but not seeming to get ahead. An opportunity presents where if I borrow $25,000 I can make a further $30,000 in six to seven months. The night my business partner and I are making the decision I get a phone call. It’s my partner, she informs me that she has fallen in love with someone and that this time it is the real thing, well she is almost certain it is. The way she informs me is that she says; “you know how you have said on a number of occasions how I will fall in love with somebody one day and it will be the real thing, well I think it’s happened.” I react and say that our marriage/relationship is over and I’m coming home to put the house on the market. Then confess that I’m too angry to continue and that I will phone back at a specified time when I have calmed down. I proceed to get drunk and forget to call. Two hours late in a drunken state I remember and make the call. She is about to go to him having related my earlier angry phone call to him. He was given the opportunity to be her knight in shinning armour and wanted her to come to his place. It was after midnight by then and an hour’s drive away. I asked her not to go until we have talked. She agreed. My partner was later to thank me for somehow performing the saving catch and referring to it as being saved by the Drunken Shaman. Next day I arrive home. As soon as I see her, I melt and hug her, we both cry. We settle and start talking about selling the house. She asks that I come and meet the man. I say I’ve stopped doing that and if she says that she is in love then I believe her and I did. She pleads, I say OK. I get a good bottle of wine and go visiting with my partner. On the journey reviewing my options as a single man and fully expecting to be giving my blessings to this new relationship I’m sad, but accepting. As soon as I lay eyes on the man I know it’s not true, she back into the “pattern”. Over the course of about three hours I polish off the wine (he’s in AA) and proceed to “interview” the man. He shows himself up, as having shaky values, is not authentic, and is highly deluded and inflated. She sees him through my eyes and in a short time the delusion is busted.

We leave. We’re in the car I say, “If you’re going to trade in, trade up not down”. We laugh and the event seems over bar the debrief which for once is not intense. A few weeks later I’m starting to get that uneasy feeling; that it will be happening again. Three months later he rings my partner, she gets “hooked in”. I want it over once and for all. And again think that there may be some therapeutic value (what happed to my resolve?) in her having a sexual encounter. Confident that there is no threat to our relationship as this man was clearly not able to see my partner let alone meet her as a whole person. She visits with condoms and a clear choice, the energy rests and nothing happens bar a reality check. She returns home that night, thanks me, its over. Both of us are left with a feeling that it really is all over (no more “events”) for a time that is. For me this lasts about three weeks. Then I start waiting for the next phone call. I tell myself it’s just paranoia and get on with survival. The unease though is with me almost constantly, I’m in a state of alert, sometimes blue, sometime orange, and when it’s pending, red. I’m tuning into every phone call my partner receives, getting annoyed at a number of lonely middle aged men that are attracted to my partner’s vibe. Knowing there is no threat, but thinking that there is something wrong with this picture. Understanding their attraction, but thinking that she should not give them as much time as she does. Wondering if she is getting off on this and not admitting it to herself. Uneasy about how obsessional I am.

The last and current experimentation is the most interesting. One of the things that I had said to my partner on a number of occasions was that if “the energy” happens with someone half decent then I’m a dead man. In my mind I was referring to the delusion that if it did have something genuine and authentic to get a grip on then it would be beyond me and her to bust. Read on.

My partner is hitchhiking, a man who doesn’t pick hitchhikers up stops. She gets in, feels the charge thinks she manages to contain it. No way, he picks it up. She was only going a short distance. He drops her off, with an invitation for a coffee and chat. She is non- committal, breaths a sigh of relief that she wasn’t going any further in his car. Meanwhile he gets home all charged up and manages to find out who she is from a flatmate. Half an hour after the ride the home phone rings (I’m at work) my partner answers. The Good Samaritan is ringing with the information that he is a friend from 28 years ago. Not only had he looked after my partner when she was sick once, they had been intimate once too. Freaky! My partner goes into shock. I arrive home spot a photograph from before we met in a prominent position and get that sinking feeling, look at my partner and know immediately that she’s got the “energy.” We talk and she says that nothing is going on and that she is just in a state of shock. I give her my take, which was as described above. She says, “yeah you’re right, that’s it.” In two days I’m going away for five days. I know where this energy goes and request that she does not meet with him until I return. I leave thinking, nah believing that that’s not going to happen. She will see him. Sure enough the evening of my departure in fact. I ring her two days into my time away to check her out, she doesn’t mention that they have met (doesn’t want to put a damper on my away time, fair enough) but she seems fine.

I get home and ask whether she has met with him she relates the story. Telling me that she didn’t want him to come and visit but the protocols of common civility “set her up”. I think ‘a likely story’ until the same thing happens to me. He rings, I’ve had two wines and he invites us both to dinner. I find myself accepting, obeying the same laws as my partner. I feel set up too, not by him (although the jury is still out on that one) no by the universe. We go. I find him battened down but relatively warm and friendly, quite a decent fellow really, although not easily read. Certainly not a viable relationship there though. The readings I take from his ex-girlfriend whom appears exceedingly uncomfortable. His story is out, I can read it on the girlfriends face and his sister whom he is close to. His story is that he fell in love with my partner a matter of a couple of weeks or so before we met and has carried a torch ever since. More than that, this love has sustained him throughout his adult life in times of despair. Although we don’t find out that night we get to know that he has a tattoo to that effect on his left breast. There is though a couple of anomalies in his story a keenly suspicious person such as myself can perceive. However they don’t emerge until later. I get a good buzz on from the wine (I’ve been drinking too much on too many occasions lately) and on my partner’s and my journey home this voice in my head keeps saying, “He’s the one!” I tell it to stop and resolve not to say what’s going on in my head. The voice persists for the entire journey and I blurt it out to my partner. I feel like I’m going crazy. The craziness has just begun. The next day my partner is away and I invite him round. I’m cold sober and I tell him that I shall be leaving soon to fulfil my “calling” which means I shall be leaving my partner and knowing his keen interest want him to look after her. I say that I know that he would be “knocking at the door” if he knew that I had left and trust that he is a good person. He is flabbergasted, possibly thinking that he is dreaming. The woman of his dreams handed to him on a plate. He leaves with my message, “to wait until I’ve gone”. I’m left wondering what I have done and why. There was no thought put into how I was going to actually practically do what I said. I had no money. For the past month I was only earning enough to just cover our expenses. Notwithstanding that, I wasn’t ready to leave my partner.

I sheepishly related the story to my partner on her return. In the telling wondering what insanity has gripped me. She wondered too. I couldn’t believe that I did that. What possessed me? Now, I think, frustration with not having any other meaningful purpose in my life except endeavouring to facilitate the healing of my partner. Perhaps I surmised that another “event” was imminent and I was pre-empting it and getting it out of the way. For the past seven years my major meaningful function in life had been to heal my partner. My paying occupation had become mundane and soulless. I was burnt-out, and the energy was driving me crazy already. I wanted it over before it started. Within hours I took it all back and signed up for another chapter. This time resolved to allow whatever needed to happen. A do or die situation. We were going to get to the bottom of this and get it out of our lives or bust up. For a short time there was so much promise that we would get through this and our relationship would benefit immeasurably.

Before I go on, the two anomalies with this man’s story: firstly, he had forgotten that he and my partner had made love together those many years before and secondly the tattoo had somebody else’s name above it. Perhaps nothing, but it does extract some power from his story for me.

What followed is a bit of a blur as it moved so fast and I drank so much throughout. However he didn’t heed my “wait until I’ve gone.” There was an affectionate greeting in my partners email the next day, his first ever email. She responded friendly like then the emails started to flow. It was mutually decided after brief and moving discussions with all three concerned that my partner was going to go ahead with a least one encounter. Well, we agreed on one encounter and then realized that you can’t go with it and be writing the script too. It was open to follow the energy. My partner was thinking that sexual ecstasy was going to happen and that she would be able to grok the mechanism and keep it. Strangely, I didn’t get that, but didn’t get what until the night of their first encounter. I spent a reasonably comfortable night “tuning in” and experienced quite a bit of energy in my power charka. Initially thinking that was all mine and then realising that it was what my partner was experiencing. Talk about being connected. As it turned out it seemed to be about claiming her personal power in the world. She returned the next day somewhat high but seemingly not deluded nor carrying any trace of a compulsion. We talked and thought that it was done she now had what she wanted; she had claimed her power and she was bringing that into our relationship. Our lovemaking indicated that. However the next day I observed the compulsion get a grip, she wanted to go back for more, but was willing to wait. She was maintaining that she was fully aware of the delusionary/compulsive inclinations and was dealing with them. Her feet were on the ground. I resided in hope.


Three days later I left them alone for four hours at our home, returning to find them high as kites having just cuddled and talked. No sex, just lovemaking. I was concerned and distressed to see them in such a state and set about endeavouring to bust their delusion. This became my role from hereon in. To me, it was like trying to break through the alcoholic denial. Though not exactly as there were moments of seeming reality and grounded beauty. I became afraid. The line between reality as I knew it and delusion was gone, I couldn’t tell the difference. I was concerned that the man might become dangerous if it didn’t go his way. Unfounded as it turned out, it was me who became dangerous. I was concerned that my partner would get fully gripped by the delusion and compulsion and that I would lose her forever. Not mine to lose as it turns out. Two days later they had a day and a half session at his place. I picked her up afterwards she was spaced out and confessed in a delusionary state she was aware of that. I was in a state of high anxiety. By this time the resolve was, to go through with it delusion and all. As it was thought that a certain amount of delusion had to be there to maintain the energy. Now, it was about claiming personal power and to peel off the layers of repression that prevented my partner from letting go into the primal. Keep going, regardless, we had gone too far to stop now. My hope in this phase was kindled by the power of our lovemaking and that we had started singing together. We had actually sung together before but never like the way we were now doing it. I was harmonising and we were meeting in song as we had never met before. It was in the nature of a break through.

Two days later I arranged to meet with the man. This was becoming a feature. I would meet alone with the man between my partner’s meetings with him. On this occasion we consumed fourteen bottles of beer and talked amicably and openly, although I maintained that he was impenetrable when it came to his romantic delusions of love. I rang my partner to say that I would be home an hour later than I had said. She asked me to bring him home. I suggested that it wasn’t a good idea she agreed. I brought him back against my better judgement entertaining notions of the three of us making love together. If I had any wits about me I would have known then that I was already in the twilight zone. I did get a message of sorts to that effect, but think I told myself that it was time to throw all concerns to the wind. I continued to drink. I was approaching the blackout stage of drinking. I had several tokes on a joint. What I can remember is that at one point in the evening I asked my partner whether she wanted to go with him she said yes and then I said that it would mean selling the house, was she prepared to do this? She indicated she was. I lost the plot calling her a bitch and a betrayer; the shadow took charge. Later after things had calmed down and we were in bed together I asked her if she really was choosing him over me. She said yes and we cried. I asked if she would leave a space in her life for me, as I couldn’t imagine us not making love together ever again. I can’t remember how she responded. The next thing I know I’m up smashing a lamp, a window and objects on top of the dressers. I’m out of my mind with rage. She tries to stop me, I resist for a time then I ask her to phone the police as I’m out of control and am afraid of what I might do. The police come and get me. They are friendly and sympathetic, so is the doctor who assesses me for a psych report. I’m deemed sane but told not to return by the police. (The doctor was ready to drive me home.) I do. My partner and the man are waiting, she is out of her wits afraid and he has a look of disgust on his face. He informs me that he would never do that looking towards the bedroom. I think that he is denying he has a shadow, but believe that he wouldn’t have done what I had done. I’m ashamed. I’m pathetic, rock bottom. I can’t believe what has taken place. My partner wants to leave as soon as possible, I try to talk to her, in my hapless state feel the anger rising and as she leaves I threaten suicide. The man asks me, “haven’t I stabbed her enough tonight?” I’m crushed! His anger is on the surface, I can’t blame him. They leave I’m overwhelmed with grief.

I don’t sleep, stunned by what I have done and yet finding a rational explanation. I had in no uncertain terms given her the freedom to do what she had to outside our relationship: thinking that’s where it was going anyway, she had told me that. The truth is not so black and white. The evenings destructive and abusive acts were as a result of holding onto years of frustration, over consumption of the great de-inhibitor; alcohol, using mind bending for me cannabis, reaching a rock bottom, a spell breaker, the shadow biting me in the ass, and a sub-conscious desire to end the bullshit.

So what is the truth? In this instance there are possibly several equally persuasive truths.
One truth could be that my partner and I were stupid to try to manage what we did without professional help. That includes my partner’s “condition”, my response to it and our addictions. Not to mention the abundant data supporting co-dependency issues. This was something that could have been available, as we know a number of counsellors and therapists. We maintained mostly isolation and it has possibly destroyed our relationship. Another truth could be that this story is a testament to two people’s courage and commitment to each other. Each displaying extraordinary willingness to enter into realms of human behaviour most would never go to. Whose love for each is so great that they would endure such distress in order to be together in their wholeness. Yet another could be that this saga describes two people who love each other immensely but could not find empowerment together in their relationship so went to great lengths to get free of each other without being utterly direct about their needs. One more is that something beyond the people involved intervened to make sure that this phenomena would stop and that whether we stay together is not the issue, its whether we can have empowered individual lives and what that looks like is the issue.

What will happen? Time will tell.


]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v56/__show_article/_a000056-000051.htm 2006-12-10T00:44:35Z 2006-12-10T00:50:08Z

Rebuilding Iraq? It's privatization in disguise by Naomi Klein; April 13, 2003 On April 6, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spelled it out: There will be no role for the United Nations in setting up an interim government in Iraq. The US-run regime will last at least six months, "pro...

Some highlights: The $4.8 million management contract for the port in Umm Qasr has already gone to a US company, Stevedoring Services of America, and the airports are on the auction block. The US Agency for International Development has invited US multinationals to bid on everything from rebuilding roads and bridges to printing textbooks. Most of these contracts are for about a year, but some have options that extend up to four. How long before they meld into long-term contracts for privatized water services, transit systems, roads, schools and phones? When does reconstruction turn into privatization in disguise?

California Republican Congressman Darrel Issa has introduced a bill that would require the Defense Department to build a CDMA cell-phone system in postwar Iraq in order to benefit "US patent holders." As Farhad Manjoo noted in Salon, CDMA is the system used in the United States, not Europe, and was developed by Qualcomm, one of Issa's most generous donors.

And then there's oil. The Bush Administration knows it can't talk openly about selling off Iraq's oil resources to ExxonMobil and Shell. It leaves that to Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraq petroleum ministry official. "We need to have a huge amount of money coming into the country," Chalabi says. "The only way is to partially privatize the industry."

He is part of a group of Iraqi exiles who have been advising the State Department on how to implement that privatization in such a way that it isn't seen to be coming from the United States. Helpfully, the group held a conference on April 4-5 in London, where it called on Iraq to open itself up to oil multinationals after the war. The Administration has shown its gratitude by promising there will be plenty of posts for Iraqi exiles in the interim government.

Some argue that it's too simplistic to say this war is about oil. They're right. It's about oil, water, roads, trains, phones, ports and drugs. And if this process isn't halted, "free Iraq" will be the most sold country on earth. It's no surprise that so many multinationals are lunging for Iraq's untapped market. It's not just that the reconstruction will be worth as much as $100 billion; it's also that "free trade" by less violent means hasn't been going that well lately. More and more developing countries are rejecting privatization, while the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Bush's top trade priority, is wildly unpopular across Latin America. World Trade Organization talks on intellectual property, agriculture and services have all bogged down amid accusations that America and Europe have yet to make good on past promises.

So what is a recessionary, growth-addicted superpower to do? How about upgrading Free Trade Lite, which wrestles market access through backroom bullying, to Free Trade Supercharged, which seizes new markets on the battlefields of pre-emptive wars? After all, negotiations with sovereign nations can be hard. Far easier to just tear up the country, occupy it, then rebuild it the way you want. Bush hasn't abandoned free trade, as some have claimed, he just has a new doctrine: "Bomb before you buy."

It goes further than one unlucky country. Investors are openly predicting that once privatization of Iraq takes root, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will be forced to compete by privatizing their oil. "In Iran, it would just catch like wildfire," S. Rob Sobhani, an energy consultant, told the Wall Street Journal. Soon, America may have bombed its way into a whole new free-trade zone.

So far, the press debate over the reconstruction of Iraq has focused on fair play: It is "exceptionally maladroit," in the words of the European Union's Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, for the United States to keep all the juicy contracts for itself. It has to learn to share: ExxonMobil should invite France's TotalFinaElf to the most lucrative oilfields; Bechtel should give Britain's Thames Water a shot at the sewer contracts.

But while Patten may find US unilateralism galling and Tony Blair may be calling for UN oversight, on this matter it's beside the point. Who cares which multinationals get the best deals in Iraq's post-Saddam, pre-democracy liquidation sale? What does it matter if the privatizing is done unilaterally by Washington or multilaterally by the United States, Europe, Russia and China?

Entirely absent from this debate are the Iraqi people, who might — who knows? — want to hold on to a few of their assets. Iraq will be owed massive reparations after the bombing stops, but without any real democratic process, what is being planned is not reparations, reconstruction or rehabilitation. It is robbery: mass theft disguised as charity; privatization without representation.

A people, starved and sickened by sanctions, then pulverized by war, is going to emerge from this trauma to find that their country has been sold out from under them. They will also discover that their newfound "freedom" — for which so many of their loved ones perished — comes pre-shackled with irreversible economic decisions that were made in boardrooms while the bombs were still falling.

They will then be told to vote for their new leaders, and welcomed to the wonderful world of democracy.

This article first appeared in The Nation. ]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v56/__show_article/_a000056-000050.htm 2003-04-13T21:48:32Z 2003-04-13T21:48:32Z

April 7, 2003 Dear friends, It appears that the Bush administration will have succeeded in colonizing Iraq sometime in the next few days. This is a blunder of such magnitude -- and we will pay for it for years to come. It was not worth the life of one single American kid in uniform, let alone t...

Can I share with you what it's been like for me since I used my time on the Oscar stage two weeks ago to speak out against Bush and this war? I hope that, in reading what I'm about to tell you, you'll feel a bit more emboldened to make your voice heard in whatever way or forum that is open to you.

When "Bowling for Columbine" was announced as the Oscar winner for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards, the audience rose to its feet. It was a great moment, one that I will always cherish. They were standing and cheering for a film that says we Americans are a uniquely violent people, using our massive stash of guns to kill each other and to use them against many countries around the world. They were applauding a film that shows George W. Bush using fictitious fears to frighten the public into giving him whatever he wants. And they were honoring a film that states the following: The first Gulf War was an attempt to reinstall the dictator of Kuwait; Saddam Hussein was armed with weapons from the United States; and the American government is responsible for the deaths of a half-million children in Iraq over the past decade through its sanctions and bombing. That was the movie they were cheering, that was the movie they voted for, and so I decided that is what I should acknowledge in my speech.

And, thus, I said the following from the Oscar stage:

"On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan (from Canada), I would like to thank the Academy for this award. I have invited the other Documentary nominees on stage with me. They are here in solidarity because we like non-fiction. We like non-fiction because we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where fictitious election results give us a fictitious president. We are now fighting a war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fictitious 'Orange Alerts,' we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And, whenever you've got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, you're time is up."

Halfway through my remarks, some in the audience started to cheer. That immediately set off a group of people in the balcony who started to boo. Then those supporting my remarks started to shout down the booers. The L. A. Times reported that the director of the show started screaming at the orchestra "Music! Music!" in order to cut me off, so the band dutifully struck up a tune and my time was up. (For more on why I said what I said, you can read the op-ed I wrote for the L.A. Times, plus other reaction from around the country at my website www.michaelmoore.com)

The next day -- and in the two weeks since -- the right-wing pundits and radio shock jocks have been calling for my head. So, has all this ruckus hurt me? Have they succeeded in "silencing" me?

Well, take a look at my Oscar "backlash":

-- On the day after I criticized Bush and the war at the Academy Awards, attendance at "Bowling for Columbine" in theaters around the country went up 110% (source: Daily Variety/BoxOfficeMojo.com). The following weekend, the box office gross was up a whopping 73% (Variety). It is now the longest-running consecutive commercial release in America, 26 weeks in a row and still thriving. The number of theaters showing the film since the Oscars has INCREASED, and it has now bested the previous box office record for a documentary by nearly 300%.

-- Yesterday (April 6), "Stupid White Men" shot back to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. This is my book's 50th week on the list, 8 of them at number one, and this marks its fourth return to the top position, something that virtually never happens.

-- In the week after the Oscars, my website was getting 10-20 million hits A DAY (one day we even got more hits than the White House!). The mail has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive (and the hate mail has been hilarious!).

-- In the two days following the Oscars, more people pre-ordered the video for "Bowling for Columbine" on Amazon.com than the video for the Oscar winner for Best Picture, "Chicago".

-- In the past week, I have obtained funding for my next documentary, and I have been offered a slot back on television to do an updated version of "TV Nation"/ "The Awful Truth."

I tell you all of this because I want to counteract a message that is told to us all the time -- that, if you take a chance to speak out politically, you will live to regret it. It will hurt you in some way, usually financially. You could lose your job. Others may not hire you. You will lose friends. And on and on and on.

Take the Dixie Chicks. I'm sure you've all heard by now that, because their lead singer mentioned how she was ashamed that Bush was from her home state of Texas, their record sales have "plummeted" and country stations are boycotting their music. The truth is that their sales are NOT down. This week, after all the attacks, their album is still at #1 on the Billboard country charts and, according to Entertainment Weekly, on the pop charts during all the brouhaha, they ROSE from #6 to #4. In the New York Times, Frank Rich reports that he tried to find a ticket to ANY of the Dixie Chicks' upcoming concerts but he couldn't because they were all sold out. (To read Rich's column from yesterday's Times, "Bowling for Kennebunkport," go here:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/articles/index.php?article=20030406-nytimes.

He does a pretty good job of laying it all out and talks about my next film and the impact it could potentially have.) Their song, "Travelin' Soldier" (a beautiful anti-war ballad) was the most requested song on the internet last week. They have not been hurt at all -- but that is not what the media would have you believe. Why is that? Because there is nothing more important now than to keep the voices of dissent -- and those who would dare to ask a question -- SILENT. And what better way than to try and take a few well-known entertainers down with a pack of lies so that the average Joe or Jane gets the message loud and clear: "Wow, if they would do that to the Dixie Chicks or Michael Moore, what would they do to little ol' me?" In other words, shut the f--- up.

And that, my friends, is the real point of this film that I just got an Oscar for -- how those in charge use FEAR to manipulate the public into doing whatever they are told.

Well, the good news -- if there can be any good news this week -- is that not only have neither I nor others been silenced, we have been joined by millions of Americans who think the same way we do. Don't let the false patriots intimidate you by setting the agenda or the terms of the debate. Don't be defeated by polls that show 70% of the public in favor of the war. Remember that these Americans being polled are the same Americans whose kids (or neighbor's kids) have been sent over to Iraq. They are scared for the troops and they are being cowed into supporting a war they did not want -- and they want even less to see their friends, family, and neighbors come home dead. Everyone supports the troops returning home alive and all of us need to reach out and let their families know that.

Unfortunately, Bush and Co. are not through yet. This invasion and conquest will encourage them to do it again elsewhere. The real purpose of this war was to say to the rest of the world, "Don't Mess with Texas - If You Got What We Want, We're Coming to Get It!" This is not the time for the majority of us who believe in a peaceful America to be quiet. Make your voices heard. Despite what they have pulled off, it is still our country.

Yours,

Michael Moore www.michaelmoore.com http://www.michaelmoore.com/mailing/unsubscribe.php ]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v56/__show_article/_a000056-000047.htm 2003-04-10T19:35:12Z 2003-04-10T19:35:12Z

by Noam Chomsky and VK Ramachandran Frontline India April 02, 2003 Noam Chomsky , University Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founder of the modern science of linguistics and political activist, is a powerhouse of anti-imperialist activism in the United States today. On M...

This is not pre-emptive war; there is a crucial difference. Pre-emptive war has a meaning, it means that, for example, if planes are flying across the Atlantic to bomb the United States, the United States is permitted to shoot them down even before they bomb and may be permitted to attack the air bases from which they came. Pre-emptive war is a response to ongoing or imminent attack.

The doctrine of preventive war is totally different; it holds that the United States - alone, since nobody else has this right - has the right to attack any country that it claims to be a potential challenge to it. So if the United States claims, on whatever grounds, that someone may sometime threaten it, then it can attack them.

The doctrine of preventive war was announced explicitly in the National Strategy Report last September. It sent shudders around the world, including through the U.S. establishment, where, I might say, opposition to the war is unusually high. The National Strategy Report said, in effect, that the U.S. will rule the world by force, which is the dimension - the only dimension - in which it is supreme. Furthermore, it will do so for the indefinite future, because if any potential challenge arises to U.S. domination, the U.S. will destroy it before it becomes a challenge.

This is the first exercise of that doctrine. If it succeeds on these terms, as it presumably will, because the target is so defenceless, then international lawyers and Western intellectuals and others will begin to talk about a new norm in international affairs. It is important to establish such a norm if you expect to rule the world by force for the foreseeable future.

This is not without precedent, but it is extremely unusual. I shall mention one precedent, just to show how narrow the spectrum is. In 1963, Dean Acheson, who was a much respected elder statesman and senior Adviser of the Kennedy Administration, gave an important talk to the American Society of International Law, in which he justified the U. S. attacks against Cuba. The attack by the Kennedy Administration on Cuba was large-scale international terrorism and economic warfare. The timing was interesting - it was right after the Missile Crisis, when the world was very close to a terminal nuclear war. In his speech, Acheson said that "no legal issue arises when the United States responds to challenges to its position, prestige or authority", or words approximating that.

That is also a statement of the Bush doctrine. Although Acheson was an important figure, what he said had not been official government policy in the post-War period. It now stands as official policy and this is the first illustration of it. It is intended to provide a precedent for the future.

Such "norms" are established only when a Western power does something, not when others do. That is part of the deep racism of Western culture, going back through centuries of imperialism and so deep that it is unconscious.

So I think this war is an important new step, and is intended to be.

Ramachandran :Is it also a new phase in that the U. S. has not been able to carry others with it?

Chomsky : That is not new. In the case of the Vietnam War, for example, the United States did not even try to get international support. Nevertheless, you are right in that this is unusual. This is a case in which the United States was compelled for political reasons to try to force the world to accept its position and was not able to, which is quite unusual. Usually, the world succumbs.

Ramachandran :So does it represent a "failure of diplomacy" or a redefinition of diplomacy itself?

Chomsky : I wouldn't call it diplomacy at all - it's a failure of coercion.

Compare it with the first Gulf War. In the first Gulf War, the U.S. coerced the Security Council into accepting its position, although much of the world opposed it. NATO went along, and the one country in the Security Council that did not - Yemen - was immediately and severely punished.

In any legal system that you take seriously, coerced judgments are considered invalid, but in the international affairs conducted by the powerful, coerced judgments are fine - they are called diplomacy.

What is interesting about this case is that the coercion did not work. There were countries - in fact, most of them - who stubbornly maintained the position of the vast majority of their populations.

The most dramatic case is Turkey. Turkey is a vulnerable country, vulnerable to U.S. punishment and inducements. Nevertheless, the new government, I think to everyone's surprise, did maintain the position of about 90 per cent of its population. Turkey is bitterly condemned for that here, just as France and Germany are bitterly condemned because they took the position of the overwhelming majority of their populations. The countries that are praised are countries like Italy and Spain, whose leaders agreed to follow orders from Washington over the opposition of maybe 90 per cent of their populations.

That is another new step. I cannot think of another case where hatred and contempt for democracy have so openly been proclaimed, not just by the government, but also by liberal commentators and others. There is now a whole literature trying to explain why France, Germany, the so-called "old Europe", and Turkey and others are trying to undermine the United States. It is inconceivable to the pundits that they are doing so because they take democracy seriously and they think that when the overwhelming majority of a population has an opinion, a government ought to follow it.

That is real contempt for democracy, just as what has happened at the United Nations is total contempt for the international system. In fact there are now calls - from The Wall Street Journal ,people in Government and others - to disband the United Nations.

Fear of the United States around the world is extraordinary. It is so extreme that it is even being discussed in the mainstream media. The cover story of the upcoming issue of Newsweek is about why the world is so afraid of the United States. The Post had a cover story about this a few weeks ago.

Of course this is considered to be the world's fault, that there is something wrong with the world with which we have to deal somehow, but also something that has to be recognised.

Ramachandran :The idea that Iraq represents any kind of clear and present danger is, of course, without any substance at all.

Chomsky : Nobody pays any attention to that accusation, except, interestingly, the population of the United States.

In the last few months, there has been a spectacular achievement of government-media propaganda, very visible in the polls. The international polls show that support for the war is higher in the United States than in other countries. That is, however, quite misleading, because if you look a little closer, you find that the United States is also different in another respect from the rest of the world. Since September 2002, the United States is the only country in the world where 60 per cent of the population believes that Iraq is an imminent threat - something that people do not believe even in Kuwait or Iran.

Furthermore, about 50 per cent of the population now believes that Iraq was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. This has happened since September 2002. In fact, after the September 11 attack, the figure was about 3 per cent. Government-media propaganda has managed to raise that to about 50 per cent. Now if people genuinely believe that Iraq has carried out major terrorist attacks against the United States and is planning to do so again, well, in that case people will support the war.

This has happened, as I said, after September 2002. September 2002 is when the government-media campaign began and also when the mid-term election campaign began. The Bush Administration would have been smashed in the election if social and economic issues had been in the forefront, but it managed to suppress those issues in favour of security issues - and people huddle under the umbrella of power.

This is exactly the way the country was run in the 1980s. Remember that these are almost the same people as in the Reagan and the senior Bush Administrations. Right through the 1980s they carried out domestic policies that were harmful to the population and which, as we know from extensive polls, the people opposed. But they managed to maintain control by frightening the people. So the Nicaraguan Army was two days' march from Texas and about to conquer the United States, and the airbase in Granada was one from which the Russians would bomb us. It was one thing after another, every year, every one of them ludicrous. The Reagan Administration actually declared a national Emergency in 1985 because of the threat to the security of the United States posed by the Government of Nicaragua.

If somebody were watching this from Mars, they would not know whether to laugh or to cry.

They are doing exactly the same thing now, and will probably do something similar for the presidential campaign. There will have to be a new dragon to slay, because if the Administration lets domestic issues prevail, it is in deep trouble.

Ramachandran :You have written that this war of aggression has dangerous consequences with respect to international terrorism and the threat of nuclear war.

Chomsky : I cannot claim any originality for that opinion. I am just quoting the CIA and other intelligence agencies and virtually every specialist in international affairs and terrorism. Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy , the study by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the high-level Hart-Rudman Commission on terrorist threats to the United States all agree that it is likely to increase terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The reason is simple: partly for revenge, but partly just for self-defence.

There is no other way to protect oneself from U.S. attack. In fact, the United States is making the point very clearly, and is teaching the world an extremely ugly lesson.

Compare North Korea and Iraq. Iraq is defenceless and weak; in fact, the weakest regime in the region. While there is a horrible monster running it, it does not pose a threat to anyone else. North Korea, on the other hand, does pose a threat. North Korea, however, is not attacked for a very simple reason: it has a deterrent. It has a massed artillery aimed at Seoul, and if the United States attacks it, it can wipe out a large part of South Korea.

So the United States is telling the countries of the world: if you are defenceless, we are going to attack you when we want, but if you have a deterrent, we will back off, because we only attack defenceless targets. In other words, it is telling countries that they had better develop a terrorist network and weapons of mass destruction or some other credible deterrent; if not, they are vulnerable to "preventive war".

For that reason alone, this war is likely to lead to the proliferation of both terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Ramachandran :How do you think the U.S. will manage the human - and humanitarian - consequences of the war?

Chomsky : No one knows, of course. That is why honest and decent people do not resort to violence - because one simply does not know.

The aid agencies and medical groups that work in Iraq have pointed out that the consequences can be very severe. Everyone hopes not, but it could affect up to millions of people. To undertake violence when there is even such a possibility is criminal.

There is already - that is, even before the war - a humanitarian catastrophe. By conservative estimates, ten years of sanctions have killed hundreds of thousands of people. If there were any honesty, the U.S. would pay reparations just for the sanctions.

The situation is similar to the bombing of Afghanistan, of which you and I spoke when the bombing there was in its early stages. It was obvious the United States was never going to investigate the consequences.

Ramachandran :Or invest the kind of money that was needed.

Chomsky : Oh no. First, the question is not asked, so no one has an idea of what the consequences of the bombing were for most of the country. Then almost nothing comes in. Finally, it is out of the news, and no one remembers it any more.

In Iraq, the United States will make a show of humanitarian reconstruction and will put in a regime that it will call democratic, which means that it follows Washington's orders. Then it will forget about what happens later, and will go on to the next one.

Ramachandran :How have the media lived up to their propaganda-model reputation this time?

Chomsky : Right now it is cheerleading for the home team. Look at CNN, which is disgusting - and it is the same everywhere. That is to be expected in wartime; the media are worshipful of power.

More interesting is what happened in the build-up to war. The fact that government-media propaganda was able to convince the people that Iraq is an imminent threat and that Iraq was responsible for September 11 is a spectacular achievement and, as I said, was accomplished in about four months. If you ask people in the media about this, they will say, "Well, we never said that," and it is true, they did not. There was never a statement that Iraq is going to invade the United States or that it carried out the World Trade Centre attack. It was just insinuated, hint after hint, until they finally got people to believe it.

Ramachandran :Look at the resistance, though. Despite the propaganda, despite the denigration of the United Nations, they haven't quite carried the day.

Chomsky : You never know. The United Nations is in a very hazardous position.

The United States might move to dismantle it. I don't really expect that, but at least to diminish it, because when it isn't following orders, of what use is it?

Ramachandran :Noam, you have seen movements of resistance to imperialism over a long period - Vietnam, Central America, Gulf War I. What are your impressions of the character, sweep and depth of the present resistance to U.S. aggression? We take great heart in the extraordinary mobilisations all over the world.

Chomsky : Oh, that is correct; there is just nothing like it. Opposition throughout the world is enormous and unprecedented, and the same is true of the United States. Yesterday, for example, I was in demonstrations in downtown Boston, right around the Boston Common. It is not the first time I have been there. The first time I participated in a demonstration there at which I was to speak was in October 1965. That was four years after the United States had started bombing South Vietnam. Half of South Vietnam had been destroyed and the war had been extended to North Vietnam. We could not have a demonstration because it was physically attacked, mostly by students, with the support of the liberal press and radio, who denounced these people who were daring to protest against an American war.

On this occasion, however, there was a massive protest before the war was launched officially and once again on the day it was launched - with no counter-demonstrators. That is a radical difference. And if it were not for the fear factor that I mentioned, there would be much more opposition.

The government knows that it cannot carry out long-term aggression and destruction as in Vietnam because the population will not tolerate it.

There is only one way to fight a war now. First of all, pick a much weaker enemy, one that is defenceless. Then build it up in the propaganda system as either about to commit aggression or as an imminent threat. Next, you need a lightning victory. An important leaked document of the first Bush Administration in 1989 described how the U.S. would have to fight war. It said that the U.S. had to fight much weaker enemies, and that victory must be rapid and decisive, as public support will quickly erode. It is no longer like the 1960s, when a war could be fought for years with no opposition at all.

In many ways, the activism of the 1960s and subsequent years has simply made a lot of the world, including this country, much more civilised in many domains.

ENDS

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Copyright (c) Scoop Media ]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v56/__show_article/_a000056-000046.htm 2003-04-09T22:50:31Z 2003-04-09T22:50:31Z

October 1, 2002 "YOU ARE EITHER WITH US, OR YOU ARE FIRED!" Dear Friends, I was going to write you a letter about what a pathetic liar George W, Bush is -- but then I figured, hey, why waste your time telling you something you already know! You already know that his planned invasion of Ir...

THOSE are the real issues facing us, not some phony excuse for a war.

But, like I said, you already know that. You know that Bush is lying through his smirk when he says Iraq has "weapons of mass destruction." He has not offered one shred of evidence to prove this. Not one! You know he is lying when he says that there is a "connection" between Saddam and bin Laden. Even members of his own administration have admitted that is not true. It's just one lie after another, and I applaud those three congressmen who went to Iraq this week and told it like it is -- and demanded that the sanctions which have already killed a half-million Iraqi children be ended. Sen. Trent Lott said "they should come home and keep their mouths shut." I say, we need more damn Democrats with that kind of courage and with mouths like that!

Which brings me to the real point of this letter. The Democrats.

I have never seen a more lame bunch of cowards and appeasers in my life. They are ready to bow down before Bush and give him what he wants to wage war against Iraq. This pathetic excuse of a party is an embarrassment to us all. The fact that they let Robert Torricelli run for re-election in New Jersey, knowing how dirty he was, shows just how capable they are of handing the Senate over to Bush and the Republicans come November. They have blown it over and over again, and lots of good people I know who keep putting their faith in the Democrats are just giving up -- and that is the worst thing to happen in a free society.

What are we going to do? Left to their own devices, the Democrats will not only hand both the House and the Senate to the Republicans in November, they will guarantee that Bush gets his second undeserved term in 2004. We must not let that happen. This year's election was theirs for the taking. Just look at the state of the union Bush gave us: Bush cronies caught stealing from the corporate till, Bush and Cheney caught breaking the law in the '90s, the economy in the toilet, and Bush failing to do the only real job he had to do since 9/11: Get bin Laden! What a disgrace! Yet the Democrats could not even find enough candidates to offer a REAL challenge to the Republicans in nearly 200 House districts for the November 5th elections. What an appalling excuse of a party.

OK, I know, there is not much we can do about this now. But we all need to get busy and ensure that this whole rotten system is rocked by the disgruntled millions come election day 2004. Otherwise, we have no right to complain.

In the meantime, we must stop the Bush attack on Iraq. We must find out now, as W says, "who is wid us and who is agin us." I am asking each of you to please sign the petition I have posted here (http://www.michaelmoore.com/petitions/peacepledge/index.php) and on my website (www.michaelmoore.com) informing the Democrats that whoever amongst them votes for this war, we pledge NEVER to vote for them again. I will personally see that your on-line signatures are delivered to every member of Congress. I guarantee your voice will be heard loud and clear.

Go to http://www.michaelmoore.com/petitions/peacepledge/index.php and sign the petition to the Democrats: "You're Either With Us Or You're Fired." Then let's figure out together what we can do to turn things around by 2004.

Thanks for taking the time to do this. We have no other choice.

Yours, Michael Moore

P.S. The wonderful, heartfelt letters sent to me regarding my mom's passing continue to fill my mailbox from so many of you. Thank you very much -- you don't know what it has meant to me. I am sorry I have not been able to be very active or public in the past couple of months, so please accept my apologies and my thanks for your understanding. Next week, I have to get back to work -- it is time for my film to bust its way into theaters across America. I will tell you all about it next Monday...
]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v56/__show_article/_a000056-000045.htm 2002-10-01T14:44:53Z 2002-10-01T14:44:53Z

Not sure how widely circulated this is. It surely is good news from the halls of power, somebody is standing up in order to be counted. A letter from former Secretary of State; Ramsey Clark to Kofi Annan. Has this been big news in the USA? September 20, 2002 Secretary General Kofi Annan U...

1. President George Bush Came to Office Determined to Attack Iraq and Change its Government. George Bush is moving apace to make his war unstoppable and soon. Having stated last Friday that he did not believe Iraq would accept UN inspectors, he responded to Iraq's prompt, unconditional acceptance by calling any reliance on it a false hope and promising to attack Iraq alone if the UN does not act. He is obsessed with the desire to wage war against Iraq and install his surrogates to govern Iraq by force. Days after the most bellicose address ever made before the United Nations--an unprecedented assault on the Charter of the United Nations, the rule of law and the quest for peace--the U.S. announced it was changing its stated targets in Iraq over the past eleven years, from retaliation for threats and attacks on U.S. aircraft which were illegally invading Iraq's airspace on a daily basis. How serious could those threats and attacks have been if no U.S. aircraft was ever hit? Yet hundreds of people were killed in Iraq by U.S. rockets and bombs, and not just in the so called no fly zone, but in Baghdad itself. Now the U.S. proclaims its intentions to destroy major military facilities in Iraq in preparation for its invasion, a clear promise of aggression now. Every day there are threats and more propaganda is unleashed to overcome resistance to George Bush's rush to war. The acceleration will continue until the tanks roll, unless nonviolent persuasion prevails.

2. George Bush Is Leading the United States and Taking the UN and All Nations Toward a Lawless World of Endless Wars. George Bush in his "War on Terrorism" has asserted his right to attack any country, organization, or people first, without warning in his sole discretion. He and members of his administration have proclaimed the old restraints that law sought to impose on aggression by governments and repression of their people, no longer consistent with national security. Terrorism is such a danger, they say, that necessity compels the U.S. to strike first to destroy the potential for terrorist acts from abroad and to make arbitrary arrests, detentions, interrogations, controls and treatment of people abroad and within the U.S. Law has become the enemy of public safety. Necessity is the argument of tyrants. Necessity never makes a good bargain.

Heinrich Himmler, who instructed the Nazi Gestapo "Shoot first, ask questions later, and I will protect you", is vindicated by George Bush. Like the Germany described by Jorge Luis Borges in Deutsches Requiem, George Bush has now proffered (the world) violence and faith in the sword, as Nazi Germany did. And as Borges wrote, it did not matter to faith in the sword that Germany was defeated. What matters is that violence ... now rules. Two generations of Germans have rejected that faith. Their perseverance in the pursuit of peace will earn the respect of succeeding generations everywhere.

The Peoples of the United Nations are threatened with the end of international law and protection for human rights by George Bush's war on terrorism and determination to invade Iraq.

Since George Bush proclaimed his "war on terrorism", other countries have claimed the right to strike first. India and Pakistan brought the earth and their own people closer to nuclear conflict than at any time since October 1962 as a direct consequence of claims by the U.S. of the unrestricted right to pursue and kill terrorists, or attack nations protecting them, based on a unilateral decision without consulting the United Nations, a trial, or revealing any clear factual basis for claiming its targets are terrorists and confined to them.

There is already a near epidemic of nations proclaiming the right to attack other nations or intensify violations of human rights of their own people on the basis of George Bush's assertions of power in the war against terrorism. Mary Robinson, in her quietly courageous statements as her term as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ended, has spoken of the 'ripple effect' U.S. claims of right to strike first and suspend fundamental human rights protection is having.

On September 11, 2002, Colombia, whose new administration is strongly supported by the U.S., claimed new authority to arrest suspects without warrants and declare zones under military control, including [N]ew powers, which also make it easier to wiretap phones and limit foreigners access to conflict zones... allow security agents to enter your house or office without a warrant at any time of day because they think you're suspicious. These additional threats to human rights follow Post-September 11 emergency plans to set up a network of a million informants in a nation of forty million. See, New York Times, September 12, 2002, p. A7.

3. The United States, Not Iraq, Is the Greatest Single Threat to the Independence and Purpose of the United Nations.

President Bush's claim that Iraq is a threat justifying war is false. Eighty percent of Iraq's military capacity was destroyed in 1991 according to the Pentagon. Ninety percent of materials and equipment required to manufacture weapons of mass destruction was destroyed by UN inspectors during more than eight years of inspections. Iraq was powerful, compared to most of its neighbors, in 1990. Today it is weak. One infant out of four born live in Iraq weighs less than 2 kilos, promising short lives, illness and impaired development. In 1989, fewer than one in twenty infants born live weighed less than two kilos. Any threat to peace Iraq might become is remote, far less than that of many other nations and groups and cannot justify a violent assault. An attack on Iraq will make attacks in retaliation against the U.S. and governments which support its actions far more probable for years to come.

George Bush proclaims Iraq a threat to the authority of the United Nations while U.S.-coerced UN sanctions continue to cause the death rate of the Iraqi people to increase. Deaths caused by sanctions have been at genocidal levels for twelve years. Iraq can only plead helplessly for an end to this crime against its people. The UN role in the sanctions against Iraq compromise and stain the UN's integrity and honor. This makes it all the more important for the UN now to resist this war.

Inspections were used as an excuse to continue sanctions for eight years while thousands of Iraqi children and elderly died each month. Iraq is the victim of criminal sanctions that should have been lifted in 1991. For every person killed by terrorist acts in the U.S. on 9/11, five hundred people have died in Iraq from sanctions.

It is the U.S. that threatens not merely the authority of the United Nations, but its independence, integrity and hope for effectiveness. The U.S. pays UN dues if, when and in the amount it chooses. It coerces votes of members. It coerces choices of personnel on the Secretariat. It rejoined UNESCO to gain temporary favor after 18 years of opposition to its very purposes. It places spies in UN inspection teams.

The U.S. has renounced treaties controlling nuclear weapons and their proliferation, voted against the protocol enabling enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention, rejected the treaty banning land mines, endeavored to prevent its creation and since to cripple the International Criminal Court, and frustrated the Convention on the Child and the prohibition against using children in war. The U.S. has opposed virtually every other international effort to control and limit war, protect the environment, reduce poverty and protect health.

George Bush cites two invasions of other countries by Iraq during the last 22 years. He ignores the many scores of U.S. invasions and assaults on other countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas during the last 220 years, and the permanent seizure of lands from Native Americans and other nations--lands like Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, and Puerto Rico, among others, seized by force and threat.

In the same last 22 years the U.S. has invaded, or assaulted Grenada, Nicaragua, Libya, Panama, Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and others directly, while supporting assaults and invasions elsewhere in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

It is healthy to remember that the U.S. invaded and occupied little Grenada in 1983 after a year of threats, killing hundreds of civilians and destroying its small mental hospital, where many patients died. In a surprise attack on the sleeping and defenseless cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in April 1986, the U.S. killed hundreds of civilians and damaged four foreign embassies. It launched 21 Tomahawk cruise missiles against the El Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum in August 1998, destroying the source of half the medicines available to the people of Sudan. For years it has armed forces in Uganda and southern Sudan fighting the government of Sudan. The U.S. has bombed Iraq on hundreds of occasions since the Gulf War, including this week, killing hundreds of people without a casualty or damage to an attacking plane.

4. Why Has George Bush Decided The U.S. Must Attack Iraq Now?

There is no rational basis to believe Iraq is a threat to the United States, or any other country. The reason to attack Iraq must be found elsewhere.

As governor of Texas, George Bush presided over scores of executions, more than any governor in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 (after a hiatus from 1967). He revealed the same zeal he has shown for "regime change" for Iraq when he oversaw the executions of minors, women, retarded persons and aliens whose rights under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of notification of their arrest to a foreign mission of their nationality were violated. The Supreme Court of the U.S. held that executions of a mentally retarded person constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution. George Bush addresses the United Nations with these same values and willfulness.

His motives may include to save a failing Presidency which has converted a healthy economy and treasury surplus into multi-trillion dollar losses; to fulfill the dream, which will become a nightmare, of a new world order to serve special interests in the U.S.; to settle a family grudge against Iraq; to weaken the Arab nation, one people at a time; to strike a Muslim nation to weaken Islam; to protect Israel, or make its position more dominant in the region; to secure control of Iraq's oil to enrich U.S. interests, further dominate oil in the region and control oil prices. Aggression against Iraq for any of these purposes is criminal and a violation of a great many international conventions and laws including the General Assembly Resolution on the Definition of Aggression of December 14, 1974.

Prior regime changes by the U.S. brought to power among a long list of tyrants, such leaders as the Shah of Iran, Mobutu in the Congo, Pinochet in Chile, all replacing democratically elected heads of government.

5. A Rational Policy Intended to Reduce the Threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction in The Middle East Must Include Israel.

A UN or U.S. policy of selecting enemies of the U.S. for attack is criminal and can only heighten hatred, division, terrorism and lead to war. The U.S. gives Israel far more aid per capita than the total per capita income of sub Sahara Africans from all sources. U.S.-coerced sanctions have reduced per capita income for the people of Iraq by 75% since 1989. Per capita income in Israel over the past decade has been approximately 12 times the per capita income of Palestinians.

Israel increased its decades-long attacks on the Palestinian people, using George Bush's proclamation of war on terrorism as an excuse, to indiscriminately destroy cities and towns in the West Bank and Gaza and seize more land in violation of international law and repeated Security Council and General Assembly resolutions.

Israel has a stockpile of hundreds of nuclear warheads derived from the United States, sophisticated rockets capable of accurate delivery at distances of several thousand kilometers, and contracts with the U.S. for joint development of more sophisticated rocketry and other arms with the U.S.

Possession of weapons of mass destruction by a single nation in a region with a history of hostility promotes a race for proliferation and war. The UN must act to reduce and eliminate all weapons of mass destruction, not submit to demands to punish areas of evil and enemies of the superpower that possesses the majority of all such weapons and capacity for their delivery.

Israel has violated and ignored more UN Resolutions for forty years than any other nation. It has done so with impunity.

The violation of Security Council resolutions cannot be the basis for a UN-approved assault on any nation, or people, in a time of peace, or the absence of a threat of imminent attack, but comparable efforts to enforce Security Council resolutions must be made against all nations who violate them.

6. The Choice Is War Or Peace. The UN and the U.S. must seek peace, not war. An attack on Iraq may open a Pandora?s box that will condemn the world to decades of spreading violence. Peace is not only possible; it is essential, considering the heights to which science and technology have raised the human art of planetary and self-destruction.

If George Bush is permitted to attack Iraq with or without the approval of the UN, he will become Public Enemy Number One--and the UN itself worse than useless, an accomplice in the wars it was created to end. The Peoples of the World then will have to find some way to begin again if they hope to end the scourge of war.

This is a defining moment for the United Nations. Will it stand strong, independent and true to its Charter, international law and the reasons for its being, or will it submit to the coercion of a superpower leading us toward a lawless world and condone war against the cradle of civilization?

Do not let this happen.

Sincerely,

Ramsey Clark

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]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v56/__show_article/_a000056-000044.htm 2002-09-26T01:28:08Z 2002-09-26T01:28:08Z

Other NCNers may wonder why I'm seemingly single focused on the more overtly political. Well, several reasons, with the so-called "War on Terrorism" most peoples focus is on secruity not enviornmental/social or spiritual issues. Unless Bush and his croonies are stopped, there is slim hope for a ...

1. Hundreds Of Thousands Could Die. To minimise US casualities, there will be a massive aerial bombardment of Iraqi cities and towns. This time, the Iraqi forces will not be fighting out in the desert, but digging in to defend their own cities and towns. Massive civilian casualities will ensue...expect the usual propaganda about "pinpoint" bombing, followed by "accentental" hits on hospitals and fefugee centres. Expect the Iraqis to be blamed for the civilian casualities.

2. The War Is A Cynical Diversion. Saddam Hussein is not even the biggest threat to the region, let alone the world. The Israel/Palestinian conflict is the key issue destabilising the Middle East, one that could be readily solved by peaceful pressure on Israel by the US. As NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark says: "I think it [a US attack on Iraq] will trigger a lot of instability in the Middle East...and make it harder to get an Israeli-Palestinian settlement." however, a diversionary war on Baghdad suits the Bush administrationm extremely well. The Palestinians have been driven off the news bulletins. At home, the war talk all but exempts the President and Republican candidates in the November elections from criticism, at a time when the media was homing in on Dubya's dubious dealings with Harken Energy, and on vice-President Dick Cheney's tenure as chief executive of the Halliburton company. Moreover, the US economy has been faltering all year, and Bush's ineptitude as an economic manager (the same failing that sank his father's presidency) has been exemplified by the huge tax cuts he pushed through for the rich. This has speedily transformed the healthy surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton into a massive deficit. No matter, now the nation has been safely diverted by the Saddam bogey.

3. One At A Time, Please. Before September 11, Dubya's presidency was collapsing into a national joke and the war on terror has been manipulated to extend his lucky state of grace. Stability within Afghanistan remains elusive. The US failed to catch Osama bin Laden (remember him?) and Mullah Omar. The authority of the Afgan puppet president Hamid Karzai barely extends beyond Kabul, and Karzai, who was nearly assassinated a fortnight ago, is having power struggles with the Tajik ethnic minority who dominate his government. Obviously, a major US military and financial presence in Afgahanistan will be necessary for years to come. Wouldn't it be wise to finish one war before starting the next?

4. Where's The Evidence? By 1998, UN arms inspectors had destroyed 95% of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destrution and...crucially...had also destroyed factories needed to make them. Such weapons require an industrial infrastructure readily detectable by the intellegence and surveillance resourses of US and Britain. Because of the extensive bombing in the past, some of Iraq's infrastructure is being legitimately rebuilt, but it should be possible...again, given the US detection resourses..to discern the purpose involved. Strangely, US and British spokespersons have largely relied upon an International Atomic Energy Agentcy report that contains evidence of some rebuilding, but the report concedes it cannot confirm that the relevant contructions have a nuclear purpose. Otherwise the US has claimed that Iraq has gone shopping for aluminium casings, that might concievably be used someday to make an atomic bomb. Pathetic stuff. The manufacture of nuclear weapons emits gamma rays, easily detectable. Chemical and biological weapons-making emits other gases, readily detectable. Where is the evidence? Of the three main nerve agents; sarin, tabou and VX, the first two have a half live of five years, so if Iraq had any hidden away from inspectors in 1998, the would be now be almost useless. Iraq's VX factory was destroyed on January 23, 1991 and a 1997 attempt to import fresh manufacturing components from Europe was intercepted in its crates and destroyed. As former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter says, the Bush administration is really dealing in "heightened speculation and rhetoric, not fact..." Moreover, the invasion logic doesn't make sense. Tp prevent Saddam Hussein from having (or using) weapons of mass destruction, a US invasion would create the very conditions under which he is most likely to use them! The fact that an invasion is being mounted thus serves as a good circumstantial evidence that Suddam Hussein does not possess weapons of mass destruction, since the Americans clearly beleive they face little risk of retaliation along those lines.

5. Peace Is Getting No Chance. The declared US priority is regime change, not getting arms inspectors back in. Why is this so? Werll in 1998, the Republican controlled Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which makes Hussein's overthrow mandatory. Also, as Ritter says, the UN doesn't want it to be discovered that Iraq poses no genuine threat. Once UN arms inspectors did returnm and certified that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction, the UN would have to keep its share of the bargain and lift economic sanctions, thus ending Iraq's isolation. That is why, as White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stated in early September, the US priority would be a regime change, even if arms inspectors recommenced. Clearly, this issue is not about Iraq's arsenal, real or imaginary. That being so, the diplomatic challenges facing the US is to look as if it supports the resumption of arms inspections, whilst doing its best to torpedo them. The war talk serves this purpose admirably. Afterall, Iraq's compliance with arms inspections is supposed to be unconditional, so they can be blamed for resisting any demand, however outrageous. In reality, the UN muddied these waters in the 1990s by using UN arms inspections for espionage purposes that went beyond the disarmanent mandate. This espionage was used by the US to guide its Desert Fox bombing campaign of December 1998. Quite legitimately, the Iraqis seek reasonable reassurances from the UN that this will not happen again. Fat chance. The UN seems to be colluding with the US in pushing Iraq into a lose/lose situation. Admit Un arms inspectors, even if we choose to stack those teams with spies who will either try to assissanate your leader, or guide others to do so. Even if you agree to these terms, we may well invade you anyway. Fail to agree with any of these demands...and your compliance must be unconditional...and we will regard that as evidence that we should bomb you.

6. There Is No Exit Strategy. Okay assume that we have killed Saddam Hussein and thousands of ordinary Iraqi men, women and children and inflamed the entire Middle East. Then what? The Iraqi population is 60% Shi'ite, 23% Kurdish and 17% Sunni. Over recent years, the Kurds have won a stable and lurative co-existance with Iraq and Turkey, which explains why neither of the rival Kurdish factions support an invasion. Washington plainly envisage the Kurds playing the surrogate role that the Northern Alliance perform in Afghanistan, but Turkey would never tolerate this. Would democracy be installed in Iraq? Hardly. The prospect of Shi'ites gaining power in Iraq...alongside their revolutionary Shi'ite neighbours in Iran...would send shock waves through those Middle East nations (Bahrain, anyone?) where Shi'ites comprise either an oppressed majority or a sizeable minority. So the likely outcome from toppling Hussein would be a puppet ruler of much the same type, drawn from the same Sunni tribes. Differebnt person, same style. Medium term, the door will have been opened for the rise of revolutionary Islam within Iraq and throughout the region. So in the name of fighting Islamic fundamentalism, a Bush victory in Iraq will have destroyed the most secular regime in the Middle East, and presented revolutionary Islam with its biggest chance for advancement in two decades. Ayatollah Khomeni must be smiling in his grave at the prospect.

7. Saddam Hussein Was Our Monster. As Dubya says, Saddam is the kind of leader who has used poison gas against his people. True, but Bush fails to add tghat the US was supportibng him politically and militarily at the time and afterwards...to the point where he thought he had been given the green light by US ambassador April Glaspie to invade Kuwait. Since then, the US has boxed itself in from engaging constructively with Iraq, despite it being the region's strongest opponent of religious extremism.

*. Iraq Is Not The Terrorist Threat. By the US State Department's own estimats, Iran is the prime supporter of global terrorism, not Iraq. To bolster it's case for invasion, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has claimed that al-Qaeda remnants are hiding in Norther4n Iraq...a "ludicrous" claim says Alex Standish, editor of Jane's Intellegence Weekly, not the least because Saddam Hussein doesn't control northern Iraq. The US and Britain do. Hussein and al-Qaeda are also bitter ideological enemies.

9. It's Not About Trade. Lets see...the death of how many thousands of innocent Iraqis should we (NZ) support in order to nudge a bit closer a trade deal with the US. Whatever the current government's current failing, its stance on Iraq (so far) has been infinitely preferable to the craven foriegn policy postures being urged by the centre right.

10. Who's Next? If bad behaviour and the potenial to aquire nasty weapons justify invasion, then where will the forces of freedom strike next...North Korea? Iran? Venezuela? Along the way, the UN and international law are being corrupted. They exist to be the guardians of weak nations, not merely to licence the whims and ambitions of the powerful.
]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v56/__show_article/_a000056-000043.htm 2002-09-24T18:10:08Z 2002-09-24T18:10:08Z

The new ugly Americans by George Ochenski ; 9/19/2002 It'll only get harder to quell our rising discontent Secretary of State Colin Powell was jeered, booed, and heckled when, as America’s top official at the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development, he attempted to defend t...

During what has been called “The Battle of Portland,” aggressive phalanxes of cops in full body armor and riot gear descended on thousands of protesting citizens during Bush’s last visit. Pictures of grandmothers being choked by nightsticks and accounts of young mothers with babies on their backs being covered in blinding sheets of pepper spray filled the media. Bush, however, saw none of this as he was carefully sequestered from those protesting his administration’s policies ranging from the new logging offensive to the looming Iraq attack.

When Bush blew Portland for sunny Stockton, Calif., the same thing happened. Citizens turned out in what has been called Stockton’s single largest demonstration to display their displeasure. Once again, however, he was carefully isolated from those he claims to lead. Protestors were herded and kept behind a line of semi-trucks by riot police, totally screened from the president. Meanwhile, those with signs supporting Bush were allowed to line his route to provide a cheering background for the media coverage.

| Obviously, the White House will go to any lengths to manufacture | a positive image for Bush, including limiting our basic rights | to peaceably assemble and petition our own government. If you’re | for the Bush policies, step right up here in front of the cameras. | If you’re against the Bush policies, step over here | behind these trucks, where the dogs and cops are waiting for you.

The problem, however, is that the protests are waiting everywhere Bush goes these days—even at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Simply put, it’s getting harder and harder to maintain the façade of broad public support for the Bush agenda in the face of mounting resistance. Ironically, while President Bush unleashes much of his harshest criticism at leaders like Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein, whom he says disdain the wishes of their people, he is hypocritically isolating himself behind a barrier of agents, soldiers, and cops from any contact with those critical of his own policies.

Isolating decision-makers from citizen dissatisfaction is one way of running a country – but it is far from the best way, as the Vietnam War so painfully proved. During that long ago time in which the Baby Boomers came of age, America’s young men were again rounded up, trained, and sent off to armed conflict on foreign soil. Truth be told, no one seemed certain why it was America’s job to step into Southeast Asia after the French colonials and their soldiers were unceremoniously kicked out. Then, as now, White House spin doctors and military advisors pumped up the nation with hysteria that we had to prevent what they called “the communist takeover of South Vietnam” or face a disastrous “Domino Effect” whereby communism would sweep through the region, toppling one regime after another.

The world looked on in wonder and horror as America went to war. What started with the insertion of thousands of “advisors” soon ballooned to one of the largest infusions of men and war materiel in modern times. While our politicians played “rally ’round the flag,” our bombers stripped the jungles with Agent Orange, dousing our own soldiers in the defoliant and planting the seeds for future disease and debility in those who least deserved it. While military bands marched and tooted beneath fluttering flags, napalm fell from the sky on combatants and civilians alike. The horror and propaganda grew on parallel courses, as a chain of presidents took increasingly desperate steps to justify what seemed to have become a pointless and endless war.

But nothing they did, including gassing, clubbing, and even killing student and citizen protestors, infiltrating protest organizations, or throwing their leaders in jail was enough to offset the rising howl of indignation from home and abroad. Fed by a steady stream of television coverage and increasing numbers of body bags filled with young Americans, the protests grew larger and louder as the toll of dead and injured mounted.

As history sadly records, America made its exit from Vietnam as overloaded helicopters plucked our last soldiers and allies from the roof of the Saigon embassy while the victorious Viet Cong completed their takeover in the streets below. The world’s mightiest military had been defeated and kicked out of this tiny country, just like the French before them, and no amount of White House propaganda would ever whitewash this harsh reality.

The question now, nearly 30 years later, is what happened to this nation’s collective memory of those events? Some believe we been so dumbed down by the media, so shocked by a vicious attack on our own shores, that the citizenry is ready to swallow whatever egregious constructs emanate from the White House.

But I don’t think so.

As the protests build, as the soldiers and cops club and gas our own citizens, as the parallels between this latest aggression and the Vietnam War become more painfully obvious every day, the streets worldwide are again filling with protestors. Soon, not even President Bush will be able to ignore their message. The United States, with all our wealth and power, can and should be a beacon of peace and freedom to the world—and not the personification of the new “Ugly Americans.”

When not lobbying the Montana Legislature, George Ochenski is rattling the cage of the political establishment as a political analyst for the Missoula Intependant.

As Montana's largest weekly newspaper, the Missoula Independent provides a popular antidote to the more conventional local media. Published on Thursdays and distributed free at more than 550 locations across western Montana, the Independent has a weekly circulation of 20,000 ...
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What!! he shouted from the back seats. A lone onlooker commented; "only one watt, he must be pretty dim!" Surveying the scene and deciding that there was nothing he could do, except what he had become accustomed to, and that was retreat, the dim man retreated. Taking his somewhat dissapointed...

"If you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen!" piped up the unprocessed chef, as he stirred a large pot of hackneyed stock. Who asked for his opinion pondered the dim man. There was a time when people only spoke when spoken to.
Did he spell hackneyed right reflected the Shadow!

There are wars and rumors of wars. Serpents arise from nests beneath the footpaths. The truth although somewhere 'out there' is breathtakingly difficult to find. And once found even more difficult to pass on. Yet what really bothers me is this mole on my buttock, even though it doesn't show, and doesn't stop me from doing anything, it seems like it does. If only you could understand this, this is really real to me, and by God I want you to feel that!

If only I could love and be loved like the books I have read tell me. Once I felt like I could but now love, like the dove I once had, has died. There at the bottom of the cage lies love, on a bed of grit. I thought of CPR but that seemed pathetic at the time. Now I know any action would have at least proved something. So I rave and rant deeply over lost love. A tale weaved from truth and experience, constructed such that I get what I think I want.

Even though death stalks me, I want what I want, surrender although I know breaths her sweet breath in my inner ear, can go take a hike. For desire has me by the short and curlies comfortable within my loins.

Oh I digress. Its fun, like ennuendo, fenching off what's really happening. Meanwhile as I dig and water the garden, thoughts visit me, proscribing a course of action. This action is nebulus though, breaching the membrain of the subconscious. Coming at me like a dream. If only others would be like me or at least be the way I want them to. Then things would be alright, I would clearly see what to do. In the meantime I will try this.....

This steely blue green spaceship we call home is threatened, in so many ways. The pain of that is viseral, my grief is consuming. That is the fire! It burns hotter than anything else. No longer will I prance or rage around that fire I will jump into it's midst. So he did! ]]> http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v56/__show_article/_a000056-000040.htm 2002-09-19T16:18:01Z 2002-09-19T16:18:01Z

ZNet Commentary Afghanistan Is On The Brink Of Another Disaster September 12, 2002 By Robert Fisk The garden was overgrown, the roses scrawny after a day of Kandahar heat, the dust in our eyes, noses, mouth, fingernails. But the message was straightforward. "This is a secret war," the Special ...

In the early weeks of this year, the Americans raided two Afghan villages, killed 10 policemen belonging to the US-supported government of Hamid Karzai and started mistreating the survivors. American reporters -- in a rare show of mouse-like courage amid the self-censorship of their usual reporting -- quoted the prisoners as saying they had been beaten by US troops. According to Western officials in Kandahar, the US troops "gave the prisoners a thrashing".

Things have since changed. The American forces in Afghanistan, it seems, now leave the beatings to their Afghan allies, especially members of the so-called Afghan Special Forces, a Washington-supported group of thugs who are based in the former Khad secret police torture centre in Kabul. "It's the Afghan Special Forces who beat the Pashtun prisoners for information now -- not the Americans," the Western military man told me. "But the CIA are there during the beatings, so the Americans are culpable, they let it happen."

This is just how the Americans began in Vietnam. They went in squeaky clean with advisers, there were some incidents of "termination with extreme prejudice", after which it was the Vietnamese intelligence boys who did the torture.

The same with the Russians. When their soldiers poured across the border in 1979, they quickly left it to their Afghan allies in the Parcham and Khad secret police to carry out the "serious" interrogations. And if this is what the Americans are now up to in Afghanistan, what is happening to their prisoners at Guantanamo? Or, for that matter, at Bagram, the airbase north of Kabul to which all prisoners in Kandahar are now sent for investigation if local interrogators believe their captives have more to say.

Of course, it's possible to take a step back from this dark and sinister corner of America's Afghan adventure. In the aftermath of the Taliban's defeat humanitarian workers have achieved some little miracles. Unicef reports 486 female teachers at work in the five south-western provinces of the country with 16,674 girls now at school. Only in Uruzgan, where the Taliban were strongest, has not a single female teacher been employed. UN officials can boast that in these same, poverty-belt provinces, polio has now been almost eradicated.

The UN was fighting polio before the Taliban collapsed, and the drugs whose production the Taliban banned are now back on the market. The poppy fields are growing in Helmand province again, and in Uruzgan local warlords are trying to avoid government control in order to cultivate their own new poppy production centres. In Kabul, where two government ministers have been murdered in seven months, President Karzai is now protected -- at his own request -- by American bodyguards. And you don't have to be a political analyst to know what kind of message this sends to Afghans.

Kabul is alive with the kind of rumours that can never be substantiated but that stick in the mind, just as the dust of Kandahar stays in the throat and on the lips of all who go there. "The British forces were right to leave," a British humanitarian worker announced over dinner in Kabul one night.

"They realised that the Americans had no real interest in returning this country to law and order. They knew that the Americans were going to fail. So they got out as soon as they could. The Americans say they want peace and stability. So why don't they let Isaf (the international force in Kabul) move into the other big cities of Afghanistan? Why do they let their friendly warlords persecute the rest of the country?"

Far more disturbing are persistent reports from northern Afghanistan of the massacre of thousands of Pashtuns after the slaughter at General Dostum's Qal-i-Jangi fort last November. These mass murders, according to a humanitarian worker I have known for two decades -- he played a brave role in preventing killings in Lebanon in 1982 -- went on into December with the full knowledge of the Americans. But the US did nothing about it, any more than they did about the 600 Pakistani prisoners at Shirbagan, some of whom are still dying of starvation and ill-treatment at the hands of their Northern Alliance captors.

"There are mass graves all across the north, and the Americans, who know about this, have said nothing," my old friend said. "The British intelligence people knew this, too. And the British have said nothing."

There are those in Kabul who suspect that the Americans are now in Afghanistan for secondary reasons: to operate in and out of Pakistan, rather than in Afghanistan itself. "They've had plenty of muck-ups in Afghanistan and they could not base thousands of their soldiers in Pakistan," a Western officer in Kabul said. "They're safer here, and now they can go in and out of Pakistan and keep the pressure on Musharraf from here -- and on the Iranians too."

Last week, The Independent revealed that FBI officers have been seizing Arabs from their homes in Pakistan and bringing them across the border to Afghanistan for interrogation at Bagram.

It was the Special Forces man in the south who saw things a little more globally. "Perhaps the Americans can start withdrawing if there's another war -- if they go to war in Iraq. But the US can't handle two wars at the same time. They would be overstretched." So to end America's "war against terror" in Afghanistan -- a war that has left the drug-dealers of the Northern Alliance in disproportionate control of the Afghan government, many al-Qa'ida men on the loose and absolutely no peace in the country -- we have to have another war in Iraq.

As if the Israeli-Palestine conflict is not enough. But when Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defense, can identify only a "so-called" Israeli-occupied territory on the West Bank -- the occupation troops there presumably being mistaken by the Pentagon as Swiss or Burmese soldiers -- there's not much point in taking a reality check in Washington.

The truth is that Afghanistan is on the brink of another disaster. Pakistan is now slipping into the very anarchy of which its opposition warned. And the Palestinian-Israeli war is now out of control. So we really need a war in Iraq, don't we?
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