narrative structure

Home from Iraq
8 May 2005, The Courier-Journal
from a speech given by photojournalist Molly Bingham at Western Kentucky University in April 2005

excerpt:

To seek to understand and represent to an American audience the reasons behind the Iraqi opposition is practically treasonous.

Every one of the people involved in the resistance that we spoke to held us individually responsible for their security. If something happened to them -- never mind that they were legitimate targets for the U.S. military -- they would blame us. And kill us. We soon learned that they had the U.S. bases so well watched that we had to abandon our idea of working on the U.S. side of the story -- that is, discovering what the soldiers really thought about who might be attacking them. There were so many journalists working with the American soldiers that we believed that that story would be well told. More practically, if we were seen by the Iraqis going in and out of the American bases, we would be tagged immediately as spies, informants and most likely be killed.

As terrifying as that was to manage and work through, there was another fear that was just as bad. What if the American military or intelligence found out what we were working on? Would they tail us and round up the people we met? Would they kick down our door late one night, rifle through all our stuff and arrest us for "collaborating with the enemy?" Bear in mind that there are no real laws in Iraq. At the time that we were working, the American military was the law, and it seemed to me that they were pretty much making it up as they went along. I was pretty sure that if they wanted to "disappear" us, rough us up or even send us for an all expenses paid vacation in Guantánamo for suspected al-Qaida connections, they could do so with very little, or even no recourse on our part.

I could go into a long litany of the ways in which the American military has treated journalists in Iraq. Recent actions indicate that the U.S. military will detain and/or kill any journalist who happens to be caught covering the Iraqi side of the militant resistance, and indeed a number of journalists have been killed by U.S. troops while working in Iraq. This behavior at the moment seems to be limited to journalists who also happen to be Arabs, or Arab-looking, but that is only a tangential story to what I'm telling you about here.

The intimidation to not work on this story was evident. Dexter Filkins, who writes for The New York Times, related a conversation he had in Iraq with an American military commander just before we left. Dexter and the commander had gotten quite friendly, meeting up sporadically for a beer and a chat. Towards the end of one of their conversations, Dexter declined an invitation for the next day by explaining that he'd lined up a meeting with a "resistance guy." The commander's face went stony cold and he said, "We have a position on that." For Dexter the message was clear. He cancelled the appointment. And, again, this is not meant as any criticism of the military; they have a war to win, and dominating the "message," or the news is an integral part of that war. The military has a name for it, "information operations," and the aim is to achieve information superiority in the same way they would seek to achieve air superiority. If you look closely, you will notice there is very little, maybe even no direct reporting on the resistance in Iraq. We do, however, as journalists report what the Americans say about the resistance. Is this really anything more than stenography?

And many American journalists often refer to those attacking Americans or Iraqi troops and policemen as "terrorists." Some are indeed using terrorist tactics, but calling them "terrorists" simply shuts down any sense of need or interest to look beyond that word, to understand why indeed human beings might be willing to die in a violent struggle to achieve their goal. Pushing them off as simply "insane, wild Arabs" or "extremist Muslims" does them no service, but even more, it does the U.S. no service. If we as Americans fail to understand who attacks us and why, we will simply continue on this same path, and continue watching from afar as a war we don't understand boils over.

- - - - -

The gatekeepers -- by which I mean the editors, publishers and business sides of the media -- don't want their paper or their outlet to reveal that compelling narrative of why anyone would oppose the presence of American troops on their soil. Why would anyone refuse democracy? Why would anyone not want the helping hand of America in overthrowing their terrible dictator? It's amazing to me how expeditiously we turn away from our own history. Think of our revolution. Think of our Founding Fathers. Think of what they stood for and hoped for. Think of how, over time, we have learned to improve on our own Constitution and governance. But think, mostly, about the words I just used: It was our decision and our determination that brought us where we are now.

Recall Patrick Henry's famous speech encouraging the Second Virginia Convention, gathered on March 20, 1775, to fight the British, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Why is it that we, as Americans, presume that any Iraqi would feel any differently? If the roles were reversed, do you think for a moment that our men wouldn't be stockpiling arms and attacking any foreign invader with the temerity to set foot on our soil, occupy our buildings of government and write us a new constitution?

Wouldn't we as women be joining with them in any way we could? Wouldn't the divisions between us -- how we feel about President Bush, whether we're Republican or Democrat -- be put aside as we resisted a common enemy?

Then why is it that this story of human effort for self-determination by violent means cannot be told in America? Are we so small, so confused by our own values that we cannot recognize when someone emulates our own struggle? Even if it is the U.S. that they are struggling against? I want to be careful to explain that I am not saying that the Iraqis fighting against us are necessarily fighting for democracy, but they are fighting for their right to decide for themselves what their nation looks like politically.

Home from Iraq Backslider's Wine

"toward an intrinsic moral evil"

Civil rights group targets religious conservatives

3 June 2005, Dyana Bagby, Southern Voice

Gay rights organizations such as the Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal have long been tracking anti-gay groups, including Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council. But now the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization known for monitoring hate groups including the Ku Klux Klan, labels them as extremist groups.

Attorneys Morris Dees and Joe Levin founded the center as a small civil rights firm in 1971 in Montgomery, Ala. The organization continues to monitor white supremacist groups as well as the rise of anti-immigration sentiment and other extremist activity. The center never in its 34-year history took aim at the religious right before now, but the rising volume of the national debate over gay marriage puts such groups in the limelight, Potok said.

“Our bailiwick is extremism,” he said. “We’ve avoided the Christian Right in the past, and we don’t feel we’ve expanded to include the Christian Right — we feel very strongly they have entered our world [of extremism].

“They have gone absolutely wild. The level of personal demonization was really quite remarkable. We felt we had to say, ‘Thus far, no further,’” Potok added.

The magazine devotes 23 pages in its current Intelligence Report to a 30-year history of the religious right’s anti-gay efforts. The report chronicles events from Anita Bryant’s statement in the 1970s that, “Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit. And to freshen their ranks they must recruit the youth of America,” to a recent direct mail campaign from Lou Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition. The mailing states, “They [gays] want our preschool children. … They want our kindergarten children. … They want our middle school and high school children.”

_ _ _ _ _

Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said the personal vilification and the false science against gay men and lesbians issued by institutions of the religious right are not only hateful, but dangerous.

“It is quite remarkable how they claim to hate the sin but love the sinner. That’s an absurd claim. We have reports that clearly show this kind of rhetoric paves the way to violence,” he said. “Without question, gay men and lesbians are the most attacked group — and the hate crimes toward them are more violent.”

The typical hate crime offender is a white man between the ages of 14 and 21, and offenders often say they are simply acting out the wishes of the larger community, Potok said.

So when Christian leaders spout anti-gay messages and preachers sermonize on the “moral intrinsic evil” of homosexuals, as Catholic Church officials have stated, there is little doubt the language leads to violence, Potok added.

Full Article

---

Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report
HOLY WAR

World O'Crap
Robert Knight, Crusader

---

"Homosexuals cannot reproduce, so they must recruit. And to freshen their ranks they must recruit the youth of America."

— Anita Bryant, 1970s

"[AIDS is] nature's revenge on gay men."

— Pat Buchanan, 1982

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

— Pat Robertson, 1992

"Homosexuals are dangerous. They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and there is nobody there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual."

— Lou Sheldon, 1992

"The feminists' longtime, self-proclaimed goal is an androgynous society. Repudiating constitutional intent, history, tradition and human nature, they seek to forbid us, in public or private life, to recognize the differences between men and women."

— Phyllis Schlafly, 1996

"Brute beasts ... part of a vile and satanic system [that] will be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven."

— Jerry Falwell, on homosexuals, 1996

"The State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit [homosexual] conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle."

— Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, 2002

"I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain: if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died."

— Jimmy Swaggert, 2004

"All foul urges of the Jewish soul come together in homosexuality, and the law should recognise them for what they are—utterly base aberrations - extremely serious crimes that should be punished with hanging and deportation."

— Völkischer Beobachte, official newspaper of the National Socialist German labour party, 1930

"Particular attention should be addressed to homosexuality, which is clearly expressive of a disposition opposed to the normal national community. Homosexual activity means the negation of the community as it must be constituted if the race is not to perish. That is why homosexual behaviour, in particular, merits no mercy."

— Reich Legal Director Hans Frank, 1938

---

* excerpts:

Homosexual acts had been punishable in Germany under Paragraph 175 of the Reich Penal Code since 1871. As with other aspects of the Penal Code, police practice and case law developed over time to define which acts " between whom and in what circumstances " would come under the purview of §175. In 1929 - as a consequence of a decades-long campaign by sexual reform organisations and the gay movement (from 1897) and growing popular support for law reform - the Reichstag Committee on Criminal Law recommended the abolition of §175.2. This recommendation had not been approved by parliament by 1933, the time of the Nazi take-over of power in Germany.

Notwithstanding these formal legal barriers, thriving gay and lesbian communities had developed in Germany between the turn of century and the early 1930s. Berlin, Hamburg and other big cities were major centres for these communities, and were the sites of both organised and informal collectives and networks. Lesbian and gay organisations, magazines and other publications, cafes and bars, cultural events, and other expressions of a community were to be found in significant numbers. Such community structures provided lesbians and gay men with means of expressing their identity, engaging in political activities, and ensuring mutual support.

- - - - -

After the NSDAP had secured power in 1933, repression against homosexuals and their collectives increased dramatically. Raids by police and Gestapo throughout the country led to the arrest of significant numbers of gay men. Lists of "homosexually active" persons were established by the police (Reich Office and Gestapo records of "suspects" for just the three years 1937-1940 include the names of over 90.000 individuals). Most bars known as meeting places for gay men and lesbians were closed throughout the country and the few remaining ones served as sources of information for the police and the Gestapo. Libraries and bookshops were purged of "indecent" scientific and literary materials relating to homosexuality. Emancipatory organisations had to cease their activities, including the publication of their magazines; publishers' stocks were confiscated, forcing them into bankruptcy. The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a driving force behind the campaign for law reform, was destroyed on 6 May 1933. The writings of its President and Founder, Dr Magnus Hirschfeld, and other scientists were publicly burned on 10 May 1933.

Historians estimate that some 50,000 men were sentenced to severe jail sentences by Nazi judges on the basis of §175. Between 1937 and 1939 alone, 24.447 men were sentenced to jail sentences under §175; no reliable data exist for the years after 1943. Rates of acquittal declined sharply after 1933 and fines were increasingly replaced by imprisonment or penal servitude; clear indications of the heightening of repression.

Up to an estimated 15,000 homosexual men were deported to concentration camps for "re-education through labour". In the camps they were often subjected to the harshest regime and assigned the most hazardous work duties. As a result, an unknown but large number of these Pink Triangle detainees died in the camps, often from exhaustion. Many were castrated and some subjected to so-called "medical experiments". Instances of collective murder actions against homosexual detainees, in which hundreds were exterminated at a time, are well-documented. An as yet undetermined number were forced into military service in so-called punitive battalions, whose high-risk duties included clearing mine fields.

Even those who escaped legal persecution saw their life drastically altered, if not destroyed. Unknown numbers fled abroad, entered into marriages in order to appear to comply with prevailing norms, and/or had to cope with severe psychological disturbances as a result of the general climate of terror.

Since female homosexuality was not included in the criminal code in Germany, lesbians did not suffer from the same forms or degree of persecution as gay men. However, some historical evidence exists of police records being collected on lesbians and the presence has been documented of a small number of lesbians in concentration camps on the grounds of their sexual orientation and because of "anti-social behaviour" (Green Triangle detainees). Lesbians did suffer the same destruction of clubs and organisations, banning of publications, closure of meeting places, and destruction of informal community networks as gay men. Furthermore, as all women, lesbians did not, according to Nazi ideology, have any role to play in public life. Lesbians, who could often not rely on a male breadwinner, were at a double economic disadvantage.

* from the Pink Triangle Coalition:

An International Coalition for Coordinating Affairs Relating to Nazi Persecution of Gay Men and Lesbians

The Pink Triangle Coalition currently includes the following organizations:

* Agudah (Association of Gay Men, Lesbians and Bisexuals in Israel)
* Homosexuelle Initiative (HOSI) Wien, Austria
* International Association of Lesbian and Gay Children of Holocaust Survivors
* International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), USA
* International Lesbian and Gay Association - Europe (ILGA-Europe)
* Lesben- und Schwulenverband in Deutschland (LSVD), Germany
* Pink Cross, Switzerland
* World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations (WCGLJO)

---

PINK TRIANGLE LINKS

Wikipedia

Channel 4 - History

US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Triangles Roses

Channel 4 - Resources

"I tell you we must die"

billmon @ Whiskey Bar writes:

The truth is that we do have heroic whistleblowers such as Mark Felt today. Their names are Richard Clarke and Sibel Edmonds and Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter -- and even Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury Secretary.

You want well-placed anonymous sources? How about the military officers who fed CBS and Sy Hersh their Abu Ghraib scoops, or the lawyers in the Judge Advocate General's office who spilled the beans on the torture memos, or whoever leaked the Downing Street memo.

You want ordinary Joes and Janes willing to risk the wrath of the powers to do what's right? How about the enlisted man who walked into the Army IG's office in Baghdad and told them the Marquis de Sade was making house calls at Abu Ghraib prison, or the Pentagon auditors who refused to sign off on the Haliburton payola, or the former detainees and the families in Afghanistan who risked their lives -- not just their careers -- by talking to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

You say we need indefatigable investigators, willing to follow the truth no matter where it leads? How about General Taguba or the International Red Cross or the ACLU lawyers who've been using the Freedom of Information Act to pry out far more information than I thought we would ever know about the inner workings of the Guantanamo gulag. you could even thow in David Kay -- the WMD true believer who tried mightly to prove Bush's case, but finally accepted and admitted that the primary rationale for the Iraq invasion was completely false.

_ _ _ _ _

... the American people have had, generally speaking, plenty of opportunities to learn the filthy truth about this administration and this war -- that is, if they were actually interested in the truth, which many of them (up to 51%, judging from the last election) apparently are not.

What the health of the Republic requires, in other words, may not be a new crop of leakers and whistleblowers, or a fresh young generation of Woodwards and Bernsteins -- or even a more independent, aggressive media. What it may need is a new population (or half of a population, anyway), one that hasn't been stupified or brainwashed into blind submission, that won't look upon sadistic corruption and call it patriotism, and that will refuse to trade the Bill of Rights for a plastic Jesus and a wholly false sense of security.

READ THE FULL POST

---

"we would build a new world, if we only knew how"

The French Revolt
Rejection of a corporate Europe
3 June 2005, Doug Ireland, LA Weekly

The massive defeat of the new European Constitution by the French in a May 29 referendum means a virtual political revolution in France— a rebellion by the people against the political elites of both left and right. The French rejected the proposed EuroConstitution by a whopping 10 points, despite an overwhelming, mendacious campaign for a Yes vote by the mainstream French media (including a major pro-Yes bias in TV coverage) and tireless stumping for a Yes vote by nearly all the major political leaders of left, right and center. The No vote reflected the deep cleavage between what the froggies call “La France d’en haut et La France d’en bas”— the France of above and the France of below.

Seventy-two-year-old President Jacques Chirac, his popularity declining, had put his prestige on the line in calling for the referendum (rather than having the parliament ratify it and bypass the voters, as his cannier partner in European construction, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, had done). But after each of Chirac’s two carefully staged, prime-time TV presentations in favor of a Yes vote, the No vote jumped several percentage points in the public-opinion polls, which simultaneously said the French found Chirac mediocre and unconvincing. (This was particularly true of a disastrous 90-minute TV show featuring Chirac being questioned by a hand-picked youth audience— Chirac, who has become deaf as a post and refuses to wear his hearing aid, couldn’t hear half the questions. When one questioner asked him about gay rights under the Constitution, saying, “I’m a homosexual,” Chirac responded, “You’re a what?” “A homosexual.” “Ah, oui . . .,” grimaced the president, who clearly had no idea what, if anything, the Constitution said about gay rights, and responded with filibustering generalities.) The No vote leaves Chirac terribly enfeebled at home and abroad.

The French political revolt against the EuroConstitution was, as the exit polls confirmed, neither a rejection of the idea of a more united Europe nor principally a nationalist reaction. The No vote was largely motored by a socioeconomic cry of protest, in a France with 10 percent unemployment, against a Constitution that was designed to make Europe the unregulated playground of the multinational corporations. Movements of factories from France, with its strong trade-union movement and traditionally strong social safety net, to low-wage Eastern European countries with no effective unions and few or weak social protections— a migration already the cause of much anguish among the froggy employee class— would have been dramatically accelerated by the Constitution, which also would have abolished individual countries’ restrictions on the movements of capital, and institutionalized deregulation, privatization and unrestricted free-market competition as the hallmarks of European economic policy. That’s why two-thirds of salaried employees and three-quarters of the working class voted No (so did 59 percent of the under-25 young, who are traditionally quite pro-European, but who fear for their economic futures).

The Iraq war demonstrated that the arguments in favor of an ever-stronger Europe advanced by the Nobel Prize–winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz have been prophetic. The former chief economist of the World Bank, Stiglitz became one of the most forceful critics of the Bank and of the International Monetary Fund, the twin global enforcers for multinational capitalism. Long before George Bush’s invasion of Iraq, Stiglitz argued— in a series of books and articles— that only a European Union that was both economically and politically puissant and coherent could provide a counterweight to the U.S.-led drive toward the economic globalization that gives the behemoth multinational corporations a free and untrammeled reign over our destinies, and offer some hope of resistance to the U.S. military adventures from which those multinationals profit so handsomely. Franco-German opposition to the Iraq war reinforced the accuracy of this analysis.

The new European Constitution was not a step toward a stronger Europe, and would have actually lessened European influence on the world stage. In it, subordination of European security and military policy (and thus foreign policy) to NATO was set in concrete. And, as the former socialist defense minister of France, Jean-Pierre Chevenement (who resigned in protest over France’s support for the first Gulf War), repeatedly pointed out during the referendum campaign, under the Constitution the crucial role France played at the United Nations in opposing the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq would no longer have been possible. The Constitution would have restricted the ability of any member of the U.N. Security Council that is also an EU country (like France— or, as in proposals for Security Council enlargement now being considered, Germany) to take a position contrary to that adopted by the European Commission. And any single EU country could veto a position contrary to Washington’s. Thus, one would only need to buy a corrupt little country— like, say, Bulgaria— to block any EU action that would counter the American imperium.

Moreover, the Constitution was anti-democratic, for it kept real power in the hands of the unelected European Commission (whose members are appointed by their national governments) rather than giving it to the elected Europarliament in Strasbourg. The EU’s presidency, currently a rotating one, was given a longer term— but the president, too, would have been appointed by the commission. The 300-page Constitution — the longest ever in the world’s history, and written in obscure legalese incomprehensible to the average voter— would have irremovably enshrined matters of policy, including conservative economic policies, that would normally be decided by democratically elected governments. And it could only have been amended by a unanimous vote of all 25 EU countries— another boon to the multinationals, which also easily could have purchased a veto from a small country’s government-for-sale.

For all these reasons, the French were quite right to vote No, effectively killing this unwieldy, undemocratic and conservative plan for a corporate Europe— a rejection that offers the hope of building a Europe for its peoples in the future.

DIRELAND

Theocracy Watch: US Air Force

From the National Jewish Democratic Council

Two weeks ago today, Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) brought an amendment before the House Armed Services Committee to urge the Air Force to develop a plan to ensure "a climate free from religious intimidation and proselytizing."

How did Republicans on the committee respond?

Just listen to Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) blame the victims and dismiss the legitimate concerns of Jews and others: "There is a problem in the military... the problem is political correctness."

Or Rep. John Hostettler (R-IN): "This amendment would bring the ACLU into the United States military, it would bring the silly thinking of several of our judicial systems such as the Ninth Circuit...." Rep. Hostettler went on to discuss what he termed "the mythical wall separation (sic) between church and state that's been erected by the courts...."

Rep. Israel then took the amendment directly to the House Rules Committee, where it was suppressed by the House GOP leadership -- supported by every Democrat, and opposed by every Republican. (Rep. Israel's statement.)

So just how bad are the allegations of religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy?

* Earlier in May, the Associated Press reported, "A top Air Force Academy chaplain said Thursday [May 12th] she was fired for speaking up about anti-Semitism and other reports of religious intolerance among cadets and staff.... [Captain] Morton said she was pressured to deny a report ... that a chaplain told 600 cadets during basic training last year 'to go back to their tents and tell their fellow cadets that those who are not born again will burn in the fires of hell.'"

* The AP later reported that under investigation are "allegations that cadets were pressured to attend religious services, that public prayers were held before official events and that Jewish cadets were harassed and insulted." The article adds, "[Academy graduate Mikey] Weinstein, who is Jewish, has said his son [an Academy cadet] has been called a 'Christ killer' by evangelical Christian cadets."

* Just this morning the Associated Press added, "On the eve of his graduation, the top cadet at the Air Force Academy sent out a religious-themed e-mail to thousands of fellow cadets, even as the school is grappling with complaints that some evangelical Christians are harassing others at the school. ...Jurewicz lists his favorite quotations in the message, including several about Jesus. ...Air Force policy bans the use of official e-mails for personal messages."

Despite all of this, House Republicans have the gall to say that the real problem in the military "is political correctness." And the House GOP leadership quashes any further discussion of the matter.

Meanwhile, House Democrats continue to lead the charge; as the AP recently reported, "Forty-six Democratic members of Congress urged the Air Force's top commander... to get personally involved in the investigation of alleged religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy."

SOURCES: FULL TEXT