Malalai Joya on the Past Decade of War in Afghanistan

Since the events of 9/11, terrorism and women’s rights violations have been used to support a decade long war and occupation of Afghanistan. In this short video, Malalai Joya – writer, activist and former parliamentarian in the national assembly of Afghanistan – successfully highlights the obscenity, greed and absurdity of the war in Afghanistan. Who can ignore that the human rights violations perpetrated by armed forces are motivated by economic gain and strategic foreign policy in Asia? Joya denounces the Obama administration for increasing the death tolls, heightening violence and violating the human rights of Afghans. On the 10^th anniversary of NATO’s war in her country, she asks us to speak up to end the occupation of Afghanistan by military troops and to protest to grant Afghans the right to self-determination. In the words of Joya: “…democracy never comes by military invasion, democracy without independence and justice is meaningless.”

Long live freedom and down with occupation!

President Eisenhower and Anwar al-Awlaki: The Death of the US Citizen

Anwar al-Awlaki, accused of terrorism, has recently been assassinated by the US government from a drone strike in Yemen. Unlike Osama bin Laden, al-Awlaki was a US citizen. Some say his annihilation was a blow to al-Qaeda, others say it was a blow to US democracy and civil rights. Obama has set a new standard for US presidents: The US president is now the judge, the jury and the executioner. But this is Obama, not Bush, so I guess I should feel better. Trials are tedious after all. We are safer now right? Ironically al-Awlaki became anti-American because he thought US foreign policy was terrorizing Muslims. This so-called war on terror has a way of keeping momentum on all sides.

I was contemplating what video clip I wanted to show. I thought a clip from Republican President Eisenhower's farewell speech would be appropriate. He warned of the abuse of power tied to the growth of the US military complex. This is no conspiracy theory. The only conspiracy is that more Americans have not seen or heard him say what he said. This is the same man that helped crush the US veterans protesting in front of the White House (1932) while Hoover was president, that fought the Germans in WWII, and set in motion the overthrowing of democracy in Iran (Operation Ajax: 1953). He was no peacenik and was not leery of using covert operations. Eisenhower's own legacy makes his parting words all the more eery.

Zizek's Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle

My first publication, in 2005, was a book review of Zizek's Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle (Verso, 2004), entitled "The Step Outside: The Act, Democracy, and Its Discontents." It was published in Critical Sense (a graduate student journal at UC Berkeley that seems to have been discontinued), Volume 8, number 1. I've decided to try something new and post the PDF directly to this blog HERE.

Like any first publication, perhaps, this one has a story. I don't know why exactly I chose to review a book by Zizek first, although its topicality was probably the impetus. I started writing it in summer 2004, which is around the same time I moved to Ottawa. This move ended up interrupting the review in more than one way; somehow I managed to save the file incorrectly (or it was corrupted at some point), meaning I had to rewrite the entire thing. After some searching, I found a printed draft, which I could use to recover about 70% of the document, but the printed draft ended up in my book bag next to a container of Indian food that leaked, producing a review curry (which, for some reason, I stored in the refrigerator in case I absolutely had to reference it--otherwise, it just sat in there on one of the shelves). I ended up rewriting the entire thing...in the end producing about two and a half reviews (there's also an original ending that is much more strident, but it wouldn't work for a review).

The reader will see a few things of note. It starts with a bang. The first few sentences read:

Zizek’s Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle picks up the thread from his previous book focused on the war on terror, Welcome to the Desert of the Real!, somewhere between the months leading up to the war in Iraq and the exposure of torture at Abu Ghraib.  So, while we miss an encounter between Zizek and the torture scandal—which unfortunately, in the minds of many Americans, is just another scandal—he has nonetheless been constant in criticizing all “musings” about whether torture should be used in the war on terror as a soft step to its legitimation.  And who knew— legitimate torture and you too could become Attorney General!

The reader will also note that I don't stray far from Lacanian reference points. At the time, I was trying to work out a kind of account of those who I called 'event theorists,' Zizek, Badiou, and others, and it shows. Today, of course, I'm doing something very different.

Martin Luther King Jr. Would Support the War on Terror?

Last night my good friend and editor of The Notes Taken sent me a link to the Department of Defense web page. The article link he sent headlines with "King Might Understand Today’s Wars, Pentagon Lawyer Says." Here is the introduction:

If Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, would he understand why the United States is at war? Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department’s general counsel, posed that question at today’s Pentagon commemoration of King’s legacy. In the final year of his life, King became an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, Johnson told a packed auditorium. However, he added, today’s wars are not out of line with the iconic Nobel Peace Prize winner’s teachings. “I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack,” he said.

This has to be one of the most outrageous attempts at co-opting Martin Luther King Jr. to date. Fortunately most of the speech MLK gave is available to listen to on Youtube and the manuscript of his words written online. Here is one portion of the speech:

It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God."

Martin Luther King Jr.'s ideology speaks for itself.

Muslims and Terrorism

The Algerian resistance once justified attacking French colonialist civilians as a tactical response to the French occupational forces superior military advantages. In the French film "Battle of Algiers" a discussion between a caught Algerian resistance fighter and French journalist goes as follows:

Journalist: "M. Ben M'Hidi, don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?"

Ben M'Hidi: "And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets."

These acts of terror were articulated juxtaposed to the French occupation's show of force (French military terrorism).

Recently Muslim extremists have been attacking Christian communities in lands such as Egypt and Nigeria. The Egyptian Coptic Christians predate the expansion of Islam and are a minority living within Islamic majority Egypt. The suicide bombings against this old community have not the slightest justification even based on the Algerian model. Algerians were natives fighting foreign invaders, in Egypt this attack is simply a hate crime of a grotesque magnitude. Other countries where this is happening can also be cited. These Muslim terrorists are inspiring Islamophobia throughout the world. It should be kept in mind that there are many Muslims who condemn these acts of violence. This clip is just one example.

WikiLeaks: Iraq, War, and Information

Before the US government and other various political elites flipped out over WikiLeaks sharing secretive diplomatic information, WikiLeaks shared leaked information on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who really cared that a video was released of humans being shot down excitedly on video by US soldiers? This exposed slaughter barely made a splash in US news media. WikiLeaks has revealed that which most people already knew: politicians lie and war kills people. Although, elites do not like feeling exposed so candidly. In a sense Big Brother is getting Big brother-ed. WikiLeaks makes the truth officially known. Not conspiracy theories, just raw reality. Truth can be stranger than fiction. WikiLeaks inspired something new. Governments and corporations now must battle with computers geeks over the security of data, the dawn of globalized Cyber Wars begins.

When Afghanistan Was On the Side of God and Freedom

People educated about Cold War politics know that the US supported Afghanistan (or certain groups opposed to communism in Afghanistan) in its struggle against the 1979 Soviet invasion of their country. It is still surreal to observe the way US leaders portrayed the war. Watching President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski tell Afghan resistance fighters that God is on their side remains ironic. President Ronald Reagan championing Afghan freedom juxtaposed to the advances of science and technology appears curious to viewers living in 2010. This seems unbelievable given the language that has emerged from the US government since the time of it invading Afghanistan in 2001. These videos reveal the meaninglessness behind politicians rhetoric in regards to wars and military occupations.

(I should mention that whoever edited the the clip with Zbigniew Brzezinski addresses the Afghans at the beginning as the Taliban. Most likely these are not Taliban fighters because the Taliban formed later in the 1990s.)