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Monk Beating is an ancient and venerable sport
NEW WORLD ORDER OLYMPICS
Journal of a Futurist, 18 March 2008
The recent decision by the United States to drop China from its annual list of top ten of human rights abusers took the world by surprise. What is the motive? For one delirious moment I thought the Bush Administration had confronted its own foul deeds and was about to nominate itself as a platinum abuser. Up there with Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, its allies. This didn’t happen. Then I suspected the act of “forgiving” China was a way of taking the heat off itself. “You might think we’ve become a nation of torturers and baby killers”, it was signalling to the world, “but compared to the Top Ten Rights Abusers, we’re virgins”. As China no longer ranks among the worst, and as we’re kinder than them, it follows that America is still God’s own paradise.
If you don’t agree with this insight, then take a look at the statement issued by the Bush administration on the day it dropped China from the list: “Their government also continues to monitor, harass, detain, arrest, and imprison activists, writers, journalists, and defense lawyers and their families, many of whom were seeking to exercise their rights under the law”. By current standards, this is seen as a positive report. It is also an apt description of today’s America. Strangely, the decision to go soft on China occurred just before the Chinese started to go tough on Tibetans. As I write, the restive monks are being exterminated and the media are being manipulated, as in the case of today’s Iraq. “Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country”, writes veteran war reporter, Patrick Cockburn, “Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls”. The Dalai Lama accuses the Chinese of “committing cultural genocide”, a statement that could be applied to the impact of US policies in the Middle East.
SINGING, DANCING, VATS OF OIL
Where to now? No longer mere trading partners, China and America are psychically linked and the Beijing Olympics will be the perfect place for the pair to acknowledge their entwining destiny. The era of the Nixon rapprochement was marked by Ping Pong diplomacy, so we can ask what kind of sport will set the tone for the unfolding China/America embrace? The answer is obvious, and will provide an awesome spectacle for the global masses. I predict the inauguration of a new Olympic event – State Torturing.
In a spirit of transparency, this will make public what is now hidden and serve as a warning to all activists. As the Chinese excel at massed firing squads, this event should open the show with a bang, and lots of them; to be deftly climaxed with a swift display of organ removals (for a throbbing Western market). Kicking down the doors of dwellings is popular with both the US and Chinese military, as is kicking the heads of occupants, so the TV world will be captivated by the two armies going for gold. Small countries should be given a chance to demonstrate prowess at inducing confessions. Uzbekistan will want to include its regional specialty of boiling political prisoners in vats of oil, despite soaring supply costs. Monk-beating is also catching on among developing nations - its the Beach Volleyball of the 21st Century - and showcasing it in Beijing may help lure Burma back into the family of civilized nations.
BOMBS THE MYSTERIOUS
LAW OF CONTRADICTION
A specialty of Israel and America is surprise air strikes on “suspected” militants in crowded areas, often delivered by predator drones. What a show! Yesterday America unleashed seven missiles on tribal areas in Pakistan, aimed as suspected Al-Qaeda hideouts. Angry witnesses said the victims were innocent locals, but let’s not muddy the achievement with technicalities.
The Olympic torturing event will help Americans renew their pride in skills long ago perfected by the CIA. It will also put an end to the spectacle of US Presidents torturing themselves and their syntax over the legalities of this age-old exercise in pain management. George Bush keeps telling the world that “Americans don’t torture”, even though he recently vetoed a Congressional bill that was designed to out an end to the practice. The Bush position is a contradiction. That’s okay, he’s fighting to preserve a traditional right. The human race did not even recognize a contradiction, until it was discovered by Aristotle, around 500 BC. George just needs a bit more time.
Australia can also play a role in the torture Olympics. Our contribution to the sport is minimal, compared to the practices of mediaeval Spain and today’s enthusiastic guards at Guantanamo Bay, but we have long played a supportive role. Our military has never condemned “extraordinary renditions” or the outsourcing of pain infliction. An Australian army officer was posted to the Pentagon when the Abu Ghraib porno tortures started to surface. What did he do? Major George O'Kane wrote to the International Red cross and said everything was sweet. A high level US army investigation later said he "glossed over" the abuse to the point of denying its existence, so you can see we’ve earned our place at the torture table. It was also an Australian consortium which built the blue bubble-wrapped National Aquatics Centre in Beijing, better known as the “Water Cube”. It has three pools below ground level, giving the venue a dungeon like ambience and making it the ideal venue for hosting the latest Olympic sport par excellence - waterboarding. This art dates back to the Spanish Inquisition, and you can be sure the innovative blood czars at the CIA will have added plenty of modern refinements, such as electrodes on testicles, anal rape and holding victims children as hostages.
Meanwhile, Enjoy Easter.
Richard Neville looks back at the war in Iraq on its 5th anniversary and discusses the failure of mainstream media and even such sites as YouTube to convey the full spectrum of horrors committed by the occupiers. Puppy tossing is a metaphor of psychopathic breakdown. Neville compares those who rely on conventional news sources to the prisoners in Plato's cave - ill equipped to see what's really happening. And as for the instigators of the invasion, why are they still at large? Click through to view.
MORE FROM HOMEPAGE DAILY
SHAKESPEARE IN A BOX
THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
TWO HOLIDAY HITS FROM HOMEPAGE DAILY
Credit: Tassos Kouris
OIL, WATER, WEALTH AND CRIME
Journal of a Futurist, 5 November 2007
It's been awhile since the last update, because I imagined, in my self important way that the job was done, that a 21st Century consciousness would quickly unfold, and I could sink into oblivion, readying myself for the zero emission hospice. I thought that a growing awareness of Climate Crisis would transform lifestyles and politics, rather than be reduced to a fiddle with lightbulbs and a flirtation with “clean coal” and nuclear. That our occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan would be seen for the acts of brutality that they are. That oil peak and water scarcity would jolt the economy from the industrial era to the age of ecology, ending our fantasy of a global powerhouse booming from here to eternity.
Along with coal, oil is a major engine of pollution and a key driver of the globalised consumer society on which most of us depend, creating incredible wealth, fun, travel and breast augmentations, while shielding us from the short term consequences of trashing nature. Oil fuels illusions, invasions, food supplies and shopaholia. It makes the absurd seem normal. At the apex of Earth sit luxury wallowing billionaires, walling themselves off from an aspiring middle class dreaming of Lear Jets and platinum credit, the entire edifice supported by sweat shops, false promises and the plunder of natural resources. This model is brought to fruition in the Emirates, with its gated skyscraper 7-star hotels, artificial islands, mammoth shopping malls, Ski Loges in the desert, a replica of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi and slaves locked below decks. The less authentic a destination, the more the tourists are drawn. Dubai is a landlocked Titanic with a political message - that global expansion will continue forever. And we still believe it, while at the same time we don't believe it. Myself included. That's the mystery. The ice caps melt and we watch glacier surfing on You Tube. What's going on? The propaganda pumped out at the top weaves its spell, that continued global expansion is sustainable. “This is a miscalculation on a scale incomparable with any other modern world crisis”, notes John Hickson in Arena Magazine, and he's right. Trade, growth and prosperity are dependent on resources now in decline. Oil, war, water and climate - they're all connected.
CONDOLEEZA GETS FAROUKED
On one level, citizens are seeing through the Matrix and pressuring politicians to tell the truth. On the weekend an environmental activist, Charles Roche, breached the security of the Australian Prime Minister during his morning power walk and berated him for supporting the clearing of 28,000 hectares of forests on the islands off Australia's north coast, "It's one of the largest sources of land clearing in the whole of Australia”, he told Howard. The reply was depressing: “You've got to have a balance in these things between the environment and jobs”. That's 20th Century speak, and it shows he is still unaware of Global Heating's likely impacts. The retention of forests will lower emissions and save lives. Any loss of jobs will be more than matched by the creation of new, non fossil fuel energies. The PM's been told this a hundred times by a thousand scientists, but he doesn't get it. The hungry oceans are destroying human habitats in Tuvalu, Samoa, Bangladesh, and yet we carry on like it's merely a choppy swell, to be calmed by a dash of carbon credits. Dream on.
Anyway, thanks Charles Roche for speaking truth to power and catapulting the issue, however briefly, onto the front page. And thanks too to Desiree Farouche, who sounds like a difficult type, who splashed lookalike blood on the palm of her hand and held it up to the face of the world's most glamorous war criminal, yelling as she was dragged away, “get thee to The Hague”. Condoleeza Rice was not amused.
The oil wars began on 9/11 and were hatched before that date. From the beginning, the invasion was a criminal exercise, and to this day, a culture of criminality and brutality operates in Iraq and Afghanistan. You must be as sick of reading this as I am of harping on it, but look at what is already accepted as normal by leaders of the “civilised” West:
- The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, General Michael Hayden, defends the methods it uses to interrogate terror suspects. This includes the secret, illegal kidnap of citizens and their delivery to torture chambers.
- The US military has increased airstrikes in Iraq four-fold this year, reflecting a steep escalation in combat operations aimed at al-Qaeda and other militants.
Coalition forces launched 1,140 airstrikes in the first nine months of this year compared with 229 in all of last year, according to military statistics. Airstrikes are up in Afghanistan, too. Coalition planes have made 2,764 bombing runs this year, up from 1,770 last year. The figures don't include strikes by helicopter gunships.
- In Baghdad the number of Iraqis killed in insurgent and sectarian attacks rose in October, according to government figures obtained on Thursday, in a blow to a 9-month-old US troop-surge policy. As in previous months, the dead were overwhelmingly civilians, with 758 reported killed against 116 policemen and 13 soldiers.
THE MOST HATED NATION ON EARTH
- The General Secretary of the Union of Political Prisoners and Detainees in Iraq, Muhammad Adham al-Hamd declared that the US occupation in Iraq relies on systematic rape, torture, and sadistic treatment of Iraqi women prisoners in its prison camps in the country.
- The US military in Iraq has fallen for every bit of disinformation fed to it by Al Qaeda personnel posing as "informants" and by Sunnis setting up Shi'ites and Shi'ites setting up Sunnis. As a result, American bombs and missiles have blown up weddings, funerals, kids playing soccer, and people shopping in bazaars and sleeping in their homes. American troops in Iraq have killed more civilians than insurgents.
It is not only Americans who kill civilians. As Australian soldiers can only be discussed in heroic terms, records of nasty incident kept from the public. Last year, Captain Andrew Paljakka, 27, the youngest officer ever to graduate from Duntroon, returned from Afghanistan to Australia and began drinking heavily. Diagnosed with post traumatic depression, he was found earlier this year in a Kings Cross Hotel hanging from a bootlace. A clue as to the possible cause of his suicide is a cryptic reference to his “having witnessed an atrocity” in Afghanistan, involving a civilian. In May, Geffry Gregg, one of the first SAS troopers to be deployed to Afghanistan also took his life. Gregg had been involved in a “bungled mission in which 11 civilians died and many were injured in an attack by Australian troops”. Last June, 60 to 70 civilians were killed when Dutch forces repelled a 500-strong Taliban assault mostly as a result of bombing and artillery fire.
18 FUTURE OBVIOUS SURPRISES
1. Coming soon: Suicide Chic. A lack of fun nursing homes and a shortage of empathetic staff will inspire baby boomers to create innovative ways of committing suicide without pain or leaving unsightly remains.
2. As climate crisis deepens, visionary leaders will emerge who can put the needs of communities before the demands of their egos. Politicians who sabotaged efforts to reduce global emissions will be hauled before the dock of the International Ecological Court and prosecuted for planetcide.
3. In 2020, after years of guilt, fear, recycling and eco-depression, a new generation will kick up its heels and party like there's no tomorrow. And there may not be.
4. The Arctic's floating sea ice is headed towards rapid summer disintegration as early as 2013, a century ahead of IPCC projections. This could lead to a 5 metre rise in sea levels. Expect fire sales of water front properties.
5. Hordes of refugees will flee sinking coastlands and head for lands with secure food supplies. Faced with the influx, citizens of rich nations will split into factions: Neo Fascists, Neo pagans and Lost Souls. It won't be pretty. Fascists will guard borders at the point of a gun. Pagans will take a global view, aiming to convert national armies into the world's First Earth Battalion, charged with restoring the natural world. Lost Souls will merge with Second Life, by which time it will have expanded by millions of square kilometers and merged with Google Earth. It will be known as Second Earth, a fully immersive 3D virtual planet, or Metaverse, where humans (as avatars) can continue the game of life even after death, so long as their software holds out.
6. The future will be less about fine dining and bad movies, more about creating edible gardens, resilient communities and carbon neutral children.
People born between 2005 and 2020, the Can Do Gen, will elevate the role of Open Source from facilitating exchanges of software to facilitating the exchanges of genes. “Imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible” asks Freeman Dyson, “the evolution of human life will once again be communal… The final step in the domestication of biotechnology will be biotech games, designed like computer games for children down to kindergarten age but played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen”. Bio-tech will be an economic powerhouse, providing cheap and abundant solar energy, breeding plants with black silicon leaves to supply the future with bio-electricity. Eventually, green tech will supplant mining and manufacturing.
7. Zero population fanatics will popularise “self pleasuring” as the higher goal of eroticism, with the option of enhancement by customised robots. A British artificial intelligence researcher has already been awarded a doctorate for his thesis, 'Intimate Relationships with Artificial Partners,' and suggests that trends in robotics and shifting social attitudes will result in alluring humanoids that will be hotly pursued as marriage partners.
8. Water theft will be punished by death, or a lifelong sentence of community service. Rain dancing will come into vogue.
9. In 2027, Madame Tussauds will feature high profile war criminals and climate change deniers. Tony Blair will make the first category; John Howard and George Bush will feature in both.
10. Olympics: Drug testing abolished, 2015; Robots welcomed 2030; genetic enhancement allowed, 2050.
11. Richard Branson and others will come to regret their investments in fleets of big jets, and not just because of fuel costs. Carbon emitting activities will be fall out of favour and fossil fuelled transport will be outlawed.
12. Communities once scorned for being “backward” will be revered for their ability to survive drought and soaring temperatures, including the Australian aborigines and India's Bishnois.
The modern world's first environmentalists?
13. Courts will practice Earth Jurisprudence, a philosophy of law and human governance that is based on the belief that human societies should regulate themselves as members of a wider Earth community. Also known as Wild Law, it extends our understanding of governance and democracy to embrace the whole Earth Community, including trees, species, rivers and eco systems.
14. As we complete the move from the Industrial era to the age of Ecology, the Consumer Society will fade away, hastened by scarcity of resources and a new Awakening (the “mind-shift”). Dwindling supplies of oil will be confiscated by the State for military purposes, which will impact on the 95 per cent of supermarket stocks dependant on oil for production, packaging and transport. The Awakening will blow a hole in the Matrix. Once basic needs have been meet, the thirst for baubles & luxury will be seen as a perversion of desire and a curse upon nature.
15. Citizens of states with large gaps in income levels die at a younger age, primarily because of the stress caused by stark social contrasts. In a post consumerist world, the core goal will be to help each other succeed.
16. It's not only oil and water that's running dry. As technologies multiply and populations expand, key resources will be exhausted in less than 40 years, inlcuding platinum, silver, zinc, uranium, indium, tantalum, aluminum, copper, lead, steel and even silicon. Is this the dire threat to national economies as so often claimed? Some economists see resource abundance is a “curse”. Today's knowledge economy provides 70% of gross world product, and rising. Investment in human resources gives a greater return. Innovation provides substitutes. Nanotech carbon rods are supposedly stronger than steel and lighter than aluminium. Nano fibres are more durable than textiles and can be “grown” without water.
17. For suburbia to survive, it will become self reliant, self empowered and off the grid - or, feeding into the grid.
18. Having amassed weapons capable of destroying the planet, high tech nations will eventually outlaw war. Until that time, the 21st century is poised between peace and annihilation.
POST SCRIPT: THE CHEATING GAME
What is this anger at drug sodden sports stars, apart from hot air? We live in a world of win at all costs and sport is the least of it. Don't worry about athletes on ecstasy, cyclists on speed, cricketers on cocaine. The training treadmill is enough to drive anyone nuts who isn't a robot, and at least doing drugs is a step up from motel pack rapes. We are all cheats. 21st Century capitalism is without honour or honesty. Nobody obeys the rules anymore, not the Geneva Conventions, not habeas corpus, not election results (eg Hamas). Global role models and stately institutions are champions at the cheating game, whether Crocodile Dundee or the BBC.
The media exude lies, advertising distorts, politicians spin - it's who we are. Winning at all costs is costing the earth and deadens our humanity.
In the Trojan Wars, 11th century BC, codes of honour shaped the action and allowed for truces. Today we have unbridled torture, daily air strikes on foreign lands and mercenaries beyond the law. Yet we're supposed to applaud the military, just like we applauded Marion Jones. A dumb Australian politician can determine the fate of refugees, a dumber US President can crush nations, and neither can be touched. Both cite God as their mentor. Boo all you like at dope cheats, but they’re just playing the game.
Bent on violence, outwitted by peaceniks
Journal of a Futurist, 9 September 2007
Dangerous Futures
Inside the APEC demo/photos of hope & shame
Today’s update appears on my sister site,
WHEN THE WEBMISTRES`S SLEEPS,
because my webmistress doesn’t
want to wake up for a week.
For the best of the web everyday, visit homepageDAILY.
SPEEDING UP THE
TRANSFORMATION
Journal of a Futurist, 9 July 2007
Hello & goodbye. No, I don't quite mean that. There's a new site in town. It distils the best of the web and provides fresh and original content from a diverse range of contributors. HomepageDAILY is updated every midnight, hence its name. It is still a beta site, an excuse for making mistakes, and it will evolve as we go. Why bother? Because today everything seems to be coming together and falling apart simultaneously, as a new reality reveals itself. Numerous voices are needed to help in this global transformation, and it's time to move beyond solitary blogs. This site will continue as usual in its disorganized way, but I also want work with a team.
While many are aware we are shifting from the industrial era to the age of ecology, transparency and creativity, politicians cling to an imperial paradigm, focused on resource wars, growth-at-all-costs and Biblical fairy tales. These could have been glory days for mainstream media, if they had resisted cheap patriotism and championed truth and justice. What if they had pursued war criminals in high office, or campaigned against cluster bombs, renditions, or torture? But no, they chose to embed themselves with the perpetrators, leaving Amnesty, Seymour Hersh and the blogs to flush out the facts. What if the mainstream had been quicker to recognize the threat of climate change and the folly of invading Iraq?
Even today, Murdoch editorialists are warmongering around the clock: “Anybody who argues we should evacuate Iraq does Australia's national interest, and that of all opponents of Islamist terror a great deal of harm”. This is the mentality that led to the wrecking of the West's reputation and the mushrooming of terror. Now they applaud the theft of civil liberties. Britain has asked its people to be "a little bit un-British" and inform on each other. At least the New York Times has come to its senses, urging the US to leave Iraq, “without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit”, admitting the cause is lost and that the invasion has “created a new stronghold” for terrorism.
LOCKED IN THE FORTRESS
Mass media obtuseness has served to multiply the range of alternative voices. A million tongues wagging on the web, a million eyes glued to incriminating videos. Cyberspace is a tower of Babel, and a network of truth telling at the speed of light. Essentially, this is a digital version of Indra's net, stretching indefinitely in all directions, which "speaks to the hidden interconnectedness and interdependency of everything and everyone in the universe." It is the future.
How scary and thrilling to be living in a time when this ancient insight is being understood. We are what we think. Waste equals food. Continuous innovation. A new concept of the common good….helping each other succeed. Self-organizing with constant feedback. Living systems as models for society. Webs and networks are central. Seeking to be self reliant, self empowered and “off the grid”. Fair trade. Micro lending. Salary caps. Open source. Life after fossil fuels... On it goes, the overdue blooming of a post-modern mental ecology that is vital to restoring planetary health and humanity's sanity. The Old Guard is still locked in the fortress turning back clocks , but it's too late to stop now.
A WHOLE LOTTA MONEY
Some say the future will be a Long Emergency, while others foresee a Long Boom. Isn't it likely to be both? Arms dealers in gold plated Lear jets serving Bollinger to presidents, while the rest of us dirty our hands in the backyard vegie patch. Social injustice is escalating so rapidly, that when the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, was asked how he felt about bank execs getting an annual bonus of $30 million, his tongue turned to lead. "It's a lot of money", he said, several times, "a lot of money, you bet". The interviewer wanted more, and got this: "But I'm still a great believer in the capitalist system". Thanks John, that's helpful. End of discussion. Like my laptop, the Australian nation is quick to revert to sleep mode.
You can't blame us, really. Signs of Alzheimer's are leeching into the national psyche, boosted by Government spoon feeding of lies, platitudes and fear mongering, three times a day after meals. Everyone is supposed to sleep soundly on Howard's watch, oblivious to the crimes committed at darkness.
The perils ahead are breathtaking, but so is the surge of creativity and social awareness among people not blinkered by a need to win fortunes or votes. Fundamentalism of any kind, whether market, Marxist or military, is a curse upon the world.
As for HPD, the proof is in the pudding. Sample these stories:
IS THIS MAN A
PSYCHOPATH?
U.S. General Dan McNeill
Certainly. And he's on our side. Following his appointment as commander of NATO's forces in Afghanistan earlier this year, U.S. General Dan McNeill devised a daring new strategy to defeat the Taliban. He would beat them at their own game. That's why today marks an important milestone for General McNeill - “Bomber” to his troops - because his goal has been achieved. Although mocked by British officers for overuse of air power, McNeill proved its effectiveness within days of taking up his post. Air strikes hit homes in the Kapisa province north of Kabul, killing nine people from four generations of a local family, including a 6-month-old child. The usual complaints erupted from human rights fanatics and the lily livered Dutch, but McNeil held his ground.
It was the fault of civilians for living in populated areas, explained Lt. Col. David Accetta at the time, areas that can provide a shelter for Taliban on the run. So homes were “targeted and hit." This was the first clue to the McNeil plan. Among the corpses found in the mud brick rubble at Kapissa in March, were four women, four children under 5 years old, and an 80-year-old man. The Bomber's tactic was on track. The gloves were off. Over the next three months, NATO would set out to prove that its air force could kill more civilians than the number achieved by the Taliban.
But it wasn't easy. The British and Dutch were reluctant to accept the mission, fretting about civilian blood. (General McNeil is a veteran of Vietnam). Some experts spread rumours that the flurry of attacks by US aircraft was “indiscriminate”, but that was the point. Others argued the strategy violated the Geneva provision that parties to conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives (Article 48, 1977 addition to, Part IV). However, as the US Attorney General Gonzales had dismissed the Geneva Conventions as quaint, who cared?
PHOTOS STOLEN AT GUNPOINT
McNeil welcomed input from other services. After the aerial slaughter in Kapisa, a convoy of Marines who were fleeing an ambush east of Kabul, started shooting wildly at the highway traffic. Their score was 19 civilians dead and 50 wounded. Afterwards, US soldiers confiscated photos of the incident at gun point.
In the past few months civilian injuries and deaths have been reported every few days, although Western sources report the numbers are often exaggerated - Chicago Tribune,
A bizarre kill was achieved on June 12, when US troops destroyed a police checkpoint east of Kabul and called in attack aircraft. Seven Afghani police were killed and four wounded. Shredded and bloodstained police gear littered the crash scene. "We are here to protect and serve the Afghan government, but the Americans have come to kill us," said Khan Mohammad, a policemen who felt he was under attack by the Taliban.
Six days later, McNeil's jets bombed a compound suspected of housing al-Qaida militants in eastern Afghanistan, netting seven children. President Hamid Karzai condemned foreign forces for careless 'use of extreme force' and for viewing Afghan lives as 'cheap', but this didn't deter the mission. The following day NATO forces fired a rocket into a building in Pakistan and notched up another tally of civilians - a child, a woman and seven men. Pakistan military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said his country demanded an explanation, but no-one was listening. In the body bag stakes, NATO and the Taliban were now neck and neck. A puzzled Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary-General, came to Kabul to slow Mc Neill's hand, but it was too late for that.
SWORD AND SHIELD THAT GUARDS AMERICA
NATO planes struck again at the end of June in Hyderabad, in the remote Girishk district, killing numerous villagers, including women children. "Six houses have been bombed, three of them have been reduced to rubble," a local named Feda Mohammad said, claiming about 100 had been killed or wounded. "People are still busy bringing out the dead from under the rubble, there are funerals at various places. A local member of parliament, Wali Khan, said “the Taliban were far away from there”. He warned that continued slaughter of civilians will spark revolt against the Afghan government.
Local Police said 25 civilians were killed in air strikes in the same area the week before, including nine women and three young children.
Hamid Karzai said "indiscriminate and unprecise" operations by foreign forces could no longer be tolerated, but his voice was drowned out by this year's Independence Day address delivered by the Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley, which urged American Airman to be proud of their calling:
"Wherever you are on our nation's 231st birthday, have a safe and enjoyable holiday, and take pride in knowing that you are a member of the finest Air Force the world has ever known! Your service provides the sword and shield that guard our nation, its interests, and ideals throughout the world. On this Independence Day be proud to be an American Airman -- a warrior who has answered our nation's call to fly, fight and win.
And win they did. This weekend it was confirmed that US troops and their NATO allies have out killed more civilians than the insurgents. UN and local rights groups tallied 314 civilians killed by McNeil's forces and 279 killed by the Taliban and associates. Congratulations, Bomber, enjoy your victory.
AUSTRALIAN AIR CREWS ASSISTED
Except of course, it isn't a victory. Every dead civilian recruits 5 more locals for the Taliban. This will provide an excuse for continued US presence in the region and plenty more Afghanis to use as targets.
Even if Bomber McNeill is arrested for war crimes, such insane attacks will continue. It is what the air force does. That its' enemy lacks warplanes only intensifies its savagery. In bloodless bureaucratic prose, the official site of the US air force reports around 40 sorties each day in Afghanistan (90 in Iraq), which involve the extermination of [suspected] insurgents in tree lines and family compounds. Example: “July 507: F-15Es hit an enemy mortar position with GBU-38s near Kajaki Dam. The JTAC reported the weapons hit their intended target. The pilots also conducted a show of force to try and flush out any insurgents still in the area… aircrews also strafed enemies in a tree line”, etc. C-130 crews from Australia assisted in such attacks, despite Canberra's assurance that its mission is one of “restoring infrastructure”.
Western commanders say any comparison of casualties caused by Western forces and by the Taliban is unfair because there is a clear moral distinction between accidental deaths from combat operations and deliberate killings of innocents by militants. This is claptrap. When invading an impoverished land peopled by extended families with interlocking tribal loyalties, the world's mightiest air power has an obligation to proceed with respect and restraint. Alas, this it failed to do, as it has failed to do in previous wars.
The killings of civilians cannot be excused as regrettable “accidents”. They may not have been intentional, but they arise from a military culture that makes such casualties inevitable. In their hearts, the officers know this. It is why they don't do body counts. It is why in the daily reports hundreds of bombing raids, you'll never see any mention of death.
Torture Tours
George Bush and the CIA have confirmed the authenticity of this site's WORLD TORTURE TOURS, launched back in August 2005.
George Bush has finally admitted the USA runs secret prisons abroad where suspects are put through "tough... necessary ... alternative" interrogation methods, which he won't reveal. But we did, over a year ago, in our WORLD TORTURE TOUR travel guide, where we showcased a range of alternative techniques to hurry up the spread of freedom, including shackles, hoods, electrocution, whips, mock executions, sexual humiliation, “fear-up, pride down”, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, dog terror, starvation, hypothermia, anal rape and genital mutilation... All in the name of freedom. Check out the original WORLD TORTURE TOUR, and play the pain game with the CIA.
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