moral, legal,rational amercian policy? forget it,

Morality, Legality and rational thought do not inform American policy. Exceptionalism does. 

Another great Greenwald article that is worth reading. 

The premises and purposes of American exceptionalism

That the US is objectively "the greatest country ever to exist" is as irrational as it is destructive, yet it maintains the status of orthodoxy

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• • Glenn Greenwald
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 February 2013 13.21 GMT
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A US flag waves within the razor wire-lined compound of Camp Delta prison at Guantánamo Bay in 2006. Photograph: Brennan Linsley/Pool/Reuters

Last week, North Korea tested a nuclear weapon, and the US - the country with the world's largest stockpile of that weapon and the only one in history to use it - led the condemnation (US allies with large nuclear stockpiles, such as Britain and Israel, vocally joined in). Responding to unnamed commentators who apparently noted this contradiction, National Review's Charles Cooke voiced these two assertions:

He followed that with this:

Nobody can reasonably dispute that North Korea is governed by a monstrous regime and that it would be better if they lacked a nuclear weapons capability. That isn't what interests me about this. What interests me here is that highlighted claim: that the US "is the greatest country in world history", and therefore is entitled to do that which other countries are not.

Note that Cooke did not merely declare America's superiority, but rather used it to affirm a principle: as a result of its objective superiority, the US has the right to do things that other nations do not. This self-affirming belief - I can do X because I'm Good and you are barred from X because you are Bad - is the universally invoked justification for all aggression. It's the crux of hypocrisy. And most significantly of all, it is the violent enemy of law: the idea that everyone is bound by the same set of rules and restraints.

This eagerness to declare oneself exempt from the rules to which others are bound, on the grounds of one's own objective superiority, is always the animating sentiment behind nationalistic criminality

ast week, the Princeton professor Cornel West denounced Presidents Nixon, Bush and Obama as "war criminals", saying that "they have killed innocent people in the name of the struggle for freedom, but they're suspending the law, very much like Wall Street criminals". West specifically cited Obama's covert drone wars and killing of innocent people, including children. What West was doing there was rather straightforward: applying the same legal and moral rules to US aggression that he has applied to other countries and which the US applies to non-friendly, disobedient regimes.

In other words, West did exactly that which is most scorned and taboo in DC policy circles. And thus he had to be attacked, belittled and dismissed as irrelevant. Andrew Exum, the Afghanistan War advocate and Senior Fellow at the Center for New American Security, eagerlyvolunteered for the task:

Note that there's no effort to engage Professor West's arguments. It's pure ad hominem (in the classic sense of the logical fallacy): "who is "Cornell [sic] West" to think that anything he says should be even listened to by "national security professionals"? It's a declaration of exclusion: West is not a member in good standing of DC's Foreign Policy Community, and therefore his views can and should be ignored as Unserious and inconsequential.

The key point is what constitutes West's transgression. His real crime is that he tacitly assumed that the US should be subjected to the same rules and constraints as all other nations in the world, that he rejected the notion that America has the right to do what others nations may not. And this is the premise - that there are any legal or moral constraints on the US's right to use force in the world - that is the prime taboo thought in the circles of DC Seriousness. That's why West, the Princeton professor, got mocked as someone too silly to pay attention to: because he rejected that most cherished American license that is grounded in the self-loving exceptionalism so purely distilled by Cooke.

West made a moral and legal argument, and US "national security professionals" simply do not recognize morality or legality when it comes to US aggression. 

In sum, think tank "scholars" don't get invited to important meetings by "national security professionals" in DC if they point out that the US is committing war crimes and that the US president is a war criminal. They don't get invited to those meetings if they argue that the US should be bound by the same rules and laws it imposes on others when it comes to the use of force. They don't get invited if they ask US political officials to imagine how they would react if some other country were routinely bombing US soil with drones and cruise missiles and assassinating whatever Americans they wanted to in secret and without trial. As the reaction to Cornel West shows, making those arguments triggers nothing but ridicule and exclusion.

This belief in the unfettered legal and moral right of the US to use force anywhere in the world for any reason it wants is sustained only by this belief in objective US superiority, this myth of American exceptionalism. And the results are exactly what one would expect from an approach grounded in a belief system so patently irrational.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/18/american-exceptionalism-north-korea-nukes

of vogueish african' inspiration - cultures and ripoffs

It is not just a matter of reducing black/brown bodies to backdrops and  props.  The rip off extends to cultural thievery in the name of  'inspiration'.  

Only this time it was the Other- the Original,  that was  supposed to have been inspired  by a thieving genius . 

The arrogance  and racism run deep.  It is apparently  the vogue in Vogue. 

Vogue’s glorification of colonial racism

by CARMEN VAN KERCKHOVE on AUGUST 18, 2007 · 21 COMMENTS AND 0 REACTIONS

Reactions:Cosign(1) Provocative(1)  What do you think?

A few years back Vogue once ran one of their annual colonial themed reactionary fantasies in Kenya and in reference to a Masai woman in full tribal regalia, Vogue asserted that the woman’s beaded earrings, beaded corset and bib-style necklace was “inspired” by a recent collection of John Galliano. Vogue actually went to print with the caption that this Masai woman adorned in jewels worn by her ancestors for centuries was “inspired” by John Galliano!! It finally dawned on me that for the average Vogue staffer, the obvious could not be imagined–the “genius” Galliano could not possibly have copied Masai tribal wear. 


Granted Africans are not Vogue’s target demographic but for the sake of basic human decency it is time for this magazine to stop belittling historic wrongs and put a stop to the glorification of colonial racism. I have discussed Vogue’s colonial fetish with Jewish friends and although their experience differs in many significant ways, it is similar to the outrage felt by some for the Nazi props used in the Charlotte Rampling movie, “The Night Porter.” While it may be inaccurate to compare Vogue’s racist colonial pictorials with the sadomasochistic Nazi scenes of the Night Porter, for many Africans the khaki safari uniforms shown in the spread, the whips, the servile air surrounding the natives depicted in the background remind us of a time best left in the ash heap. No matter what the artistic vision, neither genocide nor apartheid or any other form of human rights abuse make for good fashion props. 


http://www.racialicious.com/2007/08/18/vogues-glorification-of-colonial-racism/

"free people " enslavement. continued

"From the earliest days of the calotype, the curious tripod with its mysterious chamber and mouth of brass, taught the natives of this country that their conquerors were inventors of other instruments besides the formidable guns of their artillery, which, though as suspicious in appearance, attained their goal with less noise and smoke.

                                                                                                                                   SAMUEL BORNE.

That quote began an essay I wrote in 1997 . "Hidden Histories, the Colonial Encounter" was my "challenging" counterpoint to a British Council  Exhibition  on Photography in colonial India.   The essay looked at some of the  ways photography helped to attain colonial goals.

 There was another  paragraph in it- about how Bourne found it difficult to photograph ordinary Indians.He had to 'contend with the obstinacy  of the natives'  when he wanted to introduce them into his photographs . "Their idea of giving life to pictures was to stand bolt upright with their arms down, as stiff as pokers, thier chins turned up as if they were standing to have their throats cut", he wrote.
Those long dead Indians may not have had their throats cut but  what was slashed and burned was their many cultures. Photography played  a big role in that destruction. Something it continues to do even today. The native  is still  stereotyped  in photographs . Even in  those shot by Indian photographers. photographers who   never learnt to question  the stereotyping role of photography and repeat.copy  photographs  by Western Photographers. Many are the times that have I seen Indian copies of the series below . The poorer natives and the  local bazaars continue to be the  brown backdrops  that  foreground the White visions  we are so enamored by.

The "Free People" catalog continues to enslave the natives.

Think the people who put together the Free People catalog did? They chose India — Jaipur, to be exact — as the setting for their new photo shoot. And chose a sunny blonde (à la Owen Wilson?) to star. Sixty-eight dollar T-shirts, four hundred dollar necklaces and brown people as accessories, after the jump.

So yeah, it's kind of like Darjeeling Limited 2: Electric Booglaloo, if Wes Anderson wanted to do such a thing.

(Candy stripe corset top, $78; racerback layering cami, $38; candy drop necklace, $178)

Hey, is she rocking a leather purse while standing next to a sacred cow?

(We The Free thank you tee, $68; hues of hibiscus skirt, $88; studded leather Caleesta wallet, $58)

Ooh, brown is totes the new black. Brown people, that is.

(We The Free cardigan, $98; jeweled lattice dress, $128; lucky #7 necklace, $88; Magdalene platforms, $228)

Fruit stripes babydoll, $88; tangled chains necklace, $398; candy shop bangle, $48; camels, no price listed. Like I always say, they never have the price of the stuff you really want.

Yulia is 19 and was born in St. Petersberg, Russia. But she lives in London. And looks 15.

(Paisley petals wrap bikini, $188; Elsa's aviators, $38; metallic sail tote, $198)

Drinking tea in a swimsuit seems positively colonial, doesn't it? But her necklace is awesome. Sterling silver boxing gloves! Want.

(Dots and stripes hipster bikini, $128; mirror mirror necklace, $168; boxing gloves lariet [sic], $398)

Confession: I got so worked up over Yulia's friendcessory, I ripped the page. But seriously: Was he paid as a model? Did he sign a release? Is he the Johnny Depp of Jaipur? Puckered stripes bralette, $32; color dip gauze headband, $18; gauze carnival scarf, $48; distressed braid belt, $188; population of people in India living below the government-specified poverty threshold of $0.40 per day: 27%.

[Free People]

[Free People Blog]

Earlier: 'Free People', August 2007: Luxuriating Lolitas and $400 

http://jezebel.com/356222/free-people-someone-watched-the-darjeeling-limited-before-booking-this-photo-shoot

white breasts and poor brown backdrops

The racism inherent in photography still  runs deep. Especially in Popular Culture.  Calendar art this time.  White women with barely concealed breasts  are given  brown , ethnic  backgrounds. Sex sells and so does poverty. The latter speaks of backward cultures even as it it foregrounds the the superior whites.
Photographic stereotypes  are perpetuated to sell more than just sports and  swimsuits.


The comments that follow make for very interesting reading.  Do read them .

People - Especially Brown, Poor and Exotic - As Props

by Abby Zimet

Perpetuating as many racial, cultural and class stereotypes as possible in one fell crass swoop, this year's Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue features half-naked models in teeny "swim" wear posing in seven different continents with picturesque, sometimes spear-carrying natives as furniture-like props. Because nothing says China - the world's largest exporter and fastest growing industrial economy - like an elderly man in a cone hat poling a wooden raft down a river for a semi-naked white lady.

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2013/02/15-5

hicks, assange and now benji x

Giving political asylum to those seeking to escape danger in their own countries has been the norm for most civilised  countries.  But now, those seeking  political refuge could be considered to have committed a  "political offence".  And  that  could entail their return to the countries they were fleeing from. 

Or will  'Political Offence'  apply only to a select couple of  countries? The ones Australia cannot dare challenge? Not even when their own citizens are involved and  their lives are in  actual danger.

Many unanswered questions remain about the murky circumstances surrounding the death of a dual Australian-Israeli citizen in a “suicide-proof” Israeli prison cell in 2010, which the media reported for the first time this week. One thing is clear, however: the Australian government knowingly allowed one of its citizens to “disappear” into Israeli detention and die in solitary confinement.

It is a chilling demonstration of the readiness of the Labor government to accept the destruction of the most basic legal and democratic rights of an Australian citizen, and indeed his death, at the hands of the police-state regime in Israel, the key ally of the US in the Middle East.

Yet the Australian government, when notified of his death, also did nothing to challenge the Israeli version of events. Instead, it facilitated the secret return of Zygier’s body to be buried in a Melbourne cemetery.

International legal conventions spell out that when a foreigner is jailed, their diplomatic mission must be informed. Asked at a Senate committee hearing last Thursday why no embassy official had gone to visit Zygier in jail, Department of Foreign Affairs secretary Peter Varghese said that because Zygier was a dual national, he was “not under the relevant conventions.”

This claim soon proved false as well. Australian National University international law professor Don Rothwell said Israel had broken the international convention on consular relations. He said Varghese had made a “very significant concession” to Israel that could set a precedent that would imperil other dual citizens.

Lawyer Dan Mori, who formerly represented Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks—who was incarcerated by the US for almost six years, with the full support of the previous Australian Liberal government—said Australia had failed in its basic duty to look out for one of its citizens. “It boggles my mind that they sit back and not say, ‘He’s one of our citizens and we’re not going to have a consular visit’.”

There are clear parallels between this affair and that of Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder has been forced to seek asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy because Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s government is doing everything it can to help the Obama administration railroad him to jail in the US, even changing Australia’s laws to allow the extradition of someone charged with a “political offence.” (See: “Australian government reinforces conspiracy against Assange”).

It is now clear that while professing to protest against Israel’s conduct, the Australian government was deeply involved in covering up Zygier’s detention.

Nevertheless, the Rudd government’s public show of concern over Mossad’s methods angered both the Israeli and US governments, and may have become a compounding factor in Rudd’s replacement two months later by Gillard, who has extremely close relations with the Zionist lobby in Australia. Rudd was ousted, in a backroom coup by Labor Party figures working in concert with the US embassy, 

The sensitivity of the Australian political establishment to anything that might upset relations with Israel was highlighted last November when a cabinet revolt overturned Gillard’s stated intention for Australia to join the US and Israel in voting against a UN general assembly resolution to upgrade Palestinian membership. The decision was heavily criticised in the media and her leadership questioned. (See: “Australian prime minister defeated on UN vote”).

What has been revealed so far about the “Prisoner X” affair underlines the extraordinary influence over Australian politics exercised by Washington and its allies, particularly Israel, and the willingness of successive Australian governments to sacrifice the basic rights and lives of Australian citizens who in any way become a threat to those interests.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/02/16/zion-f16.html

reclaiming the framing of our pasts

There is a point, well made, in this reaction to a film I had posted about .  About the stealing of  Books and Histories. About the interpretation of that robbery.  And about a continued control over the  Native Narrative through White, Western, Eyes and  Minds.

I see a lot of  that  in the control of the Other's  Photographic history and  narrative . The  interpretation is still largely Occidental. And the  Orientalism  still  runs strong. Even among the Orientals.  Add to that, the arrogance of the  Do Gooder  and the mix continues be quite dangerous.

. If we are ever to control  our past and counter the effect it has on our future we have to start controlling our Pasts the telling of our Stories.   Their interpretation . Their Framing.

The film itself is excellent and I have a lot of good things to say about it.   But I was bothered by a certain element, at the very end, which was repeated by the Director, Benny Brunner, who was at the showing to answer questions.  So I raised my hand and asked a question about it.  Mr Brunner became very defensive.

His reaction made me think and re-think on a topic that already preoccupies me on a near daily basis – namely, the Palestinian narrative: who tells it, in what context is it told, how is it told, and, ultimately, who owns it.    The importance of such a discussion regarding a people’s narrative should not be underestimated, particularly in instances of oppression and ethnic cleansing.

This is an important lesson for us.  Just because and Israeli makes a film and admits that Israel murdered, dispossessed, robbed, disinherited, marginalized, and terrorized Palestinians, it doesn’t mean they really understand.   It doesn’t mean that they have a right to our story.  Most of all, it doesn’t give them a right to express their endless subtext of ineffectual Palestinian efforts.   We know our weaknesses and we know our (official) leaders have fallen short of leadership.  Given the magnitude of his societies crimes against the indigenous population and the fact that Israeli society keeps electing one war criminal after another to lead them, perhaps Brunner should focus his criticism at his own and just stick to that.

I recounted this story recently to a friend who is African American.  He laughed, cut me off, and said, “Susie, you don’t need to explain it to me.  I’m a black man.  You know how many do-gooder white people have tried to lecture me on everything wrong in the Black community and what we need to do to fix it?”

The fact is that Mr Brunner’s film is wonderful and he’s being compensated for it, with whatever funds, fame or recognition the film brings.  And while there is nothing wrong with an Israeli contributing to our narrative, it is not okay for him or her to try to frame that narrative or the discussion of our narrative.  When an Israeli filmmaker cannot understand why an occupied, imprisoned, oppressed society might not want to normalize relationships with members of the occupier’s society, that filmmaker does not have the right to condescend and criticize.  That is something that must be earned by Israelis, and there are certainly some who have.  They are those who have truly joined Palestinian society in one way or another.  People like Neta Golan and Amira Haas come to mind.

The fact is also this:  For societies that have been stripped of everything tangible and intangible, so little remains.   Some of us still have a little property left.  Some still have the privilege to wake up and see the land our forefathers and foremothers roamed (and the price of that privilege is living under the hell of occupation).  But the one thing we all still have is our narrative.  Our collective story.  Our societal truth that’s made up of millions of individual histories.  We should all guard, protect, and propagate that.  It’s ours.  We are the natural descendants of every tribe that ruled or submitted in that land, every conqueror who passed through and raped our mothers, every battle, every harvest, every wedding.  We didn’t step off European boats and proceed to kill, terrorize, or steal everything in sight.  I’d like every liberal Zionist or Israeli leftist to remember that before he or she presumes to adopt a paternal tone that criticizes or tries to shape the Palestinian narrative or Palestinian struggle.

http://palestinechronicle.com/robbery-of-books-and-ownership-of-narrative/

droning on. - dreadfully.

The Free Press seems to have become just another machine, another cog and just another bit of colour in the wheel  of  Western 'full spectrum dominance' .  

 The Secret Courts that are proposed will work to keep their conscience clear. See no evil. Hear no evil . Have no evil to report on . The pretence of being a free press in a free world can continue. Comfortably  unquestioned.    

It's been amazing, watching the histrionics and mental gymnastics some people have resorted to in their efforts to defend this infamous drone program. Extralegal murder is not an easy thing to manufacture consent around, and the signs of strain in the press have been pretty clear all around.

The drone-strike controversy briefly sizzled when it came out last week that even American citizens against whom the government does not have concrete evidence of terrorist complicity may be placed on the president's infamous "kill list."

The news that the executive branch had claimed for itself the power to assassinate Americans managed to very briefly raise the national eyebrow, but for the most part, the body politic barely flinched. I got the sense that most of the major press organizations sort of hoped the story would go away quietly (aided, hopefully, by the felicitous appearance of some distractingly thrilling pop-news/cable sensation, like Chris Dorner's Lost Weekend).

Meanwhile, it also recently came out that the New York Times, among other papers, sat on knowledge of the existence of a drone base in Saudi Arabia for over a year because, get this, the paper was concerned that it might result in the base being closed.

As old friend David Sirota noted, Times ombudsman Dean Baquet blazed a burning new trail in the history of craven journalistic surrender when he admitted the paper's rationale in an interview. "The Saudis might shut [the base] down because the citizenry would be very upset," Baquet said. "We have to balance that concern with reporting the news."

As if to right this wrong, the paper today ran an editorial, "A Court for Targeted Killings," which proposed that the government create a (probably secret) tribunal to which intelligence services would have to present evidence before drone-bombing a suspected enemy combatant.

The paper, which originally proposed the creation of such a court in 2010, suggested that the new court be modeled after the secret court created in the wake of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The FISA court was designed to give a fig leaf of judicial review to secret wiretaps of suspected foreign agents without having to make the government's evidence public.

The Times editorial is a kind of moral lunacy that Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22, captured in his play, We Bombed in New Haven, which was about an American Air Force commander instructing a squadron to bomb a series of ridiculous targets. There's a great scene where some of the men ask "Captain Starkey" why they've been asked to bomb Istanbul:

Starkey: Because we're a peace-loving people, that's why. And because we're a peace-loving people, we're going to bomb Constantinople right off the map!

Bailey: Why don't we just bomb the map?

What the Times proposes is the same sort of thinking. In their minds, the problem with our drone program isn't that we're murdering masses of people, it's that we're doing it without the appearance of legality. It looks bad on paper – so let's leave the problem, but fix the paper. Bomb the map, in other words.

This whole thing is crazy. In our own country, we don't allow the government to torture criminal suspects and/or kill people without trial – because it's wrong. If it's wrong here, it's wrong in Yemen or Iraq or Afghanistan; if it's wrong to do it to an American citizen, it's wrong to do it to a Pakistani. Our failure to recognize that and our increasingly desperate attempts to rationalize or legitimize this hideous program gives the entire world an automatic show of proof of American bigotry and stupidity.

It’s too easy to kill people when they’re just dots on a screen. It’s unpleasantly easier when you’re not even looking at the screen, but just giving an order to someone who is – like the officers in Iraq who told Apache pilots to light up a whole street full of civilians just because one of the pilots thought he saw a gun (it turned out to be camera equipment). And it’s even easier than that when you’re just a politician here at home, taking part by casting a vote in favor of this lunacy, or dreaming up justifications for it.

I’m not talking about physical bravery, I’m talking about bravery in the sense of being willing to stare directly at the consequences of your decisions, and we’re cowards because we do just the opposite, we work hard to avoid looking, and we build machines that help us do that avoiding.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/at-least-were-not-measles-rationalizing-drone-attacks-hits-new-low-20130214#ixzz2LCr2pkkO 
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