[Peace-discuss] Antiwar.com Blog
C. G. Estabrook
galliher at illinois.edu
Wed Aug 17 13:20:16 CDT 2011
Look up the blog or read the text. The articles are legit.
On 8/17/11 1:06 PM, Laurie Solomon wrote:
> I find this post very confusing and do not know what to make of it. First,
> there is this, which I take to be a warning of some sort but which contains a
> link to www.antiwar.com/blog <http://www.antiwar.com/blog>:
>
>
> MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "www.antiwar.com"
> claiming to beAntiwar.com Blog <http://www.antiwar.com/blog>.
>
> Second, it is followed by a series of articles or posts.
> I am left unclear as to what is what. Are the articles the real ones from
> Antiwar.com Blog or are they fraudulent ones from www.antiwar.com
> <http://www.antiwar.com>? Whose mail scanner has detected a possible fraud?
>
>
>
> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <mailto:galliher at illinois.edu>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 17, 2011 12:18 AM
> *To:* Peace-discuss List <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
> *Subject:* [Peace-discuss] Antiwar.com Blog
>
>
> *MailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from "www.antiwar.com"
> claiming to be* Antiwar.com Blog <http://www.antiwar.com/blog>
> <http://fusion.google.com/add?source=atgs&feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/AWCBlog>
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> * How The War Is Spun: Mass Killings Mean ‘Progress’ <#1>
> * The Cherry-Picking Fantasy Land of Elliot Abrams <#2>
> * Coalition Tries to Undermine Afghan Traditional Governance <#3>
> * Latin America Beware: The Imperial Pretext Is Changing <#4>
> * Addicted to Militarism, Despite Repeated Failures <#5>
>
> How The War Is Spun: Mass Killings Mean ‘Progress’
> <http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E3/3AmWtD1BZ24/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>
>
>
> Posted: 16 Aug 2011 12:50 PM PDT
>
> That’s the title of Kevin Baron’s piece at Stars and Stripes
> <http://www.stripes.com/blogs/stripes-central/stripes-central-1.8040/how-the-war-is-spun-mass-killings-mean-progress-military-says-1.152255>,
> which explains how propaganda is wrapped around the insurgencies in Iraq and
> Afghanistan to make them seem as if they’re on the losing end.
>
> Politico’s Morning Defense shared an email Monday
> <http://www.politico.com/morningdefense/> that is pure military public
> affairs gold. How do you interpret a suicide bombing assassination attempt
> north of Kabul that killed at least 20 people into an obvious sign the war
> was going as planned?
>
> An International Security Assistance Force spokesman emailed MD’s Chuck
> Hoskinson a response claiming the attack was “a resounding failure”
> because: 1) the target, a provincial governor survived, 2) the Afghan
> security forces reacted “autonomously” and 3) the attack did not target
> U.S. forces.
>
> The ISAF spokesman explained those points are important to make because
> they are “crucial to undermining the Taliban’s attempt to obtain a
> propaganda victory from their failed attack.”
>
> Judge for yourself who won the victory, propaganda or otherwise. According
> to The Washington Post
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/insurgents-attack-afghan-governors-compound-killing-at-least-20/2011/08/14/gIQAtD5fEJ_story.html?hpid=z2>,
> the attack occurred in a relatively secure Parwan province, north of
> Kabul. A car bomb blew up an entrance to the governor’s compound, five
> insurgents breached the facility and a two-hour gunfight commenced where
> five explosions “shook the building.” ISAF reported at least six IEDs
> <http://www.isaf.nato.int/article/isaf-releases/isaf-joins-president-karzai-in-condemning-the-attack-in-parwan-province.html>
> in addition to the car bomb were detonated.
>
> In far worse carnage, bombings in at least 17 Iraqi cities on Monday
> killed more than 60 people in “bloodbath
> <http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/15/3077493/60-killed-as-wave-of-violence.html>”
> scenes of scattered human flesh.
>
> Stars and Stripes’ Erik Slavin, in Iraq, reports U.S. servicemembers were
> not attacked
> <http://www.stripes.com/news/u-s-servicemembers-in-iraq-not-attacked-but-mission-targeted-1.152245>and
> Iraqi forces had to call for American assistance just once.
>
> U.S. Forces Iraq spokesman Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan
> <http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=65029>, in the Pentagon
> Monday, said the attacks show Iraq remains dangerous but do not threaten
> the government and the insurgency remains an unpopular shadow of its
> former self.
>
> This is notable, but of course just barely scratches the surface. I’ve written
> <http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/08/08/media-subservience-ignoring-the-crimes-of-america/>
> variously
> <http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/08/08/a-warrior-for-christ-a-warrior-for-our-country/>
> about systematic bias
> <http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/05/27/saudi-arab-spring-policy-imitates-u-s-media-cant-see-it/>
> throughout the media
> <http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/06/02/media-keeps-iraq-tyranny-on-down-low/>, which
> is particularly potent when it comes to war. Unfortunately, the majority of
> Americans still develop their opinions about American foreign policy, and
> these wars in particular, from “news anchors” and pundits on the major
> networks. This results in systematic misunderstandings about U.S. foreign
> policy and obviously needs to change <http://antiwar.com/donate/>.
>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=3AmWtD1BZ24:IFloE_4H1Oo:yIl2AUoC8zA>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=3AmWtD1BZ24:IFloE_4H1Oo:D7DqB2pKExk>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=3AmWtD1BZ24:IFloE_4H1Oo:F7zBnMyn0Lo>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=3AmWtD1BZ24:IFloE_4H1Oo:V_sGLiPBpWU>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=3AmWtD1BZ24:IFloE_4H1Oo:cGdyc7Q-1BI>
> Web Bug from
> http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E4/3AmWtD1BZ24?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
>
> The Cherry-Picking Fantasy Land of Elliot Abrams
> <http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E3/QEFleIZMZWM/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>
>
>
> Posted: 16 Aug 2011 11:47 AM PDT
>
> At the blog for the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliot Abrams concludes
> <http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2011/08/16/will-ariel-block-peace/> that people
> who think illegal settlement construction hinders the Israeli-Palestinian
> peace process are not living “in the real world.”
>
> Abrams has argued before, amazingly, that settlements in the West Bank are
> “not a critical issue
> <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/67943/elliott-abrams/the-settlement-obsession?page=show>”
> (to which I responded
> <http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/06/27/pro-israeli-falsehoods-on-the-flotilla-settlements-and-statehood/>).
> In this latest fantasy land post, Abrams pushes back against the condemnations
> for the newest set of approvals for 277 new homes in the West Bank city of
> Ariel
> <http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/15/israel-announces-yet-more-settlement-expansions/>.
> He argues that because these are new units within an already existing
> settlement, it’s all good
> <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=it%27s%20all%20good>.
>
> The new units are to be constructed in the center of the town, it was
> also announced. This is a significant fact, for construction of new units
> at the edges of the town would mean that the security perimeter would need
> to be extended to protect the new housing and the people in it. But this
> will not happen, and Ariel will expand in population but not in land
> area. It is not, in the usual Palestinian Authority parlance, “taking
> more Palestinian land.”
>
> Right, they’re just increasing the population of previously stolen Palestinian
> land. Not only is this virtually a distinction without a difference, but it
> pretends dishonestly that “expanding in population but not in land area” is
> typical for West Bank settlement construction. Abrams leaves out the 4,300 new
> units Israel approved last week for construction in Palestinian East Jerusalem
> <http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/11/israel-approves-4300-new-homes-in-east-jerusalem-2/>
> (which Abrams calls “Israel’s capital”). These thousands were in addition to
> the 930 new homes approved for construction around the same area
> <http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/04/israel-announces-930-homes-in-east-jerusalem-settlement-expansion/>
> just days earlier. Abrams is intentionally white-washing the fact that Israeli
> demolitions of Palestinian homes has skyrocketed this year with 356 structures
> demolished and 700 people displaced in the first six months 2011
> <http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110802/wl_mideast_afp/israelpalestiniansconflictdemolish>.
> These were not instances where new units were built in the center of existing
> settlements, but rather where innocent Palestinian people were expelled from
> their homes so that they could be demolished and given to Israeli settlers.
> Like, for example, the incident at the end of July where the Israeli
> government sued a group of poor Bedouin Palestinians in the Negev desert for
> over $500,000
> <http://news.antiwar.com/2011/07/27/israel-subsidies-untouched-by-us-budget-crisis/>,
> the claimed costs of demolishing their village each time they rebuilt it.
> Israeli authorities destroyed, and the Bedouin rebuilt, the homes in al-Araqib
> more than 20 times.
>
> Abrams leaves out those nasty little details so he can keep his imaginary
> framework for the entire conflict nice and neatly undisturbed. And then of
> course he chimes in with this little number:
>
> It is not reasonable to view it as a violation of international law and a
> threat to a peace agreement every time bricks and studs and drywall show
> up at the center of an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
>
> Except that it is. They are a violation of international law according to the
> consensus view of the international community. The Geneva Conventions clearly
> states <http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/WebART/380-600056> that forcible transfers
> and deportations people in occupied lands is prohibited, as is the transfer of
> “parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Not to
> mention that numerous international agreements
> <http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/misc/5fldpj.htm>, as well as the
> International Court of Justice
> <http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1671.pdf>, have declared the
> settlements illegal. Heck, even Israel sometimes admits certain settlements to
> be illegal
> <http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/02/israeli-court-orders-settlement-dismantled/>.
>
> Not Elliot Abrams though. He’s a bit too far down the rabbit hole…
>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=QEFleIZMZWM:O_4LlI_gV3A:yIl2AUoC8zA>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=QEFleIZMZWM:O_4LlI_gV3A:D7DqB2pKExk>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=QEFleIZMZWM:O_4LlI_gV3A:F7zBnMyn0Lo>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=QEFleIZMZWM:O_4LlI_gV3A:V_sGLiPBpWU>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=QEFleIZMZWM:O_4LlI_gV3A:cGdyc7Q-1BI>
> Web Bug from
> http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E4/QEFleIZMZWM?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
>
> Coalition Tries to Undermine Afghan Traditional Governance
> <http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E3/ZuGNlMEUihY/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>
>
>
> Posted: 16 Aug 2011 09:45 AM PDT
>
> The Associated Press headline pushes the occupation line that the “coalition”
> is trying to “build”
> <http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110816/ap_on_re_as/as_afghan_learning_to_govern>
> a cadre of leaders, but a perusal of the text makes clear that Kabul and its
> Western masters are actively demolishing age-old local governance traditions
> in a probably futile attempt to establish a European-style central state.
>
> The piece begins describing a failed, underattended shura in far-southern
> Helmand province, organized by Kabul carpetbaggers. Why did only seven men
> show up? Gee, could it be this:
>
> “The army commander had invited locals to the small fortified camp, but
> *sometimes those invitations were extended during gunfights when soldiers and
> U.S. Marines were using private Afghan homes and farmers’ poppy fields for
> cover*.”
>
> *door smash*
>
> “We’re using your house as a shield against gunfire from your neighbors. Obey
> us or die. Also, wanna go to a cool party next week? It’ll be about how great
> it will be to have a Ministry of Sport.”
>
> The article describes the various problems suffered by the few local elders
> who have decided to jump on the government bandwagon. One of them is that
> constant fighting and threats of assassination make it, hm, difficult? to
> extend authority. Also, reports AP matter of factly, “Some are corrupt.”
> Nowhere is it noted that if one side of the fight withdrew, the other side
> would have nothing — or at least a lot less — to fight. After all, local
> insurgents didn’t pick this war. It came to them.
>
> To illustrate the utter stupidity of trying to surreptitiously form a state in
> a tribal area, one of the elders who did show up to the shura said he obtained
> permission — from the Taliban. That’s pretty cocksure for an insurgency we’re
> often told is on the wane.
>
> Don’t we already have many guides as to the success rate of slamming
> Eurostates onto tribal societies with ancient and viable alternative modes of
> governance? Somalia is an ongoing nightmare of violence, due in large part to
> the neverending attempts
> <http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/11/24/somali-american-terrorists-victims-of-unfortunate-labeling/>
> to smash its traditional law-based society <http://mises.org/daily/2701> and
> bring back the sort of state that brutalized Somalis for decades. Even
> Pakistan has never been able to truly tame its tribal areas. It’s the same in
> many other cases.
>
> But how are America’s partners, the Brits, helping demonstrate the
> fabulousness of Western-style secular government?
>
> Oh they’re building a million-dollar mosque.
>
> Which NATO blew up.
>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=ZuGNlMEUihY:81rgmCCMVU8:yIl2AUoC8zA>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=ZuGNlMEUihY:81rgmCCMVU8:D7DqB2pKExk>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=ZuGNlMEUihY:81rgmCCMVU8:F7zBnMyn0Lo>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=ZuGNlMEUihY:81rgmCCMVU8:V_sGLiPBpWU>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=ZuGNlMEUihY:81rgmCCMVU8:cGdyc7Q-1BI>
> Web Bug from
> http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E4/ZuGNlMEUihY?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
>
> Latin America Beware: The Imperial Pretext Is Changing
> <http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E3/anUm82qLNhQ/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>
>
>
> Posted: 16 Aug 2011 08:17 AM PDT
>
> During the Cold War, the pretext for reigning terror down upon the masses in
> Central and South America through U.S. imperialism was the creeping communist
> threat. This was used as a justification for our 1954 overthrow of Guatemala’s
> democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz
> <http://www.fff.org/comment/com0502f.asp>, implementing a systematic campaign
> of political assassinations, arming murderous right-wing militias there for
> decades, <http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB11/docs/> etc. Of
> course, the same commie justification held for the CIA-orchestrated coup to
> oust the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile
> <http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/nsaebb8i.htm> and installing
> the repressive dictatorship of General Pinochet. The elusive Soviet threat was
> also the pretext for Reagan’s terror war in Nicaragua
> <http://libcom.org/history/articles/nicaragua-contras> and El Salvador
> <http://libcom.org/history/articles/el-salvador-counterinsurgency>. You get
> the picture.
>
> After the wall fell, the pretext became the drug war and terrorism. Bush I
> invaded Panama <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Panama>
> with the justification of capturing a minor thug Manuel Noriega (previously on
> CIA payroll), violent militias were continually funded to fight the drug war
> (like now
> <http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/08/15/interventionism-south-of-the-border-teaching-drug-cartels-how-to-kill/>),
> Clinton and Plan Colombia which continues to now
> <http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/07/28/supporting-atrocities-in-columbia/>,
> Bush II attempted a coup against Hugo Chavez
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela> because apparently
> he was ‘against us’ as opposed to ‘with us,’ etc.
>
> Apparently the pretext for U.S. domination of Latin America is set to change
> yet again. Amy Myers Jaffe’s piece in /Foreign Policy/
> <http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/08/15/the_americas_not_the_middle_east_will_be_the_world_capital_of_energy>
> doesn’t mention anything about U.S. intervention, but she intelligently
> predicts that the energy “center of the world” so to speak will shift to the
> Americas, instead of staying in the Middle East.
>
> For half a century, the global energy supply’s center of gravity has been
> the Middle East. This fact has had self-evidently enormous implications
> for the world we live in — and it’s about to change.
>
> By the 2020s, the capital of energy will likely have shifted back to the
> Western Hemisphere, where it was prior to the ascendancy of Middle Eastern
> megasuppliers such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the 1960s.
>
> She writes the “reasons for this shift are partly technological and partly
> political,” but oil and natural gas are likely to frame the geopolitical
> understanding of the Americas in the coming years. That will attract the
> attention of the U.S. who has been trying to exploit and command the whole
> region since 1823 with the Monroe Doctrine
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine>. If she’s right, and if Latin
> America’s recent moves towards strong independence movements doesn’t continue
> to resist the weight of U.S. pressure, we may be looking at a whole new
> pretext for a whole new set of ugly wars and interventions south of the border.
>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=anUm82qLNhQ:lA5IQCdcuBI:yIl2AUoC8zA>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=anUm82qLNhQ:lA5IQCdcuBI:D7DqB2pKExk>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=anUm82qLNhQ:lA5IQCdcuBI:F7zBnMyn0Lo>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=anUm82qLNhQ:lA5IQCdcuBI:V_sGLiPBpWU>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=anUm82qLNhQ:lA5IQCdcuBI:cGdyc7Q-1BI>
> Web Bug from
> http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E4/anUm82qLNhQ?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
>
> Addicted to Militarism, Despite Repeated Failures
> <http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E3/2dkNungBu-A/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>
>
>
> Posted: 16 Aug 2011 07:00 AM PDT
>
> Richard Falk has an insightful and somewhat dispiriting piece at al Jazeera
> called “Why the Afghanistan War Won’t End Soon
> <http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201181592644232878.html?utm_content=automateplus&utm_campaign=Trial5&utm_source=SocialFlow&utm_medium=MasterAccount&utm_term=tweets>.”
> He writes about the prescience of the so-called ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ (once
> referred to as “sickly inhibitions against the use of military force”
> <http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2011/06/06/war-fatigue-is-far-too-late/>), and
> about the systematic tendency for America, as the planet’s military
> superpower, to aggressively apply military solutions to non-military problems.
> I was reminded of the opportunity to avoid unnecessary war after 9/11 by
> treating the attacks as a criminal act instead of an act of war (how many
> lives and dollars would have been saved, how many laws never broken…). But
> Falk focuses on conflicts like Afghanistan, say, which have available
> solutions towards ending war but which are treated to the Petraeus
> counter-insurgency magic described by Falk as “gradually expanding the war by
> means of a surge of troops combined with a ten-fold increase in drone attacks”
> with little regard for civilian casualties. Why the insistence on applying
> ineffective and destructive militarist solutions when they are not applicable?
>
> Why do intelligent people persist in doing stupid things? If we had a
> completely convincing answer to this question we would have a far clearer
> understanding of the dysfunctional underbelly of US/NATO foreign policy.
>
> To get such clarity, we probably need to delve into the collective
> unconscious of the warmakers, but even without such Freudian probes, there
> are some obvious dark forces at work in the West. For Europe especially,
> but also the United States, there is a definite nostalgia for the colonial
> period when military intervention was efficiently triumphal and
> conspicuously rewarded with prestige, markets, and resources. There
> lingers in the West a sense that there must be a way to restore those
> happy days of global ascendancy despite the formal elimination of colonial
> rule. Closely connected with this residual imperialism, given some
> credibility by way of economic globalisation in the 1990s, is the parallel
> adherence to the realist belief that it is military power that continues
> to shape world history.
>
> What follows from this search for explanations is what might be described
> as *‘militarism,’ here defined as the compulsive or addictive reliance on
> hard power for conflict resolution that is not altered by repeated
> experiences of failure.*
>
> [...] Whether American militarism is better regarded as insanity or
> addiction is not so significant, but that its compulsiveness discourages a
> proper diagnosis and cure is a distressing reality. It has led to a
> succession of prolonged bloody confrontations that bring misery and
> encourage extremism.
>
> Add to these explanations the fact that the last decade has seen a truly
> unique expansion of military capacity and defense industry booms
> <http://news.antiwar.com/2011/08/15/defense-industrys-growth-since-911/>, all
> of the most readily available (and profitable) tools are military in nature.
> So no wonder that is the most popular and proximate diagnosis.
>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=2dkNungBu-A:JTnuV5TYu3k:yIl2AUoC8zA>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=2dkNungBu-A:JTnuV5TYu3k:D7DqB2pKExk>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=2dkNungBu-A:JTnuV5TYu3k:F7zBnMyn0Lo>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=2dkNungBu-A:JTnuV5TYu3k:V_sGLiPBpWU>
> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/AWCBlog?a=2dkNungBu-A:JTnuV5TYu3k:cGdyc7Q-1BI>
> Web Bug from
> http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/AWCBlog/%7E4/2dkNungBu-A?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email
>
>
>
>
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