The American Politics of Provincialism
By ignoring the Paris rally for “Je suis Charlie” on Sunday, the American Executive and Congressional Leadership displayed a parochial way of thinking: self-interest selfishly understood. France supported the American independence movement and presented the USA with the statue of liberty. Most Americans love French fries.
Allegedly, Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris but didn’t march. Ambassador Jane Hartley, pictured on the right, better known for appearing at opera functions than at foreign policy meetings, marched. At least she had the courage of her office.
Pictured on the left, is an ordinary man, a shop employee, and a man of courage, Mr. Lassana Bathily, who worked at the Kosher Supermarket, where hostages were taken by one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen. He hid several customers in a cold freezer, turned it off, and slipped out a back door to find help. The police cuffed him at first but let him go when he told them about the layout of the store and gave them a key to steel barriers so they could surprise the terrorist inside. He was a Muslim from Mali in West Africa, called a hero by his customers.
Just as the American leaders—cowards?—ignored their responsibility to stand in solidarity with world leaders, so the USA refuses to recognize the barbaric ramifications of extending the capitalist empire abroad and at home. The dispossessed, who suffer from poverty and hopelessness, respond violently. In turn, the innocents at home are subject to “blowback” : 9/11, suicide bombings, IEDs, the “irrational” attack on Charlie Hebdo.
American drones kill innocents and American leaders and operatives have committed crimes against humanity.
Consider: the FBI warned the CIA and Clinton security advisors warned Bush about a potential event, the one organized by Bin Laden, 9/11, which Bush and Cheney transformed into a cynical attack on IRAQ. There is a precedent for American deception in history: Dec. 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor. Who didn’t know the Japanese were coming?
Who is the real savage?
State-sponsored assassins at the Pentagon and CIA, the private contractors and corporations representing Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” or deprived kids from the Paris suburbs, who learn the trade of terrorism in parks and prisons? Both are culpable.
Caveat: Charlie’s cartoons ridiculing Muhammad remind me of what Emerson said: actions are a kind of words and words are a kind of action.
The Local Connection
At Moby Dickens Book Store on Saturday night, several “humanitarians” gathered to watch the “Forgotten Bomb,” a film about the atomic bomb, aka the product of the Manhattan Project.
Erich Kuerschner sent us the following statement from Stewart Udall. The former Secretary of Interior said, “There is nothing comparable in our history to the deceit and the lying that took place as a matter of official Government policy in order to protect this industry…”
“Nothing was going to stop them and they were willing to kill our own people….The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy.”
“It induced us to conduct Government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality. Until the cold war, our country stood for something.”
Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, Stewart’s son, supports LANL, and the new cold war.
Contrary to the myth, the Japanese, due as much to the effects of the fire bombs that had incinerated Tokyo, were ready to surrender prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the Americans, according to the record, wanted to send a message to Soviet Russia. The messenger killed 60,000 to 80,000 Japanese when the bombs exploded. An estimated 135,000 eventually succumbed to their wounds and the effects of radiation.
Watch Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1956-57 film “Battle of Algiers” to understand how long and how little the war on terror and civilization has changed in France. The Brits ultimately resolved the issues of Irish terror and the IRA by addressing the issue as a “criminal matter” and applying police work to the perpetrators of violence.
In terms of justice, America could arrest those responsible for arbitrary and capricious decisions to torture. But the DOJ today goes after journalists, whistle blowers, and even four-star generals who allegedly violate NSA protocols. It’s the new McCarthyism.
Elected representatives in Congress and the Administration from both parties tend to emulate the actions of hysterical cops: the ones who beat down deprived men, women and children historically on the bridge to Selma or presently kill folks in Ferguson, Cleveland, Staten Island, and Albuquerque. Trigger-happy cops in New Mexico shoot the homeless, the deranged, and, now, each other.
Nobel Prize Winner of literature, Albert Camus of Algeria, referred to the era of the 20th Century as the era of “the absurd.” There’s no end in sight.