why sudden silence?
Jon Ford
jonmfordster@hotmail.com
Thu, 15 Nov 2001 19:49:17 -0800
Jim-- it's uncanny-- everything you say about Hitchens could be said about
our own Bob! What do we need Hitchins for when we've got our own Vanity Fair
editor (Mike) and chief acolyte Simmons? Nevertheless, I'd like the
reference on that Chomsky hit-piece!
Jon
>From: "Jim Baldauf" <jfbaldauf@prodigy.net>
>To: "Roger Baker" <rcbaker@eden.infohwy.com>,
><austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net>
>Subject: Re: why sudden silence?
>Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 19:04:48 -0600
>
>Roger does here almost as good as Noam Chomsky did recently in
>deconstructing (obliterating) a similar rant by Hitchens. Chomsky prefaces
>his remarks by saying that young Hitchens couldn't "really believe what he
>was saying" and that it was a shame because Hitchens had once shown some
>promise as a humor writer. I'm afraid that Hitchens (or "Snitchens", as
>some have called him based on his society gossip work for Vanity Fair) is
>following in the shameful footsteps of David Horowitz who, it seems, has
>moved over the years from the Black Panther Party to something like the
>KKK. Snitchens apparently got a taste for the good life when he joined the
>lynch mob dogging Clinton, which earned him talking-head/pundit status on
>Fox and other right-wing media outlets. It is a shame how some folks
>abandon principle and move steadily to the right over the years.
>jb
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Roger Baker
> To: austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
> Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2001 4:50 PM
> Subject: Re: why sudden silence?
>
>
> On Thursday, November 15, 2001, at 08:14 AM, telebob x wrote:
>
>
> Gee, what has happened to the usual drumbeat of defeat from Roger,
>Jon, et al ? Shocking!
> The USA did something right again. And not for the wrong reasons
>either.
>
> tele
>
>
>
> OK already. You can't bomb your way to security in the modern world.
>What we have done
> in the case of Afghanistan is to create a malignant tumor of misery that
>may well topple the
> really big dominos of Pakistan, where the population is ten times the
>size of Afghanistan, or
> Saudi Arabia, from whence the terrorists and oil come.
>
> I also reply to Hitchens at the bottom, whose journalistic skirts
>teleboob is hiding behind,
> rather than expressing a sound opinion of his own.
>
> But first, the following bit of sensible perspective on the big picture
>from Z mag. -- Roger
>
>
> *****************************************************
>
> http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm
>
> The Irish Times
> November 14, 2001
>
> Kabul's fall is no mark of US success
> By Vincent Browne
>
>
> The "success" in replacing the Taliban with the Northern Alliance in
>Kabul, even if followed by the capture of Osama bin Laden and his al Queda
>associates, almost certainly will make no difference to the security threat
>to the US and the West from terrorism. It may do the reverse.
>
> The scale of the threat to America and its allies is documented again
>and again in a multitude of reports from official US commissions and
>organizations over the last few years. These reports describe the nature of
>the terrorist organizations that pose these threats - the absence of
>hierarchical structures, the loose connections between them, the spread of
>these organizations throughout the world and within America, the lessening
>of reliance on state sponsors, and the danger that one or more of these
>groups may acquire nuclear or biological weapons. They also emphasize the
>vulnerability of the US to attack from these organizations.
>
> In Countering the Changing Threat of International Terrorism, a report
>by the National Commission on Terrorism, published in June of last year,
>the following observation is made: "If al Queda and Osama bin Laden were to
>disappear tomorrow, the United States would still have potential terrorist
>threats from a growing number of groups opposed to perceived American
>hegemony."
>
> The same report stated: "Because groups based on ideological or
>religious motives may lack a specific political or nationalistic agenda,
>they have less need for a hierarchical structure". It says these groups
>"operate in the United States as well as abroad. Their funding and
>logistical networks cross borders, are less dependent on state sponsors and
>are harder to disrupt with economic sanctions. Their objectives are more
>deadly (than terrorist groups of a decade or two ago)".
>
> The US Commission on National Security, co-chaired by former US senator
>and presidential candidate, Gary Hart, stated in a report published on
>February 15th of this year: "Attacks on American citizens on American soil,
>possibly causing heavy casualties, are likely over the next quarter
>century. These attacks may involve weapons of mass destruction and weapons
>of mass disruption."
>
> A report in January of this year on the US Department of Energy's
>non-proliferation programmes with Russia, chaired by former US senator
>Howard Baker, and former presidential counsellor, Lloyd Cutler, is the most
>alarming. It says the old Soviet Union had a nuclear arsenal of 40,000
>weapons, over a thousand metric tons of nuclear materials, vast quantities
>of chemical and biological materials and thousands of missiles. The
>quantity of remaining highly enriched uranium (HEU) is enough to make more
>than 4,000 additional nuclear weapons.
>
> The US and Russian governments engaged in what is known as the "contract
>of the century" to destroy a great deal of this material and to bring the
>remainder under secure control. But a great proportion remains in insecure
>conditions. Worse, those "guarding" this material are given a strong
>incentive to give some of it to terrorists because of inadequate pay -
>often no pay at all for months on end - and chaotic military control
>arrangements. The report records a number of scarifying episodes:
>
> In late 1998, conspirators at a Ministry of Autonomic Energy facility in
>Chelyabinsk were caught attempting to steal fissile material of a quantity
>just short of that needed for one nuclear device.
>
> In early 1998, the mayor of Krasnoyarsk-45, a closed nuclear city that
>stores enough HEU for hundreds of nuclear weapons, wrote to the governor of
>Krasnoyarsk warning that a social explosion in the city was unavoidable
>unless urgent action was taken to pay nuclear scientists and other workers,
>who had been unpaid for several months.
>
> In December 1998, an employee of Russia's premier nuclear weapons
>laboratory in Sarov was arrested for espionage and charged with attempting
>to sell documents on nuclear weapons designs to agents of Iraq and
>Afghanistan for $3 million.
>
> Former US Senator Sam Nunn, who is co-chair of the Nuclear Threat
>Initiative, told the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on September
>5th this year: "I am convinced the threat of a biological weapons attack on
>the Untied States in as urgent as it is real." He pointed out that the
>former Soviet Union engaged in a massive programme of biological weapons
>manufacture, at one time employing 870,000 scientists. They manufactured 22
>tons of smallpox, a tiny fraction of which, if unleashed on the United
>States, would have devastating effects.
>
> A report by the advisory panel to assess domestic response to
>capabilities for terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, says:
>"The United States has no coherent, functional national strategy for
>combating terrorism."
>
> Aside from a single sentence in the Gary Hart report, there is no
>attempt in any of these documents to decipher why terrorists might want to
>attack America and what America might do to address the reasons for the
>hostility. This seems all the more surprising given the scale of the threat
>and the vulnerability of America to terrorist attack.
>
> And the reasons appear straightforward: the presence of American troops
>in the Muslim holy land of Saudi Arabia; the historic injustice perpetrated
>on the Palestinian people, an injustice reinforced daily with the might of
>American arms; the sanctions on Iraq and the frequent bombings of that
>country; and above all, the perception that America is at war with the
>Islamic world. That perception will have been reinforced hugely by the
>bombardment of Afghanistan. Even after the fall of Kabul, America seems
>more vulnerable.
>
> *************************************************
>
>
>
>
> Ha ha ha
> by
> Christopher Hitchens
> Wednesday November 14, 2001
> The Guardian
>
> There was a time in my life when I did a fair bit of
> work for the tempestuous Lucretia Stewart, then editor
> of the American Express travel magazine, Departures.
> Together, we evolved a harmless satire of the slightly
> drivelling style employed by the journalists of
> tourism. "Land of Contrasts" was our shorthand for it.
> ("Jerusalem: an enthralling blend of old and new."
> "South Africa: a harmony in black and white."
> "Belfast, where ancient meets modern.") It was as you
> can see, no difficult task. I began to notice a few
> weeks ago that my enemies in the "peace" movement had
> decided to borrow from this tattered style book. The
> mantra, especially in the letters to this newspaper,
> was: "Afghanistan, where the world's richest country
> rains bombs on the world's poorest country."
>
>
>
> Isn't this true?
>
>
>
> Poor fools. They should never have tried to beat me at
> this game. What about, "Afghanistan, where the world's
> most open society confronts the world's most closed
> one"?
>
>
> Bush is eliminating civil rights at an appalling rate in the name
> of fighting terrorism, is he not? Here are some recent marching
> orders for a newspaper:
>
> " 'Don't Put Civilian Casualties on Page One'
>
> Per Hal's order, DO NOT USE photos on Page 1A showing civilian
> casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan. [Note: "Hal" is News
> Herald executive editor Hal Foster.] Our sister paper in Fort Walton
> Beach has done so and received hundreds and hundreds of threatening
> e-mails and the like.
>
> Also per Hal's order, DO NOT USE wire stories which lead with civilian
> casualties from the U.S. war on Afghanistan. They should be mentioned
> further down in the story. If the story needs rewriting to play down the
> civilian casualties, DO IT."
>
>
>
> "Where American women pilots kill the men who
> enslave women." "Where the world's most indiscriminate
> bombers are bombed by the world's most accurate ones."
> "Where the largest number of poor people applaud the
> bombing of their own regime." I could go on. (I think
> number four may need a little work.) But there are
> some suggested contrasts for the "doves" to paste into
> their scrapbook. Incidentally, when they look at their
> scrapbooks they will be able to re-read themselves
> saying things like, "The bombing of Kosovo is driving
> the Serbs into the arms of Milosevic."
>
> If the silly policy of a Ramadan pause had been
> adopted, the citizens of Kabul would have still been
> under a regime of medieval cruelty, and their
> oppresssors would have been busily regrouping, not
> praying. Anyhow, what a damn-fool proposal to start
> with. I don't stop insulting the Christian coalition
> at Eastertime. Come Yom Kippur I tend to step up my
> scornful remarks about Zionism. Whatever happened to
> the robust secularism that used to help characterise
> the left? And why is it suddenly only the injured
> feelings of Muslims that count?
>
>
> Starvation in northern Afghanistan should be a primary issue for
> those who value human life. Will we now deliver the needed aid on the
> needed scale to prevent mass starvation or do we primarily care
> about American lives like Bush?
>
>
>
> A couple of years ago,
> the same people were striking pompous attitudes about
> the need to avoid offending Serbian and therefore
> Russian Orthodox sensitivities. Except that those
> sensitive people, or their leaders, were engaged in
> putting the Muslims of Europe to the sword...
>
>
>
> We are indeed the avenging angels of the world, but is our might used to
> promote justice or for expansionist corporate greed? When and where does
> the CIA intervene?
>
>
>
> There's no pleasing some people, but as a charter
> supporter of CND I can remember a time when the peace
> movement was not an auxiliary to dictators and
> aggressors in trouble. Looking at some of the
> mind-rotting tripe that comes my way from much of
> today's left, I get the impression that they go to bed
> saying: what have I done for Saddam Hussein or good
> old Slobodan or the Taliban today?
>
>
>
> Is terrorism a symptom of deeper problems -- or is it the primary
> problem for which bombs are the appropriate cure?
>
>
>
>
> Well, ha ha ha, and yah, boo. It was obvious from the
> very start that the United States had no alternative
> but to do what it has done. It was also obvious that
> defeat was impossible. The Taliban will soon be
> history. Al-Qaida will take longer. There will be
> other mutants to fight.
>
>
> By bombing enough innocent civilians for it to become known
> through the world of Islam and putting the Northern Alliance
> in power, we have set the stage for later problems. Do we walk
> away from the mess and tell the United Nations to clean it up?
>
> The points of potential vulnerabilty multiply in complex societies,
> and these weak points become targets for the disaffected when
> the narrow economic interests of the (corporate) empire undermine
> the possibility of legitimate democratic opposition (like Bush is
> trying to do here).
>
>
>
> But if, as the peaceniks like
> to moan, more Bin Ladens will spring up to take his
> place, I can offer this assurance: should that be the
> case, there are many many more who will also spring up
> to kill him all over again. And there are more of us
> and we are both smarter and nicer, as well as
> surprisingly insistent that our culture demands
> respect, too.
>
>
> We're good and rich and wise and individualistic while Muslims
> with their adamant moral principles are poor and bad? Do we
> enough nukes to back that point of view over the long run?
>
>
>
> ? Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
>
>
>
> Which is a much better source than, say, da Newyawkah.
>
>
>
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