witness

apparently, Ehud Olmert sets US policy

2009-01-13T01:31:23Z

Here's a clear indication of the dimensions of the egos running the show in Israel... [But Olmert should watch out, 'cuz the egos in Washington are even bigger.]

Rice shame-faced by Bush over UN Gaza vote: Olmert
Mon Jan 12, 5:05 PM

JERUSALEM (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.

"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.

Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.

The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said.

"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

"I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."

Bush has consistently placed the blame for the conflict on Hamas, telling reporters on Monday that while he wanted to see a "sustainable ceasefire" in Gaza, it was up to Hamas to choose to end its rocket fire on Israel.
But a US State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, denied Olmert's claim.
"Mr. Olmert is wrong," the official said.

Even if everything had gone according to plan, "she would have abstained. That was the plan," said the official. "The government of Israel does not make US policy."

Source

Psychic Winter

2008-12-05T02:34:04Z

A new video of mine...

Sometimes it's a day in the ashes... sometimes it's a psychic winter.

Combining suggestions of psychic driving and seasonal affective disorder.

oh well, then...

2008-10-09T00:42:38Z

This is undoubtedly the lamest moment ever in Politics:

Palin may be related to Princess Diana, Roosevelt

For more of this stirring revelation in a desperate attempt to gain votes...

putting the "lethal" back in "non-lethal"

2008-07-24T17:43:41Z

17-year-old fatally zapped by Taser likely youngest stun gun victim: rights group

By The Canadian Press

WINNIPEG - An international human rights group believes the 17-year-old victim of a police Taser in Winnipeg is the youngest Canadian to die after being zapped by a stun gun.

The teen, Michael Langan, died Tuesday.

A spokesman with Amnesty International says Langan is believed to be the youngest Canadian to die after being Tasered since 2003 - the year the agency recorded the first death linked to the device.

The group says at least 21 people in the country have died after being hit by a police Taser.

In Tuesday's case, police say the youth was a suspect in a theft and an officer deployed an "electronic control device" when he refused to put down a knife.

Source

My emphasis.

Chomsky goes porno

2008-07-03T02:51:36Z

There's only one correct answer to each question...

first

second...

Now, that was unexpected. Icky, and yet...

pinkville @ 2008-06-16T20:43:00

2008-06-17T00:51:38Z

finding a bed

2008-06-10T19:41:14Z

My 87 year old father-in-law is a World War II veteran. He was a navigator in the RCAF, flying 32 bombing missions over Germany, once making an emergency landing in Belgium, and once, when an engine caught fire over the Irish Sea, bailing out and parachuting onto Snowdon. But those days are long past. Because he is now increasingly unable to take care of himself, J and I last year started trying to find him an acceptable home for when he can no longer live on his own. Naturally, we consulted Veterans Affairs, and we were happy to discover that although the VA now only administers one veterans hospital in the whole country, that institution happens to be located on the island of Montreal (in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue) and is easy to get to from our place. When we contacted the hospital we were told that the waiting time for J's father would be about a month, and so we were content that moving him in wouldn't be difficult if and when it became necessary. Months later, J decided to confirm the details of the procedure for having him move in to the hospital, and she was told that the waiting time was now two years. Two years?!

Normally, you'd expect a gradual decline in the number of veterans making use of such facilities. There are no more Canadian veterans of World War I, and the numbers of World War II veterans is obviously dropping, so why the sudden bulge in patients at Ste-Anne? The answer is grimly telling. As J was told by the administrator at the hospital, there has been a wave of veterans coming back from Afghanistan to become patients at the hospital... mostly psychological cases.

Since 2001, about 15,000 Canadian troops have been stationed in Afghanistan. There have been 85 deaths of Canadian military personnel in Afghanistan (including one acknowledged suicide) and about 300 wounded. The vast majority of these casualties have occurred since 2006 when Canadian troops were deployed in the Kandahar region, taking on active combat missions. In a CBC report from November 2007:

A recent military survey of returned soldiers found that nearly 400 of the 2,700 who had served in Kandahar may have come home with mental health problems.

All of which gives some sense of the scale of the impact of our participation in this war. Nothing of the impact on Afghanistan, however. In fact, there has hardly been a serious study of the number of civilian casualties of the War in Afghanistan. Marc Herold, a professor with the Departments of Economics and Women's Studies at the University of New Hampshire, has conducted a study attempting to gauge the number of civilian casualties due to US bombing in Afghanistan for the period October 2001 to May 2003, finding between 3100 and 3600 deaths. This is, by his own admission, a minimum figure, and undoubtedly a very low estimate, only counting media-reported deaths directly caused by the bombing and purposely not including related but later deaths or deaths due to the repercussions of bombing, also not including civilian deaths caused by other military operations, notably, ground operations. In a 20 May 2002 article in the Guardian, Jonathan Steele reports estimates of about 20,000 civilian deaths directly and indirectly due to the US bombing. And that figure is only for the first 8 months of the war.

Finding the number of so-called Coalition deaths in Afghanistan is easy. Finding the number of Coalition wounded is a little harder - that's an impact of the war that doesn't have any mainstream media marketability, apparently - and finding the number of Coalition troops with psychological scars is harder still. As for the psychological scars of Afghanis... we'll never know, and we'll only be able to get a very small idea of the scale of such damage as we view - from our safe vantage point - ongoing developments in the country... its further decline into misery, war, hunger, narco-business, increases in small-time terrorism, the increased power of Islamic fundamentalism, the worsening of conditions for women... Rulers make victims, and victims make more victims, until there's either no one left... or the process is put to a stop.

cosmologies

2008-05-31T20:31:28Z

elemental

defying gravity

singularity

time dilation

mind-matter dichotomy

dark matter

uncertainty principle

blue shift

mechanistic universe

cosmological constant

.

irises

2008-05-23T01:47:33Z

I was invaded by the power of the night

2008-05-03T02:26:04Z

+++++++++++++++

I was invaded by the power of the night

title from twenty love poems: 1, by Pablo Neruda
veinte poemas de amor: 1

akam-i-kilak says:

... she seems happy to offer herself ... in plain possession of her freedom ... I like that ... ;D ... there is something wild and real in the picture I really love !
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

stormrider777 ( day dreAmer ) says:

perfecto perfecto !!! strong image...
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

akam-i-kilak says:

PS : just saw the other one ! Funny, but this one is private and the other one public ... when to me the other one is more schocking ... she looks so young ....
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

Thanks both.

mrs ka [ liki ] maka, yes, wild and real - in plain possession of one's freedom - these are just the sorts of feelings/ideas I hope to evoke...

at other times I hope to show a darker side, with inherent menace, but that can still be redeemed, uplifted, etc.

And you were absolutely right about the public/private access with regard to these two images... I knew I had to make this one private - because genitalia are evil in the eyes of flickr, but I was a little slow to make the other private... Looks young, it's true, but fortunately is older than appears... (23)
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

demeterº says:

beautiful image.. would look even greater in sepia-b/w.. with a bit of post processing perhaps? ;)
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

akam-i-kilak says:

Your comment touched me deeply ! Durruti ... I balance between both the same desires ... but never expressed it so clearly !

And respect to the "genitalia evil" ... you made me understand why it is so on fashion among women to do genitalia surgery so that their sex (thus sexuality) is not visible anymore ... even in pornography, which is the summum of hypocrisie ! I must admit that what I loved in this picture too, is the fact she is visibly a woman with a assumed sexuality and not a pseudo virginal yet luxurious girl and maybe that's why I was suprised (should I say chocked ? but it is so intimate ...) by some of the other pictures ! And this is probably what makes the whole serie so strong .... ;D
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

Demeter*, I tried sepia, and it did look good, but I opted for the subdued (and slightly weird, to my eyes) colour: the muted green fabric and red-brown wall. The sepia was pretty, but the colours disturbed me, so I figured I should go with what disturbs!

mrs ka [ liki ] maka, I want to celebrate sex/sexuality - and I don't want to confine what I photograph or write about to just my own orientation/desires, so I like to lend an ambiguity to my images and their accompanying texts. For example, in this series, I think no one could definitively say that the titles represent the thoughts of the model, the photographer or someone else altogether. And is the model/photographer the lover of a woman, a man, or does it matter? I suppose this post of mine [in livejournal] is my manifesto, the text being the lyrics to the Ultravox song My Sex, which expresses quite well my experience and understanding of this subject. [And it's such a beautiful song!]

All that said, I'm aware of many problems involved in depicting sex in photographs, and on the internet... and issues that arise when depicting women in such a context. I don't believe that any sexual image a woman makes of herself is necessarily empowering (though some are), and obviously men's sexual images of women are a predominantly terrible example; I think image-making has to be carefully done to try to create works that vibrate with positive energy and potential - that disrupt the pornographic or merely puerile prurient eye.

Your comment about genital surgery resonates... These days, there is a bizarre pretense of open sexuality that is at the same time deeply asexual, anti-pleasure, and only about commerce. That's how I feel about Christina Aguilera, and the rest. They can shake their asses all they want, but it's remarkably unsexy, largely because it's so obviously only about making money, not about pleasure. It's like the long, long polished fingernails... how do you actually have sex with such things on your fingertips?!

So yes, I'm trying to take imagery that is usually found in pornography or erotica (art photography) and make it a little more real. Trying to avoid the clichés of both porn and erotica, while still making something attractive...
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

akam-i-kilak says:

;) .... and this one achieves all your search very very well (at least to a woman's eye !) ... and I do agree with you with the color grading, especially now that know a little more about the whole quest ! anyway ... I really love this picture exactly as it is !
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

Thanks so much for your thought-provoking comments and kind compliments!
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Eroganza says:

.:. O . Pablo Neruda .:. How I like him .!. .!. .!.

.:. Sie tienes un hondo penar
piensa en mi
sie tienes ganas de llorar
piensa en mi .

Agustin Lara Aguirre del Pino . interpreted by Chavela Vargas .:.
Posted 6 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

If you have depths to suffer
think of me
if you must cry
think of me.

?

:~)
Posted 6 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Source 1

+++++++++++++++

to hear the immense night, more immense without her

title from twenty love poems: 20, by Pablo Neruda
veinte poemas de amor: 20

halfbreedhalf [deleted] says:

there's something here that lends some weight to an idea of absence....but i can't quite reach it .... but maybe that's the point....

--
Seen on your photo stream. (?)
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

Well, I was going for a gesture of anguish and loss... But like many gestures, it's not definitive [that's why we have language]... So, yes, the idea of absence, without being utterly explicit.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

akam-i-kilak says:

Did you ever experience the feeling of being absent by being too present ? ... and this sometimes leads to the feeling of anguish and loss because just after the moment is over ... this is what this picture and your comments reminded me ...
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

I've had the experience of feeling alone while being with someone. And also the experience of feeling so much in an instant that the time after felt hollow... empty...
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

halfbreedhalf [deleted] says:

transcendence ...... possibly ?

--
Seen in my recent comments. (?)
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

halfbreedhalf [deleted] says:

or deja-vu ...... to be so present that time shifts itself to let one view from the outside....
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

One hopes for transcendence... one hopes to attain distance on one's experiences... to better understand them.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

akam-i-kilak says:

mmmhhh .... it isn't exactly that, Durruti, yet closer to the second option .... there is somekind of feeling of having missed something, of not having fully experienced the moment ... and transcendence is to me the opposite ... it is when you are fully there ... and this you get with experience and is delicious ... by the way, for me, the woman in the picture is fully in the presence of herself and of the moment she's experiencing (to be honest, to me there is here no anguish or loss ... but maybe because I saw it first in a raw with the others)... maybe we, the viewers, and maybe the photographer too, are the ones who feel or are absent from the scene .... at the end it is a little bit as if she had taken all the power ....

Durruti ... you lost us ... and if I understood properly your other comment on the other picture, this is what you are looking for, aren't you ? ;p
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

akam-i-kilak says:

aïe !! i was writing while you were too !! funny to have conversation cacophonia like this in these circumstances ! ;D
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

halfbreedhalf [deleted] says:

you're right ...transcendence is the idea of being fully there.... but if you're the only person to feel this amongst those present .... then you feel absent .... or alone .....

--
Seen in my recent comments. (?)
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

akam-i-kilak says:

What you are describing mr hbh, looks like more to what I call an "out of the body" experience that to a déjà-vu to me ... and Durrutti, don't you think that it depends on the ongoing experience ?
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

akam-i-kilak says:

aïe ... other crisscross ! apparently I really type very slowly ! must be my bad english ! ,p)

and here we come to the starting point, mr hbh ... being absent by being too present ... you're right then ... but you describe a lonely experience and in this case probably the one feeling trascendance to do not care about ther others .... then maybe the point is the desire to share it ... ;p
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

halfbreedhalf [deleted] says:

that's right... invite them in ..... ignore the confused look on their faces..... and......invite them in .....
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

halfbreedhalf [deleted] says:

lonely and alone are 2 distinct feelings
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

halfbreedhalf [deleted] says:

he's transcending .... : P
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

halfbreedhalf [deleted] says:

there, u see ...u've absented yourself again ... by deletion
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

akam-i-kilak says:

mr hbh !!! I just cancelled the message because it was getting odd !! So, Durrutti, in the meantime, between the two last sentences of mrh I had written that I was impatient to have your own opinion !!! so you better understand his last comment now ! ;p
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

halfbreedhalf [deleted] says:

i think we need mr guyamba here..... the voice of reason .... ; P
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

akam-i-kilak says:

that would be lovely but I think that Durrutti will maybe kick us out for late discussions !

sorry, Durrutti, but the subject is so interesting !
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

Bad English?! Mon Dieu! Tu écris tellement bien en anglais! Pas comme moi en français!

My feelings about this image: the image is ecstatic, yet it conveys a sense of loss - a sense the text emphasises. It's as though one remembers the intense and exultant feelings of love one had toward someone now gone... But it is also about that intensity itself - which might come from anything! Or of being unable to get back to that feeling. That connection. So the image might be a picture of loss - or a picture of what is lost. I don't want to say that it's the woman in the image that feels loss, or the person viewing, or the photographer that feels loss, but someone does... maybe just Pablo Neruda. But (I hope) there are many possible readings, and (that) none cancel any of the others out.

Apparently, I'm the slowest with the keyboard! :~)

And I'm happy to continue... !
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Durruti Column says:

And I have no Italian or Dutch at all... :~(
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

akam-i-kilak says:

Now only mr Guyamba's opinion is missing ! ;p

At the end, I wander if it isn't an image of abandon and of the desire for abandon ... desire expressed by her, by us, by you AND by Pablo Neruda (by the way, I love him) ...
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

But notice the really interesting ambiguities of language... loss - and losing oneself in the moment. Abandoned - and abandoning oneself, living life with abandon...
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

akam-i-kilak says:

Absolutely .... That's why it is all so refined .... and complex ... and exciting ... it points out that probably we all look for the same at the end, but are not using the language in the same way ... so we spend a life trying to understand and making understand what we are looking for ... but are mislead by words ... losing oneself in the moment, abandoning oneself ... that gets some negative aspect by association with loss and abandon ... when they are the path to fullfillment ...
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

In a related vein... there's a long-standing difficulty (particularly in North America) with the meanings of and relationship between the individual and the collective. There is an indoctrinated fear of the collective - that one must necessarily lose one's identity in the collective - and collective rights are always under attack. At the same time, a limited concept of the individual is celebrated - but only that concept of the individual that takes responsibilty for aspects of society that could - and should - be collective. For example, in the US, health care is an individual responsibility, but in the rest of the industrial world it is a collective responsibility, spreading the burden so that no one feels it unduly. It's not a millions miles from losing oneself... You lose yourself in ecstasy, your skin dissolves and you become part of the world, you lose yourself in another, you lose your inhibitions, your barriers, your limits, and you become part of everything around you....
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

halfbreedhalf [deleted] says:

i think u have to be careful with the two words ..... absence and loss ..... loss and losing oneself implies a sense of control....... of ownership..... absence implies a body not being present or a deficiency ...... i found the shot represented the latter... there is a sensuality here ..... loss is far more desperate ....
--
Seen in my recent comments. (?)
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

It's a good point.
absence is cool, disconnected, alienated... or simply apart
loss is hot, ruptured, stretched
but losing oneself in something (an experience, someone else) is hot, connected...

I can't decide, though, whether the image shows what one remembers or what is present... If it is in the past - a memory - then it may be just ecstatic, and the absence is only in the present, reflecting on what once was... If the image is in the present, then it shows absence now, a current sense of loss.... In other words, the image is ambivalent. it could represent a positive feeling in the past, or a negative feeling in the present... More or less.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

akam-i-kilak says:

.... mmmhhh ... it is very late here and I have to go to bed because I am craving for the dreams I will have ... but ... I really wonder how you both got from abandon to absence .... ;p which are absolutely not the same concept ! ... can't wait to read your further discussion tomorrow morning sipping my coffee ... have a splendid evening ...
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

there's something here that lends some weight to an idea of absence..., as halfbreedhalf said.

And I think it all turns on whether you view the image as a view of a memory (the past) or as a moment in the present.

I think that if you view it as a memory, then it can be an image of abandoning oneself, losing oneself in ecstasy... but only a remembered image, because of the text: without her...

If it is the present, then it can be an image of present loss, of being abandoned... and it's not an image of ecstasy at all, but one of anguish...

But I see that halfbreedhalf views it differently from either of those readings... as a view of separation, absence... not necessarily as "desperate" as loss... And that seems entirely possible too.

It could also be a feeling of longing... for something/someone one hasn't known yet... The line from My Sex: of all the bodies I knew and those I want to know...
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

akam-i-kilak says:

Ohhh ... so it is me that jumped from absence to abandon ... this blows my mind away .... and I am a little bit in choc ... and I understood in my skin how deeply my inner still 6 years old (or even younger) girl identifies with this young girl on both the images selected ... and ... now I don't find the words anymore ... just feel having gone maybe too far into confession ... but I think it gives an interesting lecture of this image by us, the viewers ...

I am struck by both your refined and mature minds ... may I dare say that I never dreamed this was possible ? ....
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

That's very kind, and it certainly is rewarding to be able to have such a good discussion!

I'm quite curious about your inner 6 year-old... But I wouldn't want to force you to confess more than you would like! :~)
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

akam-i-kilak says:

I don't think I will answer this question ! ;p but I wondered if you had ever seen this image : www.flickr.com/photos/7357324@N03/756714149/.

To me it is the exact opposite of yours ... ;p
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

petite abeille (love the name), Thanks for the kind comments and the invite!

Come to think of it, to hear the immense night would make a good album/song title... hmmmm....

mrs ka[liki]maka, Yes, that image is very much on the other side of the street from me! I saw your comment, there, and while I see your point (and agree that that is a possible reading of the image), I can't say I like the photo. But it is interesting, which is good in itself.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

akam-i-kilak says:

You are absolutely right as usual !! I just have a tendancy in english to use the word "love" widely ... as well as when it concerns my brain than my heart ... and I "love" that picture (with my brain) because I find it quite effective, efficient respect to its purpose, and I admire intelligence. I'll try to be more precise next time ! also if ... it is also a way to spread some love around ! ;p needed in those times ! ;p ... by the way ... did you have a fast check on the other comments ... quite interesting ! ;p Have a nice day !

ps : of course yours (picture), I love with my heart !
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

There's a bit of a cross-section of comments, isn't there. Some are thoughtful, some are the usual coy (adoloescent) boy response to "a naked lady"...

:~)
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

akam-i-kilak says:

Yes !!! I was so surpised that there could be "coyboy" response to such an image and I told myself that men can quite be blind sometime ! ;p have a nice day !
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Source 2

+++++++++++++++

rose as the honey-eyed and polite schoolgirl she never was --
by tetheredto

Lola Lyndon: Stone Cold Fox! says:

@ Longan:

I'm not certain that women as subjects are inherently more interesting. What intrigues me is the differences in the ways that women subjects are portrayed-- some photographers have an aesthetic of woman as an almost inanimate landscape or homogenized product-- others follow certain conventions of romanticism to emphasize woman's femininity beyond her individuality-- and yet others are breaking radical new ground in their portrayals of the female ethos, particularly as it concerns women's sexuality.

Unfortunately, however, the political message conveyed-- particularly by women who photograph women-- is being suppressed by censorship which attacks sexuality regardless of ideological merit.

Ironically, in our efforts to control pornography and other abusive images of women, the creation of a uniquely "female gaze" is being hindered in it's development.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

Durruti Column says:

In any case, I don't regard this as a male conspiracy any longer. As many women are collaborating against their own political and civil rights nowdays... which is the ultimate expression of self-loathing, perhaps.

It's not a question of conspiracy, though, it's a question of power - and regardless of the specific issue involved (sex, race, class, etc.) members of the group with less power will sometimes (attempt to) identify with aspects of (or those in) power, consciously or not. Getting closer to power may seem to be the only way to improve your chances of getting by... an undersandable compromise. It's pretty obvious that feminists are threatening - and I can hardly find anyone who's willing to call themselves a feminist, even when their politics are feminist - and feminists are subject to often pretty severe hostility, so there are strong incentives to not be identified as one. It's worth noting that a lot of images of women by women are no different from men's images of women, merely duplicating sexist conventions, etc. of representation. More internalised lessons of a male-dominated society.

Fortunately, the work of Rose and Olive is a strong exception to that sad tale.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

languisity says:

It's worth noting that a lot of images of women by women are no different from men's images of women, merely duplicating sexist conventions, etc. of representation. More internalised lessons of a male-dominated society.

You know... That's really really true. Sometimes the portrayls are ironic, but largely not and that sort of gets to me. But people do what they know. For me, this largely links up with this lifelong conversation I've been having about race. It's not really about identifying, I don't think. It's something like a habit. Because there's no sense of power to be achieved in anyway by calling yourself less-than... which is essentially what happens. I think that it can be about power as well, but it's largely a "this is what we know, what we're taught" thing. And that's a pretty strong thing to over come given the things surrouding women.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

Durruti Column says:

Well, to elaborate a bit on identifying. I think it's part of what happens when some women think that to get ahead in business (as the cliché goes) they have to be like men - and to even out-macho men. Think of Condoleezza Rice trying to be both macho and white (and succeeding to a remarkable degree). In a more concentrated example, it's been found in studies of violence in the home that children of spouse-beaters often end up identifying with the aggressor, not the victim... it's the aggressor who has the power, and it's natural to seek to be close to the power rather than the victim. Beyond the identification issues, though, there are pretty clear pragmatic reasons to want to get closer to power... greater safety, material benefits, more comfort, etc. Though it all comes at a loss of solidarity, identity, integrity, culture, etc. The more this whole thing is internalised, the more it becomes habit, unconscious... exactly as you described it. And as you say, the more it's just a habit, the less visible the issue is and therefore the harder it is to overcome, or even acknowledge as real.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Lola Lyndon: Stone Cold Fox! says:

Durruti says:
"It's not a question of conspiracy, though, it's a question of power - and regardless of the specific issue involved (sex, race, class, etc.) members of the group with less power will sometimes (attempt to) identify with aspects of (or those in) power, consciously or not."

So true. Have you seen Lars von Trier's film "Manderlay" yet?

Durruti says:
"I can hardly find anyone who's willing to call themselves a feminist, even when their politics are feminist - and feminists are subject to often pretty severe hostility, so there are strong incentives to not be identified as one."

Just imagine the world we'd live in today if black activists had declaimed and disowned and denied their civil rights movement in the way that women have Feminism. Tsk tsk.

Alas, we'll certainly get whatever it is we deserve.

Durruti says:
"It's worth noting that a lot of images of women by women are no different from men's images of women, merely duplicating sexist conventions, etc. of representation. More internalised lessons of a male-dominated society."

Quite so. But when Feminism succeeds in provoking women to view these images more analytically-- the consciousness gradually awakens and creativity is ignited.

Durruti says:
"Fortunately, the work of Rose and Olive is a strong exception to that sad tale."

I agree... and there are many more also. Jacqueline Vanek baked my loaf today. Christie Neilson is tremendous. Ned Rosen and Lilly are doing such interesting alt-pornography projects on LoucheLust. There's too many to name... but I'm so impressed with the Flickr community in this regard. It's an exciting time. A hopeful time.

That is, as long as we can stave off the Yahoo censorship. Dammit.

Durruti says:
"I think it's part of what happens when some women think that to get ahead in business (as the cliché goes) they have to be like men - and to even out-macho men."

Having dabbled in business and politics myself, I can attest that is no figment of the imagination that only the toughest women can succeed in these environments. The reason we keep seeing these Iron Woman archetypes is because women who are less aggressive are simply eliminated from the competition early on. As long as women are a minority in these fields of endeavour, they are compelled play by men's rules to participate in the power structure. And, of course, the myth that leadership and ambition is unfeminine can therefore perpetuate. It's so insidious, really.

The fear of being viewed as unfeminine-- or as a man-hater-- or as a lesbian-- or as frigid-- is enough to keep many women from even getting in the game. God knows we wouldn't want a trivial matter like our economic equality or civil rights to interfere with inspiring any erections!

However, when the ratio of women increases-- the corporate or political culture will change along with us and allow a greater variety of women to participate. This seems evident in Sweden, for example, where women now have advanced to 47% representation in government.

Durruti says:
"Beyond the identification issues, though, there are pretty clear pragmatic reasons to want to get closer to power... greater safety, material benefits, more comfort, etc. Though it all comes at a loss of solidarity, identity, integrity, culture, etc. The more this whole thing is internalised, the more it becomes habit, unconscious... exactly as you described it. And as you say, the more it's just a habit, the less visible the issue is and therefore the harder it is to overcome, or even acknowledge as real."

Again, I think Languisity and yourself would both enjoy seeing "Manderlay". These are precisely the themes explored.
www.themoviebox.net/movies/2005/IJKLM/Manderlay/trailer.php

Anyhoo, it's a pleasure for me to see these issues discussed. I'm still optimistic!
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

tetheredto says:

I'll make the following disclaimer: I haven't read all of it and unfortunately don't have time to right this moment. But a couple of things caught my general eye and rubbed me like sandpaper. First: pornography is not necessarily an abusive image of women. And second, the images that "men take of women" are not necessarily full of sexist conventions of representation, and if they are full of what you consider these things it may not be simply aping these supposedly male ideals that lets the same conventions pop up in the work of women. Who is devaluing who to say that women must just be copying the work of men they've seen if they choose to sexualize a woman in photography, film, or otherwise? That's all for now, but I'll be back. Also, I fear the "message" (God kill the messenger with such literal ideas) behind playing videos of plastic surgery in a women's lavatory may be more complex than, "Have plastic surgery." And "as we are" may also include our implicit choices. Should also include. Does also include.

Rose
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

digalbondiga! says:

Beuatiful portrait. Love it.
Just say that i agrre with Longan drink when he says that women are a more interesting portrait subject... I don t know, there is a lot of things you can take out -visually talking- and maybe i have to admit that it exist a tradition which "stick" a lot of poetic or esthetic concepts to women. We can not eliminate an "inconscious tradional heritage" just like that. In any case it doesn t have to be something bad... And as Lola Lyndon says, the most of the time the "sexual inferiority" is the fault of the women themselves...
Oh, by the way, Lola, that s so traumatic: "I observed that plastic surgery procedures were being televised in the women's washrooms." Wow.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink )

Durruti Column says:

Rose,

It would be hypocritical of me to say that I have a problem with photographs of sex, sexual subject matter, etc. And though I didn't mention pornography, I must say that I think that most porn does neither men nor women justice. I don't think it's necessarily abusive of women - actually, I don't think images can be "abusive", though they can manifest a sexist or anti-women attitude.

I said: a lot of images of women by women are no different from men's images of women, merely duplicating sexist conventions, etc. of representation, which isn't to suggest that all men's images of women are problematic - something I thought was obvious. I'd say that a large percentage of sexual images of women made by men do involve sexist conventions of representation, and that some number of women replicate such conventions without challenging them. At the same time, I know that many women use such conventions against themselves... certainly Francesca Woodman and Tina Modotti, etc. fall into that group. It's not that sexual images of women are bad, it's that the way women are sometimes portrayed in sexual images bespeaks a particular - sexist - attitude(s) about women. If you flip through something as tame as Playboy you'd be hardpressed to find a single image that looks real (I'm not just talking about photoshop here); the women in the magazine strike poses that have nothing to do with real life... Contrast with your own sexual images... A completely different sensibilty. Real.
Posted 10 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Source 3

+++++++++++++++

hieroglyph

Bo Madsen says:

Hmmm... you are ... i realize... one of my all time favorite erotic photographers. Flickr or "outside". I would like to know about who else here on flickr you yourself likes? And: I do understand if you are not interested in dealing with this request.

--
Seen in your skin set. (?)
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

Thank you.
Frankly, there aren't many erotic photographers I like on flickr or elsewhere. I can't help but respond to Francesca Woodman's work... Maybe unsurprisingly, I like Man Ray and others, but only as photographers, not as erotic photographers, if you see what I mean. On flickr, obviously you can check my favourites, but I like (most of all) - as erotic photographers - mrs ka[liki]maka, Olga Gerard, tetheredto, Kristamas°, Annene von Durchgerockt (when she does it), CinemaCowgirl, Evelina Constantini, Violator3, and others.
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Bo Madsen says:

Thanks for taking the time...
I know and appreciate all the ones you mention - exept for Francesca Woodman and Evelina... I will check them our immediately.
Btw.: most of the people you mention above has some sort of ... unresolved (?) dealing with sexuality. Most of us also carries "unresolveness" - and are able to recognize this. I see you (= your pictures) as very ... resolved. This is one of the things i find interesting in your pictures. In other words: you seem like a human being who enjoys sex. Many of the other photographers seems portray a more complicated relation to (their?) sexuality. But: I love most of them.

I also like Nicephore Bis, eyeofra23 (a strange one..), electrocuted, and Let'sExplode ... amongst others.

--
Seen in my recent comments. (?)
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

You will find Francesca Woodman here... she's in another league... and she's dead.

Yeah, I enjoy sex, but it's still complicated... :~)

Thanks for the tips on other photographers!
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Bo Madsen says:

"still complicated": ... but you portrait it uncomplicated. And thats the thing: again and again we think we are talking about each other... but we aren't. We are talking about what we have chosen to express.
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

Yeah, fundamentally it's uncomplicated, it's about pleasure... But society circumscribes what is permissable in pleasure...
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Godiex [ d a i l y ] says:

Pleasure is a menace to this market economy:
On the contrary, it's highly profitable to keep it repressed in the dark,
and sell us the goods that will replace it for us with a promise and a warranty.
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

Yes, only a version of pleasure is permissable... marketable. Nothing (pleasure or otherwise) can be self-generated.
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Bo Madsen says:

Godiex and Durruti: Yeah... blame it on society :-) a little too simplistic in my opinion... and if it was true, then society is ALSO the "brainchild" of the human nature.

And by the way: I used to love Durruti Columns records. Used to rip off his playing style. And I loved the thick, Factory (Peter Saville?) LP Covers they/he did. But that's something like ... 23 years ago?

--
Seen in my recent comments. (?)
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Godiex [ d a i l y ] says:

hello BM: of course trying to analyze the question of sex ( and all it's mythological derivations ) in a few lines, even in a few pages, will always be a reductionism and therefore "simplistic" .
first of all, I'm not blaming it on society: what is society but the result of human interaction and not a separate entity. (as you pointed )
second, I picked it up where Durruti left his last comment, and I wasn't trying to explain the whole "complication with sexuality" with those 2 lines.

that said: what is your question ?
I mean: of course people have different levels of complication around "their" own sexuality, after all everything you have to deal with in this life is "your" version of a question/problem/issue ..you don't deal with "THE" question..because, simply there's not such a thing.,
So, if (if) you are trying to find in art a fix system and complaining that artists (or photographers, or people for the matter) deal with their things in a personal matter, and complaining that they all seem unresolved, then I think you are being simplistic, too.
If you are expecting photography, art or any means of human poetic expression to talk to you about resolved things, then you have a wrong idea of why humanity have this deep, mythology-related need for what we call art , (because we needed to call it something) :)

good art, BM, will never explain things to you, but rather raise more questions. because, that's what we need, more intelligent
questions, in order to develop consciousness. Ask art for answers,
and you will have a pretty nice base for fascism. Or the flickr's Explore.

;)
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Bo Madsen says:

Wonderful!
A few remarks - and perhaps clarifications of my own viewpoints.
The society thing... the simplification: yes, of course. No two meanings about that. I grew up in a marxist (Hegelish) environment .... or should I say: Denmark was very influenced by the idea that society is responsible for everything: the good, the bad, and everything in between. The whole social democratic welfare system we have here is related to these ideas/viewpoint.
I love the welfare system. I love that the community... society... takes on responsibilities. But: it also has it's darker sides: people (and i'm only of those..) start to blame the society for issues that are much more personal in nature. Therefor I wrote that brief remark... with a smiley.

on complications in sexuality: What I meant... and I think also wrote (i just re-read the post) is that the things that i notice in DC's pics is their lack of complications. This does NOT mean that I think that everyone should (or could) portrait that type of sexuality. Not at all.
Good art: the only thing (my friend!*) i am sure of when it comes my perseption of good art is that there are no formula. Directly opposite artistic strategies can lead to equally fantastic pieces of art.
You say: ask art for answers and that might lead to fascism: You are wrong on this one, I believe (**). I constantly ask my books, records, paintings, movies questions... and they keep giving me "lies that tell the truth", as Picasso once put it.

* The term "My Friend" ... deleted :-) See Godiex' comment below....
** I agree with you that society must not require of artists to deliver answers to specific questions.
--
Seen in my recent comments. (?)
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Godiex [ d a i l y ] says:

haha: sorry for the "my friend" thing: that was patronizing and I changed it to "BM", but you answered in the middle :)
And thanks for further explanation about what you were trying to tell to DC. Yes, you were meaning it as a compliment . I think he's work is outstanding, too.. and in that sense, yes, he makes it look easy (not as porn does it, "simplifying" the question :-) ) but in the sense that he seems deeply connected to what he's saying. I celebrate his work , too.
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Bo Madsen says:

hat tip to you, Godiex.
And I wonder what the man himself will think when he wakes up to these rather lengthy posts...

--
Seen in my recent comments. (?)
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

First of all, thank you both for the compliments on my work! Very kind and much appreciated.

Sorry to take so long to join in! I had a particularly demanding work day. But now that I am here, I have to say it's a very interesting discussion.

I think you've both said this in different ways, but to reiterate (so as to be clear): it's the interaction between society and the individual that is key. Society doesn't (monolithically) determine anything, but it manifests the parameters within which individuals act... and individuals may, of course, breach those parameters in any number of ways. And society is, afterall, us... it is made up of individuals. The point I was making about complications, pleasure, and society is that for many of us, if not all of us, the world we are born into poses certain problems for each of us with regard to our sexuality... the world complicates our ways to pleasure. This is quite obviously true for anyone who is gay or lesbian, but it's also true for all kinds of sexual expression (and all kinds of representations of sexuality). The fact that I have to make many of my (in my opinion, benign) images accessible to only friends and family is another example of a societal constraint (a constraint that is much less rigid in my home country, Canada, than it is in the country that hosts flickr, the US). It's not a question of "blaming society", but of recognising that any given society sets limits that one must operate within, against, or outside of (with according consequences).

I hadn't thought of my work the way Bo has put it (and i thank you for the realisation!): that it shows sexuality without complications, but I tend to agree. In my own terms, I'd say that I'm trying to show sexuality without judgement, to show pleasure - or a connection to pleasure without guilt or doubt or neurosis or some sort of pathology, but still trying to show it with honesty. I'm not very diary-oriented, as many flickr folks are... I have no problem with the diary mode (it's often quite interesting and enjoyable to view), but it's simply not me. I'm more inclined to a more generalised reflective mode, which I think probably means I'm less likely to represent complications (which come up in diaries quite often). Not that I don't (try to) show darker aspects related to love and sexuality...

As for art, I think worthwhile art is about trying to understand the world and ourselves better, and understanding happens on many different levels, only some of which are intellectual. Some are felt, or sensed in other ways, rather than cognitive in the usual meaning of the word. So, to some degree, I'm trying to place my work in the intersection of the sensual/sexual, the sensory, the intellectual, and the political... Whether I succeed or not is another matter...
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Durruti Column says:

Bo, Oh yeah, about Durutti Column. Love the music, and Vini is still going strong (though, obviously, without the snazzy album covers of the Saville/Factory years). About 20% of my username is for Vini Reilly & Durutti Column, the other 80% is for the Anarchist brigade of the Spanish Civil War and for the Anarchist revolution/developments that occurred in Spain at about the same time. [Note that the spelling of the band and of the Anarchist group isn't the same...]
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Godiex [ d a i l y ] says:

..and you can write, too! jeeez! :)

ha! that was an excellent text right there, and this is one really interesting thread. thanks to both of you.
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

..and you can write, too!
... or I don't know when to stop! ;~)

Yeah, a very interesting thread! Thank you!
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Bo Madsen says:

... and perhaps the thing, that will sum up all of this: The hieroglyph girl smiles at us and says: "Go out enjoy life. All of it!"
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete )

Durruti Column says:

:~) Yes indeed!
Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink | delete | edit )

Source 4

some comments on other subjects removed

+++++++++++++++

shoa השואה

2008-03-02T16:47:19Z

This is our world: holocaust.gz.

I want to restage the Dunkirk rescue at the Gaza coast.

This great evil - where'd it come from?
How'd it steal into the world?
What seed, what root did it grow from?
Who's doing this?
Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might've known?
Does our ruin benefit the earth, aid the grass to grow and the sun to shine?
Is this darkness in you, too?
Have you passed through this night?

~ from The Thin Red Line, by way of Explosions in the Sky

An Alternate World Away

2008-01-27T02:03:35Z

A quick and dirty video for an atmospheric piece by Pinkville.

horseshit race

2008-01-14T01:25:14Z

I've given it some thought, and so, yes, I'm stealing myself for... President McCain.

The Democrats continue to demonstrate that they are more committed to Republican policies than to their own electability... and as much as there's a mainstream assumption that Clinton or Obama will comfortably win, one should never underestimate the Democrats' ability to steal defeat from the jaws of victory. Anyone remember 2004? Anyone remember, for example, the AWOL candidate devastatingly - successfully - attacking the war record of the decorated war hero (while the latter said nothing in his own defence for 3 weeks)? That's the political culture we're dealing with. And the Democrats are the party that meekly handed over the Presidency in 2000 without a peep. No demands for investigations into voting irregularities, no challenges in the Senate, no word from Gore, just the "high road" to slavish devotion to the policies of the day (you know, Bush's policies, that the vast majority of the Democrats in Congress and the Senate supported in full, or in part, or in principle).

Anyway, I'm not sure America is yet capable of electing a black President, and though it may be ready to elect a woman, would she be Hillary Clinton? I'm not too sure. She isn't well-liked or likable, her platform is indistinguishable from Bush's (except perhaps for being more devoted to war in the Middle East), and she's bad-tempered enough to be a good bet to shoot herself in the foot some time between now and the first week of November. As we know, there are no other Democratic candidates...

Meanwhile, if McCain passes his greatest test - the Republican party nomination - he certainly has as good a chance to win as either Clinton or Obama. He isn't tainted by the Bush administration, he has a reputation as an independent politician, he is heralded as a war hero, and he'd have that big Republican machine behind him - the one that owns the voting machines, the Supreme Court, the media, etc.

Of course, if McCain wins it will be difficult living with a lunatic in the White House, someone who is genuinely unpredictable rather than merely predictably berserk like the current administration. And McCain, for all the talk of independence and likability, remains an extremely right wing, pro-corporate, militaristic political figure.

So I'm stealing myself up for it. And if I'm wrong, I'll just have to deal with one or the other of the Democrats' front-running right wing, pro-corporate, militaristic candidates.

So will we all.

no fear

2007-12-13T13:46:53Z

Japanese scientists create fearless mouse

By The Associated Press

TOKYO - The age-long animosity between cat and mouse could be a thing of the past with genetically modified "fearless" mice that Japanese scientists say shed light on mammal behaviour.

Using genetic engineering, scientists at Tokyo University say they have successfully switched off the rodents' instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats - showing fear is genetically hardwired and not learned through experience, as commonly believed.

"Mice are naturally terrified of cats and usually panic or flee at the smell of one. But mice with certain nasal cells removed through genetic engineering didn't display any fear," said research team leader Ko Kobayakawa.

"The mice approached the cat, even snuggled up to it and played with it," Kobayakawa said.

"The discovery that fear is genetically determined and not learned after birth is very interesting and goes against what was previously thought."

The findings suggest human aversion to dangerous smells like that of rotten food, for example, could also be genetically predetermined, he said.

Kobayakawa said his findings, published in the science magazine Nature last month, should help researchers shed further light on how the brain processes information about the outside world.

Source

But one must wonder why scientists (and others) would be interested in excising fear from mice... or humans. A number of articles have appeared online and in the press regarding experiments being conducted in the United States (and elsewhere) to produce soldiers without fear... More tinkering with human nature to benefit the lucky few in power...

The story and a cute video (which is a featured news story at yahoo.ca today) also appear at the Guardian Unlimited

pinkville @ 2007-11-27T20:54:00

2007-11-28T02:01:52Z

he no longer knew if he trembled for her or himself

the bed shook beneath him, and the Baghdadi bed shook beneath another

she kept a labial memory of their love

time was exquisitely crushed between her fingers

la la la

2007-09-09T23:46:15Z

la la la human steps ~ human sex ~ 1985

pitfall

2007-07-18T22:16:39Z

Pitfalls of speaking English as a second language...

If you don't get out of here, I'm gonna blow you!

~ a Montreal bailiff (as shown - without comment - on the local news this evening)

shameless plug

2007-07-17T01:02:28Z

If you're curious, today's Wikipedia Main Page features the article on Pierre Rossier I wrote (as the principal contributor).

accidents

2007-07-12T23:09:00Z

"Accidents" of War
The Time Has Come for an Honest Discussion of Air Power
by Tom Engelhardt

The first news stories about the most notorious massacre of the Vietnam War were picked up the morning after from an Army publicity release. These proved fairly typical for the war. On its front page, the New York Times labeled the operation in and around a village called My Lai 4 (or "Pinkville," as it was known to U.S. forces in the area) a significant success. "American troops caught a North Vietnamese force in a pincer movement on the central coastal plain yesterday, killing 128 enemy soldiers in day-long fighting." United Press International termed what happened there an "impressive victory," and added a bit of patriotic color: "The Vietcong broke and ran for their hide-out tunnels. Six-and-a-half hours later, ‘Pink Village' had become ‘Red, White and Blue Village."

All these dispatches from the "front" were, of course, military fairy tales. (There were no reporters in the vicinity.) It took over a year for a former GI named Ronald Ridenhour, who had heard about the bloody massacre from participants, and a young former AP reporter named Seymour Hersh working in Washington for a news service no one had ever heard of, to break the story, revealing that "red, white, and blue village" had just been red village -- the red of Vietnamese peasant blood. Over 400 elderly men, women, children, and babies had been slaughtered there by Charlie Company of Task Force Barker in a nearly day-long rampage.

Things move somewhat faster these days -- after all, Vietnamese villagers and local officials didn't have access to cell phones to tell their side of the slaughter -- but from the military point of view, the stories these last years have all still seemed to start the same way. Whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, they have been presented by U.S. military spokesmen, or in military press releases, as straightforward successes. The newspaper stories that followed would regularly announce that 17, or 30, or 65 "Taliban insurgents" or "suspected insurgents," or "al-Qaeda gunmen" had been killed in battle after "air strikes" were called in. These stories recorded daily military victories over a determined, battle-hardened enemy.

Most of the time, that was the beginning and end of the matter: Air strike; dead enemies; move on to the next day's bloody events. When it came to Iraq, such air-strike successes generally did not make it into the American press as stories at all, but as scattered, ho-hum paragraphs (based on military announcements) in round-ups of a given day's action focused on far more important matters -- IEDs, suicide car bombs, mortar attacks, sectarian killings. In many cases, air strikes in that country simply went unreported.

From time to time, however, another version of what happened when air strikes were called in on the rural areas of Afghanistan, or on heavily populated neighborhoods in Iraq's cities and towns, filtered out. In this story, noncombatants died, often in sizeable numbers. In the last few weeks "incidents" like this have been reported with enough regularity in Afghanistan to become a modest story in their own right.

In such news stories, a local caregiver or official or village elder is reached by phone in some distant, reporter-unfriendly spot and recounts a battle in which, by the time the planes arrive, the enemy has fled the scene, or had never been there, or was present but, as is generally the case in guerrilla wars, in close proximity to noncombatants going about their daily lives in their own homes and fields. Such accounts record a grim harvest of dead civilians -- and they almost invariably have a repeated tagline when it comes to those dead: "including women and children." In an increasing number of cases recently, reports on the carnage have taken not over a year, or weeks, or even days to exfiltrate the scene, but have actually beaten the military success story onto the news page.

In the past, when such civilian slaughters were reported, often days or even weeks after the initial military account of the battle, what followed also had a pattern to it. The first responses from the U.S. military would be outright denials (undoubtedly on the assumption that, without reporters present, the accounts of Afghan peasants or Iraqi slum dwellers would carry little weight). Normally, given the competing he says/she says frame for the reports and the inability of journalists to make it to the scene of the reputed slaughter, sooner or later the story would simply fade away.

If, against all odds, evidence of civilian deaths piled up, the military would, in strategic fashion, fall back from one heavily defended position to the next. The numbers of noncombatant dead or wounded would be questioned and lowered. Regrets would be offered. Explanations would be proffered. It was perhaps an "accident" (a missile missed its target or faulty local intelligence was responsible); or it wasn't an accident, because "the bad guys" meant it to happen as it did. (In their cowardly way, they had turned the civilian population into "human shields," thus causing the deaths in question when U.S. forces reacted in "self-defense.")

If the story nonetheless persisted, an "investigation" (by the military, of course) would be announced -- again, meant to fade away. In rare cases, "consolation payments" and limited apologies would be offered. In extreme instances, when the killings of civilians were especially grotesque and the result of boots-on-the-ground -- as at Haditha -- lower-ranking soldiers might finally be brought up on charges. With the exception of a friendly fire incident in which two U.S. National Guard pilots killed four Canadian soldiers and injured six others on the ground in Afghanistan, air strikes were exempt from such charges, no matter what had happened. (In the Canadian case, the U.S. pilot, originally threatened with a court-martial on manslaughter charges, was found guilty of "dereliction of duty," reprimanded, and fined $5,600.)

American (and NATO) officials regularly make the point that the enemy's barbarism -- and from car-bombs to a six year-old boy sent to attack Afghan soldiers wearing a suicide vest, their acts have indeed been barbarous -- is always intentional; the killing of noncombatants by American planes is always an "inadvertent" incident, an "accident," and so, of course, the regrettable "collateral damage" of modern warfare.

Recently, however, in Afghanistan, such isolated incidents from U.S. or NATO (often still U.S.) air attacks have been occurring in startling numbers. They have, in fact, become so commonplace that, in the news, they begin to blur into what looks, more and more, like a single, ongoing airborne slaughter of civilians. Protest over the killings of noncombatants from the air, itself a modest story, is on the rise. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, dubbed "the mayor of Kabul," has bitterly and repeatedly complained about NATO and U.S. bombing policies. ACBAR, an umbrella organization for Afghan and international relief and human rights organizations, has received attention for claiming that marginally more civilians have died this year at the hands of the Western powers than the Taliban; and, most recently, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has made a "'strong' appeal to military commanders in Afghanistan to avoid civilian casualties."

In all of this, the weakening of the American and NATO position in Afghanistan, and of the American one in Iraq, continue to play crucial roles -- while these repeated air-power "incidents" lead into conceptual territory that is simply never touched upon in our mainstream media.

A Blur of Civilian Deaths

But first things first. Let's start with a partial list of recently reported air power "incidents" (dates approximate), all of which resulted in significant civilian casualties:

June 18: An "airstrike against a suspected al-Qaeda hideout" in the southeastern Afghan province of Paktika is ordered after "nefarious activities" have been observed at the site, which includes a mosque and a madrassa (religious school). Almost immediately, news arrives that seven children have been killed in the attack. The initial response: "Maj. Chris Belcher, spokesman for the coalition, said there had been no sign of children at the facility in the hours before the strike, and blamed al-Qaeda for trying to use a civilian facility as a shield." (According to another spokesman, Sgt. 1st Class Dean Welch, "If we knew that there were children inside the building, there was no way that that air strike would have occurred.")

Later, up to 100 civilians are reported to have been killed in related fighting, though the figures vary with the news story. Subsequently, U.S. military officials admit that the air strike "likely missed its primary target," an al-Qaeda commander, and that "contrary to previous statements, the U.S. military knew there were children at the compound." Thinking they had a key al-Qaeda figure in their sights, they launched the attack anyway.

June 21: A U.S. air strike aimed at a "booby-trapped house" in the Iraqi city of Baquba misses its target and "accidentally" hits another house, wounding 11 civilians, according to the U.S. military. The incident is declared "under investigation."

In the larger Baquba incursion, Operation Arrowhead Ripper, part of the President's "surge plan" for the country, civilian casualties from the air (and ground) are evidently significantly more widespread than generally reported in the American media. A BBC report notes at least 12 civilian casualties, including three women, on the operation's first day and quotes the head of the city's emergency service as saying that there were "certainly more.... but ambulances were being prevented by U.S. troops from going in to evacuate them." (A Sunni political party in Prime Minister Maliki's government claims 350 dead civilians in Baquba, mainly due to helicopter attacks.)

Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post, reporting on the Baquba operation, quotes Iraqi refugee Amer Hussein Jasm, a refugee from a nearby town, saying: "The airplanes have been shooting all the houses and people are getting scared, so they ran away." Partlow also quotes an American lieutenant threatening Iraqis his unit has picked up: "Our planes can blow up this whole city. They have that capability. If we didn't care about you guys, we wouldn't place ourselves in danger walking around trying to separate the bad guys from the good guys. When you guys tell us where the bad guys are, you keep innocent people from being hurt."

June 21: "At least 25 civilians, including nine women, three infants and an elderly village mullah," are killed in "crossfire" in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan when U.S. air strikes are called in. ("'In choosing to conduct such attacks in this location at this time, the risk to civilians was probably deliberate,' [NATO spokesman Lt. Col. Mike] Smith said [of the Taliban]. 'It is this irresponsible action that may have led to casualties.'")

June 22: The U.S. military announces that it has killed "17 al-Qaeda gunmen" infiltrating an Iraqi village north of Baquba. ("Iraqi police were conducting security operations in and around the village when Coalition attack helicopters from the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade and ground forces from 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, observed more than 15 armed men attempting to circumvent the IPs and infiltrate the village…. The attack helicopters, armed with missiles, engaged and killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen and destroyed the vehicle they were using.")

A BBC report later reveals that the dead are 11 village guards ("some of their bodies cut into small pieces by the munitions used against them"). They were assisting the Iraqi police in trying to protect their village from possible al-Qaeda attacks when rocketed and strafed by American helicopters.

June 22: "NATO and U.S.-led coalition forces killed 60 insurgents [in Afghanistan] near the border with Pakistan, in what was described as the largest insurgent formation crossing the region in six months, the military said Saturday." That was how the story was first presented, before news of civilian casualties started to trickle out. Later, more defensively, U.S. Commander Col. Martin P. Schweitzer would insist that his forces had only targeted "bad guys": "These individuals clearly had weapons and used them against our aircraft as well as shooting rockets against our positions," he said. "This required their removal from the battle-space."

The first accounting of noncombatant dead, reportedly from a U.S. rocket, includes at least five men, three women, and one child, according to a Pakistani Army spokesman. These deaths occurred on the Pakistani side of the border. (According to the Pakistanis, civilians also died on the Afghan side of the border.) This figure is later raised to 12; the place hit identified as a "small hotel"; and the airpower identified as possibly B-52s and Apache helicopters. A report in the Egyptian paper al-Ahram adds: "Sources in Pakistan's tribal areas…. say 31 of the supposed slain ‘insurgents' were in fact Pakistan tribesmen and their families, including women and children."

June 30: In air strikes, again in Helmand province, munitions "slammed into civilian homes." At least 30 insurgents and civilians are initially reported to have been killed, "including women and children." These figures later rise precipitously. ("‘More than 100 people have been killed. But they weren't Taliban. The Taliban were far away from there,' said Wali Khan, a member of parliament who represents the area.") Other reports have 45 civilians and 62 insurgents dying. NATO spokesman later claim civilian deaths were "an order of magnitude less" and that Taliban fighters were firing from well-dug trenches and "continuing their tactic of using women and children as human shields in close combat."

Given the ongoing uproar over civilian casualties in Afghanistan, an investigation is launched. According to Haji Zahir, "a tribal elder who said he had been in touch with residents of bombed villages": "People tried to escape from the area with their cars, trucks and tractors, and the coalition airplanes bombed them because they thought they were the enemy fleeing. They told me that they had buried 170 bodies so far." Thirty-five villagers "fleeing in a tractor-trailer" were reportedly hit from the air -- with only two survivors, an old man and his severely wounded son. NATO (American) spokesmen beg to disagree: "The allies returned fire and called in air support, aimed at ‘clearly identified firing positions.'"

July 2: An intense mortar barrage aimed at a U.S. base near the largely Shiite city of Diwaniya leads to air strikes by two F-16s that reportedly kill 10 civilians along with Shia militiamen. Among them, it is said, are six children under the age of 12. ("'Coalition forces are reviewing the incident to ensure that appropriate and proportionate force was used in responding to the intense attack,' a U.S. statement said, without referring to any Iraqi casualties.")

New reports of deaths from air strikes in Afghanistan continue to arrive -- 108 noncombatants "including women and children" killed in Farah Province on July 6th and 33 killed in Kunar Province, "11 of them on Thursday [July 5th] during a bombardment, and 25 more on Friday as they attended a funeral for the deceased." American denials are issued and Taliban propaganda blamed. ("[A] US official said Taliban fighters are forcing villagers to say civilians died in fighting -- whether or not it is true.")

Air War: Afghanistan

Even from such a partial list -- undoubtedly lacking information from Iraq, where the air war has been notoriously overlooked by American reporters -- a pattern can be seen. But beyond the loss of innocent lives (always, when finally admitted, officially "regretted" by the U.S. military), why should any of this matter?

Let's start this way: Barring an unexpected change of policy, some version of this list of "errant" incidents, multiplied many times over, is likely to represent the future for both Afghanistan and Iraq. The obvious math of the military manpower situation in both countries tells us this is so -- as does history.

In Afghanistan this year, Taliban suicide attacks alone have increased by 230%, while Iraq-style roadside IEDs are also a growing threat. In eastern Afghanistan, where the U.S. leads NATO operations, "militant attacks" rose 250% compared to May 2006, according to the U.S. military. NATO and American troop levels, now somewhere in the range of 46,000-50,000 -- approximately 20,000 of whom are from European countries and Canada -- remain woefully inadequate for securing the country (if such a thing were even possible) and NATO casualties are on the rise.

Afghanistan, after all, is far larger than Iraq and is being garrisoned by a combined force less than a third the size of the occupying force in that country, which itself is universally considered inadequate to the task. It's a fair bet that the various European powers (and the Canadians) are wondering how they ended up in this distant war in a land that has historically been a graveyard for conquerors and occupiers. In Canada and various European countries, as casualties rise and success of any sort seems beyond reach, the Afghan deployments are becoming increasingly unpopular.

Don't expect reinforcements from NATO countries any time soon; while the U.S. Army and Marines, already stretched beyond capacity by the recent "surge" in Iraq, are probably incapable of reinforcing their Afghan contingent in any significant way. By elimination, this leaves one weapon in the American/NATO arsenal, air power, which is, in fact, ever more in use in response to a surge in Taliban ambushes and limited takeovers of villages (and even entire districts) in the Afghan south.

As the Europeans are well aware, air power -- given the civilian casualties that invariably follow in its wake -- is intensely counterproductive in a guerrilla war. "Every civilian dead means five new Taliban," was the way a British officer just returned from Helmand Province put it recently.

However, an air-power strategy fits American predilections to a tee. As a Reuters piece aptly headlined the matter, the Americans in Afghanistan are "hooked on air power." Americans have long been so. After all, with the singular exception of various Central American proxy wars during the Reagan years, air war has essentially been the American way of war since World War II. The Bush administration fought its Afghan War of 2001 largely from the air in support of the well-paid-off ground forces of the Northern Alliance, aided by Special Forces troops and lots of CIA money in suitcases. (In Iraq, of course, the invasion of March 2003 started with a massive air attack meant to "decapitate" Saddam Hussein's regime -- it did no such thing -- while having the side benefit of shocking-and-awing hostile states in the region.)

Even after American ground forces moved in, Afghanistan has never ceased to be an Air Force war. B-1 bombers have been called in relatively regularly there (unlike in Iraq) and air strikes in the Afghan countryside have become a commonplace. By November 2006, David Cloud of the New York Times -- who flew on a B-1 mission over the country (and noted that a similar flight the week he went up had "dropped its entire payload of eight 2,000-pound bombs and six 500-pound bombs after ground units called for help") -- reported that the use of air power had risen sharply there. More than 2,000 air strikes had been called in during the previous six months, with a concomitant rise in civilian casualties. In addition, the Air Force's full contingent of B-1s had been "shifted over the summer from the British air base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to a Middle Eastern airfield closer to Afghanistan," cutting mission flight time by a critical two hours.

Though no post-November 2006 figures are available, the recent spate of reported "incidents" confirms that missions have risen again this year, along with noncombatant deaths. According to Laura King of the Los Angeles Times, in a piece typically headlined, "Errant Afghan Civilian Deaths Surge": "More than 500 Afghan civilians have been reported killed this year, and the rate has dramatically increased in the last month." Local dissatisfaction and bitterness are also noticeably on the rise.

The Karzai government remains weak, ineffective, and corrupt, while Taliban strength grows in southern Afghanistan and across the border in the Pakistani tribal areas. There, for instance, Jane Perlez and Ismail Khan of the New York Times reported that, according to a secret document from the Pakistani Interior Ministry, "the Taliban have recently begun bombing oil tank trucks that pass through the Khyber area near the border on their way to Afghanistan for United States and NATO forces. A convoy of 12 of the trucks was hit with grenades and gutted on Thursday night in the third such incident in a month."

To all of this, air power is the "NATO" answer for the present and the future, the only answer in sight, however counterproductive it may prove to be.

According to a report in the British press, American General Dan McNeill, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, has already been dubbed "Bomber McNeill" (and it's not meant to be a compliment). Despite periodic "reviews of procedures," nor is his strategy -- call in the planes -- likely to change any time soon. The U.S. military (and NATO officials) have essentially confirmed this. Despite a growing chorus of criticism in Afghanistan (and among NATO allies), Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel has praised the "extensive procedures" in place "to avoid civilian casualties." "We think the procedures that we have in place are good -- they work," he told reporters. U.S. spokespeople have recently indicated that NATO is not about to "change its use of air power against the Taliban."

So, in Afghanistan, the future is already clear enough. More Taliban attacks mean more air strikes mean more dead noncombatants ("including women and children") mean more alienated, angry Afghanis in a spiral of devolution to which no end can yet be foreseen.

Air War: Iraq

Striking as this rise in civilian deaths may be for Afghanistan, it gains extra importance for what it signals about the future of Iraq. Afghanistan is, in a sense, the maimed, defeathered canary in the mine of American air-power.

In Iraq, as all now know, the U.S. military has reached its on-the-ground limits. With approximately 156,000 troops surged into place (and many tens of thousands of armed private security contractors, or mercenaries, surging into that country as well), the occupation forces have, it seems, reached their maximum numbers. By next spring at the latest, unless tours of duty in Iraq are lengthened from an already extended 15 months to 18 months -- a notoriously unpopular move for a notorious unpopular administration -- the President's "surge," like some tide, will have to recede.

Downsizing, if not withdrawal, will arrive whether anyone wants it to or not. In fact, as Julian Barnes of the Los Angeles Times has reported, U.S. commanders in Iraq already assume that such a downsizing is on the way; that, by fall, Congress will impose some kind of timetable for a partial withdrawal. They are adjusting their "surge" tactics accordingly.

With the President's approval ratings sinking into the mid-20% range, senior Republican senators, including Richard Lugar, George Voinovich, Pete Domenici, and possibly even John Warner are jumping the administration's Iraqi ship (or, at least, edging toward the rail). Pressure is building in Congress and within the Republican Party for a change of course. Bush himself has stopped promising Americans "victory," and is instead pathetically begging for "patience" on the home front until "the job is done."

The next stage of the war in Iraq is, in a sense, already in sight. While that might seem like mildly encouraging news to the ever-increasing numbers of Americans who want to see it all over, it should give pause to Iraqis, who are sure to be on the receiving end of what such a partial withdrawal will mean.

The Wall Street Journal's Jochi Dreazen and Greg Jaffe, for instance, recently reported on planning for an ongoing occupation of Iraq by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and "allies in the Bush administration" ("In Strategy Shift, Gates Envisions Iraq Troop Cuts"). The Secretary of Defense, they revealed, is "seeking to build bipartisan support for a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq by moving toward withdrawing significant numbers of troops.... by the end of President Bush's term." He is in search of a new Washington Consensus -- "a modern-day version of President Harry Truman's ‘Cold War consensus,'" as he puts it -- in which a far smaller U.S. force (possibly 30,000-40,000 troops) would "operate out of large bases far from Iraq's major cities" for years, even decades, to come.

There's nothing new in this, of course. Such a "Plan B" was, in fact, "Plan A" when the Bush administration first rumbled into Baghdad in April 2003. The administration's top officials always expected to draw-down U.S. forces quickly into the 30,000 range and garrison them in four or more enormous bases outside of Iraq's urban areas. This was the occupation they planned for, not the one they got. It now goes under the rubric of the "Korea model."

If such a plan were indeed put into operation in 2008-2009, it would surely mean one thing that is almost never mentioned in Washington, or even by critics of the war: a significant increase in the use of U.S. air power.

Actually, bombs are already being dropped in Iraq in 2007 at almost twice the rate of the previous year. In this sense, the Afghan model is available as an example of things to come, as is the historical model of the Vietnam War in the period in which President Richard Nixon was employing what might now be called the "Gates Plan." It was then called "Vietnamization." Nixon was intent on withdrawing all American ground combat troops, while leaving behind tens of thousands of American advisors, who were to continue training the South Vietnamese military, as well as sizeable numbers of troops to guard our enormous bases in that country. Not surprisingly, that period saw an unprecedented escalation of the air war over South Vietnam. It was a time of unparalleled (but under-reported) brutality, destruction, and carnage in the Vietnamese countryside.

Any similar "Iraqification" plan would surely have an equivalent effect, the gap in manpower being plugged by air power. And the Washington "consensus" Gates hopes for is already forming. The two leading Democratic candidates for President, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, adhere to it. Both call for "withdrawal" from Iraq, but define withdrawal (as Gates would) as the "redeployment" of U.S. "combat brigades" (possibly less than half the American forces in that country at present).

In other words, we are almost guaranteed that, either this winter or in the spring of 2008 (as the presidential election looms), some kind of drawdown, surely to be headlined as a "withdrawal" plan, will begin and that significantly lower levels of troops will be supported by a rise in air strikes -- and in Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, this means the bombing not of peasant villages but of urban neighborhoods.

This, in turn, means that we should prepare ourselves for a rise in "incidents," in "mistakes," in the "inadvertent" or "errant" death of civilians in escalating numbers. Whether in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, the formula, with a guerrilla war, is simple and unavoidable: Air Power = Civilian Deaths. Or put another way, "Incidents" ‘R Us.

A History of Mistakes

Let's start with the nature of modern war. The very phrase "collateral damage" should be tossed onto the junk heap of history. For the last century, war has increasingly targeted civilians. Between World War I and the 1990s, according to Richard M. Garfield and Alfred I. Neugut in War and Public Health, civilian deaths as a percentage of all deaths rose from 14% to 90%. These figures are obviously approximate at best, but the trend line is clear. In a sense, in modern warfare, it's the military deaths that often are the "collateral damage"; civilian deaths -- "including women and children" -- turn out to be central to the project. The Lancet study's figures for Iraq indicate as much.

If modern war has largely been war against noncombatant populations, then the airplane -- which, even more than artillery, represented war from a distance -- was its ultimate terror weapon. The invention of the atomic bomb, the culmination of the dreams of air power as an "ultimate weapon," signaled this in an unforgettable way. In the post-World War II years, the wars of the superpowers migrated to the "peripheries" where they could be fought with less fear of a nuclear holocaust, of, as American first-strike plans had it, the deaths of hundreds of millions of noncombatants across what was known as the "Communist bloc." Those wars began to be fought largely against low-tech forces, propelled by powerful allegiances often to national entities that did not yet exist. In those guerilla wars of "national liberation," the enemy combatants were invariably mixed in with civilian populations, which both provided support and a kind of protection. Air war against such forces, then, had to be a war against noncombatant populations. "Mistakes" would be constant.

Of course, even in World War II, the deaths of civilians in London in the Blitz were no mistake; nor were the later deaths of the citizens of Hamburg or Dresden; or the inhabitants of Tokyo and 59 other fire-bombed Japanese cities as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were atomized. The deaths of city dwellers in Pyongyang in the early 1950s were not a mistake; nor were the mass killings of peasants in South Vietnam; nor Laotian villagers on the Plain of Jars; nor the citizens of Hanoi over Christmas, 1972.

When, in 1970, after a conversation with President Nixon, Henry Kissinger passed on to White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig by phone the president's orders for "a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia," using "anything that flies on anything that moves," it was not a mistake (nor, undoubtedly, was the "unintelligible comment" on the transcript that "sounded like Haig laughing.")

Here's the simplest truth of air power, then or now. No matter how technologically "smart" our bombs or missiles, they will always be ordered into action by us dumb humans; and if, in addition, they are released into villages filled with civilians going about their lives, or heavily populated urban neighborhoods where insurgents mix with city dwellers (who may or may not support them), these weapons will, by the nature of things, by policy decision, kill noncombatants. If an AC-130 or an Apache helicopter strafes an urban block or a village street where people below are running, some carrying weapons and believed to be "suspected insurgents," it will kill civilians. The disadvantage of "distant war" is that you normally have no way of knowing why someone is running, or why they are carrying a weapon, or usually who they really are.

Once Americans find themselves engaged in a guerrilla war, the urge is naturally to bring to bear military strengths and limit casualties -- and the fear is always of sending American troops into an "urban jungle," or simply a jungle, where the surroundings will serve to equalize a disproportionate American advantage in the weaponry of high-tech destruction. In distant war, particularly wars where Americans alone control the skies and can fly in them with relative impunity, the trade-off is clear indeed: our soldiers for their civilian dead "including women and children."

This is not an aberrant side effect of air war but its heart and soul. The airplane is a weapon of war, but it is also a weapon of terror -- and it is meant to be. From the beginning, it was used not to "win over" enemy populations -- after all, how could that be done from the distant skies? -- but to crush or terrorize them into submission. (It has seldom worked that way.)

Then, there's another factor that has to be added in. What if you don't really care -- not all that much anyway -- who is running in the street below you?

Since 1945, American air power has regularly been used to police the imperial borders of the planet. It has, that is, been released against people of color, against what used to be called the Third World. (Serbia in 1999 was the sole exception to this rule.) As Afghan President Karzai put the matter in response to recent reports of civilian casualties in his country: "We want to cooperate with the international community. We are thankful for their help to Afghanistan, but that does not mean that Afghan lives have no value. Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as such." (His bitter comment eerily reflects another from the Vietnam era, more than thirty years gone. "The Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. Life is cheap in the Orient" -- so said former commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam General William Westmoreland in 1974.)

It may be that American administrations would have been no less willing to release their bombs and missiles on white noncombatant populations (as was the case with Germany in World War II); but it can at least be said that, for the last half-century-plus, air power has functionally acted as an armed form of racism, that the sense of "their lives" as cheaper, even if seldom spoken aloud, has made it easier to use the helicopter, the bomber, the Hellfire-missile-armed Predator drone. The fact is that air war always cheapens human life. After all, from the heights, if seen at all, people must have something of the appearance of scurrying insects. It is the nature of such war, and an ingrained racism, seldom mentioned any more, only adds to it.

Not so long from now, by the way, we may not even be able to use the term "air power" without qualification. We may instead be talking about "distant war" via the air, for the nature of air power itself is beginning to blur. Artillery always represented a form of distant war, but the latest version of artillery, a new weapons system evidently in operation in Afghanistan, the High Mobility Artillery Rockets, or HIMARS, brings into play an artillery man's version of air war. This truck-mounted rocket system fires its weapons into the atmosphere, where they are "guided to the target by either GPS or lasers." According to the Washington Post's William Arkin, HIMARS "can be configured to shoot a wide array of rockets and missiles, from cluster bombs to a single missile system with a range up to 300 kilometers." One or more of these rockets may have been used in the Paktika attack that killed seven children and seems to have been used in the killing of Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah in mid-May.

Beyond all else, there is the American attitude towards air power itself -- and, beyond that, toward modern war when fought on the planetary "peripheries" (even if those peripheries turn out to be the oil heartlands of our world). From World War II, through Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, our air wars have always visited death and destruction on civilians. In a future in which it is highly unlikely that American troops will ever fight Russians or Chinese or the soldiers of any other major power in set-piece battles, imperial war is likely to continue to take place in heavily populated civilian areas against guerrillas and insurgents of various sorts. Don't take my word for it. The Pentagon thinks so too and is engaged in extensive planning for such future wars -- involving weapons that leave its soldiers "at a distance" in the burgeoning urban slums of our planet.

So perhaps a modicum of honesty is in order. Iraq and Afghanistan are already charnel houses, zones of butchery for the innocent. In both lands, it's possible to make a simple prediction: As bad as things already are, if present trends continue, if the "Korea model" becomes the model, it's going to get worse. We have yet to see anything like the full release of American air power in Afghanistan, no less in Iraq, but don't count it out.

We in the U.S. recognize butchery when we see it -- the atrocity of the car bomb, the chlorine-gas truck bomb, the beheading. These acts are obviously barbaric in nature. But our favored way of war -- war from a distance -- has, for us, been pre-cleansed of barbarism. Or rather its essential barbarism has been turned into a set of "errant incidents," of "accidents," of "mistakes" repeatedly made over more than six decades. Air power is, in the military itself, little short of a religion of force, impermeable to reason, to history, to examples of what it does (and what it is incapable of doing). It is in our interest not to see air war as a -- possibly the -- modern form of barbarism.

Ours is, of course, a callous and dishonest way of thinking about war from the air (undoubtedly because it is the form of barbarism, unlike the car bomb or the beheading, that benefits us). It is time to be more honest. It is time for reporters to take the words "incident," "mistake," "accident," "inadvertent," "errant," and "collateral damage" out of their reportorial vocabularies when it comes to air power. At the level of policy, civilian deaths from the air should be seen as "advertent." They are not mistakes or they wouldn't happen so repeatedly. They are the very givens of this kind of warfare.

This is, or should be, obvious. If we want to "withdraw" from Iraq (or Afghanistan) via the Gates Plan, we should at least be clear about what that is likely to mean -- the slaughter of large numbers of civilians "including women and children." And it will not be due to a series of mistakes or incidents; it will not be errant or inadvertent. It will be policy itself. It will be the Washington -- and in the end the American -- consensus.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books).

[Note to Tomdispatch readers: Air power has been perhaps the worst reported aspect of the Bush administration's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This website has, however, covered it as regularly, even doggedly, as possible. I've written about it since at least 2004. Independent reporter Dahr Jamail, sociologist Michael Schwartz, and Tomdispatch Associate Editor Nick Turse have all offered contributions on the subject. In addition, Seymour Hersh wrote a piece in the New Yorker, "Up in the Air," in 2005 that remains predictive on air power in Iraq and a must-read. Just recently, Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com dealt incisively with a single incident of civilian deaths from the air in Iraq and how our press covered it; while Ira Chernus at the Commondreams website, took up civilian deaths in Afghanistan with his usual acumen. I recommend both pieces. Someday, it will occur to mainstream reporters to do the same and then we'll know we've entered a different moment, a different world.]

from Tom Dispatch; please go there and sign up to be the first on your block to get his fine, fine articles.

peau poétique

2007-07-12T22:41:58Z

you are quiet like the night, and like the night you are star-lit
eres como la noche, callada y constelada

title from twenty love poems: 15, by Pablo Neruda
viente poemas de amor: 15

you look like the world in your attitude of surrender
tu pareces al mundo en tu actitud de entrega

title from twenty love poems: 1, by Pablo Neruda
viente poemas de amor: 1

to hear the immense night, more immense without her
oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella

title from twenty love poems: 20, by Pablo Neruda
viente poemas de amor: 20

the night is shattered, full of stars, and she is not with me
la noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo

title from twenty love poems: 20, by Pablo Neruda
viente poemas de amor: 20

envoy

2007-06-24T12:05:43Z

~~tony blair~~

but in mere days he may be headed off to lay waste to the Middle East yet again, though wearing a different cap...

I'm expecting to hear that Suharto has been made Ambassador to East Timor... or that PW Botha has been posthumously made honourary Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission... or that Henry Kissinger has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize- Say what?!

silly propagandising

2007-05-31T11:34:56Z

Magazine's 'peace index' puts U.S., Iran near bottom of list, Canada near top

Source

A meaningless index.

First, the odour, yet again, of delusional - and deluding - Canadian smugness and self-congratulation. How ludicrous is it to place Canada anywhere near the top of such a scale when our troops are killing people in Afghanistan at this moment (making the country "safe" for US strategic and economic interests)? And when Canadian corporations in places like Nigeria have used mercenaries to intimidate and kill local opponents of their exploitative policies. But most striking: how can the violence of Iran compare with that of United States? Iran may be run by a despotic oligarchy of remarkable cruelty - yet it is a less violent place than Saudi Arabia, America's staunchest ally in the area (apart from Israel) - but no violent policies or actions perpetrated by the Iranian regime could even vaguely compare with the scale or nastiness of those of the political and corporate rulers of the US. By any honest and rational measure, the US is the least peaceful country on earth at the moment, and should be accorded the honour of the lowest spot on any genuine index of peace.

Ah well, it's only The Economist...

Wargasm

2007-05-31T01:11:52Z

Shabolovka Radio Tower. Moscow by Richard Pare, 1998. The digital print in the collection of the CCA is about 48'' x 60". Which is big. The tower is 160m high, which is also big.

But not as big as the corpulent-headed emperor, who roosts in his luxuriously appointed nest, the remote in his left hand hand, flipping from channel to channel on his majesty's viewer's choice TV... a rapid-fire montage of gore-splashed images, dow jones swells and shrinkages, and conventional porn. His right hand is busy - as the images flash - busy stroking his upturned sprite of a cock, quickening his already adolescent-like zap-gun pace, and accelerating towards his personal finish line like a NASCAR poll-sitter.

Earlier, the TV images hadn't been working, so he'd called in his official fluffer, whose black skin, broomstick-up-the-ass gait and grimace-like smile somehow set him off like nothing else. There were times when he wanted to call out mammy!, there were times when, if he'd understood French and understood the irony, the first three letters of her name - Con - would have spurred a spontaneous stain on the crotch of his pants. Con equals cunt, but how could he know? He'd gone to Yale on too select a scholarship to require or acquire any knowledge or learning.

She'd given him a few pages to sign, their hands had brushed as she passed him the pen, and a droplet of spittle had fallen from his lip to her sleeve. She had smiled, and wiped his lip dry. And departed. That was enough. The TV on and flashing, one hand on the remote, the other on his prick. The checkered flag waving in the distance.

With an explosion of spunk - liquid mother-of-pearl - he crosses the line. And later, the signed papers make their way down through the drainpipe of command. The orders are digitised, emailed, and transmitted from towers. And ultimately executed.

The next day, he takes his perch on the comfortable couch, turns on the TV, and works himself up with the gore-splashed images - courtesy al-Jazeera, an irony he does appreciate - he works himself up with the gore-splashed images his signature created.

cleft

2007-05-08T23:34:41Z

even as his fingers enter me, I reflect that "cleave" means both "to split apart" and "to adhere to"...

What Narita* brought back to me, like a shattered hologram, was an intact fragment of the generation of the sixties. If to love without illusions is still to love, I can say that I loved it. It was a generation that often exasperated me, for I didn't share its utopia of uniting in a common struggle those who revolt against poverty and those who revolt against wealth. But it screamed out that gut reaction that better adjusted voices no longer knew how, or no longer dared to utter.

I met peasants there who had come to know themselves through the struggle. Concretely it had failed. At the same time, all they had won in their understanding of the world could have been won only through the struggle.

As for the students, some massacred each other in the mountains in the name of revolutionary purity, while others had studied capitalism so thoroughly to fight it that they now provide it with its best executives. Like everywhere else the movement had its postures and its careerists, including, and there are some, those who made a career of martyrdom. But it carried with it all those who said, like Ché Guevara, that they “trembled with indignation every time an injustice is committed in the world.” They wanted to give a political meaning to their generosity, and their generosity has outlasted their politics. That's why I will never allow it to be said that youth is wasted on the young.

~ excerpt from the script of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil

cleft

The inappropriate thoughts that fling themselves against the inside of my forehead... Can't I just lose myself in the feeling? Must everything be thought through- shot through with thought? So while he's fucking me, I find myself wondering about Molotov cocktails, shed blood, dollars sucked into ATMs, phalanxes of SUVs laying a barrier of smoke...

Still, I come, and come again. And in the moments that follow, the moments that settle like a deflating mattress, the stolen moments, the moments of sweat's evaporation, of heat to cool... I wonder if I could throw a Molotov cocktail. I wonder if I'll ever have the words to help turn the tide. And I think of how the rulers haven't taken away all our pleasure, all our art.

His cock is hardening again, and I slip it into me and lose myself...

* Here is an all too brief (and unsatisfactory) account of the massive popular activism mobilised against the construction of Narita International Airport and the expropriation of farmers' land for that construction. The events were a key moment in 20th century Japanese political history.

from the vault... this oddly affecting video...

2007-05-06T01:59:08Z

Jed's Other Poem