'The Pied Piper of Arkansas' and other fairy tales

["The Cat's Dream" <info at thecatsdream.com>]

The Cat's Dream NewsLetter
<http://TheCatsDream.com>http://TheCatsDream.com

By Gabriele Zamparini


Summary:

- Support the Troops: I get an Oscar, you get a bullet!
- The Rule of the Game
- The Pied Piper of Arkansas


Support the Troops: I get an Oscar, you get a bullet!

Hollywood stars, singers and other celebrities have gone to Iraq and other
places to "support the troops". The list is quite long: Bruce Willis
(September 2003), Robin Williams (December 2003 and December 2004), Tiger
Woods (March 2004) and Al Franken (December 2004) just to name a few. Even
Mick Jagger, who has been quite critical of Bush's and Blair's madness,
recently said he would be prepared to perform in Iraq to raise the troops'
morale: "The boys are doing a very professional and a very tough job over
there and they aren't getting a lot of fun. If we were asked to go it would
be a very, very serious consideration. Just because I don't support the
policy doesn't mean I don't support the troops. That was one of the
tragedies of Vietnam". (1) Tu quoque Mick!

As the historian William Blum recently wrote: "Are American soldiers brave
because they're risking their lives every day? No, they're foolish; foolish
to be risking their lives for the awful purposes of this war, which they do
not even understand. If I'm opposed to the war because of the thousand
kinds of horror it rains down upon the Iraqi people, how can I support
those who carry out the horrors?

Al Franken, the humorist who's the leading host of Air America radio, would
like you to believe that he's against the war, but he went to Iraq to
entertain the troops a while back. Does that make sense? Why does the
military bring entertainers to the soldiers? To lift their spirits. Why
does the military want to lift the soldiers' spirits? A happier soldier
does his job better. What's the soldier's job? Raining down a thousand
kinds of horror upon the Iraqi people." (2)

BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW! This is the call of the international antiwar
movement. It's a call to the US Government and to the other members of this
notorious "coalition of the willing". But shouldn't we raise our voices and
call the troops home now even if the governments (as it seems likely!) are
not bringing them back? It's time to stop going to entertain the troops and
to lift their spirits. It's time to call for mutiny. We should, can and
must call for a mass desertion of the troops in Iraq and show them our
concrete solidarity when they do so. The only way to support the troops is
to stand with those who refuse to kill innocent lives. COME BACK HOME NOW!

"But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own
strength, would have no need to cospire. They needed only to rise up and
shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could
blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must
occur to them to do it? And yet---!" (3)


The Rule of the Game

Reporting the debate Hitchens vs Galloway, The Independent's reporter from
New York writes:"Both men also fell into the trap of insulting the
audience. Galloway did it just a little when he lamented that anyone could
doubt the statistics recording the numbers of Iraqi dead because of the
war. (100,000 he says.)" (4)

The journalist writes: "(100,000 he says.)" He says? Where does this number
come? Not one more word!

Is that because The Independent's reporter has never heard of the Lancet
report? No, of course he has! It's just that THE RULE OF THE GAME is that
that report (5) must be discredited. Even better: ignored!

As Media Lens writes: "Regardless of the rationality or facts of the matter
at hand, when the US and British governments rejected the Lancet's 100,000
figure as wildly exaggerated and flawed, the US and British media simply
fell into line. But flawed methodology cannot be the determining factor,
because the same media entities expressed zero dissent in response to the
same lead researchers using the same methods in Congo.

The difference in media performance is clearly explained by the stance of
power - the establishment on which the media system depends and of which it
is a part. Indeed it is hard to imagine a more striking example of how the
mass media act as a propaganda system for these interests.

Given the extraordinary gravity of the issue - our governments'
responsibility for the illegal killing of tens, perhaps hundreds, of
thousands of innocent civilians - it is also hard to imagine a more
appalling journalistic failure and betrayal." (6)

The number 100,000 echoes Arthur Miller's words: "Few of us can easily
surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that
the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is
intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied." (7)


The Pied Piper of Arkansas

Former US President Clinton has inaugurated these days the Clinton Global
Initiative. Here the music: "It is my pleasure to announce the inaugural
meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative to be held September 15-17, 2005,
in New York City. This event, which will bring together King Abdullah II,
President Leonel Fernandez Reyna, President Olusegun Obasanjo, Prime
Minister Tony Blair, Secretary General Kofi Annan, Vice Premier Shimon
Peres, Dr. Hernando de Soto, Rupert Murdoch, Richard Parsons, and an array
of other distinguished and dedicated leaders, will coincide with and
complement this fall's Millennium Summit of the U.N. General Assembly. This
nonpartisan conference will concentrate a diverse and select group of
current and former heads of state, business leaders, noteworthy
academicians, and key NGO representatives to identify immediate and
pragmatic solutions to some of the world's most pressing problems. The
workshops will focus on how to reduce poverty; use religion as a force for
reconciliation and conflict resolution; implement new business strategies
and technologies to combat climate change; and strengthen governance." (8)

Among the "distinguished attendees", also Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine K.
Albright and George Soros.

>From the Italian provinces of the Empire, Romano Prodi and Massimo D'Alema
>joined the call. Romano Prodi is the former President of the European
>Commission (kind of the executive branch of the European Union) and now
>leader of the center-left coalition that should dethrone Silvio Berlusconi
>in the next year elections. Massimo D'Alema is the former Prime Minister
>of Italy (the one who joined the NATO's bombing of former Yugoslavia; do
>you remember? It was called at the time "humanitarian intervention") and
>now President of the former Italian Communist Party (PCI) - which has
>changed a number of names in these past fifteen years (and lost millions
>of votes too!) - and now called - unless it's changed name again in these
>past 24 hours - Democratici di Sinistra (Democrats of the Left).

The good old Pied Piper of Arkansas keeps seducing liberals, at home and
abroad.

"When he thought that he had them all he led them to the River Weser where
he pulled up his clothes and walked into the water. The animals all
followed him, fell in, and drowned." (9)



NOTES

(1) The Rolling Stones would play in Iraq if asked, Bang Media
International Sep 14, 2005
<http://music.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1048109.php/The_Rolling_Stones_would_play_in_Iraq_if_asked>http://music.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1048109.php/The_Rolling_Stones_would_play_in_Iraq_if_asked

(2) The Anti-Empire Report: Some things you need to know before the world
ends. By William Blum - September 5, 2005
<http://www.killinghope.org/>http://www.killinghope.org/

(3) Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

(4) Hitchens vs Galloway: The big debate, by David Usborne, The
Independent, 16 September 2005
<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article312968.ece>http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article312968.ece

(5) "Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100000 excess
deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence
accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition
forces accounted for most violent deaths." and "Most individuals reportedly
killed by coalition forces were women and children." Mortality before and
after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey, The Lancet, 20
November 2004
<http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673604174412/abstract>http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673604174412/abstract

(6) MEDIA ALERT: BURYING THE LANCET, Media Lens, September 5 and September
6, 2005
<http://www.medialens.org/>http://www.medialens.org/

(7) Why I Wrote "The Crucible", by Arthur Miller, The New Yorker, 21
October 1996
<http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?020422fr_archive02>http://www.newyorker.com/archive/content/?020422fr_archive02

(8) Clinton Global Initiative, Our Mission: Message from President Clinton
<http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/home.nsf/pt_message_from_wjc>http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/home.nsf/pt_message_from_wjc

(9) The Children of Hameln, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm [Die Kinder zu Hameln,
Deutsche Sagen (1816/1818), vol. 1, no. 245]
<http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/hameln.html#grimm245>http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/hameln.html#grimm245



Gabriele Zamparini is an independent filmmaker and freelance writer living
in London. He's the producer and director of the documentaries XXI CENTURY
and The Peace! DVD and author of American Voices of Dissent (Paradigm
Publishers). He can be reached at info at thecatsdream.com - More about him
and his work on <http://TheCatsDream.com>http://TheCatsDream.com


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