MoPress

Author: mopress

  • Red Veins (sic), Blue Arteries

    The People Ain’t Stopped Pumpin’ Yet

    By Greg Moses

    Austin Indymedia

    The blue state, red state game is another one-dimensional propaganda stunt. I live in a red state, and the first thing I heard at the bus stop Wednesday morning was, “stupid Republicans!”

    A friend and fellow bus rider reports that she heard two former soldiers asking themselves if they didn’t need a militia now, “to protect us from our own government.”

    In the signs outside also, my friend saw folk protest brewing: “The bus passed a large spray painted message on a wall: ‘MEET THE DECLINE.’ At a stop on the East side there was a nice poster taped to the bus shelter: ‘VOTE AND BE COUNTED,’ but someone had written ‘Ballot box, Vote here’ on the trash can nearby.”

    Was it just my mood that day, or did I actually see it reflected in the steely eyes of fellow travelers? If you were on the bus Wednesday, you were definitely off the bandwagon.

    “My Mother got angry with me, because I said I wasn’t going to leave the country,” explained one kid to his friend. It’s like, “what do you mean you’re not leaving!”

    These red state voters were behaving like New Yorkers: bewildered, incredulous, and pissed. Asking, “who are these people who think Bush is anything but a warmongering demagogue?” Moral values?! You have got to be brain dead!

    A correspondent from India tells me via email that he reads about 56 million people who voted against Bush, but he doesn’t care about them anymore. And his rejection is not much different from many American intellectuals who pass over 56 million voters as if they were nothing but losers, or what’s worse in their eyes, Democrats.

    But now that Kerry is no longer distracting us, perhaps we can turn some attention to those 56 million.

    “How you doin’ today?” asks the cashier, as she talks about the beautiful weather we’re having on Friday. “But watch out for those drivers out there,” she grins. “They think they know where they’re going, but they really don’t.”

    56 million people aren’t about to stop pumping their lives back into the body of this nation. When I look at the sky covering my state today, it don’t look red to me.

    [56 million figure corrected fri. pm]

    [for an interesting graphic re-visioning of the vote see http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/%5D

  • Counterpunch Readers Respond

    (CANADA) Thanks for your article today on Counterpunch. I too woke up this morning and thought of Fallujah and what it means for those people.

    What a world we live in! How can we make a difference in a world seemingly bent on destroying one another!

    But then your article shows that people do care about each other, perhaps one day that will make a difference!!!

    (SWEDEN) And not only now but from the beginning of the “pounding”. Most of the time the attacks happens at night and I imagine this poor people falling apart. During the day the snippers kill everybody who dare to cross a street. The cruelty against Falluja´s defenceless population has no limits.

    A friend of mine who worked in that area told me yesterday that Falluja is just a little town, tight populated, more or less as my own town here.

    You are not alone Greg, thank you for your blues.

    (OKLAHOMA) Read your piece on ‘Counterpunch’ after I stopped screaming!! Great as ALWAYS!!

    If they have the audacity and gall to try a coup under the implication as an impeachment, what can we do? Strike? How is it that fear of embracing a culture of civil rights with its glorious diversity which extends to ALL citizens be so scary?! As I heard on the BBC’s ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ programme, Americans do wear rose coloured glasses and are insular from the outside. Guess it’s back to the Colonias?!

    In Regards to your recent article “Blues For Fallujah” I simply wanted to say well done. So few words to convey a mosts wonderful meaning. Thank You

    The sound a little person makes when she covers her head with her bare
    hands.

    POWERFUL WORDS. THANK YOU

    (NORWAY) I write from Arctic Norway. Thank you for the essay. It amazes me that nations that destroy communities in foreign lands (ie, Americans, Brits, Israelis, Russians now, and Germans and Japanese in the last war), how is it possible not to have empathy for families with dead children or destroyed homes. How is that possible? Anyone who has a child or a home, which means most of us, must know how that must tear the heart and hope out of someone. But somehow, we don’t.

    Your essay reminds us. Thank you.

    (UNITED KINGDOM) I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your article on Fallujah (if “enjoy” is a word that can be used for such a grim subject). It cut right through the bullshit to the very heart of the matter — the true central issue of the election, which was of course completely ignored: the innocent dead murdered in our name. Anyway, it was a great piece, strong and true. Thanks very much for writing it.

    (SOUTH CAROLINA) F**KIN’ A!!!!! That needed to be said, so badly…I’m clickin’ around, saying to friends; “READ THIS, GG***MMIT!!!”

    (MASSACHUSETTS) Nice piece of writing.

    (INDIA) I’m a religious conservative Hindu writing from India. I happened to read your piece “Blues for Fallujah”. You are not alone in your thoughts. Here is what most of us here in India feel about this vote.

    I can tell you that even here in my town ****, where Hindus are staunchly unsympathetic to Muslims, we were horrified and disgusted by the spectacle of your American election even as your Army prepares to “pacify Fallujah”. In many ways, the utter helplessness of the Iraqi people and their abandonment by the rest of humanity is beginning to resemble the fate of the Jews in the Europe of the 30s and 40s. Republican supporters don’t seem to understand that for us, us non-Americans, the invasion of Iraq based on lies holds an echo of the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany. I pray that Fallujah will not witness the kind of total “pacification” that places like Auschwitz and Treblinka became synonymous with.

    I myself narrowly escaped being in WTC on Sep 11 and was an eyewitness to the horrors. And seeing what the Israelis are doing under Sharon and the school massacre by Chechen militants in Beslan hasn’t left any room in my heart for any understanding of the ‘Establishment’ or ‘powers that be’ in either the Jewish or Muslim communities. However, I doubt that either of these peoples would have 51% of their population feeling the kind of insensate nationalistic stupidity and bloodlust that half of adult America has demonstrated by re-electing Bloody Bush. There is indeed a God and even though there are no mechanisms of human justice that can stay the hand of American military in Iraq, there definitely is a divine justice ( call it cause and effect if you will…) that will yet come back to haunt America for the evil that its people have wrought with this vote for Bush despite all the lies, the deception, the horrors of Abu Ghraib,…. It is clear that at least every second American is a willing accomplice in the planned and deliberate murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents in the most bloody and fiery and merciless manner so that some of those who control your industrial empires may hoard the wealth of other nations and peoples than you.

    If this is how I, a non-Muslim non-Arab Indian who detests Muslim fanatics and typically likes the average American Joe feels at this moment in history, your countrymen need to sit back and ponder over the hate they have earned from the rest of humanity by this dastardly vote. For the last four years, the American people had the sympathy of non-Muslims on account of the events of Sep 11 and the accidental/stolen election of 2000. However, 2004 is a different matter altogether. By a majority of over 3 million votes, and the vast swathe of your red states that voted for Bush,you have certified your hatred and contempt for the rest of us. With this vote, there is no longer the benefit of doubt. During the last Bush tenure, we non-Muslim non-Americans were on the sidelines, trying to differentiate ordinary Muslims from the beasts of al-Qaeda and trying to differentiate ordinary Americans from the beasts in Washington and trying to differentiate the bloodlust of white Americans from the naivety and sycophancy of black, Hispanic and other immigrant Americans who had just discovered the sinful sweetness of their individual ‘American Dream’.

    That grace is now over. And the suffering of the Iraqi people and the fallout of these events on the rest of us is henceforth your responsibility – or at least every second one amongst you – whether white, black, red, brown or yellow.

    The Nazis got into power sneakily, through an odd confluence of circumstances, perhaps comparable to Nov 2000. Bush in 2004 comes to power stamped with the approval of the American people. Finished product of the neo-cons! Inspected and approved by the good folk of America! Congratulations, America! You’ve come up with the first popularly elected Fascist administration anywhere in the world.

    I hope for the sake of the conscience of your nation that the 48% of you who did not vote for Bush never stop speaking up against the 51% who did, even though these be your own parents, children, spouses, siblings, cousins, friends, colleagues… However, don’t expect the rest of us to keep remembering that 48% of you did not vote for Bush. That’s not the kind of complexity that has influenced the fate you Americans have dealt to Iraq and the fate you will soon be dealing Fallujah.

    As for me, I can certainly say that I am no longer divided in my feelings. I have an opinion and it is no longer sympathetic to America.

    God save America from Americans! God save us all!

    PS: Thank you for your thoughtful editing and for posting my response on peacefile.org.

    Please please keep writing without being disheartened. People like you are not only America’s conscience, but the conscience of every soul on this planet we share. Sometimes giving voice to conscience may be all that someone can do in this existence, but better that than the apathy which will guarantee us perdition in the hereafter.

    And for hope, I return to the words of the Gita, where Lord Krishna says,
    “yada yada hi dharmasya glanirbhavati bhaarata
    abhyutthaanam adharmasya tat aatmaanaam srjaamyaham
    dharma sansthaapanaarthaaya sambhavami yuge yuge”

    “Whenever unrighteousness rears its head all around
    To fight injustice and for the succour of souls
    I manifest myself from time to time”

    Perhaps the moment will manifest the leadership that can face the evil Bushmen.

    (VIRGINIA) Thank you for your wonderful short piece on Fallujah that I read at the Counterpunch site this morning and put out to the…readers in my morning news service. I am an old combat veteran who opposes all war, and a leftist who opposes corporate government.

    I used your piece to pull people back to reality. Yes, there is a lot to argue about in the election, it was filled with the usual fraud and deceit. There is a lot of hand wringing to do about the way the left is now in disarray with the Democrats having spent the last six months attacking Nader and the Green Party splintered into factions. The right wing and Democratic Leadership Council could not be more pleased.

    But, as I pointed out in introducing your piece this morning, whether Kerry or Bush was elected, with the pressure from Shiah leaders in Iraq pushing the occupiers to hold elections in January, thousands of Fallujahns are going to probably be killed as they present a roadblock.

    My heart goes out to the people of Fallujah. That is where our attention should be. Thank you for attempting to get people focused on that. We all know it’s coming, and it is so much easier to stick our heads in the sand and try not to notice, try not to be tied to it in any way, put our fingers in our ears to stifle the screams, and close our eyes to the trickles of blood.

    I really love you thug lovers, You dirt bags who wring your hands and whine everytime a terrorist dies, everytime a despot is spanked, everytime the slimey, smelly leftist lose. You people cause love to swell in my heart and soul for hard ass conservitives who cause you to whimper, snot running down your trembling lips. So do yourself a favor, go live in france, stop bathing, and rub shoulders with the rest of feces of the world.

    I’m listening for the still-born child, the heart attack, the stroke. The sound a little person makes when she covers her head with her bare hands.

    After thirty hours, I’ve finally had my good cry.

    Just read your article on Counter Punch’s site, ” Blues for Fallujah”. Thanks. Cant get the image of the “sound a little person makes when she covers her head with her bare hands” out of my mind. Just wish I could make it stop. Maybe your eloquent words will help.

    Thank you, Greg Moses…

    It read like a beautiful poem.

    (DENMARK) This reader can only offer lonely silence. Tears won’t help anybody. But may your heart live forever, as a beacon, and the rest of who is you tirelessly see and hear and tell others to follow. And may your listeners be many and strong, and may the sounds of death and despair and the urgent voices of truth one day be mingled with laughter.

    I’m listening to Fallujah, too.

    But how many other people are? I thought “it” would happen today. Not a word.

    Would we know? Will we know?

    Thanks for your sensitive piece.

    (HAWAII) Subject line: Are you listening hard enough?
    Message: [In fat, large font.] BOOM!!!

  • Blues for Fallujah

    By Greg Moses

    Counterpunch

    Hush. Enough chatter about the stupid American election. I’m trying to listen to Fallujah right now.

    Stop telling me how closest advisors to the aggressor in chief hugged each other this morning in the Oval Office, and expressed great relief. Scrubbed teeth, shining all around.

    I’m trying to hear the sounds of their helicopters overhead, trying to feel the rattle in my bones as chop, chop, chop, over Falluja, they draft the very air into war.

    No more stories please about the four-hour lines, the embargoed ballots, Supreme Court refusals, or the missing youth vote. Speak of battleground states no more. They didn’t even try to change the South.

    Crashes and cries are what I’m listening for. Not more stupid talk about “margins of litigation,” that politico-mathmatic trigger point in which stupid embargoed ballots exceed differences in stupid ballots cast.

    Chinaview reports (8 hours ago) that two have been killed and six injured in Falluja, but we know since reading last Friday’s article in the Lancet that we have to multiply these numbers times ten.

    So shush that grating talk about how we’re all soon back together in some conspiracy of imperial purpose, all hailing the chief.

    I’m listening for the still-born child, the heart attack, the stroke. The sound a little person makes
    when she covers her head with her bare hands.

    Please mute that electoral count recap, would you?

    I’ve got to listen to Falluja right now.

  • From Fear to Sickness:

    Standing at the Graves of Iraq

    By Greg Moses

    Counterpunch, ILCA,

    Indymedia: Austin. Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, LA, NYC

    So much for the painted word, that quaint theory of visual art where everything is an attempt to speak. In the closing days of election USA, there is nothing real except fists and balls.

    Sure, every song has its lyric and every movie its script, but if we look at the top culture icons assisting our presidential candidates in these final days of voting–Springsteen v. Schwarzenegger–we get a sense of how visceral we need to be.

    And bin Laden–who is everything the Republicans once asked Willie Horton to be– speaks, they say, in moderated tones, with gentle gestures of hand. But who cares what or how he speaks? The image of bin Laden alive is enough to provoke a response. Listen to them holler: “The bastard is still alive!”

    Forget also the wire that Bush wore during that debate. No doubt, it was only a conduit for words. Everyone agrees he spoke poorly anyway, just as everyone agrees that what he said doesn’t really matter anymore. How he “connected,” that’s what counts. His visceral–how did it feel pressed up against your visceral in a charged field of cyber-chemical reaction.

    In fact, forget any connection that runs from spine to brain. The only connection that plays in the big-time these days runs between scrotum and gut. Why else would Kerry break a shotgun over his arm, dress in camouflage, and walk with dead geese in Ohio (Canadian geese no less).

    “Happy wouldn’t quite be the word for it,” said a dutiful reporter Friday evening when asked how the Bush campaign is reacting to the bin Laden video. But how do you put words to the feeling you get when you realize that now again, you own the nation’s fears.

    So if there is to be dialectic in the next few days, it will have to be located in a counter-visceral terrain, where we can recover our sickness about this mess–and fear not.

    Excuse me for speaking briefly. News Friday carried an important bit of research suggesting that the Iraqi death rate doubled last year. That’s about 150,000 more funerals than normal. Women of Iraq have cried at gravesides twice as often as they did the year before. If their children, fathers, lovers, and sons did not all die directly as a result of smashing metal, then they died from distresses that a world of smashing metal brings.

    If we could stand witness to 150,000 Iraqi funerals, we might find the sickness that we need. And in that sickness, we might recall caskets we ourselves have been commanded to forget. And so on (there is so much to be sick about). Compared to the fear that the fear mongers are whipping today, I feel that sickness is the healthier alternative for me.