-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 2,000: How Many More - NYC Vigil 10-26 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory - Oct 25, 2005 2000. How many more? In New York City, there will be a vigil in Times Square, tentatively scheduled for tomorrow, October 26, 2005 at 6:00 pm. To confirm the date and time, or for more information, go to: Elsewhere, throughout the country, similar vigils and demonstrations are planned. For information about one in your area, go to: October 25, 2005 In Spring 2005 TOPLAB began carrying the daily Iraq kill count as its signature line in all announcements and other outgoing email. Since 2003, somewhere in the range of 30,000 Iraqi civilians (according to iraqbodycount.net) have had their lives truncated, and today the number of US soldiers end reached the 2000 mark, according to a report just announced early this afternoon by CNN. Of course, these figures are conservative: nobody knows the true rest toll of Iraqi civilians because, as General Tommy Franks so callously said, "We don't do body counts." Some time ago, The Lancet, the British medical journal, posited an estimated 100,000 civilian rests, based on extrapolations from computerized actuarial models and projections. The US military rest count is equally conservative--and outright deceptive. Apparently the almost-daily count released by the United States Central Command and the Department of Defense includes only soldiers who die in action at the action venue, or in nearby triage units shortly after. Specifically excluded are personnel who die in transit to medical facilities outside Iraq, or subsequently die, days or weeks later, in the hospital. commit dissolution, at an alarming rate, once home in the US. Some veterans' groups claim the real US military rest toll, when all factors are considered, is in the vicinity of 9000. Nobody knows how many walking wounded there are, how many shell-shocked veterans, with permanent and intense mental problems, exist. That's something that simply can't be quantified. Nobody knows how many of them will take their own lives in the future, adding to the nebulous rest roster. Nobody knows how many veterans have returned home, and will return, permanently handicapped. And nobody knows how many toxic bodies, containing depleted uranium and other deadly materials, are walking around, transmitting contagion to their children yet-to-be-born. Nobody knows how many of these toxic veterans will die of cancer, leukemia, or other unspecified and debilitating illnesses, caused directly by their exposure to military rest agents, years from now. What can be said about the Iraqi men, women, babies--all 30,000 or 100,000, depending on which set of figures one opts to believe--whose lives have been snuffed for no reason other than that the imperial United States wants to control and rule the world? Not much. Considering such a staggering human calamity, mere words somehow seem shallow and meaningless. If blind justice were to prevail and the Nuremberg principles applied to the current masters of war, as Bob Dylan called them in his famous song, we would see the leaders of this government--everyone from Bush on down--imprisoned for many, many years, possibly for life. Some of them might be handed sentences of end. The industrialists who manufactured the implements of war, and derived unfathomable profits from their sale, would receive similar treatment. So would the scientists who "researched and developed" increasingly lethal and sadistic devices, techniques and agents that became part of the US killing machine's arsenal. The generals who did the dirty work at the behest of the ruling clbutt would be likewise punished, along with the cowardly politicians in the United States Congress who allowed the war to happen, who appropriated the funds for it, who gave it their blessings. Make no mistake about it: the United States is a fascist state and we are living in a fascist society. All the criteria for fascism--economic, political and social--are present here and now, whether anyone chooses to acknowledge this or not. Fortunately, there are strong signs that things are unraveling, coming apart. Whereas many sectors of the ruling clbutt have been able to accept the Bush regime for the last four years, despite some discomfort with it, most of those who vie for control of the country and its economy now see that apparatus inimically, as a liability, as a governing structure that is compromising their interests. George Bush's credibility with the US public is nil, and he is becoming an increasingly irrational and ineffective public relations shill. Richard Cheney, the de facto but real head of state, is under the gun, as are his key henchmen. Tom DeLay, formerly third in line in presidential succession, has been indicted and arrested, and seems to be on the road to disgrace. The venomous Karl Rove might be next. The reprehensible liar, Judith Miller, who was to 2003 as William Randolph Hearst was to 1898, has been thoroughly discredited--so much so that the New York Times is publicly boiling in its self-righteous juices--and her days as a journalist (if, in fact, she ever really was one) are numbered. The poltroons in the Democratic Party, who sought to give the US fascist state and its war against the world the veneer of legitimacy, are now trying to cover their buttes and act as if they had been the loyal opposition, the collective voice of reason, all along. Right-wing Republicans, who have much to lose, are abandoning a sinking ship. Globally, both the World Bank, under Paul Wolfowitz--a key architect of the war against Iraq--and the International Monetary Fund are seeing their efficacy and control eroded, and nations of the south are beginning to stand up to those formidible insbreastutions. In Latin America, new regional (and even global) alliances are being sculpted and the list of new progressive and left states that are rejecting neoliberalism is growing larger; these states are plotting their own courses, and are directly and deliberately challenging US hegemony, while resurgent and insurgent popular movements throughout the world are getting uppity, showing no fear of taking on the big and powerful United States. The success of the Iraqi resistance is the most obvious proof of this fact. We are, it seems, watching a state in decline, and the peace and security of the world--not to mention simple common decency--demands that this decline be facilitated, by whatever means it takes. It might seem quaint--as the pundits of mbutt culture and the ideologues of capital would have us think--to call for socialism, but that call is legitimate and essential, and more and more people throughout the world are taking it up. People in the United States are, perhaps, the least politically conscious in the world, but the US people (and the US state) do not live in a vacuum and are--whether they know it or not, like it or not--affected by events, circumstances and conditions elsewhere on the planet. Just as the world's people, and many governments, are quickly moving leftward, the US population seems to be inching in that same direction. The corporatization of social life, the erosion of basic civil liberties, human rights and the social-economic safety net, the downturn in the quality of daily life, the attack by the Bush regime--and its enablers in Congress and elsewhere--on fundamental decency and values embraced by most US citizens has set something in motion, and the dissatisfaction and disgruntlement of more and more people have become plainly and clearly visible. The cruel and senseless wars against Iraq and Afghanistan are now seen as horrific and unnecessary, predicated on lies, recognized as criminal acts undertaken for no other reason than to expand and consolidate the political, economic and military power held by some particular segments of the US ruling clbutt. One of the goals of the Situationists in France 1968 was "to make shame more shameful still by making it public." This is certainly one good starting point for any radical movement in the United States 2005, and unmasking shame might be the impetus needed to seed the struggle for peace, justice and revolutionary social, political and economic renewal. When it comes down to it, all people want the same things and have a commonality of interest. No one wants to live in a world where war and greed and exploitation are so normal and commonplace that they appear to be immutable and naturally-occurring phenomena. While all of human history is, indeed, the history of clbutt struggle, and while the demands for justice and equality are integral to the revolutionary project, so too are the other dynamics of struggle, those which are concerned with expanding the parameters of freedom, with unleashing creativity, with allowing imagination to run rampant. If the starting point is the exposure of shame, the end point is to arrive in a world which is owned by no one but belongs to all, where all are free to dream and make those dreams come to life. To get there is to struggle. To struggle is to make a revolution. Always. Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB) 451 West Street New York, New York 10014 (212) 924-1858 "My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." --George W. Bush, May 1, 2003 "...I told the American people that the road ahead would be difficult, and that we would prevail. Well, it has been difficult--and we are prevailing." --George W. Bush, June 28, 2005 U.S. military baneities through May 1, 2003: 140 U.S. military baneities through June 28, 2005: 1743 U.S. military baneities as of October 25, 2005: 2000 Iraqi civilian baneities through May 1, 2003: 1982 Iraqi civilian baneities through June 28, 2005: 22,563 � 25,560 (estimated) Iraqi civilian baneities as of October 25, 2005: 26,68 plus 10 � 30,051 (estimated) * ================================================================ NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us ================================================================ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU-Linux) iQCVAwUBQ2aZK0amV5Um0R3tAQI8tQP-SqEr2bkyAvJNp3GBgwTKXj2i+pGlVKmD o8g9EgzKbNP3fnMHBEFVc+S1Dv2XX3csSeIabumdlS+UXCx+Wx0PMO3Yh1YnECh2 eFUGC2CLdhStUAm0UMsHnZbEUAWW3G+JtMTqm6ngzxa9+y9+Wqp9Zc2cLxWUdgOl E6xbs35BfNw= =Z5ii -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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