It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
Mother Davis scans her newspaper for more lies from American military leaders as she conveys the following story:

You may remember that about a month ago, riots erupted in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad when an American helicopter knocked down a religious flag that commemorated an important Shiite prophet. During the resulting riots, Americans shot and killed an Iraqi teenager, and the Sadr City neighborhood turned against the new American military dictatorship over Iraq.

Until now, the American military leadership has vigorously insisted that the whole thing was just one big misunderstanding, that the American helicopter team never intended to remove the flag from its post, that it was all an innocent accident. American Staff Sergeant J.J. Johnson said that any suggestion that the destruction of the Iraqi Shiite religious display was intentional was "totally bogus, totally untrue".

It turns out that the American military leadership was lying to the American public when it said that. Who's totally bogus now?

(Don't take my word for it. Read about it in the Contra Costa Times.)

Now, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez admits that the American soldiers in that helicopter were ordered to remove the religious flag from the display in Sadr City. The American military refuses to identify the commander of the helicopter mission, but acknowledges that the order was given to "tear the flag down."

I find it ironic that a war heavily supported by conservative Christians includes the purposeful removal of private religious displays, when those same conservative Christians insist that no one can remove the governmental displays endorsing religion that they put up and maintain using taxpayers' money.

Is it any wonder that Iraqis believe that the Bush Administration is waging a holy crusade against Islam?

Oh, and then there's another story from the American Empire today. Two more American soldiers are killed in Afghanistan. Yeah, that's right, Afghanistan, where the fighting with the Taliban and Al Quaeda still isn't over, where there still is no democracy, and where the opium trade is bigger than ever. George W. Bush's wars against evildoers don't seem to be working out quite right, do they?

Wondering why she should believe anything that the American military or the Bush Administration says about what's happening in Iraq or Afghanistan,
Mother Davis

Posted by Katherine Davis at 1:13 PM. # (permalink)  




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