America Out of Iraq NOW

I know some of the items below I’ve said before in my blog, but I feel the need to repeat them. Since lots of blogosphere browsing software tracks the hot topics of the day, I want to chime in as well. Right now, there's much discussion about what to do concerning the Iraq war. So add my tiny voice to the chorus: Bring the American troops home NOW.

I’ve never been convinced that a mistake left incomplete is worse than a mistake finished off. If America leaves, will Iraq plunge into chaos? What do you mean plunge? Seems like it’s already there. Anyway, sure, it will probably get worse, and for the people of Iraq, all I can say is I’m sorry you were born on top of the oil that the Bush-Cheney cartel will do anything for.

The holocaust-in-progress in Iraq is (and will forever be) the blood-soaked legacy of the Bush-Cheney criminal administration. I hope Iraqis (and Americans) forever remember them for what they are: greedy, murderous maniacs.

Now that the people have taken America back in a small way, let’s get our troops out. I’m not paying for the military’s salary so they can assist with Halliburton war-profiteering stock. I’m paying them to protect me on American soil. So get back here and help rebuild New Orleans before rebuilding Baghdad.

Why is the Bush-Cheney war cartel so against calling the Iraq Civil War an Iraq Civil War? I have no idea. Maybe because they realize they’re the ones who set it off. In 1994, someone asked a Clinton admin official, How many acts of genocide make a genocide? So I ask again: how many acts of civil war make a civil war?

What is the mission in Iraq anyway? I honestly couldn’t tell you. There are just too many questions about this war. Bring the troops home NOW.

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Larry Nocella is the author of the novel Where Did This Come From?
Visit his website at http://www.larrynocella.com/.

Iraq (and the USA) for Sale

"Impeachment is off the table." Darn! With those words, new speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi crushed my dreams. Sort of. If Bill Clinton can be impeached for getting a blow job and then lying about it under oath, then I would hope a president who led the nation to war in order to benefit his oily friends could be impeached as well.

But that would just bog the nation down, again, instead of doing something meaningful. So does this mean she has more class? Who knows? Politicians are politicians, so it could be strategy: you impeach Bush, he's gone. You leave him in office, you can pound the crap out of him for the next two years, and further expose his corruption.

And what corruption! I finally got around to watching Iraq For Sale, the grassroots-funded video that takes a highlighter to war-profiteering in Iraq. It was sponsored by individual donations. I wish I had known. Missing the party sucks.

Anyway, I’d like thank all the people who were brave enough to speak out on the video. It was striking just how many of the worker for the war contractors actually spoke out publicly against their employers. This 70 minute video should be seen and discussed by every American. It specifically focuses on Iraq and how profiting from something as obviously life-and-death as war results in a lot more death. The larger, more general issue is the role of corporations and their interaction with the government.

A corporation is an entity that will defend itself against oversight and work to provide as little as possible for as much as possible. That’s not the ideal mentality for any kind of human care, whether it be war, health care or social security retirement funding. Some will argue that the government is wildly inefficient, and that may be true, but I have to think it’s better to be accidentally inefficient with oversight, than cleverly inefficient and maliciously resistant to oversight.

See Iraq For Sale, and help fight against turning every aspect of our lives into commodities.

Implicitly Silly

Project Implicit is supposed to reveal subtle or not-so-subtle prejudices we have. They do this by performing a test through a website (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/) where you have to press the E and I key AS FAST AS YOU CAN as to whether a picture corresponds to European American or African American and/or a positive or negative word. Then they scramble them so the positive words are associated with either background. If that sounds confusing, it’s because it is. I find myself having to look at each category for which key I’m supposed to press.

Supposedly this can reveal slight preferences. Maybe that’s true, but I think the IMPLICATION is that it can reveal bias, possibly even racism. But since you’re supposed to go as fast as you can, how can that detect racism? Racism at its most sinister is due to much more than a split-second key press. Racism is due to prejudice leading to well thought-out planning, culminating in social laws and policy.

Everyone’s minds are constantly churning, and everyone has evil thoughts sometimes. What matters is if those thoughts are acted on in a sustained long-term way. If I pass someone of a different ethnicity on the street and some nasty slang term comes to mind, but I just walk by, does that hurt anyone or anybody? If anything, I’ll tell my own mind to shut up with that negative bullshit.

Project Implicit is constantly emphasizing against the one thing that real life situations have, that makes them meaningful: time.

The Public Relations Assault Begins!

On November 8, 2006, the Trend Leader (a paper local to King of Prussia, PA) headline read "Local Author Examines Consumerism In First Novel." In industry lingo, this story was "above the fold." In fact, it was top of the page above the fold! Aw, yeah! Thank you to the Trend Leader and editor Pete Kennedy for his challenging questions.

Where Did This Come From? moves a bit closer to the national best-seller that it should be. If you'd like to see the article, it can open in a new window as a PDF here: Trend Leader November 8, 2006.