'The Pied Piper of Arkansas' and other fairy tales

'The Pied Piper of Arkansas' and other fairy tales
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


(2) The Anti-Empire Report: Some things you need to know before the world ends. By William Blum - September 5, 2005

(3) Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell

(4) Hitchens vs Galloway: The big debate, by David Usborne, The Independent, 16 September 2005

(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

(6) MEDIA ALERT: BURYING THE LANCET, Media Lens, September 5 and September 6, 2005

(7) Why I Wrote "The Crucible", by Arthur Miller, The New Yorker, 21 October 1996

(8) Clinton Global Initiative, Our Mission: Message from President Clinton

(9) The Children of Hameln, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm [Die Kinder zu Hameln, Deutsche Sagen (1816/1818), vol. 1, no. 245]



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@thecatsdream.com