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Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Paul Street at Jan 06, 2006

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Americans are properly mourning the tragic and unnecessary deaths of 12 West Virginia coal miners in a terrible mine explosion that reflects inadequate public and private investment in worker safety. In the "mainstream" (dominant corporate-state) media's leftmost newspaper of record, The New York Times, the Sago Mine Disaster has been a page-one story for three straight days. During that period, the Times has printed seven stories and one lead editorial on the West Virginia tragedy. A big part of the story now, of course, has to do with the bad communications that led the mining commnity to think that 12 miners had survived. During the same three-day period, another story involving 12 deaths got one article, not a single editorial, and no front-page coverage from the liberal Times. According to Times correspondents Richard A. Oppel and Omar Al-Neaml in a short item placed in the upper right section of p. A8 of Wednesday's New York Times, “American F-14 warplanes killed nine members of an Iraqi family, including women and young children, during a bombing and cannon strike on Monday night that obliterated a home near the northern industrial city of Baiji,…American officials said the warplanes had been pursuing insurgents who had been observed setting up a roadside bomb. They fled to a building, and the American planes struck the building and destroyed it. The attack enraged Iraqi officials in Baiji, about 150 miles north of Baghdad, who said that the airstrike was unjustified and that it had destroyed an innocent family.” By Oppel and Al-Neaml's account, “a preliminary investigation indicated the blast had killed the wife of the home's owner, his daughter-in-law and seven children and grandchildren, including one son who worked for the police.” “The owner of the house is a very simple man,” an Iraqi official reported, adding that “the American forces did not provide us with any justification for the attack. Agence France-Presse in Baiji,” Oppel and Al-Neaml note, “reported that eight bodies had been pulled from the rubble along with three survivors - two unconscious women and an 8-year-old boy whose cry for help alerted rescuers. A Baiji police colonel,” the reporters ad, “told Reuters that the family members killed in the bombing did not include any suspected insurgents” Richard A. Oppel and Omar Al-Neaml, “U.S. Strike on Home Kills 9 in Family,” New York Times (4 January, 2006). Yes, I said 12 dead and the Times said 9 Iraqi dead. There's some media confusion on the number of Iraqi civilians who died in their own Baiji home ---- directly murdered by Uncle Sam...by your tax dollars (including some formerly spent on mine safety, perhaps) my fellow Americans ---- without so much as trying to go to work (in a coal mine or a police station or wherever) in the chaotic shooting and bombing gallery that the U.S. "liberators" have created in the onetime cradle of civlization. Here's yesterday's account from the number two paper in the nation's supposedly left-liberal press establishment: US strike on house said to kill Iraqi family of 12 By Ellen Knickmeyer and Salih Saif Aldin, Washington Post | January 4, 2006 BAGHDAD -- US pilots targeting a house where they believed insurgents had taken shelter killed a family of 12, Iraqi officials said yesterday. The dead included women and children whose bodies were recovered in the nightclothes and blankets in which they had apparently been sleeping. A Post special correspondent watched as the corpses of three women and three boys who appeared to be younger than 10 were removed yesterday from the house outside the town of Baiji, 150 miles north of Baghdad. A US military spokesman said that US forces take every precaution to prevent civilian casualties and that they were working with Iraqi authorities to determine what happened at the farmhouse in Baiji. ''We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves," Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a military spokesman, said in an e-mail. The Associated Press Television News showed footage of men carrying several bodies, wrapped in carpets, from the wreckage of the house. The men chanted prayers: ''There is no god but God." The United States has steadily intensified its use of airstrikes against insurgents in Iraq in the past year, increasing the number of attacks from 25 in January 2005 to 120 in November. The US military says that it does not count civilian deaths from American attacks, and that investigating deaths caused by any one strike is often impractical in dangerous insurgent areas. But some analysts say the US military should make a systematic effort, both to test the reliability of its intelligence and to better learn how to reduce civilian casualties. A US military statement said that an unmanned US drone detected three men digging a hole in a road in the area. Insurgents regularly bury bombs along roads in the area to target US or Iraqi convoys. The three men were tracked to a building, which US forces then hit with precision-guided munitions, the statement said. ....ok, that's the Post piece. This is me again. I don't know how much coverage the Post gave to The U.S. Murder of Innocents in Baiji story relative to the mining tragedy but my semi-educated guess would be that the disparity is the same. Here is another and different sort of bad communications that does not speak well to the moral-intellectual character of the imperial "homeland's" "free press." I'm flashing to the title of one of the chapters in Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman's classic study Manufacturing Consent: "Worthy and Unworthy Victims."

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I accept with honour

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 09, 2006 21:58 PM
Thank you, mind. I accept the honour proudly. And I note that you are perhaps the 37th Z-Net cult-member to use scatalogical language (fascinating from a Freudian perspective) to dehumanise an opponent, including the third or fourth in this thread alone. That, and the epithet "troll", are favourite ways that cult members signal to each other (1) their unwavering allegiance to the cult (as Durkheim observed, groups require periodic ritual) (2) their complete unwillingness seriously to address objections, arguments or evidence that run counter to their world view, and (3) the evident lack of confidence in the rational defensibility of their own views.

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"Worthy and Unworthy Victims"

By Kissenger, Clark at Feb 04, 2006 11:52 AM

I just want to start off by saying I did not and still do not support the War in Iraq. And I am in total agreement with those who believe that the media does not report nearly enough on the deaths of innocent Iraqis caused by the American military. However, I think this also applies to the thousands of Iraqis who have been killed by foreign terrorists. Now, I have noticed that the left seems to have a somewhat difficult time admitting to itself that not every single Iraqi killed or maimed is the result of an American bomb, that jihadists like Zarqawi and his ilk are also responsible for the murder of many, many Iraqis. And I also think it is intellectually lazy to say "Well, there are only terrorists in Iraq because the U.S. let them in" for, while there is a grain of truth to that, it is also somewhat disengenuous. Bush's policies have without a doubt led to the deaths of thousands; but there is no need to pin the blame on him for the actions of others.

 

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Jautter, Mind at Jan 22, 2006 03:40 AM
Zbub-Nice bait, but no bite from this mind.You are only the second person on this blog[congradulations]to receive my rectal -cranial inversion certificate of authenticity award. Wear it proudly.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 21, 2006 11:11 AM
Hey Mind, how d'you figure it out? Absolutely brilliant. BTW, who the hell is "Karl"? But I'll tell you how close you came: I'm the other one you discounted: Marx. And I'd like to repeat a point I made in the Manifesto (with Freddie, but I wrote these passages), namely that the bourgeoisie must spread their system globally before you can expect further progress. In a war between America and an assortment of Wahabi and Baathist fascists - and you know, we get all the papers where I am - if you want to call yourself a "progressive" you don't go around calling those maniacs who think nothing of machinegunning young Muslims because they were drinking or talking to members of the opposite sex in public - you don't call them "The Resistance" but "The Reaction". Al-Sistani, the Shi-ite powerman, and the Kurds, are asking the U.S. to stay for at least another year. And don't you know it's the people you call the "neocons" who arrogantly wanted to get in and out quickly, while your heroes the fascist "resistance" are doing everything to keep the U.S. there? They know they could get rid of America in months by calling a truce and joining the political process. You know, I got lots of flack for supporting British so-called colonialism in India, but today India is the most robust democracy in the 3rd World. If you take the long view of history you'll see that George Bush is 1000 times more "progressive" than the fascist and theocratic thugs you guys worship.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Barkdog_sa, Calico at Jan 21, 2006 06:52 AM
Well I certainly hope Paul Street is giving his attention to Jill Carroll. A moment of silence for that gorgeous young woman who is at this moment being threatened by Sunni fundamentalists who want to chop off her head even though it is entirely against any Islamic teaching, legal ruling or Sura to be found in their (our, although sometimes I think I must be reading a different version of the Koran) book. How about a note about Jill Mr. Street? And one about the genocidalist Walid Jumblatt eh? Personally I think you are only a journalist who wants notoriety and therefore you make weak claims that are meant to side with the Absolute Right when in fact, there isn't one in the case of the war against Terror. Oh, and while your are at it...decrying the murder of innocents, ask about Mr. Mr. Abu Addas would ya?

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Jautter, Mind at Jan 20, 2006 02:37 AM
Zubub unmasked! Hello Karl,and I don't mean Marx.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 19, 2006 08:13 AM
Mr Christie, previously I had to correct your misreading of my postings until you - to your credit - apologised. This time may I leave it as an exercise for you? Hint 1: 'gangsta'/poor. Hint 2: Chomsky/Bosnia. Your use of "us" (or "our", as in "our sacrifice") and "you" is amusing, and not unreminiscent of Bush's simple-minded categorisation of the world. (Sectarians of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your brains.) Nor is it surprising that you trot out an accusation of "racism" so quickly to silence thought. But consider: since the debate was about crime and prisons (that's another hint, BTW), your presupposition is clearly that if blacks are poor they can't help but turn to crime, which you presumably don't believe about poor Jews, Chinese, Portuguese, etc., among the most upwardly mobile ethnic groups. So, though I hate to use this myself as it just stifles debate, if anyone is being racist here it sure as hell ain't me. You want "sources" on Kosovo? I'm not inclined to become your research assistant, especially since all my central claims are verifiable with a little effort in any standard source (which, sorry, excludes the omniscient Chomsky who doesn't speak a word of any Balkan language) but since you've become almost civil, I'll soon post you a little bibliography.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Man, Laughing at Jan 17, 2006 06:26 AM
You see Zubub, USA isnt even close to liberal. Compared to liberal socities like Sweden, USA lags behind on every single factor you sighted as a sign of American leftism. And acutally there are things that force inner city dwellers to emulate gansta rappas and live by the gun. Its the socio-economic circumstances that they are born into. You cant possibly say that every poor black kid born in Long Beach LA, can just ignore all the pressures coming in from every angle. This isnt a question of choice, and freedom. Its a question of a capitolist system oppressing factions of its own populace and manufactuing vicious cycles of interal pain, crime and suffering which supports the imperialist system. You say that this is a result of `freedom` you have mixed up your right hand with your left, it is because of a lack of freedom caused by an oppressive classist economic system which you erroniously attribute with choice. As Plato points out, true Democracy is about equal oppertunity, something that only a total nitwit could accociate to American society.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 17, 2006 05:58 AM
Keir's and Paul's points are valid, though I doubt the US has the "highest incarceration rate in the world" (What, more per cap. than Egypt, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Libya, Kenya, Burundi, Cuba?) and would be happy to see corroborating statistics. True, Keir, on socio-economic indicators the US is poor relative to other liberal democracies. But in less measurable ways the US has led throughout the post-war era, spawning domestic liberation movements: feminism, gays (for what it's worth even animal lib, though cynicism could be understandable), along with freedom of information, consumer protection via strict liability on manufacturers (resisted in UK and Canada), affirmative action (compare to riot-torn France, which has none), availability of abortion, battered women's shelters, anti-stalking legislation, anti-smoking, etc. Inner city problems persist, but the suggestion that that's by design (if that's what Paul intended) so as to serve up "raw material for the ... rural prison industrial complex" is sheer fantasy. Nothing forces an inner city dweller to emulate gansta rappas and live by the gun. Unemployment is at historic lows, with federally subidised training programs and affirmative action admissions at colleges across the country. These problems are a CONSEQUENCE of the degree of freedom in America, not evidence against it. Perhaps there should be less, but that's a different complaint, that Z-Net “libertarian socialists” are normally not caught dead making.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Street, Paul at Jan 17, 2006 02:58 AM
Right on, mind: empire abroad and inequality at home are merged at the hip - dialectically inseparable, as the great Martin Luther King, Jr. knew (see my Sustainer reflections at http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-01/14street.cfm) when he identified what he called "the triple evils that are interrelated": "racism, economic exploitation, and war" One of many problems for zubub's take on good America these days is that "THE MOST LIBERAL SOCIETY IN HUMAN HISTORY" now has the HIGHEST INCARCERATION RATE IN THE WORLD. Liberal Uncle Sam now locks up more than 2 million people (nearly half of whom are black in a society that is just 12 percent African-Americans) in its jails and prisons...most of them for nonviolent offenses, BTW. Prison is now a routine, normative experience for much of the nation's still large inner-city population, increasingly pressed into service as raw material for the predominantly rural prison industrial complex. It's really quite astonishing and this is just one of many problems that lead to me say that you can't export something ("freedom" and "democracy" and "humanitarianism," etc.) that is in such increasingly short supply at home.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Jautter, Mind at Jan 17, 2006 01:58 AM
All the hubbub about Zubub aside,I live about 25 miles from the Sago mine and can attest to the fact that the W.Va. miners were killed by bullets fired from the same gun that killed the Iraqi civillians,and we all {Americans} pulled the trigger.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 16, 2006 13:11 PM
Christie's sense of fairness is shown by his 7 consecutive turns for each of mine, violating in spirit Z-Net's restrictions. I'd need 49 to point out errors in his 7, but since he's denouncing a "troll", "fascist", "idiot" and the other lovely ways he regularly dehumanises his opponent, the Z-Net sect don't admonish him (Any wonder that when people like him ever get power, people like me start "disappearing" or turning up in "re-education" camps and Gulags?). Just 2 points: (1) Evidently we disagree about the nature of the U.S. You think it's a fascistic murderous empire that cannot possibly do good "in the real world". I believe it's the most liberal society in human history, with a myriad of intricately connected motivations, and that it can do plenty of good and has, including resisting fascism, communism, Serbian genocide, and now Jihadism. (2) BEFORE Nato bombing, the JNA poured 40,000 heavily armed and mechanised troops into Kosovo, ALONG WITH THOUSANDS OF PARAMILITARIES, MANY THE VERY SAME THAT HAD JUST COMMITTED UNSPEAKABLE ATROCITIES IN BOSNIA. Chomsky's monstrous omission of Bosnia from his entire book, akin to debating policy toward Hitler in 1945 without mentioning the Holocaust, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc., surpasses Orwell. A huge “cleansing” operation was imminent, 40% of Kosovars had already been internally displaced, and Nato was right to issue its ultimatum. (Nato did it just to exert authority? Plain silly.)

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Victor_wood, Vwood at Jan 14, 2006 15:25 PM
"But the US cannot leave now and hand the country over to Zarqawi." Iraq will not fall into the hands of Zarqawi. He is a tool of the Iraqi Resistance. The Iraqis will take control of themselves if the US leaves. Neither the Shiites nor the Kurds are Zarqawi followers, nor will they ever be. And the Sunnis will discard him like a hot potatoe if the US leaves. You swallow the US propaganda that Zarqawi has all this supposed power over the Iraqis and that should the US leave, Iraq would become his slaves. Rubbish. Zarqawi profits today ONLY because the US is an occupying force in a country that deeply resents foreign occupation. Remove the occupiers, and Zarqawi suddenly becomes a very minor cog in a large number of wheels.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 14, 2006 12:50 PM
LM: Your point about manslaughter has some merit, but then what do you call the crime of doing nothing while tyrant Saddam and Sons murder and rape (literally, not Keir's hyperbole) opponents, Kurds, Shi'ites, and random civilians? In the real world people in power have sometimes to trade off one evil for another. It's easy to sit in the cozy surrounding of a far left website, where nothing you do has any consequence, and point self-righteous fingers and feel more moral than everyone else. While Z-Net condemned every US enforcement of the no-fly zone, the Americans liberated the Kurds (not the Turkish ones Chomsky and Co. suddenly care so much about, but the ones they don't) and created the freeest society in the Middle East - in northern Iraq. Ultimately one needs to weigh the consequences of victims if you do act militarily versus those if you don't. I agree the invasion of Iraq is the wrong balance, for which reason I didn't favour it. But the US cannot leave now and hand the country over to Zarqawi. As for other places where they perhaps should intervene, e.g. Sudan, it's the same fallacy that Chomsky makes over Kosovo (and Christie mimicking him) with the irrelevant examples of Turkey and Timor. It doesn't become wrong to intervene in X if you should also have intervened in Y and Z. On the other hand, the US has been more forceful than Europe, though not enough, over Darfur, Burma, China, and Iran, while Z-Net fails to urge intervention.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Man, Laughing at Jan 14, 2006 09:34 AM
`I don't agree the motives are immoral` Actually, attacking a country in order to promote ones own well being, and killing alot of people in the process is immoral. Consider the fact that while Bush was beating the war drums about how we need to overthrow Saddam, he ignored an ethnic cleansing in Sudan. `The aim is to spread democratic government in the Middle East ... The motive for that is mainly strategic (post-9/11), but that doesn't make it immoral.` Why the middle east? There are plenty of places that are un-democratic and support terrorism, Sudan supposedly being one of them. Why didnt we intervene there, stop the bloodshead and create a democracy? Moreover, now youre conceding that the motive for attacking Iraq was for our own benifit, (strategic=for our benifit) so we clearly didnt have any right to attack it in the first place, and the war is a crime of highest level. `The analogy to the Holocaust is absurd. If the Americans were rounding up millions of innocents and deliberately slaughtering them for the goal of democracy the analogy might have some point. But the US doesn't intend these innocent deaths, which in any case do not exceed Saddam's annual toll.` Well it was your comparison. And the US has been killing innocents for the past several decades in order to prevent democracy. Shure, the deaths may not have been `intended` but that certainly does not mitigate our responsability for them. Manslaughter x 100000 seems like an adaquete penalty.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 14, 2006 08:36 AM
Christie's reading comprehension problems are numerous. I didn't say 30,000 Iraqi civilians killed were fascist (please quote me). I didn't "compare" Iraq to WWII: to borrow Rosa Luxemburg's quip, if I say the Empire State Building is to the Eiffel Tower as is a 2-story to a 1-story building, I'm not "comparing" the ESB to a 2-story building. I compared civilians accidentally killed when targeting a putative military target. Paul Street says they were "murdered" by the U.S., so if consistent he then has to say all civilians killed by WWII Allies were "murdered". That debases the concept of murder, even for those who think the Iraq war unjust, unlike the Allied cause. Nato bombing in Kosovo caused needless harm. Required was a much more massive military response to scare off war criminal Milosevic, namely ground troops. We know today only Milosevic' belief of imminent infantry invasion persuaded him to leave, thus liberating Kosovo. The liberation was worth it, but the ground troops should have been prepared from the start. Clinton wanted a cowardly air campaign with no US casualties; it took Blair to persuade him after weeks of Milosevic' intransigeance to threaten ground troops. “Did the bombing campaign make things worse than before?” is the wrong question. The right question is “Did it make things worse than they would have become without the bombing?” The answer (if coupled with the threat of ground troops) is No, the opposite.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Barkdog_sa, Calico at Jan 14, 2006 08:05 AM
Hmm. One of the main problems with Western Ideology is this notion that the oppressor is "owed" something. An oppressor is owed only a fair fight, nothing more and nothing less. For the most part people within conflicts nowdays are given ample warning time...sheesh...even when Israel used to come into South Lebanon to shoot up a few evil doers they'd drop fliers a day or two before to warn civilians to evacuate...some listened and some didn't. Sometimes Israel didn't do what it should either and blew up UN checkpoints and the refugees inside of them. But truly...does an oppressor deserve better than that and why does the Western Ideology COMPLETELY fail to address this notion? What about those Sherpa in the Ascent who were killed in Iraq that day? What about the Paul Johnsons? You can scroll down to find those answers should you choose to operate outside of your boxes. http://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_carmenisacat_archive.html

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 12, 2006 13:46 PM
"You argued that 40% of refugees were displaced before NATO bombing. Ergo, 60% were displaced after NATO bombing... or is simple arithmetic and binary logic too much for you?" No clue what you're babbling about. 40% were INTERNAL refugees before Nato started bombing. Then after, indicted war criminal Milosevic drove out hundreds of thousands of Kosovars. This included most of the 40% who had already been internally displaced. It is not I who needs an arithmetic lesson. But even if the two groups had been mutually exclusive (they were not, as we know from many accounts) I still don't see what point you were trying to make. Nor have I a clue what points you think I'm supposed to have "conceded" on Timor or Turkey. I was condemning Turkey (and Iraq, Iran, and Syria) for its treatment of Kurds before it ever occurred to Chomsky that he could use that to batter the US. (More precisely, he was silent for two decades on Turkish anti-Kurd brutality because Iraq then exceeded them, and he had no inclination to criticise the murderous Saddam regime since, as we all were supposed to know, Israel was the source of all evil in the Middle East). I hated the Suharto regime before I read Chomsky on Timor (one of the few valuable things he's done). Call it "concession" if you like; I could just as well say you are conceding that to me. Your systematic confusion engenders your need for insults (idiot, troll, etc.) in the hope I'll be too insulted to reply.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 12, 2006 08:38 AM
Oh please, when your key source on Afghanistan is Noam Chomsky, you may as well cite the Reverend Moon or Ron Hubbard. Chomsky's claim about impending mass starvation and "genocide" occurring because of US bombing is so outlandish that only a Z-net cult-member in need of a professional programmer could cite it without embarrassment. Your arguments on Kosovo divide into two: the unsound and the unintelligible (what's this 40-60 nonsense?), but only when you decide to speak civilly will I bother to dig up the sources you ask for (feel free to take that as an excuse; I'm sure you will). In any case, I know how it is with cult-members: if I cite articles in the Times or eminent Balkan specialists who contradict Chomsky, you'll dismiss them as "corporate media", "reactionary", etc. Like defenders of Stalin who dismissed every evidence of his crimes as bourgeois propaganda, you won't accept any source that contradicts your guru, so you have a tight little epistemic circle to feel secure in.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 12, 2006 02:43 AM
Laughing Man says: "but your ignoring the fact that we have sacrificed 100000 innocents in order to fulfill immoral motives, yes, there may be accidental good effects, but thats like saying the holocaust was good because it advanced science." A. The statistic is false; the reliable figure is 30,000. (The Lancet study has been thoroughly debunked.) B. I don't agree the motives are immoral. The aim is to spread democratic government in the Middle East (whatever Chomsky thinks). The motive for that is mainly strategic (post-9/11), but that doesn't make it immoral. C. The analogy to the Holocaust is absurd. If the Americans were rounding up millions of innocents and deliberately slaughtering them for the goal of democracy the analogy might have some point. But the US doesn't intend these innocent deaths, which in any case do not exceed Saddam's annual toll. The vast majority of the 30,000 are victims of Zarqawi's Wahabi fascists (or call them what you like); the rest are unintended accidental bystanders of attempts to target precisely Zarqawi's armed murderers. (The latter, by the way, are what's keeping the US in Iraq; so much for “resistance”). F.Christie: what's this "unanimous" (do you mean anonymous?) "poll" of Afghan "resistance fighters" (do you mean Taliban?) supposed to show? (Assuming it exists; I never heard of it). What would you EXPECT the Taliban to say? If a poll of Gestapo gave you Goebbel's explanation of WWII would you accept it as well?

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 11, 2006 23:29 PM
F. Christie says: "Note that the media should still be covering this EVEN if the war was a just one; after all, no matter how good the war is, a tragic death at our soldiers' hands is still a tragic death that should be mentioned." Agreed! How do you think Paul heard about it? He read it in the NY Times! I saw it on Yahoo and NBC. It should have been covered, and was. Paul pontificated that it should have received equal or greater coverage than tragic US mining deaths; i.e. he blames the media for not being anti-war propagandists, putting every accidental civilian death on the FRONT page with a banner headline. Your arguments about Kosovo are lame. 40% of Kosovars were displaced INTERNAL refugees from Serbian military action BEFORE Nato bombing. Chomsky thinks himself clever incessantly quoting Clark's remark that Milosevic' later expulsion was "predictable", though as former Z-Net honcho Shalom observed, Clark said it out of embarrassment. On Chomsky's logic the Allies shouldn't have drawn a line on Poland since Hitler's brutal reaction was "predictable". Infantile analysis. You go further, calling the US “culpable” for Milosevic's crimes. Then the Allies are culpable for all Hitler's crimes after Sept 1939? All Kosovar refugees were back safe and sound within months, to an ecstatic liberation from 10 years of brutal Serbian rule. Muslim 6-year-olds today bear the name “Tony Blair” in gratitude to a perceived liberator.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Man, Laughing at Jan 11, 2006 12:13 PM
Zubub: First 1% of Iraqies do belive that Americans came to spread democracy, and while the majority do think that Saddam`s removal was good, 80% of them want us to pull out NOW, not stick around for the time being. Also David may committing the intentional fallacy, but your ignoring the fact that we have sacrificed 100000 innocents in order to fulfill immoral motives, yes, there may be accidental good effects, but thats like saying the holocaust was good because it advanced science. And, it isnt right to support the Nazi`s actions regardless of the US motives for war, yes I agree, but notice that David never said anything about supporting Saddam, infact, everyone on this blog hates Saddam, so your comparison doesnt matter. Also, your take on Afganistan is totally nuts, shure, something may have gotten better, but you would be ignoring the fact that our invasion purposfully put 7 million people at the risk of death by starvation, and our dropped food supplies looked like our bombs, but shure, I bet the corperates in Afganistan got off happily. Also theres a difference between not dropping bombs at all, and bombing civilian targets, a distinction you have avoided. Should we have dropped bombs on the Nazi military targets? Yes. Should we have dropped bombs on Nazi civilian targets? No.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 11, 2006 07:08 AM
Keir: "Anyone who believes that the US should not have dropped any bombs on Germany during WWII is a "Quaker pacifist"? " No, I was being charitable. They could be fascist sympathisers, or some idiosyncratically moronic variant of the left (who think, say, that that war could have been won without bombs, or worse, shouldn't have been won at all); if I'm missing a more obvious alternative feel free to enlighten me. The point is that on Paul Street's view, all the civilians who died from the Allied bombs that Paul now implies SHOULD have been dropped (which need not include all that were in fact dropped) were "murdered" by the Americans and Brits. I just hope that if any of you ever kill someone accidentally that Paul Street is not on your jury. As for the American state being "terrible at home", one wonders what standard he uses to judge what most of the world regards as the most liberal society in the history of humanity. Alice must have nibbled at another mushroom, presumably the same reason why Paul also misrepresents my views. I stated loudly and clearly that we should be concerned with all of humanity (and I frankly doubt the concern for Iraqis by Z-Net posturers who would now leave them at the mercy of Zarqawi), but that it is perfectly permissible to give special attention to members of one's own society. I provided analogies and arguments with Paul doesn't address, preferring to characterise my view (also shared by 99.99% of humanity) as “sick”.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Street, Paul at Jan 11, 2006 01:12 AM
In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. said that he had "worked too long now, and too hard to get rid of segregation in public accommodation to turn back to the point of segregating my moral concern. Justice is indivisible." "zubub" opened all this by lecturing me that I needed to segregate my moral concern...to value West Virginian lives more than the lives of Iraqis murdered by an American F-14. The willingness of many outwardly normal and intelligent Americans to think and feel in this sad, sick, and morally stunted sort of way is at least part of why most of the world views the U.S. as the greatest threat to peace on earth. I for one am on record saying I would have (counterfactually) enlisted in the war on Nazi Germany and have never said that "all the problems in the world are the result of my government." Whenever asked about that, I've always acknowledged that the world is full of tyrannical class and other authoritarian structures of oppression that predate the rise of American global power and certainly contain their own internal logic and history etc. American state behavior is on the whole terrible at home and abroad but its fairly typical of dominant imperial states and is not unlike what a lot of lesser modern day states would be doing to their own and other people if they had as much firepower as Uncle Sam.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 10, 2006 20:12 PM
First, I didn't say the US was purely a do-gooder in foreign affairs. I said it does both good and evil; furthermore, it does good not always for purely altruistic motives (which doesn't mean people of conscience shouldn't support these actions). There weren't merely "sectors" of Bosnia and Afghanistan who benefited from US intervention. Virtually everyone benefited (except thugs and scoundrels who shouldn't have benefited). There is no relevant analogy between the victims of 9/11 - civilians innocently targeted in a fascistic criminal act - and innocent civilian bystanders of bombs aimed at military targets in a just war in Bosnia and Afghanistan (except in Chomsky's deranged morality). Do you think the Allies ought not to have dropped any bombs at all on Germany in WWII (i.e. are you a Quaker pacifist) or do you think the innocent civilian victims of those bombs were victims of the same criminality as 9/11 terrorism? I don't follow your final sentence. I didn't concede what you said I conceded, and the popularly elected gov't of Iraq could ask the US to leave if it wanted, but chooses not to for the time being because of the ongoing threat of Wahabi fascists. Incidentally, I believe that the US *is* trying to spread democracy in the Middle East, although mainly for strategic reasons. However, you might prefer instead to follow Chomsky's Alice-in-Wonderland predictions of “genocide” in Afghanistan.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Poleawl, Hobbes at Jan 10, 2006 07:44 AM
Zubub, it seems to me that YOUR view of the United States as a good-doer in foreign affairs is the orthodox view in our intellectual culture, yet you find a lot wrong with Paul Street or Chomsky pointing out the short-comings. Certainly there will be sectors of the population in the countries we invade that may incidentally benefit from a change in the power structure; the kurds in Iraq, for example. But what do you have to say about the innocent civilians who were murdered by our bombs and guns in both Bosnia and Afganistan (your examples of US benevolence)? How are they different from the Americans who died on September 11, 2001? And since you concede that Paul has solid ground in criticizing the Iraqi invasion, why not consider the question you end your comment with as a rhetorical one: "why doesn't the popularly elected government ask (the US) to leave?"

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 10, 2006 06:02 AM
Paul Street dislikes my views, so begins each reply with an intemperate reference to my "outburst", that I “have zero business lecturing” him, etc. That shows little except the sectarian mindset facing unorthodox views, and a lack of confidence in the rationality of his own. On the latter, one sees his confusion when he writes: “I think 1 percent of Iraqis believe that the U.S. intervened to spread democracy.” He takes this as a reason to condemn the U.S. intervention on a par with the alleged desire of Iraqis that the U.S. leave. This commits the intentional fallacy. It was right to support the U.S. versus Nazi Germany whatever one thought of the administration's motivations; similarly for intervention in Bosnia (on which Z-Net shared the cynical, callous views of Douglas Hurd) or Afghanistan. I take it Paul doesn't address these, not because his “original post” was on Iraq but because he tacitly (but for ideological reasons not explicitly) admits he's on shakier ground with them. On polls, for two years, despite all the horrors of the “resistance” (as Z-bloggers reverentially refer to the fascists who place bombs in mosques and markets) surveys consistently showed 70% Iraqis favouring the American overthrow of Saddam. Over 50% consistently supported American presence for the time being. If no longer, why doesn't the popularly elected Iraqi gov't ask the US to leave? (They say in a year). Acolytic is trusting Chomsky's version of the poll.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Street, Paul at Jan 10, 2006 04:50 AM
That very book is sitting unread on a shelf in my house; sounds like I should give it a look if I get time. Regarding zubub's latest outburst, the guy he dislikes so much (Chomsky) has a good question for him and others regarding the specific U.S. intervention actually discussed (however partially or indirectly) in the original post titled "Worthy and Unworthy Victims." "A good question for an invading army," Chomsky notes, "is: 'do they want us to be here?' Well," Chomsky answers the question with official sources from within the warrior class (as so commonly with this work): "we know the answer to that. The British Ministry of Defence carried out a poll a couple of months ago, it was secret, but it leaked to the British Press - I don't think it's been reported in the US. They found that 82 percent of the population wanted the coalition forces, British and US forces to leave. One percent of the population said that they were increasing security. And the Iraqis are so grateful for U.S. humanitarianism." http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=9404 I don't know if pasting this in makes an acolyte of Chomsky or British intelligence or of the Iraqi people...or maybe all of the above. I think 1 percent of Iraqis believe that the U.S. intervened to spread democracy.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Victor_wood, Vwood at Jan 09, 2006 13:05 PM
You are correct in one point. The wars the US wages are at their heart not always truly evil or truly good - depends upon the eyes of the beholder. But one thing is always true: US wars just don't happen unless serve the "interests" of the United States - interests being defined generally as economic in nature and more specifically, "special" interests. As the mafia might say - it's not personal, it's business. And you don't stop people's prejudices and hatreds toward one another through carpet bombing. cluster bombs and phosphorus. Those remain, and frequently harden. So Serbians and Muslims get along any better now? Have the Afghan people truly been freed from religious, economic and political oppression? Has the US left a trail of smiling, happy faces in its wake through the years?

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Servo, Tom at Jan 09, 2006 10:53 AM
Good point about which deaths in Iraq we should mourn the most: US troops' or innocent Iraqi civilians, especially children. If we accept the right's argument that the troops are there by their own choice made as adults to participate in the conflict, we cannot say the same for the children, who did nothing to bring on their deaths. Yet, ib general, which groups' deaths does the American society care about most? The right, obviously, does not want to talk much about the deaths of innocent children in Iraq, but they wave the bloody shirt in a "Remember the Maine" spirit to inspire the US public to support continuing the war (and producing more bloody shirts to wave, I suppose). The liberal and left, from my POV, wave the bloody shirt to inspire Americans to ask themselves "the next bloody shirt may be a relative or friend of mine, I better not let the gov't make more to wave."

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 09, 2006 07:10 AM
If you have an a priori dogmatic and sectarian assumption that whenever the U.S. uses military force it must be evil, then no evidence can ever sway you otherwise. However, if one tries to evaluate the question undogmatically, including empirically, one gets a more nuanced view. The U.S. has made bad and good interventions. Pentagon “reactionaries”, both Republican and Democratic, opposed intervening in Bosnia because they considered the Muslim victims of Serbian genocide (if you like) "unworthy victims". Appallingly, Chomsky and his Z-Net acolytes equally cozied up to Serbian apologists for the atrocities and opposed Nato intervention. When it finally happened following 3 years of media coverage and human rights activism and after at least 100,000 dead (on lowest estimates that Dave Peterson and Ed Herman obscenely rejoice over for the wrong reasons) all killing stopped within two weeks as the perpetrators were defeated. Some 75% of Afghans, even more for women, consider the routing of the Taliban a liberation and greatest hope for Afghanistan in 50 years. Defenseless people often turn to the U.S. and beg for intervention from the world's only superpower. If you're an activist, then you believe U.S. foreign policy can be swayed by public protest. But then you will be forced to admit it can be pushed to do good as well as evil. That “the left” today is dominated by self-righteous posturers who blame their own government for all evil alters not the cold facts.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Victor_wood, Vwood at Jan 07, 2006 22:29 PM
zubub First, it's not the place of the United States or any other country to remove the government of any other country. Full stop. What gives the United States that right? Even in the light of human injustice. Secondly, I think you missed Paul's point by a mile. He was not saying that we, as Americans should be just as concerned about a foreign country's victims of American murder as our own. No, he was saying that the emphasis given by the media is supremely disparate. This translates to the fact that, as Mark Curtis calls them, the victimns of other countries are "Unpeople". They are not really on the same human level as you or I (or even Paul), because they are of a sub-species homo sapiens, that does not really deserve the attention our own get in the media. In other words, if we should kill a family of 12 in Iraq, who should give a fuck, and why should we give them more media attention than, 12 REAL people we kill here at home? Tell me, zubub, are you really emotionally connected to 12 miners who you or any of your family or any of your friends probably don't even know? Don't you think it just a bit hypocritical that you should profess this "concern" about people you don't know just because they are fellow citizens of your own country? Don't you see anything wrong here?

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Street, Paul at Jan 07, 2006 21:52 PM
Nothing obscure about the ZNet reference. This is on the whole an unapologetically left-anarchist/radical democratic site(though there's plenty of shade over with left Marxist and some democratic-socialist and even social democratic thought), well-matched to my own values and background, which are internationalist and not especially nationalist or tribalist. You have zero business lecturing me on what you have the toxic temerity to consider my appropriate sphere of human concern. As for the rest, on the monumentally illegal and bloody occupation of Iraq being somehow justified and about helping Iraqis, and America being a supposed opponent of dictatorship and repression and now the righteous internationalist agent of global humanitarian....well, you just can't be serious. If you want to know my position on all that, start with my book Empire and Inequality or pull out my various foreign policy articles from http://www.zmag.org/content/AllByAuthor.cfm?lname=Street&fname=Paul&SectionName=Terror+War&startrow=1

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 07, 2006 02:14 AM
Paul, your "reference point" may be "humanity", but your rhetorical question "How elementary is that at Z-Net?" is as obscure as the term "reference point". Of course one should care about all humanity. But when a tragedy happens in one's own country it's both natural and just to give it special attention, all the more when mining safety is at issue, given that the laws we make apply to our own country. I agree that when the U.S. is responsible for Iraqi deaths it should give those special attention too. But since innocents always die in war (and allies by accidental friendly fire - Canadians in Afghanistan, Brits in first Gulf War, Americans in this war) the question reverts back to whether the war is justified in the first place. If the U.S. didn't remove Saddam, should it then give special attention to all the torture, murder, and rape victims of his regime that it left in place? If Z-Net opposes action to remove the Assad regime should it not be giving special attention to the victims' of that regime's repression who suffer as a consequence of the advocated inaction? You write "I don't want to choose", but since you must, given the finitude of possible attention and media space, you owe a better account of the principles involved. My point was merely that equal care for all victims around the world is inadequate, and there is nothing wrong with giving special attention to mining victims in one's own country. It's bad example to trade off with Iraqis.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Victor_wood, Vwood at Jan 07, 2006 01:31 AM
Amen Paul. Well said. We support a $500 BILLION military budget. Why? Who in the world threatens us $500B worth? We are more than happy to spend $500B on laser guided bombs to kill innocent families abroad, and cut back on domestic services that might have saved those miners, provided free health care for families, provided housing for the poor, and food for the hungry. $500 BILLION dollars. Most mortal minds cannot even begin to understand the size of that number. And all for cluster bombs that explode in children's hands, depleted uranium ammo that brings cancer and other forms of radiation disease, and on and on. $500 BILLION to protect us from......what? Who?

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Street, Paul at Jan 07, 2006 01:06 AM
I'm unimpressed by zubub's critique. My reference group is humanity, not just Americans or other people with a Finnish grandmother for God's sake. How elementary is that at ZNet? I don't want to choose, but maybe I should grieve the Iraqi deaths...if anything...MORE. The war masters in Washington will talk about mistaken targetting and collateral damage and the rest of that Orwellian rot, but that Iraqi family was directly butchered with the purposeful use of murderous weapons of mass human destruction by agents of the nation state that I (perhaps mistakenly) support with my tax dollars. That tax payment and the fact that I spend more time writing books and articles than I do actively resisting the murderers who run the American government makes me complicit. But then I haven't done anything on mine safety. For what it's worth, which is rather little on the broad stage, I write about the interconnections between empire abroad and inequality at home and would like people like "zubub" to consider that racist-petro-imperialist attacks on Arabs in Iraq costs money that could be spent on worker safety at home. It's human beings and workers (in places like West Virginia and Baiji) versus the plutocratic American power structure at home and abroad: Murder, Empire, and Inequality, Inc.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 06, 2006 10:50 AM
Let me just see if I understand. So you care about any stranger's death in the same way you would care about the death of a member of your immediate family or a significant other (which of course is now a pleonasm, since all others are equally significant to you)? So what do you do, attend funerals all day every day? Or maybe you won't go to any, your grannie, your mom? I'll tell you one thing, brother, I'm glad I'm not your brother, nor, my friend, even your friend. I wouldn't draw the distinction here between right and left; it's more between honesty or sanity versus hypocrisy or irrationality. (I've known lots of people on different ends of the political spectrum and don't find any correlations between left/right and caring/not caring. "You've got to smash omelettes to make an egg" was, after all, a leftist euphemism. May I ask, by the way, have you ever read some of the standard objections to consequentialism, say, Bernard Williams? I think you might find it interesting.

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Re: Worthy and Unworthy Victims: Twelve Dead in Sago Mine Versus Twelve Dead in Baiji, Iraq

By Sophphilo, Zubub at Jan 06, 2006 03:08 AM
So tell me, Paul: when your mother or father dies, do you not go to their funeral, since other tragedies somewhere in the world have much greater magnitude? Do you think it's racist or familyist to care about your own loved ones, or those that are closest to you, more than strangers? Do you think a society should have no special bonds of affection, fraternité/sororité, citizenship, common sentiment?

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