From the WTF Files
May. 6th, 2008 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unusualmusic_lj_archive1.I have no words I have been flabbergasted, horrified, angry as hell, stunned, helpless, all since I read about this yesterday.There is no way that I can write coherently about this travesty, this callousness, this exploitation, this...*flails*
but, luckily...Spencer Ackerman surely nails it in his blog post And then you wonder why they burn your buildings down
A taste: In a city consumed by chaos, war, occupation, corruption, intermittent and unreliable electricity, sewage overflows that you sometimes have to wade through, food shortages, public-health crises, you know what you shouldn’t build?
…luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad.
That’s all part of a five-year development “dream list” — or what some dub an improbable fantasy — to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a centerpiece for Baghdad’s future.
But the $5 billion plan has the backing of the Pentagon and apparently the interest of some deep pockets in the world of international hotels and development, the lead military liaison for the project told the Associated Press.
That sort of indifference to the suffering of Iraq is provocative. If I was Moqtada Sadr, I would use it as a rallying cry. Consider:
“When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time,” said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.
Your neighbors! Your actual neighbors, the ones whose country it is, experience shortages of water, electricity, fuel, cooking oil, medical care, security and more. The rise of this hotel compound will drain resources away from a desperate population...
Go read the whole thing. And click on the links. I don't think that I've heard ANYTHING about those sewage problems on the mainstream media, have you?
In addition The CarpetBagger Report points out that Even now — with violence in Baghdad again creeping up — the faint hints of the development plan have driven up the Green Zone’s already sky-high real estate prices.
Land that a few years ago was going for $60 a square meter on 50-year leases in the zone is now going for up to $1,000 a square meter, American officials said.
Ah. So we are now hell bent in pricing Iraqis out of their own capital. Gentrification for the WIN!
Oh great!!! Perfect!!! We blew Iraq to bits, completely destroyed their basic infrastructure, cannot guarantee security in our own Green Zone, put tons of people out of work, and what are our priorities? Building a fucking theme park to provide a buffer zone between the population and our obscenely expensive Embassy! Yep, I see NO REASON AT ALL why the Iraqis shouldn't resent us Americans. No reason AT ALL, why Cleric Sadr's message might be appealing to them. And considering the fact that they still can't stop attacks on the heavily fortified Green Zone, precisely HOW are they going to protect this monstrosity? With more US soldier's lives? Really?
2. And then, to top it off, read "The Journalism of Empire: AN exhibit in the LA Times" as diarist Lithium Cola dissects this LA times article Blackwater Shooting Highlights Iraq?US Culture Clash
Imagine a future in which the United States has been invaded and occupied by China. Imagine that Chinese forces speeding through downtown Chicago open fire in an intersection and kill your son, as he sits in the passenger seat of your car. Now imagine that the American Branch of the Chinese Government offers you money to make up for it.
Imagine that you say to the Chinese official holding out the cash, "I don't want your money. I want you to think American life is precious."
According to an article in the LA Times headlined Blackwater shooting highlights a U.S., Iraq culture clash, you are weird and hard to understand; the product of an alien culture.
...
BBaraa Sadoon had "60 fragments of bullet lodged in his abdomen":
Several times he asked about his car, which was shot up in the incident. Investigators told him it was still needed for the investigation. They wanted to know whether he planned to ask for compensation. He was miffed.
"I want you to feel that Iraqi life is precious," he said he told them.
It is an all-too-typical effect of war and occupation. The population of the imperial power -- in this case, you and I -- is told that the occupied people are strange, their culture too hard for we more civilized people to understand. The article both insults the intelligence of the reader and distorts and damages our understanding of ourselves and other human beings around the world.
Physician Haitham Rubaie doesn't want money either. What he wants above all is justice for his wife, a doctor, and his son, a medical student, who died.
He rebuffed attempts to have a donation to an orphanage made in his family's name. No amount of cash, no matter how well-intentioned, would sweep this under the rug.
"I don't want any help from you," he said he told them. "If you want to help the orphans, you give them money yourselves.
As readers, we are asked to think of Dr. Rubaie as culturally distant from us. A believer in a kind of justice we neither grasp nor would ever accept.
Our system is so different from theirs," said David Mack, a former U.S. diplomat who has served in American embassies in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. "An honor settlement has to be both financial and it has to have the right symbolism. We would never accept their way of doing things, and they don't accept ours."
Is this also an effect of imperialism? That we, the occupiers, come to think that "ours," our justice system, our sense of right and wrong, of just and the unjust, is so shallow and base? Do we evict our souls so we can stand the thought of the killing and torture of civilians in other lands? Do we reduce ourselves to imagining that we, in their position, would accept the money?
Note the emphasis on unimportant cultural accouterments. Iraqi "glasses of tea" are mentioned, and we are meant to understand that we, the readers, are not like that. We don't care about commiseration. We don't care about responsibility. We know nothing of these "glasses of tea":
But traditional Arab society values honor and decorum above all. If a man kills or badly injures someone in an accident, both families convene a tribal summit. The perpetrator admits responsibility, commiserates with the victim, pays medical expenses and other compensation, all over glasses of tea in a tribal tent.
A neighbor pays a neighbor's medical expenses and admits responsibility. They must be Martians.
In other words, the LA Times seems to think that accepting responsibility and making amends for wrong-doing is totally a quaint custom belonging to a backward, native Iraqi culture. After all, which Iraqi life is important, compared to that of an American? Ya'll need to click through read this to the end to catch the kicker.
but, luckily...Spencer Ackerman surely nails it in his blog post And then you wonder why they burn your buildings down
A taste: In a city consumed by chaos, war, occupation, corruption, intermittent and unreliable electricity, sewage overflows that you sometimes have to wade through, food shortages, public-health crises, you know what you shouldn’t build?
…luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad.
That’s all part of a five-year development “dream list” — or what some dub an improbable fantasy — to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a centerpiece for Baghdad’s future.
But the $5 billion plan has the backing of the Pentagon and apparently the interest of some deep pockets in the world of international hotels and development, the lead military liaison for the project told the Associated Press.
That sort of indifference to the suffering of Iraq is provocative. If I was Moqtada Sadr, I would use it as a rallying cry. Consider:
“When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time,” said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.
Your neighbors! Your actual neighbors, the ones whose country it is, experience shortages of water, electricity, fuel, cooking oil, medical care, security and more. The rise of this hotel compound will drain resources away from a desperate population...
Go read the whole thing. And click on the links. I don't think that I've heard ANYTHING about those sewage problems on the mainstream media, have you?
In addition The CarpetBagger Report points out that Even now — with violence in Baghdad again creeping up — the faint hints of the development plan have driven up the Green Zone’s already sky-high real estate prices.
Land that a few years ago was going for $60 a square meter on 50-year leases in the zone is now going for up to $1,000 a square meter, American officials said.
Ah. So we are now hell bent in pricing Iraqis out of their own capital. Gentrification for the WIN!
Oh great!!! Perfect!!! We blew Iraq to bits, completely destroyed their basic infrastructure, cannot guarantee security in our own Green Zone, put tons of people out of work, and what are our priorities? Building a fucking theme park to provide a buffer zone between the population and our obscenely expensive Embassy! Yep, I see NO REASON AT ALL why the Iraqis shouldn't resent us Americans. No reason AT ALL, why Cleric Sadr's message might be appealing to them. And considering the fact that they still can't stop attacks on the heavily fortified Green Zone, precisely HOW are they going to protect this monstrosity? With more US soldier's lives? Really?
2. And then, to top it off, read "The Journalism of Empire: AN exhibit in the LA Times" as diarist Lithium Cola dissects this LA times article Blackwater Shooting Highlights Iraq?US Culture Clash
Imagine a future in which the United States has been invaded and occupied by China. Imagine that Chinese forces speeding through downtown Chicago open fire in an intersection and kill your son, as he sits in the passenger seat of your car. Now imagine that the American Branch of the Chinese Government offers you money to make up for it.
Imagine that you say to the Chinese official holding out the cash, "I don't want your money. I want you to think American life is precious."
According to an article in the LA Times headlined Blackwater shooting highlights a U.S., Iraq culture clash, you are weird and hard to understand; the product of an alien culture.
...
BBaraa Sadoon had "60 fragments of bullet lodged in his abdomen":
Several times he asked about his car, which was shot up in the incident. Investigators told him it was still needed for the investigation. They wanted to know whether he planned to ask for compensation. He was miffed.
"I want you to feel that Iraqi life is precious," he said he told them.
It is an all-too-typical effect of war and occupation. The population of the imperial power -- in this case, you and I -- is told that the occupied people are strange, their culture too hard for we more civilized people to understand. The article both insults the intelligence of the reader and distorts and damages our understanding of ourselves and other human beings around the world.
Physician Haitham Rubaie doesn't want money either. What he wants above all is justice for his wife, a doctor, and his son, a medical student, who died.
He rebuffed attempts to have a donation to an orphanage made in his family's name. No amount of cash, no matter how well-intentioned, would sweep this under the rug.
"I don't want any help from you," he said he told them. "If you want to help the orphans, you give them money yourselves.
As readers, we are asked to think of Dr. Rubaie as culturally distant from us. A believer in a kind of justice we neither grasp nor would ever accept.
Our system is so different from theirs," said David Mack, a former U.S. diplomat who has served in American embassies in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. "An honor settlement has to be both financial and it has to have the right symbolism. We would never accept their way of doing things, and they don't accept ours."
Is this also an effect of imperialism? That we, the occupiers, come to think that "ours," our justice system, our sense of right and wrong, of just and the unjust, is so shallow and base? Do we evict our souls so we can stand the thought of the killing and torture of civilians in other lands? Do we reduce ourselves to imagining that we, in their position, would accept the money?
Note the emphasis on unimportant cultural accouterments. Iraqi "glasses of tea" are mentioned, and we are meant to understand that we, the readers, are not like that. We don't care about commiseration. We don't care about responsibility. We know nothing of these "glasses of tea":
But traditional Arab society values honor and decorum above all. If a man kills or badly injures someone in an accident, both families convene a tribal summit. The perpetrator admits responsibility, commiserates with the victim, pays medical expenses and other compensation, all over glasses of tea in a tribal tent.
A neighbor pays a neighbor's medical expenses and admits responsibility. They must be Martians.
In other words, the LA Times seems to think that accepting responsibility and making amends for wrong-doing is totally a quaint custom belonging to a backward, native Iraqi culture. After all, which Iraqi life is important, compared to that of an American? Ya'll need to click through read this to the end to catch the kicker.
