Last Straw

I was sitting right up the back of the bus this morning on my way to work, one of those buses where the second-to-back seat faces toward the back one. To my left was some other bloke and sitting on the seat facing us were two of route 29’s many goddesses, a joyful morning’s bus ride to be sure. Until, that is, someone farted. It was pretty average, nothing too offensive, but definitely male. There was a bit of nose-screwing and eye-shifting until one of the girls went for the window. I was attempting to ignore the escalating situation, continuing to read my book, when, out of the corner of my eye, I see the bloke shoot me a quick glance. And then another. I can’t believe it, the cheeky fucker. A smile breaks across my face at his audacity. I’m starting to laugh now, but its too late, the goddesses won’t have a bar of it. I’m left carrying the can. As I get off at my stop I catch a final glance; he’s smirking and for some reason all I can think of is Tony Blair.

According to FAIR the Smoking Gun Memo is going mostly unreported in the U.S., while Tom Engelhardt points out that a report by Mark Danner in the 9 June issue of the New York Review of Books, will be the first U.S. print publication to publish the full Memo:

That a “smoking gun” document about the nature of the war in the making has appeared in this fashion, not in Kyrgyzstan but in England; that no one in the British or American governments has even bothered to dispute its provenance or accuracy; and that, with a few honorable exceptions like columnist Molly Ivins, that gun was allowed to lie on the ground smoking for days, hardly commented upon, tells us much about our present moment.

Howard Zinn, one of the United States’ more sane citizens, touches on the origins of American nationalism, and how, when mixed with unbridled power, it has lead to one of the Yank’s more, uh, endearing traits: American exceptionalism.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early. When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible.

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on September 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation. We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

And Andrew Buncombe of the Independent reports on the AWOL crisis hitting the U.S. military:

As the death toll of troops mounts in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s military recruiting figures have plummeted to an all-time low. Thousands of US servicemen and women are now refusing to serve their country.