The dress-up image of the killer… and the real one

Arnold Schwarznegger had never killed anyone, but he played plenty of people who killed. He has been in many respects the masculine epitome of the killer… the killing machine… the facist ideal of the agonal man, the warrior… all on the screen. He was an image, as he has always been an image, even to himself. He sees himself reversed, so long as he preened in front of mirrors. Arnold is an image, an icon, something that only stands for something that has never really been real. During his campaign for governor of California, all he had to do was duck questions and smile into cameras until his face fatigued — no different really than what he’s always done, work his ass off building an image then parading it around in front of an audience more comfortable with appearances than substance.

If you Google News “Syria” today (December 13, 2005), you’ll get more than 1,400 stories. The overwhelming majority of these stories suggest that Syria was behind the murder of Rafik Hariri — the ex-Prime Minister of Lebanon, a multi-billlionaire, and the fourth richest politician who ever lived. Hariri was killed with a 1,000 kilogram TNT bomb-ambush against his motorcade on Febrary 14, this year.

The US, of course, already attempting to deflect blame for its serial politico-military failures in Iraq on to Syria, and seeing Syria as the last vestige of secular Arab nationalism to be expunged from the region (a goal shared by local US ally, Israel), rushed to implicate the Syrian government as the architect of the assassination.

This book review by Bruce Cummings is probably more valuable than the book under review, in uncovering the roots of both McCarthyite anticommunism and left-wing “stalinophobia.” It alerts us to the racial stereotypes we might not be acknowledging in our assessment of “news” from the Korean peninsula, and how that connects to the Cold War manufacture of stalinophobia – wherein Stalin and his actions are explained as “oriental.” The stalinization of leaders like Milosevic was stunningly effective at co-opting large sections of the non-socialist “left” in the US and building Serbophobia upon this orientalism. Just another reason this is a very interesting read.

This excerpt and link to David Pilgrim’s stark and horrifying account of sexual stereotypes attributed to Black women is another addition to the discussion of cultural conventions and their power to reproduce gendered power.

I am posting the link to this study in the hope that people will take the trouble to actually read it. The “produciton sharing agreement,” as explained herein, may seem too technical to engage us on the gut level, but it is extremely important. I especially hope Iraqi English readers will render this account available to other Iraqis in Arabic, explicitly to generate the opposition necessary inside Iraq to kill this staggering rip-off of Iraqi national assets by multinationals under the wing of the US state. This new PSA arrangement was produced with the intention to continue colonial exploitation without the “privatization” standard that generates nationalist opposition. It is exactly that opposition I hope to encourage by posting this.

Self determination for Iraq!

Does this look like a political calculation? Just like thousands of Iraqis, too, there is a mother, a spouse, a child somewhere, who would find out two days after this picture was taken that one of the people who shared their world no longer exists.

My son is being redeployed to Iraq in just over three weeks. It is his third time. This is encroaching on us at a time when I have many reasons to feel foolish and irresponsible… sometimes on the verge of devastation. All those mistakes, starting with my own military career, which led directly to his military service. It’s sometimes hard to know what to do. Sometimes we act out without thinking. Sometimes, we just cry. At loss, and the thought of loss, and the fear of loss.

Sometimes, we bite back the rage.

Here is a message from me to the Congress of the United States. There is no particular reason they will read it, but I need to say it. I am thinking about this; and others are too, especially those who wait and wish for the best.

To those who have contributed or thought of contributing to my attendance at the WSF in January, I regret that personal issues will prevent me from attendance. Contact me if you’d like your contribution refunded. If not, let me assure contributors that your generosity will be put to good use.

Please accept my apologies for the change, and my gratitude for those who helped.

All contributions to the blog and its author, however, for general work continues to be appreciated.