In the midst of all the fear and paranoia following 9/11, George W. Chimp somehow thought it a good idea to show The Terrorists™ how courageous we all were by getting out and going shopping, and actually went on TV, looked us all in the eye, and told us that. That crass, shallow admonishment remained seared into my brain for some months before finally emerging as a fully-formed inspiration in the wake of the release of the latest Star Wars “prequel” with its attendant marketing blitz of toy tie-ins and Star Wars-themed McDonald’s happy meals.

The original idea, “Pig Nation”, came from Abbie Hoffman’s famous remarks regarding the keep-up-with-the-Joneses, ticky-tacky suburban house-dwelling, station wagon-driving middle-class America of the late 1960s. It seemed an even more appropriate and apt description of the modern-day McMansion-dwelling, blockbuster movie-going, SUV-driving America of the early 21st Century.

This piece also appeared in Adbusters Magazine’s annual “big ideas” issue in 2005.

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Needless to say, the media environment was one of rah-rah flag-kissing zaniness. So, it was with little surprise that I opened the Washington Post’s World News section to find a steaming heap of blather that had to be some of the worst “safari journalism” I’d yet encountered, at least in the Post. With the predictable headline starting with “Lifting The Veil…” in what had to be the most cynical ever attempt to rope Liberals into supporting the brutality, the article attempted to indicate that one of the major “war aims” of the US was to restore “women’s rights” in Afghanistan, citing as “success” the fact that the beauty parlors had re-emerged from underground, and that the local video-rental shops had re-opened. Never mind that the Taliban were still forcibly keeping girls from going to school, or forcibly keeping them shrouded in burquas, at least the women of Afghanistan could go out and have their nails done, or rent the entire first season of Sex And The City on high-def DVD.

This piece attempts a more accurate portrayal of the state of “liberation” of Afghan women.

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Y’know what really got me about all this was how everybody in the public and the media seemed to forget all about the great honking wad of cash that the Bush Regime gave to the Taliban, early in the Chimp’s Presidency, ostensibly for the purpose of “fighting drugs” in Afghanistan. This was, of course, right about the time the Taliban were catching worldwide hell for doing things like destroying old Buddhist temple ruins and such.

Afghanistan, needless to say, was full of militant Muslim militia/guerrilla types who were trained by the CIA to resist the Soviet invasion back in the day, including an especially notable ex-CIA asset named Osama Bin Laden. It must not have occurred to the US “spooks” that folks like the Taliban or the Mujahideen see any outside invasion as a threat, not just the Soviets. Talk about more blowback than you can handle.

We first hit the streets with this one in early November, while the shit was just starting to fly hot and heavy here and in Afghanistan, and had an amazingly easy time considering the climate. Around Adams-Morgan, we’d just finished hitting a Washington Post box and were about half a block down the street when I happened to glance back to see a couple of women checking it out, and overheard one saying to the other, “yeah, we all know Bin Laden.”.

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Tragic though the event may have been, I got tired quickly of all the TV talkers howling about the thousands who died at the Pentagon and World Trade Center without once considering the USA was responsible for at least a hundred times as many over the course of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, ten years of Vietnam, the 1991 bombing of Baghdad, and the decade of sanctions against Iraq following Iraq War I.

Also — stop me if I’m wrong — but didn’t Bin Laden’s targeting of the World Trade Center classify as targeting on a “military asset” under the Pentagon’s own current rules? Was he really doing anything different from the US in Iraq Wars I and II, or the US/NATO action against Belgrade?

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