In Search of Schrodinger's Cat

The struggle contiues (and the stakes get higher)...

2011-12-05T15:03:00.000-08:00

Forced transitions

2010-07-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

As those of you who follow my Tweets and/or FB updates know, a new acquisition was welcomed into my world yesterday in the form of a new laptop. This followed a rather sudden and (briefly) traumatic morning of loss when my trusty iBook laptop decided to crap the bed after being moved over on my desk a few inches while running. The hard drive started making sad noises, followed closely by the pinwheel icon of death (familiar to MAC users), followed by repeated failed reboot attempts. After a brief period of wailing and gnashing of teeth, I realized that the time had come for the new acquisition. The biggest pain about it was going to be starting from scratch vis a vis web browser bookmarks, calendar entries, and music library contents. I viewed this as a major bummer, to coin a phrase dating back to the eighties, seventies, and even sixties.

Having previously committed time to Janet at KPFT for premium packing and mailing, I headed over to the station, where I could fulfill the commitment as well as get online and make an appointment at the Apple store to confirm the demise of the iBook and secure the replacement.

Halfway to the station (an amazingly straight shot down Studemont/Montrose over the course of a few miles) I was set straight in terms of the state of my world (which I thought had ben severely inconvenienced) by the sight of a fender bender involving an innocent motorist and the cab which had rear ended said traveller. I thought to myself "man, that cabbie's day has just begun to suck", not in a gloating way at all, merely in a way that put my seemingly earth shattering circumstances in perspective.

It helped quite a bit, and also brought to my attention the power that technology has managed to hold over us as a society in a very short time. I had a very palpable pit of the stomach feeling for the few hours between the time I new that the iBook was dead and I had the Macbook in hand and then at home and running. It was similar to the feeling that I have had on the few rare occasions that I have forgotten my mobile phone and been without it for more than an hour (OH MY GOD, WHAT IF SOMEONE (THE OFFICE) CALLS?!?!?!?)

Wasn't I swearing less that 10 years ago that I would never have a cell phone because of its essential function as an electronic leash?

I suppose that I'm still clinging to my fleeting memories of being able to roam away from home unable to be contacted in any way, yet realizing that the world is at a place where one is contacted via these mediums that you can have with you anywhere, and where one is expected to be contactable anywhere. It's actually kind of rude when you stop and think about it, but then again, maybe it is if you can remember a time when it wasn't the norm. I suppose this is the onset of what getting old and watching the world move on feels like (while still (begrudgingly) adapting). It also feels like it has a bit to do with things in my life passing on (Scooter, the compy of 6 yrs) in close succession, but that is probably something for another post, since this one has exceeded my attempt at brevity, which was inspired by Crystal, but has not panned out.

Microbursts from the Overactive Brain

2010-06-01T08:02:00.000-07:00

Having received a concerned email concerning the lack of activity here over the past eighteen months or so, I felt compelled to inform anyone who still may be checking in with any semblance of frequency that the majority of snarks and commentary can be found at my Twitter page. Initially created as a single conduit to bounce status updates along the line to Facebook (morphing into the new empirical Goliath with questionable motives (or not so questionable - profit is very transparent and the noblest of causes, right?)) and MySpace (thrashing and woofing a Stegosaurus's demise in the tar pits of online obscurity and obsolescence since its acquisition by the Murdoch information empire), I find myself utilizing it as a forum for random thoughts and information dissemination similar to what was done here in the past, albeit in a much briefer form (this entry, for example, is already 723 letters too long and is a mere breath in comparison to some previous missives).

So, if you're still interested in my thoughts on anything and everything, the Twitter feed can be viewed here.

The occasional post will still be found here, preceded by an announcement of some kind on the feed.

Thanks & Peace,

Phil

Arthur was right

2009-02-23T16:53:00.000-08:00

about many things, but chiefly about the daily struggle of people to survive in today's world being more than enough to keep them busy enough so as to preclude any definitive action in response to the inane, insane crap that our porportedly wise elected leaders are foisting upon us in the guise of policies geared towards the best interests of the common person.

A recent email from a surprising source:

It would appear that perhaps you have been lured to the dark side: a typical distracted American too wrapped up in the struggles of everyday life to be bothered with updating the postings on his blog. It's hard work, but it is important.

Yup! I checked your blog, only to find that the author has not checked it recently. I've been taking some classes, so depending how the work schedule falls, I can spend up to 87 hours a week in either work or class, with a maximum of six round-trip commutes which average 74 miles each. Say what you want about the money, I would rather have serenity and time to look at my feet.

In my copious amounts of free time, I have to ponder my country and the wise choices which have led our economy to circle the toilet. So, really, I have put all of my ponderances about the rest of the world on hold until the middle of May, but then there are all of the people who used to be my friends that I have not had time for either, so perhaps the international community is on hold until at least June.

Since leaving the Alley, the structure of a typical day for me, not to mention week or month has been radically redefined. Instead of trudging off to the same location every day to perform pretty much the same tasks over the course of weeks and months, my cell phone has become the key to gainful employment through the local office of IATSE, the stagehand's union here in the U.S. and Canada. Earlier last year I was working quite a bit with the Houston Symphony which gave me a little bit of structure, but that has gone by the wayside as the result of some jealousy, a blackball vote on my membership, and a decision to pass on the gig due to its glaring similarity to what I had just left at the Alley. I am doing most of the shows for the Society for the Performing Arts, but for the most part the bulk of my gainful employment is achieved by "working off of the roster" waiting for the phone to ring (or buzz in my case - old habits die hard). Most times the gigs are one or two day affairs, but one never knows when a call may turn into a little more. Case in point: the office called last Tuesday at 1 in the afternoon asking if I could be down at the Ballet for a load in. I was able to get down there to replace an electrician and figured it would be good for a few days of work. I transferred over to carpentry on the third day and am now on the show crew for the run. So what began as a potential two or three day gig has morphed into a three week stint. I've met a bunch of guys I hadn't worked with before, and gotten to work in another space in town.

It's a scary existence (especially in this day and age), but also an exciting invigorating one.

However, it affords me a lot less time to sit in tech, surf the net for news stories, get outraged, and write reflective blog posts full of long run on sentences. I'm still thinking on all of the events and personalities in our lovely world, just not purging as often as I'd like. I guess my priorities have changed a little since leaving the Alley. My posts and their frequency seemed to be an unintended result of being cooped up in a dark room for 12 hours a day over stretches of two weeks every two or three weeks between September and July for nine years. The time that I have now not spent working is filled with some of the things that I wrote about here: working at KPFT, albeit not in the capacity I initially anticipated, but I'm happy doing whatever it is they need me to to keep the place going - and playing bass with a band I joined in September, Fahl and Folk. And the time spent not working on those projects is spent dealing with life rearing its ugly head in the form of roof replacement (planned), furnace replacement (surprise!), and triangle trips on airplanes during the holiday to see the folks that otherwise would be relegated to phone calls every two or three weeks.

Lately my pondering has been turning in the direction of the lyrics to a classic from The Who ("Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...") when confronted with not necessarily reneged upon campaign pledges, but certainly re-conceived ones (declassification of White House emails, complete draw down of forces in Iraq) and also the concept of just when a faceless coldly calculating inhuman multi national corporation stops becoming a group of individuals that have the same base needs and wants and fears as the rest of us and becomes the entity (Sorry to disappoint you Arthur, but I still have to believe that we all have some things in common - like eating and sleeping and craving physical contact from another being). More on those and other conundrums later.

Meanwhile, check out Arthur's latest posts and help out if you can. Things over his way seem to have taken a dramatic turn the wrong way if we are to continue enjoying his eye opening unique commentary.

And above all, continue to ponder and talk and/or write about your thoughts and feelings on the state of your world with others. It's one of the only ways that things may improve eventually.

An Excursion

2008-06-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

Well, the first title for this particular post was to be "Dan Piraro gets it", based on this comic from about a few weeks ago, but alas, the comic syndicate or some bout of paranoia on his part prevents me from lifting a copy of the strip and linking to it from my photobucket account. I hope you enjoy the satisfaction that I felt when I saw the strip printed in The Houston Chronicle, no less, the only daily newspaper that (dis)serves the fourth largest city in the country, which is also known in some circles as the "Petro Metro".

There has been rhetoric spewed forth by activists and campaigning politicians who are focussed on the war in Iraq and its origins which refers to the fact that the M1 tanks and Humvees cruising around that country should be flying an Exxon Mobil flag instead of Old Glory. While this is amusing and inflammatory, it lacks irony due to the outlandishness of it as a concept. While Facism is technically defined as a nation state which is essentially controlled by corporate/commercial interests and entities, those entities will never let it be blatantly known (i.e. with the display of a flag on war vehicles or vessels) that they have this influence and are actively asserting it. Instead, they will use the cover of the nation state's political and nationalistic identity to conceal that influence and the degree of the corporation's role in the running of the country.

What I do find darkly ironic is the fact that another of the huge multi-national oil corps that are deeply embroiled in the run up to and have a huge vested interest in the ultimate outcome of the situation in Iraq (I really can't think of any other way to put it - war isn't appropriate any more, and all the other buzzwords - insurgency, conflict, uprising, sectarian strife, are all too narrow in their scope for me, even though 'situation' does have a sterile quality to it) essentially took their logo and name from one of the oldest and most common of military insignias signifying rank: Chevron.

On to the excursion from which this post gets its name:

A couple months ago I was able to venture up to Anna Lee's farm for an annual festival that spans several days around the beginning of May essentially celebrating Spring (although it's usually pretty much Summer by then here in Southeast Texas). This particular visit I was able to catch up with an old friend from the Alley who has also since moved on and is working up in Little Rock at Arkansas Repertory Theater as the Prop Head, Linda and I reminisced about some of the haunts that we used to frequent down on Galveston Bay where she lived when she worked at UH Clear Lake before the Alley. We commiserated about places that have since closed and she recommended one that I hadn't known about.

I decided to drive down to the Bay area and visit some of the sites of haunts gone and hopefully some of the haunts themselves. First stop was the bar we went to the most, simply known as The Point, a nod toward the geographic feature that it was located on, Morgan's Point in Barbour's Cut. A few years ago a trip down there was organized that I didn't make it to, but it was just as well since I got a phone call that day with the sad news that it was gone. Since I was in the general area I decided to swing by and got verification for myself: The site of many a beer and sun soaked afternoon was no more than a cement slab and the small pier that stretched from the patio out into the bay (I guess it's really the ship channel that far up). Folks were still using the pier to fish for Reds, which I found slightly comforting. Next was a tiny little bar by a small boat launch on an inlet bayou a few miles inland, called Mike and Edna's Red Lantern, if memory serves me correctly. Another cement foundation greeted me behind a metal white rail fence along the two lane highway right before the bridge over the bayou. I had to turn around and drive by it again to confirm that it was the right location.

With a slightly heavy heart about the loss of these local watering holes, I headed South to try and find the bar that Linda had recommended, Sneakin' Out. She gave me a few landmark locations and roads that would hopefully lead me to said bar (with a great name), but they were curiously far apart. I followed Red Bluff Road over many twists and turns only to find housing development upon housing development. I then continued down highway 146 to Baycliff and followed one of the local streets to the Bay. No establishment with the name that Linda gave me, but a couple interesting looking places, one of which I couldn't pass up called Junior's Hideout. It was essentially a shack with a covered concrete tarmac out back for grilling and sitting. The bar was in two sections and there was a great cooler behind it - wood doors with glass windows so hazy you could barely tell what beers were behind them. Along with the unique decor was the group of local folks in the bar. There were two women who I can only guess were mother and daughters with three young girls in tow. The kids were hurling plastic darts at an electronic dartboard with mixed success. After a little while the women shepherded the girls outside to the patio area. I inquired of the few others in the bar about the existence and location of Sneakin' Out. One of them was able to give me some directions that would take me further down the road that the Red Lantern was on.

Before leaving, I was treated to some local rivalry and angst between this fellow and a woman who had just returned to town. She came into the bar with another guy and they sat down for a beer or two. The first guy sat at the bar for a few moments and then went out back, only to return less than a minute later. He went right up to her and started talking about how great it was to see her now that she had gotten back to town since she had never bothered to say goodbye or anything after he loaned her some money and his leather motorcycle jacket. The exchange got more and more heated until the girl and the guy she came in with got up and left followed by a continuing stream of invective from the first guy. He sat down and apologized to me in case he had offended me, to which my reply was 'no problem, it's your and her business.' Not long after I thanked hime for the info and headed back North.

Wending my way back up 146 toward Barbour's Cut but going inland on Red Bluff road to Genoa-Red Bluff I found no Sneakin' Out (possibly another casualty of times gone by), but did Find the Genoa Cove Social Club, another unique watering hole with a colorful cast of characters. The highlight of this encounter was the combination of the number of golfers in the population of the Sunday afternoon crowd and the proximity (right across the highway) of the local landfill mound to the bar. As the afternoon wore on, the trash talking about how high anyone could drive a ball up the hill that day got more and more animated. One of the crowd went off to get his clubs so that the challenge could be realized. After about 45 minutes (during which there were many jibes about how his wife (who was apparently cooking steaks for their dinner) wasn't going to let him out of her sight once he got home (especially not with his clubs in tow)) he appeared and the fun began. The climax of the proceedings came when one of the guys drove a ball across the road with out much lift. It hit the far side curb and began to bounce around on the roadway, eventually making its way in front of a car and getting hit by it. The driver slowed and then kept going, only to reappear go in the other direction and turning into the bar parking lot. He got out and asked in an animated way what the fuck the deal was, only to be met with quizzical looks and questions about no one knowing what he meant and earnest denials that anyone on the patio had been hitting golf balls across the highway (in spite of the bag of clubs in plain sight. The driver sized up the number in the crowd, decided it wasn't worth it and got back into the car and drove off, much to the amusement of everyone there (and, truth be told, I couldn't see any damage to his car when he hit the golf ball or when he drove up).

Soon after I said my goodbyes and made my way back to Houston, unsuccessful in my quest for the bar Linda had told me about but satisfied with the bars that I had found and the people that I had met.

Arthur has asked the question several times about why most people are not more aware of what's been happening to their basic rights and freedoms over the past eight years, and more subtly over the past several decades. Chris Floyd has pointed it out in numerous posts (I'm going to paraphrase him here):

The typical American is too wrapped up in the struggles of everyday life to be bothered with staying informed and forming critical opinions concerning the machinations and high crimes of this administration and of this country's government and ruling elite over the past several decades, perhaps even centuries. The ruling elite even goes so far as to manufacture conditions that contribute to and further distract people from what is actually going on. Spending money they don't have with credit they aren't eligible for and they can't afford to buy crap they don't need and don't really want even though they've been momentarily convinced they can't live without it even though in less than six months they'll have either a) broken it and thrown it away b) relegated it to the garage or the attic or c) given it to charity for dispersal to a disaster victim that will look at it and say 'what the heck am I supposed to do with this?!?

Worry about money not paid back or focus on spending more than one can afford on equipment to play an elitist game that wastes more land than any other in its sprawling courses across the world are only two of an infinitismal number of factors that keep our eye off of what should bear closer watching: the fact that there a re a very tiny amount of people in the world who control a hugely disproportionate amount of the world's resources and power and will do whatever they can to keep and expand that ownership and power, including letting people die in natural disaster and premptively going to war with country after country.

I don't blame the people who are distracted. I'm one of them and am easily distracted myself - witness the drastic downturn in posts here since my self inflicted employment realignment. It's hard work to stay informed and form opinions about these things, but it is important.

D'oh!!! (Or: The guile of the Dragon and the seething frustration of American and Western Multinational Oil Barons)

2008-03-06T14:43:00.000-08:00

AP (via Raw Story):

Iraq and China are close to re-signing a $1.2 billion oil deal that was called off after the 2003 U.S. invasion, an Iraqi Oil Ministry official said Thursday.

Saddam Hussein's government signed a deal with the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. to develop the billion-barrel al-Ahdab oil field, despite U.N. sanctions that barred direct dealings with Iraq's oil industry.

Beijing was waiting for the sanctions to end when the U.S. invasion overthrew Saddam. The two countries restarted talks in October 2006.

"We are expecting that the next round of discussions, due to be held in April, will finish the negotiations," the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release information.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said it had no information about the talks.

Mmmmmm hmmmmmm.

Officials with CNPC and China's Commerce Ministry could not be reached for comment.

Really?

Meanwhile, in another part of town...

On Wednesday, another oil official said that Iraq's Cabinet has given the nod to the Oil Ministry to sign agreements with international oil companies to help increase the nation's crude output.

The two-year deals, known as technical support agreements, or TSAs, are designed to develop five producing fields that would add 500,000 barrels per day to the country's 2.4 million barrels per day output.

"But that's not enough! That sixth field in Wasit should have been ours as well!!!"

Sorry, chums.

In memoriam

2008-03-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

Breaking cover and revealing my geek/gamer roots, but one must give the appropriate props to one of the masters...

Courtesy of Penny Arcade:

Does anyone have any more questions?

2008-02-07T17:59:00.000-08:00

Because I sure as Hell don't.

BBC:

The CIA has for the first time publicly admitted using the controversial method of "waterboarding" on terror suspects.

CIA head Michael Hayden told Congress it had only been used on three people, and not for the past five years.

The Horses have left the Barn. Repeat, the Horses have left the Barn. Operation Horse Secure Padlock is no longer a viable option.

He said the technique had been used on high-profile al-Qaeda detainees including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

George W. Bush:

Mon., Nov. 7, 2005

PANAMA CITY, Panama - President Bush on Monday defended U.S. interrogation practices and called the treatment of terrorism suspects lawful. “We do not torture,” Bush declared in response to reports of secret CIA prisons overseas.

Almost Forgotten

2008-02-07T17:39:00.000-08:00

For all practical purposes, the event that has by all reasonable reaches shaped every single development worldwide for the past 90 years finds itself with fewer and fewer people that have an active memory of participating in it, albeit tangentially:

AP:

Harry Richard Landis, who enlisted in the Army in 1918 and was one of only two known surviving U.S. veterans of World War I, has died. He was 108.

Landis trained as a U.S. Army recruit for 60 days at the end of the war and never went overseas. But the VA counts him among the 4.7 million men and woman who served during the Great War.

One has to reflect on the apparent fact that we as a race of beings haven't really learned much from past horrors that we have inflicted on each other when the last vestiges of a generation that endured them are passing away like a wisp of smoke and all we can do is mention them in passing while focusing on persecuting similar and even greater horrors on the latest fellow members of the human race that happen to be in the way of "progress":

Seattle Times:

BAGHDAD — The U.S. military faced complaints Tuesday from its Sunni allies over claims that more civilians had been killed by American forces — amplifying tensions as the Pentagon tries to calm anger over an airstrike last week that claimed innocent lives.

The latest deaths occurred Tuesday when U.S. soldiers — acting on tips — stormed a squat mud-brick house in the village of Adwar, 10 miles south of Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. The predominantly Sunni area is home to many former members of Saddam's regime, and has been the frequent site of American raids.

The U.S. military said a gunbattle broke out after the troops came under small-arms fire by two suspected terrorists. It acknowledged a woman was killed and a child was wounded, but said it was not clear who shot them.

Two other men were killed and the military described them as insurgents.

But Iraqi police, relatives and neighbors said a couple and their 19-year-old son were shot to death in their beds. Iraqi police also said two girls were wounded and one later died.

How does that catchy phrase go about history and those who ignore it being doomed to a predetermined path of repetition?

WTF, Over?

2008-01-24T16:12:00.000-08:00

Ummmm, try swallowing this without choking:

A chilling report prepared by a group of top military commanders from the US and its NATO allies declares that the alliance must be prepared to launch a preemptive nuclear first strike because of “asymmetric threats and global challenges” posed to the West.

“The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction, in order to avoid truly existential dangers,” declares the report, which is titled “Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World: Renewing Transatlantic Partnership.”

Captain Patrick Ramsey: "Attention on deck. Von Clauswitz will now tell us who the true enemy is."

Lieutenant Commander Hunter: "In my humble opinion, sir, in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself."

--Crimson Tide, 1995

WOPR: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play."

--Wargames, 1983

The more countries and coalitions that profess to having the "right" to a first strike option when it comes to the use of Nuclear weapons, the closer the world comes to the vision of Robert Oppenheimer upon seeing the first successful test of an Atom Bomb in New Mexico in 1945:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

--Interview about the Trinity explosion, first broadcast as part of the television documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb, produced by Fred Freed, NBC White Paper, 1965

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of the nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima. The people of this world must unite or they will perish.

--Acceptance Speech, Army-Navy "Excellence" Award, November 16, 1945

The New Routine and a Trek North

2007-12-20T20:47:00.000-08:00

After about seven weeks, I can safely report back to all of you who follow the ravings and rantings that appear here that my decision which was chronicled in the last and possibly most lengthy entry here has been a rousing success so far. The day after my last day at the Alley (which didn't end until about 11:00 in the evening following the second preview of The Scene) I was called to work a Load In at Jones Hall, and work has continued to come my way pretty steadily since then.

As I have had a chance to place my skills on display at various jobs (ExxonMobil Energy Tech conference in the Woodlands, several meetings and events for El Paso energy and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (a certified sleeper) at the Hilton adjoining the George R Brown Convention Center and a few gigs at the union theaters in the downtown theater district my suspicions about the lack of knowledgeable and competent Sound Engineers freelancing here in town are being confirmed.

The latest gig I had at Jones Hall earlier this week was no more stressful or a hassle than a lot of the rentals that came into the Alley, and I treated it as such. It was for the Bayou City Chorale's performance of their holiday concert. The Chorale consist of a Gay men's chorus of about 80 and a Women's Chorus of 30 or so. As is the case with groups like this, it was not very well organized in terms of the scheduled structure of the rehearsal on Monday evening, but I rolled with what they did and as much as they got done I was able to tech and get a good feel for. What made the day interesting was that although I had worked in the building once before on the Load In and Out the weekend following my last day at the Alley, it had been in the capacity of a Stagehand, so I learned nothing about how the house sound system worked, where equipment was stored, and what the room sounded like. The Houston Symphony was loading out that morning, and when I got there around Noon the Symphony sound guy was still there and he was gracious enough to stick around for a little while and show me the three areas where stuff I might need was kept, how the console at the Mezzanine position patched into the house sound system, and he also helped me set up the console at that position. I'm not sure what would have happened if he hadn't have decided to take pity on me and lend a hand. Once things were pretty much in place and working (that's another thing, pretty much everything I plugged in worked the first time, which was kind of amazing, considering that it was a minor accomplishment when I was at the Alley, and I know that space and the system inside out by heart...) I was able to settle down up at the board, eat some sandwiched I brought (another thing I learned pretty quick--always take food to almost every call unless it's a strike, since you never know what's gonna happen in terms of the feces hitting the air handler as far as the schedule or client's wants/needs/demands go) and get a handle on how the choirs sounded in the room with the system I was working with.

After the show, the director and the guy who was acting as the SM were both happy and vocal in letting me know that, which is the bottom line on a gig like that. The facilities guy who hired me (based on a reference from a designer I worked with at the Alley last season who is based here in Houston--thanks, Garth!) was also happy that the Chorale folks were happy as well as being impressed that I was able to accomplish as much as I did on Monday without having to call him or Garth or either of the other sound people who have worked in that building in the past and essentially told me that he had as much work ing the building for me as I wanted to take, which seems to be the case (the building is owned by the city and is booked as much as possible to maximize revenue) between the Symphony and its many different performance series (Broadway, Pops, and regular season), The Society for the Performing Arts, and the various other organizations like the Chorale who are in there on a semi frequent basis.

This is above and beyond the work I've done for AVW, the Production Services company that provides all the A/V/Lighting services for corporate events at a lot of the hotels and the GRB Convention Center here in town. It's even more simple and much more mind numbing than the events at Jones Hall or the Wortham Center, but the constant state of flux is ever present, usually in a much more intense manner. What's great about working with AVW on the corporate side of things is the fact that I'm there to work in the room either setting up or taking down an event or operating it. If I need anything that wasn't on the original list of gear, if something is busted or if the client suddenly changes their mind about what they want or when they want it I can turn to one of the AVW staff guys and presto! it happens fairly quickly. This aspect of working through the local has been one of the most refreshing ones, the aspect of not being in charge, and being able to simply show up, be told what the project or goal is, accomplishing it, and then going away, never to concern myself with it again. One of the most grueling things about my work at the Alley was that I had gotten to a place where I thought about the job ALL THE TIME. When I was at work, I thought about everything that needed to be done (of course). But then I'd go home, and think about work. I'd go down to Galveston, I'd think about work. I'd go up to Annalee's or Amy's or out to Mike and Julie's and think about the job. I'd get on a plane and fly up to Philly (which is where I am right now--actually coming down into the lovely Tri State Area) and I'd think about the job. I wouldn't give up any of the years I spent at the Alley or any of the things that I learned there, but the last seven weeks have showed me how crazy things had gotten. My body has also been telling me how it feels about not being in a constant state of semi emergency mode--there are spates when I am really tired and it's not following any crazy period of work or anything--it's just my body saying "OK, we're going to rest now". It was especially surreal when mid November came around and I wasn't loading in and then teching Christmas Carol for the first time in twelve years. Refreshing, but surreal.

So, a success so far. Also, a chance to spend more than the requisite three or four days up in Philly for Christmas allowing for a few days to spend with my brother Brian above and beyond the Christmas day spent up at his house with our Mom.

Movin' On...

2007-10-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

Well, after a long wait between the notice and the final hours (8 weeks, possibly a new record in the annals of resignation...), here it is in all its glory...

The subject of my last post has become even more poignant in that I'll be gainfully employed at Jones Hall less than 12 hours after my last duty has been discharged here at the Alley (notes session for the second preview of The Scene) loading in the Shaolin Warriors show at 8 AM tomorrow morning.

This is not meant to be an indictment of anyone (past or present) in the Alley Organization. It is merely an explanation (to myself as much as anyone else) of the reasoning behind what is the biggest decision so far of my Adult life. I spent about 16 months actively considering the reasons, pros and cons of making this decision.

Initially, my decision was based on the premise that the next two and a half to three years would be very intense and time consuming ones in terms of the operations of the theater and the production department (especially lighting and sound). It was looking like it would go something like this:

After Carol opens this year, the theater kicks into high gear for about five months, culminating with the second of two musicals (Paris) opening after two and a half weeks of tech and two weeks of previews. Instead of taking a week or two to recuperate, the lighting and sound departments will be called upon to pack up everything that they have in the 615 building not in use in Paris and ship it off to one of three locations:

cold storage with limited or no access for the season produced offsite,

easily accessible storage for instruments/speakers and other miscellaneous equipment,

whatever office space we would be using for the 08-09 season.

This would take a few weeks, followed by another frenzied period of packing up everything that was used in Paris and hauling it off to the appropriate location.

Once all of 615 is cleared out and the building is ready to undergo its magical transformation, the grind of the offsite season will be upon us. I don't care how close the venue is or what type of reduced season we produce, it is still going to be a grueling experience, mainly because it is going to involve producing theater in a completely new and foreign manner. We're pretty spoiled here at the Alley in several ways. The facility is ours, and we can do whatever we want, whenever we want and answer to no one but ourselves. Not so wherever we end up. We are self encapsulated in our little universe on the 600 block of Texas Avenue. Whenever we need something, need to build something, it's right there where we can get at it in 5 minutes or less. At an offsite venue it may take someone five minutes or more to get to their vehicle and get on the road to storage or the shop or wherever they need to go.

In addition to that every member of the shop head staff as well as the production office will also be vetting and checking in on the work occurring back at 615 Texas. Clint and I will spend the most time over there, but Jason and Nancy would probably need to take some time away from the shop to make sure things in their world were going according to plan down there as well.

After a season on the road, the summer would (ideally) be spent by everyone moving everything back into 615, feeling out the new amenities, and figuring out exactly how we're going to initially approach producing theater in a totally new environment. This would be followed by the start of a full slate of high profile titles designed to celebrate the return of the Alley Theater company to it's renovated home. As new discoveries are made and new methods of doing things developed the additional layer of stress will no doubt make what would have been a challenging season in the old facility all the more daunting.

By the following May, several shop heads and staff members could conceivably be coming off 30 months of intense production and work without a significant break. Even if a break or two were secured for everyone, the things that potentially slipped through the cracks during those breaks and having to deal with them when they returned would offset any relief provided by the time off. And all the problems probably won't be discovered and solved by the end of that first season back in 615. I can confidently say that we weren't in a comfortable place in terms of producing in the Neuhaus until after about four seasons, and there are still discoveries that are being made.

I didn't want to pass the "point of no return", as I saw the opening of Carol this season, and get sucked into the maelstrom that would be the next two and a half years of my life essentially devoted in some form or another to the Alley Theatre. And once the renovation got pushed back a year, that maelstrom went from being 2-1/2 years to 3-1/2 years (potentially 4-1/2 with the postponement of all of the previously documented activity), essentially putting me in my early to mid 40's before I could look around and even think about doing something like what I've decided to do now.

Twelve years of regional theater at the Alley, and another four before that of freelancing between Philadelphia and New England have taken a bit of a toll as well. The schedule for me as the head of the sound department essentially was a flexible one that altered between a traditional five day nineish to fiveish week format during the period of time when a show or shows are in performance (after they have opened and are being presented for paying audiences) and a six day a week 14-16 hour day format during the period of time we called tech, but which is also known as production, where we are in the space with the actors and all the technical elements coordinating everything before an audience gets to see it.

This fluctuation made it hard to have any kind of stable consistent life outside the theater unless it was with someone from the theater (and even then it wasn't always guaranteed success, especially if the other person wasn't from the production/performance area), and we all know the saying about mixing personal relationships with the workplace. But it went beyond the ability on my part to maintain a romantic relationship while working in the production department of a major regional theater. There have been countless times over the past nine years since I became the department head where I've heard about something happening that I'd really like to attend but had to say "I'm in tech", or I heard about something that had passed (either in a 'that was really great' vein or a 'where were you?' vein, always having to answer, "I was in tech" with a resigned sigh. I'm kinda over that and want to be able to be a part of my friends' lives on a more consistent basis.

Another large part of this decision has been the direction that the theater has taken in the past few years, mainly artistically but also operationally. The artistic mission statement of the theater outlines commitments to "interpret existing dramatic works boldly and with insight," to "bring forth new writers and plays destined to be the classics of tomorrow", and also to be "the collaborator of choice for artists and arts organizations, learning from these exchanges and exporting our work to the nation and the world." While these are inspiring sounding and commendable aspirations, the Alley is still in Houston, which is far off the beaten path of the 'traditional' theater circuit. We haven't had a corps of resident designers since Greg Boyd took over as Artistic Director nearly 20 years ago, and the lofty goal of expanding the resident acting company to 24 members has proven to be a difficult one at best. Much of this can be attributed to the high and stringent standards and demands of Greg (rarely, if ever, is local acting talent tapped for roles larger than that of the 'spearcarrier' category and the decisions of what shows are slotted where in the season are largely dependent on the availability of well established and acredited designers, most of whom are based out of New York where they do the majority of their work), but making the commitment to base oneself in Southeast Texas has an effect on the type of work and the amount of commitments in the rest of the country that one can reasonably expect to secure in a calendar year.

Part of why the renovation has been put off so many times is that there has never been a physical plan in place that satisfies the needs dictated by this mission statement. The consistent philosophy exhibited by all the versions of the physical renovation of the 615 facility essentially state that the Alley aspires to be a self producing theatre with a resident acting company in a facility that can be utilized as a roadhouse, so as to be able to easily bring productions in from other theaters and to send original productions on to other theaters. Unfortunately, Nina Vance didn't have this in mind back in the late 1960's. This was quite on purpose. She had been producing theater in two locations previous to the 615 Texas building for almost 20 years and liked the kind of theater that was coming out of the restrictive atmosphere the Alley company found itself in from 1947- until 1966, when the 615 building was designed. She even went so far as to specify that the size and configuration of the Neuhaus Arena Theater replicate the Berry Street location, which it pretty much did, the exception being that the Neuhaus (pre 2001 Tropical Storm Allison and the havoc that she wrought) had on additional row of seats. Being that the 615 building is about as far from being a traditional roadhouse as you can possibly get (no fly loft, tension mesh grid, modified thrust stage, unconventional seating configuration in a rapidly widening arc that plays hell with sightlines) it does not lend itself to this model of theater outlined in the mission statement. It also does not lend itself to change very well, mainly due to the fact that the whole thing (with the exception of the roof) is poured concrete. Plan after plan has been proposed, drafted, vetted by the production and artistic staff, redrafted, and then shelved or shitcanned. One of the most frustrating aspects of the current plan and its one year postponement is the fact that the new management team is in the latter stages of learning this painful truth about the building as it exists now, which is, in its most basic form:

However the facility is renovated and/or refit, it will never be the ideal facility for the production model outlined in the mission statement. Nothing short of building a new facility in a second location or razing the current one and starting anew will achieve this goal.

No one likes to think about this option for a variety of reasons, all of them valid:

The building is architecturally unique, and while it is relatively young, historic preservation has caught on here in Houston and the proposed demolition of it would result in community heritage organizations protesting vehemently. This has been a concern even when considering actions such as changing the roof line to accommodate a fly loft as part of a renovation.

The construction of any new facility brings up the ugly possibility of a season or seasons when the theater would not be producing. This has been determined to be unacceptable due to the loss of staff over the period of non production and the loss of patronage and community exposure over the same period of time.

The fundamental identity of the Alley would be inexorably altered by the implementation of a new facility, be it a replacement or a second space.

The addition of another facility for production would alter the nature of the mission statement in that it would call for additional programming to justify its creation and existence. The space at the top of the Prairie parking garage was originally slated to be a third performance space. It was re-conceived as a new home for the administrative offices and shops after it was determined that the programming schedule was not going to be expanded to justify the existence of a third performance space in the foreseeable future.

My interpretation of the Alley's intentions as far as the programming choices are concerned has always been that, while they need to be accessible enough to generate significant revenue, they also are relevant to the current social, political, and cultural climate in the world. As recently as two years ago, this was occurring at the theater, with productions of works such as the World War I era anti war play Jouney's End, and the very poignant Pillowman, which highlights the direction that our society finds itself being nudged more and more every day towards a totalitarian police state. The past few years have seen the theater take steps toward more Vanilla, mass appealing, revenue generating programming when there are daily events in the world that require highlighting due to the fact that everywhere else (mass media, political parties) there seems to be an elaborate shell game being performed to keep the general population's attention off what is really going on and where we are headed as a country, a society, and a race.

I don't know if I'm over theater as a whole, but I like Houston and Texas, I have a lot of friends that I care about here, and the Alley is the only real regional theater that I can do what I do at the Alley in Texas.

I feel that there is more that I can be doing as a member of the Human Race in the face of the decidedly un-human practices being inflicted by a very small percentage of the world population on a much greater percentage for the sake of power and monetary profit, no matter what the cost in human life and the health of the planet's fragile ecosystem in it's current state (which is the only reason that we have been able to survive and evolve into the world presence that we are).

One thing I plan on doing is to start working with the Pacifica Radio station that is here in Houston, KPFT. I've been listening to it for years and am a firm believer in what the station is primarily about in the form of a mission to serve the community. I don't necessarily believe in the messages and causes advanced by all of the programming, but that is patently impossible, and it is also a primary tenet of the Pacifica format as a listener sponsored and programmed non commercial radio station. I have a fairly unique skill set that can provide me with a steady living here in town but should also be useful in helping out at the station. I'm not expecting to be slotted in right away as an engineer on some of the higher profile shows and will do whatever they need, but I imagine that once I get an opportunity to exhibit my proficiency in audio that they'll be plenty for me to do.

In demand...

2007-10-24T14:10:00.000-07:00

Evidently this change in work situations is going to work out okay. I'm not even out the door at the Alley and am already being secured for gigs through the IATSE local here in town. The Assistant Business Manager just called me a little while ago with something for me this Friday which, regrettably, I had to turn down since it is my last day at the theater. However, he also told me to block out several days starting next Friday for an event at the hotel over by the convention center. I think I'm all set in terms of all the requisite clothing items and tools for any sort of scenario, but I'm sure that there will be the occasional episodes of 'nope, don't have that, but will be sure to get it for next time' biting me in the ass over the next few weeks.

Very exciting...

Sing it, Huey!

It's never worked and never will...

2007-10-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

The 'Ultimate Horror' of strategic bombing was realized in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and Poland at the outset of World War II. "Strategic" is a term that has never really applied since the unfortunate law of gravity rules above anything else and the bomb will fall where they will.

It's never worked in the manner in which it was designed to (except when it was designed to do what it does naturally--terrorize and decimate the entire population of its target area) ever since, be it in Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Serbia, and countless other places, including the current targets in Iraq and Afghanistan and potential targets in Iran and Pakistan.

Chris Floyd over at Salon:

Monday, the Pentagon acknowledged a long-unspoken truth: that the bombardment of civilian neighborhoods in Iraq is an integral part of the vaunted "counterinsurgency" doctrine of Gen. David Petraeus. The number of airstrikes in the conquered land has risen fivefold since George W. Bush escalated the war in January, as USA Today reports:

"Coalition forces launched 1,140 airstrikes in the first nine months of this year compared with 229 in all of last year, according to military statistics ... In Iraq, the temporary increase of 30,000 U.S. troops ordered by President Bush in January has led to the increase in bombing missions. The U.S. command has moved forces off large bases and into neighborhoods and has launched several large offensives aimed at al-Qaeda ... 'You end up having that many more opportunities for close air support,' said Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Mueller, director of the Combined Air Operations Center in Doha, Qatar."

"'This could have been done through the infantry,' said Ibrahim al-Khamas, a Samarra city council member. 'But the American Army prefers the easiest solution, which is the air bombardment ... This airstrike was excessive, as usual, which led to the fall of civilians. People here are now carrying great hatred against the Americans after the raid. This airstrike turned their Eid to grief' ...

The New Tin Soldiers

2007-10-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

NY Times:

BAGHDAD, Sept. 27 — Participants in a contentious Baghdad security operation this month have told American investigators that during the operation at least one guard continued firing on civilians while colleagues urgently called for a cease-fire. At least one guard apparently also drew a weapon on a fellow guard who did not stop shooting, an American official said.

CBS:

BAGHDAD, Oct. 12, 2007

The first U.S. soldiers to arrive on the scene after Blackwater USA guards shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad intersection on Sept. 16, found no evidence that the Iraqis fired any weapons at the guards, the Washington Post reported Friday.

A report compiled by the soldiers concluded that there was "no enemy activity involved" and called the incident a "criminal event," the Post reports.

"It appeared to me they were fleeing the scene when they were engaged," said Lt. Col. Mike Tarsa, whose soldiers arrived at the scene 20 to 25 minutes after the shootings ended. "It had every indication of an excessive shooting."

CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq's prime minister wants private military contractor Blackwater out of his country after an Iraqi probe found Blackwater guards randomly shot civilians without provocation in a Baghdad square last month, an aide said Tuesday.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and most Iraqi officials are "completely satisfied" with the findings and are "insisting" that Blackwater leave the country, al-Maliki adviser Sami al-Askari told CNN.

Not withstanding my previous post about this happening when the Chicago Cubs make it to and win the World Series (not happening this year), if and when this happens the primary concerns that every freedom valuing American citizen should keep in mind are a: where are they going to go when they leave (they're going to be coming back here to the States to begin with) and b: what will they be doing there (your guess is as good as mine, but if the indications based on the duties secured by Blackwater in New Orleans after Katrina flushed out the majority of the more disadvantaged portion of the city's population (keeping them out of the public housing units that they still are rightfully entitled to) are anything to go by it can't be anything in the best interests of the average American).

The current administration and the support structure that keeps it in power know that the next election is a potential pivotal event. The results of said election must go in a certain direction in order for the benefactors of the current administration's policies (minimal to nonexistent tax rates for their main source of income, foreign policies that maximize profit for certain industries that they are deeply invested in (military-industrial, fossil fuel development, distribution and sale). In order for this to be achieved, the masses must remain pacified by (relatively) stable economic conditions and a seemingly calm domestic state of affairs, which means minimal public dissent and protest and NO BAD NEWS FROM THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA ABOUT ANYTHING EXCEPT HOW WE ARE IN DANGER FROM THREATS FROM TERRORISTS WHO ARE EVERYWHERE.

Pacifying and marginalizing civil dissent that goes beyond an acceptable level of intensity (read: when it starts to attract the attention of enough people to be a concern to the ruling class) usually falls to a police or military organization. But, if the local and state police are so overworked and underequipped to deal with it then a national force is usually called upon to quell the uprising, unless, the national force normally called upon to do so has already been called upon to fight in an overseas conflict and has been compromised to the point of near decimation. Then what do you do to quell the potentially polarizing protests of the administration and its policies? Why, you contract a private, corporate security force that is not answerable to any laws in the country that they're working in, even if it happens to be the country that they are indigenous to!

Peaceful Protest: What? A group of more than ten people are gathered to protest the administration's foreign policies?

CIVIL UNREST!!!

MUST BE QUELLED!!!

(SHOOT TO KILL!!!)

General Election: What? You've come to vote and you're not going to choose the ruling party on your ballot?

CIVIL UNREST!!!

MUST BE QUELLED!!!

(WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE!!!)

All I can say is that I'm glad I live in Texas, because I think they'll think twice before coming down here and doing any sort of messing with anything or anyone given the fact that everyone down here owns at least one firearm. I'm just as nonviolent as the next person and am in total agreement with Arthur and Chris in their view of physical violence as a non option in that it always sends the wrong message and sets the wrong precident, BUT, it seems to be the only language that these folks understand AND I'm not a big fan of rolling over for the trigger happy muscle of an illegitimate administration of outlaws who have no regard for the inherent rights of human beings, be they citizens of the U. S. or any other country in the world.

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are gunning us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

--Neil Young

My Rikki Tikki Tavi Impersonation, or: Staring COBRA Square in the Eye

2007-10-19T15:01:00.000-07:00

With my departure from the Alley rapidly approaching, the time has come to begin taking the many steps that cement the reality of it into place more and more with each one. Over the course of this week I've been gradually removing the vestiges and signs of my occupation of the sound office and recording/editing suite through the collection of wall and bulletin board decorations, desk clutter, personal tools and other items. It's getting to the point where the next few things to come down (my license plate collection that has been in residence for almost ten years, a huge Marillion poster) will hammer home the fact that I will be part of the elapsed history of the Alley in a little over seven days.

Another step which I just took was the meeting I just had to secure continued benefits coverage during the period that I will be accruing the necessary amount of contributed funds in the Flex Account administered by the stagehands' union here in Houston to allow me to enroll in the benefits plans that they offer to their members and employees (I guess that's what they call folks that work off the referral list but don't have cards) via COBRA. Always an eye opening experience, finding out exactly how much that stuff costs and how much employers pay out of the monthly premiums. I'm amazed that employers haven't gotten together and stood up to the health care industry about the ridiculousness of the rates that they are charging to essentially shuffle paper and work as hard as they can to deny benefits and coverage.

Somebody somewhere is making a shitload of money, it seems. Enough to bribe and cajole U.S. Congress members to vote against funding a government run independently taxed health care program for children. Enough, even, to kill for, I guess.

We'll see how long this lasts...

2007-10-07T15:00:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a one time mentor from my first few years at The Alley Theatre, Joe Pino, I've started an online comic with Strip Generator, a clever template for such endeavors.

We'll see how clever I can really be and how well I keep it updated.

This may actually happen...

2007-10-05T19:20:00.000-07:00

If the Chicago Cubs win the World Series:

Guardian UK:

BAGHDAD (AP) - The official Iraqi investigation into last month's Blackwater shooting has been submitted to the government and recommends the security guards face trial in Iraqi courts, and that the company pay compensation to the victims, an Iraqi government minister told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The minister said the report was issued under the signatures of al-Obeidi, Maj. Gen. Tariq al-Baldawi, the deputy minister of national security; and Maj. Gen. Hussein Ali Kamal, the deputy interior minister for intelligence and security affairs.

These are officials of the Iraqi government that the U.S. forces purportedly invaded the country and deposed Saddam Hussein to allow to come to power and govern Iraq as a sovereign nation. They are now exercising their right as an elected government in the investigation of the killing of a number of their citizens by agents of a foreign occupying power.

The cabinet minister said the report determined that 13 Iraqi civilians - not 11 as originally reported - were killed when Blackwater USA guards sprayed western Baghdad's Nisoor Square with gunfire Sept. 16.

GO-OOOOOO CUBBIES!!!!!

The Power of One

2007-10-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

Minneapolis, 2007:

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers."

Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

"Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.

That money would help him pay for his master's degree in public administration. It would help Anderson's fellow platoon leader, John Hobot, pay for a degree in law enforcement.

Chicago, 1919:

Eddie Cicotte: You said if I won 30 games this year there'd be a $10,000 bonus.

Charles Comiskey: So?

Cicotte: I think you owe it to me.

Comiskey: Harry, how many games did Mr. Cicotte win for us this year?

Harry: 29, sir.

Cicotte: You had [Sox manager] Kid [Gleason] bench me for two whole weeks in August. I missed five starts.

Comiskey: We had to rest your arm for the [World] Series.

Cicotte: I would have won at least two of those games -- and you knew that.

Comiskey: I have to keep the best interests of the club in mind, Eddie.

Cicotte: I think you owe me that bonus.

Comiskey: 29 is not 30, Eddie. You will get only the money you deserve. (Pause) Anything else?

Cicotte: No, Mr. Comiskey. That's it.

-Eight Men Out, 1988

It doesn't matter how you sell it...

2007-10-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

It's still preemptive war on a sovereign nation, and it's just as illegal as the one we started in Iraq four and a half years ago...

Sy Hersh:

In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran.

This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

And it will still yield nothing but more misery for millions in the region as well as inflaming an already volatile situation and risking the spread of it across seas and oceans:

A senior European diplomat, who works closely with American intelligence, told me that there is evidence that Iran has been making extensive preparation for an American bombing attack. “We know that the Iranians are strengthening their air-defense capabilities,” he said, “and we believe they will react asymmetrically—hitting targets in Europe and in Latin America.”

All of this is not based on hard intelligence, but, like the hollow bellowings of 2002 about WMDs in Iraq and the empty trumpeting about an Iranian Nuclear weapons program in the past few years (in the face of the results of repeated arduous IAEA inspections pointing to exactly the opposite conclusion), the illusion of intelligence, broadcast with such volume and in such panic stricken tones to the general populace (by willing allies in the media and the administration) that the average citizen who is accustomed to being spoon fed anything and everything that they conceivably would need to think about or pretend to have thought about and developed an opinion on until the masses are squarely behind action. Never mind what the action is, or who the action is focussed on, or what the secondary and long term results of the action may be, action must be taken immediately.

Scott Ritter:

65% of the American public aren’t antiwar. They’re just anti-losing. You see, if we were winning the war in Iraq, they’d all be for it. If we had brought democracy, they’d be cheering the President. It wouldn’t matter that we violated international law. It wouldn’t even matter that we lied about weapons of mass destruction. We’d be winning. God bless America. Ain’t we good? USA, USA! But we’re losing, so they’re against Iraq.

But what happens when you get your butt kicked in one game? You’re looking for the next game, where you can win. And right now, we’re looking for Iran for a victory.

This is exactly the wrong path for us to even contemplate going down, and the scary thing is that we've already started down it:

Ritter again, in conversation with Amy Goodman:

Look, we’re already overflying Iran with unmanned aerial vehicles, pilotless drones. On the ground, the CIA is recruiting Mojahedin-e-Khalq, recruiting Kurds, recruiting Azeris, who are operating inside Iran on behalf of the United States of America. And there is reason to believe that we’ve actually put uniformed members of the United States Armed Forces and American citizens operating as CIA paramilitaries inside Iranian territory to gather intelligence.

Now, when you violate the borders and the airspace of a sovereign nation with paramilitary and military forces, that’s an act of war. That’s an act of war. So, when Americans say, “Ah, there’s not going to be a war in Iran,” there's already a war in Iran. We’re at war with Iran. We’re just not in the declared conventional stage of the war.

If the U.S. goes into Iran in an obvious and invasive manner any shred of political, and moral capital that may exist for it with the rest of the world will disappear like a snowball melting on a hot stove.

The best way for us to protect our troops is to bring them home and end our criminal occupation of a land that was a sovereign nation until we invaded it and destroyed any semblance of government and civil institution in the name of regime change and imperialism, not by illegally invading another nation on the potentially most convincing and polarizing pretext of the week.

Same As It Ever Was...

2007-09-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

UPDATE BELOW 21 SEP 07 13:46 CST

Ah, David Byrne, you have never spoken truer words...

September 17th, 2007:

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government announced Monday it was ordering Blackwater USA, the security firm that protects U.S. diplomats, to leave the country after what it said was the fatal shooting of eight Iraqi civilians following a car bomb attack against a State Department convoy.

The order by the Interior Ministry, if carried out, would deal a severe blow to U.S. government operations in Iraq by stripping diplomats, engineers, reconstruction officials and others of their security protection.

The presence of so many visible, aggressive Western security contractors has angered many Iraqis, who consider them a mercenary force that runs roughshod over people in their own country.

Larry Johnson:

First problem. Blackwater does not have a license to operate in Iraq and does not need one. They have a U.S. State Department contract through Diplomatic Security. Instead of using Diplomatic Security officers or hiring new Security officers or relying on U.S. military personnel, the Bush Administration has contracted with firms like Blackwater, Triple Canopy, and others for people capable of conducting personnel security details. State Department is not about to curtail the contract with Blackwater, who is tightly wired into Washington. Plus, State Department simply does not have the bodies available to carry out the security mission.

Second problem. The Iraqi government has zero power to enforce a decision to oust a firm like Blackwater. For starters, Blackwater has a bigger air force and more armored vehicles then the Iraqi Army and police put together. As Spencer Ackerman reported, Blackwater’s little bird helicopter (an aircraft normally used by U.S. special operations forces) that was firing mini guns at Iraqi targets on the ground this past weekend.

I can only imagine how Americans would react if there were Russian, Chinese, Mexican, or French security firms running around the United States and getting into firefights in tough neighborhoods, such as South Central Los Angeles. We would just shrug our shoulders and say nothing. Right?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. This incident will enrage Iraqis and their subsequent realization that they are impotent to do anything about it will do little to support the fantasy that the surge is working. There are some Iraqis who genuinely want to run their own country. But we are not about to give them the keys to the car. Blackwater is staying.

Jeremy Scahill on CNN:

SCAHILL: Well, the in fact of the matter is the Bush administration failed to build the coalition of willing nations to occupy Iraq. And so, instead, the administration has built a coalition of billing corporations.

SCAHILL: Right now in Iraq, the private personnel on the U.S. government payroll outnumber official U.S. troops. There are 180,000 so-called private contractors operating alongside of 165,000, 170,000 U.S. troops. So really now the U.S. military is the junior partner in this coalition. The mercenary component of the private sector involvement has been totally unaccountable. They operate with impunity. They kill Iraqi civilians and no charges are ever brought against them, in Iraqi law, U.S. law, military law.

HOLMES: If you’re critical of what companies like companies like Blackwater are doing and how they are behaving, what’s the alternative?

SCAHILL: I think the United States needs to withdraw from Iraq. And I believe the U.S. government needs to pay reparations to the Iraqi people. We hear all of this talk of militias and sectarian violence. What about the militias that the U.S. has deployed in Iraq that are running around the country unaccountable? No, I believe — and I’ve spent a lot of time in Iraq — I believe the United States needs to withdraw and pay reparations to the Iraqi people. The arrogance of the West, toward Iraq is incredible. This is a civilization that’s been around for thousands and thousands of years. We think that we’re going to somehow bring the solution to Iraq? No, these are people that can very much dictate their own destiny and they should be allowed to do so, and mercenaries need to get out of Iraq immediately.

Democracy Now!, September 21, 2007:

In Iraq, the private security firm Blackwater USA is reportedly back on the streets of Baghdad despite an announced ban on its activities. The Iraqi government said it had revoked Blackwater’s license this week after its guards killed up to twenty-eight Iraqis in an unprovoked mass shooting. But a Pentagon spokesperson said today Blackwater is guarding diplomatic convoys following talks with the Iraqi government.

UPDATE:

NYT:

BAGHDAD, Sept. 20 — Iraq’s Ministry of Interior has concluded that employees of a private American security firm fired an unprovoked barrage in the shooting last Sunday in which at least eight Iraqis were killed and is proposing a radical reshaping of the way American diplomats and contractors here are protected.

In the first comprehensive account of the day’s events, the ministry said that security guards for Blackwater USA, a company that guards all senior American diplomats here, fired on Iraqis in their cars in midday traffic.

The account says that as soon as the guards took positions in four locations in the square, they began shooting south, killing a driver who had failed to heed a traffic policeman’s call to stop.

“The Blackwater company is considered 100 percent guilty through this investigation,” the report concludes.

More Changes

2007-09-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

Glenda has decided to mothball The Tude. I understand her reasons, but am still saddened by the short life that it lived. It was a good idea, and I enjoyed and am proud of the pieces I wrote for it.

On other fronts, the Zero Day is fast approaching when I will bid the Alley farewell and begin the next chapter of my life here in Houston--at least for the foreseeable future. You never know where or when things are going to take you. An exhaustive post about the process of coming to the decision and some of the reasons as well as what I'm looking toward doing next is in the works and will be forthcoming in mid October.

Meanwhile, I'm beat. I mowed and edged the lawn this morning (something I enjoy doing) and then went over to a friend's house to finish some electrical wiring I was doing for them in their garage, and then went to kickball practice after that. The theater has a team that I just started playing for, and the championship tournament starts on Monday. The team hasn't won a game all season, and the prospects of winning the first round game are low (it's against one of the best teams in the league), but it's fun and that's pretty much all that counts. The gist of all this is that I'm going to turn off the college football game that's on (Boston College mauling Georgia Tech--sorry, not Earth shattering to me...) and hit the old hay so that I have plenty of energy for viewing the football that counts tomorrow.

Understanding (or trying to)

2007-09-04T20:38:00.000-07:00

NOTE: UPDATE BELOW

Raw Story:

Some critics have accused Republican leaders of orchestrating a witch-hunt against Craig, forcing him out in the knowledge that Idaho's Republican governor can fill his Senate seat temporarily with another party member.

Another Republican, David Vitter, has apologized after his name was found in the phone book of a Washington escort service run by the "DC Madam." But the Louisiana senator has not come under nearly as much pressure to resign.

Louisiana has a Democratic governor, and Vitter's departure would strengthen the Democrats' razor-thin Senate majority over the Republicans of 51-49.

Gillespie denied charges of double-standards levied against the Republicans over their handling of Craig, an ardent opponent of gay marriage and an outspoken critic of sexual improprieties by other politicians.

"The fact is that Senator Craig pled guilty to a crime and, therefore, was convicted of a crime," he said.

"Senator Vitter has not been charged with a crime or let alone convicted of one. So there's a pretty big distinction here."

Also being left conspicuously alone in his circumstance is Ted Stevens. Stevens is in pretty serious trouble over the contractors whom he engaged to do work on his Alaska home:

The project, which more than doubled the size of the dwelling, was overseen by Veco CEO Bill Allen, who two months ago pleaded guilty to bribing state lawmakers and agreed to cooperate with authorities.

Stevens's seat would also not be a shoo in to be held by the GOP if he were forced to step down, but that seems to me to be too convenient an explanation. Call me cynical (because I am), but Vitter's and Stevens's infractions are right in line with time old traditions in politics from further back than when the Republican party was the Republican party: Whoring with FEMALES and dealing with crooked businessmen to save some money. Not quite the same as being caught in a sting (whether it was entrapment or a larger part of a 'witch hunt' is up for debate) soliciting a Male on Male sexual encounter in a public place, given the mindset of the average Republican constituent and the general message that has been espoused by the Party concerning Gay rights and "Family Values', per se.

Speaking this evening on The Monitor, Pokie interviewed author and Gay historian John D’Emilio about the past week that Craig has had, arguably one of the roughest weeks in history for any U. S. politician in any circumstance. Not only was he completely abandoned and thrown to the wolves by his own party, but the GLB community was deafeningly silent.

It got me to thinking about a post I wrote for the 'Tude earlier this week on this subject. As a straight male I don't know how qualified I am to be writing in depth analysis (if this can be qualified as such) on the subject, but I do know that I have a greater than average amount of professional and social contact with gays and lesbians (working in the entertainment business and having and above average number of friends who are or were in the process of figuring out that they are gay in high school and my Unitarian Church youth group) and therefore am more aware of issues that directly impact the community. I opened the comments section of the post up with a question about why it's so hard for one to accept one's sexual orientation and move on from there.

An innocent enough query, but one that is likely to get me pretty severely dressed down (pun intended?) for my ignorance and nerve at asking such a question when I have absolutely no frame of reference.

In order to frame the environment that Craig grew up in, E'Milio spoke of the Idaho witch hunt perpetrated against homosexual men in the 1950's when Craig was a young man. Police in Boise, not a large city to begin with, rounded up 1000 men and questioned them about places they frequented and people they associated with. Men left Idaho, some committed suicide. D'Emilio grew up in New York at the same time, and spoke of it as one of the "Gay Capitals' , but reiterated that even there there was nowhere for him to go and be with people like him. Idaho must have been a thousand times worse.

Craig has been taken to task for scolding Bill Clinton for his conduct during his Presidency, as have hundreds of other politicians, Republican and Democrat. In addition to riding on the coattails of public outrage over the episode (artificially manufactured by the media to a large extent) it seems to me that much of this condemnation came out of the fact that it happened WHERE it happened in contrast to the nature of the event. The fact that Clinton initially lied to the his family, the public and Congress about it didn't help matters much either. But if he had had his encounters with La Monica elsewhere, the prospect of their degree of sensationalism and even newsworthiness probably would have been greatly diminished. Any improper behavior that takes place in the Oval Office seems to take on an additional allure and weight. The Republicans would have jumped just as eagerly and viciously if he had been caught taking a bribe, or anything else, IF IT HAPPENED IN THE OVAL OFFICE. For Craig, the condemnation and the nature of it ("He's a nasty, naughty boy") were specifically designed to fall in line lockstep with the Party dogma concerning infidelity and impropriety. Based on the fact that he probably started denying his own sexual identity at such a young age in Idaho probably made denials and "hypocritical" declarations very easy for him.

D'Emilio also pointed out that to people my age and younger, the contrast between the treatment that Gay issues and Gay rights get today is vastly different than twenty or thirty years ago, when he and Craig were just coming into their own agewise, although their sexual identity and orientation were apparent to them years before that. Even twenty five years ago, when Craig was embroiled in a page scandal not unlike the one that brought Mark Foley down last Fall, he had to vehemently deny not only the accusations of the scandal but any hint of a notion that he may have any homosexual inclinations. This was 1982, when AIDS was still just a whisper behind closed doors (not even referred to as AIDS, but as "The Gay Cancer").

De'Emilio was by no means condoning Craig's behavior but rather, making an attempt to shine some light on the terrifying and crushing isolation that this man, like many others like him, has had to endure on a daily basis just to function in the world on a quasi-normal basis. Even as a respected (until now) elected official, loved husband and family man, he was faced with this loneliness that had no outlet for relief (in the form of the fellowship of others like him) because he could reveal it to no one. Certainly a degree of the severity of his circumstances were a result of his own life choices which necessitated various modes and methods of deception and misinformation about who he is as a person, but that couldn't diminish the reality of the isolation.

I recently viewed two films that I had been meaning to see ever since they came out but didn't catch in the theater (not exactly a result of slackerdom: my work necessitates me sitting in a dark room and watching a story unfold in front of me on a stage (usually repeatedly), so I am seldom inclined to pay 8 or 10 dollars to sit in a dark room and watch a story unfold in front of me on a screen) But I digress. The two films in question were A History of Violence and the new Casino Royale. Both good films in their own right, and both concerned in large part with major characters willfully living lives full of contradictions and inaccuracies. Why? There had to be more to it than escape from a past as a mob hit man which almost certainly would have ended in violent death or the maintenance of cover as a 00 agent in Her Majesty's Secret Service, and so must there have had to have been a reason for Larry Craig to live his elaborate life of lies which only now has come crashing down around him. Acceptance in a world that he thought would eliminate his desires? A need to be as close to those that he most admired? This is the aspect of this issue that I'm least familiar with and am most shaky putting forth theories on, so I'll leave it there.

I like women, I'm not insecure about how much of a man I am (because I don't feel the need to project my masculinity on anyone who comes within five feet of me), and I am pretty comfortable with who I am as a Human Being. These three things seem to be hotbed issues that many men feel they have to prove over and over again in today's society, and if they aren't proven daily, then your status as a man is questioned, and therefore your worth as a Human Being is questioned. I'm sure that working in the Arts for as long as I have has colored my views about how easy it is to fit in and be accepted by professional peers, but I certainly don't regret it. If anything, it has given me that chance to be a more well rounded individual since it has exposed me to a variety of personalities. It certainly has gone a long way to giving me the outlook that motivated me to think about what D'Emilio said (and to listen to the show that he was on and the station that it was on, come to think of it) and to spend the time I have to write this post. It's taken me longer than any other post I've written (I usually have an idea and slam some stuff out and publish within a few hours--I'm sure it shows sometimes), but with this one I had to put stuff down and walk away several times. Hopefully it will rub of on future posts and they will benefit from it by being a little more polished, but, who knows? I may go back to the old slam 'em out mode tomorrow.

Larry Craig may have become a politician for the wrong reasons and lived the majority of his life as a huge falsehood. He may still be trying to pitifully maintain the illusion of that falsehood with the help of a few friends and his family, but he is still a human being who has been abandoned by most people he thought he could count on. He has entered a new chapter of the story that is his Hellish life of denial and shame. Deserved or not, I kinda feel sorry for him.

UPDATE 5 Sept 07 09:30:

Many of you are probably wondering what I was smoking when I posted this in light of these recent developments. But it just reinforces my point about the pitiful nature of Craig and the long stretch of meaningless existence he sees his remaining life as being if he is indeed forced to leave the Senate. And it would appear that he (along with one other spineless self annointed fixture in the Capitol) is the only one who thinks he can make a serious attempt to do this...

Unjustifiable Means

2007-09-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

I just posted a rather long tude over at the 'Tude dealing with the latest technological innovations that the FBI has implemented in their wiretapping program.

We're getting ready to open John Patrick Shanley's Doubt at The Alley. Without giving too much away, it details the struggles of a Nun at a Catholic school to remove a perceived (by her) threat to the students by whatever means necessary. At the very end of the play she makes a terrifying declaration while attempting to justify her actions to her protege, a younger and much less life experienced Nun:

"In the pursuit of wrongdoing, one steps away from God."

Much of what has been going on in the past six years in the pursuit of wrongdoing and terrorism on the part of our government has been done while "stepping away from the Law, Justice, and Human Decency."

We must never forget that no matter what the deed being responded to and how dire the threat, the ends never justify the means. Acting otherwise only leads to reducing oneself to the same level as the wrongdoer, or worse, even lower.

Fault Lines

2007-08-31T17:10:00.000-07:00

I've been posting daily over at the 'Tude, but the treatment I wanted to give this isn't really in line with what Hill and the gang are going for over there. So, for your consumption:

The Danziger Bridge Killings: How New Orleans Police Gunned Down Civilians Fleeing the Flood

Democracy Now!:

On the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we take a look back the Danziger Bridge killings. Seven police officers been indicted for opening fire on two African American families on the Danziger Bridge days after the storm, killing two people and wounding four others. At the time, the official story was that they gunned down snipers. Now the question is why they shot at two families fleeing the flood.

Last December, seven police officers were indicted for killing two people walking across the bridge. They were from two families, the Bartholomews and the Madisons. James Brisette, a young man who was a friend of the Bartholomews, was killed by seven bullets in his back and legs. Susan Bartholomew's arm was partially blown off. Her daughter and husband had three gunshot wounds each. Their trial is ongoing.

Ronald Madison, a forty-year-old mentally disabled man, was one of the two people killed. He was walking across the bridge with his older brother Lance, when, according to police, he was shot in the back and died. Lance was initially arrested and jailed for attempting to murder the police officers. He was later released after a grand jury cleared his name.

Dr. Rommel Madison is the brother of Lance and Ronald Madison. He is a dentist, and he testified this week at the International Tribunal on Hurricane Katrina that was put together by the People’s Hurricane Fund.

DR. ROMELL MADISON: My brothers were seeking help to get to safety on the east side of the Danziger Bridge by officers on the west side, and it hadn’t flooded, so they had refuge there. But they didn't have food or water, so they would go to the east side, where everyone was being picked up to be brought to safety to the dome and to the Convention Center.

On the day of September 4th, there was a family at the foot of the bridge, a husband, wife, daughter, three small kids and a teenager. During that time they were on the bridge, they noticed a rental truck, a moving van-type-sized truck, about a mid-sized van. It pulled up where the family was. They exited the truck. About seven men exited the truck, and they opened fire on the family at the foot of the bridge. One individual was killed. Everyone was wounded, but one of the children. The children's ages were from fourteen to nineteen.

After seeing that, they started retreating back to the westbound side of the Danziger Bridge back toward my office again. And at that point the police officers opened fire on them. They wounded my brother Ronald in the back twice. My brother Lance was able to get him to the other side of the bridge and put him on the grass, and then he ran for help. When he did return, he was relieved to find the National Guard and the state police, and he was telling them what happened.

At that point, the police officers walked up, and then they finally disclosed that they were police, because when they originally got out of the van, they were dressed in shorts, T-shirts, just plain shirts. They never identified themselves as being police. And to see them open fire on a small group of individuals, African American individuals, at the foot of the bridge, they just figured they were out to, you know, go hunting and shooting and killing people.

[snip]

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to be done now? In the case of your family, the police officers are going on trial, Dr. Madison. Your family has also sued?

DR. ROMELL MADISON: My mother and brother have. But presently, we're still faced with the uphill fight with the judicial system. OK, when the indictments were handed out to the police on December 28th of ’05, they were allowed to turn themselves in January 2nd of ’06, so that they could have this time to spend with their families.

The second thing that the judge did that I feel was incorrect was that he provided bail for first-degree murder. Nowhere in the United States is anyone provided bail for first-degree murder. These individuals were provided bail. One of the officers quit and was allowed to move to Houston, Texas, to leave the state. And that's unheard of also. They were supposed to be on house arrest, and they shouldn't have left -- he shouldn’t have gone anywhere.

Third, they were allowed to go back to work as police in the police department, which is really a tragedy to the public. They’ve fired police for second-degree battery, let alone for being charged for first-degree murder, and allowed them to come back to work as police officers.

The last thing is that the violation of the grand jury testimony, too, by giving it to the defense attorneys for the police, to allow them to find out what’s [inaudible] in it and whether it would have a means to try to have the charges dropped against their clients. Now, that is another violation of civil rights injustice, because no one's allowed to view the grand jury testimony. If that was the case, they could have let the defense attorney decide whether or not they should be charged or not.

Everything has really been the complete opposite of what should be. And finally the judge -- there was a motion for the judge to recuse himself. I don't think just because of this, but because of his air of impropriety that was given in his disclosure. So at this point, that's what we're all working on: his recusal from the case and trying to obtain a judge that will deal with everything strictly by the book and fairly.

ROSANA CRUZ: And just to clarify, the judge on this case is a close friend of the police department, has three staff members who have direct family relationships or business relationships with the defense attorneys.

If and when the state of affairs in this country deteriorates to the point of Martial Law being declared, which Arthur thinks may be closer than one is comfortable thinking about, the social structure will likely show immediate signs of fracture along the lines of race and economic status. It is not difficult to imagine a bloodbath the likes of which would make the above chronicled events look like a schoolyard shoving match.

The fault lines that such a fracture would follow exist today and have existed for hundreds of years. No amount of military defeats or proclamations or legislative acts have been able to alter the deep seated traditions and beliefs of white people towards people of color, specifically African Americans. Part of it is the resistance toward governance by a body thousands of miles away that has no perceived frame of reference to the local circumstances, but the greater part is the deep seated human tendency to continue to vilify what has been viewed as that which is not a part of us, past and present and future, simply out of the fear of change. Sadly, the circumstances that will most likely bring upon an escalation of this behavior are also the greatest opportunity for the dismantling of those attitudes and barriers.

The choice to continue down the path of separation and marginalization through intimidation and violence is easier than the uncertain choice to cross the barriers and engage. A very unique set of circumstances need to fall into place in order for this to happen and they need to be met with an open eyed attitude. This is not usually the mindset people are operating in when faced with the daunting scenarios found during a large natural (or man made, in the case of the Levees rupturing) disaster or a police or militarily enforced social regimen (which is what Martial Law essentially is.)

One would hope that we have evolved far enough that there are people whose cooler heads would prevail in some situations like this, as they did in the case of Houston Mayor Bill White overruling Harris County Judge Robert Eckels in the matter of accepting the bulk of evacuees from New Orleans two years ago. Unfortunately, the possibility of examples of the conduct detailed above cannot be ruled out.

Their Loss=Our Gain

2007-08-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

John McClain:

Looking back at March 22, the day Matt Schaub was acquired by the Texans, I'll never forget the haunting words of one member of the Falcons organization: "We just traded the wrong quarterback."

Little did he or anyone in Atlanta understand just how prophetic those words would become.

Before the Texans made the trade, Schaub got strong endorsements from two coaches Kubiak knows well from working with them for so many years at Denver.

Bill Musgrave, who coaches quarterbacks at Atlanta, tutored Schaub last season and at the University of Virginia. Alex Gibbs was a Falcons assistant during Schaub's first three years. They told Kubiak that Schaub was just about everything he wanted in a quarterback and that he would make a smooth transition into the Texans' system.

As a Texans fan, this is a development of such proportions that one tends to get a bit giddy at the prospect of the team's performance in the next few years. It also is an example of such bitter irony for the Falcons organization and their fans that you can't help but feel some empathy. How can you giggle behind a bunched hand or chuckle to yourself mentally at the man who gets clocked by a falling safe in the middle of a meadow?

While the statement from the Falcons representative quoted above does indicate the knowledge of potential issues with Vick both on field and off, there can't be any way of foreseeing the firestorm that is in motion and will most likely end in jail time and the end of his NFL, if not his entire professional football, career. However, the statement seems to cut in another direction, this one strictly football related.

The running quarterback's days are numbered. This is not to say that we are looking at a return of the proliference of the classic immobile pocket passer in the NFL, but more to the passing quarterback with good pocket instincts--the ability to feel pressure and avoid it long enough to gain a small amount of yardage or avoid a large loss fifty percent of the time or more. Yes, this is a lot to ask, but players can be developed (and can develop themselves) to meet this criteria.

The classic running quarterback (notice I didn't say 'scrambling') is a dying breed mainly due to his own attractiveness in two ways: the potential for yards and touchdowns both through the air and on the ground, and the potential gate and television revenue generated by an exciting player who can potentially provide an amazing play worthy of Sunday night highlights and play of the year accolades at every snap of the ball. Based on the value attached to those two attractive possibilities, owners such as Norman Braman, Zygi Wilf, and Arthur Blank secured running quarterbacks Randall Cunningham, Dante Culpepper and Vick with huge contracts and signing bonuses.

However, this strategy soon came to reveal itself as a sharp double edged sword. Along with the gate value and improvement that this new generation of QBs brought to the team, it also exposed them to more serious types of injury more often than the classic pocket QB. Another, perhaps even more serious issue that reared its ugly head was the matter of conditioning that showed itself in the tendency of these quarterbacks to fade a little or succumb to more minor injuries that they might have been able to play through earlier in the season in the last quarter of the season or (worse) during the playoffs.

This has proven itself to be a recurring factor in the late season and playoff performances of the Eagles in the eighties and nineties with Cunningham, and again here in the aughts with McNabb, the Vikings in the nineties with both Cunningham and Culpepper, the Steelers in the late nineties with Kordell Stewart, and the Falcons in recent years with Vick. Contrast that with the QBs who have made it deep into the playoffs and to the Super Bowl and won it such as Brady, Manning, Warner, Elway, Favre, and Aikman. The only two examples of classic running QBs who made it to the Super Bowl are McNair with the Titans in the 1999 season, and you can hardly pin the outcome of that game on his ability--the entire team played their hearts out and almost snatched that game out from under Kurt Warner and Dick Vermeil's noses, and McNabb with the Eagles two years ago--and that loss can be attributed more to the questionable late game play calling of Andy Reid than McNabb's performance, the inane comments of Terrell Owens not withstanding.

You have to think that GM's and coaches pay attention to these results and act accordingly. David Carr was an above average QB at Fresno State, but the NFL isn't the WAC and the schedule is a bit more intense than what he experienced in college. The sieve of an offensive line that he had to work with for most of his career also had a lot to do with it, but McClain also makes these good points:

Schaub gets rid of the ball fast. He's been sacked once in three games. Kubiak wants the Texans to have fewer than 30 sacks, which would be a franchise-record low.

Schaub feels pressure and knows how to sidestep it. Sage Rosenfels, who's capable of being a starter in Kubiak's system, also has that pocket presence coaches talk so much about.

Schaub makes good decisions. In other words, he doesn't throw the ball to the wrong spot or step into sacks. He's authoritative in the huddle, it's clear he's in charge, and no one else talks.

Schaub doesn't say the wrong thing. He listens and soaks in everything he hears that might benefit him. He doesn't make excuses. He takes the blame whether he deserves it or not. He accepts criticism. When he makes a mistake, he gets angry at himself, not anyone else, and vows not to make the same mistake again.

Sorry Falcons. You pay your money, you take your chances...

Just leave 'em alone!

2007-08-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

Houston Press:

Freaking ferrets. They're insidious. Their cuteness conquers all. It makes people forget the high price of keeping them, measured in both vets' bills and time spent entertaining them. It trumps the fact that you're going to be spending a lot of time cleaning up ferret shit. It blinds you to the realization that you're loving a weasel.

"I call them the 'Thief of Hearts,'" Clark says. "They will steal your heart, but they will also break it pretty bad when they go. Next year I'll have to get another to replace Vladi."

My brother had several of these little critters when we were in college and both living at home. The most annoying thing about them was their habit of chewing on the back of my Timberland boots, which gave them a well worn look but made it hazardous to move in a rolling chair after sitting for a period of time more than, say, thirty seconds. When Rikki died he had him cremated and still has the ashes in an Urn at his house (he has two dogs now). The other two Ferrets were being boarded while the medical clearances to go to Japan to live with his girlfriend at the time's sister and her husband.

Yeah, they smelled, and the percentage of accuracy in terms of the litter box did leave a bit to be desired, but they lived primarily in his room, so it wasn't that much of an issue. It certainly wasn't as serious a problem as some people make it out to be:

Giuliani: This conversation is over, David. Thank you. [Mr. Giuliani cuts him off.] There is something really, really, very sad about you. You need help. You need somebody to help you. I know you feel insulted by that, but I'm being honest with you. This excessive concern with little weasels is a sickness.

I'm sorry. That's my opinion. You don't have to accept it. There are probably very few people who would be as honest with you about that. But you should go consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and have him help you with this excessive concern, how you are devoting your life to weasels.

There are people in this city and in this world that need a lot of help. Something has gone wrong with you. Your compulsion about it, your excessive concern with it, is a sign of something wrong in your personality. I do not mean to be insulting. I'm trying to be honest with you and I'm trying to give you advice for your own good. I know you, I know how you operate, I know how many times you called here this week. Three or 4 o'clock in the morning, David, you called here.

You have a sickness. I know it's hard for you to accept that, because you hang on to this sickness, and it's your shield, it's your whatever. You know, you gotta go to someone who understands this a lot better than I do. And I know you're real angry at me, you're gonna attack me, but actually you're angry at yourself and you're afraid of what I'm raising with you. And if you don't deal with it, I don't know what you're gonna do. But you called here excessively all week, and you called here at 3 o'clock in the morning. And 4 o'clock in the morning. Over weasels. Over a ferret.

The fact that they're illegal to be kept as pets in some municipalities across the country and here in the Houston metropolitan area under the pretense that they are as dangerous as predatory cats is ludicrous. People keep animals as pets that are more dangerous and more eccentric than Ferrets, sometimes with deadly results. Whoever heard of a Ferret choking the life out of its owner? And when the little guys do bite you, it's all in play and totally harmless (as long as they've had their rabies shots), unlike
this:

From ALLAN HALL
in Berlin

A MAN who lived in his own “zoo” of lizards and insects was fatally bitten by a pet black widow spider — then eaten by the other creepy-crawlies.

Police broke in to Mark Voegel’s apartment to find spider Bettina along with 200 others, several snakes, a gecko lizard called Helmut and several thousand termites had gorged on his body.

It may not be illegal, but, man, that's just STOOOPID...

Pets are great, not matter what anyone else thinks about them. They provide companionship, and their love is unconditional as long as you treat them with respect and compassion. Whoever heard of a well loved pet going bad?

One more thing about Ferrets. They don't take kindly to being called weasels, and they're not afraid to speak out against attempts at oppression:

Attitude

2007-08-28T11:06:00.000-07:00

I'm honored to have been asked to be a part of a new newsblog that my fellow blogger Hill has started, the Tude. There is a great team of news hounds with strong opinions and writing skills working to keep people informed on the fast developing situations in our world today and providing some alternative perspective on them. Check it out when you get a moment.

Motivation

2007-08-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

GIs' morale dips as Iraq war drags on

With tours extended, multiple deployments and new tactics that put them in bare posts in greater danger, they feel leaders are out of touch with reality.

"I don't see any progress. Just us getting killed," said Spc. Yvenson Tertulien, one of those in the dining hall in Yousifiya, 10 miles south of Baghdad, as Bush's speech aired last month. "I don't want to be here anymore."

Arthur's latest post highlights the oft overlooked and/or actively denied reality of the deliberate manner in which the U. S. has forced its will upon the nations of the world merely for the sake of doing so.

He cites a passage from The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman, part of which follows:

Wooden-headedness, the "Don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts" habit, is a universal folly never more conspicuous than at upper levels of Washington with respect to Vietnam. Its grossest fault was underestimation of North Vietnam's commitment to its goal. Enemy motivation was a missing element in American calculations, and Washington could therefore ignore all the evidence of nationalist fervor and of the passion for independence which as early as 1945 Hanoi had declared "no human force can any longer restrain." Washington could ignore General Leclerc's prediction that conquest would take half a million men and "Even then it could not be done." It could ignore the demonstration of elan and capacity that won victory over a French army with modern weapons at Dien Bien Phu, and all the continuing evidence thereafter.

American refusal to take the enemy's grim will and capacity into account has been explained by those responsible on the ground of ignorance of Vietnam's history, traditions and national character: there were "no experts available," in the words of one high-ranking official. But the longevity of Vietnamese resistance to foreign rule could have been learned from any history book on Indochina. Attentive consultation with French administrators whose official lives had been spent in Vietnam would have made up for the lack of American expertise. Even superficial American acquaintance with the area, when it began to supply reports, provided creditable information. Not ignorance, but refusal to credit the evidence and, more fundamentally, refusal to grant stature and fixed purpose to a "fourth-rate" Asiatic country were the determining factors, much as in the case of the British attitude toward the American colonies. The irony of history is inexorable.

The colonial Americans were committed to their independence from the rule of Imperial England under George III in a much stronger way than the British army regulars and hired Hessian guns were to quelling the rebellion (insurgency?).

Andrew Bacevich(h/t Arthur):

The communists of North Vietnam were less interested in promoting world revolution than in unifying their country under socialist rule. We deluded ourselves into thinking that we were defending freedom against totalitarianism.

They were much more committed to this goal than the French and later U. S. forces were to stopping the misperceived push for worldwide totalitarian revolution (which was ill communicated to the ranks anyway)

Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the insurgent groups are all similar in at least one way: They all want to see the U.S. out of the region physically, politically, and economically. They don't want to destroy our way of life, they just want to be able to live their way of life in their homeland(s). The fact that we may not agree with some of what that way of life entails (and there are some egregious facets to it to be sure) and that we don't like the way they want to develop natural resources that rightfully belong to them is not an acceptable motive for our actions over the past several decades.

The attempt to tell these people what to do, when to do it, and to do all of it with a smile and shows of grateful subservience only serves to strengthen the resolve of these people to resist these efforts. They're not stupid. They know when they're being told what to do. And it's certainly not the first time, either.

You can't look at both sides of a coin at the same time...

2007-08-25T17:20:00.000-07:00

The beat on immigration goes on, in opposite directions from the same mouths.

SSDD:

Romney blasts 'sanctuary cities', calls for tough immigration policy

The Salt Lake Tribune new services
Article Last Updated: 08/22/2007 01:35:57 PM MDT

New York Times News Service

Romney's campaign radio commercial in the early battleground states of Iowa and New Hampshire challenged the "sanctuary policies" of "cities like Newark, San Francisco and New York" that bar local police from alerting federal immigration authorities about arrests of undocumented immigrants.
At least 32 communities and counties nationwide have adopted sanctuary policies, according to a 2006 study by the Congressional Research Service. The cities include: Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Baltimore, Detroit, Minneapolis, New York, Austin and Seattle.
"Sanctuary cities become magnets that encourage illegal immigration and undermine secure borders," Romney's campaign ad said.

And yet:

CAMILO MEJIA: The military is aggressively targeting Hispanics to join the military. Some people may have heard about the DREAM Act, through which the military hopes to recruit undocumented youth who are graduating from high school. The proposal is to serve two years in the military or go to college for two years and then get your green card, which 65,000 people who are undocumented and graduate from high school and are not eligible for financial aid from the federal government are not going to be able to go to college for two years. So, you know, this is one of the ways in which, you know, the military is targeting young immigrants, mostly Latinos, to join the military. You know, it’s -- again, it’s a poverty -- it’s an immigration draft that’s going on.

And yet:

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) - The mayors of the Texan city of El Paso and the Mexican city of Juarez led a protest by dozens of people on Saturday against a planned border wall to stem illegal immigration into America.

The protesters held hands across the Paso del Norte Bridge, which spans the Rio Grande and connects the downtown cores of the two cities.

El Paso Mayor John Cook and Juarez Mayor Hector Murguia Lardizabal embraced at the top of the bridge.

So, we want to keep these folks out of the country but don't mind them enlisting in our armed forces to fight our ill conceived wars of preemption and aggression, not to mention cleaning our houses, mowing our lawns, and cooking that yummy mexican food we love?

This, my friends, is a classic example of wanting to have one's cake and eat it too.

Can't.

Be.

Done.

Who is gonna build that damn wall, anyway?

Say it again, brother

2007-08-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

Hal:

The war cannot be won militarily. The war cannot be won militarily. The war cannot be won militarily. The war cannot be won militarily. The war cannot be won militarily.

What are those pigs good for, anyway?

The Walrus Weighs In

2007-08-23T18:18:00.000-07:00

Permit me to utilize the Leatherneck Weapons Inspector to debunk him:

John Bolton:

I hope Iran understands that we are very serious, that we are determined they are not going to get a nuclear weapon capability, and unless they change the strategic decision they’ve been pursuing for close to 20 years, that that’s something they better factor into their calculations.

Scott Ritter:

When the Iranians operate their cascades for any significant duration of time, every single time, the cascades self destruct. This president's trying to tell us that we are at imminent risk from the Iranians. That this Nuclear program represents a real and imminent threat to the security of the United States of America. The Vice President is creating a sense of urgency. The Media is hyping up that we're one year away from a Nuclear armed Iran. I'm telling you right now, even if Iran has a covert Nuclear weapons program, which no one has demonstrated they have, they couldn't build a Nuclear weapon if they wanted to. They just don't have the technological capacity.

Now, how do we know all this? From the inspectors.

Contrary to popular belief, Iran has not kicked out the inspectors.

Iran is operating 100% in compliance with it's legal obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran is permitted, under Article 4 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enrich Uranium. We are demanding that Iran be denied that which it is legally allowed to do when we say it must suspend it's Uranium enrichment program.

But even more than this, we're told that the Iranians are "picking a fight," that they're "searching for a conflict."

Iran fought an eight year war with Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed. Their economy was devastated. They are just beginning to recover from that and they are going through a serious period of economic difficulty with high unemployment. This nation awash in a sea of oil spends 30 billion dollars a year to import gasoline because they don't have the refining capacity to produce indigenous gasoline. They're not looking for a fight. The last thing they want is a fight with the world's sole remaining superpower.

I don't really have anything to add except perhaps this:

NIR ROSEN:

I am skeptical that they are actually sending fighters to Iraq. I just don’t see the need for it. Iraqis are very well trained. [Iran] might be sending some weapons. But then again, there’s also a black market in weapons, so just because a weapon is Iranian doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily been sold by Iran.

The Grumbling Bear

2007-08-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

Stirring and beginning to mark out territory:

The Guardian:

Luke Harding in Moscow
Wednesday August 22, 2007

Vladimir Putin announced ambitious plans to revive Russia's military power and restore its role as the world's leading producer of military aircraft yesterday.

The new emphasis on Russia's revived military prowess comes against a backdrop of deteriorating relations with the west. Mr Putin has denounced the US's missile defence plans in Europe, scrapped an agreement with Nato on conventional armed forces, and grabbed a large, if symbolic, chunk of the Arctic.

San Diego Union Tribune:

By Guy Faulconbridge
REUTERS

6:15 a.m. August 2, 2007

MOSCOW – Russian explorers dived deep below the North Pole in a submersible on Thursday and planted a national flag on the seabed to stake a symbolic claim to the energy riches of the Arctic.

Russia wants to extend right up to the North Pole the territory it controls in the Arctic, believed to hold vast reserves of untapped oil and natural gas.

The first item is no doubt a reaction to this inane policy revival on the part of the Bush administration, using the onionskin paper thin justification of a ballistic missile threat to its allies from rogue nuclear nations.

The second item would seem to be more of an insurance policy on the part of Russia in reaction to the continuation of the neo cons' undeterable urge to expand the conflict in the Middle East that could spiral out of the control of anyone or any nation.

Like every other nation, Russia recognizes that energy is the key to survival and a source of energy needs to be secured in order to ensure the security of that survival. The U. S. is and has been for decades making more and more aggressive inroads into the energy resources right in Russia's backyard with no regard for the rights of the nations and peoples who can lay rightful claim to those resources. So, two options present themselves and are being acted upon by Russia. The strategic economic one, in the form of the Arctic claim, and the strategic military option in the form of the increased military production and patrolling:

By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:11pm BST 22/08/2007

Eurofighter Typhoon jets scrambled for the first time to intercept Russian nuclear bombers approaching British air space, the Ministry of Defence said yesterday.

The Tu-95 Bear nuclear bombers were detected over the Atlantic on Friday, the RAF said yesterday.

Tornado F3 fighters and two Typhoons were scrambled from RAF Leuchars in Scotland.

And let's not forget the Dragon, who also has a big vested interest in the resources of the region:

Iran has become the top oil exporter to China, surpassing Saudi Arabia. Official Iranian statistics have stated that China's oil imports from Iran more than doubled in 2006. In June 2007, China reportedly imported around 567,000 barrels per day (b/d).

As Scott Ritter said in a discussion with Seymour Hersch:

Our oil-based economy is operating on the margins, as we speak. We only have 1.0% to 1.5% excess production capacity. If you take the Iranian oil off the market, which is the first thing the Iranians will do, we automatically drop to around minus-4%, which means there ain’t enough oil out there to support the globe’s thirst for oil, especially America’s thirst for oil. And we're not the only ones drinking it. You think for a second the Chinese and the Indians, the world’s two largest developing economies, are going to say, “Hey, Uncle Sam, we’ll put everything on hold, so we can divert oil resources, so you can feed your oil addiction, because you attacked Iran”?

Energy. It's what inevitably brought down Hitler's Germany when he made the fatal decision to invade the Soviet Union when he did which was in response to the aggressive moves that Stalin was making towards the Ploesti Oil fields in Romania. The Wehrmacht was nothing but a useless mass of steel with out petroleum based products. The decision was made in June of 1941, and the course of the war was essentially set, although it would take several years and millions of lives to secure the ultimate result.

The Japanese push in the Pacific six months later was essentially a similar grab for resources, although not in reaction to aggressive moves by rival nations but to the power vacuum left in the Pacific following the marginalization of the European colonial powers in 1940 with the fall of France and the Battle of Britain and the tying up of the Soviet military in the West six months earlier. Ultimately the defeat of Germany and the over stretching of the Japanese Army and Navy (along with key battles such as Midway) determined the outcome of the war in the Pacific.

Energy. Once again rearing its ugly head as the primary reason that nations threaten and attack each other. I have a sinking feeling that even when the so called 'renewable' energy sources become the preferred option people will find ways to fight over the wind and sunlight.

And speaking of Solar Power:

Setting a good example...

2007-08-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of angst and gnashing of teeth lately over a series of products ranging from clothing to hygiene items manufactured in China that are, shall we say, of sub par quality. Many folks are asking why this has appeared so suddenly, and I think I may have a theory (first of all it's not all that sudden):

2002:

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has announced the following recalls:

Hair Dryers. Remington Products Co, LLC has announced the recall of about 3,000 hair dryers made in China. The hair dryers are not equipped with an appliance leakage current interrupter plug to cut off electrical current in case of contact with water.

Extension Cords. STK International Inc has recalled approximately 190,000 extension cords made in China, which have undersized wires, presenting a shock hazard.

And second of all, when the Chinese Communist government made the decision to move from corrupt Communism to corrupt Corporatism as the basic model for the country, who do you think they looked to for inspiration?

Ford:

On June 9, 1978, Ford Motor Company agreed to recall 1.5 million Ford Pinto and 30,000 Mercury Bobcat sedan and hatchback models for fuel tank design defects which made the vehicles susceptible to fire in the event of a moderate-speed rear end collision. The action was the result of investigations by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defect Investigations (Case #C7-38), sparked by a petition from Center for Auto Safety, publicity generated by national publication expose of the hazard (Mother Jones News Magazine, "Pinto Madness" by Mark Dowie, Sept/Oct, 1977) and publicity over the largest punitive damages awarded by a California jury to a young man who had been severely injured in a Pinto fuel tank fire (Grimshaw v Ford).

Chevrolet:

General Motors has refused to voluntarily recall and retrofit its pickup trucks with saddlebag gas tanks, even though its own internal records and testing experience in other models, and in proto-types, show that it has long mastered the engineering technology to enhance the safety of the gas tanks on these trucks.

Brunswick:

"Hey, Lou, I'll have anoth--" **CCCRRAACCKK** "WHOAAAAA!!" *THUD*

The following product safety recall was voluntarily conducted by the firm in cooperation with the CPSC. Consumers should stop using the product immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Product: Frameworx Table Height Chairs and Bar Stools

Units: About 22,400

Manufacturer: Brunswick Bowling & Billiards Corp., of Lake Forest, Ill.

Hazard: The down shaft on the seat plate assembly can fracture, which can cause an occupant of the seat to fall.

Incidents/Injuries: Brunswick has received reports of 20 incidents in which the seat plate assembly has failed. Three injuries resulting from falling from a seat have been reported.

Good old American ingenuity, marketing and sales skills. That's where the Chinese looked for guidance. Of course, at least one of the men in charge let his conscience get the better of him:

Zhang Shuhong, the boss of a major supplier to Mattel, hung himself at the weekend after his export licence was suspended and 1.5m products withdrawn because of safety fears about toys sold in the US, Britain and other parts of Europe.

But he may have just been taking matters into his own hands before the Chinese government decided to:

The FDA issued a warning Friday after toothpaste containing DEG was detected in a shipment seized at the border. The government says at least 100 people died after taking cough syrup containing DEG, an industrial solvent used in paint and antifreeze.

China's dismal drug-safety record was underscored this week by a Chinese court's decision to sentence to death the country's former top drug regulator.

You couldn't make this shit up no matter how hard you tried.

Really??? (Mark II)

2007-08-21T11:23:00.000-07:00

Reuters:

By Paul Tait

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq has made "extremely disappointing" progress towards reconciling its warring sects, the U.S. ambassador said on Tuesday, just three weeks before he is due to present a pivotal report on Iraq to the U.S. Congress.
ADVERTISEMENT

In some of the bluntest language used by a U.S. official towards Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's fractured coalition government, ambassador Ryan Crocker also warned that U.S. support for Maliki's administration was not open-ended.

Only the U. S. Congress is allowed to take the entire month of August off!!

"Progress on national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned, to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself," Crocker said.

"We do expect results, as do the Iraqi people, and our support is not a blank check," he told reporters in Baghdad.

Because we have other countries to bomb, dammit!!!

See?

AMY GOODMAN: Nir, what about Iran? What about the whole Bush-Cheney push to attack Iran? And what is the significance of this? And how does it play out in these countries?

NIR ROSEN: Well, I think we’re dealing with a mentality on the part of our administration that nobody else is going to have the guts to take on Iran in the future, the next president, so if we don’t do it, who’s going to do it, and we’ll be vindicated in the future just like Reagan was vindicated, allegedly, for bringing down the Soviet Union. So they have this long-term view of how history will treat them, and if they don’t take down Iran, nobody else will.

On to Damascus!

2007-08-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

Since they've got the best quality steel to be found and our own production industry went overseas almost fifty years ago...

Holy Joe, courtesy of the (surprise, surprise, surprise!) WSJ:

The United States is at last making significant progress against al Qaeda in Iraq--but the road to victory now requires cutting off al Qaeda's road to Iraq through Damascus.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad cannot seriously claim that he is incapable of exercising effective control over the main airport in his capital city. Syria is a police state, with sprawling domestic intelligence and security services. The notion that al Qaeda recruits are slipping into and through the Damascus airport unbeknownst to the local Mukhabarat is totally unbelievable.

Ah, Diplomacy... what a beautiful thing...

Really?!?

2007-08-20T12:40:00.001-07:00

Apparently any trait indicating foresight must be surgically removed from one before running for public office.

DN1:

Dems: Wiretap Approval Could Grant Bush Extra Powers
Congressional Democrats are acknowledging President Bush’s broad new spying powers approved this month could be even more extensive than initially claimed. Ambiguous language defining “electronic surveillance” means the so-called Protect America of 2007 Act could go well beyond wiretapping to permit physical searches and financial record-gathering -- all without court approval. The admission comes amidst news the Bush administration has privately said it won’t be held to those limits the legislation does set on surveillance activities. The New York Times reports Justice Department officials refused repeated entreaties to commit to following Congressional rules at a private meeting last week. Participants in the meeting say assistant attorney general for national security Ken Wainstein told former Justice Department lawyer Bruce Fein the administration does not consider itself bound by Congressional restrictions.

Another chip of the old block...

2007-08-16T18:28:00.000-07:00

courtesy of the current administration's hammer and chisel:

Article 1:

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Not so fast, my friend...

Raw Story:

A US anti-war group has been warned it will be fined 10,000 dollars if it does not remove posters in Washington announcing a march in the capital next month against US involvement in Iraq, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

1937;

"First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out;
Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out;
Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."

Martin Niemoller, 1892-1984

Arthur Silber:

THREE: Tell every politician, Democratic or Republican, that they must stop repeating the Bush administration propaganda on Iran. Above all, they must stop saying that "all options are on the table," which in this context can only refer to a threat to launch an unprovoked war against Iran.

FOUR: Contact every politician you know who appears on television or gives newspaper interviews, and tell them they must be sure to explain briefly in every appearance they make why an attack on Iran at present would be a monstrous crime. IN EVERY APPEARANCE. As I noted above, if this catastrophe is to be stopped, it must be made the NUMBER ONE TOPIC IN THE NATION. If you're well-known enough to create interviews or appearances for yourself, THEN DO IT. Talk about Iran, and why we must not attack that country in the present circumstances.

FIVE: Talk to everyone you can, at work, in your family, among friends, and at social gatherings. Explain the issues to them in a way that is appropriate for the relationship and the occasion, and urge them to take all these actions themselves. Explain briefly why this might be the most important battle they will ever fight.

Talk to them as much as you have to, and take all the time you can afford. Where you can, create more time for this work. Talk to as many people as you can, every single day.

That post was the one that propelled me into the current state of world event heavy blogging you've been reading for the past five months. Arthur has decided to move away from his focus on the looming (some might say already in progress) Iranian crisis in order to work on other essays. His stated reason is a decidedly obvious lack of effect. I'm not offended, but I believe that any discussion (or post) about the topic with anyone is potentially informative and eye opening. Even after the bombing begins and oil prices skyrocket:

SEYMOUR HERSH: But anyway, so the question then is -- we go to war -- tell us what happens next, in your view.

SCOTT RITTER: Well, it’s, you know -- it’s almost impossible to be 100% correct, but I’ll give you my best analysis. The Iranians will use the weapon that is the most effective weapon, because the key for Iran -- you know, Iran can’t afford, if this -- remember, the regime wants to stay in power, so they can’t afford a strategy that gets the American people to recognize three years in that, oops, we made a mistake. I mean, if that was Saddam’s strategy, it failed for him, because he’s out of power. Yeah, we realize we made a mistake now in Iraq, but the regime is gone. So the Iranians realize that they have to inflict pain upfront. The pain is not going to be inflicted militarily, because we're not going to commit numbers of ground forces on the ground that can cause that pain. The pain will come economically.

Our oil-based economy is operating on the margins, as we speak. We only have 1.0% to 1.5% excess production capacity. If you take the Iranian oil off the market, which is the first thing the Iranians will do, we automatically drop to around minus-4%, which means there ain’t enough oil out there to support the globe’s thirst for oil, especially America’s thirst for oil. And we're not the only ones drinking it? You think for a second the Chinese and the Indians, the world’s two largest developing economies, are going to say, “Hey, Uncle Sam, we’ll put everything on hold, so we can divert oil resources, so you can feed your oil addiction, because you attacked Iran”?

And it’s not just Iranian oil that will go off the market. Why do you think we sent minesweepers up there? We’ve got to keep the Straits of Hormuz open. The Iranians will shut it down that quick. They’ll also shut down oil production in the western oil fields of Saudi Arabia. They’ll shut down Kuwaiti oil production. They’ll shut down oil production in the United Arab Emirates. They’ll shut down whatever remaining oil production there is in Iraq.

The bottom line is, within two days of our decision to initiate an attack on Iran, every single one of you is going to be feeling the consequences of that in your pocketbook. And it’s only going to get worse. This is not something that only I recognize. Ask Dick Lugar what information he’s getting from big business, who are saying, “We can’t afford to go to war with Iran.”

I'll be writing about how much of an insane folly any sort of action against Iran was and how the only recourse is to get the Hell out and leave these people and their natural resources alone for them to develop and sell (or not) on their own, for whatever reason they deem fit for the welfare of their own nation and people:

SCOTT RITTER: Well, there can be no doubt that Iran has plenty of oil, but that oil is the only thing Iran has going for it, in terms of a viable world-class economy. In 1976, the Shah of Iran came to the United States, sent his representatives to intercede and say, “Look, we’ve done an analysis, and we’ve got a finite amount of oil. And right now we need to export it. And if we don't export it, we don't make money, etc. We don't have enough oil to sustain this. We need to come up with an indigenous energy policy that frees up our oil for exportation. We want to use nuclear energy.” And the U.S. government went, “Good idea, Shah. We're all for it.” That was Gerald Ford.

The chief of staff of the White House at the time was Dick Cheney. The Secretary of Defense was Donald Rumsfeld. So, this argument that both Cheney and Rumsfeld put out today that Iran is a nation awash in a sea of oil, there is no need for a nuclear energy program, they both supported Iran's goals of achieving nuclear energy in 1976. Not only nuclear energy, but they also supported the Shah when he said, “We cannot allow a nuclear energy program’s fuel to be held hostage by the vagaries of sanctions and war. We need an indigenous fuel-manufacturing capability inclusive of the full uranium enrichment process.” And guess what the U.S. government said in 1976. “No problem, Shah. Good deal.”

So taking that into consideration along with the recent reminders from 1994 should we call this current version of the Shooter "Mark III"?

Anti Zydecoists? Terrorists?

2007-08-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

DN!:

AMY GOODMAN: A drive-by shooting targeted Pacifica Radio station KPFT in Houston early Monday morning. A single bullet blasted through a Plexiglas window into the station's studio at 1:00 a.m. No one was injured in the shooting, but the bullet came within eighteen inches of Mary Thomas. She was hosting a Zydeco music program at the time.

More than thirty-five years ago, the Ku Klux Klan blew up the station's transmitters twice within the Houston station’s first year of operation. In October of 1970, five months after the first bombing, KPFT's transmitter was bombed for a second time, just as the station was broadcasting folk legend Arlo Guthrie's song “Alice's Restaurant.”

This came on the heels of the 'Summer Sizzle' fund raising campaign that was held to raise the funds needed to finish out the fiscal year for the operation of the station. Happily the goal was not only met but was exceeded by about 6 grand.

KPFT's Summer Sizzle finished a few hours early, achieved the goal of $135,000 and then some!
The unofficial final total has us at just over $141,000, about 5% over the goal!
Thanks to all the staff, programmers, phone volunteers and everyone who contributed.

AMY GOODMAN: Duane, do you think this could be politically motivated?

DUANE BRADLEY: Well, certainly we can't say it's not. There's nothing that’s been found yet in terms of who may have done this. KPFT has been, as you pointed out, at a point of controversy in Houston since day one, thirty-seven-and-a-half years ago. There were no overt threats to the station. We've received no email or voicemail or letters or anything. No one has claimed responsibility for it, but we do on Sunday evenings, prior to Mary's Zydeco Pas Sale show at midnight, from about 6:00 ’til midnight we have some relatively, you know, controversial programming, Afrocentric programming, that can sometimes be quite heated. And certainly we know from past experience that KPFT has been threatened and indeed attacked.

On Sunday morning during the Blues music show "Blues on the Move" Duane went into a bit of a testimonial about the vital importance of the support from the listeners to the existence of the station (member support accounts for 85% of the annual operating budget--the other 15% comes from a Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant) and spoke of the diversity of the programming as one of the station's greatest strengths. He admitted that there was programming on the station's schedule that he did not care for personally but was committed to supporting just as much as the programming that he does enjoy--not just because he is the GM--but because he believes in the mission and service that the station provides to the community that supports it.

I feel the same way about KPFT, as has been evidenced in past posts. It's an amazing resource, a relative rarity here in the U.S. (there are only five flagship Pacifica stations along with several hundred affiliates), one that will endure despite the attempts of individuals who only know how to speak in the language of force and therefore assume that that is all anyone else can understand.

KPFT bills itself as "Radio for Peace." I guess that is just to much for some folks to handle.

Exeunt the Brain, Stage Left...

2007-08-13T05:05:00.000-07:00

MSNBC:

WASHINGTON - Karl Rove, President Bush’s close friend and chief political strategist, plans to leave the White House at the end of August, joining a lengthening line of senior officials heading for the exits in the final 1 1/2 years of the administration.

Pro Life=Anti Woman

2007-08-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I was talking with a good friend about the current political climate. When the subject of Abortion rights came up she stated that the main reason she felt the right to such procedures needs to be upheld and strengthened is the simple fact that, no matter what the law is, women in certain circumstances will seek access to them in whatever form they are being offered under whatever laws exist at the time.

Another passage from one of my favorite writers' novellas published in the anthology Different Seasons:

In those days [1935], a married pregnant woman was a radiant woman, sure of her position and proud of fulfilling what she considered to be the function God put her on Earth for. An unmarried pregnant woman was a trollop in the eyes of the world and apt to be a trollop in her own eyes as well. They were, in Ella Davidson's word, "easy," and in that world and that time, "easiness" was not quickly forgiven. Such women crept away to have their babies in other towns or cities. Some took pills or jumped from buildings. Others went to butcher abortionists with dirty hands or tried to do the job themselves; in my time as a physician I have seen four women die of blood loss before my eyes as the result of punctured wombs--in one case the puncturing was done by the jagged neck of a Dr. Pepper bottle that had been tied to the handle of a whiskbroom. It is hard to believe now that such things happened, but they did, gentlemen. They did. It was, quite simply, the worst situation a healthy young woman could find herself in.

The novella spans from the early 1970's to its culmination in the telling of the final tale, exerpted above, in 1980. 1980, when Roe v. Wade was still a fresh decision and the Pro Life movement had yet to grow into the multi headed beast it is today.

Arthur Silber:

There are a great many aspects of today's world that are variously horrifying, ghastly, destructive and appalling -- and among the very worst is an idea that appears to be rapidly gaining support: the noxious notion that all questions relating to abortion rights should be returned to the states. For many reasons, only a few of which are discussed below, this idea is completely incoherent as a matter of political theory, and it undercuts any defense of individual rights on the most fundamental level.If you give a damn at all about the liberty of a single human being, you should oppose all such attempts to your last breath.

The human being to which I refer is not the developing fetus, but the woman who carries the child. I well understand that many people believe that the fetus is a human being long before birth, with all the rights that attend to that designation. In the political context, I consider all such beliefs irrelevant, no matter how sincerely and deeply held. Only one ultimate point matters here: whether you think the developing fetus is a human being or not, the fetus is contained in and supported by the woman's body. If the woman's body did not exist, neither would the fetus. Only the woman's existence makes that of the fetus possible.

The fetus only exists because of the woman's body -- not yours, not that of some possibly corrupt and stupid politician in Washington, and not the body of some possibly ignorant and venal politician in a state legislature.

And now we find that there are instances of those rights being placed in the hands of individual Pharmacists:

Last week, a Federal court ruled that, despite Illinois law, pharmacists in Illinois can refuse to dispense emergency contraception. The state passed a law in 2005 that requires all pharmacies to dispense EC. As a result, Wal-Mart (and other companies) have disciplined pharmacists that refused to follow the rule. Then came the lawsuits and the bad news.

U.S. District Judge Jeanne Scott denied a request Tuesday by Wal-Mart to throw out a lawsuit filed by pharmacist Ethan Vandersand. Scott sided with Vandersand, who had claimed he was legally protected from discipline by the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act when he declined to dispense Plan B.

What's next? Pharmacists refusing to dispense physician prescribed
medications for diseases they might believe were contracted by behavior they might think is illegal or immoral? Where does the line get drawn? As Arthur went on to say in his post:

This is, finally, what the battle about abortion concerns. To the extent people choose to limit a woman's right to her own body, they accept and reinforce this endlessly destructive cultural tradition -- and they believe in Original Sin, even if they are atheists. Religion holds no exclusive claim to irrationality of this kind. They seek to control abortion because they seek salvation, whether they recognize that fact or not. To bring salvation nearer, women must be eternally subordinate, and they cannot be allowed to do anything other than what men allow.

And as George Carlin pointed out in his HBO special Back In Town:

If you're pre-born, you're fine, if you're pre school, you're fucked. Conservatives don't give a shit about yo until you reach military age. Then they think you are just fine, just what they've been looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.

Pro Life. Pro Life. These people aren't pro life, they're killing doctors! What kind of pro life is that? What, they'll do anything they can to save a fetus, but if it grows up to be a doctor, they just might have to kill it?

They're not pro life. You know what they are? They're Anti Woman.

It all boils down to this point:

Posted by theal2 on 08-03-2007 01:40 AM:

quote:Originally posted by live4love
How about some laws that would control men's bodies, like ...say.... it's illegal to ejaculate without the express intent to create life ?? How do you think men would feel about that ?
After all every sperm is a potential life right ??
Gee if we had some laws like that we would rarely need any abortions !!

( ridiculous right ? Just as ridiculous as trying to control womens' biological functions with laws )

Guys...if you don't want babies and don't want to have to pay for them them keep it in your pants or get a vasectomy. If you do want kids then make sure you discuss this before you have relations with a women. Find a partner that wants the same as you do !!

JMO

L4L

If men could get Pregnant, abortions would be legal at drive through fast food joints, the golf course, sports stadiums or whereever they choose.

Easy Money...

2007-08-10T21:13:00.000-07:00

Is anything but.

1929:

The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Crash of ’29, was one of the most devastating stock market crashes in American history. It consists of Black Thursday, the initial crash and Black Tuesday, the crash that caused general panic five days later.

The crash followed a speculative boom that had taken hold in the late 1920s, which had led millions of Americans to invest heavily in the stock market, a significant number even borrowing money to buy more stock. By August 1929, brokers were routinely lending small investors more than 2/3 of the face value of the stocks they were buying. Over $8.5 billion was out on loan, more than the entire amount of currency circulating in the U.S. The rising share prices encouraged more people to invest; people hoped the share prices would rise further. Speculation thus fueled further rises and created an economic bubble. The average P/E (price to earnings) ratio of S&P Composite stocks was 32.6 in September 1929, clearly above historical norms.

1987:

Black Monday is the name given to Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell dramatically, and on which similar enormous drops occurred across the world. By the end of October, stock markets in Hong Kong had fallen 45.8%, Australia 41.8%, the United Kingdom 26.4%, the United States 22.68%, and Canada 22.5%.

The most popular explanation for the 1987 crash was selling by program traders. Program trading is the use of computers to engage in arbitrage and portfolio insurance strategies. Through the 1970s and early 1980s, computers were becoming more important on Wall Street. They allowed instantaneous execution of orders to buy or sell large batches of stocks and futures.

2007:

Central banks on both sides of the Atlantic pumped billions into the financial system to calm nerves over an impending credit crunch today - but their actions only served to heighten alarm, prompting a fresh plunge in global share prices.

The European Central Bank injected an emergency €95bn (£64.5bn) into the markets in its first intervention since the turmoil triggered by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC in 2001.

Bonddad;

2.) These are big funds -- 2 billion+ is not chump change. But the manager can't "``fairly'' value their holdings". That means the 2 billion + in total assets may not even be close to accurate. Remember -- Bear Stearns lost 6 billion in 2 funds just a few weeks ago.

3.) The ECB is flooding the market with liquidity. While this is a good thing in the short run because it eases some concerns, it may not be enough. The bottom line is we are seeing announcements of hedge fund/investment losses coming from all over the world. And the pace is snowballing.

4.) "investors aren't recycling their money back because of subprime concerns" Translation: either the ECC can continue to inject liquidity or we're going to have a continued problem in the markets.

5.) In the 1920s, the US banking system collapsed because of runs on the banks. A similar situation is happening with hedge funds right now:

Union Investment, Germany's third-biggest mutual fund manager, stopped withdrawals from one of its funds on Aug. 3 after investors pulled about 10 percent of the assets. Frankfurt Trust, the mutual fund manager of Germany's BHF-Bank, halted redemptions from a fund after clients removed 20 percent of their money since the end of July.

All because of greedy, bloodsucking, soulless people (primarily while males similar to myself save for the fact that they didn't allow themselves to follow any passion they might have had that didn't involve masses of cash) and their unslakeable lust for money and power:

KEITH ERNST: One of the interesting stories here underneath all of this is how these mortgages came about in the first place. You know, we like to think, or I think most Americans think, that mortgages are made by banks and depository institutions, but especially in the subprime market that's not the case. They're largely made through state-chartered finance companies that don’t have any bank deposits, and so they don’t have any bank regulators.

Where do they go for their money? They go to Wall Street. So Wall Street will supply them the money to make the loans, will buy the loans from these lenders, and then will repackage them into securities and sell them to investors. Now, again, in principle, that's fine. It can make low-cost capital available to families who need mortgages. The problem comes when the insatiable appetite builds for more and more mortgages and lenders get reckless with regard to the quality of the mortgages they’re originating.

Why do they allow themselves to get reckless? Why, because the loans aren't representative of families, or anything important like that. They're just numbers and levels of risk that are to be assumed...

Benchmarks, or Highway Robbery

2007-08-10T16:21:00.000-07:00

STIOL:

Overall, the law would secure the agenda of ExxonMobil, Chevon, and the other majors, robbing the Iraqi people of their most basic source of wealth. Much is at stake. With 115 billion barrels of proven reserves ($7 trillion worth at $64 per barrel) and another 215 billion possible or likely ($14 trillion), there’s nearly a million dollars of oil for every Iraqi citizen. It’s a vast and precious national resource—but only if Iraqis are allowed to control it themselves.

THIS. IS. A. REALLY. BAD. IDEA.

2007-08-10T10:49:00.000-07:00

McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.

[Note the word charged. It implies suspicion without any corroborating evidence.]

Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.

This is totally illegal, regardless of whether the suspicions of the Shrub are accurate in the least. There is no active PUBLIC discussion about authorizing military action against Iran, either within our own government or with the cooperation of the U. N. Security Council. Whether or not it can be technically classified as legal under the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution is left to the devious skills of the student-twisters of the law that currently occupy the White House and aid and abet the administration in its current course of action:

Authorization for Use of Military Force
September 18, 2001

Public Law 107-40 [S. J. RES. 23]

107th CONGRESS

JOINT RESOLUTION

To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.

NO.

IRANIANS.

WERE.

ON.

ANY.

OF.

THE.

FOUR.

PLANES.

Want to guess who was on the planes?

AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 11
7:45 a.m.: Departed Boston for Los Angeles.
8:46 a.m.: Crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Mohamed Atta, pilot and group leader
Age: 33.
Nationality: Egyptian.

Abdulaziz Alomari
Age: Unknown.
Nationality: Saudi.

Satam M.A. Al Suqami
Age: 25.
Nationality: Saudi.

Wail M. Alshehri
Age: 28.
Nationality: Saudi.

Waleed M. Alshehri
Age: 22.
Nationality: Saudi.

UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 175
7:58 a.m.: Departed Boston for Los Angeles
9:02 a.m.: Crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center

Marwan al-Shehhi, pilot and group leader
Age: 23.
Nationality: United Arab Emirates.

Fayez Rashid Ahmed Hassan Al Qadi Banihammad
Age: 28.
Nationality: Saudi.

Ahmed Alghamdi
Age: 21.
Nationality: Saudi.

Hamza Alghamdi
Age: 20.
Nationality: Saudi.

Mohand Alshehri
Age: 21.
Nationality: Unknown.

AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 77
8:10 a.m.: Departed Washington Dulles for Los Angeles
9:40 a.m.: Crashed into the Pentagon

Hani Hanjour, pilot and group leader
Age: 29.
Nationality: Saudi.

Nawaf Alhazmi
Age: 25.
Nationality: Unknown.

Majed Moqed
Age: Unknown.
Nationality: Unknown.

Khalid Almihdhar
Age: Unknown.
Nationality: Unknown.

Salem Alhazmi
Age: Uknown.
Nationality: Saudi.

UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 93
8:42 a.m.: Departed Newark for San Francisco
10:01 a.m.: Crashed in Stony Creek Township, Penn.

Ziad Samir Jarrah, pilot and group leader
Age: 26.
Nationality: Lebanese.

Saeed Alghamdi
Age: 25.
Nationality: Saudi.

Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi
Age: 20.
Nationality: Saudi.

Ahmed Alnami
Age: 23.
Nationality: Saudi.

Hmmmm, no Iraqis, no Iranians, and a whole bunch of Saudis.

Interesting.

I wonder what we're doing about Saudi Arabia? Oh, right:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States is developing a proposed $20 billion, 10-year arms sales package for Saudi Arabia, a senior administration official confirmed on Saturday.

Why, you may ask. Well, aside form the obvious nepotism laden reasons, there's this load of bunkum:

The proposed sale, first reported in The New York Times, is intended to upgrade the Saudi military's ability to counter possible Iranian aggression in the Persian Gulf region, the official said.

"This is all about Iran," said the official, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because discussions with the Saudis are still going on and the arms sale deal has not been completed.

How about a better, more constructive idea?

Sure, Iran has not suspended its uranium-enrichment program as initially requested by the United Nations Security Council exactly a year ago, but Iran has complied with other aspects of the council's, and the IAEA's, demands pertaining to greater nuclear transparency, access, and the resolution of "outstanding questions".

If the IAEA's reports of Iranians slowing down on the centrifuge program and openly entertaining the "time out" option do not constitute progress and a major plus, then what does? Any undue impatience with the diplomatic approach is uncalled for and indicative of a lack of a sound policy approach by the White House, seemingly riveted by contradictory influences by the moderate-hawk voices coming from different branches of the government.

Alas, it would seem that the words "sound policy approach" and "Bush White House" relate to each other in a manner similar to that of Matter and Anti-Matter.

I'll beat it out of 'em even if they do want to tell us!

2007-08-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here watching the Astros grudgingly work their way toward the end of a second win against the Cubs after watching the ending of The Great Raid, another of those formulaic WWII films which yearned to catch a ride on the coat tails of Saving Private Ryan with its template of glorifying the experience of the American fighting man during what was one of the most terrible conflicts in recorded history, not to mention one of the most far reaching in terms of how the ultimate outcome of it has shaped and is still shaping the world in countless ways right up to this very moment.

Ahhhh, the king of the run-on sentence is back in the HOUSE....

One of my issues with this series of films (which also includes Windtalkers and The Thin Red Line) is that while one of the apparent aims of all of them is to highlight the horrors of war that the professional fighting man is subjected to during the course of the conflict the main focus is on the experience of the United States fighting man with little attention paid to the opposition which, one must concede, is exposed to and must endure the exact same horrific episodes and conditions. The Japanese forces are shown as fellow Human Beings in a few scenes during Red Line, and there are briefs attempts at glimpsing the plight of the German Army regular soldier in Private Ryan (the surrendering soldiers shot with hands up at the end of the Normandy sequence opening the film, and Steamboat Willie), but they are tinged with humor that renders them without the appropriate weight for what they actually are: glimpses of the Jap or the Kraut as a fellow man in a plight that is chillingly similar to that of the average GI dogface stuck in a foxhole awaiting seemingly random orders from on high. One film that struck me with its (some would say unsuccessful) attempts at evenhandedness is Enemy At the Gates, which presented the plight of an invading army stuck in a circumstance where leadership has seemingly lost all initiative alongside the desperation of a defender pushed to the brink of logistical combat capabilities as well as Human survival in the form of the siege of Stalingrad. The narrow focus of the plot was the cat and mouse pursuit of a Russian sniper by a German master sniper, but the backdrop of a city the size of Cleveland transformed into a raging battlefront from block to block oozed from the back round during the entire film.

The bar to which all these films should be held is, of course, All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the novel by WWI German trench soldier Erich Maria Remarque.

But I digress.

Katherine Eban:

James Mitchell arrived at the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. He was one of America’s first high-value detainees. He was captured in March of 2002 in a firefight in Pakistan. He wound up in a safe house in Thailand. He was rushed to a hospital in order to save his life from infected wounds. The FBI had agents present at the scene, and because the CIA's interrogation team had not yet arrived, they began to interrogate Zubaydah.

And what they used was classic rapport-building techniques that almost every FBI agent is trained in, which is to find common ground with the person you’re interrogating, to treat them with humanity. And, lo and behold, Zubaydah responded and talked, and not only talked, but gave them the name of the person who had been the entire master planner of 9/11: K.S.M. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, referred to as Mukhtar. He identified him. He identified Jose Padilla. In other words, there was every indicator that rapport-building techniques were completely effective.

This first struck me as amazing, initially because it was one of the first occasions that I had heard about these techniques being used, without inflicting any pain or duress upon the subject, and then because the non pain and duress inductive methods were actually producing results in the form of credible information! Of course it couldn't last:

However, after those disclosures, the CIA interrogation team arrived with James Mitchell it tow and said, “Now, everything is going to change. We’re going to get him to say everything he knows, and we’re going to use these coercive techniques.” And, according to my sources, there was even a coffin present at the interrogation they were going to use to bury Zubaydah alive.

Now, the FBI agents who were present, once the CIA interrogation team introduced these harsh tactics -- basically there was the equivalent of a firefight within the safe house over what kind of tactics were going to be used. And the FBI ultimately deemed that its agents could not be present while coercive tactics were being used. You know, the FBI is a law enforcement agent. Their goal and their training is to bring people to trial using interrogation methods that are permissible at a trial, which don't include any of these coercive techniques. Of course, you couldn't bring anybody to trial saying that you had extracted a confession using these methods. And so, the result of the fight within the safe house between the FBI and the CIA was to give the CIA, which had much less experience with interrogations, control. And that’s how America's interrogation policies unfolded.

Or, as one of my fave authors phrased it in The Tommyknockers:

The FBI was on scene at 6:00 P.M., the CIA a 7:15 P.M. By 8:00, they were yelling about jurisdiction. At 9:15 P.M., a frightened, infuriated CIA agent named Speklin shot an FBI agent named Richardson. The incident was hushed up, but Bobbi and Gard would have understood perfectly--the Dallas Police were on the scene and in complete control of the situation.

All of this vengeful craziness seems to stem from the first few days after 9/11 and the soul searching that went on in the intelligence community about what wasn't done and why (so called 'human' intel and the types of contacts that needed to be initiated and fostered to gain such intel (with government money--who smells another Iran Contra scandal?)) and what needed to be done and whether or not we as a nation wanted to take a trip down that path (infiltrating the human networks and interpreting the intel gleaned from them). Based on the path that the administration has chosen, two conscious choices seem to have been made:

Infiltrating the human networks was going to be too slow and possibly not fruitful if the infiltration was detected and false intel was fed to the agents/assets, so members of the human networks needed to be seized whenever possible and intel was to be extracted from them.

This extraction was to be done in a shroud of secrecy, both due to its total illegality under U.S. and International law and also its total affrontery to human moral decency (when has that ever stopped anyone, though) and the potential fallout from the general population in the event of its diclosure as official policy (which we are witnessing currently, though not nearly on the scale we should be).

A portion of the inertia to enact these policies as well as large portions of the Patriot Act and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force came out of the all to Human emotion of fight when faced with a threat that has already inflicted damage and has the potential to inflict additional damage and flight is not a viable option. Flight to where? We were hit at home, in one of the most damaging episodes since the above mentioned WWII. However, we as a nation have also shown the ability to exercise restraint during the most advantageous of circumstances:

George Will:

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson's opening statement, delivered in a city reeking from the decomposition of 30,000 bodies still buried in the rubble, said: "That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason."

Nuremberg, says Dodd, was "the place where America's moral authority in the second half of the 20th century was born." That perishable resource has, he thinks, been squandered by Bush administration decisions inimical to the Constitution and international law.

Whether we will ever get it back in the eyes of the world remains to be seen.

BTW, the Astros managed to pull it out in the end after all...

FISA'd

2007-08-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

A developing situation in my small world has precluded my posting frequecy lately, but in light of recent happenings I would feel remiss if I don't jump into the pool for a dip. Besides, Arthur has snapped off an impressive number of lengthy, thought provoking and enraging (if you're not enraged after reading some of the most recent posts you need to check your pulse, priorities, and possibly status as a human being) entries after a lengthy period of recuperative silence.

Cenk Uygur:

Here we go again. I was going to write a nice, fun piece about Matt Damon on a lovely Sunday afternoon when the Democrats went and ruined everything, as usual.

Well, I'll go ahead and comment on the latest installation of the Bourne franchise. I saw it Saturday night. The theater was packed to the gills, and we had to grab the remaining two adjacent seats in the front row slightly off to the left. I'm going to have to go back and see it again from further back in the auditorium, but the experience was still a good one. The film is great fun visually from start to finish, with very few (brief) opportunities given the audience to catch their breath. Damon and the supporting cast do a great job with the script. It's pretty good, once one accepts the convention (continuing a trend which established in the first two films) that the only similarities between the films and the Ludlum novels. The detail featured in these films that strikes me as poignant is the highlighting of the typical use of technology and practice which are precisely at the heart of the surveillance and wiretapping programs that has been in place for years now under the NSA and which Congress signed into law on Saturday, ruining the weekend for anyone who is a fan of the Fourth Amendment, may it rest in peace.

These insidious ways of flagging and tracking people are employed during all three of the major sequences in Ultimatum, to varying degrees of success, since, of course, our intrepid amnesiatic hero can never be a step behind his pursuers... Data Mining and Satellite Tracking play a huge role in the action and forward movement of the plot of the film.

In actuality, the film Enemy of the State touched on these precise issues several years ago, albeit with less critical and popular acclaim and success. In the interest of full disclosure, the story left quite a bit to be desired. Smith and Hackman did as much as they could with their roles and the story, but it seemed kinda rough around the edges, possibly because it was 15 pounds of story crammed into a ten pound box.

However, in all four films, a network of surveillance exists to filter certain key pieces of information that, once detected, place in motion a machine of incalculable swiftness, inhuman mercilessness, and single minded purpose, even when it doesn't know what it will do with the goal once it has attained it, be it a piece of information or an individual. Scary stuff, that exists this very moment, to be sure.

So, while Matty and his crew might have gotten FISA'd, they were doing a little FISAing themselves for anyone who was paying attention and likes to talk about what they just saw beyond the terms of how cool the NYC chase was or how there's no way he could have survived that 10 story swan dive in to East River. Apologies to anyone who hasn't seen it yet, but take heart: All you know is the there's a chase sequence in downtown Manhattan, and Damon goes for a dip in the River. You'll have to pony up for the rest of the goodies...

"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are."

-Pigkiller, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

If Bill O'Reilly were a Cat...

2007-08-01T07:16:00.000-07:00

His name would be Bucky.

"For doing my job you're going to bill me?"

2007-07-26T19:59:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, more quality treatment for our veterans:

WCBS:

Former Army Specialist Rodriguez started getting bills for $700 for lost or damaged government property this summer. Although he was discharged some four years ago, bills recently arrived demanding payment, but giving no details on what or why -- nor do they offer a way to dispute the charges.

And he's not alone. A 2006 government report found more than 1,000 soldiers being billed a total of $1.5 million. And while fighting overseas put their lives on the line, this battle on paper could cost them their future by ruining their credit. Rodriguez will be reported to credit agencies next month.

"It makes a terrible point about the nature of military service today," citizen soldier Tod Ensign said.

Ensign is a veteran's advocate. He says this is all part of the military’s push to be run more like a business.

"They'll just pound him and call him, call his employers, and make his life as miserable as they can until he pays up," Ensign said.

Testimony before Congress detailed in a report found that "although unit commanders and finance offices are authorized to write off debts for lost and damaged equipment ... they have not always done so."

Ummmm, What the fuck is that all about? If there is anything that can be classified as the 'cost of war' it's lost and damaged equipment, never mind the human costs...

Excuse me--numb fuck, stone brained looking for any angle to squeeze a buck from any potential source military beaurocrats:

IT'S FUCKING WAR. SHIT GETS BLOWN THE FUCK UP. FUCKING DEAL WITH IT. IF YOU DIDN'T WANT TO PAY FOR IT, DON'T GET INTO A WAR!!

Of course, we know how receptive these folks are to common sense and logic now, don't we?

What's next? Billing widows or parentless children for the cost of a dead soldier's uniform and equipment they had on when they were killed? Maybe billing a Hummer driver's widow for the cost of the vehicle since it was damaged beyond repair by an IED or EFP?

I'm going to stop now before the wrong person stumbles upon this and thinks it's a grand idea and should be implemented yesterday...

Money for Nothing

2007-07-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

Jim Hightower:

By a 244-181 vote in June, our congress critters quietly hiked their own pay, putting them in an income class that exceeds 97 percent of American households. And guess what? Unlike us riff-raff, their pay raise is automatic! Deserve it or not, need it or not, they get this annual boost, unless they choose not to accept it. And, gollies, guess what again? They rarely choose to say no!

Glad to see that a little less than half of the reps. in Congress recognize how ridiculous this is, but it's still not enough...

Worse than the raise – which comes when the majority of Americans are falling behind economically – are the excuses of the congressional leaders. They say the big bucks are necessary to retain experienced lawmakers. Yeah... experienced at raising their own pay, which they've done for seven of the past 10 years. And if you want to hear a truly sad tale, try this: members wail that they have to meet with lobbyists who are paid far more than they are, so they need to narrow the gap to save face.

Ken Boehm of the National Legal and Policy Center:

"Their approval rating is 14 percent," Boehm points out. "That means that 86 percent of the American public thinks they're doing a pretty crummy job. If they were doing an absolutely sterling job -- and everybody knew it -- and working long hours and doing productive stuff and not getting caught stealing and so forth, then you might be able to make an argument about it. But that's hardly the case when their approval rating is [so low]."

In the Spirit of Hill...

The Citadel of Sanity

2007-07-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

"The Atlantic and Pacific are our walls. Broad, stout walls. The Citadel of Sanity! If we get in it we'll go bankrupt like the others and lose a couple million of our finest young men."

Ike Lacouture, on why the U.S. should avoid entry into World War II, The Winds of War, by Herman Wouk. The character of Lacouture may have been based on the real life isolationist Senator from Michigan Arthur Vandenberg.

Houston Chronicle, 19 JUL 07:

Construction of a polarizing fence along the Texas-Mexico border is expected to begin by this fall, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff confirmed Wednesday, adding that border communities will be consulted "in terms of style" so the government doesn't "create any eyesores."

Chertoff said he had seen some fencing "that was quite attractive" during his visits along the South Texas border.

"I think I was in Brownsville ... and I saw some very nice fence that was ornamental but it did the trick," he said.

Similar to how effective the isolationist camp's views were in the lead up to the U.S.'s entry into World War II (all Pearl Harbor attack conspiracy theories non withstanding...) border barriers of any kind serve no purpose but to antagonize the nation that didn't build them and make life difficult for the people and other life living on either side of the border on all sorts of levels.

Oh, yeah, it probably won't keep folks from crossing the border in search of work and a better life, either. Despite what some of the commenters on the piece from yesterday had to say:

44mag wrote:
The fence won't solve all the problems on the border, but it will help. The open borders lobby knows this to be true, hence their hysterical opposition - it will ruin the environment, cause flooding, kill livestock, destroy the economy, bankrupt farmers, blah blah blah.

texrob1 wrote:
Build It! It certainly won't hurt anything,all these people claiming the fence will hurt the environment,what about the tens of thousands of Illegal aliens trampling all over the environment? I guess they are careful as they are entering our country Illegally, to not hurt any plants or animals,what a Joke.

sportfanatic wrote:
I want a fence with electricity, just like jurassic park.

Ahhh, I love Texas, just not too fond of some of my fellow Texans...

Back to Thursday's article:

Chertoff, however, pledged Wednesday to consult with border leaders on the fence design, but said "we can't give border communities a veto."

The homeland chief on Wednesday said he "can't rule out" that the government would use eminent domain to seize private property to make way for the fence. Governments use eminent domain to take private property for public use.

In a state rich in property rights history, that acknowledgment will likely earn a fiery reception along the border.

Yes, it will and it has:

Chronicle, 20 JUL 07:

(John Cornyn showing some intestinal fortitude on one thing at least)

"I assure you there will be local consultation," the Texas Republican said in a call with state reporters. "There will not be ... unilateral actions on the part of the Department of Homeland Security without local input."

"This could not be mishandled any worse, as far as I'm concerned," said Cornyn, who voted last year for legislation mandating the construction of 700 miles of double-layered fencing at the Southwest border but insisted that local leaders be consulted.

Or, maybe just self preservation by trying to please everyone on some level:

The fence issue is a tricky one for Texas elected officials in Washington, and particularly for Cornyn, who is up for re-election next year. On the one hand, Cornyn and other Texas congressional delegation members are pressing for increased border security. But they also are facing a huge wave of opposition to the fence from border officials and landowners who view it as the wrong approach to border security.

I myself like this comment:

txnflfan wrote:
Cherfoff says that construction was to begin by this fall... Hmmm
Weren't these the same people a few weeks ago who ran around talking about urgency, and the need for immediate legislation.
The last time I checked we are at the end of July, and the fall is in October.
Where is this urgency they were talking about???

I say get rid of every incumbent in office regardless of party. Perhaps the next batch will actually do the will of the people who sent them to Washington.

If only wishing would make it so. These Congress critters are worse than cockroaches in terms of getting rid of them for good. Remember our good buddy Tom Delay from Sugarland? He's still weighing in with random idiocy like this that Hill went off on the other day.

But I'd like to go back to a phrase from the article on Thursday:

The homeland chief on Wednesday said he "can't rule out" that the government would use eminent domain to seize private property to make way for the fence.

Ummmmm, excuse me? Homeland Chief? As in, "Jawohl, mein Commandant?" He's not my homeland chief, I'll tell you that right now.

Let's keep it in perspective and call him what he is, the Homeland Security Chief.

Amazing what the omission of a single word can do to a title... maybe I should apply as a copy editor over there at the Chronicle....

Another great passage that somehow didn't make it into the online article was a quote from none other than the Shrub himself on the merits and risks of stepping on the toes of landowners here in Texas over the issue of this pesky fence:

By the way, in my state of Texas, when it comes to the fencing, I would strongly urge those who advocate it not to go down there and go face to face with some of these Texas ranchers down there.

As Hill would say:

BwaaaaaaaaaahahaahAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think I can call Texas my state before he can, even though I've only been back for 12 years after being spirited away by parental units at the tender young age of one...

Remember: Broad, Stout Walls! Bigger Fences Make Better Neighbors!

Just ask the Israelis about how well their wall is working over in the West Bank.

Col. (res.) Shaul Arieli, who was the last commander of the Gaza regional brigade of the IDF, has stated that the effectiveness of the barrier will only be short-term. "The fence provides a partial security response to the terror threats and a good response to prevention of illegal immigration and prevention of criminal acts," he explains, "but on the other hand, in its current format it creates the future terror infrastructure because this terror infrastructure is precisely those people living in enclaves who will support acts of terror as the only possible tool that they perceive as being able to restore them the land, production sources and water wells taken from them."

Cataloguing(people...)

2007-07-13T22:30:00.000-07:00

How long would it take for the idea of this to be shot down here in the U.S. where Democracy "exists"? The same sort of Democracy that we are purportedly bringing to Iraq?

U.S. troops are stopping Iraqis at checkpoints, workplaces and sites where attacks have recently occurred, and inputting their personal data using handheld scanners or specially equipped laptops. In several neighborhoods in and around Baghdad, troops have gone door to door collecting data.

Can this be far behind?

Over there and maybe over here?

I can't help but recall the fears of Paul Craig Roberts in this interview with Mark::

"the United States is is essentially finished. Liberty's dead, I don't see any way to bring it back. The country is balkanized, it's split, and ignorant. It hasn't the foggiest idea what's happening to it."

"...I don't see any signs of hope at all. I see none. None at all. I expect to die in a concentration camp."

More Support for the Troops...

2007-07-13T09:58:00.000-07:00

I think all of this speaks for itself. My blood has been close to the boiling point and I'm going to meet a friend for lunch here in a little while, so I wanted to assemble these items together not unlike the modifications that the boys and girls over there have had to employ for years now just to feel like they have a chance of surviving an ambush:

But here we are in Iraq after 15 bloody months still welding steel plate onto Humvees. Sure, our soldiers gain a tad more protection, but it also turns the vehicles into rollover queens because it shifts their center of gravity.

The problem is that the soft-skinned Humvee was conceived as a light utility truck – not a close combat vehicle. "The Humvee is horribly thin-skinned and underpowered," says Army veteran Scott Schreiber, who drove one for six years. "It should be used in roles that don’t call for armor. If the role calls for armor, it’s simple: use armor."

Bob Geiger:

A study completed in late June by the Pentagon's Inspector General concludes that the Department of Defense (DoD) has risked the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq due to malfeasance in awarding and monitoring contracts for badly-needed armored vehicles.

The study, which was requested by Democratic Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York, found that since 2000 the DoD has awarded "sole-source" contracts valued at $2.2 billion to just two companies, Force Protection, Inc.(FPI) and Armor Holdings, Inc (AHI).

Inspector General auditors found that the Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC) made these two companies the sole providers of armored vehicles and armor kits for troops, despite knowing that other suppliers may have produced the equipment so desperately needed in Iraq substantially faster. Both manufacturers fell far behind delivery schedules, while AHI also produced inadequate and faulty equipment.

Democracy Now!:

On Wednesday, Republicans defeated an amendment that would require U.S. troops to get as much or more rest between deployments as the time they were deployed. Seven Republicans joined Democrats in support but the measure failed to attract the sixty votes needed to move ahead. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized Republicans, saying: “Our troops are not machines, they are human beings.”

UPDATE 14 JUL 07 (very early):

Then there's this:

Following the Committee’s April 24, 2007, hearing on the Tillman fratricide, the Committee wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding seeking “all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President” relating to Corporal Tillman’s death. The White House Counsel’s office responded that it would not provide the Committee with documents that “implicate Executive Branch confidentiality interests” and produced only two communications with the officials in the Defense Department, one of which was a package of news clippings. The response of the Defense Department to the Committee’s inquiry was also deficient.

How far are these bastards willing to go? As Poppy put it in 1990:

That's why, in the Persian Gulf, George Bush had to say, 'This will not be another Vietnam.' He actually said, 'this time we're going all the way.'

*Rubbing eyes fiercely...*

Ooops, who left that faucet running again? No wonder the damn water bill is so high...

2007-07-10T19:53:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush, 9/30/03:

And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.

Tom Delay, 7/13/05:

The law specifically says that the CIA operative, they're trained to keep them covert. That means usually they're overseas, they're not working out of Langley driving in and out of the gate, they are truly undercover, and you leak it, you're breaking the law.

That wasn't the case. That wasn't the case here. Ms. Plame was working at Langley, coming and going quite obvious she was working for the CIA and this...uh...er..this...there may be other's who leaked...uh...we'll find out when the investigation is over.

Paul Bedard, 7/3/07:

Robert Novak:

"I am sure it was not a planned leak but came out as an offhand observation."

The rest is history. Novak was investigated in the CIA spy case, slammed by fellow journalists for "outing" an agent, the subject of what he calls false stories, kicked off his regular CNN gig, and barred from Meet the Press for two years-and out $160,000 in legal fees. Still, he writes,

"Judging it on the merits, I would still write the story."

Bob Ewegen, Denver Post, 7/6/07:

I am angry at the underlying event - the fact that an American patriot whose only crime was to serve her country in a dangerous and honorable profession had her mission undercut for partisan political purposes.

I am even angrier that the vicious "outing" of Valerie Plame put her sources at risk - the men and women in foreign countries who had risked their own lives to help America in our war on terror.

In the intelligence trade, such foreign sources are called "assets." I call them heroes. And they are the ones who were put most at risk after columnist Robert Novak revealed Plame's CIA connection as part of a clumsy Bush administration effort to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had become a critic of the Iraq war.

I will never forgive anyone who willfully puts the lives of America's military or intelligence personnel or our friends abroad in danger.

And that's exactly what former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage did when he leaked Plame's identity to Novak - and what Novak did when he published the name of a covert CIA agent.

Between Armitage's dishonorable act and Novak's dishonorable act were a string of other dishonorable acts, including an executive order by President Bush empowering Vice President Cheney to declassify classified information, which Cheney did, thus allowing Libby to shop Plame's identity around in hopes of finding a journalist willing to smear Wilson through his wife. With Libby's information confirming Armitage's original tip, Novak willingly blew Plame's cover.

In so doing, he didn't put Plame at personal risk, because she was not overseas at the time. But he did irrevocably damage her mission - and put those human "assets" at risk.

You see, al-Qaeda and its ilk rarely try to kill CIA agents - or anyone else who can fight back. What these cowards do is kill people who have worked with U.S. agents.

You can imagine the conversation: "Hmm, that Valerie Plame who visited here turns out to be a CIA agent. Didn't she hang out at Hamid's coffee shop a lot?"

Next day, Hamid's body turns up, along with the bodies of his wife and family, all of whom were tortured to death before his eyes.

That's the way our enemies play the game. That's why we train brave men and women like Valerie Plame so America can fight back.

Politics, or national security?

Politics.

Politics, or the safety of our combatants and allies in the war on terror?

Politics.

Politics, or the Law?

Politics.

Politics, or common sense?

Politics.

Politics, or--

Politics.

Still think it's not a Civil War?!?

2007-07-09T13:03:00.000-07:00

BBC, 3/21/06:

US President George W Bush has said he does not believe Iraq has descended into civil war but urged the nation's leaders to confront sectarian violence.

Bill O'Reilly, 11/29/06:

It's not a civil war as NBC News wants you to think. It has nothing to do with that.

AP, 7/9/07:

Prominent Shiite and Sunni politicians called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves after a weekend of violence that claimed more than 220 lives, including 60 who died yesterday in a surge of bombings and shootings around Baghdad.

During a news conference yesterday in Baghdad, Abbas al-Bayati, a Shiite Turkoman lawmaker, criticized the security situation in Armili, saying its police force had only 30 members and that the Interior Ministry had finally responded to requests for reinforcements only two days before the attack.

In the absence of enough security forces, al-Bayati said authorities should help residents "arm themselves" for their own protection.

The call for civilians to take up arms in their own defense was echoed yesterday by the country's Sunni Arab vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, who said all Iraqis must "pay the price" for terrorism.

OK kids, it's official: the presence or absence of U.S. forces in Iraq has NO IMPACT on the fact that a Civil War is currently occurring there, therefore rendering this argument completely moot:

Iraq's foreign minister warned Monday that a quick American troop withdrawal could lead to civil war and the collapse of the Iraqi state, adding that the U.S. has a responsibility to build Iraqi forces so that they take over.

And if that's not enough fun and excitement for ya, chew on this:

Iraq says Turkey has 140,000 soldiers along its border, prompting fears of an incursion against Kurdish guerrillas.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari an ethnic Kurd himself, said his government was against any breach of Iraqi sovereignty.

Turkey accuses Kurdish separatists of staging attacks from inside Iraq. It has often warned Baghdad that it is prepared to take military action.

It's time to get the Hell out RIGHT NOW. If the saber rattling in the north as detailed above doesn't abate pronto, there will be a new huge messy front in this mess that the U.S. forces will be powerless to influence except through the implementation of force through the air, the accuracy of which has already been proven over and over again as suspect, to put it gently. The only sure result of any air sorties on the part of the U.S. forces would be the killing of Kurdish and Turkish forces, resulting in the ire of both groups being focussed upon the U.S., who right now can sort of call both groups allies, or at least "not enemies".

There's no way that the oil worshiping fat cats are going to get their hands on that oil:

In March 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force), which included executives of America’s largest energy companies, recommended that the United States government support initiatives by Middle Eastern countries “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve. It does so to the benefit of the companies, but to the great detriment of Iraq’s economy, democracy and sovereignty.

I suppose that the U.S. could stay and follow Gunner's advice:

One of the big problems with how we have fought this war of liberation is our unwillingness to completely exterminate the bastards. Churchill also said we should just gas the “uncivilized” fucks that give us a hard time. An American military man in Vietnam gave us a wonderful phrase for this, “destroy the village in order to save it.” That is exactly what needs to happen. And I don’t mean something small scale like 1-3 million dead Iraqis (the toll of our Indochina wars) I am thinking big. Like all males between the ages of 9-55, or something similar. That’s what it will take to win this thing, whatever that means. But the softies in the liberal media and Congress won’t go for it…

But in eliminating all the opposition, it would gravely polarize the rest of the region against the U.S. and demonize the U.S. imperialistic empire alongside such revered infamous members of the book that is world history as the Emperors and Centurions of the Roman Empire, Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes, the Vandals and Visigoths, Imperial Spain during the Inquisition, and Nazi Germany among others.

I kinda doubt that the fellas who got together in Philadelphia in 1787 had this sort of thing in mind when they drafted this:

"You'd have to be dead...

2007-07-07T20:13:00.000-07:00

not to be affected by Moore's movie."

-Barclay Fitzpatrick, Vice President of Corporate Communications, Capital BlueCross

Digby:

...it made me cry and a Michael Moore film has never made cry before. I've laughed and cheered and certainly gotten enraged, but even through all of those emotions in this film --- and there were plenty of them --- I remained choked up. I just couldn't get past the idea that people could make these life-ending and life-ruining decisions about other people --- for profit. It's so fundamentally at odds with what I think of as normal human empathy that on some levels it seems akin to being a concentration camp guard or an executioner. (And from the emotional reaction from those who'd worked in the industry and had quit, it takes a toll those with empathy who are asked to perform that dirty function as well.)

There is one story in the film of a woman whose husband was denied a bone marrow transplant allegedly because it was an "experimental procedure," --- is one a thousand excuses health insurance companies use to keep from having to provide care for those whose premiums they eagerly cashed in the years before their customer got sick. But I think what got me about that particular story was the fact that this woman worked in the hospital where the board of directors of this managed care company also worked. She spoke to them personally. She wasn't just a piece of paper in an in-box. It was a real live person, a colleague and neighbor, literally begging for her husbands life ... and they said no. For profit. It makes me want to howl in pain and outrage.

Moore's movie is actually quite successful in showing that people in other first world countries with universal care live very well despite the fact that they pay higher taxes for medical care (and other things) because --- they don't have to pay for medical care and those other things. The people who live middle and upper middle class lives as professionals don't lose anything --- and the society as a whole gains tremendously because those crippling worries are removed from all, the poor and middle class alike. I don't think Americans have any idea that they are not actually living at the top of the heap --- they think what we have is a good as it can possibly be, and it just ain't true.

Take a minute and read that last paragraph again.

Yes, the tax bracket is higher for everyone with a nationalized health care program.

But one doesn't have to take into consideration while seeking employment what level of health insurance is offered above and beyond all other aspects of potential employment--like what the actual job is, whether one is qualified and/or trained for it, schedule and pay, full or part time status, etc.

What a freakin' concept, eh?

What would you spend 1.4 trillion on?

2007-07-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

Noah Shachtman:

Additional war costs for the next 10 years could total about $472 billion if troop levels fall to 30,000 by 2010, or $919 billion if troop levels fall to 70,000 by about 2013. If these estimates are added to already appropriated amounts, total funding about $980 billion to $1.4 trillion by 2017.

Ummmmm, maybe some Universal Health Care of some kind or another?

NHS services are largely "free at the point of delivery", paid for by taxes; the NHS's budget for 2007-08 is £104($208) billion.

Or maybe rebuilding New Orleans...ten times over?

Hugh Kaufman, senior policy analyst for emergency response at the Environmental Protection Agency, said New Orleans may need one of the largest public building programmes ever seen in the US at a cost of $80-100bn - approximately the same as the yearly cost of the war in Iraq.(yearly cost of the war before the infamous surge...)

How about revamping the education system in this country?

The vast majority of students (up to 70 percent) lack the financial resources to pay tuition up front and must rely on student loans and scholarships from their university, the federal government, or a private lender.

Or research into altenative energy?

Consider the U.S. is spending $67 billion annually on the war on terror vs. $3.4 billion on energy research, according to the National Science Foundation.

What would you spend it on?

I think he may know what he's talking about...

2007-07-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.), is a Senior Fellow with Hudson Institute and a professor at Yale University. He was Director of the National Security Agency from 1985 to 1988. From 1981 to 1985, he served as Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the Army's senior intelligence officer. From 1977 to 1981, he was Military Assistant to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

If the Democrats truly want to succeed in forcing President Bush to begin withdrawing from Iraq, the first step is to redefine "supporting the troops" as withdrawing them, citing the mass of accumulating evidence of the psychological as well as the physical damage that the president is forcing them to endure because he did not raise adequate forces. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress could confirm this evidence and lay the blame for "not supporting the troops" where it really belongs – on the president. And they could rightly claim to the public that they are supporting the troops by cutting off the funds that he uses to keep U.S. forces in Iraq.

No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods. Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.

Of course, no U.S. forces have found themselves being used a literal pawns in a colossal power and resource grab that the occupation of Iraq has become.

Oh, spiders, what beautiful webs you weave...

2007-07-05T13:39:00.000-07:00

My head is seriously hurting after reading this:

Before entering government, Libby was a private attorney who represented billionaire international commodities trader Marc Rich.

Rich was indicted in 1983 by then-U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani on charges of tax evasion and illegal dealing with Iran during the American hostage crisis.

Rich fled to Switzerland. He also occupied a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted List for many years.

Giuliani, former mayor of New York, is now a leading Republican presidential candidate. He endorsed Bush's decision to spare Libby jail time even though he had tried to put Libby's client behind bars.

Ears...Bleeding...

"After evaluating the facts, the president came to a reasonable decision, and I believe the decision was correct," Giuliani said in a written statement Monday evening.

Rich's fugitive days ended when former President Clinton pardoned him in January 2001, a move that prompted a congratulatory call from Libby to Rich.

**Nervously twitching**

Clinton, of course, is married to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who is the Democratic front-runner for the White House.

She blasted Bush's decision on Libby, leaving out any mention of Libby's connection to Rich -- or Rich at all, for that matter.

OOooooo, look at all the pretty strands in the sunlight...

And President George Bush threw it all away...

2007-07-03T12:45:00.000-07:00

Robert J. Elisberg:

There's a singular moment that stands out in Michael Moore's new film, SiCKO. The moment bursts your heart with joy and gnashes your teeth with fury. That's a tough trick to pull off.

The moment in question comes during the highly-publicized sequence when Moore has brought a boatload of seriously-ill 9/11 rescue volunteers to Gitmo for treatment. Unable to land, they put ashore instead at Cuba. But the specific moment isn't about any of that, isn't about health care at all.

Just before Moore and his companions are set to leave Cuba, they're told that a local fire department has heard there are 9/11 rescue heroes and would like to meet them. When the Moore group arrives at the station, there are the firefighters standing at full-salute attention. The Cubans explain they wish they could have joined the Americans to help out on 9/11, but add that all firefighters are brothers, all rescue volunteers are honored.

As the Americans movingly head down the line to shake hands with the Cuban firefighters, suddenly they all break into hugs.

It's a glorious, emotional scene, that swells the heart with the sense of decency from both sides. The Cubans nobly reaching out, and the Americans who nobly risked their lives.

When I lived in PA, I was a volunteer firefighter with the local department for a few years in high school and college. I've often thought about it for the past five and a half years, knowing that hundreds or maybe even thousands of individual volunteers like I was during that time in my life rushed up to lower Manhattan and offered to do whatever needed to be done. Seeing these few folks in the film and hearing additional testimony from the in their appearance on Democracy Now! made me ponder the fact that I most likely would have gone up there myself if I hadn't have turned the page to this current chapter of my life here on the gulf coast, and most likely would have been in the same dire straits as Reggie and John.

But Mr. Elisberg uses the example of solidarity between emergency workers across physical and ideological barriers to springboard to a larger theme on squandered opportunities and potential global solidarity in favor of power and resource grabbing:

After 9/11, as horrific as that day was, there was an apparent thought in the air: that through tragedy, the world had come together. The entire world. Friends and enemies alike all over the globe were holding vigils for the stricken-America, knowing that in this disaster, everyone was connected. If there was to be a fight against terrorists, here was the world opening its door and its heart to America. United, the world had a chance to connect and work together to achieve whatever heights it wanted.

And President George Bush threw it all away.

He not only lost the rarest chance of uniting the entire world, but did the unimaginable: he got the world -- ready to support America -- to distrust, even in-part hate the United States to depths this country has never known.

There was our enemy, Cuba -- a nation we've been at conflict with for half a century, a nation off-limits to Americans without special permission -- standing at ready-salute to the heroic men and women who risked themselves in the 9/11 attack. Five years later, still swelling with honor towards them. Not just any nation, but Cuba. Our bitter enemy. Hugging Americans in support for 9/11. Still standing by us, five years later.

And President George Bush threw this all away.

On the Fourth of July, we turn our thoughts to the Statue of Liberty, standing tall in the harbor, welcoming immigrants from around the world to the freedom of our shores. For 232 years, we have been a beacon to all such people and such hopes, and those around the world have looked at that Statue with arm raised and flame held high to stand for all that is good, noble, glorious and important about America.

And President George Bush threw all that away.

The Democrats and even some Republicans who are finally recognizing the antics of this administration for what they are--a shameless grab at as much power, wealth and control as absolutely possible, consequences and repercussions be damned--keep invoking the moniker of Richard Nixon, as in Nixonian Stonewalling, but this goes far beyond what Tricky Dicky tried to get away with. He was content to spy on political rivals and lie to the American people about the escalation of an unpopular war. The Shrub and the Shooter (or is it the other way around?), not to be outdone, have raised the bar to almost unfathomable heights (or depths) by adding torture, kidnapping, illegal and covert wars on non belligerent nations, and the blatant disregard for established international institutions such as the U.N. and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The damage that has already been wrought and may be additionally wrought in the next 17 months is staggering and hard to comprehend. What's even harder to comprehend is how the damage can be repaired after January 20, 2009.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away (they're cheaper, too!)

2007-06-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

I post about a lot of various issues and personal happenings. This film focuses on an issue that I really haven't devoted a great deal of time to, but that is a looming elephant in all of our lives. What happens if we get really sick? Will our insurance cover everything? How much will it cover if not? How much of what it doesn't cover will I be able to afford before I'm in serious trouble?

If you've never asked yourself these questions or if you don't think you'll ever need to, then you have to see this movie. Even if you know that you'll never be faced with having to ask or answer these questions, you should see the film, because under the main theme are some pretty far reaching questions:

If we as a society are measured by how we treat those members who are the worst off (think uninsured people who have to seek treatment in an ER, or worse, those who were unlucky enough to be in New Orleans twenty two months ago), then who are we?

How did we get here (this one is answered pretty easily and clearly in the film thanks to Tricky Dicky's obsession with archival documentation of the magnetic type)?

And it also raises the specter of why we don't do anything about it, namely that:

The best way to exercise and maintain control over a people is to keep them in three states: fear (the terrorists must be fought over there so we don't have to fight them over here), poverty (below poverty line minimum wage, anyone?), and demoralized (it doesn't matter if I vote or not, the crooks will always be in power in Washington/Austin/(insert county seat here)).

I don't know what will happen if I get sick or get in a serious accident. I'm not very confident, in part because of what I saw earlier tonight but also in light of the flap over which the GURD medication my insurance company would pay for even after being prescribed by my doctor and having him argue with the insurance company in a three way conference call. Formulary, non formulary, pre-certified, their all just words that mean nothing except for what color ink and how much of it ends up at the bottom of a balance sheet at the end of the day.

I can remember one time I got top notch free care after a serious accident: After I hit a telephone pole with a Postal jeep while on a collection run during the holiday season one year when I was in college and working as a Casual letter carrier during the Christmas break. The jeep only had a lap belt, so my face hit the steering wheel about as hard as the jeep hit the pole. About $5000.00 of oral surgery later, I had seventy stitches in my face and the right side of my upper jaw wired with braces. All courtesy of the USPS workman's comp insurance. So, unless you work for the government or a government connected entity and are smart enough to get hurt or fall ill on the job, you should probably stay on your toes and keep all your bases covered.

Oh, and please see the film. Keep an open mind, and SEE THE FILM.

Of the people, by the people, for the people

2007-06-28T09:31:00.000-07:00

Jim Hightower:

Let’s be blunt. It’s no longer the Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, or al Queda bombers killing our troops in Iraq. Washington is killing them.

George W – still clinging to his disgraced neo-con fantasies – and the congressional leaders of both parties – unwilling to use their budgetary and oversight authority – are the ones who have 150,000 American men and women trapped in Iraq’s civil war. The troops are doing all they can, yet they have been betrayed by a White House and Congress that has no strategy to make “victory” possible and is unwilling either to provide the massive troop strength it would take to secure that country… or to bring our troops home.

So, our men and women are locked in a gruesome shooting gallery by U.S. politicians who apparently intend to keep them there for the year and a half or so left in Bush’s term. Hundreds of them will die, thousands will be horribly maimed, and all will suffer trauma. They are not victims of the “enemy,” but of America’s own failed “leaders.” It is immoral to do this to them, but there they are.

Meanwhile, Bush keeps saying that his war is essential to America’s own security and is the “challenge of our generation.” But he is obviously lying to us. If it was true, all Americans would be enlisted in the cause. If it was true, we’d have half a million troops in Iraq, or more.

But that would mean that the families of the elites would have to be called to duty – and this is politically unacceptable to Washington. As one Bushite, Sen. Jeff Sessions, put it: “We have a limited number of men and women we can send to Iraq.” In other words, don’t call on his family or friends to make any sacrifices for this "essential" war.

They are killing Americans in a war they know they can’t win – and a war their families won’t join. This is a dishonorable sham, and only We the People can stop it. Protest more. Protest louder.

Concur.

Do whatever you can, but do something if you believe in the idea that is America and everything it stands for, as opposed to the narrow agendas and priorities that the current administration and its Neo Conservative and elite backers would have us believe is the true meaning of this amazing group of people that make up America:

Dennis Kucinich:

We all know that the Iraq Study Group, in one of its major recommendations, Recommendation 63, said the United States should encourage investment in Iraq's oil sector by the international community and international energy companies; that the United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise; that the United States should ensure the World Bank's efforts to assure that best practices are used in contracting.

Mr. Speaker, the last 50 minutes that I have spent talking about the effort to try to privatize Iraq's oil, if you go to one of the search engines, you can find perhaps 1 million different citations relating to this. So it is impossible to cover this kind of a subject, even in a period of an hour. But it needs to be said that this administration has pushed the Congress to put language in funding bills for Iraq that would set the stage for the privatization of Iraq's oil.

I am going to quote from the first war supplemental, that "the President shall make and transmit to Congress a determination, No. 2, whether the Government of Iraq is making substantial progress in meeting its commitment to pursue reconciliation initiatives, including enactment of a hydrocarbon law." Then under subsection (b), it says "if the President fails to make this determination, the Secretary of Defense shall commence the redeployment of our Armed Forces from Iraq."

In other words, privatize your oil, or we are leaving you without having a security and peacekeeping force to replace the United States Army.

PLEASE attempt to adjust your radio...

2007-06-21T16:52:00.000-07:00

This is pretty frightening, but not absolutely 100% true here in Houston...

We DO have a great station here in town, KPFT at 90.1 FM in town and 89.5 FM down on the island of Galveston. They are listener supported, and worth every penny that they raise. From Amy and Juan every morning on Democracy Now! to great music programming on the weekends like The Lone Star Jukebox and The Bluegrass Zone to commentary on world events on The Monitor, the programming is diverse and well thought out. It's a refreshing alternative to the aural flamethrowers like Rush and BillO who dominate the AM airwaves.

Lock it in and rip the freakin' knob off!!!

Puppeters

2007-06-19T18:52:00.000-07:00

Someone needs to get in there with a pair of sharp scissors...

Mumia Abu-Jamal:

Wherever we look in this world, we see the U. S. trying to install a network of puppets, who owe more to the us than to the people of their own countries. In simplistic terms, the corporate media pushes the idea of 'good guys' and 'bad guys'--silly symbols that take us back to mythic cowboy movies. In fact, any given leader can be a good guy and a bad guy depending on the time you're talking about. The late Saddam Hussein, now derided almost universally as a dictator, was an American ally just a brief time before--receiving a bounty of U. S. arms and, yes, weapons of mass destruction. As long as Saddam was using his weapons against Iran, all was well. Today, an Iraqi puppet sits on the national throne, a creation of us power, as surely as was the late Shah of Iran. Afghanistan presents an almost identical snapshot, a leader supported on a throne of U. S. bayonets--in a word, a puppet.

Why is it the business of the us to appoint the leaders of other nations? What's right about that? What's Democratic about that? We don't question it, because it's so deep in our national and international experience.

Why national?

Well, while many folks know about the FBI's harassment of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., how many of us know that the government planned to replace him as a black leader with someone who was more malleable, and less committed to civil rights? The FBI wanted to replace King with Samuel Pierce, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Reagan, someone who Reagan incidentally greeted as a guest to the White House, not recognizing that he was a member of his own cabinet.

The imperial industry of placing puppets over other people didn't begin abroad, it didn't start when one crossed the border, it began in the U. S., in an attempt to control and channel a popular movement. That's because empires begin at home, in essence, they export the methods they use at home abroad.

Democracy Now!:

The United States yesterday has lifted its embargo on direct aid to the Palestinian government in an effort to support Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah's struggle against Hamas. Last week Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip. Abbas responded by dismissing the democratically-elected Hamas-led government and formed a new cabinet led by a prime minister who has the backing of Israel and the United States.

John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in an interview with Amy Goodman:

Well, what we've done -- we use many techniques, but probably the most common is that we'll go to a country that has resources that our corporations covet, like oil, and we'll arrange a huge loan to that country from an organization like the World Bank or one of its sisters, but almost all of the money goes to the U.S. corporations, not to the country itself, corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton, General Motors, General Electric, these types of organizations, and they build huge infrastructure projects in that country: power plants, highways, ports, industrial parks, things that serve the very rich and seldom even reach the poor. In fact, the poor suffer, because the loans have to be repaid, and they're huge loans, and the repayment of them means that the poor won't get education, health, and other social services, and the country is left holding a huge debt, by intention. We go back, we economic hit men, to this country and say, “Look, you owe us a lot of money. You can't repay your debts, so give us a pound of flesh. Sell our oil companies your oil real cheap or vote with us at the next U.N. vote or send troops in support of ours to some place in the world such as Iraq.” And in that way, we've managed to build a world empire with very few people actually knowing that we've done this.

I started off as economist, became chief economist, and my job really – I had a staff of several dozen people. My job was to get them, and for me to convince these countries to accept these very large loans, to get the banks to make the loans, to set up the deal so that the money went to big U.S. corporations. The country was left holding a huge debt, and then I would go in or one of my people would go in and say, “Look, you know, you owe us all this money. You can't pay your debts. Give us that pound of flesh.”

The other thing we do, Amy, and what's going on right now in Latin America is that as soon as one of these anti-American presidents is elected, such as Evo Morales, who you mentioned, in Bolivia, one of us goes in and says, “Hey, congratulations, Mr. President. Now that you're president, I just want to tell you that I can make you very, very rich, you and your family. We have several hundred million dollars in this pocket if you play the game our way. If you decide not to, over in this pocket, I've got a gun with a bullet with your name on it, in case you decide to keep your campaign promises and throw us out.”

I can make sure that this man makes a great deal of money, he and his family, through contracts, through various quasi-legal means, and I can also – if he doesn't accept this, you know, the same thing is going to happen to him that happened to Jaime Roldos in Ecuador and Omar Torrijos in Panama and Allende in Chile, and we tried to do it to Chavez in Venezuela and are still trying – that we will send in the people to try to overthrow him, as, in fact, we recently did with the President of Ecuador, or if we don't overthrow him, we'll assassinate him. And these people all know the history. They know that this has happened many, many, many times in the past.

The degree to which this nefariousness goes is pretty remarkable. I guess one can't underestimate the power and allure of cold hard cash and the power and influence that comes with it, but one has to consider the ramifications to one's soul, as I talked about here and here.

More on the Iraqi Hydrocarbon Act...

2007-06-07T16:33:00.000-07:00

Which should be called the "Multinational Oil Corporations stealing Iraqi Hydrocarbon Act".

DN! on Wednesday, June 6:

AMY GOODMAN: As the Iraqi parliament moves closer to a final vote on a controversial oil law, local opposition is growing. This week, oil workers in southern Iraq announced a strike to oppose the law and demand better wages. More than 600 workers are taking part, affecting two major pipelines. The workers want to be a part of the negotiation process from which they've been excluded. Critics say the law will expose Iraq's oil to major privatization and foreign takeover.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, the strike is critical. It’s been a long time building. There had been some negotiations between the strike leaders and Prime Minister al-Maliki. There are a number of demands, basic working conditions, wages, as you say, but also a seat at the table and opposition to the attempt to turn over Iraq's oil to foreign oil corporations and the -- as more knowledge has been brought to Iraq, it’s been very difficult for Iraqis to even learn what this oil law was about, just like it’s been difficult here. As more information has spread, the opposition has spread, as well, and now the workers have taken the situation into their own hands and struck.

This is really quite amazing and tremendously heartening. The Iraqis are finally seeing through all the smoke (literally) and mirrors of the last five years and realizing what all the ruckus is really about. Hopefully they'll be allowed to continue and grow as a representative group looking out for their own interests, which just happen to be the natural resources of IRAQ, not...

ANTONIA JUHASZ:If the law passes, US corporations have the potential to own a true bonanza of oil and, if the US military stays, protection to get in and get it. Now --

AMY GOODMAN: Which companies, in particular?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Chevron, Exxon, Conoco, BP, Shell, Marathon.

The key to this is that while the Iraqi Parliament can and most likely will pass a resolution ending the occupation of Iraq, it must also be passed by the Cabinet, which is where Al Maliki has his base of support, which is essentially in the role of lap dogs for the US and its corporate interests in the region.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: The United Nations mandate for the US occupation of Iraq gives ultimate authority to the Iraqi parliament and the Iraqi cabinet to determine if the occupation can continue. So, theoretically, if the Iraqi parliament, joined by the cabinet -- and that’s critical -- say that the occupation cannot continue, theoretically it would have to end. That stands in vast opposition to the plans of the Bush administration and now, apparently, the plans of the Democratic leadership, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Couldn't it give Bush an out?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: It could give Bush an out, if he wanted an out. I don't think he wants an out.

AMY GOODMAN: Because?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, I think there’s many ways in which the war is not going all bad for the President and for the administration. The only thing that’s truly going bad is the instability. But what has worked is a government in place that is more amenable to US interests than the last ten years of the Hussein regime, a government in place that is willing to negotiate in a dramatic fashion on the nature of Iraq's oil regime, and being on the precipice of a transfer of Iraq, a fundamental transfer, in its oil policy. We have US oil corporations engaging daily in negotiations with the Iraqi oil ministry, waiting on the sidelines.

AMY GOODMAN: And if they don't pass this law?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: If they don't pass the law, it’s a big strike at the heart of the agenda. I would say that the game wouldn't be over, and the fact that the administration is talking publicly about this Korea policy, the idea that the United States would maintain some sort of military presence similar to the US presence, quote/unquote, "keeping the peace between South and North Korea," that’s a permanent military engagement, which could last as long as fifty years. The thirty-year contracts, the length, the extended length of the occupation, leads me to believe that this is the idea that the administration wants to pursue.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think of this comparison?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: It’s incredibly disturbing. First of all, the conditions are completely dissimilar, except for the desire of the United States to maintain a presence and to use the misunderstanding, I think, of the American public as to the role of the US military in Korea, to say, “Well, we’ve created peace for fifty years in one situation. We can create peace for fifty years in this other situation. Oh, and by the way, our military will be really well situated to move forward across the region to spread peace across the Middle East, where, oh, by the way, there also happens to be two-thirds of the world's remaining oil.” It’s a terrifying proposition.

I'll say. Let's hope the Iraqis stick to their guns (of principle, mind you) and "Throw the Bums Out!"

By no means do I mean to refer to any of our military personnel as the bums in question. That particular moniker is reserved for anyone in Iraq solely for the purpose of making a fast buck on the destruction of a country, culture, and people-- from contractors all the way up to CEOs.

Border control to prevent... what, exactly?

2007-06-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

The cover story of last weeks' Houston Press focused on the environmental impact of a proposed border fence/barricade plan surrounding the Laredo area of the Texas-Mexico border area. The potential impact on the indigenous wildlife as well as the local human population on both sides of the border is great, but a few other interesting tidbits were slipped in the piece as well, like this one:

Local officials also got ahold of an eight-page "request for proposal" from DHS that sets out a plan for border fencing near Laredo, including the statement that "The total value of contract...will not exceed $172 million." Under "proposed corporate structure," it lists Houston-based Kellogg Brown & Root.

Peter continues to pay Paul, it would seem...

And then there's this, concerning the ability of the local officials and population to question the plan and its feasibility (based on the amount and accuracy of the information on the plan for the barricades):

Initially, federal officials debated the authenticity of the map. That seems to have passed, and the proposed fencing has been accepted as more than just some errant agent's doodling.

At the same time, DHS tightened its control over information. The U.S. Border Patrol, which had been commenting on the border fence, was told to shut up.

"We have an order from headquarters. We can't comment on the fence," Camilo Garcia, public affairs officer of the Rio Grande Valley sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, said last week. "They gave us guidelines earlier on what we could talk about, and now they say those don't apply."

Agricultural impacts? What agricultural impacts? I get all my strawberries from California, anyway...

Two issues seem likely to be dominant for the farmers and shippers.

One has to do with water access. Almost all irrigation is done with water out of the Rio Grande. "If we can't get access to that water, then we have a huge problem. Because almost all fruit and vegetable crops are irrigated. Most places in the country, a lot of the irrigation is done with well water. That's not the case here," McClung says.

"I heard one plan from one Border Patrol guy, a low-level guy, well, he said we'll put gates in the fence, we'll open them at 8:30 in the morning for an hour or two. Well, jeez, Louise, all that reflects is a wanton lack of understanding of how agriculture works."

And everyone's favorite Golden Oldie, Eminent Domain:

The other issue is land condemnation. Most of the land in South Texas, even down to the river, is privately owned.

"There is a deep emotional resentment at the notion of land condemnation. Secondly, there's questions about fair value, about how it would be done, and there's many people who simply do not want to part with their land under any circumstances," McClung says.

And then there's just plain common sense, unless the reason that DHS and their masters want the barriers put in isn't consistent with the stated reasons:

By profession, Steve Ahlenius, president and CEO of the McAllen Chamber of Commerce, is a pretty upbeat kind of guy. The fence really bothers him, though, and like a dog with a bone, he can't let it go, even as his wife cautions him not to come across like some kind of radical.

"We keep hearing DHS talk about possible terrorists' attacks coming from the southern border, and I finally went back and said, ‘Okay, I'm going to look [at] historically since 1999 what's been the things that happened in the United States. Did we have someone coming in from the southern border and planning a terrorist attack?'"

What his research shows, he says, is that since 1999, all known terrorist activity has involved U.S. citizens, naturalized citizens or citizens who are here on visas or alien residents — or who have come in from Canada.

Reflecting on the burgeoning Muslim population in Canada, Ahlenius thinks the greater threat for terrorist attacks on the United States is going to come from the northern border.

A great film came out last year that highlights the impact of an international border drawn haphazardly in the middle of a region that shares many characteristics, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. From the Director's statement:

...a study of the emotional, psychological, spiritual, and social implications of having an international border running through the middle of a culture.

-Tommy Lee Jones

The impacts of such a barrier, which most people interviewed in this article are resigned to see happen, go far beyond all the impacts listed here and in the article. It will make the commerce and transit of everything and everyone that crosses the border both ways right now more difficult, but it will not reduce the need and desire of that transit and commerce to continue. The only thing that will increase is the number of injuries and deaths resulting from attempts to circumvent the barrier and the economic impact of the compromise of the aforementioned commerce across the border.

In Their Memory

2007-05-29T18:14:00.001-07:00

Jim over at Nitpicker put up a nice post yesterday honoring our men and women in the armed services which has motivated me to do the same (albeit a day late...):

Casualty Lists:
Operation Iraqi (Liberation) Freedom
Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan)
Desert Shield/Desert Storm

Memorials:

Vietnam War
Korean War
World War II
World War I
Spanish-American War
American Civil War
Mexican-American War
War of 1812

Not a memorial per se:

American Revolution

This is a nice video Ava Lowery of Peace Takes Courage did as well. The quote from Douglas McArthur at the end of the video is worth repeating:

"The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of War."

Sweet...

2007-05-27T23:23:00.000-07:00

No introduction or commentary needed...

Housecleaning

2007-05-26T17:06:00.000-07:00

I just found this draft from the end of February while cleaning off my desktop. Not sure why I didn't post it at the time, but the current turn of events, restrictions on modes of communication with the outside world and continuing trends in Iraq make it just as poignant now as back then. I haven't spoken with my friend about his brother's current status, but if nothing has changed, he'll be going back in October sometime after arriving at Fort Hood early last December. However, I have my doubts based on the fudging of the numbers that's been going on where the surge is concerned.

I was out with a few friends earlier tonight and the subject of one of their brothers came up. The individual in question is active duty Army home on leave from Iraq. Several interesting facts came up that are worth noting:

He was due to be home (Fort Hood in central Texas) in mid November in time for Thanksgiving but did not get back until mid December. My friend spent Thanksgiving up there with his brother's wife and newborn baby on Thanksgiving just to keep her mind off of the fact that her husband hadn't made it back for the holiday. I'm pretty sure they had pizza for Thanksgiving Dinner...

He hasn't been back for three months and he already knows that he is going to be redeployed in October of theis year, making his leave time only ten months, if that.

He is already training for his return, giving his body and mind no down time to decompress and try to get over what he saw and did during his time there.

One of his jobs was on the Fire Brigade, which essentially means that he was the first to respond to attacks on patrols in his sector. He found himself having to respond to attacks and put out burning Humvees with guys that he knew and may have been hanging out with a few days before inside. Then after the fire was out, it was his job to haul the burnt out vehicles with the charred corpses of his comrades back to the base.

Another job he did was to resupply the personnel in an active combat zone with ammunition. This meant that he was driving a truck loaded to the gills with explosives into a live fire zone on a daily basis. He saw and knew plenty of people killed while doing that as well as on patrols.

To blow off steam, he and his buddies would hunt the packs of wild dogs which roam the streets of Baghdad with M16s, sometimes emptying an entire magazine of rounds into one animal.

He saw and photographed on a regular basis (for a few weeks until he couldn't take it any more) scenes of utter carnage: the bodies of Iraqi and American soldiers in the streets rotting, animals foraging, stuff that my friend described to me as "World War II scenes of devastation in living, vivid color".

By all accounts that I've been observing, things are worse and getting more so every day. No amount of surging or supplementing is going to turn things around. The only way things are going to even begin to appear to improve is when we get all our forces out of there and let the situation play itself out.

This sucks the big one, but we have to realize that whatever our stated motives are or our physical presence is, if we remain in Iraq, WE WILL BE PERCEIVED AS AN OCCUPYING IMPERIALIST FORCE BENT ON STRIPPING IRAQ OF IT'S GREATEST NATIONAL RESOURCE.

Yes, the civil war will get worse.

Yes, there will continue to be sectarian killings.

No, the Iraq Hydrocarbon Act will not be able to be enforced (sorry, chums)

Our standing in the world as a nation and culture is at stake as well as the lives of countless people--soldiers, contractors, civilians, insurgents, you name it. After a while, who they are and which side they're on matters less and less. They are all casualties of an inane and senseless conflict that they have no interest in. There comes a point in any conflict where all that matters to one is simple survival.

Additionally, the stability of the entire region and possibly the fate of the world as we know it is hanging in the balance. It might take just one more nudge (such as action against Iran) to push matters past the control of anyone or any country. Scarily, this is looking like it will be a reality before the Christmas shopping season gets into full swing more and more.

Scott Ritter discussing his book Target Iran with Sy Hersh last October:

And because this condition exists, there will be war with Iran, unless a little miracle occurs, called the Democrats winning Congress, creating enough friction to stop the war, in the November elections. But even if that occurs, as you pointed out, there is no separation between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on the issue of Iran. Everybody sits there and says. “Wait a minute, we’re losing the war in Iraq, and there’s 65% of the population that’s turned against this war. Certainly we’re not going to go to war with Iran.”

Again, I mean to correct the American public here. 65% of the American public aren’t antiwar. They’re just anti-losing. You see, if we were winning the war in Iraq, they’d all be for it. If we had brought democracy, they’d be cheering the President. It wouldn’t matter that we violated international law. It wouldn’t even matter that we lied about weapons of mass destruction. We’d be winning. God bless America. Ain’t we good? USA, USA! But we’re losing, so they’re against Iraq.

But what happens when you get your butt kicked in one game? You're looking for the next game, where you can win. And right now, we’re looking for Iran for a victory. We’re going to go to war with Iran. When? Not in October, I’ll tell you that.

There’s a couple things that have to happen before we go to war with Iran. There has to be a serious diplomatic offensive to secure the military basing required to support the aerial forces necessary for sustained bombardment and the logistic apparatus that goes along with that -- the fuel, the bombs, the support personnel, the maintenance. We haven’t done that. We’re doing it. There has to be political preparation here at home. The Bush administration is not a dictatorship yet. They still have to go to Congress, and they still have to get a degree of congressional approval for military operations against Iran. Not that much, though. I mean, everybody is aware that after 9/11, Congress pretty much gave the Bush administration a blank check to wage war anyway they saw fit, so long as it dealt with the global war on terror.

Well, the "little miracle" did occur, but it doesn't seem to be working out as well as some of us thought now, is it? I guess we'll have to keep sending messages like the one delivered last fall until someone is under the dome who doesn't worry about how something looks politically and is more concerned with what the people of the country have mandated. Taking action like Hal suggests here might better serve the interests of the American and Iraqi people:

Now that we’ve unleashed a 120 billion dollars for Bush to grab and distribute to his friends – yes, some of it will go to Halliburton and Bechtel, you can bet on it – how do we get Congress to extract our troops from this insidious civil war in Iraq? They won’t step up.

I’ll tell you what we do. It was mentioned off-handedly on my blog yesterday. Today I woke up and said “Hey . . . ”

We have to get someone in Congress, one of the 140, to file a resolution for a National Referendum on the War in Iraq. A National Referendum to be voted on November 6th 2007. The resolution should be funded because it’s going to take some money to put this on every ballot in the country. The resolution should specifically state that the referendum before the voters is binding. My suggested wording:

“Resolved, the President of the United States is hereby ordered by the Citizens of the United States of America to implement a plan to withdraw all US troops from Iraq by March 31st 2008.”

It’s an up or down vote and if it receives a simple majority, the President must acquiesce.

But if the ruling elites and the big corporations have their way, the train will just keep on rolling, and it'll just get uglier. More of the Hersh/Ritter conversation:

SEYMOUR HERSH: But anyway, so the question then is -- we go to war -- tell us what happens next, in your view.

SCOTT RITTER: Well, it’s, you know -- it’s almost impossible to be 100% correct, but I’ll give you my best analysis. The Iranians will use the weapon that is the most effective weapon, because the key for Iran -- you know, Iran can’t afford, if this -- remember, the regime wants to stay in power, so they can’t afford a strategy that gets the American people to recognize three years in that, oops, we made a mistake. I mean, if that was Saddam’s strategy, it failed for him, because he’s out of power. Yeah, we realize we made a mistake now in Iraq, but the regime is gone. So the Iranians realize that they have to inflict pain upfront. The pain is not going to be inflicted militarily, because we're not going to commit numbers of ground forces on the ground that can cause that pain. The pain will come economically.

And it’s not just Iranian oil that will go off the market. Why do you think we sent minesweepers up there? We’ve got to keep the Straits of Hormuz open. The Iranians will shut it down that quick. They’ll also shut down oil production in the western oil fields of Saudi Arabia. They’ll shut down Kuwaiti oil production. They’ll shut down oil production in the United Arab Emirates. They’ll shut down whatever remaining oil production there is in Iraq. They’ll launch a massive attack using their Shia proxies in Iraq against American forces. That will cause bloodshed.

The bottom line is, within two days of our decision to initiate an attack on Iran, every single one of you is going to be feeling the consequences of that in your pocketbook. And it’s only going to get worse. This is not something that only I recognize. Ask Dick Lugar what information he’s getting from big business, who are saying, “We can’t afford to go to war with Iran.”

SEYMOUR HERSH: Final question: given all this, are we going to do it?

SCOTT RITTER: Yes, we're going to do it.

They're irrevocably disconnected from reality. The only thing that is to be done (if it's not too late), is to somehow disconnect them from their perches of power.

Never mind the river of blood, there's Black Gold under them thar sandy dunes!

2007-05-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

Dennis Kucinich's statement concerning the Supplimental Military Spending Bill that was passed yesterday can be read here. It is a blistering indictment of the administration's reason for remaining in Iraq as an (unwelcome) occupying force and it's motives behind the 'incentives' being offered up before the current government in Iraq. The main crux of Kucinich's criticism is the Iraq Hydrocarbon Legislation, which will effectively cede exploration, development and production rights to the majority of Iraqi oil fields to US and other multinational energy companies.

“The benchmarks in today’s war supplemental force the Iraqis to privatize their oil industry by demanding passage of the Iraqi “Hydrocarbon Act.” The war supplemental blocks over a billion dollars in reconstruction funds if the Iraqis refuse to comply.

This administration has misled Congress into thinking that pending Iraqi legislation before their Parliament is about fair distribution of oil revenues. In fact, except for three scant lines, the entire 33-page hydrocarbon law creates a structure to facilitate the privatization of Iraq’s oil.

The truth is that the “Hydrocarbon Act” will open Iraq’s oil reserves to foreign investors, giving them, and not the Iraqi people, the ability to develop the majority of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields. The Iraq National Oil Company would maintain control of only approximately 17 of these oil fields.

If this happens, Iraq will be the only country in the Middle East that does not maintain government control of its own oil industry.

The wealth of Iraq, their rich oil resources, should remain in the hands of Iraq for the benefit of the Iraqi people."

As Greg would say, "Gotta love those Petrodollars!"

Kucinich had even stronger words on the subject this morning on Democracy Now!:

Well, first of all, this is a question that is for the people of Iraq to decide when they’re not under occupation. You have to keep in mind that this process that the Bush administration has been pushing began even before the invasion of Iraq. They were meeting with oil companies, looking at how they could create a beachhead, essentially, in the Middle East, and they have been looking at the prize of Iraq oil for many years now.

And so, you have to remember that even though it looks like this legislation isn’t going anywhere, there is enormous pressure being put on the Iraqi government, and you can bet that before too long they’ll put the kind of pressure on them that the Iraqi government will break, will relent, and go ahead and pass this law that will permit about 80% of its oil to be controlled by multinational oil companies. Now, keep in mind that Iraq has as many as 300 billion barrels of oil. At a market price that looks like it’s going toward $70-a-barrel, you can be talking about $21 trillion worth of oil, 80% of which will be under the control of multinational oil companies, if it’s up to the Bush administration.

This is a crime, literally. And so, I’m challenging it. I’m letting the Congress know about it, and I’m going to keep an eye on this, because I think it’s the basis for a war crime charge.

When Amy quoted an article from the Plain Dealer of Cleveland citing the criticism of Kucinich's concern about the bill by the in step Republican Party spokesman:

I wanted to read from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, your hometown paper. It says, “Republicans dismiss him altogether, with Republican Party spokesman Dan Ronayne saying, ‘It sounds like congressman Kucinich is trying to get noticed with a nutty conspiracy theory.’”

he responds thusly:

Well, if you look at the facts, the facts speak for themselves. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, Vice President Cheney was meeting with oil company executives. They were planning this takeover of Iraqi oil. You know, everyone knows that it has one of the largest oil supplies in the world. This war has been about oil from the beginning. And I’ve been one of the few people who’s been willing to challenge it and say that. And I think the American people need to know that our government has been instrumental in trying to push the privatization of Iraq oil for the profit of multinational oil companies. Our soldiers shouldn’t be there in Iraq. We need to bring our troops home. And when someone looks at the long test of truth over the last five years, I’m the one who’s been telling the truth. This administration has not told the truth. And some of my colleagues in Congress have kept their head in the sand, while there’s been enormous catastrophe in Iraq, loss of life there, loss of lives of our troops, up to over $500 billion wasted already in American taxpayers’ funds. I mean, someone has to stand for the truth here. Someone has to stand for the Constitution.

One unfortunate omission from Kucinich's statements are an acknowledgement to the immense damage and loss of life that has been incurred on the side of the Iraqi nation and people. Arthur has plenty to say about that here:

Notice anything missing? Oh, it's nothing much. Nothing very important. Only a few small details.

Over 650,000 dead Iraqis, the overwhelming majority of whom never threatened or harmed the U.S., or even wished to. The number is probably much closer to one million now.

A completely devastated and destroyed country, which huge numbers of people have been forced to flee, and to which they may never be able to return.

The Iraqis -- the dead, mutilated, maimed, and displaced Iraqis -- did not have a choice.

I know it's not pleasant to think about, but we as a nation are being looked at as the architects of this mess and when we are called to account for it it will likely not be easy to explain away as "unwise policy".

Getting ready to bite of more than they can chew (again)

2007-05-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

Arthur:

Almost three months ago, I described in detail a series of actions that might help deter the current administration from launching an attack on Iran. You can probably think of a number of others, if you seriously put your mind to it. Some of those actions require the Democratic Congress to do something, or at least try to do something. Thus far, the Congress has not seriously tried to do even one of them: it has not moved to rescind either AUMF, nor has it passed a resolution condemning a possible attack on Iran, let alone proposed that such a non-defensive attack would be an impeachable offense. It has done nothing. Periodically, a few Democrats will make noises about doing something -- at some time in some indeterminate future.

So let me tell you something. If this paralysis and inaction continues, and if the Bush administration does order an attack on Iran, I don't want to hear one goddamned word from a single goddamned Democrat about how terrible and calamitous it is. They've been able to take action for months, and they can take action now. They do nothing.

Alain Gresh:

Since the 1960s, i.e., well before the victory of the Islamic Revolution, Iran sought to develop a nuclear infrastructure to prepare the post-oil period. With the development of technologies, complete mastery of the civilian nuclear cycle makes the shift to military usage much easier. Have the leaders in Tehran made that decision? Nothing allows us to assert that. Does the risk exist? Yes, and for reasons that are easy to understand.

During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), Saddam Hussein's regime used chemical weapons against Iran - in violation of all international treaties: neither the United States nor France became indignant over this usage of weapons of mass destruction, which traumatized the Iranian people. Meanwhile, American troops are encamped in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iran is surrounded in a dense network of foreign military bases. Finally, two neighboring countries, Pakistan and Israel, have nuclear weapons. What Iranian political leader could be insensitive to such a context?

and Me...

Iran is not an immediate threat to the United States or its allies in the region. IF Iran is pursuing nuclear enrichment technology for the purpose of developing a weapons program in addition to an energy program, it is not an offensive act. It is an act of defense motivated by the fact that Iran is now surrounded by declared and undeclared nuclear powers: Russia to the North, Pakistan, India and China to the East, Israel to the West, and the United States to the South in the Persian Gulf with an disproportionately sized naval armada.

If there were a situation where the United States was surrounded in such a manner (Canada and Mexico possessing proven nuclear weapons and another major power such as China or Russia having placed a similarly sized force in the Gulf of Mexico) I'm sure that the United States would be rattling its nuclear sabers, and if the U.S. didn't have nuclear weapons, it certainly would be pursuing that technology as vehemently as Iran and most likely more so, all the while defending its inherent right to that technology and the right to possess it for use as a DETTERENT. This is the reason the U.S. gives for possessing nuclear weapons (despite the fact that it is the only nation to have actually used them on another country) and yet it tries to deny other countries with a legitimate case for possessing nuclear weapons as a DETTERENT the opportunity to do so.

The only course of action in terms of Iran is to recognize its status as a country and normalize relations with no prerequisite conditions. Force will only be met with force (which, according to International Law, Iran has all the right in the world to use if attacked) and Iran has many more options open to it to inflict severe damage on the interests of the U.S. and its allies in the target rich environment of the Middle East -- even with conventional weapons.

As the animation on the end of the world that has been going around for the past few years goes, "WTF, Mate?!?" We've got plenty to take care of here at home with the insane amounts of money that we don't have and must borrow from anyone and everyone gullible enough to lend it to us that we're spending on Iraq and would potentially spend on another foolish excursion in the Middle East:

Hill Country Gal

and

Michael Moore (covered by an unlikely source)

Road Trip, anyone?

2007-05-18T18:28:00.000-07:00

I love 'em. After my family moved up to the Philadelphia area my Father and Brother and I would take a road trip in a Volkswagen Beetle back to Kansas City to see his parents and visit our childhood friends, as well as to give my Mother a much needed break from the overload of Testosterone in the house for the remaining 50 or so weeks of the year.

Those trips were some of the best times of my life for a myriad of reasons. It gave my Brother and I a great opportunity to see a great deal of the country (we didn't always take the same or most direct route from Philly to KC), taught me the value of patience in the face of adversity (dead starter motor on the Beetle in the middle of Ohio on I-70, broken timing belt on a Ford Escort Station Wagon resulting in all eight valves bending beyond use in the middle of Missouri on the same I-70). It also was an open furoum for my Father to extol Brian and I in all kinds of stories and useless (at least we thought so at the time) concerning the history of the origins of many of the American Oil companies, how General motors orchestrated the demise of the Trolley and Horsecar as the main source of transport in urban areas and even small towns.

One of the most memorable trips was one that he and I took in the Fall of 1992 following a miserable failure of an employment attempt here in Houston. He flew down, we rented a car and I drove us back to Philly with all my crap in about two and a half days. his eyesight had gotten so bad that he couldn't drive, so I relied on his conversation to focus on in the wee hours. He told me about his time in the Army in the early fifties and also about the jobs he had at University libraries before he met my Mother. It also stand out because it was the last real quality time I spent with him before he died in a car accident about a month after we got back to Philly.

I've continued the tradition on my own, from using the excuse of having to go back to KC to close out a safe deposit box to travel back to PA from Houston to see family and friends (a redux of the trips with Brian and my Father, just in the opposite direction) to forays into Wet Texas for no other reason than to answer the caall of wanderlust. Watching the miles melt away, chattering on the CB with whoever there is to talk to and stopping wherever and whenever the notion strikes me (something that was not really an option on trips with Dad, who loved to push it and make as much time as possible).

The point of all this reminiscing about road trips is that the increasingly out of reach price of gasoline, which is a direct result of the ill-advised excursion that the Shrub and the Shooter have dragged this country into along with the manipulations of the market by the belmouths of big oil, is putting the opportunity for the average American family to enjoy the ability to embark on trips like this more and more out of reach. Whether they're camping trips, cross country tours of historical sites or state and national parks, or simply trips to see family and/or friends in other cities or the country, they are (or were) an integral part of family recreation and bonding time.

Just one more piece of collateral damage in this self serving and never ending War on Terror(Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL))

Life outdoing art

2007-05-17T18:04:00.000-07:00

I just finished watch The Good Shepherd on DVD. Interesting piece, but it seems rather tame when placed next to the testimony of James B. Comey on the attempts by then White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales to induce a very sick, bedridden, and medicated then Attorney General John Ashcroft to approve as legally sound a procedure that Comey had refused to do so on as acting AG. The procedure in question is widely accepted to be the Warrantless Domestic Wiretapping Program that has become so controversial. The attempt by Card and Gonzo was apparently at the direct behest of the Shrub (who may have ultimately been advised to do so by the Shooter, but that gets into some serious Black Helicopter hypothesizing...)

On the Shrub's press conference dodging today when queried about these events...

Digby:

Bush's answer (like most of Gonzales' ) is entirely unresponsive and should be greeted with howls of protest from the press and relentless pounding from the punditocrisy. This isn't some "investigation" about which Bush has "promised" not to comment, as he has claimed with previous scandals. This was a direct question about whether he ordered Card and Gonzales to go over to Ashcroft's room in the ICU to get him to sign off on a program that he had already said he would not sign off on.

That's key, you know, as to just how despicable this gambit was. Ashcroft had made it known that he would no longer sign off on this (or these) programs before he got sick. They were trying to get the man to sign something with which he disagreed while he was under heavy sedation in the ICU. And according to Comey, it was his impression that Bush had personally called Mrs Ashcroft to get her to let them in the room. How low is that? (And how important it was to them that they would even risk it for what would surely be a short period --- after all, Ashcroft would recover, and presumably would resent the fact that they had done this thing.)

In any case, Bush was deeply involved. He met with both Comey and Mueller on the issue after they all said they'd resign. The spinners are trying to say that their Dear Leader finally overruled others who had nefarious intentions , but his refusal to answer the question today should put that to rest. There's no reason for him to launch into such outdated 2003 gibberish about enemies lurking who "would like to strike" if he didn't order it. It's obvious that he did.

Greenwald:

Behold the royal hubris from the President's press conference today. Bush categorically refuses to answer questions about whether he sent Card and Gonzales to obtain Ashcroft's authorization for his illegal eavesdropping while Ashcroft was in intensive care. The reason, of course, is because the Terrorists are out there and are scary and want to kill us. Therefore, Bush does not have to answer questions about what he did.

These are the type of facially absurd and democracy-subverting shenanigans to which we have been subjected for the last six years. They will continue unless and until the press, the Democrats in Congress and/or Americans generally decide that they will no longer tolerate it.

As former OLC official Marty Lederman noted last night, John Ashcroft and James Comey are both Republican ideologues who proved that they were willing to endorse and defend even the most radical (and illegal) behavior (including the lawless detention of Jose Padilla and the administration's "refashioned" -- though still illegal -- warrantless eavesdropping program). If they were insisting that the conduct of the Bush administration was not only illegal, but so illegal that they were ready to resign en masse over it, then, as Lederman asks: "can you even imagine how bad it must have been?"

There is just no excuse left for allowing the administration to keep this behavior concealed from the country. What James Comey described on Tuesday is the behavior of a government completely unmoored from any constraints of law, operating only by the rules of thuggery, intimidation, and pure lawlessness. Even for the most establishment-defending organs, there are now indisputably clear facts suggesting that the scope and breadth and brazenness of the lawbreaking here is far beyond even what was known previously, and it occurred at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

James Comey's testimony amounts to a statement that -- even according to the administration's own loyal DOJ officials -- the President ordered still-unknown spying on Americans, and engaged in that spying for a full two-and-a-half-years, that was so blatantly and shockingly illegal that they were all ready to resign over it. And the President's Attorney General then lied to ensure that this episode remain concealed. Mere one-day calls for a Congressional investigation are woefully inadequate here.

There is clear and definitive evidence of deliberate lawbreaking. In addition to Congressional investigations, there is simply no excuse for anything other than the immediate commencement of a criminal investigation by a Special Prosecutor. And the administration ought to be pressured every day to account for what it did here. This is not a one-day or one-week fleeting scandal. These revelations amount to the most transparent and deliberate crimes -- felonies -- by our top government officials, not with regard to private and personal matters but with regard to how our government spies on us.

The only thing there is to add is that this is most likely tatamount to the camel's nose in the tent, i.e. there are many more of these revelations to follow...

Conviction

2007-05-17T14:29:00.000-07:00

Democracy Now!:

Agustin Aguayo, Army medic who was released from military prison last month after serving more than seven months for refusing a second deployment to Iraq:

Yes, I could say that, unfortunately, the environment there creates a situation where conscience, your sense of right and wrong, gets clouded by what’s going on around you. You’re in survival mode. And this results in people acting in all sorts of unethical ways. I spoke to a master sergeant while I was in prison, and I shared with him my feelings. And he said, “I can understand you. I mean, the Army could potentially ask you to do some unethical things at this time, and, unfortunately, many of our young people are in this situation. They just want to survive.” And like I said, that sense of right and wrong gets clouded in that environment.

If this is truly the case with the majority of U.S. forces in Iraq, military and non military, then a state of endgame exists and the only sane course of action open is that of complete withdrawal as soon as possible. At this point, one can accurately surmise that the priorities of the forces in place no longer place the welfare of the Iraqi people and state in a high position. As has been stated before, the situation in Iraq is going to get worse before it gets better, perhaps over the next several years, whether the US is there or not. If the US stays, it is likely that it will get worse in greater orders of magnitude than if they leave.

Despite the fact that his post military prospects are severely limited now, Aguayo goes on:

I was found guilty of two charges, which is desertion and missing movement. And I have to carry that with me from now on. And I’m willing to do that, because I stood up for what I believed. So the implications are rather great, but it’s something I’m willing to live with, because I saved my integrity, and I was truly free when I stood up and I finally said, “I cannot participate anymore, and I’m willing to accept any consequences.”

Are these the same Freedoms that the Shrub and his administration are touting as those that the terrorists so despise it spurred them to attack us? The freedom to follow the stirrings of one's heart and soul? Not likely, since they (the terrorists and the administration, although it could be argued that they are both of animals of the same stripe) are enjoying the same freedoms in their actions throughout the world, albeit with completely different intentions and results than Aguayo...

When is a Debate not a Debate?

2007-05-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

Georgia Representative Jack Kingston's questioning of Robert Greenwald on his film Iraq For Sale and Jeremy Scahill on his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army during a session of the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense is a frightening case study in the core tactics and practices that are employed in debates by conservatives these days.

There are a few basic tenets that are to be employed as soon as the questioner/debater senses that the direction of the dialogue is turning against them or their cause.

1. Question the opponents' loyalties or beliefs:

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, no. I mean, I think, first of all, Blackwater is a company that has very deep connections in US intelligence, in the military. It does indeed have political connections to the White House. I do think it also has -- it’s viewed, I think, in some official circles as being a very forward-thinking company that provides very innovative services. I think it's a combination of the political connections of the company and the kinds of services that it provides. Mr. Prince likes to refer to Blackwater as the Federal Express of the national security apparatus.

What I find concerning is the fact that not only is Mr. Prince a significant contributor to several of the campaign causes of Republicans who are in influential positions, particularly in the years of the Republican-controlled congress, as well as to the White House, but he has deep connections to some of the religious right organizations that have come to a position of prominence in this country. I think this is a company that embodies a lot of what President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address in 1961.

REP. JACK KINGSTON: Let me ask you now, being a conservative Christian, there’s a problem with that?

Followed quickly on the heels of that by

2. Interrupt the opponent repeatedly:

JEREMY SCAHILL: No. There's no problem with being a conservative Christian. The problem --

REP. JACK KINGSTON: Well, you said now -- you said -- I mean, you're saying he gives money to the Republican causes, and then you say to the religious right, and I’m having trouble connecting that.

JEREMY SCAHILL: OK. Well, let's unpack that a little bit. I have an issue --

REP. JACK KINGSTON: I want to give you an opportunity to -- when you say a guy’s secretive, which is, you know, derogatory. “Multimillionaire who bankrolls the President” is derogatory. And then you put that he’s a conservative Christian. I want to just, you know, give you an opportunity to explain yourself.

and

3. Change the subject abruptly (ideally putting the opponent on the defensive):

Robert Greenwald: No, let me be very clear, these films are not about maximizing dollars, so I go out and I spend three quarters of my time trying to fundraise. Iraq for Sale- 3,220 people, patriotic Americans, gave $25 and $50 each because they wanted the story of war profiteering told- they wanted to get that out. Similarly, with Wal Mart, we raised money from all kinds of sources, people- and by the way, Republicans and Democrats-

Jack Kingston: But- if I could reclaim the time here. But are you saying, and I want to make sure here, that profit is evil?

Robert Greenwald: No--

Jack Kingston: But I mean you accept that-- for example, how much would you charge if I-- and you're obviously a bright guy-- if I said to you, "Bring me a gallon of gas in Baghdad." What would be the market value? Four Dollars a gallon? Fifteen Dollars a gallon? What is it?

These practices of misdirection and patronizing in the form of non compliments ("You're obviously a bright guy") are meant to throw the opponent off balance and give the appearance of confusion and unpreparedness on the opponent's part to observers. It's no lees a form of bullying than the finger pointing and shouted interruptions that occur several times every minute on shows like O'Reilly's and Hannity and Colmes, not to mention any program where Coulter makes an appearance to debate a point with another guest.

Admittedly, Colbert and Stewart engage in this practice but in the case of Stephen it is merely a parody of itself, and Stewart doesn't seem to be deliberately malicious even when he is at his most forceful (it seems to come from a constant state of incredulity that he finds himself in to some degree or another- I can definitely relate).

As much as I loathe Kingston for his stance in the hearing and his attempts to discredit and marginalize Greenwald and Scahill, I do admire him for his tenacity and dedication to the craft of predatory non debate debate. With so many like him eager to attack the people who want to talk about the issues because they want to talk about the issues (whatever the issues may be) instead of defending their side of the issues it's no wonder that the mainstream media loves to cover them. It's just another form of celebrity cat fight, except in this case the stars aren't as glamorous. Politics is, of course, show business for ugly people...

The New Wild West

2007-05-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

Amny Goodman spoke with Brian Siebel of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, on the swift and virulent reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings by the Gun lobbyists:

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about your findings today in this aftermath of the shootings at Virginia Tech.

BRIAN SIEBEL: Well, what we point out is, we didn't even know who had been shot at Virginia Tech, when several gun lobby organizations put out press releases calling for students and teachers on college campuses to be armed. You know, I think they would like it to give everybody a gun and start the crossfire. I think that's their solution to this kind of tragedy. Of course, we totally disagree with that. And the report is designed to draw attention to their campaign. It follows on the heels of another campaign that the gun lobby has been pushing, which is to force guns into workplaces. They have supported bills in a number of states to bar employers from keeping guns out of employees' cars. We think that's again just a kind of foot-in-the-door effort that ultimately they would like to see guns essentially everywhere in society.

One has to ask whether the aim of such a line of thinking is to reduce the overall potential for violence or to provide the means for instant and deadly vigilante justice to be administered in a situation such as the rampage at Virginia Tech or the Columbine shootings under the guise of "self defense".

Doc Holiday: "What the hell's that all about, Creek?"

'Turkey Creek' Jack Johnson: "He crawfished a bet and called me a liar."

Doc Holiday: "Sheriff, may I present a pair of fellow sophisticates: Turkey Creek Jack Johnson, Texas Jack Vermillion. Watch your ear, Creek."

Tombstone Marshall Fred White: "Afraid I'll have to have those guns."

Johnson: "It was a fair fight."

Jack Vermillion: "We was legal."

White: "I'm sorry, boys. I gotta take 'em before Judge Spicer. Hand 'em over."

Vermillion: "Law and order every time, that's us."

-Tombstone, 1993

Life Imitating Art

2007-04-26T19:47:00.000-07:00

Real life events on the U.S.-Mexican border last month are disturbingly similar to the storyline of a film from a few years ago, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. The only unfortunate thing is that there is no Pete Perkins to act as an agent of redemption for Ramiro Gamez Acosta's killer, Border Patrol Agent Nicholas Corbett.

Corbett and the Border Patrol claim he was acting in "self defense". It looks like Acosta was cocking his arm to throw something. Like a rock, maybe? All that Corbett needed to do was point the rifle and say "Alto!", whether Acosta was aiming at him or the BP truck, which is what it looks like to me.

All that things like this are going to do are polarize each side even further without contributing anything to a possible solution...

Trying to imagine...

2007-04-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

what it would be like if the roles of two nations (and the people impacted) were reversed:

Baghdad Burning:

So we've been busy. Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable? We, like many Iraqis, are not the classic refugees- the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice. We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare- stay and wait and try to survive.

On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else- as yet unknown- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I've had since the age of four? Is there room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?

The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?

Let me paraphrase one small section of this latest entry to reflect the alternate possibility:

Since last summer, we had been discussing it more and more. It was only a matter of time before what began as a suggestion- a last case scenario- soon took on solidity and developed into a plan. For the last couple of months, it has only been a matter of logistics. Plane or car? Canada or Mexico? Will we all leave together as a family? Or will it be only my brother and I at first?

The reality of these circumstances that would drive one to abandon all that has ever been known to them is so foreign to me that I have nothing but admiration for all those who have had to stay and survive the Hell that they have had to endure for the past four years.

Best of luck to Riverbend and her family in their travels. Hopefully they will be able to return to their home soon.

Two fairly significant events this week...

2007-04-25T17:57:00.000-07:00

The first of which is the airing tonight of Bill Moyers documentary "Buying the War", marking his return to investigative journalism after an absence of three years. Amy had him on Democracy Now! this morning to talk about it.

Digby also notes the curious lack of a review in the NY Times and what that may mean:

LA Times:

Phil Donohue, fired as host of an MSNBC show in early 2003 says he was told he could have a war advocate on his program as a solo guest, but dissenters had to be balanced out from the right.

"Our producers were instructed to feature two conservatives for every liberal," he says.

There is no on representing the conservative argument here, not the deeper ideological reasons for believing in the Iraq invasion. But that's partly Moyers' position: In the run-up to war, point-counterpoint emerged as a devastating sham.

I guess it's not so surprising that the NY Times didn't bother to review this. It's cowardly, however.

I'm glad that Moyers has amassed the footage and put it all in one place so that people can see it again in its glory. It's a big story and I'll be interested to see how many of the most dizzying moments during that long national acid trip Moyers was able to capture.

The second is the release of the paperback edition of Greg Palast's new book, Armed Madhouse, which features some new material that the Cranium doesn't want you to read.

Greg's most recent post also sheds some interesting light on the role of Gonzo as the most recent sacrificial lamb to be left twisting in the wind:

1. It’s all about the 2008 election.
2. It’s not about Gonzales.

We’ve been here before. Gonzales is getting Libby’d. Takes the bullet for Karl Rove and the White House. If you wondered why the Republican jackals like the sinister Senator Specter piled on Gonzales — it’s because they were told to.

Rove and Bush are doing the Nixon Twist on Gonzales.

Look, I have no sympathy for Alberto the Doomed. He’s guilty of a crime I employed in racketeering cases: “Willful failure to know.” It’s a kind of fraud; Alberto was going way out of his way to not know what he had to know, that Rove and the President were toying with prosecutors.

Gonzales is their glove-puppet. Why fire him? The nation watches these hearings and wants to kill something.

But why shoot the puppet? It’s time to fire the puppeteer. Eh, Mr. Rove?

The more folks see the Cranium for what he is, the tighter the sights will train in on him...

Appropriate use of racial terms

2007-04-24T20:23:00.000-07:00

like this one which has been stirring up so many Hornets as of late?

NONE.

No one should ever use any terms that are even questioned in terms of their volatileness. If you have to ask if you should use them, then you know not to.

Never let a good gag go to waste...

2007-04-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

Shame on all of us for thinking that it was his original idea...

Thank goodness he couldn't resist and thus has further mired himself in the pit of controversial hawkdom that may be his undoing as a candidate...

Here's the scary thing...

2007-04-21T17:37:00.000-07:00

...these people are dead serious.

WBBM 780:

The Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), which is not affiliated with any national Baptist organization, announced plans to protest at victims’ funerals only hours after 32 people were killed in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. They also may protest at other events on the Virginia Tech campus.

The organization, founded and led by Fred Phelps, believes the United States has condemned itself to destruction by accepting homosexuality and other “sins of the flesh.” Phelps’ daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said the Virginia Tech teachers and students who died on Monday brought their fate upon themselves by not being true Christians.

“The evidence is they were not Christian. God does not do that to his servants,” Phelps-Roper said. “You don’t need to look any further for evidence those people are in hell.”

They may not be affiliated with any national Baptist organization, but one has to assume that they work from a scripture that has the same template as all the other Christian rooted faiths. You know, the one that preaches loving one's fellow (wo)man and practicing tolerance and forgiveness of all one's fellows?

UPDATE 21 APR 07 21:46

And how do we think they'll react to this?

Lost in the Shuffle...

2007-04-21T13:59:00.000-07:00

Hidden amongst the indignant howling over gun control, weapons sales that never should have taken place, stress management in the workplace, the alleged lack of psychiatric help for disturbed individuals at our institutions of higher learning, and the completely ineffective rationalization and defense of the political machinations of the Executive branch on the Judicial branch of our government are two episodes that likely will have greater impact farther into the future than any of these things: the obvious and inflammatory taunting of the Iranian Nation and people by John McCain (pretty much topping any of the cowboy invective uttered by the Shrub) and the start of construction of a wall designed to separate Sunni Iraqis from their Shite neighbors in order to minimize violence between the two.

The fact the John McCain (the lost fourth Wilson brother) had this witty alternate version of one of the Beach Boys greatest songs so readily handy to unveil for a group of his veteran friends shows that the prospect of taking such action against Iran is in the forefront of his mind and there is a very ready and willing mindset to follow through at the slightest provocation (this actually may be in the process of occurring as I write this). In the self quoting spirit of Arthur, I'd like to harken back to this post of mine from early March:

Iran is not an immediate threat to the United States or its allies in the region. IF Iran is pursuing nuclear enrichment technology for the purpose of developing a weapons program in addition to an energy program, it is not an offensive act. It is an act of defense motivated by the fact that Iran is now surrounded by declared and undeclared nuclear powers: Russia to the North, Pakistan, India and China to the East, Israel to the West, and the United States to the South in the Persian Gulf with an disproportionately sized naval armada.

If there were a situation where the United States was surrounded in such a manner (Canada and Mexico possessing proven nuclear weapons and another major power such as China or Russia having placed a similarly sized force in the Gulf of Mexico) I'm sure that the United States would be rattling its nuclear sabers, and if the U.S. didn't have nuclear weapons, it certainly would be pursuing that technology as vehemently as Iran and most likely more so, all the while defending its inherent right to that technology and the right to possess it for use as a DETTERENT. This is the reason the U.S. gives for possessing nuclear weapons (despite the fact that it is the only nation to have actually used them on another country) and yet it tries to deny other countries with a legitimate case for possessing nuclear weapons as a DETTERENT the opportunity to do so.

Justin had some similar thoughts in this post following the serenade of the VFW in Murrells Inlet:

I know the Iranians appreciate the humor, just as we would find it uproariously funny if Iranian President Ahmaninejad or some other relatively well known Iranian politician who wanted to become the Iranian leader sang about bombing America in front a laughing crowd. We Americans eat that kind of shit up! What would be even funnier is if Iran invaded Canada and Mexico, sent Iranian battleships off the coast of the U.S. to conduct war exercises using high tech bomber planes, conducted clandestine raids and sponsored terror attacks on U.S. soil, and so on.

And Brian offers these thoughts about how it's going over in Tehran and the rest of the sovereign nation that is Iran:

I don't know what the reaction to the McCain video has been in Iran. But since they're the weaker nation, if their reaction is anything other than passive acceptance of our dear senator's foolishness, then our reaction to their reaction will determine whether this becomes a big deal or not.

The World wonders...

As far as the newest no bid boondoggle of a project in Iraq, I will yield to Tristero in this entry at Digby's Blog:

the American military is building a wall to physically separate a despised minority from their neighbors in order to protect them. And vice versa.

But let's not infer the worst here. After all, history teaches us that sealing off ghettos does reduce violence. That's simply an indisputable fact. For example, attacks against Sunni Jews declined markedly and rapidly under the Nazis. Had they not built walls around the ghettos, which enabled an entire Jewish population of a given city to be quickly rounded up and sent off to the camps, attacks on Jews would have gone on for much, much longer.

Seriously, is this the best way to show the Iraqis how to govern themselves, police themselves, and live amongst themselves? By building barriers to keep them separated from each other? What an example we're setting for the rest of the world...

Harsh, and yet...

2007-04-10T19:14:00.000-07:00

rather telling.

This latest essay by Scott Ritter helps to clarify what the history behind the infighting between the Shia and the Sunni in Iraq is really all about.

It is a convoluted mess. You think that Biblical history of the evolution of Christianity and the bloody repression it faced in the early years following Christ's death is complicated? How about the Spanish Inquisition and the repercussions that it wrought? The Protestant movement and its subsequent migration of thousands of Europeans to the Americas, resulting in the extermination of hundreds of indigenous tribal peoples? The Crusades? The Rennaisance?

All of them significant and traceable to the modern day political, social and economic swamp we find ourselves mired in.

However, they all are comparable to the turmoil and strife that was ongoing between the peoples of the Middle East when we were still ignorant of their existence and ways, or worse yet, cognizant of their existence but dismissive of their social structure, which was as sophisticated as a Western model while also adapting its own distinct characteristics.

While long and quickly mind numbing to the average American reader (bear down when you feel your eyes start to cross, it's worth it) Ritter's essay provides a brief rundown of the vital splits that occurred within the Islamic religion resulting in the three major competing sects of the modern day: Shia, Sunni, and Wahabbi, following the death of Muhammad and the ensuing struggle for power at the top levels of the leadership of the Islam faith.

What this all boils down to is that we as Americans have no idea what the root causes of the violence between Sunni and Shia Iraqis are--and even if we did have the respect and take the time to do so we would throw up our hands and let them work it out between themselves. It's been being hashed out between various incarnations of the sects for over 1500 years, so why should they all of the sudden listen to a foreign power who is only really interested in stripping the land of its natural resources tell them how to solve their differences and govern themselves?

To put it into perspective, imagine if a huge foreign power came over to the U. S. and overthrew the current regime (an interesting concept in and of itself) and then tried to institute a form of government that had never been put into practice before; all the while looting the natural resources of the country, dismantling the national, state snd local institutions; leaving almost no public services intact and putting millions of people out of work. The resulting unemployment would manifest itself in the polarization of these suddenly unemployed individuals by various religious groups which have traditionally been at odds with each other. The result would be similar to what we are seeing in Iraq today, only on a much larger and messier scale (the polarized divides would, I'm sorry to say, develop more along an ethnic (I'm loathe to use the term racial--we're all members of the same race--the human race) lines, with minorities at odds with Caucasians and the occupying force).

The occupying force would no doubt be undereducated as to the nuances of the cultural and social history and fault lines of the American experience, from the marginalization of the native American peoples to the enslavement of Negros and other minorities to the war that was fought to restore the Union and secure the freedom of all people in the U. S. to the repression of all those minorities and the various forms that that repression takes up to the present day to the class marginalization that is rampant in the U. S. and so on and so on. Due to this ignorance, the occupying force would have nary a clue as to how to address the violence short of introducing more armed forces into the equation, resulting only in the further inflamation of the violence. Over time, however, the leaders of the various factions would recognize the fallacy in striking at each other as opposed to the occupying forces and begin calling on their followers to act against the occupying force as opposed to each other.

In short, whatever nation or force took on such a task would quickly discover that they had struck an active hornet's nest which they mistook for a beehive full of honey that they thought had been either abandoned or was full of hibernating bees that wouldn't mind all of the honey being "harvested". Further whacking of the nest and other methods of quelling the hornets would continue to prove fruitless. How they responded to this revalation is another matter entirely.

Ve haff vays uff makink zoo talk...

2007-04-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

I came home and mowed the lawn instead of zipping over to this gathering, so I thought that a post would serve as some form of penitence (that's the best I can do to tie into the recently passed holiday...) even though I'm dog tired after the effort (damn winter not letting my grass grow so I need to cut it and stay in shape!).

Democracy Now last Thursday:

New revelations have linked the FBI to the interrogation and detention of anti-war protesters in Washington, D.C. According to unearthed police records, a secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain and question a group of protesters in a downtown parking garage in April 2002. Some of the protesters were interrogated on videotape about their political and religious beliefs.

Ah, shades of the good old days:

The actions and orders of the GESTAPO were not subject to judicial review. Under the law of 30 November 1933 the only redress available was by appeal to the next higher authority within the GESTAPO itself.

The reason assigned for the arrest and commitment of persons to concentration camps usually was that, according to the GESTAPO, the person endangered by his attitude the existence and security of the people and the State.

The most casual remark of a German citizen might bring him before the GESTAPO, where his fate and freedom were decided without recourse to law.

Casual remarks, like, "The war in Iraq is illegal."? Or maybe, "The highest members of the administration are guilty of crimes against humanity and should be impeached." ? I thought what Paul Craig Roberts said in his interview on The Monitor here was a bit of a stretch, but after hearing about this latest escapade along with this from 2004 I'm not so sure any more. What makes me see red more than anything else in the case of the DC episode is the long term effect that it has had on one of the protesters, Nat Meysenberg:

I don’t think I’ve been to a protest in D.C. since. Secondly, I have become vastly more distrustful of police orders. I cooperated with police requests and acted in good faith, that I would be let go if I merely cooperated with them. And throughout, they violated my rights, from my very right to show up and speak out against the war to my rights to be free from incarceration and harassment.

These people are supposed to be there to defend the laws and defend my rights, and instead we find them covering things up in federal court for year after year.

However, while he chooses to avoid DC:

But also, more generally it’s galvanized me in a way to speak out about what happened to me and the type of illegal tactics used by police departments all over the country to silence dissenting voices and protesters.

Yet another example of the resilience of the human spirit to express itself that these thick skulled dunderheads in authority can never get through their heads. More info about the fight to preserve Civil Rights and freedom of expression can be found here.

A night at the cinema

2007-04-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

Dennis Hartley has written about the cinematic chronicling of the difficulties of re entering society that veterans face on a daily basis here:

As the Iraq “war” grinds on and we sadly gird our loins to deal with a whole new generation of physically and/or psychologically scarred vets, it’s time to take a look at some of the films that have tackled the difficult subject of “coming home”.

Hands down, one of the most powerful movies ever made about the physical ravages of war is Dalton Trumbo’s 197l anti-war classic “Johnny Got His Gun”, adapted from the director’s own novel. Timothy Bottoms is a horribly wounded WW I vet who lies in a hospital bed for the duration of the film, re-living his war trauma and reviewing his life. His injuries are so grave that, in addition to the loss of all his limbs, he has lost the ability to speak (what is left of his torso and head is wrapped in gauze, mummy style.) Hence, we only “see” Bottoms in black and white flashbacks, with the actor providing voice-over to parlay the racing thoughts going through his mind as he lies helplessly in his hospital bed. (In all seriousness, I would not recommend this film for claustrophobics.)

Recent releases that Hartley doesn't mention include Harsh Times and Jarhead. Some may argue that these two (along with Three Kings)glorify the Iraq experience more than they act as an anti war statement, but it's in the eye of the beholder as far as I'm concerned.

Death of a Brain

2007-04-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

I have to believe that the blood clots in his legs are seriously impairing the reasoning abilities of Dick Cheney when he says things like this on the same day the Pentagon issues a report that says this in direct contradiction with him.

It's the only reasonable explanation, but stranger things are possible, I guess...

Got a pulse? You're ready to fight Terror!

2007-04-05T13:38:00.000-07:00

Remember the scene in Enemy At The Gates when the new soldiers who had survived a three day train ride in cattle cars and the strafing of the shuttle boats on the Volga were being pressed into service to immediately attack a fortified German position in the meat grinder that was Stalingrad? Every other man was handed a rifle and told "When one man falls, pick up his rifle and move forward."

No briefing, no onsite training, hmmmm, sounds familiar...

UPDATE 4:55 PM CST 5 APR 07:

Time's cover story this week has more:

Even Colin Powell—a retired Army general, onetime Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Bush's first Secretary of State—acknowledges that after spending nearly six years fighting a small war in Afghanistan and four years waging a medium-size war in Iraq, the service whose uniform he wore for 35 years is on the ropes. "The active Army," Powell said in December, "is about broken."

Army equipment is wearing out even faster than Army troops. Gear and weapons are usually left in the war zone to be used by newly arriving troops. That grinds the equipment into scrap up to 10 times as fast as in peacetime. The lack of guns and armor back home has a boomerang effect: many of the troops training in the U.S. are not familiar with what they'll have to depend on once they arrive in Iraq.