TPM: "McCain misses 42 Senate floor votes in a row."

Will they have a special election?

I guess he's doing this so he can run as a Washington outsider.

Yesterday, there was a bit of a discussion here about the "spending like Edwards in a beauty shop" line we heard in the GOP debate. Over at TAPPED, GF-R has more, noting the triple-hit the phrase gets -- it's tax-and-spend, it's "limo-libs," and it's questioning the Dem male masculinity. All in one neat package.

What's more significant is its indication of the campaign to come:

Indeed, the fiestiness on display last night should serve as a wake-up call for people who think the 2008 contest against the G.O.P. is going to be a cake-walk, thanks to the weakness of the president, the example of the 2006 victories, and the alleged weakness of the Republican field. The Republican contenders are going to fight the Democrats, hard, through-out the primary season and after...

It's absolutely true, and these one-liners have, in the past, taken on a life of their own. These caricatures end up defining Democratic candidates on Republican terms.

"Flip-flopper," anyone?

So just where is the Dems' comeback? Where is the response? Why is it even a "response" -- why weren't lines like this at the previous Democratic debate?

Where is the Democratic joke that takes on a life of its own, and takes the Republicans down a notch along the way?

Why are Democrats seemingly unable -- or, unwilling -- to come up with these kinds of lines?

We've now had a couple chances to see the GOP presidential candidates stand together and debate and the results have been highly disturbing. While their counterparts in Congress can't wait to shuffle off the Bush albatross, the presidential candidates continue to argue with each other over who will go further than Bush. And there's only one reason they're taking this seemingly counterintuitive route: the bloodthirsty conservative base demands it. As was aptly demonstrated in the Tuesday's debate, offering oneself as a tyrannical president consistently yielded whoops and cheers from the ignorant authoritarians present in the audience. And when one candidate suggested something reasonable--maybe US foreign policy has something to do with Middle Eastern terrorism--a livid Rudy Giuliani let loose an incoherent barrage of violent options for dealing with the Islamofascists, to the mass-rally cheer of the 25%ers Fox News gathered to hear the debate.

This spectacle of authoritarian xenophobia and demagoguery got me thinking back to my longstanding prediction about Gingrich and McCain being the two candidates most likely to win the nomination and what led me to that conclusion. With regards to McCain, his earlier inevitability as a front runner along with his unwavering support for the War and its escalation signaled to me that he could easily capture a major chunk of the GOP voting base. Events since then have demonstrated a McCain campaign that has repeatedly shot itself in the foot and erased any advantage that inevitability might have had. And in a crowd of candidates that all want more war, more torture, less liberty and more authority, there's just nothing to make McCain stand out.

My inability to recognize that the GOP candidates would distinguish themselves by being worse than Bush also clouded my judgment about Gingrich. I assumed, in the wake of a conservative movement deep within an identity crisis, that Gingrich would represent a return to conservative ideals that firmly repudiate Bush conservatism. My mistake was in assuming that these principled conservatives would be politically engaged. Rather it has been the most bigoted and bloodthirsty elements that are leading the charge. And the candidates are giving them red meat by the truckload. Whether it is abortion, war, homosexuality or immigration, the response has been unblinking power, slavish authoritarianism and exclusionary policy. This is nothing but the war cry of conservative white Christian males who demand that they rule the globe. And the candidates are giving them just that. How is Newt to compete? Sure, he holds many of these views himself, but how is supposed to distinguish himself from the rest of the pack? Indeed, that is the major problem with each of the GOP candidates. The consensus amongst people like me who analyze politics (professionally or otherwise) is that Giuliani's lead in the polls is due to his early adoption of the authoritarian model. From the get-go he was the pro-torture, pro-war, anti-liberty candidate whose entire candidacy rested upon his 9/11-forged mythological image. That is why Rudy's social liberalism is so far irrelevant to the base. His promise to use the presidency as a position of tyranny is enough for the 25%ers. If he held orthodox right wing views on abortion, gun control and immigration, he would already be the nominee.

This is all to say that I've had to rethink my predictions. It isn't clear who the nominee will be, and that is due to the candidates' group decision to throw general electability to the wind and run campaigns that cater exclusively to a distinct minority of the country. I didn't expect the candidates to go this far right, in other words. And actually, I'm glad they are taking such reprehensible and unpopular positions. It forces the GOP into a corner and hastens the crackup that has been in the works for the past couple years. It's better for the public at large to see exactly what conservatism has become and decisively reject it rather than to delay the inevitable.

This morning Tom posted on China's decision to bow down to economic demands instead of political expediency when it backtracked on requiring bloggers to register using their real names once the tech industry balked at the regulatory burden.

This he argues, shows how economics (and by extension, connectivity) encourage freedom in China. Barnett acknowledges that the party is not going anywhere, anytime soon, but that people like Mann need to expand their view of freedom, because when the tech industry can force the state to back down on its crackdown, that is a positive sign of change in China, even if a small one.

Here again, I note the difference between Mearsheimer and Tom. Tom sees economic connectivity and transactions in terms of absolute gains, hence his view more optimistic outlook on trade with China. Mearsheimer sees these through the view of relative gains which are zero sum. In short, these views will always be irreconcilable. Mann, is not a neo-realist but his view of China meshes better with that view. China is not seen to be transitioning fast enough, and hence our continued economic transactions there are not aiding China's democratic transition. As such, he calls for a reassessment of out policy on China, and no doubt sees its system and regime as a threat.

To read my original post addressing this subject, please click here.

From some non-random Google search entries. As the UK prepares to announce arrest warrants for the KGB/FSB/SVR/Vympel (whatever)agents who spiked Alexander Litvinenko's tea with Polonium-210, check out the defiant neo-Sovietism in the second entry and the actions reported in the others. RIA Novosti doesn't speak without the regime's tacit permission or active direction:

Russia seeks first-strike capacity against US bases in Europe
Jane's, UK - 2 hours ago
Another Russian defense analyst, Alexander Pikayev, acknowledged at the time that Russian forces might use tactical nuclear weapons to eliminate threatening ...

Sudan using Chinese, Russian weapons in
Brisbane Times, Australia - May 8, 2007
In a 24-page report obtained by AFP, London-based Amnesty provided photographs of Russian and Chinese warplanes it said were deployed at Nyala airport in ...

No, a Cold War isn't necessary, that is, if the Bush Administration stops the Neocon abuse of the military and puts it back on a firm, rebuilding, peace-through-strength constitutional defense posture. This posture would engage and rebuild alliances while offering strength and resource trade that provides an alternative to Russian energy. The alternative to wasteful adventurism must come from the economic core of the US and prepare for decisive victory in last resort wars, not endless policing in OPC's (Other Peoples' Countries).

Internationalism has gone too far when both parties have the White House, but obviously the GOP neocons have been quite bad. However, they are not without their secret supporters on the left.

"We wouldn't have had to go through all this if we had done our job right in the first place. The media should have pressed harder for documentation and should not have allowed sources to remain anonymous. It's just amazing what we let people get away with saying" (Geneva Overholser, journalism professor at the University of Missouri).

"The problem is that follow-ups as a rule are treated like stepchildren. You go with the big story when you got it, and if it's contradicted later, you try to ignore the contradiction." (Marvin Kalb, executive director of the Washington office of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy). 

"Probably most papers are wishing they had paid a little bit more attention" (USA Today White House Editor Gwen Flanders).

What are these giants of journalism talking about?  Dick Cheney's energy policy?  The run up to the invasion of Iraq?  The Justice Department's purge of US Attorneys?

None of the above.  These are all quotes from an archival piece in the July/August 2001 issue of the American Journalism Review about the reporting of "Vandalgate."  We remember Vandalgate as the reports of outgoing Clinton administration's White House vandalism, planted by Ari Fleischer in the days following George W. Bush's first inauguration, and when the dynamics of the Bush White House-news industry relationship were established once and for all.  Unfortunately, about all that has apparently changed since then are the stakes.

Foreign Policy has an interesting set of related articles providing different and opposing views on the challenges posed by China's rise, and its prospects for democracy. The first debate is between Zbigniew Brzezinski and John J. Mearsheimer and the second between David M. Lampton and James Mann.

The question posed by the Foreign Policy team in the Brzezinki v. Mearsheimer debate is the following:

Is China more interested in money than missiles? Will the United States seek to contain China as it once contained the Soviet Union? Zbigniew Brzezinski and John Mearsheimer go head-to-head on whether these two great powers are destined to fight it out.

Brzezinski comes down on the side that China, despite its history of resentment and humiliation in the past century, is currently more interested in continuing its economic development and winning acceptance as a great power or what has come to be called, the theory of a peacefully rising China.

Mearsheimer argues that based on neo-realist theory, China cannot rise peacefully. The reason, as he explains it is that

The international system has several defining characteristics. The main actors are states that operate in anarchy—which simply means that there is no higher authority above them. All great powers have some offensive military capability, which means that they can hurt each other. Finally, no state can know the future intentions of other states with certainty. The best way to survive in such a system is to be as powerful as possible, relative to potential rivals. The mightier a state is, the less likely it is that another state will attack it.

In short, as China rises, the US will move to prevent it, because according to neo-realism, one great power will not allow for the rise of near peer competitors. Mearsheimer also criticizes the theory of a peacefully rising China by arguing that because power is fungible any increase in China's economic strength means a diminution of American power. The larger China's economy, the bigger its military threat. Since any power that becomes a regional hegemon (more powerful that other states in its region) do not want peer competitors, this will ultimately lead to conflict between China and the United States.

To understand Mearsheimer's point of view, one should understand neo-realist theory (see Mearsheimer, K. Waltz, S. Walt). As cited above, states live in an anarchic international system (no Leviathan to rule them all) where their main goal is to ensure their survival. States also need to be strong relative to other states to guard against attack, and because power is fungible (economic translates into military) relations between states are zero-sum. This means, that a gain for one, is a loss for the other reducing the opportunity or incentive for cooperation or what is called the security dilemma. Neo-realist, due to the theory's zero-sum view of power put little faith in long-term cooperation between states. Rather, in an anarchic system like ours they look to the structure of the system as dictating how sovereign states will behave. For Mearsheimer we are currently living in a multipolar world, where the US because it does not have a near peer in its own geographical region (Western Hemisphere) is able to project its power in other places (China's near abroad). As such, neo-realist theory dictates that as China rises, the US will seek to contain it to prevent it from becoming its near peer in the Pacific. It will do this, according to Mearsheimer, with the aid of India, Russia, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Vietnam (and one suspects Taiwan) all of whom will also seek to prevent China's rise to the position of regional hegemon in the Pacific. China knows this, and as such will bide its time, and cultivate its economic and military power until it is powerful enough to dictate acceptable behavior in its near abroad with the ultimate goal of pushing the United States completely out of the Pacific hemisphere and in so doing, ensuring its ability to reintegrate Taiwan to the mainland.

To continue reading, please click here.

The U.S. is NOT “the richest country on earth”; it merely plays host to the largest pieces of the largest corporations on earth, as well as to several of the richest families on earth. It plays host in the same way a human body plays host to a virus. As soon as they’re gone – and that will happen when it no longer benefits their bottom lines to remain because there is nothing left worth stealing, and their raw materials are so polluted or destroyed they are essentially unreachable or unusable – America will be a former “first-world country” that has deteriorated to third-world status for all practical purposes. It will be owned by families like the Bushes, the Rothschild’s, Duponts, and so on, and the corporations they represent. Work, for the most part, will not pay even close to a living wage, and there will be no benefits.

There will be no worker, homeowner or other protection for any individuals if they are not wealthy enough to ‘protect’ themselves. Possibly there will be no more voting; for all practical purposes there is none now. Anyone the neocon-Republicans do not choose to give access to the corrupted electronic voting machines, the judicial and other appointees who stand by to cover any other problems, and the right-wing fanatics who believe only in a “democracy” that they control (which is why they have no problem with disenfranchising tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of legally qualified voters), will not win. They determine who can vote or not, they count the votes or “lose” them, they can initiate or block investigations – they have control of the voting process, AND THE MEDIA.

As any politician knows, without the media, they have no chance, for the people will never get to hear anything they want to say, will never hear anything but propaganda from the other side. If one side controls the media, the other side will be constantly misquoted, ignored and smeared, with, if necessary, quiet little back page retractions, but only after the damage has been done. This administration used a takeover plot around thirty years in the making that involved a stealth invasion of religious fanatics sometimes backed by corporate interests sneaking their way into the government, but the two were really brought together in the Bush administration, though it should really be called the Cheney administration, or perhaps the neocon administration. Together with religious fanatics who had lied and stolen and bribed their ways into the judiciary and other high government office, they set about making themselves secure.

They hijacked the voting process as described, and took over much of the judiciary with appointees who would follow orders and not necessarily the law, especially in areas where they might be called upon to pre-empt elections, block investigations of their people, or initiate them against the democrats. Once in office, they began appointing members of Dominionist schools like Pat Robertson’s university, and of PNAC. These latter were involved in all sorts of overthrows of democratic governments in favor of tractable dictators, engineered Iran/Contra, the Tet Offensive which is now known to have been a false flag operation and many, many other things that were antithetical to American ideals and laws, so much so that they have been carefully kept from the populace all these years, and are only now coming out, now that honest people trapped in the government with these predators have begun to have enough of being gagged, fired, and watching their country being abused.

According to the combined neocon/Dominionist plans published and aired variously by PNAC, Pat Robertson and writers over the years, the plan is, first, to take over the government of the U.S., which is almost complete. Then the idea is to alter it, likely using another false-flag op involving the deaths of a couple or a few thousand more American citizens as an excuse (a national emergency”) to declare martial law (which, according to another new law quietly promulgated by the administration, can only be defined and declared by the president), suspend what remains of the Constitution, and begin rounding up dissidents and protestors. There are around 800 internment camps built on a no-bid contract to KBR, supposedly to contain an expected “invasion” of illegal immigrants. The president or those he designates, including the radical-right owned Blackwater mercenary company’s death squads, can on their suspicions alone declare anyone, anywhere, to be “illegal enemy combatants” or “agents of a foreign power” or simply “terrorists”, and kidnap them or “extrajudicially execute” them, as they choose. The president has already hinted broadly that this power has been used; he seem to take a strange sort of delight in it.

As something of an aside here, George Bush is relishing his position of power, even though he hasn’t the wit to hold it or use it alone. It allows him to hold “the High Justice” over others – life and death. If he says someone should die, they die, and he LOVES that. Watch him when he talks about it. He get a strange sort of smirk on his face and licks his lips, as if he could taste the blood. Legally speaking, he could take ABSOLUTE POWER at any time. He simply has to declare a National Emergency and martial law, and that’s it. The Constitution is no longer in force. He could even make something up, a total lie; no one would have the authority to challenge it, or him. As to his enjoyment of use of the power to kill others, consider: when he was Governor of Texas, he executed more people than any other governor anywhere, any time. At one point, while talking to the press, he mocked a woman who had been sentenced to death: “Please don’t kill me!” he said, in an attempt at a woman’s voice in falsetto. He thought he was being funny! He ignored exculpatory evidence and international law in order to execute people, and he never ONCE commuted a death sentence. Then there’s the memo where Tony Blair was desperately trying to stop him from ordering a bombing run on a foreign newspaper!

George Bush LIKES TO KILL. He feels nothing for those who die, innocent or not, no matter age or gender – or how many; all that matters is a) how useful killing them is, and b) that he gets to order it. He wants to be King Rambo. I would bet money (if I had any) that he asks for pictures. The general who figures this out and allows him to go on an attack against someone who couldn’t possibly shoot anything at the plane so that he himself can push the button, pull the trigger or whatever can likely name his own reward.

More and more of our infrastructure, the commons, and our vital industries are being sold off to crony corporations – “privatized” as the Bush administration likes to call it. More often than not, these corporations are totally incompetent for the job(s) involved, and they simply take the money, they or some third-level or further down subcontractor does a half-assed job of it, and they and the money, always much, MUCH more than it should have cost to be done correctly, simply disappear together, never to be seen again, never to be investigated. More and more of the labor in this country, and even white-collar work, is being shipped overseas where there is less regulation or expectation of a living wage, much less benefits. As the jobs disappear, the prices go up because corporations find it cheaper to import whenever they can from countries with laborers who have no rights. Even so, other prices go up too – because they can: gasoline, power, food, medical care, housing – and there is an ever-decreasing amount of money available to those who need these things. The things we used to grow for ourselves are shipped away somewhere, and we import much of our food from countries that could easily poison us, by intent or by their own lack of sanitation. What we do grow for ourselves is done mostly by Big Agriculture, with as little care for cleanliness and safety as they can get away with, for the sake of profits, so that poisonings are becoming more frequent. The Bush administration’s response has been to cut funding again and again to those agencies responsible for protecting us, to gut the laws, and to order the DOJ not to investigate or to prosecute. The tax breaks passed since George Bush literally took the office have all been for the wealthy and for the largest of the corporations, not regular workers of any kind. Social programs have been deliberately destroyed (more on this in a moment) until there is little help available for people on the edge, or for those who have fallen off.

Predatory lending practices are now not allowed, they are encouraged, putting the unwary young, the disabled, and the elderly so far into debt so quickly, they will likely be debt-slaves forever, or have no credit at all, and no way to repair it. A rubber-stamp Republican Congress carefully and deliberately totally excluded the outnumbered democrats, and passed a bankruptcy law written by the credit industry. It allows no Chapter 7 bankruptcy for ordinary people – only for those rich enough to shelter wealth in real estate. The same Congress also removed or crippled antitrust laws, environmental regulations, and passed a “Drug Benefit” using Medicare that benefits only the big pharmaceutical companies, robbing the elderly and disabled, still leaving them paying more than anyone else in any other country. Also, unlike the VA or any other large buying group, Medicare is, BY LAW, not permitted to use that bargaining power to bargain for lower prices. They have no choice but to pay whatever the pharmaceutical companies demand.

Social programs are deemed not just a waste of money, but actual theft from the wealthy, taking their “hard-earned money” and giving it to the undeserving, lazy and sinful poor who did nothing to earn it, who are poor as a punishment from God as a result of their own laziness and lack of foresight. The neocons also feel that even though they set up the business atmosphere, rules and everything else so that it’s nearly impossible for the poor to climb out of their poverty, nonetheless it’s God’s judgment on the poor. They feel no responsibility whatsoever – or pity or compassion as far as I can tell.

Neocons are essentially Dominionists or Christian Reconstructionists who are politically active. They believe, for one thing, that they are “forgiven from the beginning of time”, meaning that no matter what they ever do, they are already forgiven for it. They are also fascists: business, especially those that they are involved in, is of primary importance. Safety, sanitation, wages and fair treatment of employees, reasonable hours and all other employees rights are a drain on the bottom line, and are not rights at all; they are also theft. They remove them, undermine them, get around them every chance they get. It’s up to employees to look out for themselves. The same goes for the customers, end users or whatever, and it goes for public schooling, which they also intend to destroy. They believe charity should come from neighbors if at all, and schooling should be done at home or by the church. They (especially Karl Rove) follow the works of Machiavelli, especially The Prince, like a manual on how to take over and rule a country, which is precisely what it is. They admire and quote successful, ruthless conquerors from Hitler to Genghis Kahn. They believe it is necessary to lie to those they rule, and to keep them in fear. And they believe that those not favored by God with great wealth are rejected by God, and should have no rights whatsoever. Those rights too they undermine, gut, get around or remove whenever they can. Any kind of dishonesty, so long as it works, is obviously fine with God, and they don’t hesitate.

They cherry-pick the bible, saying righteously that the Old Testament must also be followed. Somehow though, they pick all the most merciless, cruel, narrow parts, and they skip completely over anything that has to do with love, compassion, generosity, not praying in public, or anything else that doesn’t suit them. Especially if it allows them to take advantage of someone else. They talk about a “warrior Jesus”, which I have been unable to find anywhere in the New Testament.

Every law passed, every Executive Order signed, every signing statement added to a law by the Republican Congress and by president George Walker Bush has taken SOMETHING away from the American people or set something on a course of destruction: rights, benefits, wages, teachers, the franchise, the commons, the environment, infrastructure, the prices of staples and necessities – the list is too long even for this long-winded diatribe. I would like to add here that they have also taken our credibility, our reputation for any kind of fairness or concern for others that existed in the rest of the world, and destroyed it. We now kill whom we wish from small children on up (or torture them, from small children on up), kidnap innocents, recognize no rights of other people at all, we make up lies and use them as excuses to invade and occupy other countries, after dropping loads and loads of “smart bombs” that still manage somehow to kill more innocents than anyone else, we destroy the infrastructure of other countries and commit every war crime listed in that “quaint” document, the Geneva Conventions. We also ignore the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Vienna Accords, and every other document that seeks to recognize the rights of others, and that tries to help make a peaceful, clean, healthy world we can all live in.

That’s because they don’t believe it will be long before they can fulfill their God’s commandment – as they interpret it, anyway – and start Armageddon. This means the “battle at the hill of Megiddo”, and refers to the Last Battle on earth. They expect to be “raptured”, that is, taken from the earth, minus their clothes but alive, and taken by Jesus to Heaven for their reward for all this treachery, murder and destruction. They don’t believe they will HAVE to live on this earth – it will be remade, repaired, and made perfect – THEN they get to come back, after all the evil, sinful nonbelievers have suffered and, for the most part, died.

Well, I just heard Oprah say, “I don’t have to build schools, we have a government that does that. We live in the greatest country in the world.” I’m sorry, Oprah, but we don’t. We live in what was, perhaps, the greatest country in the world. Maybe. Our people, in general, have perhaps the most wonderful expectations and ideals. Now, however, we live in country run by thieving, lying elitist religious-cult fanatics, we invade and occupy countries too weak to fight us off, and we steal from them. We kidnap people, murder people, we allow no real news to reach our citizens, we allow no one to protest without setting up an attack on them by police. Our school systems are falling apart – except for those attended by the children of the wealthy. Our electrical grid is ready to fail and kill, perhaps, millions. Our water, air, and now our food supply are all contaminated. We have about the 49th best medical system in the world – if you can afford to access it.

All this, and our democrats in Congress are so isolated, they think nobody out here knows much of any of this. They continue to do business as usual: noise for the people, action for the mega-corporations. And paybacks to them, of course. Well, the world is about to get very unstable, and very unsafe. When things get THAT bad, it gets unsafe for everyone. Even for the wealthy and the people who think they rule everything. Maybe, especially, here.

At 52, I have learned that my country has never been what it was touted as, what it was supposed to be, almost from the very beginning. Nevertheless, there are a great many of us who believe the ideals set out by the Founders were and are magnificent; they are worth dying for. And our enemies, the greedy fools who think that business should take precedence over the welfare of human beings and even the impending destruction of the environment that keeps us alive must all give way to that greed, are fools, and sad fools at that. They remain enemies, though: a man with a gun can kill you even though he is not really responsible. Therefore, we MUST act, and we must do so in time for it to have a useful effect. The first requirement is opening the eyes of those blinded by conditioning and propaganda; this is why I write. Before this, I’ve only written songs. Now I sit at the keyboard of the computer (actually, I lie down and type, as I am in too much pain to sit for long), and this is what I write in the desperate hope that it gets read, and that perhaps a few people act on what they read.

The more I dig, the more I learn how badly We the People are being used and abused by those we hired to take care of OUR business, to protect us and our land. For me, it has been a heartrending journey, and it has left me angry beyond words. But words are all I have. With the money being wasted on an unnecessary standing military – which our Founders warned us of, as if history is not warning enough – we could supply the world’s very BEST healthcare for all, housing for the homeless, and everything else we need to become the very best individuals we can. Instead, that money is being siphoned off by war profiteers who have bankrolled our enemies or anyone at all who can pay (as the Bush family got rich bankrolling Hitler). It goes to crony companies and insane religious fanatics and greedy politicians, leaving the People, our infrastructure, our future and the earth itself to slowly, and sometimes quickly, fall into the abyss. This is INTOLERABLE to me!

Our greatest hope of late, the new Democrats we over-rode another attempt to steal an election by the GOP to elect, are showing themselves to be cut from the same cloth as the Republicans. “Impeachment is off the table” said Nancy Pelosi, almost before anything else. Now she and the same Democrats who brought us NAFTA and “free trade” that isn’t have held a secret meeting shutting out all but a handful of Democrats, seemingly to allow crony corporations to nullify all human and workers rights and benefits and all environmental safety for the sake of a few more dollars. They are bankrolled themselves by the corporations who often write our laws now, to the detriment of everything and everyone but their profits. The Democrat's proposed laws are mere noise that will accomplish nothing, but sound good.

A recall is too much to hope for, but she and they MUST NOT be re-elected! They MUST learn that there is a penalty for such treachery. Next, Bush and Cheney MUST face impeachment, and our troops must be brought home and Iraq allowed to work out it’s own destiny as they and the vast majority of Americans want. After that, we face the long road of cleaning up the mess the neocons have made: removing laws stealthed into being, Executive Orders and other things that are unconstitutional, unethical and un-American. We also need to remove self-admitted traitors who have bought their appointments to high office and the judiciary with money or loyalty to the Imperium in the person of the president and not to America. Then we need to look are perhaps not keeping a standing army; deprived of an enemy, they have ALWAYS turned against the populace. The Founders envisioned state militias that can become a military in case of invasion. Aside from maintaining the infrastructure in case of that need, there IS no need for such a military! Not unless we wish to continue spending our own blood and treasure, the lives of our children, as sacrifices on the merciless altar of corporate raiding of other countries disguised as “self defense”, as in this war and the one to come in Iran, which will also keep us as poor as possible, so that we are easy victim for the ruling corporations and pseudo-Christian cultists now in charge. There will be enough repair work to keep generations busy. We have the right to change our government completely if we so choose – it’s right there in the Constitution, and it may be necessary. The mindless, soulless, destructive corporations must be divested of their stolen funds and removed from all access to power along with their elitist puppets.

If America is to survive, we must become producers again, and we must take care of our own, NOT have a government we never elected steal all they can from us and use the money to fund research for more weapons to sell to perpetuate eternal wars, to maintain occupying armies all over the world, and to suppress the citizenry when the light finally dawns even for the most skeptical, which it will, but much too late for any useful action. The time to act is NOW – or not at all, in which case America is as dead as Imperial Rome. With what Bush and his backers and cronies would make of it, it SHOULD be dead, but the corpse would rise, armed, to rob the world until someone, or until the planet itself, with weather changes we can barely (we hope) survive rises to stop it.

Some of us really love the country they are trying so hard to destroy, and we remember the oath we took decades ago: “ ...to defend the United States of America from enemies both foreign and domestic, so help me, God.” I meant it then and, as I’ve said before, my feelings haven’t changed. Our potential is so very great, it is worth any effort by each of us to bring back and start on the right road again. But we must work together to stop allowing the lies, the propaganda, the strawmen, the dividing tricks of the radical right to divide us each from the other. Women, men, all skin colors (there is only one “race”: HUMAN), middle class, working poor, Jews, Catholics or other religions, liberals, true conservatives, WHATEVER, are all meaningless – or they will be when we are all starving, imprisoned slaves.

“ ...to defend the United States of America from enemies both foreign and domestic, so help me, God.”

I remember. Disabled, in constant pain, a wife in end-stage COPD, still, I cannot forget. I WILL NOT forget! So help me god.

Ian MacLeod

May 14th, 2007

Oregon

Crossposted to Daily Kos and Diatribune:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/15/192713/665

http://www.diatribune.com/node/1059

Ann Coulter's latest is so over the top, I couldn't resist posting it here. Coulter manages to pay tribute to Jerry Falwell and blame Ted Kennedy for 9/11 in a single column! 

"Jerry Falwell- Say Hello to Ronald Reagan!"

No man in the last century better illustrated Jesus' warning that "All men will hate you because of me" than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who left this world on Tuesday. Separately, no man better illustrates my warning that it doesn't pay to be nice to liberals.

Falwell was a perfected Christian. He exuded Christian love for all men, hating sin while loving sinners. This is as opposed to liberals, who just love sinners. Like Christ ministering to prostitutes, Falwell regularly left the safe confines of his church to show up in such benighted venues as CNN.

He was such a good Christian that back when we used to be on TV together during Clinton's impeachment, I sometimes wanted to say to him, "Step aside, reverend -- let the mean girl handle this one." (Why, that guy probably prayed for Clinton!)

For putting Christ above everything -- even the opportunity to make a humiliating joke about Clinton -- Falwell is known as "controversial." Nothing is ever as "controversial" as yammering about Scripture as if, you know, it's the word of God or something.

From the news coverage of Falwell's death, I began to suspect his first name was "Whether You Agree With Him or Not."

Even Falwell's fans, such as evangelist Billy Graham and former President Bush, kept throwing in the "We didn't always agree" disclaimer. Did Betty Friedan or Molly Ivins get this many "I didn't always agree with" qualifiers on their deaths? And when I die, if you didn't always agree with me, would you mind keeping it to yourself?

Let me be the first to say: I ALWAYS agreed with the Rev. Falwell.

Actually, there was one small item I think Falwell got wrong regarding his statement after 9/11 that "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians -- who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle -- the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"

First of all, I disagreed with that statement because Falwell neglected to specifically include Teddy Kennedy and "the Reverend" Barry Lynn. 

Second, Falwell later stressed that he blamed the terrorists most of all, but I think that clarification was unnecessary. The necessary clarification was to note that God was at least protecting America enough not to allow the terrorists to strike when a Democrat was in the White House.

(If you still think it isn't Christ whom liberals hate, remember: They hate Falwell even more than they hate me.)

I note that in Falwell's list of Americans he blamed for ejecting God from public life, only the gays got a qualifier. Falwell referred to gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle.

No Christian minister is going to preach that homosexuality is godly behavior, but Falwell didn't add any limiting qualifications to his condemnation of feminists, the ACLU or People for the American Way.

There have always been gay people -- even in the prelapsarian '50s that Jerry Falwell and I would like to return to, when God protected America from everything but ourselves. 

What Falwell was referring to are the gay activists -- the ones who spit the Eucharist on the floor at St. Patrick's Cathedral, blamed Reagan for AIDS, and keep trying to teach small schoolchildren about "fisting."

Also the ones who promote the gay lifestyle in a children's cartoon.

Beginning in early 1998, the news was bristling with stories about a children's cartoon PBS was importing from Britain that featured a gay cartoon character, Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubbie with a male voice and a red handbag.

People magazine gleefully reported that Teletubbies was "aimed at Telebabies as young as one year. But teenage club kids love the products' kitsch value, and gay men have made the purse-toting Tinky Winky a camp icon."

In the Nexis archives for 1998 alone, there are dozens and dozens of mentions of Tinky Winky being gay -- in periodicals such as Newsweek, The Toronto Star, The Washington Post (twice!), The New York Times and Time magazine (also twice).

In its Jan. 8, 1999, issue, USA Today accused The Washington Post of "outing" Tinky Winky, with a "recent Washington Post In/Out list putting T.W. opposite Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche, essentially 'outing' the kids' show character."

Michael Musto of The Village Voice boasted that Tinky Winky was "out and proud," noting that it was "a great message to kids -- not only that it's OK to be gay, but the importance of being well accessorized."

All this appeared before Falwell made his first mention of Tinky Winky.

After one year of the mainstream media laughing at having put one over on stupid bourgeois Americans by promoting a gay cartoon character in a TV show for children, when Falwell criticized the cartoon in February 1999, that same mainstream media howled with derision that Falwell thought a cartoon character could be gay.

Teletubbies producers immediately denounced the suggestion that Tinky Winky was gay -- though they admitted that he was once briefly engaged to Liza Minnelli. That's what you get, reverend, for believing what you read in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and Newsweek. Of course, Falwell also thought the show "Queer as Folk" was gay, so obviously the man had no credibility.

Despite venomous attacks and overwhelming pressure to adopt the fashionable beliefs of cafe society, Falwell never wavered an inch in acknowledging Jesus before men. Luckily, Jesus' full sentence, quoted at the beginning of this column is: "All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved."

A few years ago, Dendreon Corporation reported phenomenal results in a first phase genetic-based treatment for inoperable prostate cancer patients, achieving remissions in a large percentage of study subjects compared to those receiving a placebo. The first phase in this case involved a relatively small number of subjects, increasing the risk that later phased tests across larger numbers would show less optimistic results.

The drug, in a later phase of testing inoperable prostate cancer patients who also had little progress with chemotherapy, was found to prolong the study patients' lives on an average of months, not years.

Then the bottom fell out of the stock when the FDA flirted with approval for marketing as a cancer treatment drug, hedged, and then failed to approve Provenge.

These events raise some important issues regarding bio-pharma investment and the biopharm economy. There are a number of brave biopharma companies that are putting money into R&D while posting losses until and unless one of their genetic drugs or agents gets results and negotiates FDA hoops to marketability. Until such an event, sometimes these companies will suffer investors who know the wait for FDA or further phase drug results will leave their money in a fairly inert stock, and take their funds towards current movers.

It seems that such investments, while riskier, stand to support firms that very well could profit not only investors, but everyone in ways well-beyond what money can buy or sell. These are life stocks, and so long as management keeps the firm expenses rooted in R&D and reasonable compensation, there ought to be some manner of hybrid investment benefit programmed into these stocks that incentivizes investment, or, holding the stock.

Perhaps tax credits for investment firms that take reduced commissions on buying bio-pharma firm stock for clients would enhance the intangible profit of this crucial industry to all. If the bio-pharma firms or their genetic development licensors meet certain fiscal discipline standards, why not reward investment firms and investors who support them against short term appearances?

Brian Whittaker has done a terrific piece of research journalism to explain how MEMRI pulled the wool over the eyes of the international media in its reporting about a Hamas TV show, in which Mickey Mouse allegedly encourages a young Palestinian girl to profess her readiness to become a suicide bomber. Even the AP, CNN, and progressive bloggers like Matt Yglesias (Jihad TV? C'mon Matt, you can do better than that) were suckered into reporting the story pretty much as MEMRI (or in Matt's case, Palestinian Media Watch) gave it to them. The trouble is--the program transcript as reported by MEMRI was wrongly translated:

In the Hamas video clip issued by Memri, a Mickey Mouse lookalike asks a young girl what she will do "for the sake of al-Aqsa". Apparently trying to prompt an answer, the mouse makes a rifle-firing gesture and says "I'll shoot".

The child says: "I'm going to draw a picture."

Memri's translation ignores this remark and instead quotes the child (wrongly) as saying: "I'll shoot."

Pressed further by the mouse - "What are we going to do?" - the girl replies in Arabic: "Bidna nqawim." The normal translation of this would be "We're going to [or want to] resist" but Memri's translation puts a more aggressive spin on it: "We want to fight."

The mouse continues: "What then?"

According to Memri, the child replies: "We will annihilate the Jews."

The sound quality on the clip is not very good, but I have listened to it several times (as have a number of native Arabic speakers) and we can hear no word that might correspond to "annihilate".

What the girl seems to say is: "Bitokhoona al-yahood" - "The Jews will shoot us" or "The Jews are shooting us."

This is followed by further prompting - "We are going to defend al-Aqsa with our souls and blood, or are we not?"

Again, the girl's reply is not very clear, but it's either: "I'll become a martyr" or "We'll become martyrs."

In the context of the conversation, and in line with normal Arab-Islamic usage, martyrdom could simply mean being killed by the Israelis' shooting. However, Memri's translation of the sentence - "I will commit martyrdom" turns it into a deliberate act on the girl's part, and Colonel Carmon has since claimed that it refers to suicide bombers.

When I read about this story first at Matt Yglesias' blog I wrote a doubting comment at his blog as soon as I noticed his source was Palestinian Media Watch. If you write about the Mideast conflict as long as I have you tend to know which sources are immediately credible and which are only credible if independently verified. And MEMRI is one that I never credit unless verified by a more reliable, and less tendentious source.

If I knew to keep my distance why could not AP, CNN and other publications have invested in the time it would take to ask Arabic speakers to vet MEMRI's translation? Now, they wouldn't have egg on their face. Of course, the problem is the damage is now done. MEMRI's story, though false, has circulated deeply and widely. No amount of clarification from the Brian Whittakers of the world can correct the false impression planted by the anti-Arab propagandists.

On a final note, I completely agree with Brian that it is unpardonable for Hamas to place children in the position they did in questioning the girl on this show. Using children for political purposes is despicable and worthy of condemnation. But if we're going to condemn this program, let's do so based on accurate, credible information and not based on someone's fever dream of Arab anti-Semitism and annihilationsim.

I also note that the AP provided a translation of a speech by the Mickey Mouse character which should also be questioned:

“You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists,” the character squeaked on a recent episode. “We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers.”

Which is summarized thusly:

Hamas militants have suspended a television program that featured a Mickey Mouse look-alike urging Palestinian children to fight Israel and work for global Islamic domination

AP doesn't say where this translation comes from: MEMRI? Their own independent sources? Remember what The Who used to warn us? "We won't be fooled again." Let the media beware and verify MEMRI stories and translations before running with them.

A big hat tip to Sol Salbe.

[cross-posted to Tikun Olam]

Eli Lilly makes billions on diabetes treatment and also gets $4.2 billion a year in sales of their biggest cash cow Zyprexa which has been scandalized as *causing* diabetes as a major side effect.

In the New York Times, it was revealed that the new chairman of a Federal Consumer Protection Agency has been chosen. No one should be surprised that it is a top executive from an industry lobbying firm.

With the Bush Administration's usual sewer level ethics, no one should be surprised that the new nominee will be getting a bonus from his trade association. This bonus forces him to recuse himself from matters concerning his old employer by law. The article makes it clear that he will have no problem circumventing this ethics law.

What seems strange is that this misadministration that is politicized to unprecedented levels could be so tone deaf. The nominee is named Baroody and I was certain that I had read "Parody" at first. This nominee seems nothing more than an attempt by some Bushie to get a laugh.

You can imagine it if I can. One Bushie says to another, "We're running out of evil things we can do to this country."

The second Bushie says, "No way! Even if we're all going to be indicted next week, we can still have some fun with the Democrats."

The first replies, "Of course! What was I thinking? We've never been concerned with governing so why bother starting now. I think it's time for a parody."

The second laughs and says, "I've found the perfect nominee. He has all the usual ethical issues including conflict of interest. He's nothing more than another attempt to ruin a government agency. Even better, his name even looks a little like parody!"

The first Bushie almost falls off his chair in evil laughter. "Oh, that's too rich!"

The second Bushie jumps to his feet and screams, "Blasphemer! No one can ever be too rich."

"It was a figure of speech!"

The first Bushie relaxes a little. The sweat beading on his forehead is dried by a well monogrammed towel. "I'll let it go this time but you have to remember. We Bushies are here in Washington so that no rich person has to pay taxes and there is no limit to how much money we can make when we leave government."

The second Bushie notes a flaw in that. "Why wait until we leave? I'm already raking in the dough from my stock options."

The first smiles and pats his friend on the head. "We have to at least try to pretend like we're here for public service."

Or something like that.

With none of the democrats exciting anyone, Ron Paul is looking better all the time. New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who the Clintons have always liked, is now talking about a billion dollar independent run.

so, does anyone think that either Ron Paul or Bloomberg could cause an upset or even become "major contenders?"

what I find interesting is the "new conspiracy theory" about MySpace blocking Ron Paul's message: YouTube Ron Paul Conspiracy Video and I think that more oddball stories can be found on google, digg and other blogs as well (from what I can tell, they're multiplying like rabbits).

What I found wierd? CNBC (source) had this to say about where Ron Paul ranked:

"9. Ron Paul, Texas congressman, Last Ranking: -- "

"The anti-war Republican stood out, and his answers were the talk of the spin room -- well, parts of it, anyway. Our problem: until he starts to take votes from someone else, we don't know where to place him."

Since when did a politician become "unrankable?" Is CNBC simply not ranking Paul because he's an uncontrolable first place contender? and prefering to ignore poll data by debasing and adulterating it in the same way they do with exit poll data these days?

all I know is, I gave a few bucks to Ron Paul for his courage!

but, for all I know, Ron Paul was there to simply get people to turn on their TV's and meet the others.

update from national review: I’m suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it,” Paul said. “They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there. source

go ron paul, go! this is the first time i've heard someone brilliantly topple the "fight them before they come hear" argument by Bush.

The excerpt below is posted with the full knowledge and permission, even encouragement, of the author, who wants his essays to be read by as many people as possible.

Send a message about this essay to letters@thehill.com. If your letter is good enough to be published, it may be read by your senators and congressman! From The Hill:

How to win the Iraq war

By Brent Budowsky

Success can still be achieved in Iraq along historic precedents of Ireland, South Africa and El Salvador when armed combatants ended their wars and joined the political process.

The current escalation is doomed because it encourages the dominant party to sectarian war, the Maliki government and its allies among Shi’ite militias and Iran to intransigence, using American troops to achieve military victory in their war against Sunnis.

If Senate Republicans demonstrate clarity and conscience they can save our country from continued catastrophe, save their party from electoral disaster, and save Iraqis from a cauldron of carnage that will bring war without end.

Official Washington almost universally believes privately that the Iraq enterprise is doomed because official Washington also believes, incorrectly, that the president will never change the policy.

The president vowed to never negotiate with Syria and Iran, insulting even the Speaker, who advocated this. The president changed that policy.

The pressures are rising dramatically…

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and to Bill Alexander, then-chief deputy whip of the House. He is a contributing editor to Fighting Dems News Service. He can be read on The Hill’s Pundits Blog and reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.

Click the title, above, to read Brent’s two-part solution, and call your senators toll free at 800-459-1887 to affect their war funding vote today .

Carolyn Kay

MakeThemAccountable.com

The Utah Jazz have reached the Western Conference Finals, defeating Golden State 4-1. It's the first time since 1998 that the Jazz have reached the conference finals. This is, of course, delightful -- even if it means that my sleep schedule is slightly skewed by late games.

I do enjoy basketball -- even more so when the good guys win. :)

So, in last night's debate, we learned:

We need to WIN! in Iraq, the terrorists will follow us home, women who are raped must be forced to give birth to the child, and, most importantly, torture is awesome. 

What a pathetic bunch.

Guys, I posted this on my old blog back when my son, Dustin, was deployed to a deadly area in the Anbar province with the Marines.  They were supposed to come home in only a couple weeks, but his unit had lost three men in three days.  I did not know it then, but he'd watched a platoon buddy die that day, Pfc. Rex Page, 21 years old.  This is how it feels to live in hell.

Originally posted on June 29, 2006 at: http://blueinkblots.blogspot.com.

Whenever a soldier dies in Iraq or anywhere else, a wave of uneasiness--fear, revulsion, guilt, sadness--ripples through the survivors. It could be felt on Monday, even as the fighting was still going on.--"Iraq War Ends Silently for One American Soldier," Dexter Filkins, New York Times, June 29, 2006.

"I don't know if this war is worth the life of Terry Fisk, or 10 soldiers, or 2,500 soldiers like him," Colonel MacFarland told his forces. "What I do know is that he did not die alone. He was surrounded by friends.

"A Greek philosopher said that only the dead have seen the end of war," the colonel said. "Only Terry Fisk has seen the end of this war."--ibid

"I know this has been a hard week. You guys lost three men this week."

"Yeah. I don't want to talk about any of that right now. I'm just worn out and stressed out and I just want to hear news from home."--my son, calling at 3 a.m. his time, from the Anbar Province, Iraq.


When the phone rang at about six p.m. our time, I glanced at the caller ID and saw the familiar "AT&T Hits."

That's so strange. AT&T Hits. It sounds so happy, like a top-forty pop-music hit parade from the sixties. The big A.M. radio station where I grew up in Dallas--KLIF--published a list every week of the Top-40 and we'd avidly follow it to see which one of the British Invasion was beating out all comers that week.

I yanked up the phone and said hello but the response was dead air. I've learned to be patient, because the satellite phones the guys pass around from Marine to Marine in the unit is notoriously beat up and bunged up. They cut in and out and it's not unusual for our sons to have to call back six or eight times during one brief conversation.

Maybe there are plenty of troops in headquarters rear areas and in vast military bases like the ones our secretary of defense loves to visit--so sprawling that they've actually got fast-food restaurants on them and PX's. They have access to Internet cafes where they post blogs or catch a glimpse of their new babies back home through videoconferencing.

But for the Marine infantry, fighting bloody battles every damn day in the Anbar Province of Iraq, there are no bases, no PX's, no mess halls. They sleep in abandoned Iraqi houses and in the streets or in temporary posts snagged in war-riddled buildings or up on roofs or out in the desert. If they sleep at all.

A platoon will lug around a sat phone and pass it around when it is relatively quiet so the guys can check in at home and reassure their nerve-rattled families that, at least for right then in that breathless moment of time…they're okay.

I said hello again and waited again, and then said, "Dustin, I'm here honey. If you can hear me."

In response came the telltale death-rattle of the connection being cut, and I hung up immediately because if he can, he'll call back.

When the phone rang again I snatched it up and said, "Is it you?"

"Yeah," he said, and in that one instant, I knew something was terribly wrong because I'm his mama. Talk to me all you want about fatigue or overseas connections but I know.

I said, "It's 3 a.m. your time. Kinda late."

He said yeah, he just wanted to check in and let me know he was all right.

Dustin knew and I knew that his unit had lost three good Marines in three days.

I said, "I know it's been a real hard week. I don’t know if you knew any of the guys."

He said, "Yeah, I don’t want to talk about that right now. I just want to see how everybody's doing."

I dropped the subject immediately, because it is my job to do everything humanly and motherly possible in this universe to keep that boy going, to keep his spirits up, to make him laugh if I can, to reach through that telephone cord, reach across an ocean, reach across 6,000 miles and wrap my arms around him and hug him close and say, It's gonna be all right.

I said we were all fine, and this is what I would have said if we'd all been in the hospital in the ICU ward. I can only imagine the horrors my child has witnessed during the past few months. He does not need to be worrying about the health and safety of any of his loved ones back home.

Fortunately, I didn't have to lie this time like I did his last deployment to The Bad Place. I told him we were all doing well and told a couple of funny stories I'd saved for just this purpose, to prove my point and get him through the next miserable day in hell.

I told him he sounded exhausted, and he said, "I'm worn out and stressed out and I just want to get out of this place and come home."

I'm not going to give specifics on an Internet blog, but I will say he's been in a very bad place, and I will say that his unit is due to rotate home in the near future, but he still has several weeks where he must remain vigilant.

"I'm stressed-out too," I admitted (for the first time). "A friend of mine put it beautifully. She said, "The screws that hold me together are coming loose."

I laughed when I said it to keep the conversation light, and he said Yeah. He didn't laugh because he doesn't much any more, not now. I turned it into a joke and said, "If that makes you feel any better." He said, "It does, actually."

We talked of little things, everyday things, little sanities of home life that he hungers for, little touches of the real world and not the world of car bombs and IEDs and snipers and firefights and death and stench and heat and misery and homesickness.

I asked if he needed anything, if he'd gotten the care packages I'd sent recently. We talked of when we'd see one another again, and I knew the conversation was coming to a close because he has so little time, you see, because there are other miserable homesick Marines patiently waiting their turn.

And then I felt frantic and desperate and terrified because I don't know, I never know, if that is the last time I will ever hear his voice.

When you fear that you may not ever speak to your child again, you want to say just the right thing, and what is that?

How do you keep from being betrayed by the tears in your shaky voice? How do you be at least as brave as he is?

HOW?

His dad wasn't here, but I remembered things I had overheard him tell our son about the final days of combat. How it was easy to get distracted by thoughts of home and hearth, and get careless.

How you had to remain vigilant.

But his dad is a combat veteran and I am not. So I could not say it, but I could remind him of it just the same.

I said, "Of course, you know to remain vigilant. Please be very very careful honey."

"I will," he said.

And then I felt this urgency, this terrible urgency, to say, "Honey, you are never forgotten. Never ever for a single moment. You are in our thoughts and our prayers every moment of every day. We count the days until we can see you again. You aren't forgotten."

And he said, "Sometimes I forget myself."

"Please, please be careful," I said. "Hang in there. Just hang in there a little longer until you can be safe again."

We told each other how much we loved each other, and I fought valiantly to hide my tears, and when we said good-bye, I thought about how he refuses to hang up until I do. I've never said anything about it, but I've noticed it. Every conversation, no matter how brief. He waits for me to say good-bye.

And then you hang up and you sit alone in a silent house that once rang with his laughter and his noise, and your heart cracks open and there is nothing you can do but cry. Sob and sob because you don't have to be brave for him anymore.

When I'd gotten myself a bit under control, I called his dad and told him about the conversation. We agreed that something awful must have happened in the last few days, that he just called home for one brief moment of comfort, of hearing Mom's voice and news of home.

"I'm glad you were there for him," said my husband of 32 years.

The other night, I had a long and quite lovely conversation with the father of one of the young men in my son's unit. We'd met on a parent's forum. All I knew was that his child was in the same hell as mine, and that's all I needed to know.

But I was surprised to learn that he works in the field of psychology, and as a trained therapist, he said, "With all my training and all my education and all my experience, and all my kind well-meaning colleagues…I have absolutely no resources for coping with this."

We agreed that obsessive thoughts, insomnia, crying jags, and constant daily ongoing TERROR punctuated by spasms of panic and hysteria were NORMAL, actually.

Normal, that is, for the parent or loved one of a young man or woman in war.
Together, we fretted about how best to help them when they make those 3 a.m. phone calls; what's the best tone of voice; what to discuss and not to discuss; how best to be the most comforting and most supportive we can possibly be.

Like me, this particular gentleman did not want this particular war and does not share the politics of many of the most well-meaning "flag-wavers" as we call them--people who insist that we should support the war or it means we're not supporting the troops.

They don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Some of my readers accuse me of being filled with hatred or rage, but they don't get it and they don't get me.

When I see politicians use this war as a weapon of divisiveness in order to appeal to a narrow "base"--and I'm talking on both sides of the aisle--when I see politicians who have never dodged a bullet in their lives preen and preach in front of hoards of flags; when I see politicians who care much more about photo ops than about rolling up their sleeves and searching for the smartest solutions to this mess; when well-meaning patriotic souls accuse me of "undermining the troops"--souls who know nothing about the cards and letters and jokes and care packages and homemade cookies and phone calls and love to my son and others I know that I have sent countless times over there…and I look at the daily death toll mounting, and when, in my son's heavy voice, I hear the unimaginable weight of exhaustion and fear and the sheer stress of surviving when others didn't…

Well, all I can say is this.

Can you possibly understand the terror, all you who sit at home in your comfortable chairs and watch the evening news and shake your heads and go on the Internet and argue politics with me?

If you have not been there, if you have not spoken to your child and wondered if it is the last time you will ever hear his voice, then in matters of this war, shut up.

You are not qualified to speak.

Our government has intensified its search for the three missing American soldiers. They're dropping leaflets asking Iraqis for help in finding them. They've increased patrols and detained many for questioning.

Here's the thing:

WHAT THE HELL WERE TWO HUMVEES containing so few troops doing in that neighborhood at 4AM without back-up? Is "Georgie's" new "strategy in Iraq" to flood Baghdad with additional troops but leave them out there in groups so small they are attacked and captured to be used as pawns in this civil war?

BRILLIANT! Why didn't I think of that?

Sometimes these guys make me dizzy! I have to go lie down for a while so my poor little "liberal" brain can process the genius the conservatives in power possess. I'm sure with enough rest, I'll be able to comprehend the benefit of such a "strategy."

Last year Ig Publishing approached me to write a book on the issue of combat PTSD in our returning OEF/OIF troops. I'd been blogging for a few years, but had never written a book before.

As any writer I suppose I'd wanted to write a book eventually. Someday. When I had more time. When I knew what to say. And how to say it. I thought I'd write of my father, who fought on the streets in Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. I'd call it, "Revolutionary Daughter" or something lofty like that.

I'd even started interviewing my parents and buying books on the topic to begin my research. But did I think I'd ever really write a book in my life? Really?

Well, it's real. I've written a book. Just not that book.

No, my book is called Moving a Nation to Care: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and America's Returning Troops. Nothing lofty in that there title, eh?

For the scoop on Thursday night's signing, read the full write-up.

Or listen to a 15-minute interview I gave to Charlotte Crockford, 91.5 FM WUML.

Heading out to Philadelphia tomorrow for my second book event [Facebook invite]. On Friday, May 18, I'm at the Barnes & Noble in Greenwich Village [Facebook invite].

Philadelphia

What

Book Signing/Community Gathering with Ilona Meagher, author of Moving a Nation to Care: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and America’s Returning Troops (Ig Publishing)

*Where*

Robin's Bookstore

108 S. 13th Street

Philadelphia, PA 19107

*When*

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

*Time*

6:00 p.m.

*Phone store for more information*

215-735-9600

New York City

What

Book Signing/Community Gathering with Ilona Meagher, author of Moving a Nation to Care: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and America’s Returning Troops (Ig Publishing)

*Where*

Barnes & Noble – Greenwich Village

396 Ave of the Americas at 8th Street

New York, NY 10011

*When*

Friday, May 18, 2007

*Time*

7:30 p.m.

*Phone store for more information*

212-674-8780

*Special Guests*

Author Penny Coleman, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide, and the Lessons of War

IAVA member, Outreach Director Rob Timmins

Ig Publishing, publishers of Moving a Nation to Care

But what does all of this have to do with The Rumsfeld Revolution in Military Affairs? Download Moving a Nation to Care's sample chapter on the Rumsfeld Revolution to find out.

P.S. Did you participate in the Buy One, Get a Signed Copy Free promotion? Your books were sent out via First Class mail today. I may even beat Amazon.com! :o)

The U.S. is NOT “the richest country on earth”; it merely plays host to the largest pieces of the largest corporations on earth, as well as to several of the richest families on earth. It plays host in the same way a human body plays host to a virus. As soon as they’re gone – and that will happen when it no longer benefits their bottom lines to remain because there is nothing left worth stealing, and their raw materials are so polluted or destroyed they are essentially unreachable or unusable – America will be a former “first-world country” that has deteriorated to third-world status for all practical purposes. It will be owned by families like the Bushes, the Rothschild’s, Duponts, and so on, and the corporations they represent. Work, for the most part, will not pay even close to a living wage, and there will be no benefits.

There will be no worker, homeowner or other protection for any individuals if they are not wealthy enough to ‘protect’ themselves. Possibly there will be no more voting; for all practical purposes there is none now. Anyone the neocon-Republicans do not choose to give access to the corrupted electronic voting machines, the judicial and other appointees who stand by to cover any other problems, and the right-wing fanatics who believe only in a “democracy” that they control (which is why they have no problem with disenfranchising tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of legally qualified voters), will not win. They determine who can vote or not, they count the votes or “lose” them, they can initiate or block investigations – they have control of the voting process, AND THE MEDIA.

As any politician knows, without the media, they have no chance, for the people will never get to hear anything they want to say, will never hear anything but propaganda from the other side. If one side controls the media, the other side will be constantly misquoted, ignored and smeared, with, if necessary, quiet little back page retractions, but only after the damage has been done. This administration used a takeover plot around thirty years in the making that involved a stealth invasion of religious fanatics sometimes backed by corporate interests sneaking their way into the government, but the two were really brought together in the Bush administration, though it should really be called the Cheney administration, or perhaps the neocon administration. Together with religious fanatics who had lied and stolen and bribed their ways into the judiciary and other high government office, they set about making themselves secure.

They hijacked the voting process as described, and took over much of the judiciary with appointees who would follow orders and not necessarily the law, especially in areas where they might be called upon to pre-empt elections, block investigations of their people, or initiate them against the democrats. Once in office, they began appointing members of Dominionist schools like Pat Robertson’s university, and of PNAC. These latter were involved in all sorts of overthrows of democratic governments in favor of tractable dictators, engineered Iran/Contra, the Tet Offensive which is now known to have been a false flag operation and many, many other things that were antithetical to American ideals and laws, so much so that they have been carefully kept from the populace all these years, and are only now coming out, now that honest people trapped in the government with these predators have begun to have enough of being gagged, fired, and watching their country being abused.

According to the combined neocon/Dominionist plans published and aired variously by PNAC, Pat Robertson and writers over the years, the plan is, first, to take over the government of the U.S., which is almost complete. Then the idea is to alter it, likely using another false-flag op involving the deaths of a couple or a few thousand more American citizens as an excuse (a national emergency”) to declare martial law (which, according to another new law quietly promulgated by the administration, can only be defined and declared by the president), suspend what remains of the Constitution, and begin rounding up dissidents and protestors. There are around 800 internment camps built on a no-bid contract to KBR, supposedly to contain an expected “invasion” of illegal immigrants. The president or those he designates, including the radical-right owned Blackwater mercenary company’s death squads, can on their suspicions alone declare anyone, anywhere, to be “illegal enemy combatants” or “agents of a foreign power” or simply “terrorists”, and kidnap them or “extrajudicially execute” them, as they choose. The president has already hinted broadly that this power has been used; he seem to take a strange sort of delight in it.

As something of an aside here, George Bush is relishing his position of power, even though he hasn’t the wit to hold it or use it alone. It allows him to hold “the High Justice” over other – life and death. If he says someone should die, they die, and he LOVES that. Watch him when he talks about it. He get a strange sort of smirk on his face and licks his lips, as if he could taste the blood. Legally speaking, he could take ABSOLUTE POWER at any time. He simply has to declare a National Emergency and martial law, and that’s it. The Constitution is no longer in force. He could even make something up, a total lie; no one would have the authority to challenge it, or him. As to his enjoyment of use of the power to kill others, consider: when he was Governor of Texas, he executed more people than any other governor anywhere, any time. At one point, while talking to the press, he mocked a woman who had been sentenced to death: “Please don’t kill me!” he said, in an attempt at a woman’s voice in falsetto. He thought he was being funny! He ignored exculpatory evidence and international law in order to execute people, and he never ONCE commuted a death sentence. Then there’s the memo where Tony Blair was desperately trying to stop him from ordering a bombing run on a foreign newspaper!

George Bush LIKES TO KILL. He feels nothing for those who die, innocent or not, no matter age or gender – or how many; all that matters is a) how useful killing them is, and b) that he gets to order it. He wants to be King Rambo. I would bet money (if I had any) that he asks for pictures. The general who figures this out and allows him to go on an attack against someone who couldn’t possibly shoot anything at the plane so that he himself can push the button, pull the trigger or whatever can likely name his own reward.

More and more of our infrastructure, the commons, and our vital industries are being sold off to crony corporations – “privatized” as the Bush administration likes to call it. More often than not, these corporations are totally incompetent for the job(s) involved, and they simply take the money, they or some third-level or further down subcontractor does a half-assed job of it, and they and the money, always much, MUCH more than it should have cost to be done correctly, simply disappear together, never to be seen again, never to be investigated. More and more of the labor in this country, and even white-collar work, is being shipped overseas where there is less regulation or expectation of a living wage, much less benefits. As the jobs disappear, the prices go up because corporations find it cheaper to import whenever they can from countries with laborers who have no rights. Even so, other prices go up too – because they can: gasoline, power, food, medical care, housing – and there is an ever-decreasing amount of money available to those who need these things. The things we used to grow for ourselves are shipped away somewhere, and we import much of our food from countries that could easily poison us, by intent or by their own lack of sanitation. What we do grow for ourselves is done mostly by Big Agriculture, with as little care for cleanliness and safety as they can get away with, for the sake of profits, so that poisonings are becoming more frequent. The Bush administration’s response has been to cut funding again and again to those agencies responsible for protecting us, to gut the laws, and to order the DOJ not to investigate or to prosecute. The tax breaks passed since George Bush literally took the office have all been for the wealthy and for the largest of the corporations, not regular workers of any kind. Social programs have been deliberately destroyed (more on this in a moment) until there is little help available for people on the edge, or for those who have fallen off.

Predatory lending practices are now not allowed, they are encouraged, putting the unwary young, disabled, and the elderly so far into debt so quickly, they will likely be debt-slaves forever, or have no credit at all, and no way to repair it. A rubber-stamp Republican Congress carefully and deliberately totally excluded the outnumbered democrats, and passed a bankruptcy law written by the credit industry. It allows no Chapter 7 bankruptcy for ordinary people – only for those rich enough to shelter wealth in real estate. The same Congress also removed or crippled antitrust laws, environmental regulations, and passed a “Drug Benefit” using Medicare that benefits only the big pharmaceutical companies, robbing the elderly and disabled, still leaving them paying more than anyone else in any other country. Also, unlike the VA or any other large buying group, Medicare is, BY LAW, not permitted to use that bargaining power to bargain for lower prices. They have no choice but to pay whatever the pharmaceutical companies demand.

Social programs are deemed not just a waste of money, but actual theft from the wealthy, taking their “hard-earned money” and giving it to the undeserving, lazy and sinful poor who did nothing to earn it, who are poor as a punishment from God as a result of their own laziness and lack of foresight. The neocons also feel that even though they set up the business atmosphere, rules and everything else so that it’s nearly impossible for the poor to climb out of their poverty, nonetheless it’s God’s judgment on the poor. They feel no responsibility whatsoever – or pity or compassion as far as I can tell.

Neocons are essentially Dominionists or Christian Reconstructionists who are politically active. They believe, for one thing, that they are “forgiven from the beginning of time”, meaning that no matter what they ever do, they are already forgiven for it. They are also fascists: business, especially those that they are involved in, is of primary importance. Safety, sanitation, wages and fair treatment of employees, reasonable hours and all other employees rights are a drain on the bottom line, and are not rights at all; they are also theft. They remove them, undermine them, get around them every chance they get. It’s up to employees to look out for themselves. The same goes for the customers, end users or whatever, and it goes for public schooling, which they also intend to destroy. They believe charity should come from neighbors if at all, and schooling should be done at home or by the church. They (especially Karl Rove) follow the works of Machiavelli, especially The Prince, like a manual on how to take over and rule a country, which is precisely what it is. They admire and quote successful, ruthless conquerors from Hitler to Genghis Kahn. They believe it is necessary to lie to those they rule, and to keep them in fear. And they believe that those not favored by God with great wealth are rejected by God, and should have no rights whatsoever. Those rights too they undermine, gut, get around or remove whenever they can. Any kind of dishonesty, so long as it works, is obviously fine with God, and they don’t hesitate.

They cherry-pick the bible, saying righteously that the Old Testament must also be followed. Somehow though, they pick all the most merciless, cruel, narrow parts, and they skip completely over anything that has to do with love, compassion, generosity, not praying in public, or anything else that doesn’t suit them. Especially if it allows them to take advantage of someone else. They talk about a “warrior Jesus”, which I have been unable to find anywhere in the New Testament.

Every law passed, every Executive Order signed, every signing statement added to a law by the Republican Congress and by president George Walker Bush has taken SOMETHING away from the American people or set something on a course of destruction: rights, benefits, wages, teachers, the franchise, the commons, the environment, infrastructure, the prices of staples and necessities – the list is too long even for this long-winded diatribe. I would like to add here that they have also taken our credibility, our reputation for any kind of fairness or concern for others that existed in the rest of the world, and destroyed it. We now kill whom we wish from small children on up (or torture them, from small children on up), kidnap innocents, recognize no rights of other people at all, we make up lies and use them as excuses to invade and occupy other countries, after dropping loads and loads of “smart bombs” that still manage somehow to kill more innocents than anyone else, we destroy the infrastructure of other countries and commit every war crime listed in that “quaint” document, the Geneva Conventions. We also ignore the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Vienna Accords, and every other document that seeks to recognize the rights of others, and that tries to help make a peaceful, clean, healthy world we can all live in.

That’s because they don’t believe it will be long before they can fulfill their God’s commandment – as they interpret it, anyway – and start Armageddon. This means the “battle at the hill of Megiddo”, and refers to the Last Battle on earth. They expect to be “raptured”, that is, taken from the earth, minus their clothes but alive, and taken by Jesus to Heaven for their reward for all this treachery, murder and destruction. They don’t believe they will HAVE to live on this earth – it will be remade, repaired, and made perfect – THEN they get to come back, after all the evil, sinful nonbelievers have suffered and, for the most part, died.

Well, I just heard Oprah say, “I don’t have to build schools, we have a government that does that. We live in the greatest country in the world.” I’m sorry, Oprah, but we don’t. We live in what was, perhaps, the greatest country in the world. Maybe. Our people, in general, have perhaps the most wonderful expectations and ideals. Now, however, we live in country run by thieving, lying elitist religious-cult fanatics, we invade and occupy countries too weak to fight us off, and we steal from them. We kidnap people, murder people, we allow no real news to reach our citizens, we allow no one to protest without setting up an attack on them by police. Our school systems are falling apart – except for those attended by the children of the wealthy. Our electrical grid is ready to fail and kill, perhaps, millions. Our water, air, and now our food supply are all contaminated. We have about the 49th best medical system in the world – if you can afford to access it.

All this, and our democrats in Congress are so isolated, they think nobody out here knows much of any of this. They continue to do business as usual: noise for the people, action for the mega-corporations. And paybacks to them, of course. Well, the world is about to get very unstable, and very unsafe. When things get THAT bad, it gets unsafe for everyone. Even for the wealthy and the people who think they rule everything. Maybe, especially, here.

At 52, I have learned that my country has never been what it was touted as, what it was supposed to be, almost from the very beginning. Nevertheless, there are a great many of us who believe the ideals set out by the Founders were and are magnificent; they are worth dying for. And our enemies, the greedy fools who think that business should take precedence over the welfare of human beings and even the impending destruction of the environment that keeps us alive must all give way to that greed, are fools, and sad fools at that. They remain enemies, though: a man with a gun can kill you even though he is not really responsible. Therefore, we MUST act, and we must do so in time for it to have a useful effect. The first requirement is opening the eyes of those blinded by conditioning and propaganda; this is why I write. Before this, I’ve only written songs. Now I sit at the keyboard of the computer (actually, I lie down and type, as I am in too much pain to sit for long), and this is what I write in the desperate hope that it gets read, and that perhaps a few people act on what they read.

The more I dig, the more I learn how badly We the People are being used and abused by those we hired to take care of OUR business, to protect us and our land. For me, it has been a heartrending journey, and it has left me angry beyond words. But words are all I have. With the money being wasted on an unnecessary standing military – which our Founders warned us of, as if history is not warning enough – we could supply the world’s very BEST healthcare for all, housing for the homeless, and everything else we need to become the very best individuals we can. Instead, that money is being siphoned off by war profiteers who have bankrolled our enemies or anyone at all who can pay (as the Bush family got rich bankrolling Hitler). It goes to crony companies and insane religious fanatics and greedy politicians, leaving the People, our infrastructure, our future and the earth itself to slowly, and sometimes quickly, fall into the abyss. This is INTOLERABLE to me!

Our greatest hope of late, the new Democrats we over-rode another attempt to steal an election by the GOP to elect, are showing themselves to be cut from the same cloth as the Republicans. “Impeachment is off the table” said Nancy Pelosi, almost before anything else. Now she and the same Democrats who brought us NAFTA and “free trade” that isn’t have held a secret meeting shutting out all but a handful of Democrats, seemingly to allow crony corporations to nullify all human and workers rights and benefits and all environmental safety for the sake of a few more dollars. They are bankrolled themselves by the corporations who often write our laws now, to the detriment of everything and everyone but their profits. The Democrat's proposed laws are mere noise that will accomplish nothing, but sound good.

A recall is too much to hope for, but she and they MUST NOT be re-elected! They MUST learn that there is a penalty for such treachery. Next, Bush and Cheney MUST face impeachment, and our troops must be brought home and Iraq allowed to work out it’s own destiny as they and the vast majority of Americans want. After that, we face the long road of cleaning up the mess the neocons have made: removing laws stealthed into being, Executive Orders and other things that are unconstitutional, unethical and un-American. We also need to remove self-admitted traitors who have bought their appointments to high office and the judiciary with money or loyalty to the Imperium in the person of the president and not to America. Then we need to look are perhaps not keeping a standing army; deprived of an enemy, they have ALWAYS turned against the populace. The Founders envisioned state militias that can become a military in case of invasion. Aside from maintaining the infrastructure in case of that need, there IS no need for such a military! Not unless we wish to continue spending our own blood and treasure, the lives of our children, as sacrifices on the merciless altar of corporate raiding of other countries disguised as “self defense”, as in this war and the one to come in Iran, which will also keep us as poor as possible, so that we are easy victim for the ruling corporations and pseudo-Christian cultists now in charge. There will be enough repair work to keep generations busy. We have the right to change our government completely if we so choose – it’s right there in the Constitution, and it may be necessary. The mindless, soulless, destructive corporations must be divested of their stolen funds and removed from all access to power along with their elitist puppets.

If America is to survive, we must become producers again, and we must take care of our own, NOT have a government we never elected steal all they can from us and use the money to fund research for more weapons to sell to perpetuate eternal wars, to maintain occupying armies all over the world, and to suppress the citizenry when the light finally dawns even for the most skeptical, which it will, but much too late for any useful action. The time to act is NOW – or not at all, in which case America is as dead as Imperial Rome. With what Bush and his backers and cronies would make of it, it SHOULD be dead, but the corpse would rise, armed, to rob the world until someone, or until the planet itself, with weather changes we can barely (we hope) survive rises to stop it.

Some of us really love the country they are trying so hard to destroy, and we remember the oath we took decades ago: “ ...to defend the United States of America from enemies both foreign and domestic, so help me, God.” I meant it then and, as I’ve said before, my feelings haven’t changed. Our potential is so very great, it is worth any effort by each of us to bring back and start on the right road again. But we must work together to stop allowing the lies, the propaganda, the strawmen, the dividing tricks of the radical right to divide us each from the other. Women, men, all skin colors (there is only one “race”: HUMAN), middle class, working poor, Jews, Catholics or other religions, liberals, true conservatives, WHATEVER, are all meaningless – or they will be when we are all starving, imprisoned slaves.

“ ...to defend the United States of America from enemies both foreign and domestic, so help me, God.”

I remember. Disabled, in constant pain, a wife in end-stage COPD, still, I cannot forget. I WILL NOT forget! So help me god.

Ian MacLeod

May 14th, 2007

Oregon

Crossposted from Daily Kos:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/15/192713/665

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1178708601224&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
..."People see the anarchy and instability in the Palestinian Authority areas and prefer to leave to a safer place," explained Ibrahim Barakat, a businessman from Beit Hanina, a large Arab neighborhood in northern Jerusalem. "Also, people are afraid of losing their status as permanent residents of Israel and that's why they are moving back into Jerusalem. After all, life inside Israel is much better than the West Bank."

..."Let's be honest, we have lost the battle for Jerusalem," admitted a Fatah legislator from the city. "The Palestinian Authority hasn't done anything to preserve the Arab and Islamic character of Jerusalem. The Arabs in Jerusalem have lost confidence in the Palestinian leadership and that's why most of them prefer to live under Israeli control. Frankly, when I see what's happening in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, I can understand why."

I hiked about three or four miles down a bike path converted from an abandoned rail spur this afternoon, with the object of visiting my next door neighbor. I could have visited him by walking the thirty plus feet from my front door to his, but today I wanted him to exercise his professional skills on my head. My neighbor is a barber. Ambling along, I got to thinking about middle class matters once again. Though this time, my inspiration was less Aristotle and more Dagwood.

In my last offering here, I drew attention to ambiguities in the definition of Middle Class, ably outlined in Wikipedia. One of the kind café denizens brought up the fact that Middle Class has as often been used as an epithet as it has an encomium, while another added the observation that Middle Class may have replaced "Working Class" in our vocabularies, at least to some degree. That reminded me of one of the observations in the Wikipedia piece...round and round the brain does go:

It is the nature of their work and lack of influence that leads some to come to the conclusion that most Americans are working class. The majority of workers are not paid to share their thoughts and ideas as much as professionals. They are commonly closely supervised and do not enjoy a great deal of independence in their jobs. They are also not commonly paid to think and their thoughts are not often sought by their employer organizations or clients, which leads to a lack of influence.

I wasn’t entirely happy with this: professionals, after all, work. How would I parse the idea "Working Class?" More particularly, could I parse it in a way which didn’t create a hierarchy? I settled on a division of the working class into two subsets: the articulate working class and the dexterous working class. The first manipulates symbols, the second, objects. Both express ideas through the kinds of manipulation they do. Into the first class would fall persons like myself, a manipulator of words. Into the second, my barber, a manipulator of scissors, clippers, and hair. Aside from suggesting that he take a little off the top, I cannot instruct him in his trade, and anyone who would trust me within clipping distance of his scalp is quite unwise. It is far more likely that I would walk four miles to get a good haircut than he would walk four miles to get a lecture on Emerson. Which of us is the most socially valuable? Depends on how shaggy you are or what you think you might need to know about Emerson, I think.

Perhaps a better example might be my plumber, who is also a former student of mine. I must quickly say that he was a plumber before he was my student, as well as after, and he didn’t become my student to escape the rigors of plumbing. I teach, from time to time, in a Historic Preservation Program, and it takes special skills to retrofit old structures with new utilities. He wanted to be a historic plumber. I asked him what was the difference. "$75.00 an hour", was his reply. My plumber is a dexterous worker. He makes more than I do. I’m articulate, kinda-sorta, and that distinction gives me a social cachet and perhaps a little more influence than his dexterity gives him. <boast> My son the doctor</boast>. <boast> My daughter the lawyer </boast> <boast???>My child the plumber </boast???>. I’m not so sure. We’ve been culturally conditioned to place "articulate" professions over "dexterous" ones for at least 100 years. Nineteenth Century popular art Universally depicted gentlemen and ladies on their suburban or country estates fully attired: the men in hats, coats, ties, and vests. It would never do to be mistaken for one of the hired help.

I go on and on about this because I have a sensitivity to it. I come from dexterous roots. My relatives of my grandparents’ generations were maids, cooks, tailors, and the like. Half my cousins are dexterous...retired now, they worked as farmers and school custodians. A couple of them were really can’t be categorized by this scheme. What would one call someone who took a degree in forestry and spent his working life stocking pheasants in rural Minnesota? I like dextrous people, and I envy them their dexterity. Like Dagwood, putting me near wrenches, saws, or other hand tools is courting disaster. I hang around the custodial staff at the education factory swapping yarns almost as often as I hang around my articulate colleagues. More people marry outside their religious affiliation and race than outside their social class. Class Action seeks to find ways to bridge "classism" and I think this is crucial if a better politics is to spring out of today’s shambles.

My thesis, such as it is, is that articulate workers claim the right to speak for the dexterous workers without speaking to them, first. I see that sort of thing around the café on occasion...especially in situations where issues of unions come up. Some would have it that unions are for the dexterous. The articulate don’t need them. Not too many weeks past, an extended discussion about net roots/ grass roots developed in the context of the work of Saul Alinsky. I don’t know if any persons reading this took part in that one or not.

I wonder how many carpenters, masons, plumbers, health care workers other than doctors, masseurs, chefs, barbers (or hair stylists) hang around the café? Would they feel comfortable here? Would we make them feel at home? Of would those of us among the articulate commandeer the center and give them tables behind the potted palms in the corners? Two of my 19^th century heroes were certainly articulate without patronizing the dexterous. Lots of them were, actually, but this essay has already gone on longer than is good for it. But let me at least point to William Morris, (fair warning, the page linked plays some neo-medieval midi files at you, and they aren’t what I would call high art) who was both dexterous and articulate. The great designer (and not quite so great poet) was a social radical because he felt that the consumption driven machine economy of his day was destroying working men and women. His How I Became a Socialist is worth reading. The American Arts and Crafts Movement sought to restore honor to workers and craftsmanship and personalization and idiosyncrasy to made objects. Not practical, perhaps, but the work of Gustav Stickley and the Roycrofters at least tried to say to the culture that making things was as important as thinking things was.

Let me wrap this up with a little Emerson and a little Morris. The first of this some lines from his Ode to William H. Channing.

Though loth to grieve
The evil time's sole patriot,
I cannot leave
My buried thought
For the priest's cant,
Or statesman's rant.

If I refuse
My study for their politique,
Which at the best is trick,
The angry muse
Puts confusion in my brain.

But who is he that prates
Of the culture of mankind,
Of better arts and life?

***

The horseman serves the horse,
The neat-herd serves the neat,
The merchant serves the purse,
The eater serves his meat;
'Tis the day of the chattel,
Web to weave, and corn to grind,
Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.

There are two laws discrete
Not reconciled,
Law for man, and law for thing;
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking.

And, from Morris’ Chants for Socialists,

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN

Come, comrades, come, your glasses clink;
Up with your hands a health to drink,
The health of all that workers be,
In every land, on every sea.
And he that will this health deny,

Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down,
Down among the dead men let him lie!

Well done! now drink another toast,
And pledge the gath'ring of the host,
The people armed in brain and hand,
To claim their rights in every land.
And he that will this health deny,

Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down,
Down among the dead men let him lie!

What they share is a recognition that societies which elevate the thing made above the maker thereof are degraded societies.

aMike

Want to contribute some thoughts on topics related to democracy and education? Send them to me using the contact on my bio and I'll mount them under your moniker.  :-)

In 2003, immediately after our invasion of Iraq, American contractors began pouring in to the country.

Taking advantage of Paul Bremer’s order, which effectively dissolved all of the civil institutions and Iraq, the contractors seized buildings and property formally owned by the Iraqi government. The area around Saddam’s Palace where, in 2003, the Coalition Provincial Authority had set up their headquarters, (Now the U.S. Embassy), was the prime real estate for contractors, military command units, government agencies and coalition senior officer quarters.

The Green Zone was the place to be. All the money was coming through there, and there was lots of money. If one could establish his foothold there, as a civilian contractor, the chances of getting contracts were greater than being located outside of the Green Zone.

The action was in the palace. In 2003 and 2004 the spacious lobbies of the Palace were like the floor of the stock exchange. Deals were being cut and money was changing hands seven days a week, 24 hours a day. It was the wild west. Everyone was carrying a gun and had several bodyguards in-tow. There seemed to be no rules, just business. The air was electric with business deals and making friends.

The plight of the Iraqi people, whom we had just put in the dark by blowing up their sources of electricity and who were made desperate by the loss of fresh running water and even immediate access to it, seemed unimportant to what was transpiring in the Green Zone. That always bothered me. Outside of the green zone, where the Iraqi population lived (known as the Red Zone), things were bleak, but no significant violence was occurring between the Iraqis themselves then.

In the palace (CPA Headquarters), very little, or no conversation about the Iraqi population and their desperate existence was heard. Meetings that were taking place regarding strategy and aid were being held between Bremer, his staff, generals and big American contractors like Halliburton, Parsons, Bechtel and the Corps of Engineers. While talking to people on his staff in 2003, I was told the U.S. State Department and even the CIA were not welcome in Bremer’s circles.

No Iraqis were involved in the planning phase meant to assist their own people. The Iraqi political figureheads we brought in like Ahmed Chalabi , were not planners or strategist. They were there for the political face and to make as much money as they could, and they made plenty. Ultimately there were discovered as nothing more than con men and dismissed, but only after having bilking the US taxpayer for millions.

Bremer and the Military staff made sure everyone knew not to trust the Iraqis. It was almost comical however, how we choose which Iraqis to trust. If an Iraqi, almost regardless of who he was, could speak English, he had immediate credibility with the coalition members, particularly the senior military American guys who always needed interpreters.

It was like the main population of Iraq, living outside of the green zone, did not exist at all. If there was conversation about the Iraqi plight and how we could help, I never heard it. Building bridges, water facilities, making concrete barriers, managing the oil and establishing the electric grid was all the rage. (Those were also the places all the money was going).

Employment for Iraqis, inoculations for the population, clean water supplies, civil organizations like city councils, schools, hospitals, social assistance institutions etc, were seemingly all left out of the equation, and when the existing institutional structures were all looted, it seemed to have no effect whatever in the green zone. Those we supposedly came to liberate were apparently all but forgotten by Paul Bremer and his guys.

Not all American contractors who came to Iraq were callous or seemingly uncaring about the Iraqi population at large.

There were those very special Americans who came to Iraq to do every good thing they could to help the recovery of Iraq. Many of those Americans had left Iraq as children, or young men and women who had been terrorized by Saddam Hussein and his regime.

Successful in their own right in America, they returned to do what ever they could to help rebuild their former country, the place of their birth. Construction workers, engineers, lawyers, doctors and businessmen and women came from America. I actually worked for one such Iraqi-American who became my friend. Dr. Rubar Sandi.

Rubar Sandi, a Kurdish American who was forced to flee Iraq after Saddam killed members of Rubar’s family, was one of the first back into Iraq after the invasion took place. In the thirty years or so since Rubar came to America, he became a U.S. citizen and seized the American dream. Rubar became very successful through his own hard work, ingenuity, faith and willingness to stand on certain principles of personal integrity, honesty, loyalty to his friends and sheer determination.

Rubar has experienced the American dream we all seek, but he never forgot his Kurdish home in Iraq, or the friends and family he left behind in the Northern area of Iraq known as Kurdistan.

When my mission with the CPA was over, I really did not want to leave Iraq just then. My Diplomatic appointment had not yet happened because the CPA was still in power. The State Department were bystanders back then.

In February of 2004 I received a call from The Sandi Group in Washington DC. I was asked if I would accept a Vice President position with the Sandi Group division located in Baghdad. I flew to Washington DC for a short briefing and was on a plane right back to Baghdad. I met Rubar in Baghdad. His office, surprisingly, was not in the Green Zone, but rather in down town Baghdad (The Red Zone). Rubar greeted me like a brother meets a brother. He asked me what I was doing there. I told him I had been the Airport Director in Basrah and that I wanted to do more to assist the Iraqis who we (America) had placed in a very dangerous position. Rubar smiled and told me that he felt, when I walked into his office, that we would work together and that he was sure I was the man he needed in Iraq. “You can stay” he said.

Rubar employed over 4,000 Iraqis. By the time I arrived to his offices in Baghdad, he had already begun, or was negotiating dozens of projects geared to, not only making money, but to employ Iraqis. I knew the company didn’t really need thenumbers of employees it had, so I asked Rubar why he employed over 4,000 Iraqis and was surprised by his reply. He said “Go pick the one that I should fire”. “Go and tell me which man’s family should not eat next week Marshall”. “These people are depending on the Sandi Group for their life. How can I trim down to the 3,000 I actually need? These people are like family now”.

Rubar hired two Iraqi secretaries to assist me. Dalia and Halla. Both spoke English, both were computer literate, both understood the principle of business and accompanied me to just about every meeting I went to, from the University of Baghdad, where Rubar was trying to establish telecommunications and electric power independence for the University, to the home of the Minister of Oil and Transportation where I was negotiating airport contracts with the Ministers. Almost all of my business associates in Baghdad, while working for Rubar Sandi, were Iraqi. I learned to respect them and felt so very fortunate to have been selected by Rubar to work in the Baghdad office.

The bodyguards Rubar assigned to me were Kurdish from the Northern parts of Iraq. Whenever a shot was heard, or a bomb exploded nearby, I would find myself being covered by my bodyguards who would always place their bodies in the way of any harm that may come to me. These guys were dedicated and faithful to the man who had provided them their sustenance, Rubar Sandi. He told them to keep me safe. They did.

I admire Rubar and I continue to call him friend. I also became very close friends with his brother Bayar. I consider these men as my own family members right to this day.

Even after everything seemed to be going wrong in Iraq, Rubar Sandi has kept his presence known in Iraq and continues to employ as many Iraqis as he effectively can and assist in the development of business opportunities and even programs to address women’s issues. He is a great American and humanitarian who greatly loves the place he was born and the people who live there.

Rubar Sandi’s efforts, however unnoticed by the greater American, or Iraqi population, will not be unrewarded in the end of it all. No good work is ever for nothing.

There are other Iraqi-Americans like Rubar and Bayar Sandi in Iraq still. They are hoping to make it work for the sake of all Iraqis and the entire Middle East. They have my profound respect.

Not everybody in Iraq, who came after the invasion, had the only goal of making a buck. Many of the Americans there actually came to help, and actually have. Rubar Sandi and Bayar Sandi are two of those people.

http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/archive/dutyiraq/sandi.htm

About the Author

Marshall Adame is a 2008 Democratic Candidate for Congress in North Carolina’s 3rd District.

http://marshalladame4congress2008.com

Must read:

Be sure to go to Tomdispatch to read Chalmers Johnson's plan for ending the American Empire before it ends us.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/

Tom

Official Title: "Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan Policy and Implementation."

Other disgarded job titles included "Whatever Bush Says-er," "Director of FUBAR Plans," and, of course, "Fall Guy."

I'm sure this will all turn out swimmingly. Best of luck.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who died today, like most fundamentalist religious leaders, was not, in my opinion, emotionally normal.

My heart goes out to his surviving family of a wife, two sons and a daughter.

While I believe he was terribly misguided and sick I believe he believed in his heart of his version of the truth as he experienced it.

A much more sinister and sick colleague is the Rev. Pat Robertson whose recent pronouncements have been nothing short of completely insane.

Dr. Rick Lippin.

Southampton, Pa

http://medicalcrises.blogspot.com

I have for a long time had anger at, and contempt for, gutless, soulless, sociopathic, warmongering, chickenshit, chickenhawks. Occasionally, something happens to bring that anger boiling to the surface.

This morning there is a column by Tom Chartier on the Lew Rockwell.com sight about a pathetically stupid Vietnam Vet who gave one of his purple hearts to George Bush. There is a picture of Bush proudly wearing it.

Read the article if you can stand being outraged one more time by our fearless leader.

Sorry, my laptop has a glitch, or else I do, and I cannot post a link.

It is a beautiful spring day in the Mountain West and I am so mad I could puke. My stomach feels like it did when I saw friend’s moments after they had just earned a purple heart. Some were still screaming, some would never scream again. Bush just keeps grinning as he demeans one more symbol of honor.

In the past I have stupidly taken the position that impeachment was a bad idea at this time. Impeach Bush, the lives saved will number in the thousands.

In a Jewish Republicans forum directed by House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Deputy National Security Advisor and Bush administration Democracy Czar Elliott Abrams may have tipped the Oval Office's hand a bit too far regarding the efforts of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to establish standards of mutual accountability in the Israel-Palestinian peace process.  Rice's benchmarks are in synch with a report by Paul Wolfowitz's World Bank, stressing economic hardships imposed on Palestinians by Israel in the territories regarding the use of roads, freedom of movement, forbidding Palestinians from entering roads used by Jewish settlers and closing off areas around settlements.

As reported in the Forward on May 10, 

Abrams described President Bush as an “emergency brake” who would prevent Israel from being pressed into a deal; during the breakfast gathering, the White House official also said that a lot of what is done during Rice’s frequent trips to the region is “just process” — steps needed in order to keep the Europeans and moderate Arab countries “on the team” and to make sure they feel that the United States is promoting peace in the Middle East.

...Rice’s renewed drive to promote an Israeli-Palestinian settlement is seen in Washington not only as a desire to calm America’s allies in Europe and the Middle East but also as part of the new thinking within the State Department, which views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an obstacle that deters Arab countries from joining the United States in its attempts to stabilize Iraq.

This view was recently reinforced by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who in a conversation with nationally syndicated columnist Robert Novak accused Abrams of preventing the administration from having a “coherent Middle East policy” which would engage Iran and Syria in an attempt to stabilize Iraq. “I do know that there are a number of Israelis who would like to engage Syria,” Hagel told Novak. “They have said that Elliott Abrams keeps pushing them back.”

Who do we trust in order to understand what is really going on?  Rice?  Abrams?  Hegel?  Novak?  It is a sorry state of affairs when these are the options dealt to us by the keepers of the common wisdom. 

But there are rays of light, if not encouraging signs, that there are some at important levels of leadership with a degree of sanity and vision.  Nancy Pelosi's delegation to the Middle East is promising, and hardly the harbinger of defeat and failure as declared in administration statements and beltway punditocracy circle jerks -- including, notably, Secretary Rice herself.

And there are signs of life among the leadership of the principal parties as well.  With Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert making interested noises regarding the Arab League's Beirut/Riyadh initiative in Jordan ahead of the upcoming World Economic Forum, Ha'aretz reports,

Vice Premier Shimon Peres will meet with Jordan's king separately next Sunday during the World Economic Forum conference which will take place in Jordan. Peres will discuss with the king his plan to build a channel stretching from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea and to establish economic and tourist enterprises along it, with the cooperation of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

 

I just wanted a post with the word "Bubble" in it, like everyone else.

[cross-posted to Tikun Olam]

The face of Israeli hate has once again reared its ugly head. A recent immigrant from France who had also lately become religious lured an East Jerusalem taxi driver to his death in what appears to be a nationalist inspired hate crime:

The 26-year-old Tel Aviv man accused of murdering an East Jerusalem taxi driver on Monday, Julian Soufir, told police, "I decided to murder an Arab."

Police said their initial investigation revealed that the suspect, an immigrant from France whose family lives in Netanya, went to Jerusalem on Monday morning to find a taxi driver to murder.

They discovered the murder of Taysir Karaki, 35, from Beit Haninah north of the capital, almost by chance after they stopped two young men walking down the middle of a Tel Aviv street at around 4:00 P.M., near Yonah Hanavi Street...

The body of the East Jerusalem man was discovered in an apartment [there] on Monday afternoon. His throat had been cut, and his body bore the signs of a severe attack.

A preliminary police investigation revealed that the dead man had been invited to the apartment by the 25-year-old Israeli...

The motive behind the murder seems to be nationalistic, as the suspect said that he had killed the taxi driver over his Arab nationality.

Neighbors said that the suspect had recently become religious

The victim appeared to have no political affiliation whatsoever and little involvement with politics. He leaves behind a widow and two young children:

Karaki's father, Yasser Karaki, told Haaretz his son, who was married and the father of four children ages six to 12, had driven the children to school and set off for work at 8:30 A.M. "He was a good guy, he was not involved in politics; all he wanted to do was make a living for his children," the elder Karaki said.

The few dozen friends and relatives who gathered on Monday at the Karaki house seemed shocked at the idea Karaki was murdered for nationalistic reasons. A neighbor, Wahib Liftawi, said the police called his nearby grocery store.

"They told us Taysir had had an accident and we should go to the police station in Neve Yaakov," Liftawi said. "Khaled, Taysir's brother, went there and then to Tel Aviv to identify the body. We heard on the news that French people took him to Tel Aviv. They asked him to help them to the apartment with their luggage and then they stabbed him. Allah will not forgive them; he was a good boy."

For many Israelis, this incident be merely a one-off event perpetrated by what they hope will turn out to be a mentally deranged individual. It will not resonate. It will not fit any pattern. It will not involve much soul-searching. This will be because of the protective shell covering Israelis that prevents them from interacting or empathizing with Arabs.

We will have to see what influences played upon the terrorist. Where did he get the idea that killing an Arab was a laudable endeavor? Was he a follower of extremist settlers as previous Jewish terrorists have been? We shouldn't jump to conclusions till we know the facts. But previous similar crimes make us wonder whether this one will fit the pattern of Jewish extremism. And no doubt Soufir will join the ranks of Jewish 'martyrs' (at least in the eyes of the Kahanist crowd) like Eden Natan-Zenda, Yigal Amir, Baruch Goldstein and too many others who struck a blow for Jewish "justice."

Haaretz quotes an Israeli Arab Knesset member making a cogent point about how this crime fits into Israeli Jewish attitudes toward Arabs:

MK Ahmed Tibi (Ra`am-Ta`al) said...that "an atmosphere of incitement, hated of Arabs, and the escalating racism in the country are fertile soil for this crime," and added that " the court will probably find mitigating circumstances for the murderers."

No doubt he is correct. Jewish terrorists often serve much shorter sentences than Arab terrorists. And the treason case against Azmi Bishara could also have served as a trigger for the crime. Maariv and other Israeli media were braying for Bishara's head and Jewish Knesset members were calling for him to be kidnapped and tried for treason. This is precisely the type of incitement to violence Tibi is talking about.

I'm guessing that we might have our next "gate". But this time it's more than a "gate".

Linguistically, people have chosen to not call this a "gate", because to relegate it to and homage to Watergate would belittle the offenses.

Watergate was about Nixon authorizing one "burglary" because he thought he could gain some advantage in the campaign.

This is about the perversion of one of the most basic institutions of the United States Government. For over two hundred thirty years the Justice Department has remained a bastion of integrity. I'm sure there have been some partisan-ne're-do-wells in it's history, but this is different.

This is the Executive branch, using the power of the United States Government to try to discourage, and dispose of the votes of as many Democratic voters as possible.

And why were they doing this?

At the outset it was just so they could loosen some regulations and cut some fat checks to some close friends, courtesy of the US Taxpayer and their children.

But after six years, they've become addicted to the money, and the power, and they are afraid that this is the only way to keep themselves out of prison.

Lest we forget, Consider KBR, Exxon, and Blackwater:

Halliburton/KBR - Dick Cheney was granted a crate full of Halliburton/KBR stock as a reward for becoming vice-president. Since then it has done quite well winning federal contracts despite ample evidence they have continually perpetuted fraud and terribly mismanage logistics in Iraq.

Exxon - Has posted consecutive largest-profits-ever.

Blackwater - Has built a very lucrative mercenary industry while avoiding any oversite and paying $100s millions to loyal-Bushies for "consulting services". This includes former senior justice department officials with close ties to Gonzales Bush and Cheney.

So, in short: Rove and Gonzales were trying to stack the justice department with political hacks, who given the power of indictment would use it to:

1. debilitate Democratic candidates,

2. defund their financial supporters, and

3. intimidate or outright arrest anyone silly enough to try to register blacks and Mexicans to vote (let alone have the name of a black man and try to vote in Florida. "Uh, I'm sorry Mr. Tyrone Jones. It appears that you are ineligable to vote because someone with your name went to jail").

All this so they could remain in power and continue to spend $100+ billion/year to fight a war that is providing us no benefit.

And when they get caught. . . What does the brave leader, and his consigliere do? Blame it on anyone who dares break the circle of trust. As Josh Marshal so succinctly put it

McNulty: You guys are crooks;

Gonzales: Yeah, whatever, but no one would know if you'd kept your mouth shut.

They are pitiful, really.

to several leaders of the Sunni Iraqi insurgency, and they don't like it, they consider it another enemy, like the U.S. Neither do they like what they see as the meddling of "Iranians." And they acknowledge that not participating in the political formation process was a big mistake.

I learned that and a lot of other very interesting things in Nir Rosen's May 13 New York Times Sunday Magazine piece, "The Flight from Iraq."

Highly recommended piece as to the current big picture situation. If you don't have time for the whole article, start at page 6:

Syria sees the Iraqi civil war through the prism of Lebanon...."The temptation is there,” a top official at the U.N. refugee agency told me, referring to the possibility of bringing the refugees into the civil war. “The money from Bin Laden is there. If the international community doesn’t help, then the other groups will, and all hell will break loose. Iraqis are sitting in Syria and Jordan where the Baathists and Wahhabis are strongest. If 1 percent of the two million can be bought, then that is very dangerous.” He noted that money came from Saudi Arabia to Jordan and was disbursed there. “This problem will be with us for a long time,” he said, shaking his head in frustration.....

Many Iraqi resistance leaders have based themselves in the relative safety of Amman and Damascus. It isn’t always clear how active they are in Iraq, or how active they expect to be, but they are a long way from giving up. What’s most striking about these men is the sense that they have become trapped — militarily, at least — between Al Qaeda and its ilk, on one side, and the Americans on the other, with a dangerous Shiite-dominated, Green Zone-based government to the east and an irritable, secessionist Kurdish region to the north....

Note: Rosen's Iraq reporting work in the past has been highly recommended by Juan Cole.

The Times is reporting Iran has stepped up its nuclear capabilities. I'm sure soon we'll see Richard Perle and Joe Lieberman and others on the teevee, telling us how Shock and Awe will solve this problem. Preemption, and all...

Hopefully, since we've seen this movie before, people will this time focus on the details:

The material produced so far would have to undergo further enrichment before it could be transformed into bomb-grade material. To accomplish that, Iran would likely first have to evict the I.A.E.A. inspectors, as North Korea did four years ago.

Even then, it is unclear whether the Iranians have the technology to produce a weapon small enough to fit atop their missiles, a significant engineering challenge.

Pesky things, details.

What's former Rep. Curt Weldon doing in Bangladesh, how much is it going to cost the taxpayers and why is the Global Alliance for Homeland Security operating out of an apartment in Woodside, Queens?  

From a 3/19/07 Bangladeshi ATN TV story:

"A US Homeland Security Service delegation led by Congressman Curt Weldon has arrived in Dhaka today for discussing issues of international terrorism with the government in Dhaka. The delegation is to hold a meeting with a high government official as well as business leaders during their three-day visit.
 
Meanwhile, the commonwealth secretary-general, Don McKinnon, has also arrived in Dhaka on a three-day Bangladesh tour."

From a 3/21/07 BBC report:

"Bangladesh-US security conference scheduled for May" 
 
Text of report by Raheed Ejaz headlined: "Security conference with US to be held in Dhaka in May: Economic security a must for national security, says US Congressman" published by Bangladeshi newspaper New Age website on 21 March
 
 "A conference on homeland security is scheduled to be held in Dhaka in May with the aim of enhancing the US-Bangladesh strategic partnership as well as ensuring economic security.
 
This was stated by US Congressman Curt Weldon on Tuesday, 20 March, at a press conference in the National Press Club.
 
Weldon led a five-member delegation of the Global Alliance for Homeland Security Asian Regional Chapter which arrived in Dhaka on Monday [20 March].
 
He said, "The premise of the conference is ensuring economic security for people. You cannot secure (sic) a nation unless you have economic security for your people in terms of providing decent jobs, healthcare, education and housing for them."
 
"This conference is not just about physically protecting the people of Bangladesh and America from terrorists and natural threats but is also designed to focus on ways of improving your nation," he told reporters.
 
"We do not just want to come here in May to focus on the traditional role of homeland security, we want to focus on economic security too," he said.
 
The US Congressman, dwelling on the objectives of their organization, said, 'We want to bring nations together to protect nations against the kind of attack that we saw in 9/11 and the kind of attack the people of Bangladesh saw in August 2005.'
 
He was referring to the chain-bombing by JMB activists in almost all the districts of the country.
 
He told newsmen that they wanted to 'feel the pain as well as the success of Bangladesh'. They also wanted to give Bangladesh a plan of action that focuses on the nation as a nation and also as a strategic national ally of the US.
 
Replying to a question about Bangladesh being considered to be a strategic partner of the US, Weldon said, "We consider it because of its volatile position, its democracy and its Muslim majority."
 
Referring to the current situation, he said, 'We know that you have gone through some political turmoil and we understand your position. Democracy is never perfect. There is no perfect government.
 
"You identified your shortcomings and weaknesses and you are doing that right now as a nation," he added.
 
On the issue of corruption Weldon said, "It's healthy to weed out corruption. If there are corrupt politicians and corrupt corporate leaders, they should be held accountable."
 
"These are all the basic tenets of democracy and right now you are going through the process of making sure that your democracy works in that way," he added.
 
Referring to his discussion with the top brass of the army, he said, 'Our support is for them for what they are doing, but the final fact is that you are in fact a democracy. And eventually you will return to the premise (sic) of your constitution of free and fair election.'

Convener of the Global Alliance for Homeland Security Bangladesh Chapter, Imam Anwar Hossain, also spoke at the press conference.
 
Source: New Age website, Dhaka, in English 21 Mar 07"

As noted in the report, Curt Weldon led a five-member delegation of the Global Alliance for Homeland Security Asian Regional Chapter. As it so happens, there is an American chapter of the Global Alliance for Homeland Security:

NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Company Name: GLOBAL ALLIANCE FOR HOMELAND SECURITY INC.

Process Address:
THE CORPORATION
61-17 WOODSIDE AVE #5-E
WOODSIDE, NY 11377

Type: DOMESTIC NOT FOR PROFIT

Status: ACTIVE

Status Comment: INCORPORATION/APPLICATION FOR AUTHORITY/ARTICLES OF ORGANIZATION/NOTICE OF REGISTRATION

Filing Date: 9/29/2006

Duration: PERPETUAL

County: QUEENS

Date of Incorporation/Qualification: 9/29/2006

Corporation Number: 3418770

But how do we know if this Global Alliance for Homeland Security is associated with Global Alliance for Homeland Security Asian Regional Chapter? We don't but we have a clue. Also registered at 61-17 Woodside Ave #5E:

#1
NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Company Name: AMERICAN BANGLADESH FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY INC.

Process Address:
THE CORPORATION
61-17 WOODSIDE AVENUE #5E
WOODSIDE, NY 11377

Type: DOMESTIC NOT FOR PROFIT

Status: ACTIVE

Filing Date: 10/13/1998

#2
NEW YORK DEPARTMENT OF STATE

Company Name: AMERICAN BANGLADESH FRIENDSHIP CLUB, INC.

Process Address:
M.A. AWAL CHOWDHURY
61-17 WOODSIDE AVE #5E
WOODSIDE, NY 11377

Type: DOMESTIC NOT FOR PROFIT

Status: ACTIVE

Filing Date: 9/15/2000

Today's issue of the Bangladesh Daily Star has an update on Curt Weldon's visit to that country:


"US Security Team to Bush - Give Bangladesh high priority as US strategic partner"

"A US security delegation comprising a congressman and military veterans has asked President George W Bush to give Bangladesh "high priority" as a strategic partner in US foreign and national security policies against the backdrop of its exposure to Islamist extremism.

"Bangladesh is potentially a crucial player in the struggle against Islamic extremism, and this is a crucial period for that country. The US has rare opportunity now to help shape the future of an important nation," the delegation said in a recent letter to Bush upon returning home after a protracted visit to Bangladesh last month.

The five-member delegation last month visited Bangladesh and held a series of high-level meetings with senior government leaders, civil and military officials and businessmen.

The delegation comprised US Congressman Curt Weldon, former deputy assistance secretary of defence W Bruce Weinrod, retired US Air Force major general Ronald J Bath, retired US Army colonel Timothy D Ringgold, and retired US Coast Guard commander Michael D Kearney.

They came to Bangladesh to develop the framework for a major conference on homeland security issues to be held in Bangladesh later this year.

By making Bangladesh a priority the US could help "ensure a democratic and pro-Western nation, and prevent the emergence of another highly unstable Islamic nation vulnerable to extremism", the letter said.

It warned that given the economic underdevelopment in that national along with political instability in recent years, "Bangladesh is vulnerable to extremist efforts to impose a violently anti-US regime on that nation".

Although Bangladesh is the world's third largest Muslim majority country, "the Bangladeshi form of Islam is generally moderate and tolerant and has co-existed comfortably with a secular government since its independence", the letter said.

But Bangladesh can be "a strong member of a moderate Islamic coalition that rejects fanaticism and terrorism", it added.

"Bangladesh's positive role and potential makes it all the more important that the US take a pro-active role in assisting Bangladesh to improve its political and economic situation so that Bangladesh will not provide fertile ground for extremist fanaticism."

The delegation observed that Bangladesh is now in a period of "political and economic transition" when key leaders are seeking to strengthen and deepen the national democratic political system and also crack down on "endemic" corruption.

"This is truly a historic moment in Bangladesh. A successful outcome is crucial to the future stability and political orientation of that nation," the delegation said.

Given the importance of the present moment for the future, they suggested that the US strengthen further its support for Bangladesh "by making every effort to support those far-sighted leaders who are working towards a genuine and corruption free democracy that is aligned with the West in its struggle against Islamic extremism".

On increased defence ties, the letter pointed out that the Bangladeshi military plays a key role in the nation. "The military leadership is at this time assuming a low-profile and positive role in encouraging needed changes in the Bangladeshi political system" and in the efforts to end rampant corruption there.

"The US should reinforce and in effect reward the Bangladeshi military for their role and restraint. Enhanced military-to-military and as appropriate, civilian-to-military programmes and visits are very much in the US national interest," the delegation's letter said.

"We, therefore, strongly urge that the US make Bangladesh a very high priority...By doing so, the US will ensure that Bangladesh strengthens its democratic system and increases its role as moderate and democratic Islamic ally in the global struggles we face in the twenty-first century," the delegation said."

The Global Alliance for Homeland Security Asian Chapter delegation that visited Bangladesh in March, according to the Daily Star, was comprised of Curt Weldon, former deputy assistance secretary of defence W Bruce Weinrod, retired US Air Force major general Ronald J Bath, retired US Army colonel Timothy D Ringgold, and retired US Coast Guard commander Michael D Kearney.

The Daily Star omitted the fact that Weldon,  Ringgold and Kearney are Defense Solutions LLC executives.

From the Defense Solutions LLC website:

"Defense Solutions, Inc. is a US-based, international project management and business development firm headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania (suburban Philadelphia) with offices in Washington, DC; Tel Aviv, Israel; and Budapest, Hungary. Defense Solutions conducts program management, business development and strategic studies and analyses in the Defense, Homeland Security, Information Technology and Telecommunications markets. With expertise in industry, government, the armed forces, law enforcement, maritime security, national politics, and information technology, we possess the expertise, judgment and personal relationships to rapidly implement a focused business development or political strategy to win contracts and generate business."  

Defense Solutions has a press release on its website about Curt Weldon's trip to Bangladesh which is a re-print of a 3/21/7 Bangladesh newspaper article that focuses more on economic and trade issues than security.  The article covers Weldon's speech at a meeting of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

On p.2, the story notes that  Foreign Affairs Advisor Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury attended the meeting. I don't know if Chowdhury is a common name in Bangladesh but M. A. Awal Chowdhury heads the American Bangladesh Friendship Club registered at 61-17 Woodside Ave #5E.    

LOL - You got to give it to Curt Weldon. The guy signs on with Defense Solutions in February and by May, he is lobbying the White House on behalf of the Bangladesh military. Word sure does get around - even the corrupt buggers in Bangladesh heard about Weldon!

Most Americans are comfortable with the phenomenon that over time we begin to resemble our pets. Most Americans would not find much comfort in the realization that over the last 6 years we have begun to resemble our enemies.

To wit; the sudden political emergence of the term ‘Caliphate,’ a darkening apparition which should send us rushing to the mirror for a second look. The word (ca•lif•ate) has its origin in the religion of Islam and refers to Islamic domination of the world by the subjugation of all civil and political laws to a supreme religious theocracy. Jihad is their holy war to achieve it.

At first blush, the idea that God must inevitably trump politics sounds deceptively harmless, but it’s not; especially considering that the philosophy surfaced in a 1964 manifesto* by Islamic fundamentalist Sayyid Qutb and has now been quietly co-opted by Bush apologists and franchised to the Department of Justice.

The gang at DOJ was recently revealed when their Oz curtain was rudely dragged aside by three decidedly political events; first, the exposure of an apparent government epidemic of unconstitutional hiring practices; second, a disgraceful recitation of 120 or more ‘I can’t remembers’ by America’s #1 Lawyer; and third, the public revelation that 150 graduates of a 4th tier Christian law school had been hired by the DOJ and were now responsible for adjudicating our country’s cardinal issues. On its own merits, this last event should have sent a luminous flare into the darkness of public apathy.

By abandoning America’s honorable tradition of seeking and promoting the best and the brightest, President Bush’s strategists chose instead to populate the Justice Department with a crew of compliant bottom-of-the-barrel barristers, hired not for their understanding of the law, but rather for their love of the holy scriptures.

For some, glassy-eyed fervents at the big tent show, this might seem a stunning example of the Hand of the Almighty at work. However, when all-of-the-mighty are Bush-bred elephants bent on stampeding a major re-draft of the constitution “…tearing down the wall between church and state in America and enmeshing the two,” a policy openly advocated by Prof Ashcroft and 4th tier Regent University founder Pat Robertson, I think it’s time once again for us to reexamine the man in the mirror.

Look deeply. Do you see that six-o’clock shadow? Well, that darkening growth on America’s cheek bones has a name; it’s the ‘Christian Caliphate,’ same word, just clean-shaven. Its presence signals the maturation of a new and terrifying American soldier, a Special Forces type, operating behind enemy lines, a grunt endowed with special powers; spiritual weaponry.

Take a second look. Is that stubble growing into a long black beard? Can the turban be far behind? Whose jihad is this anyway?

_____________________

*One line of thinking proposes that America's tragedy on September 11th was born in the prisons of Egypt in 1964 with Qutb’s work entitled "Ma'alim fi al-Tariq."

I've written to a couple of big shot bloggers asking them to write about this, but they haven't, so I'll give it a shot.

At the SC Democratic debates, Mike Gravel was portrayed as some kind of loony tunes crazy uncle at the party. I didn't see the debate live (I've really come to hate the artificialty and the contentless questions. The contrast with the MoveOn Town Hall session is very striking.) But radar magazine put up a highlight reel , which I did watch.

Here's an excerpt from his first answer:

Well, first off, understand that this war was lost the day that George Bush invaded Iraq on a fraudulent basis. Understand that. Now with respect to what's going on in the Congress, I'm really embarrassed.

So we passed -- and the media's in a frenzy right today with what has been passed. What has been passed? George Bush communicated over a year ago that he would not get out of Iraq until he left office. Do we not believe him?

Now this is an absolutely central point at this momenet in time. The US in engaged in an indefinite occupation of Iraq. There is no chance of attaining the goal sought, but never stated, of establishing pliant secular client smackdab in the middle of the Middle East, to serve as a base for military and diplomatic activity. The plan, documented in Fiasco and Imperial Life in the Emerald City and countless other places, was to parachute in exiles, set up a fake democracy, and run the country through those puppets.

As Josh pointed out last week, this effort has failed. The goal cannot be attained. The reason the US forces are lurching from pillar to post trying to identify the enemy is that there really isn't any enemy that is preventing the goal from being attained. Once Al Sistani forced the US to hold real elections, the game was over. A real election will select an islamist government that will not want the US to be in Iraq, and certainly will not want to advance American goals in Israel.

Gravel is pointing this out. You would think that this would become a central debating point. this is the most important issue in the country at the moment. And it is actually asking a very important question--is the immediate American foreign policy goal a muscular imperialism driven by a trumped-up threat of global terrorism? Is US foreign policy going to continue to be driven by a nearly non-existent threat that, in any case, cannot be dealt with militarily?

But that question appears to be off the table. The response to Gravel's remarks is embarrassed laughter.

Later on, Gravel doesn't mince words on these questions:

We have no important enemies. What we need to do is to begin to deal with the rest of the world as equals. And we don't do that.

We spend more as a nation on defense than all the rest of the world put together. Who are we afraid of?

Who are you afraid of, Brian? I'm not. And Iraq has never been a threat to us. We invaded them. I mean, it is unbelievable. The military industrial complex not only controls ourgovernment, lock, stock and barrel, but they control our culture.

Again, the reaction is that he has gone out of bounds. These questions, these issues cannot be permissably raised. It is taken for granted by everyone else in the room that there is somebody to be afraid of, that there is an enemy that requires the possession of thousands of nuclear warheads, of fighter jets that have no targets, of aircraft carriers groups that have no threat to respond to.

Again, this is a very legitimate question. The press reaction to his raising this questions is to treat him like a crazy old man.

But is there anything he says in these two excerpts that is not well worth discussing? Haven't all the post war threats turned out to be much less dire than proposed? And isn't the current bogeyman--stateless guys in caves--at some point actually laughable?

It's like going into the Senate. You know, the first time you get there, you're all excited, "My God, how did I ever get here?"

Then, about six months later, you say, "How the hell did the rest of them get here?"

And I got to tell you, after standing up with them, some of these people frighten me -- they frighten me. When you have mainline candidates that turn around and say that there's nothing off the table with respect to Iran, that's code for using nukes, nuclear devices.

I got to tell you, I'm president of the United States, there will be no preemptive wars with nuclear devices. To my mind, it's immoral, and it's been immoral for the last 50 years as part of American foreign policy.

Williams: Let's use a little moderator discretion here. Senator Gravel, that's a weighty charge.

Who on this stage exactly tonight worries you so much?

Gravel: Well, I would say the top tier ones. The top tier ones. They've made statements.

Oh, Joe, I'll include you, too. You have a certain arrogance. You want to -- you want to tell the Iraqis how to run their country.

I got to tell you, we should just plain get out -- just plain get out.

It's their country. They're asking us to leave. And we insist on staying there.

And why not get out? What harm is it going to do? Oh, you hear the statement, "Well, my God, these soldiers will have died in vain." The entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain. And they're dying in vain right this very second.

And you know what's worse than a soldier dying in vain? It's more soldiers dying in vain. That's what's worse.

This is not, Brian Williams, a "weighty charge." It is simply the truth. The US is the only country that has used a nuclear weapon. It is the only country that has endorsed first use of a nuclear weapon against conventional forces. This administration has reestablished research programs for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

And this is all happening in an environment where there is no credible threat The most serious threat is probably an overthrown government in Pakistan--which is nowhere near any kind of existential threat. The US has no reason for a defense posture any more aggressive than Canada.

When Gravel points this out--when he says that he will take the nuclear option off the table--expressly because it would be wrong, and inconsistent with longstandingly asserted US principles of a commitment to peace and democracy.

Even if you think Gravel is wrong, these are both valid and pressing points in a world with no enemies beyond a few thousand impoverished extremists. The states who speak in threatening terms, like Iran, pose no credible threat. Iraq posed no credible threat. An Afghan government hijacked by foreign extremists did pose a credible threat. And that government was removed from power, although the extremists were left at large.

But there is certainly room to debate whether we really need to be on a permanent war footing, in a world where the most potentially threatening country is on of our largest trading partners.

But this is a debate that the media and the establishment candidates will not permit to happen. Gravel will continue to be mocked and marginalized--and the issues he is raising will be ignored.

Deanie, one of the bloggers on TPMCafe posted this this morning:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/deanie_mills/2007/may/13/the_lost_boys_uncoffined

I commented on her blog with the following which I decided to post here for everyone's consideration:

Deanie,

You're one of the best writers on this or any other site. Your blogs always hit home and this one is no exception.

"Cannon Fodder" is a horrible term and so appropriate for the deaths in Iraq. There was NO genuine reason for us to invade that sovereign nation. The Neo-Con monsters who decided to make this tragedy a reality shoulder complete responsibility for EVERY American who has died there.

As I have said before... I wish there were a Hell for "Georgie" and his puppet masters.

The poignance of this blog is breathtaking! It takes me back to "Moore" a great kid in Vietman. I have a picture of his helmet with the bullet hole through it. It entered in the left front and exited in the left rear and didn't touch his head. It was a miracle! But another round caught him in the left leg and shattered the femur. We did all we could but he lost that leg. I have another picture of him in the hospital in Danang with that helmet hanging on the bedpost and a big, bright smile on his 21 year old face. He'd survived! His leg was gone but he was alive. Then, an embolism sent him into cardiac arrest. We did CPR and revived him. He was placed on a plane to Tokyo in critical but stable condition. Another embolism took his life on that plane. I'll never forget his name or his face!

They aren't nameless, "Georgie!" I wasn't nameless!

Each brave man and woman who has served this country in time of war had a name. Each had parents and family who loved them. Each was patriotic beyond words.

I'm not talking about the "hypocritical" patriotism that "Georgie," Dick "The Monster" Cheney and the rest of the Neo-Con beasts who brought this shame on America have. I'm talking about REAL, HONEST, GENUINE patriotism. I'm talking about the kind it takes to stand for something when doing that may mean you DIE! I'm talking about the kind of patriotism it takes to stand up in the face of the "Patriot Act" and the other horrors of "Bush World" which threaten all our civil liberties to blog the truth on this and other sites. I'm talking about TRUE PATRIOTS like Deanie, Glenn, Tom, Howard and so many others who scream against the hurricane of FALSE PATRIOTS like "Georgie!"

This blog is enough to make a man cry! It's enough to make a man think! It's enough to make a man ANGRY!

Thank you, Deanie, for all you do!

[cross-posted to Tikun Olam]

Sit back and fasten your seatbelts, readers. This could be a wild ride. As you may know, I've been writing about Rachel Neuwirth's cyber-bullying behavior toward Jewish liberals in my blog for several months. Poor Rachel doesn't like it one bit. But what really took the cake for her was one of my recent posts in which I said that in my opinion the version of the story originally told by UCLA Rabbi Chaim Seidler Feller and several witnesses (that Neuwirth first called him a "kapo" during a 2003 altercation at UCLA, after which he got into a physical argument with her) was more credible than her own version (Seidler Feller attacked her unprovoked after which she called him a "kapo"). I also noted in this post that Seidler Feller had retracted his original claim and apologized to Neuwirth. But that fact does not mean that I have to renounce my own opinion of what likely happened. This is America after all.

But Rachel only values American liberties when they apply to her. When they apply to others, she'd rather employ her typical bullying, intimidating tactics and forget that others are entitled to rights as well. Hence this letter I just received from her attorney. Read it and then tell me what you think is really going on here:

Re: Rachel Neuwirth vs. Richard Silverstein

The undersigned represents Rachel Neuwirth and in fact represented her in the action against Rabbi Seidler-Feller...I have read your diatribe of May 7, 2007. The only thing which Ms. Neuwirth has attempted to accomplish since defendant Seidler-Feller has taken full responsibility for the attack upon her in October 2003, and has admitted that the fact [sic] was totally unprovoked was to set the record straight and obtain retractions from those numerous individuals and media source which suggested or stated that she somehow provoked the attack upon her and which led to her vilification by many people, including yourself.

Your diatribe constitute nothing short of defamation since you state that you "didn't believe her story" thereby calling her a liar with respect to the fact that Seidler-Feller did in fact acknowledge that the attack upon her was unprovoked. Your statements contending that Ms. Neuwirth is a liar and that Seidler-Feller was in fact provoke into striking her. I nevertheless demand such retraction and will act accordingly upon your refusal to do so. Your reference to "harassment or intimidation" applies more aptly to your diatribe then [sic] to Ms. Neuwirth's attempt to set the record straight and to correct the old misconceptions that she was somehow responsible for goading defendant Seidler-Feller into committing the assault upon her.

I will expect a reply within 10 days.

Very truly yours,

Charles L. Fonarow

This is what a noted internet law attorney in Washington, DC wrote to me about defamation:

If you simply report the unquestioned facts of the case...and then provide a statement that is clearly your opinion, you have said nothing defamatory. Opinions cannot be defamatory -- only purported statements of false facts. But, there is a risk of her suing you regardless. This is the problem with our legal system -- there is little deterrent against frivolous suits.

A truer word was never spoken. If this lawsuit isn't the height of frivolousness and vanity I don't know what is.

Yes, folks this could get very interesting. I am appealing now for support from readers and the progressive blog world. I'd like to see others call her out for her outrageous conduct. I may need to raise funds for attorney's fees. After all, she engaged in a four year lawsuit against Chaim Seidler Feller before he capitulated. I hope you'll be in this with me for the long haul. The principles of freedom of thought and the right to express one's opinions in blogs are worth fighting for. I hope you agree and join with me. I have a Donate link in my blog's sidebar. Use it if you're so moved.

Another thing for Rachel to consider is that if she drags this thing through the internet, news media and court, it will only remind the world that there is another version of what happened on that fateful day in 2003, and that version isn't hers--it's the one she's trying so desperately to suppress.

I have written a much fuller account of my reaction to this which will be published in the coming days after I consult with legal counsel.

I can't say for sure at this time, the arguement is not clear:

but let's play Junkie Rush/right wing news media hysteria news, just to show the right wingers how much fun it can be, ok?

The advancement of Wolfowitz to the head of the World Bank, which is current honey pot works for, requires that he give his honey pot a 50K year raise.

Well, for the right winger "let them eat cake" crowd, $50K is about the same as the median family in the USA.

Hey guys, your wife is working her guts out for 35K/per and suddently the boss give his honey a 50K/ year raise, I'm sure that's ok with you all, right?

The "let them eat cake" from the Wall Street Journal program on Fox just makes me sick.

This is "merit"? or is this "come hither"?

For the ethically challenged, if you take a job and must give your honey pot 50K a year raise, the ethical choice is for one of you two to resign.

Ethics is not about "how can I or mine get richer while I look good".

That's not ethics.

This is just an on-line blog, nobody edits my posts, and nobody checks my spelling.

But if you want to challenge my thinking, bring it on.

Junkie Rush has went on and on about his devotion to Wm F Buckley, then ignored Buckley's denunciation of Bush's failure in Iraq.

Junkie Rush went on and on and on about how Hillary would not even run, much less win, the Senate Seate in New York.

Maybe somebody needs to test Junkie Rush for urine.

The Boy seems to be wrong time after time after time.

Drug test time, logic test time.

Junkie Rush can't pass this test. But his right wing listeners don't care about facts and logics.

This is why Junkie Rush is a mulit-millionaire and not a joke in Missouri.

"They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest

Uncoffined – just as found…"

So begins the lines from a Thomas Hardy poem that was quoted in the movie, The History Boys, by a character called Posner, played by young Samuel Barnett, to his literature instructor and tutor, Hector, played by Richard Griffiths.

The gaggle of British schoolboys in the movie have scored high enough on their end-of-school exams to qualify for admittance to Oxford, and have been held over for another term of strict tutoring so that they might score as high as possible on Oxford's incomparable entrance exams.

Their headmaster hopes to also "polish" the working-class lads a bit as well, because he knows that they will be competing with young men and women who have had access to far finer schooling and the sophistication of travel and exposure to culture that wealth can provide. The year is 1983, and they must do it the old-fashioned way, through long hours in the library and rigorous academic trials put before them by their teachers.

The movie was written by Alan Bennett, and was based on his play by the same name.

In this scene, Posner is reciting an obscure poem on battlefield graves, and there was something about the timeless words and the earnest young face onscreen as he spoke them that caught me so unawares that I did not even know I was weeping until the scene ended.

"They throw in Drummer Hodge to rest

Uncoffined--just as found.

…And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound.

 …Young Hodge the Drummer never knew – Fresh from his Wessex home –

 …why uprose to nightly view

Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain

Will Hodge forever be;

His homely Northern breast and brain

Grow to some Southern tree,

And strange-eyed constellation reign

His stars eternally."

When Posner sits down with his teacher to discuss the poem about a teenage drummer-boy younger than himself, Hector points out a little-known fact:

"The important thing is, Hodge HAS a name," Hector says to his student.

"Say Hardy's writing about…the Boar wars, possibly. These were the first campaigns where soldiers--common soldiers--were commemorated. The names of the dead were recorded and inscribed on war memorials.

"Before all this," he explains, "soldiers, private soldiers, were ALL unknown soldiers.

"And so far from being revered, there was a firm in the 19th century--in Yorkshire, OF COURSE," he adds with great disgust, since they live in Yorkshire, "which swept up their bones from the battlefields of Europe in order to grind them into fertilizer."

Watching this scene on Mother's Day weekend, I was so flabbergasted by that knowledge that I could not comprehend it for a moment. It is common to refer to soldiers as "cannon fodder" or as "expendable,"--but to think that all those mother's sons were treated like so much MANURE to be bought and sold in the marketplace after giving their lives in battle and tossed into an unmarked grave--did their mothers ever even know what had happened to their boys?

Hector goes on: "So, thrown into a common grave though he may be, he's still Hodge.

"Lost boy though he is, on the far side of the world…

"He still has a name."

On that day, I knew, three of our American boys had undergone something so horrible as to defy imagination.

Why, oh why, I have asked myself over and over, did some platoon leader or CO somewhere down the line send out a small convoy of only two Humvees, carrying seven soldiers and one Iraqi translater, on a pre-dawn patrol into one of the deadliest areas in Iraq?

Not only is the "Triangle of Death," as they call it, infested with Sunni insurgents, but it contains an active element of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Less than one year ago, two other soldiers had been kidnapped in that same area and were found later mutilated, tortured to death, and their bodies rigged with explosives.

From what I've read, it would seem that these troops were some of the freshly-arrived "surge" troops, but I could be misunderstanding what I've read.

All we know for sure is that, at about 4:45 in the morning, another unit could hear sounds of explosions and could not reach the patrol. Fifteen minutes after that, a drone aircraft showed two burning vehicles. A rapid response team was called out but it wasn't all that rapid--it took them another forty minutes to reach the burning Humvees, where they found four dead soldiers and a dead translator.

Some of the soldiers had been shot, some died in the bombing. All were unrecognizable.

And three were missing.

Maybe I know too damn much for a Marine mom.

Maybe Marine moms aren't supposed to know what was most likely happening to those boys while I was sitting in my Texas home watching a movie, but it was in my thoughts the whole day. Off and on, I searched internet news sites and watched the T.V. news, but there wasn't a whole lot more information.

It got to be Sunday.

Mother's Day. All day long, three mothers were going through the worst agony imaginable for their lost boys.

I switched between three networks looking for something, ANYTHING on the news.

Not one mention could I find.

Now, granted, I only have access in my rural home to the three networks. I don't know if CNN or MSNBC was doing hourly updates. All I know is that the network news reports did not even mention the attack, the four dead soldiers, or the three missing boys.

On an al-Qaeda website, a group took responsibility for the kidnappings, but displayed no proof that they really had the boys.

They're lost.

"They throw Drummer Hodge to rest Uncoffined, just as found."

These lost boys--these mother's sons--have no name to the barbarians who took them.

They will be blamed for all the crimes committed against humanity by "weekend armchair warmongers", as Sen. Barack Obama referred to the civilian war-planners when he spoke out against this war in 2002.

Men who, in my estimation, have no souls.

Though these lost boys are surely innocents, they will be held accountable for the sins of those who sent them into war with no plan to bring them home.

How many of our young men and women have left a part of their souls soaked into the Iraqi desert like blood?

I've been reading Barack Obama's book, Dreams from My Father. It it, he describes his first trip to Kenya, birthplace to his father, when he was a young man in his twenties.

Meeting family for the first time, he was puzzled when an aunt or other relative would say to him, "Make sure you don't get lost again."

Finally, he asked his half-sister, Auma, what they meant. She explained that it was a saying that referred to a person you hadn't seen for a while. When a loved one would move away, relatives would say, "Don't get lost."

Then she explained that there was a deeper, more serious meaning.

"If someone moves away," she said, "They promise to return…No one sees them again. They've been lost, you see. Even if people know where they are."

We are lost in Iraq.

All our soldiers and Marines are lost over there, even though we know where they are, and even though those who sent them away promise that there is a purpose to their absence, and they promise us that we will see them again.

But sometimes, we don't get to see them again.

And then they are truly lost.

You turn on the evening news, and the most horrible thing that could ever happen to them does not even merit a two-minute story in the broadcast.

So many in this country go about their lives, and they are not touched by this war. Not really. They may know someone--a neighbor, a friend from high school--who is fighting in Iraq, but they don't have the same visceral gut knowledge of living every day in hell because a loved one is in the most terrible danger imaginable and there is nothing you can do to protect them.

Not even if you are their mother.

It is so easy to say SUPPORT THE TROOPS.

But who among us can NAME one?

Not a casual acquaintance. Someone who, if they were thrown to rest "uncoffined," you would grieve for the rest of your life?

I write, and all of us who have family in the military…

We write so that all our soldiers and Marines will have a name.

Because whether they return to us or not, a part of them will always be lost in a strange land, beneath strange-eyed stars.

If it is important for the Iraqi Parliament to remain at work and not take a vacation this summer, how about the U.S. Congress and the President? Why should anyone in America take a vacation while our boys and girls are giving their all with repeated tours, extended stays, and stop loss in Iraq?

If our troops can't take a vacation over there, then neither should we over here. Taking a vacation is a traitorous act. If you are planning on going to the beach or Disneyworld this summer, you are an agent for terrorist. Support the troops, stay home.

"Stay the course", don't desert, "surge" your work in the "new way forward" by not taking a vacation.

Calling all bloggers, get out the postings. Get the word out in the Blogosphere. Cause a stink for a good cause, the exploitation by the administration of the military in Iraq. Contact your reps in Congress and tell them that the right thing for the Iraqi Parliament to do is right thing for the U.S. Congress to do. Also, there will be no vacation to Crawford, Texas, this summer. Sorry George, that brush and undergrowth will just have to go unattended.

With U.S. policy in its last throes, there is no time for vacations. No vacations for anyone until the mission is over whether it is accomplished or not.

We pride ourselves in being a multicultural society. But we are not sure what that means exactly. We can all agree that it means that in our geographic space we have groupings which comprise various ethnic, racial and religious etc "cultural" backgrounds.

The idea, is fuzzy. At times we are suppose to be a "melting pot" so that all these various groups melt together into some harmonious Ueberculture. At other times we seem to think that every cultural grouping should be allowed to pursue and maintain its own identity and interests, The latter idea envisions America as a country that really has no defining culture or interests but is some sort of confederation of disparate cultures co-existing in some sort of equilibrium of interests.

The truth of the matter is that there are those groups who strive to assimilate to a weakly conceived American Culture, and there are those elements who strive to maintain their cultural individuality.

Of the latter type, to some degree or another, these groups are really at odds with "being American" in the inclusive (melting pot) sense. They seek to further their own group interest in a multicultural environment which--to some extent, at least officially--extols integration into some dimly perceived American fold.

So there is AIPAC, The Black Congressional Caucus, the KKK, etc.

These groups are not all equally successful in manipulating the American body polity to their advantage.

Some are very successful and exert considerable (to their numbers) influence on our body politic others are rather weak.

The problem with the idea of multiculturalism in the exclusive sense as opposed to multiculturalism is the melting pot sense is that the former results in some groups exercising disproportionate influence on issues that affect the future of our nation as a whole.

The downside to the melting pot idea is that it requires people to give up their particular cultural heritage to a large extent for the sake of an emergent "American culture".

As an example of the absurdities of cultural exclusivity consider Richardson's comment about why he did not turn against Gonzales sooner. His reply to that questions was "he is Hispanic".

If that's the end result of multicultural exclusiveness, I say let's start indoctrination into an American culture as soon as possible.

Why America went into Iraq is something for the pundits, academics and the politicians to discuss into the next century. What has happened there since our arrival is something I can only hope will be fully realized and understood by the American public and every elected official in our country.

From my personal experiences of living in Iraq for three years, I have concluded Americas leadership is solely responsible for the entire country of Iraq becoming a living hell of suffering, poverty, starvation and depravation, unimaginable to either Iraqi or U.S. citizen just prior to our arrival in Iraq in 2003.

I personally attended and participated in many high level Coalition, State Department and DoD meetings and briefings in Iraq from 2003 until late 2006.

I remember being astounded, on many occasions, about the way we addressed the needs and requirements of the Iraqi people and their government. On one occasion after another, where the decision makers in Iraq had glowing opportunities to move Iraq in the right direction, the smallest suggestion that action being considered might be politically incorrect could, and often did, derail any further talk or action and everyone would be back to square one. More than not, it was the Military planners in the Embassy who would stop any worthwhile State Department initiative.

It seemed to me that the leadership in the Embassy in Baghdad were very unaware, almost detached, from what the average U.S. Soldier was experiencing on a day to day basis outside of Baghdad’s green zone where life was actually pretty close to just being normal. Although the senior officers in the Embassy would , from time to time fly out to the Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), their arrival and departure was always very scheduled and planned. Very rarely would any of these officers actually go outside of a FOB where the troops were going everyday amongst the Iraqi general population.

Let me be clear here. No act of courage, sacrifice, bravery, or selflessness is ever wasted, or for nothing. Our soldiers are carrying out their duty as they took an oath to do. You will not find any soldiers in Iraq who are not faithful and dedicated to their Commanders and to each other. Risking their lives for each other is a daily event for our soldiers in Iraq. This is as it should be. The senior officers however seemed to me to be somewhat different in that regard. Their future in the military and their promotion potential seemed to be factored into just about every decision. The real exception was the National Guard and Reserve component Senior officers who seemed always determined to get their soldiers what they needed and to be there for their soldiers. This is not to denigrate the Officer Corp, but it is what I noted during my extensive time in Iraq.

Donald Rumsfeld and General Casey seemed obsessed with ensuring The State Department (Condi Rice) did not get a firm foothold onto the leadership or management of the Iraq development planning, and that included the diplomatic part of the mission. From my perspective, the U.S. Ambassador was a figure head who simply did what General Casey and Don Rumsfeld decided needed to be accomplished by the State Department.

The Generals had all the money, they had the President’s ear and they controlled almost all the resources. The golden rule; He who has the gold, makes the rules. State Department diplomatic efforts or