Benedict@Large

'A Chill Wind is Blowing in This Nation...'
Transcript of the speech given by actor Tim Robbins to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 2003.

Villified anti-war activist and actor Tim Robbins talks about hope and fear, about baseball and scaring children, and about how bullies are stopped in a challenge to the media to stand up and do their job. Most impressive.

Also, an excerpt from Robbins' response to Baseball Hall of Fame president Dale Petroskey:

To suggest that my criticism of the President put the troops in danger is absurd. I had been unaware, that baseball is a Republican sport....You invoke patriotism and use words like freedom in an attempt to intimidate and bully. In doing so, you dishonor the words patriotism and freedom and dishonor the men and women who have fought wars to keep this nation a place where one can freely express their opinion without fear of reprisal or punishment.

Take that! all you naysayers. Didn't President Bush tell you that we would all be safer after we kicked Saddam's butt? But no, you wouldn't bekieve him. You thought you knew everything.

Well, it's time for all of you to eat crow! The terror threat was just lowered to yellow. I know I feel a lot safer now.

That stuff? Heck, that's ancient history!

Or at least it was ancient history. But with the looting of museums in Baghdad and elsewhere, most of it is gone.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. The probability of wide-spread looting was well understood before the war, and scholars of Middle Eastern history were consulted extensively in order to identify the locations of critical components of Iraq's cultural and religious heritages. The intent of these consultations was to allow U.S. troops to quickly secure these important locations and prevent them from being damaged. Instead, these locations were all but ignored by U.S. troops, who instead focused solely on protecting the Ministry of Interior (intelligence information) and the Ministry of Oil.

The significance of these losses to the Iraqi people cannot be overstated. As much as the Iraqis wanted their oil protected as their future sourch of revenue, these treasures spoke equally as loud of their pride and sense of identity. Indeed, not only is there outrage among world scholars, but Iraqi citizens in what are now daily protests are calling upon the U.S. to restore order and even suggesting that Bush and Saddam are one and the same. These are not happy people, and their discontent will make the already difficult task of convincing the Iraqis of our good intentions far harder, especially with the daily reminder of their loss in the form of the pilaged remains of their museums.

And so what is the administration's response to this? Same as it always is: Send in Colon to clean up Rummy's messes. [Does the irony of this escape you: black janitor good only to clean white master's mess?] While Rummy brushed of critcism on this ("Bad things happen in life, and people do loot" ), it falls to Colon to try to figure out some way to retrieve some of the stolen items. But Colon is likely to have little success, for there is a well-establish world-wide black market hungrey for just such items. Most of these items are probably lost forever, and the Iraqis are very angry about this. Said one Iraqi woman, "Go back to your country. Get out of here. You are not wanted here. We hated Saddam and now we are hating Bush because he is destroying our city."

But of course, why should we have expected any less from George? Such details hardly fit into the plans of a man driven only by "gut instinct". And he does, after all, have a long history of destroying national treasures when they get in his way. His first one, in fact, was our Constitution. Don't expect for the Iraqis to be treated any better.

Kirwan is out with another of his graphical essays, "Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace", over at AmericaHeldHostile. It kind of a fairy tale type of satire, except that it's the same fairy tail we've been reading in our newspapers for the last six months.

Rummy seeks to consolidate (his own) power: Leave it to this administration to use a quick military victory to seek addition power. And so it is that the official U.S. military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, reports of Rummy's latest grab for power. In a 204-page document submitted to Congress on Monday, Rummy is seeking (among other things) the following:

• To eliminate many reports to Congress from the Pentagon, including over 100 pages of exemptions from reporting for Rummy himself (congressional oversite),
• To allow direct Defense Department payments without oversite to "supportive" foreign entities (Bye-bye, Colin), and
• To end provisions that require that high-level military official not make a career of their curent positions.

This is total crap, but will likely pass a Republican Congress that is now as useless as its Democratic members have been for a long time.

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This proposed law flys in the face of my previously expressed concerns regarding the professionalization of the military, and the risks therein. Our Constitution specifies quite clearly that our military is subordinate through oversite to its civilian commanders, and the clear intention of much of this proposed legislation is to remove that exact oversite. If enacted as written, this document will almost literally establish our military as a fourth and independent branch of our government, quite obviously a status that Rummy seeks for himself. But aside from this dimunition of Congressional oversite, Rummy seeks to establish himself as Supreme Commander in several other ways:

• By allowing himself carte blanche to support foreign militias without review, he seeks to overthrow any coherent foreign policy coming from the State Department (dumb nigger).
• By eliminating a rotational system of top brass (and upping their salaries, to boot), he seeks to surround himself with a continually-loyal elite of military brass.

Now it is quite obvious to a casual oberver that the State Department is to handle our "foreign entangements"; that is why it has it's own seat on the President's cabinet. But Rummy kicked Colin's ass on the Iraq run-up, and this suggestion of his to have his own "foreign policy" budget clearly is an attempt to put the State Department out of business. From now on, according to Rummy, the business of state will be handled at the end of his many rifles.

I wrote extensively earlier (sorry, link missing) about the dangers to the public of an increasing professionalization of the military, and this last proposal is exactly what I was referring to. Rummy wants to "extend the tours" of his selected brass into a form of elite corps of senior advisors that has never yet existed in the history of our country. Loyal only to him because of his unique and (per his proposal) unaccountable status, Rummy could potentially order a strike on the White House himself! Theatric? Hardly. I have been told by hard core insiders that they would like to see Donald Rumsfeld follow or perhaps even replace Bush in the White House. Theatric, my ass. There are those in the core that are already dreaming of this.

And yet, there is another side to this distancing of the military mind from that of the public, and this is that it is bad for veterans who do not opt for career service. This is quite obvious as the "Support Our Troops" Republicans chop $14 billion from the veterans' sevices budget while they are away and unable to complain. Support them, apparently, when they are killing people, but screw them when they come back injured. And this was another point that I made in my earlier article: The number of Senators today who are also veterans has dropped dramatically of late. Not having to "walk the walk", they are clearly finding it so very much easier to cast our vets aside.

Now, I will admit that $14 billion is not that much of a cut for a federal program of this size. Certainly, a fully-funded federal program this large could make up for this merely with "belt-tightening" and efficiency measures. Except for the fact that the veterans program today is not fully-funded. Except for the fact that it already sucks. Why don't you read about it as it exists today if you don't believe me.

But on a most personal level: I ended up on the streets and homeless one day. I spent a lot of time there in fact, mostly with guys my age. Noticing this, I one day asked them about where they were during Vietnam. Total silence for a while until one of them said, "We were all there, stupid." But I pressed: "Then why do you live here? Why don't you go to the VA?" They broke out immediately into a laughter. "That's were we all came from, stupid."

A very interesting graphic display of perhaps 600-700 "Bush Approval Polls" going back to before 9/11. You can bet that the significance of this is not lost on Karl Rove. War makes George Bush; peace breaks him.

This from BBC News: US rejects Iraq DU clean-up

While this is diturbing, it is entirely predictable. The U.S. military won't clean up their depleted uranium (DU) because, if they did, it would be viewed as an admission by them that DU is harmful. (If you are not aware of the DU issue, your best bet is this Google search.)

But I offer this one question: If DU is not harmful as our military suggests, why did the Kuwaiti's spend so much money to clean it up in their country after the 1991 war?

Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive interviews Roger Ebert:

There's an interesting pattern going on. When I write a political column for the Chicago Sun-Times, when liberals disagree with me, they send in long, logical e-mails explaining all my errors. I hardly ever get well-reasoned articles from the right. People just tell me to shut up. That's the message: "Shut up. Don't write anymore about this. Who do you think you are?"

No shit!

But this is a good interview. Roger talks about the "Michael Moore incident" (Mike screwed up, but not because of his message) and frames a lot of stuff from the prespective of how movies do and do not influence public opinion.

By the way, Roger mentions a "traitor list" during the interview, and dilegent Benedict has tracked that down for you:

Now, I was going to ask to be included on their list, but frankly I was quite scared off by their admonition that "All emails sent to ProBush.com are monitored by the U.S. Government". Whoa! Besides, I couldn't figure out what qualifications I needed. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton made the list, but Robert Byrd did not. Jimmy Carter and Ramsey Clark made the list, but Bill Clinton did not. Of course, Peter Arnett is there, but where the hell is Geraldo? Much too confusing for me.

In the Mailbag:

No doubt, my Fundamentalist-bashing post from yesterday would elicit a response from long-time Fundamentalist friend, MsFedup. Yes, I had to wade through the inevitable sermon from her, but if she didn't include that, I'd be worried that she was on her deathbed, and I would not like that thought.

Two points that she brought up however, warrant a response:

As with the 7 days of creation? God putting it into a matter of time man's tiny mind can grasp.... what's wrong with that? Just look at the organization of that one particular story of creation? Look at the order of how creation took place? Hmmmm. Right in line with the theories surrounding evolution.

I don't have a lot of problems with her take on this. There are indeed many similarities between Genesis and the more modern evolution and big bang theories, though not quite so many as MsFedup suggests.

And if I am a fundamentalist because I believe all this first and foremost -- what does one call the person that totally believes in science whereby so much is reliant on theory?

In many ways, this statement perhaps best characterizes the "Great Divide" between us. MsFedup believes (as do all Fundamentalists) that "science" is simply a great collection of theories that one can pick and choose among, choosing only those that happen to fit into one's other "more dominent" faith. As such, she proposes that my greater trust in science is also a matter of faith, and that I choose science as my faith over God. Science to her is simply just one more false religion. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Science, in fact, has nothing to with it's current and former sets of theories. Science is a method of answering questions. It is a method that involves presenting theories along with supporting evidence. Should the evidence be sufficient and also withstand scrutiny, the theory is accepted. But it is only accepted for so long as future research does not show that evidence as either insufficient or false. In this fashion, science is "self-correcting". What was "true" yesterday may quite well be false tomorrow. And scientists accept this. In fact, the philosopher Karl Popper went much further than this in his falsifiabily statements on science: Science proves absolutely nothing. It is merely the best method we have for the on-going refinement of truth.

And this is exactly where MsFedup and I most disagree. She views science as some quite intact and stagnent "collection of theories", while I view it much more in the sense of Popper: an ever-evolving search for truth, but a search in a fashion that allows previous "truth" to be discarded when it is demonstrated to be false. Fundamentalist have no similar method of self-correction.

Oddly enough, it seems that we have a little slice of liberalism springing up in the great state of Utah. Yesterday, I linked to their local Salt Lake Tribune about complaints there against their "favorite son", Orrin Hatch. Now today comes this:

Above all, there is the fact that the United States, abetted by Britain and Australia, has launched an unprovoked attack on a sovereign state. That is why most other governments are deeply worried: The American attack on Iraq could be used as a precedent, using exactly the same arguments as President Bush, to justify an Indian attack on Pakistan or a North Korean attack on South Korea. The U.S. action in Iraq has fundamentally challenged the rule of law in the world, which is a problem no matter how happy most Iraqis are at the moment -- and Washington clearly meant to do just that.

Perhaps a newspaper to keep an eye on. A little dissent in the heartland for sure.

Mary at the watch has an interesting post out regarding psychopatic personalities and of course George Bush. While it is a bit lengthy, it dovetails nicely with my earlier post on Fundamentalism.

Harley Sorensen is a riot today with his "Occupational Hazard" article. So is Rich Procter in "You have questions? I have answers!". Toss in Bernard Weiner's "Confidential Memo", and we'll just call this "Comic Monday".

[Note to Bernard Weiner: What's with all of this concern about Iraqis possibly electing someone we don't like? Certainly in "rebuilding" Iraq, we're planning to sell them a bunch of ES&S voting machines. Heck, they're so crooked, even Jimmy Carter wouldn't notice!]

Dear President Bush, So what's the scoop, Georgie? Are we going after Syria next because Saddam hid his WMDs there or because Saddam hid himself there? (Actually, I kind of liked the Hezbollah angle that Rummy was floating on the Sunday circuit. Has he been talking to Ariel "the bulldozer" lately?)

Of course, that's only three excuses, and you do know that you'll be needing a few more than that to flip-flop between, at least if you want to do the run up like you did last time. With that in mind, here's a few suggestions I've thought up:

• The "aluminum tubes" routine - I know, re-using aluminum tubes would be kind of obvious, but don't throw the idea away too fast. Just hit them with Syria's "increasing purchases of dual-use technology". Nice, huh? Just "scary" enough to it to make it fly. (But don't let on that this is just the same high-tech medical stuff we wouldn't let Iraq buy for the last twelve years.)

• You simply must keep up with that "represses his own people" routine aslo. No, I don't think folks will get tired of it. (Don't all those rugheads do that?) Besides, without it, how could you use the "we're just freeing the people there" routine that was such a hit last time?

• And you'll simply love this one: "Reliable intelligence sources" have seen Osama (remember him?) in Syria lately. Talk about getting the home team whooped up!

Just one more thought: What if Saddam didn't move his WMDs into Syria? What if he moved them into Iran instead? What? Oh, you already thought of that. That's what I like about you, Georgie. You're always one step ahead of me.

I like to touch base with all of the "Sunday Morning Pundits" on TV whenever there is a dramatic hint of a "policy redirection ruse" going on in the White House. This morning, I caught both CBS and ABC. Amazing stuff, if you just allow your mind to see it. On ABC, it was as mild as mentioning Syria as a potential next target for us.Sort of a "conditioning" for the American public to get ready to raise their flags in support of a second (perhaps third?) unjustified war. Put it on their lips thi soon, and surely they will follow, raising their flags all the way against the American "traitors" who object. Quite more interesting however was Tim Russert, who devoted his half hour to a Donald Rumsfeld interview. I offer you this article, Jerusalem Urges Bush: Next Target Hezbollah, as to why this interview was so interesting and indicative of the future unrestrained use of our military power. This was the first time anyone mentioned the Hezbollah/Syria link within the context of our war against Iraq. Rummy made the link explicitly in this interview. This cannot be a mere slip of the tongue. Sharon has asked us to wipe out Hezbollah for him while we are at this, and conveniently, Rumsfeld's Syria is right on the road to that target. Syria is dead for that alone. Sharon wants? The neocons are almost totally Jewish radicals? Sharon gets. Time to pack your bags if you are a Syrian.

A point that must be beat upon over and over until the media takes it up a their very own theme: At a time of war, how dare we reduce veterans' benefits?

In the Mailbag:

Testify! reminds me of a comment I had made elsewhere. It is perhaps the best statement that I have made regarding my complete distrust of all fundamentalist ideas:

Here is the question you must first answer if you want to "do battle" with fundamentalists: What is a fundamentalist? What makes a person this? If you do not know this, then you do not know your enemy, and he will beat you every time. I'm not referring to the elements of their theology, dogma, and ritualism either. Everyone chooses a religion based on its compatability with something that it inside of themselves. What is that something?

It's certainly not a belief in the Western concept of God, because Christians, Jews, and Muslims all adhere to that same concept. It is not a depth of belief in that concept, for certainly none are more devout than the Catholic Pope, and he is not a fundamentalist. So once again, what is that something?

To understand this, one must understand what it is that distinguishes the fundamentalist view from others, and that is a literalistic belief in whatever is the guiding holy text; indeed that the text itself is "The Word Of God". What this belief provides for the fundamentalist a sense of absolute certainty in everything. Not only does every moral question disappear before this certainty, so too are all the whens, wheres, whys, and hows of paying reverence to that God.

On the surface, this is a very attractive concept, if for no other reason than that it greatly simplifies how one conducts one's life. Yet, as attractive as this prospect is, fewer than 10% of the practicioners of Western faiths subscribe to fundamentalist beliefs. Clearly, something is wrong with this picture. But what? For that, we must look to the texts themselves. (Remember, we are only trying to figure out what motivates a person to fundamentalism here. We are not at all trying to question the value of these texts.)

The first question that arises is one of timing. According to Jewish fundamentalists, God spoke to them for about three and a half millenia. For some reason, the Jewish God ran out of things to say after that, and has been silent since. To the Christian fundamentalists, He spoke for perhaps an additional millenium, and for Muslim fundamentalist (whose God was apparently the most talkative), He spoke perhaps only 700 years more.

Yet when we look at these three texts, we find that a majority of each is devoted to historical record. This is the first contradiction: Granting that God said all He needed to say as these fundamentalists claim, what was the purpose of the historical record for the many millenia that He did speak, and why was it of no value afterwards? And why did He stop speaking in the first place?

Which leads to the second question: If God had said all He had to, why did He leave so many contradictions in each of these texts? This certainly cannot be seen as assigning to Him a desire to create absolute certainty. And indeed, most pratitioners of these three main branches of Western religion do not view it in that fashion. But the fundamentalists from each of those religions obviously believe exactly that.

Both of these in turn lead to the third question, and that is: What about science? Clearly, the greatest intellectual attack in history against literalist interpretations comes from this thing called science, and yet God chose to stop speaking at least a millenium beforehand? The two conflicting views of genesis are both refuted by science, and God has no guidance to offer (that He wants written down, at least) in these sacred texts? The contradictions go on and on, and God doesn't think He needs to provide a little more guidance? Yet this is what the fundamentalist claims; that in spite of the fact that God no longer wants His texts to be altered, and in spite of the fact that they are suffer from contradictions, and in spite of the fact that they face the challenges of a scientifific method that did not exist when the were written, ... somehow God has told us enough. Heaven is indeed a very small place for fundamentalists.

So what is a fundamentalist? A fundamentalist is a person who requires absolute certainty. A fundamentalist is further a person who is willing to suspend rational (i.e., logical) thought in order to obtain that very certainty. But what does this mean for a person wishing to "do battle" with fundamentalists? For that, we need to move into psychology?

A person who repeatedly insists upon suspending rational thought on a particular subject in order to maintain an irrational belief in that subject is clearly not a mentally healthy person. When that person repeatedly suspends rationality in order to achieve a false sense of absolute certainty, psychologists refer to that person as pathologically paranoid, and this is indeed that "inner element" we have been looking for as to why a person becomes a fundamentalist. Fundamentalists are essentially "control freaks" who "got religion". Not every person who suffers from this mental illness resolves it in religion, but all who do become fundamentalists. All of which means that when we do battle with fundamentalist, we must be first aware that we are fighting a form of insanity.

[Benedict@Large is an Atheist of over 30 years. For that entire time, I have been fascinated by the topic of religion, and have studied it intensively. Three years ago, I realized that I still had no concept of fundamentalism and began my study of of it then. The conclusion presented here is the result of my first two years of study on that topic. I have seen nothing to refute my conclusion since then.]

Thanks again to Testify! for retrieving this for me.

Hatch Leading Charge to '1984,' Critics Warn: This interesting article is made all the more interesting for having been published in a Salt Lake City newspaper. Apparently the locals there are none too pleased with Orrin's introduction of an amendment calling for a repeal of the sunset provisions of USA Patriot Act:

In Washington, prominent conservatives are publicly questioning why Hatch, whose political rise was based on a philosophy of getting government off peoples' backs, now is seen by many as the congressional front-man for helping government look over peoples' shoulders.

Orrin Hatch clearly has a problem in Utah, and his problem is symptomatic of what happens when one party gains too much power: It's voters will start asking why, if their party has so much power, aren't they getting their own little piece of benefits from that. Watch for this as a growing trend among Republican voters.

Around the Blogs:

The Peace Movement: What Went Wrong?    It was inevitable that the wingnuts would be back on the offensive, saying that the peace movement, having been "proven wrong", was now "eating crow", that their every fear has now been proven stupid (as the right had said all along), and (in one article) that the peace nuts should now "shut up for a few years". Among many others comes this article by Kathleen Parker of The Orlando Sentinel, where among her "fence mending" suggestions are that liberals are "whimpering near-death", "irrelevant to today's reality", and are "just the 'Yes, but' crowd formerly known as the 'antiwar pundits.'" While Kathleen is writing this however, Liberal Oasis is offering a different perspective:

Well, what is it exactly that we all have been proven wrong about?

-- That this war was not about disarmament, but about establishing Pax Americana on the backs of dead Arabs, Muslims and US troops?

-- That this war wouldn’t end with Iraq, and could soon lead to more misguided wars with neighboring countries?

-- That invasion and occupation will keep our troops in harm’s way for an indefinite period of time, while fostering more terrorism against America?

-- That the Bush Administration has no interest in real democracy, and will ensure a government is created that will serve Bush Inc.’s interests?

-- That the policy of pre-emptive war may destabilize the world as other nations adopt it?

-- That there was a way to disarm Saddam Hussein of WMDs and work towards his removal without killing civilians, including children?

How does this happen? Why the different views of the peace movement? Why do these two seem to not even be talking about the same set of people? All of this of course begs the question: What went wrong?

Nate Newmann thinks he knows. He says this:

... there was little or no message by the antiwar movement on how they were acting in solidarity with the oppressed folks within Iraq.

And that was the fatal flaw of antiwar organizing.

And the left cannot plead lack of time, since they had all the time necessary between the first and second Gulf Wars ...

"little or no message"? "fatal flaw of antiwar organizing"? "cannot plead lack of time"? This is utter nonsense. The claim of little or no message simply is not valid; every counterclaim by the left started at least with "war is not the way to do this".

But "antiwar organizing"? Get a grip, Nate. The far right began reorganizing when Barry Goldwater was trounched. The neocons began 12 years ago when Bush, Sr. told them the march on to Baghdad was unacceptable. Both of these were quite well-funded marches to the right with every organizational consultant available to them for a price they could pay.

In contrast, the anti-war movement is a movement scratched up almost overnight in the best traditions of democracy? How can he possibly compare the two?

The Left was indeed disorganized, but when tens of millions of people across the globe unite in six months, they can only do so with a quite highly decentralized organization. A group of this size cannot even come into existance in such a short time without such. And this to him is a fault? The union could never have even existed without it.

But his last claim is the most atrocious: That we had 12 years to get all of this done. Get what done? Assume a 9/11 type of incident would occur and impose itself on an intellectually lazy president? Prepare our arguments just in case this happened? Just in case a quite marginal view of American foreign policy would catch this man's ear? This is stupid. This would require a clarvoiance claimed only by side-show hucksters.

But Nate goes on still:

The antiwar movement lost the argument on timing and on the efficacy of alternative means of addressing peoples broad concerns on Iraq. And I attribute that partly to their simplistic focus on "no war" unity over developing a more sophisticated positive message that also would have required more outreach to non-rallygoers (and probably less focus on rallies).

But just what were these "broad concerns"? Were they of a nuclear nature or of a boichemical nature? Were they over terrorist ties or Saddam's repression of his people? Who knows? Everytime the left countered an argument, the administration merely change the argument. Over and over they "shapeshifted" themselves simply to avoid dialogue with the left, knowing quite well that their stated agruments would be exposed as insufficient in any open and honest public debate.

It was however this very "shapeshifting" of rationale that then became Nate's "broad concerns" of the public. But, unlike he suggests, the left did indeed have answers to these; they just simply never got anything even close to proportional access to the public forums to discuss them.

And it was not simply that the left lacked responable access to these forums. It went further in that the right had so much access to them that they often used this access not to advance their own points, but rather to merely misrepresent the views of the left and even parody them as people. Digsby at hullabaloo offers a perfect example of this:

Every political party has its fringe. In a two party system, the coalition in each is huge and represents a wide range of opinion. There are also always those who will use dramatic and over the top actions in the name of politics. However, they rarely signify with the public unless a concerted propaganda campaign makes it appear that these people represent a mainstream view and then closely ties them to elected politicians.

White supremecists, Christian Reconstructionists, militias, neo-confederates and anti-immigrant bigots represent the extremist fringe of the Republican party and I would suggest that their activities would be far more repulsive to most middle of the road Americans than some theatrical kids at a protest rally --- if they heard about them constantly. If there were a non-stop barrage of criticism coming from talk radio and cable television against (them), many ... Americans would begin to see these people for the rude, immature bigots they are.

But, the fact is that the only "extremists" who are pointed out and regularly lambasted in the media are from the left. And, it is part of a long standing, organized effort to portray the entire democratic party as being out of the mainstream. ... If the "extremists" of the left didn't exist, Rush would just make some up.

And this all gets back to why Kathleen Parker and Liberal Oasis above seem to be referring to different groups: Because this is exactly what they are doing. The right has been allowed to parody the left into something that does not even exist with the full and complete complicity of the American news media, and it is this parody that Ms. Parker is addressing. Is she even aware of this? It hardly matters so long as her reading public is not.

And this is exactly "what went wrong" with the peace movement. Deliberately or otherwise, the movement simply was denied fair access to the public forum while simultaneously being parodied in it. Anyone who thinks that this was not the single critical blow to this movement in the U.S. need only look to Europe, where media access was far more balanced. Approval rates there generally ran in the 25-30% range, and in Spain, whose government backed the effort, they ran as low as 5%. No other single factor besides press coverage can begin to account for this difference. The American public was not only underinformed, but also frequently misinformed throughout the entire build-up to the war. And that made all the difference.

President's brother says "yes" to whore: Oh, I'm sorry. I was just having a "Republican moment" there. It just seems Neil is tapping some bimbo, and his wife is threatening to defame the family name over it. Watch for George himself to kick a few bucks over to keep her quiet as they split. After all, we aren't supposed to know that a Bush also doesn't know what "is" is. (MSNBC)

This is simply bullshit. While the U.S. targets news reporters, Sharon acts with impunity as he slaughters unarmed and conspicuously-marked international aid workers:

According to Laura, the activists were being shot at while protecting some children from Israeli gunfire. Tom was in plain view of the sniper towers and was wearing a bright orange fluorescent jacket with reflective stripes. The nine ISM activists and many children were in the process of leaving the area. Sniper fire from the tower was hitting the wall close beside the children, who were afraid to move. Tom was attempting to bring them to safety when he was shot. There was no shooting or resistance coming from the Palestinian side at all.

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting has just released their statement regarding the targeting of journalists in Iraq by U.S. forces. Their suggestions of murder and war crimes are included.

Hans Blix says that he knew his search for WMDs in Iraq was simply a U.S. ploy.

If you live in Alabama, you'd better buy your dildos now.

John Dean offers a good overview of the plans for the occupation phase coming up in Iraq over at FindLaw.com. While he does take some (well known) swipes at these plans at the end of this article, the fact that he does not clutter his presentation of these plans with them makes this article a quite good review of them.

This is disturbing: The BBC reports that the 10 chief suspects in the bombing of the USS Cole have escaped from custody in Aden. According to this article, this escape was accomplished by merely breaking a window. This simply does not make sense for too many reasons. First of all, we clearly knew the conditions at the jail in which they were being held. There is simply no way we would have allowed them to be held in a cell with a breakable window with direct access to freedom once it was broken. And more importantly, suspects in a single crime are almost never gathered into a single cell where they can colaberate on their common defense.

And why just now after so much time? My take? Expect to find several of these folks dead near some bombing of American troops stationed near the Syrian border.

I remember back when the Chimpster's name first came up for a White House run. With all that money flowing in so quickly, I just had to do some background on him. I came away quite unsettled, but could not put my finger on exactly why. It was not long afterwards when some writer (whose name I have long forgotten) used the term "intellectually lazy", and I knew instantly that this was the exact source of my discomfort. Making decisions without sufficient research, taking the glory as they are enacted, and then turning away, never looking back at how things actually turned out. Indeed, Bush himself admits this, except that when he does, he says it with his typical manly facade: He makes his decisions from his "gut".

Anyways, Paul Krugman takes a look at this today:

I won't pretend to have any insights into what is going on in the minds of the Iraqi people. But there is a pattern to the Bush administration's way of doing business that does not bode well for the future — a pattern of conquest followed by malign neglect.

You mean they actually said that? BuzzFlash provides an absolutely wonderful list of GOP hoof-in-mouth moments.

Neocon Watch:

Newshouse News Service offers this excellent introduction to "think tanks" and the roles they play. To it, I have one addition: Many of the most powerful ones today serve as more than simply "idea factories". They also serve as ad agencies on how to sell their ideas to a less-than-informed public.

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Laurie Manis in "Lest We Forget" provides chilling historical parallels between the past and today.

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This solves that one. I don't have to write an intro to watching Richard Perle. Harold Meyerson came out with a quite adequate one today.

---

Game 1 of the Wolfowitz Doctrine is now in the ninth inning, and the home team is nowhere to be found. So far, so good. Too bad this isn't a one-game series. Game 2 promises the be quite a bit tougher.

Game 2 of course is the democratiztion of Iraq. According to the Wolfowitz Doctrine, a tribal people who have never in their history experienced anything akin to neither democracy nor our cultural values will suddenly see how wonderful all of this is, and quickly jump on board. Forget for the moment that the Iraqis are up shit's creek and that U.S. propaganda attempts are not working outside of the U.S. but are impressing the Chinese in their sophistication. Forget for the moment that the Iraqis may get a little testy about Corporate America already fighting over how the "spoils of war" are to be divided, Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect offers a good outline of the problems we face in Game 2 in his Boston Globe editorial.

Of course, since victory in Game 1 came so "easily", there are those in the administration confident of victory in Game 2 who already looking forward to Game 3, a game that might properly be titled "You're next." Which begs the question, "Who's next?" And there is a surplus of candidates.

Certainly the most threatening candidate is "Axis of Evil" toss-in North Korea with their newly-restarted nuclear weapons program and somewhat more advanced missile program. While a lot has been made about how we won't attack them because of these capabilities, I think people are over-estimating the impact of that on our policy towards them. The reason we won't attack them is because the is no business support for it. In a nutshell, we'd rather negotiate with them because they don't have anything we need.

A far better candidate is the other "Axis of Evil" honoree, Iran, and indeed preliminary marketing efforts for that war are already underway. But while they do indeed have something we want, war with Iran presents several obsticles beyond those associated with marketing another war in that region so quickly. First, Iran has not suffered the crushing burden of sanctions for 12 years, so we would expect their military to offer a much more formidable defense. Second, while not everyone in Iran is totally pleased with their government, there is no wellspring of hatred of it in that country as there was in Iraq. Finally, we shot an aweful lot of weapons at Iraq, and it will take a while for us to replenish those. Prognosis? Don't look for an Iran war for at least a year. In the meantime, the administration will simply hope that the "Iraq Example" plays well in Iran and causes them to "tow the line".

Now Syria is another bird entirely. They are a thorn in Israel's side, they are small, and we are right there. And so marketing for this is well under way. First there was the night-vision goggles claim. More important, however is the claim that Saddam may have stored his WMDs there. Toss in a terrorist strike against U.S. forces in Iraq which we will no doubt claim came from Syria, and you have a Syrian war that is easily sold as both "provoked" and "purely defensive". Besides, how else is Wolfowitz supposed to have any fun?

"All the world's a stage." ~ William Shakespere

This is pretty pathetic. "You are watching history!" the voice from the TV proclaimed. "This is like when the Berlin Wall fell," another chimed in. Well, not exactly.

I had been hearing stories suggesting the entire event had been staged for the TV cameras, but really wasn't sure if I might just be hearing some "sour grapes". I wasn't. What's that other saying? A picture is worth a thousand words? Try this picture of that "moment in history". Shot from a "slightly" different angle, it is indeed worth a thousand words.

In 1991, only 10% of our missiles deployed against Iraq employed "smart" technology. Today, over 90% of our missiles fly into their targets with GPS and lasar-guided precision. In 1991, it took a half million troops and several months just to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. Today, with a force only half that size, we are inside Baghdad itself within just a few weeks.

To hear the Republicans tell it, this is the kind of military might you get by voting Republican. Of course, in order to believe this self-delusion of theirs, you would also have to believe that all of this fancy new technology was conceived, funded, designed, developed, and put into mass production in less than two short years. All of that with time still left over in which to train our troops in how to use them.

Sorry, wingnuts, but the mighty military machine you are seeing over in Iraq today is none other than Bill Clinton's Military.

From Atrious: Well, isn't this just ducky? William H. Pryor, Jr., another passifier for the southern slave staters, has been nominated to the Eleventh Circuit. Shove racism in our faces a bit harder, will you George?

Off subject, perhaps, but not very far off. GoogleWatch has an interesting page out regarding the potential for Google to be abused by federal government snoops in both a retroactive and proactive form. Interesting.

BBC tossed from Israeli cable TV, CNN also targeted. All this since FOX was added. Need more be said?

Where are they Now? Talk about the "revolving doors" of influence in Washington! In a first-of-its-kind survey of former White House staffers, The Center for Public Integrity has followed the employment of "Top 100" Clinton staffers after their one-year prohibition on lobbying had expired. More than half of the top one hundred Clinton White House officials went on to represent, work for or advise businesses and entities in areas they regulated while they were in office. Per presidential scholar G. Calvin Mackenzie, the Distinguished Presidential Professor of American Government at Colby College:

It is a normal number, or maybe smaller than normal number.

The images of huge bronze statues of Saddam being toppled by American soldiers working together with Iraqis certainly do make for inspiring TV news coverage. The citizens (those left) of Iraq are now a free. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there is another fight for freedom going on.

As I had mentioned a while back, I suspected that the outrageous Patriot Act II was perhaps not meant as an actual bill to be considered, but was rather an Ashcroft wish list of provisions to be slipped unseen one-by-one into other bills being passed by the GOP-controlled Congress. Indeed, this seems to be coming to pass.

The bill in question, known as the Kyl-Schumer measure, simply refines Patriot I provisions regarding warrantless searches so that Justice is better able to go after "lone wolfs" such as the recent Capitol-area sniper. While the bill has broad bipartisan support, Democrats, long frustrated by Ashcroft's refusal to provide any information on how current warrantless search provisions are being used, wish to add a provision requiring Justice to do just this. Ashcroft gets his new provision, but gives something back for it.

Not to happen that way however. If the Dems insist on Justice's accountability to Congress, the GOP wants the sunset provisions of Patriot I rescinded. And this comes straight out of that Ashcroft wish list called Patriot II.

There goes the neighborhood:

Seems a day can't go by when some Bush appointee (or nominee like Daniel Pipes) doesn't stick his foot in his mouth, revealing himself as being against some core American value, and as often than not, that value is religious tollerance. So it was this time with Rod Paige, Secretary of Education and a Baptist deacon.

In an interview with Baptist Press (a mouthpiece for the Southern Baptist Convention) entitled Rod Paige: America's education evangelist, Dr. Paige stated that he "would prefer to have a child in a school that has a strong appreciation for the values of the Christian community ..." This quite naturally has created quite a furor among civil liberties and education groups, in particular Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Federation of Teachers, the latter group saying that he "should quickly clarify or recant his comments." Per his press secretary, Dr. Paige intends to do neither.

Now as an American citizen, I should not have to care what faith my Secretary of Education practices, and if, for example, my Secretary of State or Defense made a similar statement, I would not care in the slightest. But in making such a statement in this particular venue and then failing to accept quite reasonable requests for clarification, Dr. Paige portrays himself as confused as to just which school system he heads. Here's a hint, Dr. Paige: It's called the public education system. You remember, don't you? It's the one where you don't have to take Bible classes.

If you were wondering about my less than active posting over the last couple of days, I've been working on several longer articles. The first of them is below:

Neocon Watch:

Meet Daniel Pipes, an active little fellow who "writes" Op-Ed for (among others) the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, and is a member in good standing in the neoconservative inner circle. His acceptance into this circle of elites was fully acknowelegded by them with his co-signing of an endorsement letter to President Bush from the Project for the New Amercan Century (PNAC) just over a year ago, congratulating him on pissing North Korea off in his now infamous "Axis of Evil" speech.

Mr. Pipes has indeed worked hard for his acceptance into this group. In his own biographical sketch, he cites a Harvard education, claims fluency in many languages, implies professorships at major universities, and can't help but pat himself on the back for how many people ask him to talk. But most of all, Mr. Pipes likes to congratulate himself on "anticipating" in 1995 the two thousand year old Arab tradition of protecting their own homes.

But there is another resume that Mr. Pipes fails to mention: that of his deep-seated hatred of everything Islamic. In his personal writings and public speeches, he is fond of presenting his "facts" that Muslims are paracites, rapists, and the like, and even claims without a shred of evidence that Mohammed never existed and that the Koran in a forgery. Mr. Pipes claims that this demonstrates himself to be a centrist on Mid-East issues. The KKK would have loved this man.

In perhaps one of his most outstanding moments however, Mr. Pipes, in ideas remenicient of the massive WWII incarcerations of U.S. citizens for merely being of Japanese ancestry, also wants all American Muslims to be tracked without cause by the U.S. government:

The rise in attacks on mosques is a related symptom, one frighteningly reminiscent of the swastika scribblers of another era. Those jacking up the hate are elevated to the status of seers. To wit, one of America's chief vitriol-slingers is Daniel Pipes, a shill for Israel's ultra-right Likud party. He is demanding that all of the 6 million Muslims in America be monitored and their activities regulated. He wants campuses purged of attitudes sympathetic to Islam and Arabs. Pipes also claims that his "research" shows 15 percent of Muslims are proto-terrorists. At an Emory University forum earlier this year, his claim was exposed as a fraud and he admitted under fire that he has no evidence. Yet, he remains a frequent network chattering head denouncing Islam.

Mr. Pipes clearly has lost focus on the fact that this was the exact strategy employed by Nazi Germany that resulted in the eventual deaths of so many own his own ancestors during the Holocaust.

Such efforts of course deserve recognition and reward, and so Mr. Pipes has been nominated by the president to a directorship post on the U.S. Institute of Peace. With many American Muslims regard Pipes as "the nation's leading Islamophobe", the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a D.C.-based civil rights group, has called on the White House to rescind the nomination or the Senate to reject it.

Recent Articles:

Why the Left Loves Osama [and Saddam] ~ This article made quite a stir a few weeks ago when it was released, but it really is quite silly. Starting from a false spin-byte ("none of the millions of antiwar demonstrators have a bad word to say about Saddam") then claiming as "fact" something for which no data exists (all of the protesters are Marxists), Mr. Pipes proceeds to introduce the apparent bible of the left, "dependencia theory", a doctrine so purvasive that it produces a full 127 hits on a Google search. (It says that industrialized nations exploit third world labor for resources. In their countries.) From this, Mr. Pipes concludes that all peace marchers adore Saddam as a hero of the lower classes.

That people even give such nonsense a second glance is a sure indictment of our educational system. That a major newspaper would even think to publish it is astonishing.

Columbia VS. America ~ Mr. Pipes is also not immune to the practice of taking personal credit for the work of others, as this more recent article (in which he takes the lead credit) demonstrates. His co-author, Jonathan Calt Harris, is actually the head of Campus Watch (a student organization Mr. Pipes founded to track college professors of Middle East ancestry and sympathies), and indeed, he merely quotes (but does not attribute to) that group's research in paragraph after paragraph. In fact, even a casual comparison of this article's content against that group's research suggests that Mr. Pipes merely placed his name as the lead in a cheap attempt to draw attention to its quite marginal content.

This article starts with its two big punches: statements that Campus Watch (a student organization he founded to track college professors of Middle East ancestry) claims were made by two professors of Middle East Studies at Columbia Universtiy, both of which are highly inflamatory and "anti-Western". Now I am not at all an expert on who Columbia selects professors for their Middle East Studies program, but it is clear that Campus Watch feels that this program would provide a better education for its students if anti-Israeli sentiments were never mentioned. That might be nice for Israel, but it could hardly produce a graduate qualified to work in that area.

From there, the list of "outrageous statements" by a half dozen other professors in that program that consist of little more than references to American policy such as "imperialistic", "beligerent", "fraud", and "abuse". Now, that such references are well open for debate, I will not attempt to deny. But sentiments such as these are hardly unique to the Muslim community, and to somehow use them as an indictment of this entire program at Columbia is nonsense. Mr. Pipes is simply suggesting that any college program on the Middle East is invalid if it is not totally slanted to pro-Zionist sentiments.

And it is important to put this into context: Students in this program at Columbia hardly confine themselves to just courses from this department. In all likelihood, while they focus their studies on Middle Eastern history and current issues, the majority of their courses are elsewhere in subjects such as philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology and the like. Mr Pipes would likely not want you to know this. He would prefer his readers to believe that the best and brightest of our students are somehow being brainwashed by some massive conspiracy. (This is a common fantasy of all fundamentalists.) It is not Columbia University that is attempting brainwashing, Mr. Pipes. It is you.

[Grade: F ... Danny: Your writing is slim on any real content and and filled with unsupportable fabricatoin. You also go out of your way trying to draw associations that simply do not withstand even casual scrutiny. Your habit of taking personal credit for the research of others is repulsive. For this reason, I feel compelled to file a federal lawsuit against Harvard University in which I will claim that legacy admissions were prejudicial in that they unfairly denied access to that fine universty by better-qualified students.]

Freedom of the Press: US warplanes bomb Al Jazeera office, kill journalist The Baghdad office of Al-Jazeera was struck by two U.S. missiles earlier today, killing one employee and injuring another. Per anonther Al Jazeera correspondent, "Al-Jazeera office is located in a residential area and there is no way that the attack was a mistake." US warplanes also targeted the neighbouring Abu Dhabi TV offices. The U.S. has previously targeted Al-Jazeera correspondents in both Basra and two years ago during the war in Afghanistan.

So they've started shooting already. Oakland, California police, in a direct violation of their training, have fired wooden bullets directly at protestors. Such bullets are provided to them as non-lethal force so long as they are fired into the ground for a scatter-shot effect. It is time to disarm these police and pull the plug of AM radio jackasses in the San Francisco Bay Area. Free speech must never include protection for the incitement to riot, and unauthorized use of weapons must equally exempt police officers from the broad protections of law offered them by their badges. Good God! Are we back to Kent State already? In addition to several protestors, a number of bystanders were also injured. See you in court, Oakland.

The paper shredders in the libraries of Santa Cruz, California are working overtime these days. Anyone looking to "throw the bums" out might well start here in a search for their replacements.

The latest and greatest WMD discovery trurned out to be insect poison. Hey, assholes, remember Union Carbide and Bhopal? Weapons of mass destruction, indeed. Same as my feet when I find an ant colony.

Neocon Watch:

Tom Friedman is out with a new article called Watch Out for Hijackers, and indeed seems to be continuing his concern with how Bush, the man, will be handling things after the war is "over". By "highjackers", he is referring to who is selected for the interim governments. Indeed, a war is currently going on between State and Defense over this. Mr. Friedman is understandably cautious on this, yet fails entirely to mention the biggest hijacking threats; companies like Bechtel and Halliburton.

[Grade: B- ... Tom: Your concerns are admirable, but you continually avoid facts that you clearly have available to you. Since you are quite well aware that campaign contributions will determine the future of Iraq, why don't you just come out and say it instead of hoping that you will not be proved the fool by your earlier advocacies for death?]

William Kristol also has a new piece out in his Weekly Standard called The War For Liberalism, in which he merely continues here his ad hominem attacks on the left. Mr. Kristol would undoubtable say that my characterization of his statements as such is a sign of my own inability to understand the "depth" of his thought, but as the American Prospect points out quite well in it's review of his article, every "fact" that Mr. Kristol references has been "reformatted" by him for his own convenience; a conveniencne that as always lies far askew from the truth. When the points a writer desires to make have to be hidden under such glossey misstatement of truth and the writer is as well aware that he is doing so as Mr. Kristol is, it ceases to be merely a political commentary. It instead becomes a mere lie, meant solely to attack whomever Mr. Kristol, in this untimate act of intellectual laziness, has failed to anticipate.

[Grade: F ... Billy: You clearly have good writing skills. Why you try to pass sloppy research off on me is something I cannot fathom.]

Warnings on the Professionalization of the Military: Charley Reese thinks there should be a lot more shared sacrifice during wartime, and offers several suggestions for ways that might happen. One of these is a movement away from our all-volunteer Army and towards the more traditional "citizen soldier" format of earlier times. His concern with the all-volunteer Army is that as it has evolved both in its make-up and our deployments of it, it looks increasingly more like a mercenary force, and it is from this type of army that most military coups arise.

Indeed, as this New York Times article (purchase only) points out, today's all-volunteer Army is beginning to represent less of a cross-section of America and more of the mercenary force that Charley cautions against. Indeed, since the inception of the all-voluntary Army, the following changes have been noted:

• While the generally more educated upper and upper-middle classes tend to shun military service, the overall education level of those in the military has risen above that found in the general population.
• Participation level by geographic region is increasing skewing away from the Northeast and towards the South, with additional (but lesser) skewing across other regions.
• The military is increasingly relying on re-enlistments instead of new enlistments for fulfilling its force requirements.
• And alarmingly, as the number of members of Congress who are veterans decline, the partisanship among the military officer corps has skyrocketed.

While several of these changes do bode well for military effectiveness, combined they also increasingly tend to separate the social consciousnesses of those forces from those held by mainstream America. The all-volunteer Army is increasingly begining to look like a warrior caste, and it would be from just such isolation that one would expect any sentiment towards a military coup to arise.

Now I'll admit Charley's caution might sound way too far out; that our soldiers would never do anything like this. But it is just this level of our own disbelief that should concern us, for it occurs to me that by the time something like this stops sounding so far out, it would probably be too late to do anything about it. And as Charley himself concludes, "One should never fall into the trap of thinking that just because something has not happened, it can't happen."

In Israel, "Iraq war provides cover for fresh Israeli crackdown". As widely predicted, the Sharon government has used the distraction of the world press by events in Iraq to step up actions against Palestinians. In all, 17 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the Iraq war, including six children and an elderly man. Speculation exists that Sharon may be using this violence to incite Palestinian reprisals, which might then derail the recently-announced Bush-Blair peace intitiatve for that region.

Israel's leading "liberal" newspaper, Ha'aretz, comes under fire in Jonathan Cook's "The two faces of Ha'aretz". Cook notes (among other things) "the ommission of Intifada stories that might cast an unsympathetic light on Israel as well as the willful mistranslation (between Israeli and English language editions) of passages that reveal the depth and extent of racist attitudes towards Palestinians".

And from Ha'aretz comes this: White man's burden

Meet neoconservative columnists William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and Thomas Friedman, marketers all in the march to Iraq. Kristol feels that it's O.K. if the U.S. makes a "few mistakes" in the Iraq war. To him, an elegant war with 60 killed in two weeks isn't any different than a less elegant affair with a thousand killed in two months. Hey Bill, we've hit a thousand already and it's not yet three weeks. Does that count?

Krauthammer, an animal unto himself, began his advocacy for the Iraq war before the dust of the Trade Center had even settled. To him the Iraq war is really the beginning of a gigantic historical experiment; ambitious, perhaps even utopian. Utopia on the front end of a cruise missile, no doubt.

Friedman at least seems to have the soul he was born with. Having started his war advocacy with enthusiasm, of late he has been voicing increasing concern that Bush may not be the person to run it. Of the three, he is also the only one honest enough to call this the neoconservative's war. (Both Kristol and Krauthammer defer to self-denial on this point.) While Friedman appears more level-headed than his colleagues, he nonetheless remains a committed hawk.

The trouble with their neoconservative philosophy of course is that it one and the same as the "bigger stick" policy that has mired Israel in a perhaps endless cycle of violence: if a certain level of force does not defeat "the enemy", simply apply more and more until it does. While this will work on a conventional battleground, it fails in these circumstances for two reasons. First, it assumes that the enemy has somewhere to retreat to. This is certainly not the Palestinian situation, nor can it be with any indigenous population. Which leads to the second error, and that is that at some point in this ratcheting up of force stops being war and instead becomes genocide. That these writers in particular seem unfazed by this last fact remains beyond my comprehension.

Supporting the Troops: Army chaplain offers baptisms, baths

CAMP BUSHMASTER, Iraq - In this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there's an oasis of sorts: a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water.

It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity.

''It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,'' he said.

Molly Ivins has her usual great article today on Working for Change. Among a host of other points, she is particularly ticked off by our plans to pay for universal health care for Iraqi citizens when we cannot find a way to do the same for our own. She concludes her article by relating an "incident" regarding a recent talk she gave in Ames, Iowa. I will let her questioner speak for himself:

I'm from Texas, but I left 50 years ago. I guess I've just forgotten. Could you explain to me just what you Texans mean when you say, ‘Compassion?'

Well said.

From Asia Times, there is this on how to tell if your newspaper or TV station is lying to you. To their excellent suggestions, I would add what I call my "smell test". Is this how people act? Under what conditions would they act in this fashion? What would be their emotional motivation as they took this action? If the action described and the motivation attributed to it cannot pass these three simply questions, then it fails my "smell test". In short, it stinks. What you are in all probability reading (or hearing) is propaganda, and should by you be summarily dismissed as such.

In the Mailbag:

Upon viewing the quite mild "Faces of Iraq" flash movie I posted below, my fundamentalist (and then some) friend, MsFedup, writes to tell me that my brain has clearly been greatly disturbed by my liberal educators. Just how MsFedup comes upon her knowledge that my educators were liberal is beyond me, seeing as that my formal education ended a quarter of a century before I ever ran into her, but that is beside the point. Fundamentalists simply know these things.

I first ran into this idea that education pollutes the mind when I was 17 and was listening to the father of one of my first Great Loves. His contention then was that since it seemed that the more a person was educated, the less they were inclined to accept stricter religious interpretations, it was education itself that was wrong. Now he was correct in his premise: on average, the more education one has, the less they are inclined toward religious strictness. But even now, 35 years later, I can recall being deeply disturbed by the conclusion he had arrived at. Naturally, being at the time quite hormonally-driven in my adoration of his daughter, I said nothing. Still, the fact that I remember his statement even today suggests that incident to be some sort of "defining moment" in my life.

At 17, I had only recently moved away from my Catholic upbringing, preferring instead to view myself as an Agnostic. It would take an additional four years before I "made my conversion" to Atheism. (One does not actually "convert" to Atheism; one merely arrives there.) This conversion, of course, was made during the period of my life that MsFedup would likely call the "liberal warping" of my mind.

Now to be honest, in my four years at that Ivy League university, I cannot recall being involved in a single conversation about religion, and nor can I recall a single professor speaking to that topic. My conversion was a silent one, and indeed, it would be an additional 25 years that I would remain mostly silent on this. It was, I was told often enough, not something to be spoken of in "polite society".

But MsFedup has an answer for this one too. It wasn't necessary for religion to be brought up during my university days. My professors, you see, were all part of a grand and quite sophisticated conspiracy to deprive me of the knowledge of God. A conspiracy, as MsFedup would no doubt confirm, that was headed by none other than Satan himself. Fundamentalists simply know these things.

Which brings me back to this concept of education as a villain. There seems to be some sort of "brain slip" to an argument which essentially posits that the more one knows, the stupider one becomes. Some sort of element in this reasoning simply defies reason itself.

Now, I am not at all against religion. Quite to the contrary, the various world religions provide to most of the world's peoples their definition of morality. To the extent that they do so, I find them to be of great beauty.

But I am of a more Buddhist mindset, in that I see many roads to the top of the mountain, but only a single mountain to climb. To the extent that other religions provide a road up that mountain that differs from the one provided me through my Atheism, I embrace them and wish them Godspeed on their separate but equal journeys. But that is where my tolerance of religion stops.

When a religion (such as the one held by MsFedup) claims that any not on its own road will be forever damned to some fiction that they call Hell, my tolerance ends. Such religions are not contributing towards the betterment of human morality; such religions instead are seeking to destroy it.

This is of course, as MsFedup would no doubt claim, how education contributes to stupidity. Fundamentalists simply know these things.

From t r u t h o u t, there is this: Several more acts of violence against those who oppose this war. This one strikes particularly close to home for me. I am quite familiar with the Wheaton campus, having had my third Great Love as a student there, and having actually lived on that campus (with her) after I graduated. Norton, Massachusetts was back then a quite woodsy and isolated place, and indeed, the Wheaton campus (all female, back then) was, though not fenced in, simply a place that you did not enter without proper business there. It was just that simple, and all locals knew and respected the campus. But these are different times. An again, there have been no arrests. As I reported below, this is how it begins: rhetoric and unpunished violence. It begins this way, and if not stopped, it will end the same way it did back in the 70's. It will end with those who advocate for peace being murdered. It will end with the murderers going unidentified and unpunished. It will end once again with the greatest of humiliations of our country before the world: That we who espouse so greatly the freedoms provided by the First Amendment are totally incapable of defending those very freedoms in our own backyard.

Faces from Iraq: A long-time anti-war friend just sent me this link to a Flash movie. I had actually seen this a while back, perhaps a month or so before this war began. What struck me in viewing it again was that its orignal message still rang as true to me now that the war is on as it did from well before this trajedy began. I simply cannot look at these faces and see hate. I can't get anywhere past simply seeing them as my neighbors.

There is another war going on, and this one is inside of the Beltway. The should-be-discredited Rummy and his defense lackies are fighting with the State Department under Colin Powell as to who gains the spoils of this war. In a street fight (or just a good old fashioned debate), Rummy would die a quick death. Unfortunately, this is George Bush's White house, and rules of logic have no play there. So Powell and his State Department are getting their asses kicked by Rummy and Wolfy and the Prince of Darkness. Just a note: I will have more on Rummy in a few days. I am still working on it now, but trust me, it will blow your socks off.

James Higdon writes 'Things that God told me', in which he claims to have private conversations with God. After reading his article, I am inclined to believe that he does.

In the Mailbag:

As I write this, press reports indicate that 733 Iraqi civilians and 91 members of the Allied forces are dead. 824 sets of hope and dreams washed from the face of the earth. And there are obviously many more yet uncounted, and many more to come. We tried to stop this war, but we failed. At a time like this, it is easy for me to look inward and ask, "Why bother?. The enemy is all around us and so much stronger than we are. Why waste so much effort, when failure is inevitable?" I really wasn't in that kind of a mood at all yesterday when I recieved a letter from friend Brooke. In it, she had forwarded an essay by Clarissa Pinkola Estes entitled "Letter to a Young Activist During Troubled Times", a paragraph of which appears below. I've posted it in its entirity here, and for any of you who, like me, wander from time to time into the "Why bother?" mood, this essay will do a very nice job of getting you out of it.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able crafts in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind... Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

There is an interesting concept in this essay: That of slowing down the outside of a waterspout. We did not lose this battle. We in fact won it. Yes, those 824 sets of hopes and dreams are gone forever, but we slowed that down. For each and every one of these, we gave them a few days or a few weeks of extra time. I suspect that if we could talk to any one of these now, they would say thank you for those extra moments. But we did more than that: We slowed this machine down. We slowed it down long enough to gather a world's worth of opinion behind us. We slowed it down long enough to terribly upset the machine's plans for its next and next and next conquests. We put the bug in the machine of world empire. World empire is now effectively dead. The neocons are effectively halted. They have not yet even admitted this to themselves, but there is simply no way that they can continue their crusade without facing a global uprising of such force that even the most powerful of militarys in the history of the world could overcome. No, we did not save those 824 people who have thus far died, but we have done just a bit better than that. These dreams of empire died last week in Iraq, and with these, so also died any claim of legitimacy for the Presidency of George Bush.

I don't know where these people get the nerve, but Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (Republican, of course) thinks New York cops and firemen should work overtime without pay as a wartime sacrifice. Naturally, both of these groups are outraged at his suggestion. A couple of thoughts occur to me on this. First of all, it's none of Stevens' business. Second, I haven't seen where Stevens has offered to return any of his compensation to help pay the $75 billion price tag on this war. But stuff like this is merely the tip of the iceberg on Republican thought regarding compensating employees. Two things that they really hate and want to eliminate (Republican insiders have actively confirmed this to me) are overtime pay and the minimum wage. Regarding overtime pay, their argument is that since the same amount of work is done during Hour 40 and Hour 41, the same compensation for both is completely fair. On a casual level, this certainly seems to make sense, but of course, it is a complete denial of history. ("Supply-siders" are very good at forgetting history.) Prior to the enactment of overtime legislation, employers routinely forced their employees to work to 60 and 70 hours weeks. Overtime legislation was never meant to prevent that, simply to apply a set of brakes to it. If employers want to work their employees to exhaustion, they still can, but the employee gets additionally rewarded for doing so. Somehow, Republicans see this as an undo burden on their favorite pet, the American businessman, but they won't tell you that. What they will tell you is they they are merely looking out for the employee who has to stop working at 40 hours because his boss won't pay overtime. Imagine that! Republicans, champions of the little guy! At the same time, of course, this party wants you to believe it to be the party of "family values". But I fail to see where "family values" come in when one or both parents are removed from the household for an additional 20 or 30 hours a week. Family values, it seems, are fine for Republicans, but only after the businessman had lined his pockets. Of course, the far greater hypocracy is the Republican desire to eliminate the minimum wage. Once again, they have a nice little justification for this: Compensation is a private matter between the employee and the employer, and the employee is harmed by not being allowed to work at whatever wage he deems is appropriate. Champions of the little guy again! Of course, this is ludicrous. Even at the current low level of the minimum wage, a household of even the poorest of quality simply cannot be maintained, and indeed many households are dissolved when a single bread-winner cannot find employment above minimum wage. So much for family values. Business first; families second. But wait, Republicans say. If we eliminate both overtime and the minimum wage, employees will then be able to work as many hours as they need to provide for their households. If 40 isn't enough, they can work 50, or 60, or 70, or ... well, I guess they can just work themselves to death trying to support a pigsty. But don't ask them how the businessman fares during all of this. They will accuse you of class warfare.

Health Department officials in New York are seeking the power to quarantine for up to 60 days anyone it suspects may be a victim of smallpox or other deadly disease that could be spread by terrorists, the New York Post reports. Now if that isn't ripe for abuse, I don't know what is. But, as The American Prospect points out, that hardly compares to the quarantine that President Bush faces.

Having been a protester during the Vietnam War, I've long seen the signs nurturing physical violence against protesters of this one. Just as then, every hand in inciting this will be quick to deny responsibility when these incidents occur. Just as then, politicians will say how horrible it is after it happens, but will not go on record in advance condemning this violence. Just as then, no one who takes part in this violence will be arrested. From AmericaHeld Hostile today comes Grafton resident beaten for views on war and DJ Incites Violence at Peace Rally. The process is well underway once again. And for those too young to remember the Vietnam protests, a little history lesson: Kent State did not happen overnight. Then, as now, the violence started as mere rhetoric. Then as now, the first small incidents of violence went unpunished. This lack of punishment emboldened others, and the violence escalated bit by bit, a little more each time, until 4 students were shot dead at a Kent State peace rally. And lest we forget, those murders too went unpunished.

Better late than never: Arab states push for General Assembly resolution ~ This should have been done weeks ago before the invasion started. Still, there's no Security Council-style veto power in the General Assembly, so this would clearly have a good chance of passing. Unfortunately, General Assembly resolutions are considered non-binding, but at least it would flush out just who is and who is not a member of the "Coalition of the Willing".

Mass Layoffs Threatened for Teachers in California Hey! This will work out well. Jack up class sizes, dumb down students, and then we'll have an endless supply of kids who aren't prepared for any job better than the Army. Talk about foresight! Flexibility too. Can't get the voucher idea past first base? Find another way to defund public education!

You've got to be joking: US assails rights record of Libya ~ Pardon me, but someone should have taken a good look in the mirror before releasing this list. Not that it isn't true, but there isn't a thing on this list that is not a part of the Bush gameplan too.

Kucinich to House: “Stop this war now.”

Stop this war now. Seventy-five billion dollars more for war. Three-quarters of a trillion dollars for tax cuts, but no money for veterans’ benefits. Money for war. No money for health care in America, but money for war. No money for social security, but money for war. We have money to blow up bridges over the Tigris and the Euphrates, but no money to build bridges in our own cities. We have money to ruin the health of the Iraqi children, but no money to repair the health of our own children and our educational programs.

How to make friends and influence people:
Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity bans Bush, supporters

"Room for one more." photo

From The Crisis Papers: "The Greatest Story Never Told" ~ Ernest Partridge reviews our new touch voting machines and finds them solely subject to fraud on a massive scale. Are they actually being rigged? That's the problem. As they are implemented, there is simply no way to tell. This is a major crisis confronting our democratic system and its future viability, and the mainstream press is virtually ignoring it. (What's new?) To anyone with a computer background, it is quite easy to see that these machines are "fixable". Indeed, it is so easy to "fix" these machines, that it is almost impossible to think that someone has not already done so. To Mr. Partrige's comments in this regard, I would simply add this: In a democracy, it is not only important that votes be counted correctly, but also that the voters have confidence that the votes are being counted correctly. These machine simply do not inspire any such confidence. For an additional set of links on this issue, click here.

Has the "real world" set a trap for the United States? You decide.

As thoughts on the eve of the apocalypse points out, first Rummy, then Powell, says, "Back off, Syria!" Syria's answer? Up yours! Watch for Israel to take up the slack on this one.

Iraq Diaries (31 March 2003)

Cathy Breen and I visited Amal at the home of her friends, having heard that her home had been further destroyed by ongoing bombing. She then took us to her house which faces the river, graced by a garden where flowers are blossoming. Picking our way through broken glass at the entrance, we entered what was once one of the most well appointed homes in Baghdad. The rooms are in disarray. Several walls are cracked, the windows are all shattered, and a thick layer of dust and grime covers the exposed furniture, books, carpets and floors.

Fired by America for telling the truth...
Hired by the Daily Mirror to carry on telling it

That was the headline as Peter Arnett was hired by none other than London's loudest anti-war voice, The Daily Mirror. Read also his first story for them: This War is not Working.

Kirwan has a new article over at AmericaHeldHostile called "Through the Hourglass - Darkly". If you haven't run into him yet, his commentary is always extremely biting and is inevitably accompanied by his own surrealistic political artwork. He's done a bit of a flip-flop in this article however, because he's made the artwork (a series of seven hourglass images) itself the article and simply allowed his commentary to accompany it. Always good graphics; definitely anti-Bush.