NPK is out of town, so instead of Friday Night at 8, welcome to a mini version of the NOLA/Gulf Coast Blogathon. I know NPK would approve!
Apr 19 2008
Pfriday Phony Pony Party
this is a phony pony….SomeOne Pforgot!
here’s some more phony’s….
pflease don’t REC this phony pony. Go see some of the Great Essay’s on the Pfront Page. They deserve your REC’s.
Apr 19 2008
President Obama – promise me you’ll clean house?
( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Do these people have no shame?
The LA Times is reporting that the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles has been trying to ring up impressive numbers – by having his prosecutors going after, well, parking violators:
The disgruntled prosecutors in Los Angeles say they are now spending an exorbitant amount of time working on less significant cases — mail theft, smaller drug offenses and illegal immigration — to reach quotas. They cited the recent disbanding of the office’s public integrity and environmental crimes section, a unit with a history of working on complex police corruption and political corruption cases, as evidence of a shift toward high-volume, low-quality prosecutions . . .
The decision to set numeric goals appears to be unprecedented in the recent history of the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles. U.S. attorneys going back to the early 1990s said they had no such goals.The move was part of a broader office restructuring to address a severe staffing shortage and steadily declining productivity, which had fallen 30% or 40% from 2001, O’Brien said.
Think about it: Declining numbers since 2001. Hmmm, I wonder what would’ve happened in 2001 that would’ve caused federal prosecutors to decrease the number of piddling little cases they took on? I wonder whether they might have had to start working instead on bigger, more significant cases that involved, oh, say, congressmen and so on? Like, say, Carol Lam’s work that led to the conviction of Republican Duke Cunningham? Or, say, Debra Wong Yang’s work to go after Republican Jerry Lewis?
Oh, but wait! Carol Lam was fired because her “work output” was too low. And, shoot, Debra Wong Yang? Well, she was supposed to be pursuing Lewis. Only – well, here:
- Debra Wong Yang, in October 2006, five months after beginning her work on the investigation into Lewis and his relationship with various defense contractors (hey, whaddaya know! – same thing Carol Lam clobbered Duke Cunningham for!), suddenly leaves her federal prosecutors’ position and goes to work for – mirabile dictu! – the very same law firm that is defending Republic Congressman Jerry Lewis!! For a $1.5 million signing bonus, no less! . . .
- A few weeks later, those less-compliant U.S. attorneys whose investigations and/or non-cooperation have proven problematic – including Carol Lam – are fired on December 7, 2006.
- Using the Senate-circumventing provisions of the PATRIOT Act, the White House, via the Department of Justice, immediately appoints George Cardona as acting U.S. attorney for the Los Angeles office. He does an outstanding job of not moving the investigation forward one iota in the intervening seven months (the maximum time allowed for his temporary, PATRIOT-enabled “acting” appointment), at which time (in June 2007) the BushCheney administration circumvents the Senate and names him interim U.S. attorney, which effectively means nothing will get done on the investigation into Lewis’s misdeeds until this administration is gone.
- As soon as Cardona gets his interim appointment, he appoints Michael Emmick to head up the Lewis investigation. Or, as the WSJ dutifully reports it,
To jump-start the Lewis investigation, Mr. Cardona, the interim U.S. attorney, in June called on a veteran prosecutor, Michael Emmick, to revive and supervise the investigation, people with knowledge of the investigation say.
Heh: “jump-start.” Yeah, right: “revive and supervise.” Yeah – sorta like Michael Corleone’s assassin went to Hyman Roth’s hospital room with a pillow in The Godfather: Part II, so’s he could “revive and supervise” him. Unh-huh, shoor.
The above is from a diary I wrote last September telling of the Justice Department’s crying about “budget cuts” making it necessary for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles to take on fewer cases and “slow down” ongoing cases. Yeahhh, riiiight.
Oh – and then, last month, Tom O’Brien, who heads the L.A. office, says, shoot, looks like we’re gonna hafta close down our public integrity and environmental crimes section. And here is the positively Orwellian spin the office tried to put on that (emphasis added):
[U.S. Attorney spokesman Thom] Mrozek insisted the changes will not mean the office will prosecute fewer public integrity cases, which include civil rights violations, police misconduct cases and public corruption by government workers and elected officials.“The idea is to see additional crimes prosecuted in this area,” Mrozek said, adding that public corruption is one of U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s top five priorities.
Huh – I wonder what the other four are. I can only imagine. But given that, just yesterday, the Pentagon inspector general released a report detailing an instance in which George Bush himself as well as a few Air Force generals had intervened to improperly award a $50 million contract, and a year after the FBI was called in to investigate,
The U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada declined to prosecute the case in May 2007
– well, then, I gotta believe those other four “top priorities” must be taking up all of Atty. Gen. Mukasey’s time.
So – last September, the L.A. office of the U.S. Attorney says it is cutting back investigations because of “budget restraints.” Now, all of a sudden, according to today’s LA Times article, a month after U.S. Attorney O’Brien eliminates the public integrity and environmental crimes section,
O’Brien estimates that he has hired 60 new prosecutors over the last year and that the office is approaching its full strength of 267 lawyers for the first time in recent memory.
Huh. Wow. Not enough attorneys to pursue big, complicated investigations (coughJerryLewiscough), but the money rolls in from DOJ when those pesky illegal immigrants are rounded up.
Funny how that works.
But here’s maybe the best part of the story:
O’Brien’s critics question his motives in pushing for increased productivity. They say he wants higher stats to help his chances of remaining in the politically connected post of U.S. attorney regardless of who wins the presidential election in November. O’Brien denied that accusation.
You’re kidding, right?
Also available in Orange
Apr 19 2008
NATO’s Own Mercenaries Supply the Taliban
So in the news today, The Guardian has this story: Nato admits mistakenly supplying arms and food to Taliban.
Nato forces mistakenly supplied food, water and arms to Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, officials today admitted.
Containers destined for local police forces were dropped from a helicopter into a Taliban-controlled area of Zabul province…
A Nato spokesman said the pallets were carrying rocket propelled grenades, ammunition, water and food.
Nothing like delivering rocket propelled grenades into the hands of the Taliban to help “win” in Afghanistan.
According to the story on the ammo drop in the New York Daily News:
“The cargo consisted of 7.62-mm. small-arms ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and food and water. It did not contain any guns,” NATO said.
Upon delivery to the Taliban, the pallets were left unguarded. Even in the unlikely case of the Taliban did not already have guns to use the ammunition, it will surely obtain them in short order. Even without guns, the ammunition and explosives can be used to form lethal IEDs.
So is this a case of if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, or something else?
Well, NATO denies they’ve switched sides in the conflict. In The Guardian story, a NATO spokesperson is quoted as saying:
“We are aware of it but we are not fired up about it. It sounds like someone made a mistake. It was a cock-up rather than a conspiracy.
“The forces on the ground are working to get the message across that we do not deliberately supply the Taliban with arms.”
According to the story, “Afghan politicians have said they do not believe the drop was an accident.”
So how could such a “cock-up” happen? According to the story about the incident from the AFP, private military contractors, mercenaries made the drop.
“On March 25, a private helicopter company was contracted, on behalf of an ISAF unit, to resupply an Afghan National Police (ANP) outpost located in a remote mountain area” of Zabul provine, an ISAF statement said.
According to the NY Daily News, NATO spokesman, Portuguese Brig. Gen. Carlos Branco, “would not identify the air cargo firm or disclose how many RPGs and how much ammunition was airdropped to the enemy”.
NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan has been critically hampered for years by a lack of helicopters. In an October 2007 story, the Globe and Mail reported Beleaguered NATO set to charter helicopters (cached).
NATO plans to rent helicopters to resupply front lines and remote bases in southern Afghanistan – an unprecedented move that could reduce ground casualties even as it exposes the unwillingness of major European allies to send their choppers into dangerous, Taliban-infested areas.
Defence ministers meeting today in the Netherlands are expected to approve chartering up to 20 large helicopters, flown by civilian contractors, to provide vital airlift and reduce the number of military convoys exposed to roadside bombs.
Not only was this to be an unprecedented move for NATO, but the cost of chartering helicopters to fly supplies was expected to be high, more than $100-million a year. The price NATO troops would have to pay when NATO’s own mercenaries delivered weapons to the Taliban was not publicly disclosed.
Did the mercenary pilot and navigator just make a human mistake? Who knows? We don’t even know who they were employed by — and NATO isn’t saying.
The Bush administration blames its NATO allies for not providing enough helicopters for the Afghanistan mission. What U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others in the administration overlook is that America’s military helicopters are bogged down in a war of choice in Iraq. If the U.S. was not in Iraq, then it would have resources to fight in Afghanistan.
Last week, a British court ruled Faulty army gear may breach human rights.
Sending British soldiers out on duty with defective equipment may breach their human rights, the high court ruled today.
In a potentially significant verdict for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr Justice Collins ruled that a soldier “does not lose all protection simply because he is in hostile territory carrying out dangerous operations”.
Using mercenaries in Afghanistan endangers NATO soldiers there just as much as shoddy equipment. The use of mercenaries by NATO is a betrayal of the troops. By adopting the Bush administration’s efforts to privatize wars, NATO members have betrayed their fighting men and women they’ve ordered to serve in Afghanistan. This mercenary “cock-up” is just further evidence of their betrayal.
Apr 19 2008
Friday Philosophy: Torture
..
There seems to have been a lot of discussion about torture lately. How’s that for an understatement. I’ve taken note but have mostly resisted taking part in any of the discussions. Well, actually, I don’t suppose going to a lecture by a refugee rights advocate on Tuesday about the US role in torture actually counts as “resisting,” but I’ve mostly stayed away from online discussions. I’ve expressed my feelings about it in the past and it has not always been accepted in the spirit it was offered.
I was raised a boy, preordained to be a man. There is no dismissing that. That gives me a fairly rare perspective, given what has happened in my life in later years.
In the world of my youth, there were boys who took pleasure in torturing animals lower on the food chain. Like it or not, such boys were accorded status. Torturing animals was cool…up to a point. Except to those of us who thought it was gross. But expressing that disgust was a possible way to become a target oneself.
Those boys were better boys. That was the message I received when adults who either observed or were told about the behavior said,
Boys will be boys.
In our neighborhood were two bullies. I once confronted one of them when I became fed up at his torturing of another neighborhood kid, one I didn’t even particularly like. I beat up Don Smith when he broke Tom Jones’ glasses (those are their real names, not anonymous pseudonyms). I am still ashamed of that.
But I was congratulated. People said he needed it.
I never confronted Butch Watson. I tried to avoid him as much as possible. In Butch’s world, you either participated in the torture or you were prey.
In my sophomore year of high school I had just become starting QB on the junior varsity football team when I injured my right shoulder (while being forced to wrestle Bob Jacobsen during PE class), meaning I couldn’t pass the ball more than a few yards. I took the opportunity to quit football, ensuring the eternal disapproval of my father. But I walked away from a sport in which harming my opponent seemed to be the point and a team which had a sadist for a coach.
It was later in high school that I first really became aware that there were people who were supposedly designated universal targets for torture because they were in some way different than me…and that I was supposed to accept that as the way life was. Participating in that torture was the price one had to pay to be part of upper crust, however that was defined. I’m also ashamed that I remained silent then and for too much more of my life.
In 1967 I divorced my family. I refused to be taught how to torture by the US government. Word on the grapevine was that family members who might be contacted were often in danger of being tried as accomplices. That caused a great breach in my life. It turned out to be futile. I was captured and, circumstances being what they were at the time, was indeed taught those torturing skills. Being who I am, I learned…and I learned well enough to become a Spec 5 as a prison guard in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in two years.
I learned that having learned how to torture meant that every moment, I had to choose not to do it. I managed to accomplish that. I earned a Presidential Commendation after I became able to use my mind in order to help the prisoners rather than my body to harm them. But I could have done without the nightmares I had in which I actually used those skills to kill or maim someone.
After the Army, I became a teacher. Among other things, that gave me some standing to talk about bullying. So did being a parent. But it’s not like many people listened.
Boys will be boys. And some people have to be prey.
Then the school shootings picked up and people began to notice. People are quite good at beginning to notice when it is already way too late. It’s been too late as long as I can remember.
In later years I got to play target for quite a few years. There are still remnants of that. My ethics require speaking up in favor of eliminating people like me as prey. That has lead to disappointment…frustration…
There’s probably another word that goes there, but it doesn’t want to divulge itself at present.
We are a society, a culture, a country that tortures. We have always been one.
Beyond that, everything is a matter of degree.
 Bruise
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Apr 18 2008
Impeachment is the only way they don’t get away with torture
( – promoted by buhdydharma )
United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 2: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Emphasis mine.
Impeachment at this juncture and based on the revelations over , regardless of the arguments against it, is a moral imperative. Bush will no doubt pardon anyone that has any connection to any wrongdoings, and even though Obama and Clinton talk about investigating the crimes committed in this administration, I think we all probably know how difficult it will be to get anything meaningful done in that respect, although if either of them do, I will be so very pleasantly surprised.
That being said, the arguments of “not enough time” or “not enough votes” all melt away when compared to the implications and consequences of ignoring and tacitly approving of torture. Torture is the most heinous and sadistic of acts that I can possibly think of. I would be willing to be there are millions, nay, tens of millions of Americans who agree with me. Yet, for us tens of millions, we will be known as “those people who torture”.
And it will not be forgotten, nor will anybody be forgiven (not to mention our troops being at greater risk for being tortured if captured).
Illegal wiretapping, while a violation of the Constitution and most certainly an impeachable offense, is not a crime against humanity. Outing an entire covert network of nuclear proliferation tracking, certainly more impeachable than lying about a blowjob, was never something that most people could understand how directly they were impacted by that. Ignoring subpoenas, destroying evidence of torture, lying to Congress and misleading the American people wasn’t something that apparently caught on in terms of anyone in Congress caring enough to pursue.
But torture is different.
Torture is subhuman. Torture is clearly illegal. Torture is a stain on the entire country. It is never “for noble causes”. It is never “right”, it is never “just” and it is never acceptable on any legal or moral level whatsoever.
Criminals associated with the administration were pardoned and the country “moved ahead” in a number of prior republican administrations. And while some of these criminals did commit some heinous crimes, I don’t believe that top administration officials – including the President – had such a hand in directing, approving and planning the torture of other humans – no matter what those humans were suspected of doing (or merely being associated with).
And this is the difference. Whether we approve of Bush and his administration or not, he does represent this country. As does/did Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Powell and Ashcroft. They are the face of “America’s bullying foreign policy”.
And they have associated this country with being torturers.
There is only one remedy that will ensure that the perpetrators will not get away with it. And to make any argument against this remedy ignores the consequence of “America tortures” will have on us for many years to come. It can be used as an excuse for attacks on our troops. It can be used as an excuse to attack US interests around the world. It can be used as an excuse to attack us here in America. It can be used as a reason to not ever take us seriously again.
What happens now is what will define us as a nation.
******************
Please join the ACLU in demanding a special prosecutor to investigate the role that was played by the highest officials in the Bush administration – including Bush himself in the acts described above.
And please spread the word – even if the corporate media doesn’t think that this is important enough – it is how we act now with respect to accountability that will determine who we are as a country. It has been almost two weeks since this story broke and there is still a near complete blackout on this story.
Apr 18 2008
Four at Four
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Top general ‘hoodwinked’ over torture
By Richard Norton-Taylor, The GuardianThe US’s most senior general was “hoodwinked” by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques for terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, the Guardian can reveal.
The development led to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners.
General Richard Myers, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.
The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington – who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date – is disclosed in a devastating account of their role… in his new book…
Is this operation CYA for Myers?
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NATO mistakenly supplying arms and food to Taliban
By Anil Dawar, The GuardianNato forces mistakenly supplied food, water and arms to Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, officials today admitted.
Containers destined for local police forces were dropped from a helicopter into a Taliban-controlled area of Zabul province. The coalition helicopter had intended to deliver pallets of supplies to a police checkpoint in Ghazni, a remote section of Zabul late last month…
A Nato spokesman said the pallets were carrying rocket propelled grenades, ammunition, water and food.
Heckuva a job NATO! Actually, it wasn’t NATO per se. It was their private military contractors. Mercenaries at their finest.
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Pentagon institute calls Iraq war ‘a major debacle’ with outcome ‘in doubt’
By Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott, McClatchy Newspapers
The war in Iraq has become “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush’s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.
The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.
It was published by the university’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center.
“Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle,” says the report’s opening line…
The report also singles out the Bush administration’s national security apparatus and implicitly President Bush and both of his national security advisers, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, saying that “senior national security officials exhibited in many instances an imperious attitude, exerting power and pressure where diplomacy and bargaining might have had a better effect.”
No one could have predicted an invasion and occupation of Iraq could go badly… oh wait. Nevermind.
Four at Four continues below the fold with an effort to convert polar bears into oil.
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The Associated Press reports Bush flunkies seek more time for decision on listing polar bears. “The Department of the Interior wants 10 more weeks to decide whether polar bears should be listed as threatened or endangered, a delay conservation groups condemned as tied to the transfer of offshore petroleum leases in one of the animals’ two U.S. habitats. The Interior Department on Jan. 9 missed a deadline for a final decision, and three conservation groups sued…”“The request for more time is likely a tactic by political appointees to delay a decision until the Minerals Management Service can finish issuing offshore petroleum leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwest shore, home to one of two polar bear populations in Alaska, to further protect the leases from legal challenges.”
Apr 18 2008
Through the Darkest of Nights: Testament VIII
Every few days over the next several months I will be posting installments of a novel about life, death, war and politics in America since 9/11. Through the Darkest of Nights is a story of hope, reflection, determination, and redemption. It is a testament to the progressive values we all believe in, have always defended, and always will defend no matter how long this darkness lasts.
All installments are available for reading here on my page, and also here on Docudharma’s Fiction Page, where refuge from politicians, blogging overload, and one BushCo outrage after another can always be found.
When the rain stopped, Shannon and I walked out onto the National Mall into air washed clean of the stench of deceit and corruption that pervades this city. The stench factories at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue will foul the air again within minutes, but for now the air is breathable. Shannon had been silent inside the Lincoln Memorial, she’d only spoken once. We were looking out at the Capitol, barely visible in the mist at the far end of the Mall, and her words expressed exactly what I’d been thinking.
“It’s even farther away than it looks, Jericho. It’s so far away it’s not even in this world anymore.”
As we walked along the pathway beside the Reflecting Pool, I longed to ask Shannon to tell me about herself, to explain who she was, to tell me why she had come into my life. I keep remembering her words that night in New York . . .
I want to believe she’s who I think she is, but it doesn’t seem possible. She may share all of her secrets with me someday, but until then, just being with her restores my hope that this nightmare will end, and that I will live to see it. So I walked silently beside her, until she began to speak of what was to come.
“I know what’s in your heart, Jericho, I know it is broken. But many hearts are broken.”
“I know they are . . . I wish I could heal them, Shannon, I wish I could heal them all.”
“But you feel alienated.”
“I feel like . . . like it’s useless to care anymore. No matter how hard I try, nothing is ever going to change. Maybe my alienation is my fault. Maybe it isn’t. I’ve never spoken to anyone but Sarah about it until now. What would people say in response? Some would say I’m antisocial. Some would say I must think I’m better than everyone else. Some would tell me to quit feeling sorry for myself and get a life.”
“Those who crawl into bed with the whore of complicity are the ones who need to get a life, Jericho. They are obsessed with money and possessions, they fill their homes with the empty prizes of this empty society of empty people with empty eyes and empty dreams. They harbor resentment if others have more empty prizes than they do. They get married for the shallowest of reasons, then wonder why their marriages crumble into dust. They compete for lovers, for position, for power, for status. They measure the meaning of their lives by all of the wrong standards-the size of their dwelling, the extent of their wealth, the scope of their influence, the desirability of their bodies.”
Shannon looked into my eyes. “You are not alienated, Jericho. They are. They are alienated from what really matters. They deceive themselves into thinking they will find happiness, but they will not find it, they will never find it, they do not even know what happiness is. They think they will finally be happy if they can get one more promotion, or find one more good investment, or close one more deal so they can be Sales Drone of the Year and be the envy of all the other sales drones. But happiness does not lie ahead of them, it does not lie ahead of any of them. Endless shame lies ahead of them, endless carnage lies ahead of them, endless war lies ahead of them.”
“I don’t understand. If endless war awaits us, seeking peace seems useless.”
“There are many forms of war, Jericho, and there are many forms of peace. The most terrible manifestation of war is the war that never ends within every human soul, between love and hate, between compassion and vengeance, between truth and deceit, for the wars of this world wreak their destruction when hate and vengeance and deceit are winning that war within each of us. That war never ends. Hate and vengeance and deceit are winning that war in more human souls than ever before, and endless war among nations will be the consequence. But that war within each of us has not yet been lost.”
We reached the end of the Reflecting Pool, and Shannon glared at the White House for a moment before turning away in disgust. “The exploiters have maintained their power by inciting hate and vengeance, by engaging in deceit, and by inflicting emotional and psychological torment on those who resist them. They will expand their power by escalating that incitement and intensifying that torment. It will be unrelenting, it will go on for years. The innocent and the powerless will be subjected to one outrage after another, but there will be no deliverance from the evil of these vipers. The institutions of democracy will be purged of believers in democracy, and betrayers of democracy will take their place.”
“And no one will challenge them?”
“No one in power will challenge them, so the torment will go on. Torment can be endured, Jericho, but everyone has a breaking point. The exploiters know that. They are determined to destroy all resistance to them, to break our will to speak out against them, to torment every seeker of peace with their brutal agenda, and its brutal impact, and the brutal reality that no one will hold them accountable for the treason and war crimes they will commit.”
“There must be a way to make people listen, to stop this.”
“Seekers of peace must listen to each other first, Jericho. We must heal ourselves. Only then can we heal those who are in even more need of healing than we are. The afflicted cannot heal the afflicted. Believe me, I have learned that lesson.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
“When you are ready, I will tell you about it, I will tell you about everything. But I will not burden you with that now, you are burdened enough as it is. Your heart is already broken, the hearts of millions are already broken, but your hearts can be healed. By each other.”
“By reaching out to one another.”
“Yes. By speaking to one another, heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul, in words of healing, in words of compassion and encouragement and empowerment. You all feel isolated, you are isolated, but physical distance from one another no longer matters. The broken hearted in Michigan and Illinois and Missouri will reach out to one another, the broken hearted in every state, in every city and town across this wasteland ruled by highly paid heart-breakers will seek union and healing and empowerment through one another, and they will find what they seek. They will tell each other their stories, and in the telling, healing will come, and when healing comes, communion will come, and when communion comes, empowerment will come, and when empowerment comes, the resistance will begin.”
“The Internet. We’ll use the Internet.”
“Of course. The resistance I speak of is already emerging. It will be a resistance unlike any before, it will be a resistance born and forged by seekers of peace who may never meet, but whose hearts beat as one. It will begin among the broken-hearted who think they are alone, it will begin among those who think it hurts too much to care anymore, but who care anyway. It will begin when the broken-hearted reach out to one another, and realize they can heal one another. So they will, and a ripple of healing will spread outward in concentric rings of compassion, across this country and then across this world.”
We stood at the base of the Washington Monument and looked back at the Lincoln Memorial. “Think of that Memorial when your faith in yourself is tested, Jericho. Think of Abraham Lincoln, and remember that one human being can make a difference, that one human being can free millions of other human beings from bondage. If enough Americans remember that, they can free themselves from bondage, and then free all of humanity from bondage.”
Ahead of us the Capitol stood atop its hill. Shannon would not even look at it, she looked at me instead, and there was fire in her eyes. “America once had leaders who actually cared about the truth, Jericho. They sought it and spoke it, but those days are gone. American journalists cared about the facts, they sought them and reported them, but those days are gone. America was respected in the world. That respect was sought and earned, but those days are gone. This nation is staggering into the twilight of its existence. Americans are afraid of losing their freedom, but they are even more afraid of defending it.”
Shannon unclasped her necklace and gave it to me. “Someday, I will tell you who has worn this pendant in ages past, Jericho. Until then, wear it next to your heart. Wear it for America’s children, whose parents are too afraid to defend them. Wear it for her poor, for her homeless, for everyone in this country yearning to be free. Wear it for the Founding Fathers of this fallen land, who would weep in shame if they were alive today and had to look upon what this nation has become. Wear it for every young American about to be sent off to die by deceivers, wear it for the million human beings in Iraq who will perish because criminals covet the oil lying beneath the sands of the Cradle of Civilization.
Wear it next to your heart, Jericho, and know that when your breaking point comes, I will come to you. Until that night, when all will seem lost, wear it for the men, women, and children who are already lost, wear it for those who died with Sarah on that terrible morning, whose deaths have been exploited, so the patriotism of America can be exploited, so the sacrifice of her soldiers can be exploited, so the oil wealth of the Middle East can be exploited, so the anger of the Muslim world can be exploited, so other mornings of mass death will be triggered, so the cycle can be repeated, so the profits can be reaped.”
I looked down at the pendant in my hand, a broken heart linked to a necklace of silver that glistened in the sunlight like a promise of redemption.
“Believe in peace, Jericho. Believe in healing. Healing brings peace and peace brings healing.”
Shannon embraced me. “You must go your way now, and I must go mine. But when all seems lost, I will come to you as I have promised.”
Apr 18 2008
Filling up the tank
( – promoted by buhdydharma )
My first disclaimer is that this is not going to be an essay about gas prices. I’ll leave that for someone else.
What I want to talk about is how, in the midst of one outrage after another after another (those are all just from the front page here yesterday and today) we keep our sanity. Lets not fool ourselves, after awhile, staying awake and paying attention takes its toll. If it didn’t, more people would join us. There are times I can’t really blame my friends who don’t want to “mess with their beautiful minds” because its frankly exhausting keeping up with it all.
For some reason, I reached a bit of a breaking point this week in watching the ABC debate. I think it was more of a last straw than just the sheer inanity of that event. But after all the “fuck you’s” at the tv screen, I felt pretty exhausted. I need to fill up the tank.
One of the things I’ve learned in my professional life is that people who work day in and day out with families who are defeated and hopeless will come to feel defeated and hopeless themselves after awhile. My job as a leader of an organization doing that kind of work is to help staff keep going by providing the resources, support, education and environment they need to stay energized and hopeful in their work. So I’ve done alot of thinking over the years about how you fill up your tank.
Most of the time when people talk about this, they refer to what I would call “the basics”… you need to eat well, get enough sleep, exercise and make time for things that you enjoy. All those things are necessary I think, but not sufficient.
Let me quote a bit of a poem by David Whyte that I think gets to the core of this:
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes to recognize its own.
There you can be sure you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was meant to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness
and the sweet confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
I think that, first of all, we can’t be afraid of the darkness. When we are there, it is a thing to be embraced – a womb as Whyte says – where we can find ourselves. And when we find ourselves, we know where we belong and can jettison all those things that are a distraction. Another quote from Whyte has been a source of incredible wisdom for me over the last year or so:
the antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness
Ever notice that when you are doing what you really love and feel passionate about, you have almost boundless amounts of energy?
The coming of the dark can be our signal that its time to think about our hearts…and what they are they are telling us to do. I’m going to spend some time listening to mine and getting my tank filled up for the next round.
Apr 18 2008
Scarborough: People Know John McCain….Oh really?
In the deliciously gosippy story of Rachel Maddow spanking the Very Serious Person(al) tushy of Joe Scarbough for talking over her…Moran Morning Joe states the following (paraphrased): “People don’t know him, (Obama) they know John McCain….snip….It’s about defining the candidate, defining your opponent.”
Do they Joe? Do they REALLY know him? Let’s play “Define The Candidate”
The conversation was about attacking/smearing Obama through his associations, Maddow contends that it is a matter of focusing on this sort of trivial ‘dirt’ by the campaign…and by extension the media, who can’t resist the salaciously prepared Red Meat. The classic Rovian Politics of Personal Detruction. She asks why, for example, this association, of a McCain associate in a bathroom associating with an undercover cop isn’t associated with “Knowing McCain.” Or defining him.
Teh video, from Crooks and Liars.
Also via C&L, from Cogitamus a bit of a “definition.”
Do you think if Barack Obama had left his seriously ill wife after having had multiple affairs, had been a member of the “Keating Five,” had had a relationship with a much younger lobbyist that his staff felt the need to try and block, had intervened on behalf of the client of said young lobbyist with a federal agency, had denounced then embraced Jerry Falwell, had denounced then embraced the Bush tax cuts, had confused Shiite with Sunni, had confused Al Qaeda in Iraq with the Mahdi Army, had actively sought the endorsement and appeared on stage with a man who denounced the Catholic Church as a whore, and stated that he knew next to nothing about economics — do you think it’s possible that Obama would have been treated differently by the media than John McCain has been? Possible?
And — this is fun to contemplate — if Michelle Obama had been an adulteress, drug addict thief with a penchant for plagiarism — do you think that she would be subject to slightly different treatment from the media than Cindypills McCain has been? Anyone?
More questions for those pundhats that “know McCain,” if they “know him,” do they know about this?
…A debate question from Mike Stark
Senator McCain, your first wife kept the candle lit for you all those years you were away in Vietnam. When you returned, she was there for you. Soon afterward, she was disfigured in a tragic car accident. You left her for a younger, prettier and richer heiress that bankrolled your political career. Of course, it’s common knowledge in DC that you are a skirt-chasing hound-dog and you’ve cheated on this wife as well. If you can’t be faithful to your wife, how can we expect you to keep the faith with us?”
Or this, via Turkana
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.
Or perhaps the meme de destruction that was used to “define” John Kerry in 2004. Do they “know about” McCain’s “flip-flopping” as brilliantly outlined by Avenging Angel?
1. Embracing “Crazy Base World”
2. Closing Borders – and Minds – to Immigration
3. Campaign Finance Fraud
4. Going Over to the Supply Side on Taxes
5. Attention: Deficit Disorder
6. Let’s Overturn Roe v. Wade After All
7. Supreme Courtship of the Right
8. France-Basher to Alliance Builder
9. A Tortured Position on Torture
10. A Hate-Love Relationship with George W. Bush
Do they know about his naked bigotry toward Asians?
Also in 2000, McCain insulted Asians. “I hate the gooks,” John McCain hissed, “and I will hate them for as long as I live…and you can quote me.” After a few days of negative press attention, he took it back: “I apologize and renounce all language that is bigoted and offensive, which is contrary to all that I represent and believe.”
(h/t to 73rd Virgin in the comments!)
Do they “know” about the unhinged temper tantrums that Saint McCain has thrown his whole life? Or as his “hometown paper” which endorsed him five times (so it is hardly a hatchet job) “defines him…”
“If McCain is truly a serious contender for the presidency, it is time the rest of the nation learned about the John McCain we know in Arizona. There is also reason to seriously question whether he has the temperament, and the political approach and skills, we want in the next president of the United States.”
And if they do know all that, and still support this grouchy geriatric misogynist mountebank ……how the hell is a “character defining issue” of something as minor as a freaking flag pin what they think this campaign for the office of “Controller of the Worlds Biggest Supply of Nuclear Weapons” should hinge upon? Character? They have the nerve, while supporting this guy to make character THE issue?
What are they, blind to the facts, self-interested idiots?
Wait, don’t bother to answer that. Sorry.
Let’s just hope that as American voters, who now disagree with McCain’s major plank in the campaign that Iraq is a “must win” by a two-to-one margin get to “know” St. McCain as well as you and your ass-kissing buddies in the press do…..
That they have the good taste and brains to reject you both.
Apr 18 2008
Earth Day #2: Bush Killing Coastal Louisiana
( – promoted by buhdydharma )
This is Part 2 of an Earth Day-themed series on environmental issues in the Gulf Region after Katrina and the federal flood.
In the first part of this Earth Day series, the environmental devastation experienced by New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Region was discussed. This installment will focus on Louisiana’s wetlands which are being washed away and the sinking of New Orleans and the rest of southern Louisiana.
When conservationist Mike Tidwell wrote his seminal work Bayou Farewell, in 2003, he predicted how a massive storm would destroy New Orleans. In the opening pages of this book, he said,
A devastating chain reaction has resulted from the taming of the Mississippi and now the entire coast is dissolving at breakneck speed…and New Orleans itself is at great risk of vanishing. A major hurricane approaching from the right direction could cause tens of thousands of deaths.
Tidwell also described visiting the Louisiana coast in 1999, traveling with Cajun fishers and observing their unique way of life, and seeing drowned graveyards, telephone poles, and forests. Since the 1920’s Louisiana has lost an astonishing amount of land–equivalent to the state of Rhode Island–to the sea. The levees designed to protect New Orleans from flooding have been part of the problem. As described by Tim Fitzpatrick in this article,
Natural landscaping can be considered a city’s Achilles’ heel when it is faced with an oncoming hurricane. New Orleans, being below sea level, is a prime example of that. The city lies at the bottom of a “soup bowl” with the Mississippi River running right through it. As the river reaches the Gulf of Mexico, it slows down and creates a fan of sediment or what is commonly known as a delta. This sediment could have traveled thousands of miles through 40 of the 48 contiguous states before it eventually dumps into the Gulf. It is such a huge amount of sediment being transported that the Earth’s crust literally sags underneath it. Every time a sag forms, new sediment fills the gap. Through millions of years, the Mississippi has changed course east and west creating six delta lobes, which has formed the entire coastline of southern Louisiana. Lake Pontchartrain, twice the size of New Orleans, lies on the lip of the bowl to the north and coastal wetlands lie to the east, west, and south of the city. Flood control engineering was designed to hold back spring floods and make New Orleans an important port city for oil exploration and transportation. This man-made flood control concept contributed to the disappearance of coastal wetlands. Since silt and nutrients, the bread and butter for marshland growth, were unable to be replenished, the existing land sunk and the wetlands turned to open water. A natural sponge for soaking up the floodwaters and protecting New Orleans against hurricanes had disappeared.
In his later work, The Ravaging Tide, Tidwell describes how after the publication of Bayou Farewell, it was a struggle to get leaders outside Louisiana to take action on this issue. He says that Louisiana’s conservative Republican governor Mike Foster
publicly committed himself to waging “jihad” against the problem of coastal erosion, pushing the issue to the top of the legislative agenda.
As far back as the early ’70’s, adds Tidwell, geologists at Louisiana State University had come up with a plan, called Coast 2050, to restore Louisiana’s shores. It said a
series of feasible engineering projects not only could counteract much of the subsidence but could actually create new barrier islands and wetlands fairly rapidly. This would involve permanently closing some of the most damaging canals and channels, like the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. It would also invlove harnessing the great land-building power of the Mississippi River itself. By building several gate-like “control structures” right into the levees of the river, the sediment-rich water could be released and then surgically guided via pipelines and manmade canals to areas in greatest need of wetland and barrier island development.
But the $14 billion price tag was too steep for a Bush Administration which had no qualms about throwing hundreds of times that much money away in Iraq. Bush consistently ignored requests for coastal restoration funding from both Foster, his successor Kathleen Blanco, and members of Louisiana’s bipartisan congressional delegation.
In fact, ironically, Bush seemed prepared to sacrifce Louisiana in favor of Iraq–even before Katrina and the federal flood brought to light this seriously misplaced priority.
Despite the growing crisis, the president somehow found millions of dollars for the restoration of wetlands in Iraq while Louisiana lay dying on the table. Saddam Hussein had drained a vast area of wetlands inhabited by some of his staunchest enemies–the so-called Marsh Arabs…the Bush Administration in 2004 proposed spending ten times more federal money restoring wetlands for these Arab people than for restoring the Louisiana coast for Americans. Congress ultimately denied the request, but Bush actually sent wetland experts from Louisiana (Emphasis mine) to Iraq anyway to help spend the millions of dollars he persuaded Japan and Italy to invest in the project.
Only in the summer of 2005, just before Katrina struck, did Congress finally appropriate $570 million in new coastal restoration money for Louisiana…Even this amount was allocated over the objections of the White House.
Will a new Democratic Administration give Louisiana coastal restoration the attention and financing it needs before New Orleans is permanently wiped out and the distinctive Cajun culture of the Gulf Coast there is gone forever? We all need to make sure our Democrats know the importance of this issue–and not just in Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Region, but in an increasingly energy-hungry world in which coastal erosion is bringing corrosive salt water closer and closer to oil installations. Indeed, Sen. Mary Landrieu has used the term “America’s Energy Coast” to call attention to the value of this vital part of the country. Because as long as we are dependent on fossil fuels, we ignore the need to protect coastal Louisiana at our peril.
Apr 18 2008
Colbert Arranges a Light Saber for Jedi Webmaster Obama
If you did not catch the Colbert Report on Comedy Central last night (Thursday, April 17th), you will probably find it worth your while to catch one of the scheduled reruns today or this evening. The show brought to a climax Colbert’s week in Pennsylvania in advance of the primary election next Tuesday.
Last night’s show was political satire at its best, but it was also political allegory at its most profound.
Stephen Colbert showed why he deserved that Peabody Award.
Here is a link to last night’s show.
Here is a quick synopsis below the break.
(1) The candidate who portrays herself as the detail-oriented policy wonk who can fix anything is given the opportunity to come in from New York to fix the broken down big screen. Hillary walks onstage and dutifully delivers her lines, and the audience remains under control and does not boo her (Colbert clearly made sure that the audience members would hold their fire during Hillary’s appearance.) Finally, with Hillary’s “expert” advice, the big video screen is up and running.
(2) Colbert then uses the big screen “fixed” by Hillary to run a devastating deconstruction of the shameless “gotcha” approach of ex-Clinton apparatchik George Stephanopoulos and ABC’s Charles Gibson during Wednesday night’s “debate,” i.e., inquisition. The circle of guilt-by-associations leading back through the Pope, who was a Nazi youth, all the way to Hitler is a particularly sharp thrust.
(3) Rep. Patrick Murphy, who was an Army Captain in the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq, comes on to talk about why he has endorsed Obama for President. Murphy’s handling of past tense verbs is a little clumsy, but he is earnest, coherent, concise, and obviously knowledgeable about the realities of Iraq. Colbert gives Murphy essentially free rein, and Murphy brings up the point that Obama is a “once in a generation” kind of leader.
(4) A very relaxed John Edwards waltzes in to deliver his “Edwords” lines with good timing and grace, including a dig about worrying about getting bitten by James Carville–thereby reminding savvy viewers of Carville’s going nuclear and calling Bill Richardson “Judas” after Richardson endorsed Obama. Is Edwards hinting at how he is leaning?
(5) Using the wonders of 21st century technology, Jedi Webmaster Obama then appears behind Colbert on the same big screen that had earlier been “fixed” by Hillary and proceeds to put the media’s pointless faux “distractions” on notice at the very top of Colbert’s famous “On Notice Board”–to the great delight of the live audience, which roars its approval with sustained cheering.
This episode is political satire and allegory of the highest caliber. Hillary, seemingly unwittingly, lays the groundwork for Murphy, Edwards, and Obama to change and elevate the quality of the national discussion. Colbert serves as the medium for the transformation.
It is game, set and match–for Obama.
And Colbert, more than any other media figure (though Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann make their fair contributions), seems to be the genuine Voltaire of our era.