Mar 18 2008

Iraq Moratorium, war’s 5th anniversary demand action

The convergence of the 5th anniversary of “shock and awe” with Christian Holy Week and Iraq Moratorium #7 has sparked hundreds of antiwar actions across the country this week.

The Iraq Moratorium, a loosely-knit grassroots movement, is usually observed on the Third Friday of every month, but March events are spread throughout the week.

It began last weekend, when more than 500 people gathered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco for a rally, march and vigil.

Speakers included Daniel Ellsberg, State Sen. Carole Migden and former San Francisco Supervisor and current Green Party vice presidential candidate Matt Gonzalez.

Ellsberg invited the crowd at the church to join him in a “die in” Wednesday at noon outside the San Francisco office of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. “We may be arrested for disturbing the peace,” he said. “But there is no peace.

Golden Gate XPress, the student newspaper at San Francisco State University, reports:

[Cindy]Sheehan,(right) a congressional candidate … concluded the event by reflecting on her personal loss. She told the story of her son who was killed in the third bloody mission into Sadr City, a mission forced upon him against his will.

“Today I have one dead son,” she said to a silent hall, using a tissue to dry a tear. “When your child is killed in a war, they always say ‘Your child volunteered. Your child was a hero,'” she said. “What makes him a hero if he was ordered to kill innocent Iraqis?”

Sheehan further acknowledged the Americans and Iraqis who lost their lives in the war and the politicians who put them there.

“It’s bullshit that we’re not impeaching,” she said.

Because the Moratorium, which encourages local grassroots action on the Third Friday of every month, coincides with the Christian observance of Good Friday, March 21, some actions will include a religious theme.

The Pike’s Peak Justice Coalition will take part in Pax Christi’s Way of the Cross/Way of Justice procession in downtown Colorado Springs.  

A Hartford, CT “Lamentation and Protest” will begin with an interfaith prayer service, followed by a silent procession to the federal building, where marchers will pile stones bearing the names of victims of the Iraq war.  Church bells will ring in a number of communities in Massachusetts to mark Moratorium observances.

In Cincinnati, candlelight vigils will be held in eight neighborhoods, and dozens of street corner vigils are planned across the country.  Most vigils take place every month, and some have been going since the war began.  

In a session called “Write Some Wrongs,” people in Cornwall, CT will meet at the public library to write their Congressman about “what is in your heart about the Iraq war and what you want him to do about it.”

The Iraq Moratorium encourage local organizers to “do their own thing” on the third Friday of the month – but to do something, whatever it is, to end the war.  It is all a loosely-knit national grassroots effort operating under the Iraq Moratorium umbrella.

Friday is the seventh monthly Moratorium, and more than 800 events have been listed on the group’s website, IraqMoratorium.org , which has a list of this month’s actions and reports, photos and videos from previous months.

Mar 18 2008

OR-Sen Candidate Joins Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq

As we approach the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, there is a movement building to end the war. The Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq is a growing coalition of congressional candidates and military leaders who are pushing a swift and responsible withdrawal plan. The coalition includes candidates like Darcy Burner WA-8 and Donna Edwards MD-4, Major General Paul Eaton who was the former Security Transition Commanding General in Iraq and Dr. Lawrence Korb who is the former Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration. The coalition to end the war just got gained another endorser, Oregon Senate candidate and current House Speaker Jeff Merkley.

Yesterday, the Darcy Burner campaign posted a diary about the Responsible Plan to End the Iraq War. Here’s a snippet from Darcy about how the whole movement began:

For five years we have asked our political leaders these questions, and for five years the answers never came.  Well, about six months ago, some fellow Democratic challengers and I got tired of waiting, and today we introduce the fruit of our impatience:  “A Responsible Plan For Ending The War In Iraq.” It is intended to map out how we can end the war and prevent a mistake like this from ever happening again.

Working with such military experts as Major General Paul Eaton, who was General Petraeus’ predecessor in Iraq, and building off the work of the Iraq Study Group and existing legislation, we have created a plan for congressional action to answer these questions and fundamentally change the debate on national security.  This is the conversation our public officials, citizens and the media need to be having, but have not – until now.

This plan presents a set of actions that Congress can take to remove all troops from Iraq while engaging in a diplomatic, political and economic offensive in the region. It is designed to convert our current costly and unsuccessful military approach to a more effective civilian one that addresses the root problems we face in Iraq. It moves us away from the use of military tools and enables more robust diplomatic and humanitarian work.  It offers a path to rebuild the military, the State Department, and a commitment to take care of returning veterans.

Here in Oregon, my preferred Senate Candidate Jeff Merkley has signed on to the plan. Jeff Merkley was opposed to the Iraq War from the beginning and has been a staunch proponent of a withdrawal, so it’s no surprise that he’s joined the movement. Here’s a snippet from his website:

On the eve of the five-year anniversary of the Iraq war, House Speaker Jeff Merkley endorsed A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, authored by Major General Paul Eaton (U.S. ARMY RET.) former Security Transition Commanding General, Iraq; Dr. Lawrence Korb former Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration; Brigadier General John Johns (U.S. ARMY RET.) specialist in counterinsurgency and nation-building; and Capt. Larry Seaquist (U.S. NAVY) and presented by Washington Congressional candidate Darcy Burner and other House candidates around the country.

“I opposed this war publicly from the very beginning. It’s now long past time to bring our sons and daughters home, repay the debt we owe our veterans, and restore America’s standing in the world,” said House Speaker Jeff Merkley said. “Gordon Smith and the Bush Administration led us into this war and have never offered a plan to get us out. Smith has manipulated and confused the media and the public and done nothing to bring an end to this war.”

If you’d like to read more about Merkley’s endorsement of the plan go here. I hope that more candidates like Jeff Merkley join the House candidates and the Military leaders in supporting this growing movement. It’s encouraging that numerous Democratic candidates are taking the lead on this issue. What about our current Senators and Reps? Where are they? Democrats were not successful at gaining a sixty vote majority to override Bush’s veto to pass a timetable for withdrawal. We can’t let them give up! They should be joining this coalition and adding strength to the movement to end the war. Please contact your Senators and Reps and encourage them to sign on to the plan.

As of today, We’ve lost 3,990 soldiers in Iraq and tens of thousands have been injured. How long can we afford to let Congress do nothing?

To learn more about the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq go here.

Mar 18 2008

Four at Four

  1. The New York Times reports Bush backs Fed’s actions, but critics quickly find fault. George W. “Bush on Monday welcomed the Federal Reserve’s sweeping intervention in the nation’s financial markets as his administration faced accusations that it had supported the bailout of a prestigious investment bank while doing little to address the hardships of Americans facing foreclosures on their homes… Mr. Bush singled out Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. for praise, saying he had shown ‘the country and the world that the United States is on top of the situation,’ an assertion that was broadly disputed by the president’s critics.”

    Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, George W. Bush, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke yuck it up as their policies steer the United States into a deep recession and a worthless dollar.

    The Wall Street Jornal reports Street Cheers Goldman, Lehman. “Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the two big U.S. investment banks least wounded thus far by the credit crunch, gave markets a shot in the arm Tuesday by reporting first-quarter results that beat Wall Street’s expectations and were free of nasty surprises. To be sure, the results were damaged by the turmoil of the past few months, in which key markets froze up as banks became increasingly wary of trading with each other. Each bank’s earnings fell by more than 50% from the year before, and each booked roughly $2 billion in credit-related losses.” And this was the “good” news today? Put me down as unimpressed.

    Meanwhile over in Russia, Prava, yeah Pravda, runs with an opinion-analysis of the U.S. economic fallout by Abbas Bakhtiar, When the US sneezes the world catches cold.

    The world’s economy will experience the negative effects from the US economic downturn. The most affected areas will be China and other Asian “emerging” economies and European Union… The full picture of financial crisis is still hidden and full cost of the coming bailouts will not be known till autumn.

    Of course this is not written in stone. The US government may come to its senses and decides to act responsibly and allow many companies and banks to go under. It may try to support dollar. It may try to cut the budget deficit or the trade deficit. It may even decide that its war in Iraq was not and is not such a good idea and withdraw its troops. It may even try to get friendly with Venezuela and Iran, thereby reduce both the price of oil and pressure on the dollar. The truth is that it is the US president that can do these things and not the Federal Reserves. We just have to wait for the elections and see who is elected as the next president.

    It is my opinion that no other US president has ever damaged United States as much as George Bush, and he will be remembered by both the Americans and others as one of the most unpopular US presidents ever. But he is at the end of his second term and has only a year to destroy the rest of the economy. Let us hope that he will be busy with other things and doesn’t do more damage. Let us also hope that the American people will not fall for promises of further tax cuts and glories in battle fields abroad. Neither brings peace and prosperity.

    And, just to underscore how “on top of the situation” Bernake is, the Federal Reserve cuts key interest rate by 3/4 of a point, according to the NY Times. The cut “to 2.25 percent… was less than investors had been hoping for even though it was one of the deepest in Fed history.” Don’t Panic. Don’t Panic.

  2. The Associated Press reports Mortars near U.S. embassy in Yemen kill 1. “Two mortar shells exploded Tuesday by a high school next to the U.S. embassy, killing a Yemeni guard and wounding three students and three other guards, an Interior Ministry official said. Troops sealed off roads and prevented journalists from coming closer to the school, which is attended mostly by Yemeni students… It was unclear if the embassy or the school was the target.”

  3. The Guardian reports Kosovo clashes force UN to withdraw. “Serbs went on the warpath against western peacekeepers in northern Kosovo yesterday in the worst unrest since the small Albanian-dominated Balkan province declared independence a month ago. As UN riot police backed by Nato helicopters and armoured vehicles used stun grenades and teargas to restore control of a court building occupied by Serb activists last week in the northern Serb-controlled town of Mitrovica, Serbian rioters clashed with the international forces and used automatic weapons against Nato troops. Dozens of police, Nato troops, and Serb civilians were hurt in explosions and clashes after riot police stormed the building at dawn.”

  4. The Independent reports China prepares for crackdown by clearing Tibetan capital of witnesses. “After days of street fighting and protests by Tibetans seeking independence, Chinese authorities have moved to clear Lhasa of the last independent witnesses ahead of a deadline for demonstrators to surrender. Beijing’s governor in Tibet promised leniency to demonstrators prepared to give themselves up, but Tibet independence groups said scores of people had already been killed during the protests. Yesterday, sources in Lhasa said NGOs and the few remaining foreign journalists were taken out of the city, leaving no one to inform the world of how Beijing would reinforce order. Some reports said handcuffed Tibetan prisoners were paraded through the city earlier yesterday.”

News of Obama’s speech this morning is below the fold.

  1. Barack Obama gave a speech today titled “A More Perfect Union“. Of the speech, The New York Times reports “Mr. Obama delivered a sweeping assessment of race in America. It was the most extensive speech of his presidential campaign devoted to race and unity, a moment his advisers conceded presented one of the biggest tests of his candidacy.”

    For nearly a week, Mr. Obama has struggled to distance himself from a series of controversial statements by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who characterized the United States as fundamentally racist and the government as corrupt and murderous. Mr. Obama concluded over the weekend that he had failed to resolve the questions, aides said, and told advisers he wanted to address the firestorm in a speech.

    In his address here, delivered in an auditorium to an audience of about 200 elected officials and members of the clergy, Mr. Obama disavowed the remarks by Mr. Wright as “not only wrong, but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity.” But he did not wholly distance himself from his pastor or the church, Trinity United Church of Christ, on Chicago’s South Side.

    “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” Mr. Obama said. “I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

    …

    “We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.”

    He added: “Against all predictions to the contrary, we saw how hungry the American people were for this message of unity. Despite the temptation to view my candidacy through a purely racial lens, we won commanding victories in states with some of the whitest populations in the country. In South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies, we built a powerful coalition of African-Americans and white Americans.”

    …

    “The comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through – a part of our union that we have not yet made perfect,” Mr. Obama said. “And if we walk away now, if we simply retreat into our respective corners, we will never be able to come together and solve challenges like health care, or education or the need to find good jobs for every American.”

    The speech was written by Obama who “worked on it for two days and nights… and showed it to only a few of his top advisers”, according to Marc Ambinder. Personally, I think the assessment by SusanG at Daily Kos is spot-on: “It seems honest discussions of race and class just became part of the national dialogue.”

Mar 18 2008

When The Going Gets Weird……

The weird turn pro.

Photobucket

And the going is starting…well, continuing at an accelerated pace…to get weird. And will get weirder. We are in a time of great change…on every level. It is a fact that every generation, every era, thinks that it is in the midst of some existential crisis, and lol, in a way they are correct. All of the event and the decisions made in response to their crises have led to…now. And to the confluence of events that we are facing today, in our era.

But our era IS different, if for no other reason than that this is the first truly global era…and in the fact that we are facing a truly global set of circumstances. The conflict of “good” vs “evil” has always been with us, but we are in an era where a true decision between them must be made. And NOT just on the individual level.

Though if course that is where it always begins.

For those not ‘into it’ on the metaphorical level, please excuse the following passage! It is not intended as moralistic preaching, or assigning labels to individuals…but as more of a strategy session, lol.

On one side we have the Forces Of Evil, or a I like to call them…the FOE. On the other we have the Forces Of Good, whose acronym tends to describe the state that its practitioners often wander around in, lol. One of the big differences between Fog and Foe…..and the main reason that the Foe is so often successful in the short term….is, focus. The Foe is ALWAYS intent and driven to create the world it wants to see. It’s world is almost completely reactionary, whenever it sees Good…it is compelled to destroy it, and since their is a lot of good in the world…and the primary focus of the majority of humans is to be and do good….they are always on the attack. These are people whose Outrage Meter is permanently spiked.

The vast majority of the Fog, on the other hand, mainly just wants to be left alone to experience the good things of the world, family, fulfilling work, helping others in their community, riding ponies and petting pooties.

It is only in times of direct threat that the majority of the Fog is activated…world wars and such. And that brings us to this quote from The Usual Suspects: “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing people he doesn’t exist.”

The next step in this ancient balancing act is………the Foe taking advantage of the vacuum created by all that pony riding to expand and expand and expand. Until finally, and completely inevitably since the Foe is completely unable to restrain itself….thank goodness!….The Foe oversteps, and goes too far. Takes too much, destroys too much, kills too many and, emboldened starts to brag about things like torture or spying on its citizens. Slowly but surely, the Foe exposes itself to the Fog.

Like….now.

The Fog starts to focus a bit. The warning cries…The Yelling…of the more assiduous of the FOG (that’s us, folks!) who man the metaphorical front lines, start to be heard and to their astonishment…listened too!

Unfortunately, that usually takes some kind of pretty serious crisis. Apparently more of a crisis than the theft of an election or two, an illegal and immoral war, or torture, or the stripping of the Constitution. It takes THEIR lives being directly affected.

It seems to me that we are approaching that point. Gallup: 80% disillusioned by: meteoriot

Which of course means………that the shit is starting to hit the fan.

Or as one poster on Daily Kos said today: But they just got my attention.

We are at a point of confronting many many issues, issues that can be seen from a larger perspective to be sign, symptoms and indicators of the larger reality we find ourselves in.

The choice to change our way of life and commerce to halt Climate Crisis.

The choice of voting for perpetual war, or for some semblance of peace.

The choice of how our economy works, apparently, as it begins to collapse, on the most meaningful level since the New Deal.

The choice of whether our government is still a government of, by and for, the People…iow, if we will prosecute those who have stolen it in order to rule us and enrich themselves.

The choice of how we will respond to other governments around the world as they kill and oppress our fellow resisters and protesters.

And many many others. All of them with profound implications for the status quo. All of them directly determinant of what kind of world we will wind up with…or ideally, what kind of world we will consciously create.

All of them, at the root, choices between what could be called “good or “evil.” The choice of the Greatest Good for All vs What is Good for the Powers That Be. The choice between cooperation between humans or competition among humans….a philosophy that the Planet is unable to support as we close in towards seven billion humans.

These are in many ways, very frightening times. It is very tempting to shrink back from the ‘front lines,’ to retreat in the face of the complexities and daunting scale of these challenges. It is only natural to be, in a word, scared.

But this is not the time to shrink, this is the time to yell even louder, but not just louder….it is time to yell better, too. Time for all of us to dig down deep and find new reserves of strength and new ways to continue to fight….to win.

It is time for the pros to stand up, for the going is surely getting weird!

I leave you with two quotes, the first from Obama’s speech today, especially in honor of those about to hit the streets tomorrow. The second a little older, lol!

What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part – through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk – to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.

Mar 18 2008

Wherein I burnish my parenting credentials…

I know on a day like today one should say something brilliant or witty or insightful on Obama’s speech, but I’ve committed to be the class clown even on heady days and so I offer up my darkest moment of political fatherhood…

With that out of the way…

…its a month ago and I’m watching one of the Republican debates and the tall guy who looks like Guy Smiley from Sesame Street is prattling on about double Guantanimo or some such shit and my five year-old daughter walks in and says…

Her: What are you watching?

Me: (smoldering) The Republican Debate.

Her: Huh? What’s that guy doing?

Me: He’s lying.

Her: Why is he doing that.

Me: (intemperate) Because THAT’S WHAT THEY DO, babe. Republicans lie.

And the moment it comes out of my mouth I know I’ve double-donged the doberman.

First, because that’s not the kind of father I aspire to be… who tells his kids how to think… and second because the fastest way to turn my daughter into a Republican (my darkest fear) is by letting her know I despise those people,  thereby fueling a post-pubescent rebellion filled with sweater-sets, Paul Anka music and an obsession with… say… the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Immediately I’m on the defensive and she’s locked in like a laser.

“Why do Republicans lie? What do they lie about? Why are all those people clapping if they’re lying? Isn’t it against the law to lie? The old guy with the white hair looks MEAN.”

So, over the next few days I come up with…

Me: Look, daddy misspoke when he talked about lying. Your daddy thinks, and not everyone agrees, that Democrats, in general bring people together and Republicans, in general, push people apart. And when I see people being pushed apart… I get angry… and I say things I shouldn’t.

Her: Like the F-word Mommy always uses.

Me: Um… yes, like that.

The next morning on the way to school…

Her: Daddy, there are some kids in class who will never play with me… I think myabe they’re Republicans.

Me: (nervous laughter)

Now jump forward.

End of the day. Daughter stays for “after school” and I go to pick her up, but when I get there I see her in the middle of some kid conflict… two groups…  the “popular” one having refused to play with the “unpopular” one… my daughter caught in the middle.

So, I remove Jo, heading toward the car, and she turns back glaring at the “populars”…

Her: (like she’s nineteen) Fucking Republicans.

True tale.

Mar 18 2008

Updated – Dalai Lama May Resign If Violence Escalates (w/vid)

“If things become out of control then my only option is to completely resign,” Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader told a news conference in the north Indian town of Dharamsala, the seat of his government-in-exile.

“Even 1,000 Tibetans sacrificed their life, not much help,” he said. “Please help stop violence from Chinese side and also from Tibetan side.”

link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t…

His remarks come in response to Premier Wen Jiabao’s accusation that the riots in Tibet were organzied by the “Dalai clique”:

“We have ample facts and plenty of evidence to prove that the riots in Lhasa were organised, premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai clique,” Wen said, stepping up the offensive against the 1989 Nobel laureate.

link: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/…

Buried in that animus is a remark highlighted by The Hindu, an India News Service:

“The door of dialogue still opens to the Dalai Lama so long as he [the Dalai Lama] gives up the position for ‘Tibet Independence’, and so long as he recognises Tibet and Taiwan as inalienable parts of the Chinese territory,” Premier Wen Jiabao said at a press conference here after being elected for a second term.

link: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/…

The Times UK reports that even though the Dalai Lama cannot technically “resign”, he can choose to not reincarnate again. The Dalai Lama reiterated his commitment to pursuing nonviolence and his “middle way” of greater Tibetan authority within China, instead of outright independence:

“On violence, it’s wrong. We should not develop anti-Chinese feelings. We must live together side by side,” he said. “Independence is out of the question.”

He also challenged the Chinese to investigate him thoroughly to verify that he had no part in instigated the recent violence in Tibet:

“Investigate thoroughly, so if you want to start investigating from here you are most welcome,” he said.

“Check our various offices …They can examine my pulse, my urine, my stool, everything.”

The BBC highlights that this war of words is waging in the midst of a wider crack-down, including the mass relocation of monks:

A Chinese source with links to the security forces told the BBC that 600 monks had been flown overnight on military planes from Lhasa to Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan. The report could not be independently verified.

The source was told that the monks were transported because the authorities feared they would become a focus for protests if they stayed in Lhasa.

Police have also stopped BBC journalists from entering the village in which the Dalai Lama was born in north-eastern Tibet.

link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asi…

Please keep all sides of this conflict in your thoughts, prayers and meditations.

UPDATE: YouTube has video up of the Dalai Lama’s remarks:



 

Mar 18 2008

Pony Party, Deja Vu

I don’t intend to be a pest about DocuDharma’s March Madness online bracket-picking group…found here….really, i dont…

But as registration will cut off when the tournament starts on Thursday, I wanted to make extra sure that anyone who wished to participate had ample notice…

so…

Once you follow the link to the site, use the following info to register:

Our group name is DocuDharma

Our group i.d.# is 85671

The password is yelllouder

Our bracket name is picks 4 kicks

Once you sign up, click ‘my bracket’ tab at the top to open your bracket.  Clicking the little “i” button will show you a synopsis of the matchup….click on the team you think will advance, and the bracket will reflect your choice.

The scoring system is explained on the site.  I didnt really read it as i dont expect to amass many  ðŸ˜‰  Matter of fact, I havent even made my own picks as of this auto-publish, but i hope to have time to do so later today.  

You can register to play, or just to keep track of how the others (probably just me and ucc….sigh) are doing.

I made this widget before the final schedules were determined, so it is actually one hour ‘fast’….

Mar 18 2008

30 Mill: N’Orleanians vs N’Learians

A short rant on Priorities.

30 million to bail out the rich folks.  What?  Afraid they might make a late Lear payment? Of course all the employees who worked for B-S just got the big douche, being minor stock holders.  No job, no 401K’s nadda. No bailout for them.

Of course, I have a hard time working up a great deal of sympathy for those who make a living shuffling papers on other’s loans, milking profit off the middle class’ interest rates. I realize I am being simplistic, but still…..

This is even truer, because if we have 30 million laying around, why the fuck did we not use it in New Orleans? Never mind. We all know the answer to that.

Pictorial explanation below.

If you have this:

If your home looks something like this:

And your toys look like this:

You get this:

If your home looks something like this:

and your toys only look like this:

You might get one of these things, full of poisons:

But mostly you get a big can of this:

FUCKED

Mar 18 2008

Docudharma Times Tuesday March 18



I see you slither away with your skin and your tail,

Your flickering tongue and your rattling scales

Like a real reptile.

Tuesday’s Headlines: Plunge Averted, Markets Look Ahead Uneasily: Obama speech will try to defuse race issue :  State TV switches to non-stop footage of Chinese under attack: 1,000 Tibetans arrested in Chinese crackdown: President Robert Mugabe ‘raises the dead’ to secure electoral victory in Zimbabwe: Ghanaian fashion accessory is plastic fantastic: UN forces face grenade and gun attacks from Serbs in Mitrovica: The Big Question: What is the role of the EU President:  Vatican in Saudi talks on building churches: Egypt army to tackle bread crisis: Mexican leftist’s ally appears to win party helm

Arrests after governor’s threat to deal harshly with resistance

Thousands of paramilitary police were massing in Lhasa and other Tibetan areas of unrest last night ahead of an ultimatum to protesters to hand themselves in.

Witnesses reported that arrests had begun long before a midnight deadline passed in the capital, and authorities in other provinces were cracking down both on protests and those who report them.

Hong Kong journalists were ordered to leave Lhasa, and foreign reporters have been turned away or ordered to leave Tibetan areas in the Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu provinces in the past two days.

Tibet’s governor, Qiangba Puncog, said that protesters who turned themselves in would be “treated with leniency within the framework of the law … Otherwise, we will deal with them harshly.”

USA

Plunge Averted, Markets Look Ahead Uneasily

With the Dow Jones industrial average up slightly more than 21 points by the end of trading Monday on the New York Stock Exchange, it may have looked like a calm day on Wall Street.

But under the surface, the scene was far from serene. After policy makers hastily arranged a sale of the embattled investment bank Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase over the weekend, stocks and other financial instruments fluctuated wildly during much of the day as investors started worrying about who and what would be next in the line of fire.

Obama speech will try to defuse race issue

· Democratic frontrunner to speak in primary state

· Pastor’s views disowned as ‘stupid’ and a ‘distraction’

Barack Obama will today make his strongest attempt so far to defuse the race row scarring the Democratic presidential race when he tackles the issue head on with a speech in Pennsylvania, scene of next month’s hotly contested primary.

The Obama campaign said the speech in Philadelphia will address “race, politics, and how we bring our country together at this important moment in our history”.

It comes after a week in which he has taken a battering from Hillary Clinton’s campaign team, particularly over incendiary remarks by his pastor about the US and discrimination.

In interviews last night previewing today’s speech, Obama described as “stupid” remarks about the US and whites by the preacher at his church in Chicago, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and admitted that the focus on race over the last week had been “a distraction”.

Asia

State TV switches to non-stop footage of Chinese under attack

China has begun to fight back against criticism of its handling of the Tibetan protests, launching a sustained publicity offensive as well as blocking foreign broadcasters and websites and denying journalists access to areas of unrest.

After days of ignoring and then playing down protests, the media suddenly switched course yesterday. TV channels aired hours of Friday’s anti-Chinese riots in Lhasa and the aftermath.

Employees at the state television service CCTV’s English service were instructed to keep broadcasting footage of burned-out shops and Chinese wounded in attacks. No peaceful demonstrators were shown.

1,000 Tibetans arrested in Chinese crackdown

Close to 1,000 Tibetans have been detained in two days of sweeps across the capital, Lhasa, by paramilitary police hunting down those who took part in last week’s deadly anti-Chinese riots.

Sources in the city said around 600 people had been detained on Saturday and another 300 had been picked up on Sunday. They said it was not clear where those rounded up were being detained because the main Drapchi prison in Lhasa is already believed to be virtually full.

Those detained could be taken to the old Number One prison in the Sangyip district in the northeast of Lhasa that is currently not believed to be in use.

Africa

President Robert Mugabe ‘raises the dead’ to secure electoral victory in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe has the highest proportion of elderly voters in the world, according to the voters’ roll being used for elections next week. A glance at one page of the roll yesterday for a ward in the Mount Pleasant suburb of Harare turned up a Fodias Kunyepa, who was born in 1901. Over the page was Rebecca Armstrong, born 1900.

Somewhat younger was Desmond Lardner-Burke, born 1909, who was the notorious Minister for Justice in the rebel Rhodesian Government and responsible for the harassment, arrest and detention without trial of tens of thousands of black nationalists, including President Mugabe, fighting against white rule in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ghanaian fashion accessory is plastic fantastic

“Our bags are complete trash” may not strike you as the perfect sales pitch. But one Ghanaian entrepreneur would beg to disagree. His Trashy Bags venture is turning the scourge of discarded plastic that litters this corner of west Africa into a cool fashion accessory.

Plastic bags are a ubiquitous feature of the African landscape not seen in coffee table books or travel magazines. In Ghana they line roads, hang from palm trees, float in the sea and gather in drifts on the white sandy beaches.

Europe

UN forces face grenade and gun attacks from Serbs in Mitrovica

Violence erupted in a flashpoint city in northern Kosovo yesterday when hundreds of Serb protesters forced the withdrawal of United Nations police in the worst clashes since the province broke away from Serbia a month ago.

The toll of injuries on both sides rose during a day of bloody unrest, in which Nato and UN forces reported grenade attacks and automatic weapon fire and responded with teargas and warning shots.

Tensions had been building for days in Kosovo after the relative calm that followed the declaration of independence, and Western diplomats now fear that the territory could be heading towards de facto partition between the Albanian-dominated south and Serbian north.

The Big Question: What is the role of the EU President, and who are the leading candidates?

Why are we asking this question now?

Why are we asking this question now?

A President of the European Council will be appointed next year. According to an opinion poll, most citizens in almost every large European Union country want the job to go to a political big-hitter – such as a Tony Blair or an Angela Merkel – rather than to someone relatively unknown. More surprisingly, 50 per cent of Britons agree with them, according to the survey for The Financial Times.

Middle East

Vatican in Saudi talks on building churches

· Pope’s spokesman hopeful of ‘historic’ agreement

· Secret negotiations follow King Abdullah’s Rome visit

The Vatican has been holding secret talks with the Saudi Arabian authorities on building churches in Muhammad’s homeland, according to one of Pope Benedict’s most senior Middle East representatives. Archbishop Paul-Mounged El-Hashem said: “Discussions are under way to allow the construction of churches in the kingdom. We cannot forecast the outcome.”

But, speaking to the news agency Agence France-Presse, the Lebanese prelate, the Pope’s envoy in the Gulf, added: “There are around three or four million Christians in Saudi Arabia, and we hope they will have churches.”

Egypt army to tackle bread crisis

Egypt’s president has ordered the army to increase the production and distribution of bread, in an attempt to cope with serious shortages.

Rising prices and alleged corruption have sparked recent clashes at bakeries in poorer neighbourhoods, leading to several deaths.

Hosni Mubarak said eradicating bread queues was “imperative”.

The army and interior ministry control numerous bakeries normally used to supply bread for troops and police.

Mr Mubarak issued his order to the army at a meeting of cabinet ministers on Sunday that was called to address the growing crisis, his spokesman said.

Latin America

Mexican leftist’s ally appears to win party helm

Such an outcome could deal a setback to conservative President Felipe Calderon and efforts to privatize the state oil company.

MEXICO CITY — Leftist firebrand Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador appeared to cement his hold over Mexico’s main opposition party Monday after a key ally declared himself the winner of a bitterly fought leadership race.

Alejandro Encinas, a former deputy to Lopez Obrador, claimed victory in the campaign to be president of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, based on samplings of Sunday’s vote conducted by two polling companies hired by the party.

The contest pitted adherents of Lopez Obrador’s confrontational style of politics against moderates represented by Encinas’ main rival, former federal lawmaker Jesus Ortega.

Mar 18 2008

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

The muses are ancient.  The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them.  Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward.  In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.

It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse.  Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets.  Others have been suggested throughout the centuries.  I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts.  And maybe there should be many more.

Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…

I spent yesterday reviewing youtube videos of young people coming out.  Input begets output.


Shades of Purple

Queries

How can parents

stop loving a child

simply because

that child is gay?

And if parents

love their gay child

whence comes your right

to hate that child?

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–March 17, 2008

I know you have talent.  What sometimes is forgotten is that being practical is a talent.  I have a paucity for that sort of talent in many situations, though it turns out that I’m a pretty darn good cook.  ðŸ™‚  

Let your talent bloom.  You can share it here.  Encourage others to let it bloom inside them as well.

Won’t you share your words or art, your sounds or visions, your thoughts scientific or philosophic, the comedy or tragedy of your days, the stories of doing and making?  And be excellent to one another!

Mar 18 2008

Reclaiming the Streets – Gabriel Lafitte

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

An excellent article by Gabriel Lafitte, advisor to the Tibetan Government in Exile, about the protests and riots, and what it means to the Tibetans themselves. What follows is his article in full (reprinted with permission).

The Tibetan revolt, like those of two and five decades ago, will be crushed by the overwhelming might of the Chinese military. No match could be more unequal: maroon-clad nuns and monks versus the machinery of oppression of the global rising power. In recent months, fast-response mobile tactical squads whose sole purpose is to quell the masses have been overtly rehearsing on the streets of Tibetan towns for just what they are now doing.

What is the point of revolt if it is almost certainly suicidal

This uprising has many uniquely Tibetan characteristics. At street level, a favourite item seized from Chinese shops was toilet rolls – hardly the usual target of looters. Not that Tibetans, over millennia, have felt much need for the paper rolls, or even for the basics of the Chinese cuisine such as soy sauce. What the Tibetans did with the loo paper was to hurl it over power lines, instantly making Lhasa, and other Tibetan towns, Tibetan again. Right across the 25 per cent of China that is ethnically and culturally Tibetan, the unrolled toilet paper looks like wind horses, the white silken scarf khadags with which Tibetans greet and bless each other. As all Tibetans know, they carry their message on the wind: Victory to the gods!

That is what this revolt is about: making Tibet Tibetan once more. The white scarves also protected Tibetan shopkeepers from attack as the streets filled, for a short and costly moment of freedom, with Tibetans smashing the businesses of immigrant Chinese traders.



Heavy police presence during protests

Even in the most intoxicating moment of reclaiming the streets no Tibetan could have forgotten the ever present security cameras, and the network of informers penetrating deeply into urban Tibetan private lives. No Tibetan could have been unmindful that the full repressive power of a modernised, high-tech tyranny would hunt them down, and show no mercy. All Tibetans know of former friends who, on release from prison and torture, now shun old acquaintances because they are under such intense pressure by their torturers to regularly name names of those who privately voice thoughts that do not conform to the Party line. These informers live in fear of being hauled in again, for further torture, and of betraying their friends.

That is what makes this revolt uniquely Tibetan. It is no accident that from the outset the protests were led by those who have already renounced all ties to kin, dedicating their lives to serve all of humanity, unconditionally. The nuns and monks of Tibet have taken vows to work for the liberation of all sentient beings from all sources of suffering – in the mind and in the external world. From the Dalai Lama through to the newest novice, they train in meditation to cut attachment to existence, to the existence of me ahead of all others.


They know they will die, and are ready for it. Just as in the great Tibetan revolts of 1959 and 1987, many will die in secret prison cells, after torture. When the world is no longer watching, or able to see, Tibetans who risked all so as to focus the world – in this Olympic year – on China’s shame, will die.

What do Tibetans find so objectionable about today’s China? Why is it that Tibetans and Chinese, neighbours for thousands of years, cannot get on?

Media coverage focuses on immediate causes, but there is a deeper story. Having worked with Tibetans for 30 years, having seen Chinese development projects in Tibet for myself, and having been briefly imprisoned for it, I can share what my Tibetan friends tell me. Contemporary Chinese capitalist modernity is as problematic for Tibetans as past State violence and repression. China today pours money, overwhelmingly State money, into Tibet, into railways, highways, tourist infrastructure and a top-heavy administrative elite. Glass towers, shopping malls, enormous brothels masquerading as discos, towering offices, now dominate urban Tibetan skylines which only 20 years ago were a sacred landscape of prayer flags, temples and meditation.

On the face of it, that’s progress. If Lhasa now looks like any Chinese boomtown, that’s just the price of modernity – or so many outsiders say. But Tibetans find themselves excluded from the material benefits of modernity, watching powerlessly as gangs of non-Tibetan immigrants take over even the unskilled jobs on construction sites and driving taxis. Tibetans remain poor, socially excluded, on the margins of a State-funded construction boom that reduces Tibetans to a minority meant to smile for the tourist cameras as they try to focus on their spiritual pilgrimage. The holy city of Lhasa, and all the big monasteries where the protests began, have been swamped by mass Chinese tourism, poking lenses into the most private devotions of those on the path to enlightenment.


The new railway to Lhasa, less than two years in operation, accelerated the tourism boom, the brothels and discos, and the marginalisation of Tibetans. Most Tibetans live in a countryside as big as western Europe, with their herds of yak, sheep and goats, eking an existence on land rigidly allocated decades ago by Chinese bureaucrats who refuse to re-divide land as families grow and new families form. Poverty among Tibetans is endemic, even as statistics averaged for entire provinces, bundling urban boom and rural neglect, proclaim rising standards of living.

The latest threat to Tibetan ways of life comes wrapped in an ideology of environmentalism. In the name of protecting the Tibetan upper reaches of China’s great rivers – both the Yangtze and the Yellow – thousands of Tibetan nomads are being forced off their land, and resettled in miserable new towns in the middle of nowhere. Instantly, their livelihoods and intimate knowledge of the land and sustainable management, are useless – but they are seldom given training in new skills or even compensation beyond a grain survival ration.

Now the nomads, in a huge and rapidly expanding area, are ecological refugees, on the mistaken assumption that they are ignorantly and carelessly to blame for degradation of a vast grassland second in size only to Australia’s pastoral inland. The nomads, compulsorily voiceless, not allowed to form any NGOs of their own, have no opportunity to show how deeply they care for the land, having sustained its productivity and its wildlife over millennia. China’s urban-based Party elite regards nomads as stupid, uneducated, unscientific, greedy and destructive – everything China is trying to get away from. There is no partnership between authority and those on the land, because they are of different races, with very different worldviews.

This is the bedrock of the revolt. The Chinese authorities hold rural Tibetans in contempt, while urban educated Tibetans are viewed with suspicion, their exclusive loyalty to China and the Party forever tested by extreme “patriotic education” campaigns that make it compulsory to denounce the most revered lamas.


To be a Tibetan in Tibet is a lot like being black in Mississippi 50 years ago. Travel within Tibet, migration from country to city, number of livestock permitted, number of children permitted, all are rigidly and oppressively controlled by an invasive bureaucracy. Meanwhile health care and education, strictly on a capitalist user-pays basis, are concentrated in urban areas. Only if you have the money upfront, and connections, do you even get in the door of a hospital.

The monks and nuns, who devote their lives to clarifying and purifying the mind, draw inspiration from the example of their teachers, and the teachers of their teachers, the highest of all being the Dalai Lama. China’s Party leaders, including President Hu Jintao, who imposed martial law the last time Tibet revolted, never seem to learn that insisting on monks trampling or spitting on an image of the Dalai Lama is only going to deepen Tibetan alienation.

The China the world glimpses briefly today is a China that has not, in Tibet, changed as much as we would all hope. Tibet is stuck in a time warp, of Marxist anti-religion propaganda, mass campaigns of denunciation and thought reform. China’s policies in Tibet are deeply contradictory and self-defeating. China wants Tibetans to embrace and love the motherland and the Party, but the punitive insistence on stability always undermines the uneven, often exclusionary, progress towards development.

China needs to be told by its friends that an empire cannot be made into a nation by force. Australia, as a close friend and with a Prime Minister fluent in Chinese, is uniquely placed to remind the isolated and fearful Party leaders that they can gain much by listening to the message of the rioters: give us a break. Australia could teach China much about landcare, about rural communities and government working as partners to repair long term damage, and about discovering the hard way how to respect and reconcile with the Indigenous peoples.

As the Dalai Lama has always said: Tibetans and Chinese have gotten on well in the past, and can do so again, but only if there is mutual respect for fellow human beings who differ in their sources of happiness.

Tibetan monks and nuns are now dying, usually with equanimity and no hatred, in order to maintain that difference.


Gabriel Lafitte is a development policy consultant to the Environment & Development Desk of the Tibetan government in exile based in India.

In 1999 he was asked by Tibetans to assess a World Bank project in Tibetan areas of Qinghai province, that proposed alleviating poverty by sending tens of thousands of non-Tibetan settlers to displace Tibetan nomads. While at the World Bank site he was detained and interrogated by China’s state security force for a week, then deported.

Read Gabriel Lafitte’s full bio

Mar 18 2008

Storytime with Pinche!

All the great men of import gathered around the table. Lunch had broken and the help swiftly took the service away so the captains of industry could tackle the task at hand. They were veritable whose who of plutocrats.

At the head of the table sat Thomas W. Lamont, acting head of Morgan Bank; Albert Wiggin, head of the Chase National Bank; and Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank. Lesser men flanked them down each side of the dark chestnut table. There was levity in the air. The Republic was in crisis.

They remember the Panic of 1907, the fourth panic in three score years. It was JP Morgan who stepped in then, the great man himself. He organized a team of bank and trust executives that secured international lines of credit and bought plummeting stocks of healthy corporations. The free market had saved itself that day, save the help from international friends.

Or that’s how they chose to remember it.

After brief rebout, they choose Richard Whitney to be there man who was to be their new Morgan. He would lead their resources into battle. They would buy large blocks of the falling stock of U.S. Steel. Then they would move onto other blue chip stocks. Unfortunately, there was no foreign capital to be had. So they decided to move forward as one, coordinated like the fingers of a hand.

This was at 1 p.m. on Friday, October 25.

Over the weekend, this meeting of the financial gods was splashed on every newspapers across the United States. The plutocrats were the Britney Spears of their day, and these group of elite was all but certain that their actions would fix public trust in the market. By Sunday, these men had convinced them that they were finally around the bend and good times were here again. The credit crisis of the late 1920s was over!

On Monday, October 28, the people bought none of what the plutocrats were selling, and even less stock. In fact, the public who had stock along with almost all other investors decided to get out of the market. At the end of the day, the Dow was down by 13%.

There were rumors that the Rockefeller family and other financial giants were set to buy large quantities of stocks. Even William C. Durant was on board. Surely the public would see that they had confidence in the market, so the public should to.

The next day was “Black Tuesday”, October 29, 1929, 16.4 million shares were traded.

The Dow lost another 12%.

The ticker did not stop running until about 7:45 that evening.

The lost for the week was $30 billion, ten times more than the annual budget of the federal government.

It was more than America had spent in World War 1.

The masters of Wall Street meet and discussed went wrong. They released that it was the foreign capital that JP Morgan had connected with domestic spending capabilities that had won the day in 1907. It was outside investors who bought the American credit. Without outside stimulus, the credit cycle would cannibalize itself until it was not only unruly, but also worthless.

The men laughed, realizing their folly. One junior raised a specter, “What if the country had already burned through its entire line of foreign investment and credit?”

Lamont looked up from his bourbon and muttered, “Not only would that be impossible, it would be sheer and utter madness. JP Morgan would never do anything as foolish as to prop up some industry again, unless there is a vast supply of cheap foreign investments. Mark my words young man, that would never happen.”

A cheer went up from the gaggle, and merriment. Sure, the country would be in a bind for quite awhile, but the absurdity of the junior executives comments gave them thanks that at least they were not that over a barrel.

Or wearing barrels, which would surely be the case.

Bonus:

Richard M. Salsman:

“As late as April 1942, U.S. stock prices were still 75% below their 1929 peak and would not revisit that level until November 1954-almost a quarter of a century later.”

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