Jan 13 2008

War Torn – part 1

The New York Times, Sunday 1-13-08, has an ‘Eye Opening’ Report, Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles with this one only being Part 1 !!

A series of articles and multimedia about veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who have committed killings, or been charged with them, after coming home.

I’m only about halfway through it, tough reading, and memories flowing back of the reports of some, not so long ago, of my brothers of ‘Nam!

These Reports, Articles, Discussions…………. need to get the Traffic this form of Communication brings forth, so Others will Pickup these Extremely Important Subjects and Do More investigating and reporting!!

If we had todays technology yesterday, PTSD and other Results of War, would be right up there Alongside the ‘War Is An Absolute Last Resort’, and Wars of Choice wouldn’t occur, at least by this Nation!!

These Conflicts will have Even More Devestating Results felt for even longer than any previous conflicts, for those Hatreds we are creating will be followed with destructive behavior, others are now striking back for our failed policies of the past as we add more in the present!

A Snippit of this report:

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”

Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment – along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems – appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving.

About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

Audio Interview: Dr. Jonathan Shay on Returning Veterans and Combat Trauma (January 13, 2008) There is four seperate, short, parts of this interview at site.

Book Excerpt: Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (January 13, 2008)

Blogrunner: Reactions From Around the Web

This is a nine page report with more to follow, This Is The Reality Of Man’s  War’s of Choice, and Not Only For The Combat Veterans but For Those Who Are Invaded and Occupied!!

Follow the link above to Learn More, for we have been Apathedic for Too Long!!

The following has nothing to do with the above, but is possibly another sad result of the divisions within this Country as a further result of our Failed Policies and our Loss of Control of our Government, the People’s Democracy.

This bus was totaled by fire, around 9:30 pm, Friday night, 1/11/08

It could have been machanical but Owner~Operator~Driver ( and Veteran ) Jim Goodnow who pulled into a South Jersey Truck Stop, to catch a 3 or 4 hour nap. In retrospect, remembers some suspicious activity outside the bus, and about 20 minutes later, the entire engine compartment, and back of the bus was engulfed in flames.

I received an e-mail about this yesterday with little information as none was really known at the time, Jim reportedly planned to notify the ATF Arson Squad on Saturday morning.

There is nothing up at the IVAW website as yet about the incident.

I did a few searches and couldn’t find much, yesterday, except a couple of Veterans Yahoo Groups that had short reports w/pics that didn’t post, about it. llbear found ,this short report at the Postland Indie Media site.

And this morning I found a report over at the Yellow Rose of Texas blogspot site titled “The YELLOW ROSE PEACE BUS DESTROYED BY FIRE!” with a few photo’s

This bus, often mired in controversy since the IVAW “Dirty South” tour that left Philly in June, and had Active Duty BBQ’s @ Ft Meade, Ft Jackson, Camp Lejeune, Ft Benning, and other Southern Military Posts (Including an IVAW benefit by Tom Morello, of Rage Against the Machine, and AudioSlave, in Virginia) as well as backdrop for many a Demonstration, and Ft Drum, NY, organizing parties, has finally died.

Again, this could have been a result of something mechanical causing the fire in the engine compartment. But as many of us Pro-Peace Activist know there are a few groups out there, no names or links need be placed, who are reportly being funded and have ramped up their so called ‘Super Patriotic’ rethoric, starting negative rumours about upcoming Peaceful Demonstrations, that are and have been welllllllll Peaceful, no matter the number of participants, from a handful to Tens Of Thousands! They also have become more violent in their speach and even actions towards the Peaceful Demonstrators, and they certainly haven’t been peaceful themselves.

There is also this Video of the fire

Blip TV

over at the Yellow Rose of Texas Blogspot site.

The ’embedded link’ and the ‘url link’, for the photobucket video, didn’t work so I put it up on my Blip TV site and Google Video.

Jan 13 2008

Blog Voices This Week 1/13/08

Anyone who has been closely watching the primaries over the last two weeks probably feels like you’ve been riding a roller-coaster. This time last week everyone was ready to anoint Obama as the next president and the media was full of misogynist platitudes about Clinton. Then came her emotional moment and win in the New Hampshire primary. And now the intersection of race and gender is causing no end of turmoil.

In the middle of all this, I thought it would be interesting to listen to those in our midst who live at that intersection of race and gender every day – women of color. When I visited some of their blogs, I found that a common theme was their reaction to an op-ed in the New York Times last Tuesday by Gloria Steinem titled Women Are Never Front-Runners. In order to set the stage, its probably best to click through and read the whole editorial. But I’ll provide a few of Steinem’s statements that were most commented on by the blogs that I visited. And then we’ll explore some of the reactions.

Gender is probably the most restricting force in American life, whether the question is who must be in the kitchen or who could be in the White House…

That’s why the Iowa primary was following our historical pattern of making change. Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).

I’m not advocating a competition for who has it toughest. The caste systems of sex and race are interdependent and can only be uprooted together…

What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age.

This country can no longer afford to choose our leaders from a talent pool limited by sex, race, money, powerful fathers and paper degrees. It’s time to take equal pride in breaking all the barriers. We have to be able to say: “I’m supporting her because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman.”

I’d like to start with some powerful words by Shark-Fu at AngryBlackBitch:

After reading Steinem’s Op-Ed I felt invisible…as if black and woman can’t exist in the same body. I felt undocumented…as if the history of blacks and the history of women have nothing to do with the history of black women.

When I read “Black men were given the vote a half-century before women of any race were allowed to mark a ballot, and generally have ascended to positions of power, from the military to the boardroom, before any women (with the possible exception of obedient family members in the latter).” I felt both attacked and ignored at the same time.

I think of the women and men in my family who were not extended the protected vote until 1965. I wince at the lack of acknowledgment for the black women of Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery who had to march with their brothers in the 1960s to attain the vote because the suffrage movement abandoned them in a Southern strategy to get the vote in 1920.

And there it is again…that invisibility; like a brutal weight that I am so bloody tired of carrying.

What worries me is that this is the kind of article that makes some black women wary of feminism…wary of the sisterhood…because eventually, just give it time, it will all come down to black and white or women and men with black women vanished from the equation.

Next, let’s hear from Sudy at A Womyn’s Ecdysis:

Look, I’m not going to go head to head with Steinem and argue what is most pressing for womyn in America – race or gender. What I do know is that as a US womyn of color living in this country is that the two are so inexplicably interlaced that I resist ANY individual that pitts once against the other, especially a White mainstream feminist. What I find most often, too, is women like Steinem (White liberal women) call gender over race…

There’s a reason why I use the word gender/ace as one entity. I cannot separate the two.

And finally, here’s some of the conclusion of an essay by Jennifer Fang at Racialicious:

Ultimately, however, Steinem’s piece (intentionally or unintentionally) draws a line in the sand between people of colour and women, essentially disregarding the everyday racism faced by Black and Brown people, and claiming the Oppression Olympics gold medal for women. Further, by casting the debate as between Black men and White women, Steinem renders the woman of colour invisible, reaffirms the binary Black-White paradigm of race, and demands we take a side in the epic battle between race and gender. Is it no wonder, then, that women of colour have long felt alienated by feminists like Steinem? Where do we fit when we’re being asked to choose between Obama and Clinton as a metaphor for race versus gender? And how are we supposed to react when an incorrect choice labels us as “less radical”?

Gloria Steinem wants us to able to say we’re supporting Senator Hillary Clinton because she’ll be a great president and because she’s a woman. But if we’re really ready to take “equal pride in breaking all the barriers”, then how can we be expected to make the call between voting for these candidates based even in part on their identity? Regardless of whom we decide on, by making the identity politics of our candidate a factor in our decision, we are implicitly establishing a “separate and unequal” relationship between race and gender barriers that only fuels the continued clash between race activists and feminists.

Today I bring you these words from our sisters and ask you to take a moment to contemplate the invisibility of their situation in these binary codes that are used to divide us. These voices need to be brought into the conversation if we are ever going to understand the reality that surrounds us. It might sound a bit corny after all these years, but my vision for today is of Aretha and Annie…and sisterhood.

Jan 13 2008

Is This A Victory?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying privately he now won’t attempt to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on the wiretapping of al Qaeda suspects. Instead, he’ll merely support another 18-month extension of the six-month-old Protect America Act. WSJ

Now I saw this news yesterday on Daily Kos and my search skilz are not such in the morning that I care to look it up and the Beltway Bozos are not back in session ’til next week so no big deal says I thinking there plenty of time to muster up some outrage.

What I saw this morning on Atrios linking Open Left made me spew my coffee (which I haven’t even had yet).

If you can’t tell I think this no victory.  The Protect America Act was a horrible capitulation of Congress and a stain and a blot on the Constitution.  Any extension at all is unacceptable.  Six months ago it was a bad idea.  IT STILL IS!

The fact that Harry has found some spine on a clear corporate giveaway after the revelations that unlimited spying on citizens without warrants was willing acceded to by the Telecoms BEFORE 9/11 AND those greedy bastards were willing to sell out our supposed National Security interests because we were late with the bribe check…

Heck.

Jan 13 2008

Memories, Class Anxiety, and Shuffling Toward Oblivion

I think my own notions of class might be a bit too quaint. I think about my grandparents. Granddad with a grade eight education, worked at a steel mill when things like that actually existed in North America. Grandma worked part time on the weekends at a dry cleaners operating one of those giant presses. They owned a small home. They took modest vacations camping all across Canada and the United States. They believed in “saving for a rainy day”. My grandpa, like most men in his neighborhood could build and fix things. My uncle Floyd was a printing press operator who made a bit of extra money on the side fixing cars in his neighborhood. My mother went to nursing school at age seventeen because girls became teachers, nurses, or secretaries. Although she later went to university as an adult, it never occurred to my grandparents to send her even though she had straight As. There was a rather well off side of the family and the women from that part became teachers. It was considered respectable to do that.

Then I think of my own early childhood. We were probably considered middle class because my mother was in a union and while they did go on strike, she was never laid off. My grandparetns had to consider layoffs in their houshold budget. My parents separated and my mother got a job as a nursing instructor. She made exactly enough money to qualify for a mortgage and borrowed the down payment off my grandparents. Despite the fact that my mother was an is skillful at handling money, it generally ran low at the end of the month and we ate vegetarian. Most of the men on my street worked in factories, I lived in a GM town and working there was a commonly expressed aspiration. When I was eighteen one of my childhood friends got on with GM and we thought she had won the lottery. She did to.

The men on my street generally worked in factories although there was a teacher, a few firemen, and a cop. If you raised to much hell, Art, the cop might talk to your parents. His boys, one of whom was my age, were expected to be nice to the young kids and even the girls and include them in games. They might have resented it but they reluctantly included me street hockey, helped me learn how to skate at the local arena, and beat the shit out of a boy from another neighborhood when my nose got bloodied. When I took power skating, a big guy from out of the neighborhood who knew Art’s boys, took up for me when the guys in my class accidental knocked me over about a hundred times. He skated over and asked what the problem was. Naturally, I said there was none. He was sixteen, I was ten, I had no freaking clue who he was. The next week he was there at the rink, teen aged boys hung out there even when they weren’t playing hockey. He showed me how to tie my skates a different way to compensate for my weak ankles and introduced himself. Nobody knocked me on my ass at power skating although they still told me I couldn’t skate worth shit.

It wasn’t all nostalgic tribalistic bonding. Until other couples got divorced on our street, my mom and I were outsiders. The women considered her a threat, the men thought she was uppity. I routinely got into fights at school because I “did not have a dad” and spent an inordinate amount of time at the principals office. I was small, I lost most of the fights. My clothes weren’t stylish and my mother could not volunteer as a parent chaperon on school field trips. There was a limited amount of social tolerance for anybody who was perceived to be different. If you were different you were expected not to draw attention to yourself and inhale a certain amount of harassment or exclusion at recess. Teachers did not intervene unless blood was spilled. My school went from K to 8, it was big by the standards of those days:700 kids by the time I left. Older kids used drugs there on the weekends and dropped the occasional needle. A chapter of a well known motorcycle gang had a house within walking distance of my street. Everybody knew where it was. Nobody got very nosy. My mother’s best friend was from India. When she and her husband came to visit, people in my neighborhood stood in the driveway and stared.

My mother went to graduate school secretly because you got a 500 dollar bonus at the community college. She was worried she would be seen as too ambitious by her boss and get assigned extra work so she did not tell anybody. She just wanted the money.

The United States was considered rather exotic. They were hip.

Jan 13 2008

World to US – “Don’t elect another idiot, please…”

Well, that isn’t exactly the headline, but it may as well have been.

In a WaPo article from today outlining the increased world opinion about and interest in the Presidential primaries and our upcoming election, the general feeling around those terrorist loving, freedom hating countries in the Middle East, er, Europe, Africa and South America is that hopefully us Americans can elect someone this November that isn’t out of touch with the rest of the world on, well, just about everything, actually.

It has been one of the bigger stories in the UK lately:

[M]ajor British newspapers this week alone have devoted more than 87 pages to news of the U.S. primaries, including 22 front-page stories — exceptionally intense coverage of a foreign news event. More than 700 correspondents from 50 countries covered the Iowa and New Hampshire events.

And while only someone who has been in a coma for the past 7 years is oblivious to the fact that Mister Bush’s administration’s actions, decisions and positions have been disastrous when measured by any metric that doesn’t involve favoring the ultra wealthy corporatists – much of the world is just waiting for the clock to run out on the most embarrassingly dangerous era in this country’s short history.

Of course, in recent history, the opinion of too many people in this country has been to do the opposite of what the general consensus of the rest of the world wants or is doing – even if just for spite and phony chest-thumping.  But this election does present an opportunity; even a historic one – to set this country (somewhat) in the same direction as the rest of the world is moving.

While I am not talking about any one candidate in particular, there is a big contrast between the “worst” Democratic candidate and the “most palatable” republican candidate – not just here but also in the eyes of those around the globe.  If we look at major issues where we have not played well in the sandbox with others, the list would be a long one.  The environmental, trade and foreign policies (pick pretty much any aspect of it), not to mention nearly all of the domestic policies have had disastrous results or are setting this country on a dangerous path.

The WaPo article is a pretty funny read, and discusses the level of interest in South Africa in both Obama and Clinton (no “what about Edwards?” comments, please), but not in the republicans.  Ireland has a lot of coverage of Clinton, and others are quoted as wondering if this will be the end of the US being “the bully on the playground” or that we “choose a person who is both talented and willing enough to work towards peace rather than war.”

Interest was high in Brazil, Denmark and other countries as well – mostly in Clinton and Obama.  And foreign policy analysts have been outspoken about just wanting to turn the page, while hoping that the American people redeem ourselves for the debacle that has become the worst administration ever:

Many analysts said the election has created high expectations that the new president will be more in tune with the rest of the world.

“In many capitals people have been waiting for this change for some time,” said Rosa Balfour, a senior analyst at the European Policy Center, a Brussels-based research group.

Of course, that eliminates pretty much every republican candidate right off the bat.  But it does show that, even this early on in the election process that many eyes are on what is happening, what will happen and what we are thinking/doing.  It is obvious who are viewed as viable candidates to function and participate on the world stage.  And it is a good warning and bit of advice that the American public should take.  

“Our” candidates have their differences.  But they are not going to act like a buffoon and be an embarrassment to us or to the rest of the world.  We can only hope that enough people around this country remember the last time that a buffoon and embarrassment was on the ballot.

Jan 13 2008

Fight!

The next time I see a Repug attack dog on Faux Noise or on the MSM tagging a Democratic candidate as Liberal, Liberal, Liberal, I want to see MY candidate aggressively attack back.

“That’s right I AM A LIBERAL!

  • Conservatives believe it’s perfectly ok for the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer!
  • Conservatives don’t care that the middle class in America is shrinking!
  • Conservatives want to give the Richest 1% Tax Cuts while our military struggles to buy more up armored humvees!
  • Conservatives want to privatize social security instead of raising the withholding cap for people who earn more than 100 Grand a year!
  • Conservatives don’t care that the deficit has doubled under their watch!
  • Conservatives want Paris Hilton not to pay any taxes on the money she earns from her parents death!
  • Conservatives don’t want evolution taught in public schools!
  • Conservatives don’t want stem cell research done on frozen embryos, even if they are going to be thrown out anyway!
  • Conservatives don’t want teenagers to know about or to have access to birth control!
  • Conservatives are offended when they hear a phone message giving them an option for a second language!
  • Conservatives are afraid their kids will become gay if gay marriage becomes legal and accepted!
  • Conservatives believe water boarding isn’t torture as long as they’re not on the receiving end!
  • Conservatives believe we should occupy Iraq indefinitely!
  • Conservatives believe we should ‘stay on offense’ on the so called war on terror, and that we should threaten to invade or nuke any country whose leaders don’t like us!
  • Conservatives believe we can just kill everyone who hates us!
  • Conservatives believe anyone who thinks President Bush is an idiot, hates America!

That’s right, you nailed me!  I AM A LIBERAL!”

It makes me nuts that our candidates are afraid of the L word.  Especially since the Conservatives have been such screw ups.  All we have to do is point out their record.  When they try to duck it and shift blame we need to hit them with “I thought your party was supposed to be the party of personal responsibility, take some!”

I know I’m just fantasizing but wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had a candidate that would actually fight?  Their candidates are falling all over each other to claim they are more Conservative than the other.  While our candidates and the MSM think being labeled a Liberal is bad?

Jan 13 2008

Pony Party, NFL Round-up

Jan 13 2008

Pony Party: Sunday music retrospective

Music I survived



Debbie Reynolds:  Tammy

Strangely, these were the songs I liked and could remember.  You wouldn’t want to know the ones I can’t remember, I’m willing to bet.



Connie Francis:  Who’s Sorry Now



Connie Stevens: 16 Reasons



Brenda Lee:  All Alone am I

Please do not recommend a Pony Party when you see one.  There will be another along in a few hours.

Jan 13 2008

Docudharma Times Sunday January 13

This is an Open Thread: Ice,Wind,Snow and Rain Will Not Imped You

Sunday’s Headlines: In Texas, Weighing Life With a Border Fence: In Vegas, Politics Comes to The Strip: Saudi Arabia beheads foreign maid: Iraq opens door to Saddam’s followers: Bribery, brothels, free Viagra: VW trial scandalises Germany: Townsfolk defy ‘Mother Fire Throat’

Unions bitterly divided in Democratic race

A tight Clinton-Obama contest has raised the costs and stakes for organized labor. And no place higher than in Nevada.

LAS VEGAS — The tight race between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama has opened surprisingly deep and bitter divisions in the ranks of organized labor, as rival union leaders fly planeloads of last-minute volunteers into key states, accuse each other of trying to disenfranchise members, and even launch open attacks on rival Democratic candidates.

In Nevada, which holds its caucuses Saturday, unions backing Clinton are crying foul because some caucuses will be in casinos and hotels where a pro-Obama union’s members predominate — helping that union’s members and potentially discouraging others.

Meanwhile, inside the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which has endorsed the New York senator and is leading the charge for her in Nevada, several officers are protesting the union’s decision to run negative ads against the Illinois senator.

Water-boarding ‘would be torture’

US national intelligence chief Mike McConnell has said the interrogation technique of water-boarding “would be torture” if he were subjected to it.

Mr McConnell said it would also be torture if water-boarding, which involves simulated drowning, resulted in water entering a detainee’s lungs.

He told the New Yorker there would be a “huge penalty” for anyone using it if it was ever determined to be torture.

The US attorney-general has declined to rule on whether the method is torture.

However, Michael Mukasey said during his Senate confirmation hearing that water-boarding was “repugnant to me” and that he would institute a review.

USA

In Texas, Weighing Life With a Border Fence

GRANJENO, Tex. – Rafael Garza, a former mayor of this small border city, stood steps from the back door of his simple brick house and chopped the air with a hand. “This is where the actual fence would be,” he said.

And the federal property line, he said, would be at his shower.

Mr. Garza, 36, a Hidalgo County sheriff’s sergeant who traces his family here to 1767, was imagining what life would be like in the shadow of the Proposed Tactical Infrastructure – the wall, to many outraged South Texans – that the Department of Homeland Security has committed to build by the end of the year.

In Vegas, Politics Comes to The Strip

Caucus Sites in Casinos Become A Flash Point

LAS VEGAS — Next Saturday, gamblers at the Bellagio, the opulent Las Vegas casino immortalized in the George Clooney blockbuster “Ocean’s Eleven,” will be treated to an unusual sight.

Just before noon, the hotel’s dishwashers, cocktail waitresses, porters and bellhops will go on break and gather in a 30,000-square-foot ballroom to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama or maybe John Edwards to be the Democratic nominee for president.

A similar scene will play out in eight other casinos on or near Las Vegas’s Strip as Democrats caucus in Nevada, the next stop in the party’s fiercely competitive presidential race. There will be more than 1,700 caucus precincts across Nevada, but estimates are that the votes cast in the casinos could be more than 10 percent of the statewide total. Many of them will be cast by Latinos, the first time in the 2008 presidential race when that ethnic group will play a significant role.

Latin America

Anger at Argentina airport delays

Passengers at Argentina’s main airport have damaged ticket counters and thrown objects at staff after an airline cancelled flights for a second day.

TV pictures showed broken glass in the terminal of the national carrier, Aerolineas Argentinas, at Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires.

The protests were against delays caused by a baggage handlers’ strike and a walk-out by ticket counter workers.

Witnesses said the stoppage began after a passenger abused an airline employee.

Townsfolk defy ‘Mother Fire Throat’

Mount Tungurahua in Ecuador could erupt at any moment, spewing red hot lava down its slopes and hurling volcanic rocks on to the small town of Baños below. But, far from fearing for their lives, the town’s inhabitants are angry about what they see as a media hype that is seriously damaging their livelihoods.

Tungurahua is a grumpy old soul. Lying about 100 miles south-east of Quito, the volcano normally blows smoke and ash into the sky several times an hour. Every now and then, a rumbling sound can be heard and the ground shakes a little. It sounds as if Mother Fire Throat, as the Incas called the volcano, is flexing her vocal cords.

Middle East

Saudi Arabia beheads foreign maid

An Indonesian housemaid has been executed in Saudi Arabia after being convicted of killing her employer, the Saudi interior ministry has said.

The woman was beheaded in the southern Asir province, in what was the second execution in the country in 2008.

Iraq opens door to Saddam’s followers

A bill to restore rights of former Baathists ends a bitter and divisive legacy of American bungling

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor

Sunday January 13, 2008

The Observer

It is now seen as the most disastrous decision of the US-led occupation of Iraq – the firing of hundreds of thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party from their government jobs in April 2003.

Enacted by the Coalition Provisional Authority’s head, Paul Bremer, it created a powerful impetus that pushed former Baathists towards rebellion and many took up arms with the insurgents. In a single swoop former officials and members of the Saddam-era security forces, many of them concentrated in the Sunni Triangle, were rendered unemployed. It caused the impoverishment of whole communities, stoking up resentment to the presence of coalition troops.

Europe

Bribery, brothels, free Viagra: VW trial scandalises Germany

Tales of high-level sleaze heard in court have angered millions afflicted by welfare cuts and a pay freeze

Kate Connolly in Berlin

Sunday January 13, 2008

The Observer

For years, it is a wonder that Volkswagen managed to produce any cars at all. Europe’s biggest automobile company, and the leading symbol of corporate Germany, was embroiled in a widespread scandal involving sex, bribery and pleasure trips, the scale of which the continent has not seen before.

In a courtroom investigation in Braunschweig in Lower Saxony, in the north west, details of the €2.5m affair have been unfolding and the nation has been poring over the lurid details. They involve a string of expensive hookers, sex parties and expense-account shopping trips which took place over the best part of a decade, endorsed by a management keen to buy the support of union officials and the shopfloor at a critical time for the company. The scandal has claimed the scalp of the personnel director Peter Hartz – who was convicted at a trial last year – along with two senior managers and the chairman of the powerful works council.

Nyet! The Madonna of Moscow says our pop stars are rubbish

So Valeriya wants to show them how it’s done. With 100m sales and Putin as a fan, she may have a chance

By Jonathan Owen

Published: 13 January 2008

With record sales of 100 million and countless awards for her music, she is probably the best-selling star never to have topped the British charts. But now Valeriya – Russia’s answer to Madonna, who counts President Vladimir Putin among her army of fans – plans to change all that by trying to conquer London this week.

She brings with her an extraordinary soap-opera life story that, if filmed, would have critics pointing out that reality is not like that. But hers is. Born the daughter of two classical musicians, she achieved fame at the age of 23 with victory at international song contests. That set her on a fast track to becoming one of Russia’s leading pop stars, and three years later she was voted Person of the Year by the country’s journalists.

Africa

Kenyan police defiant over city bloodbath

THE police chief was unapologetic about the number of people her force had shot dead in Kisumu, western Kenya, to quell looting in the violent aftermath of last month’s disputed presidential elections.

“They don’t know another language except the gun,” said Deputy Police Commissioner Grace Kaindi, glancing up from her desk with pursed lips. A Kenyan police motto, “Keepers of the peace, defenders of the innocent”, hung on her office wall.

In the darkness of the mortuary a few hundred yards away, her force’s handiwork lay on the floor of three sweltering rooms: some 50 bodies under strips of crimson cloth with their feet poking out, waiting for families to collect them.

Libya key transit for UK-bound migrants

Up to a million await calmer spring seas before risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean



Mark Townsend

Sunday January 13, 2008

The Observer

Up to a million migrants have gathered in Libya, from where they will attempt to sail across the Mediterranean for Europe and, ultimately, the UK.

New estimates reveal that there are two million migrants massed in the North African country and that half of them plan to sail to the European mainland and travel on to Britain in the hope of building a new life.

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), most have travelled from sub-Saharan states such as Ghana and Sierra Leone, attracted by Libya’s reputation as a centre for people smugglers. Most are expected to wait until the spring, when the seas are calmer, before making the crossing on unseaworthy and crowded vessels.

Asia

Angry Pakistanis turn against army

IT IS the most expensive – and talked about – property development in Pakistan, but few can get near it. Hidden behind barbed wire, the new state-of-the-art army headquarter to replace a garrison in Rawalpindi is costing a reputed £1 billion and will cover 2,400 acres of prime land in Islamabad, including lakes, a residential complex, schools and clinics.

Originally intended to represent the best of Pakistan, the new army HQ is now being seen as a symbol of all that is wrong with the country.

Come and laugh at us, plead Burma’s people

Street satirists and ordinary Burmese agree: a travel boycott will ruin them

Chris McGreal in Mandalay

Sunday January 13, 2008

The Observer

From their shopfront theatre in Mandalay, the Moustache Brothers tell bad jokes in barely comprehensible English about Burma’s backward-looking generals and every few years they get flung into jail for it.

There are three in the troupe – actually two brothers and their cousin – and each evening they wait for the tourists to turn up and justify their performance of slapstick, dance and strangled humour about the army looking after itself while the rest of Burma goes to the dogs.

Jan 13 2008

The Military Industrial Complex and the Power Elite

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Wikipedia tells us that the concept of a “permanent war economy” originated in 1944. Such a war economy, it was predicted, would be one in which there would be a post-WWII arms race. It was argued at the time that:

the USA would retain the character of a war economy; even in peacetime, American military expenditures would remain large, reducing the percentage of unemployed compared to the 1930s.

The concept was also used by U.S. businessman and Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson to refer to an institutionalized war economy, a semi-command-type economy which is directed by corporation executives, based on military industry, and funded by state social spending…whereby the collusion between militarism and war profiteering are manifest as a permanently subsidized industry.

Wilson warned at the close of the war that the U.S. must not return to a civilian economy, but must keep to a “permanent war economy.” Wilson was made Secretary of Defense under Dwight D. Eisenhower, and was largely instrumental in reforming the Pentagon as an instrument for facilitating a closer relationship between the military and industry.

The military, originally conceived as a small order fed by state militia, has now become an empire, the largest and most expensive feature of our government.

President Eisenhower, in a speech on 16 April 1953 said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Back in 1956, C. Wright Mills a sociologist, wrote an influential book which brought attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggested that the ordinary citizen was a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those entities. The book title is The Power Elite.

The following is quoted from a review of Power Elite. The review was written by Jeffrey Leach for amazon.com.

According to Mills, these three institutions (military, corporate, political) now form a contiguous whole as far as managing the country goes. Moreover, people inhabiting any of these three structures often move between them with seeming ease. Isn’t it funny that Colin Powell, a lifelong military officer, suddenly finds himself in the political world as Secretary of State? Or how Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld move between the corporate and political worlds with such simplicity?

Mills includes a couple of chapters about the role of society. In this section of the book, the author concerns himself with the concept of “masses” versus “publics”. A mass is essentially a population that receives opinions from elites through controlled communication systems instead of expressing their own ideas… A public, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of a mass. Opinions are not received through media systems, but arise from open debate through open communications systems…

I think anyone with an iota of common sense knows where we stand today in terms of Mills’s definitions. The United States, that great, immutable bulwark of freedom, is instead a mass of some 260 million souls effectively controlled through the corporate media systems.

Sure, one can argue that the people vote officials out of political office, but has that really changed anything? And sure, the Internet does allow nearly anyone with access to a computer a forum for virtually any topic, but it will take more than a few e-mails tacked on to the end of every news opinion program on the media outlets to convince me that we do not essentially receive our opinions… Every time you hear the word “democracy” fall out of an elite’s mouth, just remember that democracy means “mob rule,” in this case, the American mob ruled by the power elites.

Stephen Lendman writing on ZNet observes that the corporate media is in crisis, and that our free and open society is at risk. I would agree but argue that this phenomenon is nothing new but that it’s only now becoming widely recognized, largely because of the information available to the “masses” by way of the Internet.

Fiction substitutes for fact, news is carefully filtered, dissent is marginalized, and supporting the powerful substitutes for full and accurate reporting. As a result, wars of aggression are called liberating ones, civil liberties are suppressed for our own good, and patriotism means going along with governments that are lawless.

The Power Elite Today

Journalist Joseph Kraft, a former member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, said the CFR “comes close to being an organ of what C. Wright Mills has called the Power Elite – a group of men, similar in interest and outlook, shaping events from invulnerable positions behind the scenes.” Kraft worked at the Washington Post and the New York Times during the 1950s and became a speech writer for JFK. For this he was placed on Nixon’s master list of political opponents.

This from Wikipedia:

A study by two critics of the organization, Laurence Shoup and William Minter, found that of 502 government officials surveyed from 1945 to 1972, more than half were members of the Council. Today it has about 4,300 members, which over its history have included senior serving politicians, more than a dozen Secretaries of State, former national security officers, bankers, lawyers, professors, former CIA members and senior media figures.

As for the Trilateral Commission:

The Trilateral Commission is a private organization, established to foster closer cooperation between America, Europe and Japan. It was founded in July 1973, at the initiative of David Rockefeller; who was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time and the Commission is widely seen as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations. Other founding members included Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, both eventually heads of the Federal Reserve system.

Other Influential Organizations

American Enterprise Institute:

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is a conservative think tank, founded in 1943. It is associated with neoconservative domestic and foreign policy views. According to the institute its mission is “to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism – limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate.” AEI is an independent, non-profit organization. It is supported primarily by grants and contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. It is located in Washington, D.C.

AEI has emerged as one of the leading architects of the second Bush administration’s public policy. More than twenty AEI alumni and current visiting scholars and fellows have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government’s many panels and commissions. Former United States Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar, and Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is a senior fellow.

The US Chamber of Commerce:

The Chamber is staffed with policy specialists, lobbyists and lawyers. It is known for spending more money than any other lobbying organization on a yearly basis.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been criticized by some as being a Republican front group, promoting Republican candidates and becoming a driving force to support the right-wing policies of the administration of George W. Bush. In an article posted at the liberal political blog MyDD, Matt Stoller wrote that the Chamber “used to be a trade association that advocated in a bipartisan manner for narrowly tailored policies to benefit its members. Since 1997 or so, it has become a fully functional part of the partisan Republican machine,” with CEO and president Thomas J. Donohue “raising its budget to $150M a year from corporate chiefs satisfied with his ability to move policy through a Republican Congress.”

The Chamber claims on its website that its mission is to “advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity, and responsibility.” It describes itself as “the world’s largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.”

However, the Chamber is “dominated by oil companies, pharmaceutical giants, automakers and other polluting industries,” according to James Carter, executive director of the Green Chamber of Commerce.

There are numerous others. For the sake of brevity and bandwidth I’ll list a few of them here with links. If your time permits I would encourage readers to check the links and look at the membership in these organizations. Check who supports them with funding. You will find overlapping membership. Check the board of directors of any international oil company and you will see their links to AEI, CFR and others.

Hoover Institute,  Heritage Foundation,  Hudson Institute,   AIPAC,  Manhattan Institute,  Team B

In his book Mills documents how WWII solidified the trinity of power in the US made up of military, corporate and government elites and how working in unison through “higher circles” that these power elite are those who decide whatever is decided of major consequence. Those higher circles include the influential organizations listed above. There is no conspiracy at work here. This is all done openly and legally but the message is also controlled by the corporate media and so we don’t see or hear much about what goes on in the “higher circles”.

If you’ve ever wondered why there are times when some of our elected representatives don’t stand up and show some backbone and represent our interests, the interests of the people who elected them to office, perhaps this will help you to understand why, or at least to help in the process of connecting a few dots.  

Jan 13 2008

Iglesia ……………………………………… Episode 23

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

 

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous Episode and previous pertinent episode!

Well then! She, a good Catholic girl for all of her life, felt like she was in Heaven….but she was wearing a burkha and was standing in what was obviously…now…a mosque. And of course, that meant she was dead. She most assuredly wished to have a word with the manager!

She was starting to feel sharp again instead of feeling all gauzy and disassociated from her body, she threw a couple of punches in the air and jogged in place a bit and felt even more like her old self. Which meant she was starting to get seriously pissed off.

Then she looked around the beautiful blue, black, and gold mosque…and noticed there was no door. Fuck that….she walked over to the nearest window with every intention of climbing out and hunting down someone to verbally…and quite possible physically abuse. Then as she got closer to the window…she had to stop and just look. She had heard the term breathtaking beauty, but now she felt it. She had to consciously start breathing again. She had looked out the windows while she was lying on the platform in the center of the room. But then she had only seen window sized segments, framed like pictures. Now as she approached and saw the entire tableau of the valley the mosque was situated in, she was quite literally stunned by the beauty.

She had seen pictures of Alpine valleys that were a pale shadow of this one. A ring of snowcapped craggy mountains of gray and purplish rock leading down to a fringe of fir and pine and spruce with a lazy river running and curling down the very green and grassy center, running occasionally over rocks that made small cataracts and waterfalls. The colors were so vibrant, they…vibrated! The greens were so bright and…green, it felt like an assault, the blues of the sky and water contained what seemed like a thousand different perfect shades of blue, the white of the snow was blinding in its whiteness. And she could hear the sound of the river as it danced and swirled over the rocks and there was simply no other word to describe it….the water was …laughing! The trees were so perfectly shaped and colored they looked more like Christmas trees than any decorated tree she had ever seen. The rocks, though they were the essentially just the same browns and tans and grays of all rocks, though these were browner and tanner and grayer, were so perfectly formed they resembled some sort of exotic gems. It wasn’t just the colors and the shapes though…all of the elements of the landscape were in exactly the right place…you could FEEL that! And each piece and element perfectly complimented and offset each other element, contrasting…yet combining and harmonizing to such an extent that the valley just …oooozed beauty …and peace.

She slowly…again…returned to herself. This place had a way of separating you from yourself. She shook her head to clear and realized that what had brought her back this time was an old friend, her anger. The same anger that had propelled her all of her life, that had driven her. Driven her through school at the top of her class after she had overheard her teacher telling her mother not to expect much from her. Driven her out of her small town and through college. Driven her to the big city and to becoming a cop, and driven her up through the ranks of the cops.

And now someone here was going to get introduced to her old friend!

“Fuck this shit!” she yelled in her head, “let’s kick some ass!”

But just as she began to swing her leg over the golden window sill, she heard suddenly and startingly heard a voice behind her! And before she could wheel around and see where it was coming from, who it was…her mind instantly registered it as the voice from an old sitcom…..

It was the voice of Apu, from the old sitcom The Simpsons, and it was saying….”I would not do that if I were you, my friend.”

Jan 13 2008

Saturday Night YouTube: Hamu Hamu Heaven!!!