FOR TUESDAY, MAY 18
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is teasing? (Do not accept: ratting)
JEOPARDY!
Hair Care History for $600
Helene Curtis Inc. was the first to market this aerosol product in the 1950s.
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FOR WEDNESDAY, MAY 19
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What hair spray? (Acceptable: Spray Net)
JEOPARDY!
Hair Care History for $1000
In the twentieth century, cortisone joined coal tar and sulfur as a treatment for this flaking of the skin from the scalp.
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FOR THURSDAY, MAY 20
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is dandruff
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
It's a Long Story for $400
A 1968 film based on this Russian novel was released in a shortened six-hour, thirteen-minute version.
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FOR FRIDAY, MAY 21
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is "War and Peace?"
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
It's a Long Story for $1200
Dorothy Dunnett's six-volume Lymond Chronicles begin in this UK country in the aftermath of war with England.
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FOR SATURDAY, MAY 22
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Scotland?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
It's a Long Story for $2000
This "little" Dickens novel of 1857 runs about 900 pages.
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FOR SUNDAY, MAY 23
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is "Little Dorrit?"
FINAL JEOPARDY!
National Heroes
A statue of this Italian national hero of the nineteenth century is in New York City's Washington Square Park.
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FOR MONDAY, MAY 24
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Giuseppe Garibaldi?
JEOPARDY!
Presidential Pets for $200
In 1989, this springer spaniel made the cover of "Life" magazine along with her new puppies and Barbara Bush.
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FOR TUESDAY, MAY 25
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Millie? (Acceptable: Mildred Kerr)
JEOPARDY!
Presidential Pets for $600
You'll earn a feather for your cap if you know Caroline Kennedy had a pony named this.
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FOR WEDNESDAY, MAY 26
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Macaroni?
JEOPARDY!
Presidential Pets for $1000
Thomas Jefferson's pet grizzly bears were a present from this pair of travelers.
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FOR THURSDAY, MAY 27
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who are (Meriwether) Lewis and (William) Clark?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Seems Like Ancient Times for $400
In olden Japan, agricultural groups called "be" were mainly busy producing this.
Friday, May 28, 2004
He's baaaack.....
Well, I'm back but not back with it, as you can see. They say travel broadens one, but I don't think broadening your waistline is what was originally intended by the phrase. But eight days on a train, taking in more scenery than you can actually absorb in that time, with surprisingly good food three times a day, will tend to have that beltline effect.
Thanks to all those who came back to see if I had; my return hit rate dropped to almost nothing while I was away, which is kinda to be expected when you tell folks you won't be around, but started to pick up again on Tuesday. So I'm flattered that people were checking and thank you for the attention. (On the other hand, my first-time hit rate went way up for a few days; I suspect it was because of what I wrote about the conspiracy theories surrounding Nick Berg's death, since "nick berg conspiracy" appear to have been the main search keywords by which people found the site. Oh, a sidebar on that, and another serious hit to the tinfoil-hat crowd: It develops that the orange jumpsuit Berg was wearing in the video is not standard issue US military prison clothing. Those jumpsuits have zippered fronts and breast pockets, neither of which Berg's did.)
There've been some things to deal with relating to work and personal life (yes, I do have one) that have kept me from jumping right back in, but no, I haven't disappeared and yes, I'm back safe and sound. Oh, and I'm not quite as derelict as it might seem: We missed a connection and so got back a day later than planned.
Riding through places ranging from cities like Chicago where you are just another single thread in the fabric - in fact, one that could be pulled with no damage to the whole - to small towns in northern Montana where frankly the daily passing of the Amtrak is still something of an event (Did you know that people still go out to wave at trains? How cool is that?), got me to thinking about the places we call home and their variety. I don't mean that in any "this great, big, beautiful land of ours" sense, but in an individual one, the idea that for each of us, there may be a place we feel we belong, a place that's home, not just a residence. John Denver said it in "Rocky Mountain High" when he referred to "coming home to a place he'd never been before." It's a place where we can, resorting to a cliche, set down roots.
It's not a matter of the size or the location, although they are part of it, it's a matter of the feel.
It occurs to me as I write this that this is something I've reflected on to one degree or another for a long time, not always to the same effect. In college, way, way back in the '60s, I wrote something I vaguely remember about a "rootless generation" emerging, consisting of young people who were not committed to a certain place and so were free - and I did present it as a form of freedom, something to be welcomed - to move about when, where, and as they would without being bound by things that were of their immediate environment but not of them. Their home, to put it another way, was inside them rather than around them.
In the years since I've come to wonder if I wasn't actually rationalizing my own sense of rootlessness. Well, not rationalizing, more like making a virtue of necessity. I've usually felt out of place everywhere I've been, like I didn't really fit in. I can come up with all kinds of Psych-101 reasons as to why (okay, I'm more adept than that; Psych-202), but they're really unimportant now. I remember once my first wife and I, while living in New England, visited her relatives at the Jersey shore (where we are both from). As we left one brother's house, she said something about "going home." I was somewhat taken aback, since we had planned to stay a few more days - until I realized she meant the motel. She was so adept at settling in wherever she was that she could refer to the motel where we'd been for three days as "home" without any seeming contradiction. I always envied that about her. Still do, in fact.
By contrast, I once said to her as we were arriving at our house after some errands, feeling unusually philosophical, that she had "no idea what it's like to look at the place where you've lived for seven years and feel like you don't belong there." She said "You're right - I don't." And she didn't. (I actually wrote something rather more personal about this whole feeling which I'm not going to include here; this is quite personal enough, thank you. But since I've gone this far, I'll offer to email it to anyone who wants for who knows what odd reason to see it.)
It may be - warning, more Psych-202 coming - that's part of the reason I like to travel: After all, when you travel it's natural to feel a bit out of place. That feeling of difference, of newness, hell, that's part of the allure.
There was, of course, a political side to these reflections as well, a side that hinted at a shift in perspective from my college days. This was written to a friend in the UK; the letter was dated November 29, 1993.
The truth is, I think what prompted all this was seeing such a variety of scenes and places in such a short time. (The route was Boston - Chicago - Los Angeles - Portland - Chicago - Boston or, put another way, industrial Northeast/Midwest, Central Plains, Southwest, Pacific Coast, Columbia River Basin, Northern Plains, and back.) In just about every one of them I could find something beautiful or intriguing or interesting or thought-provoking or something that could make that place one worth spending some time in. I could see what might attract people to the place. But I began to wonder if familiarity, if not breeding contempt, at least gives rise to indifference. The beauty of the Rockies, the ruggedness of the coast, the incredible sweeping openness of the plains, these are things that some people experience every day. Do they appreciate what they have? Or is there a point at which it becomes sameness? Do we, ultimately, only see value in the exotic?
I recall taking a cross-country bus trip some years ago. At a stop in Indianapolis, a little shop at the station had a poster in the window advertising its new fountain creation: a Coney Island. Now, growing up on the Jersey shore as I did, Coney Island was a place you never went because it was always noisy, overcrowded with tourists spilling beer and ice cream, and expensive. But, I realized, in Indianapolis it might have seemed an exciting, exotic place. Later, when we crossed the Mississippi, the driver announced the fact over that sort of crackling, hissy PA buses always seemed to have. Passengers were looking out their windows going "oooh!" And I was looking out my window going "oooh!" And a girl from East St. Louis was going "Yeah? So?" The situation was reversed: What to me was notable, to her was everyday, not even worth mentioning to the point where she was surprised anyone else would.
Which brings me to the wrapup of this meandering line of thinking, something that the trip drove home and clarified. I've been trying of late to take more notice of the things around me, the views and vistas that normally we let slip into the background because we're too busy, we're too distracted, they're too familiar, they're just town streets or a little hill, they're not grand or special or exotic. I've been trying, that is, to be more aware of place. Because I think, maybe it's a natural progression, maybe it's a matter of age, maybe it's always been there but is now emerging with force, but I think that I want to belong somewhere. I don't know where that is or even how to look for it, but what the hell, I'm here now so I may as well take a really good look around. After all, if I don't know where it is, it might just possibly be here.
And even if it turns out not to be, I may as well enjoy the scenery.
Thanks to all those who came back to see if I had; my return hit rate dropped to almost nothing while I was away, which is kinda to be expected when you tell folks you won't be around, but started to pick up again on Tuesday. So I'm flattered that people were checking and thank you for the attention. (On the other hand, my first-time hit rate went way up for a few days; I suspect it was because of what I wrote about the conspiracy theories surrounding Nick Berg's death, since "nick berg conspiracy" appear to have been the main search keywords by which people found the site. Oh, a sidebar on that, and another serious hit to the tinfoil-hat crowd: It develops that the orange jumpsuit Berg was wearing in the video is not standard issue US military prison clothing. Those jumpsuits have zippered fronts and breast pockets, neither of which Berg's did.)
There've been some things to deal with relating to work and personal life (yes, I do have one) that have kept me from jumping right back in, but no, I haven't disappeared and yes, I'm back safe and sound. Oh, and I'm not quite as derelict as it might seem: We missed a connection and so got back a day later than planned.
Riding through places ranging from cities like Chicago where you are just another single thread in the fabric - in fact, one that could be pulled with no damage to the whole - to small towns in northern Montana where frankly the daily passing of the Amtrak is still something of an event (Did you know that people still go out to wave at trains? How cool is that?), got me to thinking about the places we call home and their variety. I don't mean that in any "this great, big, beautiful land of ours" sense, but in an individual one, the idea that for each of us, there may be a place we feel we belong, a place that's home, not just a residence. John Denver said it in "Rocky Mountain High" when he referred to "coming home to a place he'd never been before." It's a place where we can, resorting to a cliche, set down roots.
It's not a matter of the size or the location, although they are part of it, it's a matter of the feel.
It occurs to me as I write this that this is something I've reflected on to one degree or another for a long time, not always to the same effect. In college, way, way back in the '60s, I wrote something I vaguely remember about a "rootless generation" emerging, consisting of young people who were not committed to a certain place and so were free - and I did present it as a form of freedom, something to be welcomed - to move about when, where, and as they would without being bound by things that were of their immediate environment but not of them. Their home, to put it another way, was inside them rather than around them.
In the years since I've come to wonder if I wasn't actually rationalizing my own sense of rootlessness. Well, not rationalizing, more like making a virtue of necessity. I've usually felt out of place everywhere I've been, like I didn't really fit in. I can come up with all kinds of Psych-101 reasons as to why (okay, I'm more adept than that; Psych-202), but they're really unimportant now. I remember once my first wife and I, while living in New England, visited her relatives at the Jersey shore (where we are both from). As we left one brother's house, she said something about "going home." I was somewhat taken aback, since we had planned to stay a few more days - until I realized she meant the motel. She was so adept at settling in wherever she was that she could refer to the motel where we'd been for three days as "home" without any seeming contradiction. I always envied that about her. Still do, in fact.
By contrast, I once said to her as we were arriving at our house after some errands, feeling unusually philosophical, that she had "no idea what it's like to look at the place where you've lived for seven years and feel like you don't belong there." She said "You're right - I don't." And she didn't. (I actually wrote something rather more personal about this whole feeling which I'm not going to include here; this is quite personal enough, thank you. But since I've gone this far, I'll offer to email it to anyone who wants for who knows what odd reason to see it.)
It may be - warning, more Psych-202 coming - that's part of the reason I like to travel: After all, when you travel it's natural to feel a bit out of place. That feeling of difference, of newness, hell, that's part of the allure.
There was, of course, a political side to these reflections as well, a side that hinted at a shift in perspective from my college days. This was written to a friend in the UK; the letter was dated November 29, 1993.
That, in turn, raises another issue which predates NAFTA (and GATT) but is closely connected to them: loss of community or, rather, the creation of what I call rootless workers. For a few decades now, capital has become more and more mobile, shifting from place to place more by electronic transfers than by the movement of actual bonds, bills, and coins. (You've heard of "virtual reality;" this is like virtual money.) Corporations have become freer than ever to chase around a country or the world, leaping from enterprise to enterprise, even industry to industry, in pursuit of profit. The result has been regional booms and busts as one area competes with others to see who could offer the most to Big Business in a downward spiral of self-flagellation that inevitably left the losers gasping for economic breath - and, often, the "winners" with a temporary if not downright pyrrhic "victory." (Consider Texas, whose "boom towns" of the '70s became the empty husks of the '80s; consider Korea, whose "economic miracle" of the '80s, built on the infusion of transnational capital in search of low-wage labor, is turning sour as corporations move on to the Philippines in search of even lower-wage labor.)The melancholy was less in the sense of not having roots per se than in being unable to have roots - but still there was much more of a sense of importance of "place" than I'd had years before.
The corporate response to this undeniable reality has been to trumpet "emerging opportunities," "growth regions," and "market expansion." Implicit in all this staged euphoria is the notion that working stiffs, ordinary folks, everyday people, or whatever other folksy label we want to put on the 90% of us left out of the considerations of the powerful, are no different than the parts on a machine: replaceable, disposable, even interchangeable. And that the only way for us to survive in this bold new economic future is to be as mobile as capital - that is, to chase work around the country or the world as rapidly as money chases profit. We dare not attach ourselves to a place, a people, a community, or even a particular sort of work because we may have to abandon it on short notice for the sake of our own and our families’ survival, perpetually chasing behind - always, of course, behind - capital in what gives a new, more sinister meaning to "the rat race."
We have to drink the shallow economic water that runs on the surface of a local economy because if we dare to set down roots and try to drink from a deeper source, we may find the watershed pumped away to feed another, distant, plain, leaving the earth cracked, dry, and barren and ourselves (and the stable communities we hoped to find) to wither. We must, that is, become nomads - no, not even nomads, which implies purposeful ranging over well-known territory, but mere wanderers, emotionally isolated in order to be emotionally insulated against the constant risk and frequent reality of loss. We must be homeless, placeless, rootless.
If that sounds melodramatic it's because it describes not what's fully formed today but the end of a process that has been going for some time and will only be accelerated by NAFTA and GATT, which make the macroeconomics of transnational corporations and not the microeconomics of actual human beings not merely the central (that'd be nothing new) but increasingly the only economic standard of measure. On the other hand, if it sounds melancholic, that's because it is.
The truth is, I think what prompted all this was seeing such a variety of scenes and places in such a short time. (The route was Boston - Chicago - Los Angeles - Portland - Chicago - Boston or, put another way, industrial Northeast/Midwest, Central Plains, Southwest, Pacific Coast, Columbia River Basin, Northern Plains, and back.) In just about every one of them I could find something beautiful or intriguing or interesting or thought-provoking or something that could make that place one worth spending some time in. I could see what might attract people to the place. But I began to wonder if familiarity, if not breeding contempt, at least gives rise to indifference. The beauty of the Rockies, the ruggedness of the coast, the incredible sweeping openness of the plains, these are things that some people experience every day. Do they appreciate what they have? Or is there a point at which it becomes sameness? Do we, ultimately, only see value in the exotic?
I recall taking a cross-country bus trip some years ago. At a stop in Indianapolis, a little shop at the station had a poster in the window advertising its new fountain creation: a Coney Island. Now, growing up on the Jersey shore as I did, Coney Island was a place you never went because it was always noisy, overcrowded with tourists spilling beer and ice cream, and expensive. But, I realized, in Indianapolis it might have seemed an exciting, exotic place. Later, when we crossed the Mississippi, the driver announced the fact over that sort of crackling, hissy PA buses always seemed to have. Passengers were looking out their windows going "oooh!" And I was looking out my window going "oooh!" And a girl from East St. Louis was going "Yeah? So?" The situation was reversed: What to me was notable, to her was everyday, not even worth mentioning to the point where she was surprised anyone else would.
Which brings me to the wrapup of this meandering line of thinking, something that the trip drove home and clarified. I've been trying of late to take more notice of the things around me, the views and vistas that normally we let slip into the background because we're too busy, we're too distracted, they're too familiar, they're just town streets or a little hill, they're not grand or special or exotic. I've been trying, that is, to be more aware of place. Because I think, maybe it's a natural progression, maybe it's a matter of age, maybe it's always been there but is now emerging with force, but I think that I want to belong somewhere. I don't know where that is or even how to look for it, but what the hell, I'm here now so I may as well take a really good look around. After all, if I don't know where it is, it might just possibly be here.
And even if it turns out not to be, I may as well enjoy the scenery.
Monday, May 17, 2004
See you soon!
That's it, I'm outta here. I should be back, perhaps with some stories of the road, next Monday evening, so look for me either Monday evening or Tuesday.
Have a quiet and peaceful week. Keep hope alive!
Have a quiet and peaceful week. Keep hope alive!
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Thursday?
JEOPARDY!
Haircare History for $200
"Provocative" name for the 1960s practice of combing from ends to scalp to create a bouffant.
I'll catch up on the rest of the Jeopardy! answers for the week when I get back from vacation.
What is Thursday?
JEOPARDY!
Haircare History for $200
"Provocative" name for the 1960s practice of combing from ends to scalp to create a bouffant.
I'll catch up on the rest of the Jeopardy! answers for the week when I get back from vacation.
Monday morning special
I deliberately held this back a day so I could post it today.
According to the most recent Newsweek poll,
The time is coming. Later than we may have wished but sooner than we may have expected.
According to the most recent Newsweek poll,
a majority (51%) of adults approve of some form of legal recognition for gay and lesbian couples; 28 percent say they favor full marriage rights, while 23 percent favor civil unions or partnerships but not gay marriage.An interesting finding was that total support for marriage and civil unions was directly related to age: the younger the age group, the greater the support; among those under 30, it was nearly 2/3. Even so, only among those 65 and older did such support drop below 50%.
The time is coming. Later than we may have wished but sooner than we may have expected.
Celebrate
It's Monday, May 17, 2004. It should always be an occasion for celebration when human rights are expanded.
And the cause for celebration has grown. According to the Christian Science Monitor for May 17,
Meanwhile, Governor Witless Rommel's demand that country clerks enforce a 1913 law intended to limit interracial marriages as a means of preventing out-of-state same sex couples from getting marriage licenses in Massachusetts is meeting with resistance, in some cases openly so.
And the cause for celebration has grown. According to the Christian Science Monitor for May 17,
New York's attorney general has said his state - which has no defense of marriage act (DOMA) prohibiting gay unions - will recognize the Massachusetts licenses.In addition, the AGs of Connecticut and Rhode Island will decide Monday how to treat the licenses. Perhaps they, too, will recognize them.
Meanwhile, Governor Witless Rommel's demand that country clerks enforce a 1913 law intended to limit interracial marriages as a means of preventing out-of-state same sex couples from getting marriage licenses in Massachusetts is meeting with resistance, in some cases openly so.
Some town and city clerks have said they won't follow Romney's request that they ask for documentation. At least three others have said they won't even require applicants to answer the question regarding residency.Nice to see that there are still those somewhere in government, even if it is at a county clerk level, who realize that it's justice that trumps law, not the other way around.
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is a yellowjacket?
FINAL JEOPARDY!
German Words
To the Germans, it's Donnerstag, meaning "thunder day."
What is a yellowjacket?
FINAL JEOPARDY!
German Words
To the Germans, it's Donnerstag, meaning "thunder day."
Pow! Well?
On April 2, Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that claims about Iraqi mobile bioweapons labs he made in his UN Security Council speech were based on information that was not "solid." Now he's gone beyond that.
Add to that the fact that Josh Marshall refers to a Baltimore Sun article in which Powell says that
It seems to me, frankly, that Powell might be sensing a sinking ship and is trying to edge slowly away without looking disloyal. But with Powell and Rumsfeld now openly contradicting each other, something will have to give.
Washington (Reuters, May 16) - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was wrong about Iraq's purported pre-war mobile biological weapons laboratories, a key part of the case about suspected weapons of mass destruction, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday.These are the same non-existent mobile labs that The Big Dick Cheney was pointing to as recently as January as "conclusive" evidence of Iraqi WMD programs.
"I'm very concerned," he said in reply to a question on the NBC program "Meet the Press" about having used claims in a U.N. Security Council speech now known to have been "inaccurate and discredited."
"It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed, and I regret it," he said.
Add to that the fact that Josh Marshall refers to a Baltimore Sun article in which Powell says that
we kept the president informed of the concerns that were raised by the ICRC and other international organizations [about abuse of prisoners] as part of my regular briefings of the president, and advised him that we had to follow these issues, and when we got notes sent to us or reports sent to us ... we had to respond to them, and the president certainly made it clear that that's what he expected us to do.That directly contradicts the White House line that ICRC reports never made it up to Cabinet level.
It seems to me, frankly, that Powell might be sensing a sinking ship and is trying to edge slowly away without looking disloyal. But with Powell and Rumsfeld now openly contradicting each other, something will have to give.
Forewarned is forearmed
I will be leaving on a week's vacation tomorrow, that is, Monday, morning. No, I don't do mobile blogging.
So don't expect to see any posts after tonight until next Monday night and possibly not until Tuesday.
With any luck at all, when I come back I will be as ignorant of what's going on in the world as the average American. And you know what they say about ignorance.
So don't expect to see any posts after tonight until next Monday night and possibly not until Tuesday.
With any luck at all, when I come back I will be as ignorant of what's going on in the world as the average American. And you know what they say about ignorance.
"Paul is dead"
I mentioned before the conspiracy theories that have, not surprisingly, popped up around the decapitation of Nick Berg, conspiracy theories that suggest that the US was somehow involved or even that it was a CIA job. That came up on a political mailing list I'm on and I responded, leading to a short exchange. Since this was all on the list (not private email), I see no problem with posting it here. Except for the removal of a few passages that do not present arguments related to the issue, I'm printing them in full. (There has been some minor editing to clean up syntax.)
For the sake of clarity in following who said what, other folks' posts (one person did the first one, the other two were by someone else) are blockquoted (i.e., indented) and mine are not. In my posts, where I quote what someone said to reply to it, the quote is italicized.
Original post:
It goes on to suggest that Berg was "cruelly murdered soon after that release, like many others around the world who suffer such a fate at the hands of state-condoned death squads - sometimes just hours after their release from official detention." It also called Musab al-Zarqawi "a flimsy propaganda creation" who "came to our attention in January, 2004" as the supposed author of the quite possibly forged letter to al-Qaeda bewailing the fact that the US was winning in Iraq.)
My reply:
I'm sorry folks, but I think this goes right past cynicism, flies past paranoia, and lands right in lala land.
The arguments remind me of the type I find on websites denying the moon landings ever happened based on supposedly "telling" details and "obvious" mistakes in lighting and shadows that any photographer could have told them were neither.
I've heard about the "too light" hands. The video is not only of low quality, it's horribly over-exposed, which would make everything lighter. (Note, for example, that the head of the man wearing the white hood almost disappears into the background and the highlights on Berg's jumpsuit are completely washed out.) Significantly, the "too light" hands are still darker than Berg's face.
Now we have the "forbidden gold ring." The person who reads the statement and executes Berg does indeed appear to be wearing a ring. How in hell anyone could tell it was gold as opposed to any non-banned material like silver, copper, etc., is beyond me. (Yes, I know that's what was reported. My statement stands.) And in fact, while it's generally agreed that wearing of gold rings is forbidden for men, that belief is not universal; some scholars insist that it is regarded as distasteful but not actually forbidden. One such discussion is here.
The "convenient timing" argument also doesn't impress me unless someone can tell me a time this would not have been useful to the troglodytes. Yes, it could serve to distract from Abu Ghraib and the growing evidence of torture at other sites (although, happily, it hasn't succeeded), but with things going as badly for the Bushites as they have been in Iraq, at what point would this have not served as a means of distraction? An argument about timing that could be applied literally at any time is no argument.
As for why he was picked up, Nick himself told his family that he thought it was because his Jewish name and his Israeli stamp made them suspicious. He was also investigated by the FBI in 2002 after his email account was used by an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui (no connection was found), which could have been what made the FBI suspicious of him in Iraq. I frankly find either of those much more credible than the idea that the Iraqi police are checking out the Freepers' "enemies list."
And I find it hard to credit breakfornews.com's analysis when they say "Al-Zarqawi came to our attention in January, 2004." Zarqawi has been around for several years. I first heard of him about two years ago, when he was accused of the assassination of a US diplomat. Prior to that, in 2000, he had been indicted in abstentia in Jordan. In his 2003 speech to the Security Council, Colin Powell cited him in his attempt to link Iraq to al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2003, the UN froze his financial assets. So if he only came to breakfornews.com's attention in January, then attention is what they have not been paying.
Finally, I don't want to hear any responses along the lines of "Are you saying the US couldn't do such a thing? Don't you know about...." That's not the issue at hand. The question is not could US intelligence agencies commit murder to further a political cause - I say they could - but did they in this case - and I say they did not.
Second post:
I remain quite thoroughly unimpressed. Ultimately, much of this seems to me to be the result of the desire to have the CIA and/or military intelligence be guilty (and thus the assumption that they are) because it makes it easier to oppose US policy if nothing bad can be pinned on its opponents. Sorry, kids, the world ain't that simple.
The fidgeting suggests they've never done anything like that before and don't know how to act.
Maybe they hadn't. But as you yourself note, what does that prove one way or the other? More to the point, their "fidgeting" looked to me like the normal shifting around that someone will do when standing in one position for nearly five minutes while someone else reads a statement. I suggest you video yourself doing the same and see how much you fidget.
there is a reason for Nick Berg to have been in the compound
If true, it would mean what? Besides that, was he contracted to the military to do such work at military sites? Or are we to assume they would hire someone off the street?
the orange jumpsuit
Ah yes, the jumpsuit, the one that supposedly proves he was in US custody when the video was made. In addition to my not buying into the notion that the CIA is that astoundingly inept in making a fake, what makes us think that rebel groups could not get orange jumpsuits? Indeed, what makes us think they would not have done it deliberately in order to link him visually to imprisoned Muslims?
I actually don't understand the timeline questions you raise. Why would you assume a jumpsuit he might have been wearing while held by Iraqis/US was the same one as in the video? He himself said he was released on April 6 in emails to his family. Not good enough, could have been a forced cover? He was seen between then and April 10 both by a Chilean journalist friend and the staff at the hotel where he was staying.
the chair and the paint
For pity's sake, it's a flaming chair. There is nothing unusual or unique about it. As for the paint, I don't see how you can tell anything about it other than in either case it's very roughly - by no means "exactly" - the same color. And why in hell would military-issue paint not have been available to others? Just because it's bought in quantity doesn't mean it's some special formula. "You cannot buy paint used in military buildings from your local paint shop." Perhaps not, but that hardly means that commercial users can't get it.
Second: Was Abu Ghraib repainted with military-issue paint? How do we know? Did the military actually do the job or was it one of the private contractors, who would obtain their own supply of paint, perhaps even locally? Perhaps the paint used was very common locally.
Finally, at least for now, I'll give you one more alternative: Grant everything you say and conclude the video was taken inside a military building. The sound quality of the video makes it clear that it was taken in a large, empty room. Is there such a place at Abu Ghraib? Certainly, some rebels have from time to time captured some outposts, police stations, government buildings, and so on. Can we say with any confidence at all that none of them had large empty rooms that had seen a coat of military-issued paint?
He seems entirely too calm and lacking in fear
Calm, yes; lacking in fear, no. He looked rather like someone trying to stay calm. And our expectation of fear, of terror, is based on the fact that we know what happens next. Unless he spoke Arab fluently, there's no reason to think he knew what was coming.
I say again, the attempt to prove the video was a US intelligence setup strike me as an example of "conclusion first, reasons after." Could US intelligence murder someone one? Yes. Could Zarqawi murder someone? Yes. Given that undeniable premise, Occam's Razor tells me that the video is real.
PS - As for the business of who was holding Berg after his arrest, I think there's a lot of finger-pointing and CYA going on. My suspicion is that, as they've done before, US agencies are hiding behind technicalities (think "we never said 'imminent'") and that while technically he may have been in the custody of the Iraqis, they were just holding him for the US until we said it was okay to let him go. So we can say "he was never in our custody" while still being in effective control.
Third post:
I'll make this my last comment so we don't keep going around on this.
you may be responding on the belief that I have some entity in mind to blame for the Berg death. I don't. I won't say it's a US coverup or propaganda maneuver
Fine - however, since every doubt you raised pointed to US involvement in his death and you said "I suspect Berg was killed by accident during interrogation and someone came up with a way to use it to promote sympathy for our actions in Iraq," it seemed a pretty safe assumption.
facts are not adding up to what the "officials" claim happened
There are two tracks here, one about his arrest and confinement, the other about his kidnapping and murder. For the first part, I agree that something isn't right; he said the Iraqis arrested him but the US held him, the US says the Iraqis held him, and the police chief of Mosul says they never arrested him and doesn't know what it's all about.
The other track is the validity of the video and the question of who killed him. The two tracks are not the same, but many people seem to conflate them, as in fact you did with your timeline question about his arrest, release, and the jumpsuit. I agree there are valid questions about the first track. I have seen nothing that gives me pause about the second.
Don't close the door on questions raised.
The questions have to be of sufficient strength to open the door in the first place. And in my view, they're not. (Remember, I'm talking about the video.)
The chair...it can't be sold in retail outlets because it's under a recall order. ... anyone who bought that specific model had to have done so with Government approval or ... turning it's head to the deal and was done for a purpose OTHER than retail sales.
Or a much simpler and more logical explanation that requires no conspiracies: It was obtained before the recall. And for my own knowledge, how did you identify the exact model of chair and how did you know that it's under a recall order? What order, issued by who, when?
it doesn't look like what it's professed to be
I think the video (and, one last time, that's what I'm addressing) looks exactly like what it's professed to be.
Footnote: I have no doubts that the sort of argument I faced here will be picked up on by folks like the Freepers and pushed widely as another example of how lefties are the "blame America first" crowd and therefore being antiwar is to be anti-American. I maintain, as I said above, that the real impulse is not to blame the US but to avoid blaming others. It's not a new thing; I remember the same thing happening during Vietnam, when there were people who would avoid criticizing North Vietnam or the PRG because to do so, they feared, would appear as an endorsement of US policies.
But I don't see it that way at all. Crime does not justify crime, evil does not justify evil. A May 13 editorial in "Baghdad," the daily newspaper of the Iraqi National Accord (quoted by the Iraqi Press Monitor for May 14) says
It just ain't that difficult to grasp, people.
For the sake of clarity in following who said what, other folks' posts (one person did the first one, the other two were by someone else) are blockquoted (i.e., indented) and mine are not. In my posts, where I quote what someone said to reply to it, the quote is italicized.
Original post:
[Another poster] brought up the similarity between the murder of Nick Berg and that of Charles Horman ("Missing" movie) in Chile. I found it interesting, that in both cases, the fathers and sons were on opposing sides regarding our government's involvement. I'm pasting an email from Liberation News.(The attached article said that "the family firm of beheaded American Nick Berg, was named by a conservative website in a list of 'enemies' of the Iraq occupation." Nick's father, Michael, was known to oppose the war and was on the list along with the firm, Prometheus Methods Tower Service. The site in question is FreeRepublic.com, populated by a collection of reactionary nitwit mouth-breathers known as Freepers. The article proposes that the Freepers' enemies list got into the hands of officials in Iraq, who mistook Nick Berg for Michael Berg and so arrested him.
"One of the clues the FBI and CIA is studying is the large gold ring Zarqawi is wearing on his right hand, giving off a glare several times during the six-minute tape." - NBC News
Yet a male wearing a gold ring is forbidden by Islam. Nick Berg was held as a prisoner by U.S. puppet forces for 14 days immediately before his beheading. Perfect timing for a CIA black-op distraction.
It goes on to suggest that Berg was "cruelly murdered soon after that release, like many others around the world who suffer such a fate at the hands of state-condoned death squads - sometimes just hours after their release from official detention." It also called Musab al-Zarqawi "a flimsy propaganda creation" who "came to our attention in January, 2004" as the supposed author of the quite possibly forged letter to al-Qaeda bewailing the fact that the US was winning in Iraq.)
My reply:
I'm sorry folks, but I think this goes right past cynicism, flies past paranoia, and lands right in lala land.
The arguments remind me of the type I find on websites denying the moon landings ever happened based on supposedly "telling" details and "obvious" mistakes in lighting and shadows that any photographer could have told them were neither.
I've heard about the "too light" hands. The video is not only of low quality, it's horribly over-exposed, which would make everything lighter. (Note, for example, that the head of the man wearing the white hood almost disappears into the background and the highlights on Berg's jumpsuit are completely washed out.) Significantly, the "too light" hands are still darker than Berg's face.
Now we have the "forbidden gold ring." The person who reads the statement and executes Berg does indeed appear to be wearing a ring. How in hell anyone could tell it was gold as opposed to any non-banned material like silver, copper, etc., is beyond me. (Yes, I know that's what was reported. My statement stands.) And in fact, while it's generally agreed that wearing of gold rings is forbidden for men, that belief is not universal; some scholars insist that it is regarded as distasteful but not actually forbidden. One such discussion is here.
The "convenient timing" argument also doesn't impress me unless someone can tell me a time this would not have been useful to the troglodytes. Yes, it could serve to distract from Abu Ghraib and the growing evidence of torture at other sites (although, happily, it hasn't succeeded), but with things going as badly for the Bushites as they have been in Iraq, at what point would this have not served as a means of distraction? An argument about timing that could be applied literally at any time is no argument.
As for why he was picked up, Nick himself told his family that he thought it was because his Jewish name and his Israeli stamp made them suspicious. He was also investigated by the FBI in 2002 after his email account was used by an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui (no connection was found), which could have been what made the FBI suspicious of him in Iraq. I frankly find either of those much more credible than the idea that the Iraqi police are checking out the Freepers' "enemies list."
And I find it hard to credit breakfornews.com's analysis when they say "Al-Zarqawi came to our attention in January, 2004." Zarqawi has been around for several years. I first heard of him about two years ago, when he was accused of the assassination of a US diplomat. Prior to that, in 2000, he had been indicted in abstentia in Jordan. In his 2003 speech to the Security Council, Colin Powell cited him in his attempt to link Iraq to al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2003, the UN froze his financial assets. So if he only came to breakfornews.com's attention in January, then attention is what they have not been paying.
Finally, I don't want to hear any responses along the lines of "Are you saying the US couldn't do such a thing? Don't you know about...." That's not the issue at hand. The question is not could US intelligence agencies commit murder to further a political cause - I say they could - but did they in this case - and I say they did not.
Second post:
There are other things that make me suspicious, aside from the arguments you listed. The fidgeting of the two men to the far left and far right to me suggests they've never done anything like that before and don't know how to act. That's just my own gut feeling, though and not evidence of anything.And my reply:
The things that DO seem suspicious to me are these - Nick Berg was at one point examining communications towers in Abu Ghraib (the suburb of Baghdad at least, however we don't know if he was actually in the prison compound.). He e-mailed a friend back in the States about having taken photographs from the towers. Yesterday I got a link to an article from the NYT. In this article there is specific mention of "an important communications antenna stood broken and unrepaired". Right there is a reason for Nick Berg to have been in the compound because that was his line of work.
Next point, so many people have spoken about the orange jumpsuit. If he was released on Apr. 6th, where was he between that day and the day his body was found? He called home on Apr. 9th so at some point he should have been able to change his clothing, and if he was being held by someone, why would they have allowed him to call home if the intent was to horrify Americans as much as possible?
Next, have a good look at the still shots of Nick Berg in the chair as he's shown in the opening scenes of the video, and then go look up the photos taken inside the corridor of Abu Ghraib depicting some of the prisoner abuse. Abu Ghraib Prison was painted when the Occupation forces took it over (most likely to relieve the minds of those being held there that this was not the Hussein Regime, not that it seems to have made much difference.) The point being that would have been military supplied paint and it's not available to just anyone. You cannot buy paint used in military buildings from your local paint shop, it's very specifically produced in massive quantities for the use of the military in its buildings. The walls are the exact same color.
Look for the chair Nick Berg is sitting in. You'll find identical chairs in Abu Ghraib prison photos, including one of the corridor abuse shots (there are two of those, one from each end of the corridor). In the same corridor abuse photo there is what appears to be an orange jumpsuit lying on the floor along with another dark colored garment. Now that in and of itself is nothing since we all know the orange jumpsuits are standard American detainee clothing, but that one and one barely discernible being worn by a prisoner slightly visible inside a cell are the only two of these suits in evidence.
Then there's the fact that the US Government has lied, repeatedly, about having had Nick in custody prior to his death when there are numerous documents and correspondences confirming it. Why?
My theory is not that this was a planned, staged execution by US black ops or whatever. I suspect Berg was killed by accident during interrogation and someone came up with a way to use it to promote sympathy for our actions in Iraq. He seems entirely too calm and lacking in fear through the entirety of the video until he's knocked to the ground. He speaks calmly at the beginning, and while the speaker is reading he sits quietly with no signs of fear for his life or safety. He looks at the camera the whole time and wiggles around a little bit but seems completely unafraid. If he were a Jew in the hands of Muslim Extremists, he ought to be utterly terrified.
I remain quite thoroughly unimpressed. Ultimately, much of this seems to me to be the result of the desire to have the CIA and/or military intelligence be guilty (and thus the assumption that they are) because it makes it easier to oppose US policy if nothing bad can be pinned on its opponents. Sorry, kids, the world ain't that simple.
The fidgeting suggests they've never done anything like that before and don't know how to act.
Maybe they hadn't. But as you yourself note, what does that prove one way or the other? More to the point, their "fidgeting" looked to me like the normal shifting around that someone will do when standing in one position for nearly five minutes while someone else reads a statement. I suggest you video yourself doing the same and see how much you fidget.
there is a reason for Nick Berg to have been in the compound
If true, it would mean what? Besides that, was he contracted to the military to do such work at military sites? Or are we to assume they would hire someone off the street?
the orange jumpsuit
Ah yes, the jumpsuit, the one that supposedly proves he was in US custody when the video was made. In addition to my not buying into the notion that the CIA is that astoundingly inept in making a fake, what makes us think that rebel groups could not get orange jumpsuits? Indeed, what makes us think they would not have done it deliberately in order to link him visually to imprisoned Muslims?
I actually don't understand the timeline questions you raise. Why would you assume a jumpsuit he might have been wearing while held by Iraqis/US was the same one as in the video? He himself said he was released on April 6 in emails to his family. Not good enough, could have been a forced cover? He was seen between then and April 10 both by a Chilean journalist friend and the staff at the hotel where he was staying.
the chair and the paint
For pity's sake, it's a flaming chair. There is nothing unusual or unique about it. As for the paint, I don't see how you can tell anything about it other than in either case it's very roughly - by no means "exactly" - the same color. And why in hell would military-issue paint not have been available to others? Just because it's bought in quantity doesn't mean it's some special formula. "You cannot buy paint used in military buildings from your local paint shop." Perhaps not, but that hardly means that commercial users can't get it.
Second: Was Abu Ghraib repainted with military-issue paint? How do we know? Did the military actually do the job or was it one of the private contractors, who would obtain their own supply of paint, perhaps even locally? Perhaps the paint used was very common locally.
Finally, at least for now, I'll give you one more alternative: Grant everything you say and conclude the video was taken inside a military building. The sound quality of the video makes it clear that it was taken in a large, empty room. Is there such a place at Abu Ghraib? Certainly, some rebels have from time to time captured some outposts, police stations, government buildings, and so on. Can we say with any confidence at all that none of them had large empty rooms that had seen a coat of military-issued paint?
He seems entirely too calm and lacking in fear
Calm, yes; lacking in fear, no. He looked rather like someone trying to stay calm. And our expectation of fear, of terror, is based on the fact that we know what happens next. Unless he spoke Arab fluently, there's no reason to think he knew what was coming.
I say again, the attempt to prove the video was a US intelligence setup strike me as an example of "conclusion first, reasons after." Could US intelligence murder someone one? Yes. Could Zarqawi murder someone? Yes. Given that undeniable premise, Occam's Razor tells me that the video is real.
PS - As for the business of who was holding Berg after his arrest, I think there's a lot of finger-pointing and CYA going on. My suspicion is that, as they've done before, US agencies are hiding behind technicalities (think "we never said 'imminent'") and that while technically he may have been in the custody of the Iraqis, they were just holding him for the US until we said it was okay to let him go. So we can say "he was never in our custody" while still being in effective control.
Third post:
[Y]ou may be reading and responding on the belief that I have some entity in mind to blame for the Berg death. I don't. I won't say it's a US coverup or propaganda maneuver, but I also won't say it is who official reports claim.And, once more, my reply:
Basically my sole premise right now is that facts are not adding up to what the "officials" claim happened. Something just ain't right. What that "something" is is open to speculation but the fact that the whole sordid mess seems fishy is pretty common consensus from all I've seen and heard.
The reason I replied to your post was not so much an effort to convince you the article was accurate but to say "Don't close the door on questions raised.".
The chair...I don't place a lot of emphasis on it really, except for the fact that it can't be sold in retail outlets because it's under a recall order. That suggests to me anyone who bought that specific model had to have done so with Government approval or Government turning it's head to the deal and was done for a purpose OTHER than retail sales.
The CIA and/or MI? Hell I don't know! I just know it doesn't look like what it's professed to be.
I'll make this my last comment so we don't keep going around on this.
you may be responding on the belief that I have some entity in mind to blame for the Berg death. I don't. I won't say it's a US coverup or propaganda maneuver
Fine - however, since every doubt you raised pointed to US involvement in his death and you said "I suspect Berg was killed by accident during interrogation and someone came up with a way to use it to promote sympathy for our actions in Iraq," it seemed a pretty safe assumption.
facts are not adding up to what the "officials" claim happened
There are two tracks here, one about his arrest and confinement, the other about his kidnapping and murder. For the first part, I agree that something isn't right; he said the Iraqis arrested him but the US held him, the US says the Iraqis held him, and the police chief of Mosul says they never arrested him and doesn't know what it's all about.
The other track is the validity of the video and the question of who killed him. The two tracks are not the same, but many people seem to conflate them, as in fact you did with your timeline question about his arrest, release, and the jumpsuit. I agree there are valid questions about the first track. I have seen nothing that gives me pause about the second.
Don't close the door on questions raised.
The questions have to be of sufficient strength to open the door in the first place. And in my view, they're not. (Remember, I'm talking about the video.)
The chair...it can't be sold in retail outlets because it's under a recall order. ... anyone who bought that specific model had to have done so with Government approval or ... turning it's head to the deal and was done for a purpose OTHER than retail sales.
Or a much simpler and more logical explanation that requires no conspiracies: It was obtained before the recall. And for my own knowledge, how did you identify the exact model of chair and how did you know that it's under a recall order? What order, issued by who, when?
it doesn't look like what it's professed to be
I think the video (and, one last time, that's what I'm addressing) looks exactly like what it's professed to be.
Footnote: I have no doubts that the sort of argument I faced here will be picked up on by folks like the Freepers and pushed widely as another example of how lefties are the "blame America first" crowd and therefore being antiwar is to be anti-American. I maintain, as I said above, that the real impulse is not to blame the US but to avoid blaming others. It's not a new thing; I remember the same thing happening during Vietnam, when there were people who would avoid criticizing North Vietnam or the PRG because to do so, they feared, would appear as an endorsement of US policies.
But I don't see it that way at all. Crime does not justify crime, evil does not justify evil. A May 13 editorial in "Baghdad," the daily newspaper of the Iraqi National Accord (quoted by the Iraqi Press Monitor for May 14) says
"Abu Ghraib no justification for killing the American hostage"Abu Ghraib does not justify the murder of Nick Berg. The murder of Nick Berg does not justify Abu Ghraib.
The abuses in Abu Ghraib prison have served the interests of terrorists. Two days ago, an American was killed under the pretext of revenge for prisoners. Thus, what we expected came true: namely, that the wave of violence might open endlessly in spite of reassurances made by the American president and other officials that such abuses would not be repeated. To avoid the wave of hatred, we think all prisoners who were not convicted must be released, especially given news reports that say 60 percent of them were arrested by mistake. Besides, Iraqis' participation in supervising prisons is a prerequisite. As to the hurry in trying those responsible for abuses, it is indisputable. As we condemned abusing Iraqi prisoners, so do we condemn killing the American hostage.
It just ain't that difficult to grasp, people.
Saturday, May 15, 2004
Kerry? Who cares?
A friend responded via email to my post admitting that if I lived in a tossup state, I'd vote for Kerry. I'm going to post my side of the exchange in order to make more explicit what was implicit (but I thought, perhaps incorrectly, still clear) in my previous ones on Kerry. Note as you read this that I'm excerpting from and thus not doing justice to my friend's argument since my purpose here is to "revise and expand" my own thoughts rather than to argue for them as a course for others to follow. My friend's remarks are italicized.
You still see Kerry as an option to Bush? Ya gotta love the Gucci and Pucci set. They have the election cornered. I think the ABB crowd has lost its way. The system is broken beyond repair. There's so much hot air from all corners, that it, like more advertising, makes one turn away with contempt and disgust.
Actually, I didn't say that. I said, as near as I can quote from memory, that the only hope I had for a Kerry administration was that things would get worse a little more slowly, giving a little more time to organize opposition. In that sense, yes, I think a centrist corporatist Democrat would be "better than" - read "not as insanely bad as" - a sociopathic wingnut.
Put another way, under Kerry most everything would get worse on any scale we could agree on. Bush would actively press to make those same things worse. Kerry is a product of a corrupt system and demonstrates that corruption well. Bush is a whole new system of corruption.
Put a final way, I see them both as debilitating diseases, neither of which you would choose but one of which, bluntly, will happen to you - but one offers somewhat better chances for long-term survival or at least a course of decline that will take longer, offering some slightly better chances for developing effective treatment.
That's why, if I lived in a tossup state, I'd swallow my pride (and a good deal of antacid to keep from upchucking) and vote for Kerry.
In one sense, however, I don't know if it matters because I'm afraid we're screwed either way. Bush wins, he consciously and deliberately seeks to undermine what remains of our freedoms and turn us into vassals of the corporate state. Kerry wins, he doesn't try as hard and frankly probably not consciously, he just lets it happen because that's where his background, including his political career, points him, it's what seems natural - and it turns out every bit as bad because we stop trying as hard to resist because too many of us think "oh, we've got a Democrat in there now, things will be okay," just like we did with Carter, just like we did with Clinton.
So no, I don't see Kerry as an "option to Bush." I see electing him strictly as a tactical move, nothing more. I also said something like "the work doesn't end in November, it begins."
PS: The ABB crowd hasn't lost it's way. As soon as your stand is "anybody but," you're admitting you have no such way to lose.
As your closing statements alluded to, I do not believe that a Kerry presidency would gain any extra time for anything. The person occupying the White House is a subject of the paymasters.
I don't know that it will, either. I just have more hope that it will than the alternative. And I gotta keep taking my hope where I can find it.
You still see Kerry as an option to Bush? Ya gotta love the Gucci and Pucci set. They have the election cornered. I think the ABB crowd has lost its way. The system is broken beyond repair. There's so much hot air from all corners, that it, like more advertising, makes one turn away with contempt and disgust.
Actually, I didn't say that. I said, as near as I can quote from memory, that the only hope I had for a Kerry administration was that things would get worse a little more slowly, giving a little more time to organize opposition. In that sense, yes, I think a centrist corporatist Democrat would be "better than" - read "not as insanely bad as" - a sociopathic wingnut.
Put another way, under Kerry most everything would get worse on any scale we could agree on. Bush would actively press to make those same things worse. Kerry is a product of a corrupt system and demonstrates that corruption well. Bush is a whole new system of corruption.
Put a final way, I see them both as debilitating diseases, neither of which you would choose but one of which, bluntly, will happen to you - but one offers somewhat better chances for long-term survival or at least a course of decline that will take longer, offering some slightly better chances for developing effective treatment.
That's why, if I lived in a tossup state, I'd swallow my pride (and a good deal of antacid to keep from upchucking) and vote for Kerry.
In one sense, however, I don't know if it matters because I'm afraid we're screwed either way. Bush wins, he consciously and deliberately seeks to undermine what remains of our freedoms and turn us into vassals of the corporate state. Kerry wins, he doesn't try as hard and frankly probably not consciously, he just lets it happen because that's where his background, including his political career, points him, it's what seems natural - and it turns out every bit as bad because we stop trying as hard to resist because too many of us think "oh, we've got a Democrat in there now, things will be okay," just like we did with Carter, just like we did with Clinton.
So no, I don't see Kerry as an "option to Bush." I see electing him strictly as a tactical move, nothing more. I also said something like "the work doesn't end in November, it begins."
PS: The ABB crowd hasn't lost it's way. As soon as your stand is "anybody but," you're admitting you have no such way to lose.
As your closing statements alluded to, I do not believe that a Kerry presidency would gain any extra time for anything. The person occupying the White House is a subject of the paymasters.
I don't know that it will, either. I just have more hope that it will than the alternative. And I gotta keep taking my hope where I can find it.
If at first you don't succeed...
...lie, lie again.
The Pentagon continues to insist that the anti-missile-missile system to be deployed in Alaska and California is not only effective against an "accidental or unauthorized launch" of a ballistic missile against the US, it would in fact be "irresponsible" to do otherwise.
This is despite the fact that even in tightly-controlled tests, the Pentagon succeeded in only five of eight tries against dummy missiles that used no countermeasures whatsoever.
The latest blast against the idiocy came on Thursday:
All the old technical arguments against this stupidity are still valid, as are all the old political arguments, with one exception: We used to say that a false feeling of invulnerability could cause us to act rashly and brazenly in a way that would damage the possibility of peace and increase risks faced by others as well as ourselves.
Shelve that argument; it's hard to imagine us acting more rashly and brazenly than we already are.
The Pentagon continues to insist that the anti-missile-missile system to be deployed in Alaska and California is not only effective against an "accidental or unauthorized launch" of a ballistic missile against the US, it would in fact be "irresponsible" to do otherwise.
This is despite the fact that even in tightly-controlled tests, the Pentagon succeeded in only five of eight tries against dummy missiles that used no countermeasures whatsoever.
The latest blast against the idiocy came on Thursday:
Washington (Reuters) - The multibillion-dollar U.S. ballistic missile shield due to start operating by Sept. 30 appears incapable of shooting down any incoming warheads, an independent scientists' group said on Thursday.What I find so fascinating about the whole this is that this system keeps coming back to life, like Jason. Every time you think it's good and dead, it springs up again with a new rationale for the same old crap. This time, believe it or not,
A technical analysis found "no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack," the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a 76-page report titled "Technical Realities." ...
Overstating the defensive capabilities was irresponsible, said the report by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based group. It cited past Pentagon statements the capability was limited only by the number of interceptors.
"If the president is told that the system could reliably defend against a North Korean ballistic missile attack, he might be willing to accept more risks when making policy and military decisions," the report said.
"I actually worry that it's worse than useless, that it's really dangerous," George Lewis, a report co-author who is associate director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told reporters at a briefing.
The General Accounting Office, Congress's nonpartisan investigative arm, said last month the system's effectiveness would be "largely unproven" when it becomes operational.
[t]he initial goal is to protect all 50 U.S. states against a limited strike from North Korean missiles that could be tipped with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.You read that right. The new bogeyman is North Korea, replacing unnamed "rogue states," which replaced China, which replaced long-time champ the USSR.
All the old technical arguments against this stupidity are still valid, as are all the old political arguments, with one exception: We used to say that a false feeling of invulnerability could cause us to act rashly and brazenly in a way that would damage the possibility of peace and increase risks faced by others as well as ourselves.
Shelve that argument; it's hard to imagine us acting more rashly and brazenly than we already are.
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is blackjack?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fun with Colors for $2000
A small type of wasp, it normally builds its nest underground.
What is blackjack?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fun with Colors for $2000
A small type of wasp, it normally builds its nest underground.
Hail Mary becomes Hey! Merry!
In what critics had called a "Hail Mary" attempt to prevent the beginning of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts on Monday, a coalition of bigoted state lawmakers and conservative wackos petitioned the federal courts to issue a stay to block county clerks from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
The state's Supreme Judicial Court determined in November that banning same-sex marriages violated the state constitution's equal protection clauses because a definable group of people was being denied rights and benefits available to others. The right-wing boobs' argument was that even though such interpretation is the Court's purpose, by doing so, it had somehow violated the principle of separation of powers.
Their motion for a stay lost at the District Court level.
It lost at the Appeals Court level.
And now,
Let the issuing begin!
Footnote: On the downside, the Appeals Court agreed to consider the demerits of the nitwits' claims at a hearing set for June. The slimebucket lawyers representing the creeps are already talking about arguing their so-called case before the Supreme Court.
The state's Supreme Judicial Court determined in November that banning same-sex marriages violated the state constitution's equal protection clauses because a definable group of people was being denied rights and benefits available to others. The right-wing boobs' argument was that even though such interpretation is the Court's purpose, by doing so, it had somehow violated the principle of separation of powers.
Their motion for a stay lost at the District Court level.
It lost at the Appeals Court level.
And now,
[t]he Supreme Court refused Friday to block Massachusetts from allowing gay marriages beginning Monday, removing the last legal impediment to what will be the nation's first state-sanctioned same-sex weddings.The motion was declined without comment.
Let the issuing begin!
Footnote: On the downside, the Appeals Court agreed to consider the demerits of the nitwits' claims at a hearing set for June. The slimebucket lawyers representing the creeps are already talking about arguing their so-called case before the Supreme Court.
Footnote to the preceding, Life Goes On Dept.
Again from the Iraqi Press Monitor for May 13, this time quoting the London-based Asharq al-Awsat:
The Iraqi Olympic football team has qualified for the finals of the Olympic Games in Athens from 13-29 August, after beating the Saudi team 3-1 in Jordan. Iraq leads the group by getting 9 points against 8 points for Kuwait and 6 points for Saudi Arabia.It may seem silly, but it just gives me a little hope - my magic word - that in the midst of all the pain and destruction going on in Iraq there are still people thinking about sports and the Olympics. It's a reminder that people are still living their lives, going to market, cooking their meals, playing with their children, dreaming of the future; that even as the blood flows, so does life.
Another sign that Iraq is joining the civilized world
First there was mad cow disease, now this, from Azzaman, a London-based Arab language daily newspaper, via the Iraqi Press Monitor for May 13:
Three hundred people of the al-Madain district in south-east Baghdad were poisoned yesterday because of drinking polluted water. Chairman of the District Advisory Council Hameed Husam said poisoning was the result of drinking water supplied by the Diala river which is full of pollutants from sewage and industrial waste.Can toxic waste dumps be far behind?
A double-headed tale
Follow the money, they say.
Seattle (Reuters, May 14) - Two Portland, Oregon, DJs were fired for making jokes as they aired a recording of American Nick Berg's beheading in Iraq, station management said on Friday, calling their actions "beyond comprehension."Yet Rush Limbaugh, who likened the tortures at Abu Ghraib to "anything you'd see ... Britney Spears do on stage" and said the soldiers were just "blow[ing] some steam off," and having "a good time," who called reaction to the torture pictures "an example of the feminization of this country," rolls merrily along.
The DJs, named only by their on-air personas "Marconi" and "Tiny," and their producer were fired from their morning show on Thursday after the pair laughed and played background music while repeatedly airing Berg's screams as militant Islamists decapitated him.
Just a reminder...
...that there are places outside of Iraq. A few dispatches from less-attended parts of the globe.
Sudan
A horseback Arab militia known as the janjaweed, believed to be acting at the direction of the Sudanese government, has been embarked on a "reign of terror" in the Darfur region of western Sudan, according to an official report to the UN Security Council, reported the BBC on May 8.
The Security Council said it would "monitor the situation" but would take no action at present.
I guess there's not enough oil there.
Meanwhile, the violence has spilled over into Chad, whose army has had battles with the janjaweed after the militia attacked villages in eastern Chad, according to Chad's defence minister, Emmanuel Nadingar.
Sudan to Democratic Republic of Congo
Again from the BBC (don't expect too much international news from US media, folks), for May 7:
The government of DR Congo had hoped to use the elephants and the parks in which they are found as a tourist draw to bring much-needed capital to the country now that a bitter and unusually bloody five-year civil was has come to an end.
Or has it?
Democratic Republic of Congo
Writing in the May 10 International Herald Tribune, Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, co-chair of the advocacy group En Avant Congo!, charges the UN peacekeeping mission is failing its job.
As reported by the May 13 Toronto Globe & Mail,
From the Toronto Globe & Mail for May 14:
Footnote: Following the decision, Reuters says, Roh apologized to the nation for his part in causing the constitutional crisis, saying "Even though the impeachment was overturned it does not mean I have escaped political and moral responsibility." He pledged to let the new parliament take the lead in making reforms.
Sudan
A horseback Arab militia known as the janjaweed, believed to be acting at the direction of the Sudanese government, has been embarked on a "reign of terror" in the Darfur region of western Sudan, according to an official report to the UN Security Council, reported the BBC on May 8.
After briefing the council, UN Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan spoke of a "scorched earth policy" and "repeated crimes against humanity".Ramcharan said that more than one million people have been driven from their homes in the attacks, in what human rights groups have labeled a campaign of ethnic cleansing designed to drive African peoples out of the region.
He described aerial bombardments as well as systematic attacks on villages by Sudanese government forces and militiamen who killed, raped, and looted.
The Security Council said it would "monitor the situation" but would take no action at present.
I guess there's not enough oil there.
Meanwhile, the violence has spilled over into Chad, whose army has had battles with the janjaweed after the militia attacked villages in eastern Chad, according to Chad's defence minister, Emmanuel Nadingar.
Sudan to Democratic Republic of Congo
Again from the BBC (don't expect too much international news from US media, folks), for May 7:
Poachers linked to the Sudanese SPLA rebels are killing elephants for ivory in the Democratic Republic of Congo, say national park authorities.The SPLA is the rebel band in Sudan whose activities are the justification for the brutality of the janjaweed.
A spokesman said poaching began for meat two years ago in the Garamba National Park near the border with Sudan, but the object now was ivory. ...
He estimated only 14,000 elephants remained in DR Congo compared to 90,000 before the country's war began in 1997. ...
The BBC's Arnaud Zajtman says that, despite an international ban, at the main tourist market in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, ivory is still being sold.
The government of DR Congo had hoped to use the elephants and the parks in which they are found as a tourist draw to bring much-needed capital to the country now that a bitter and unusually bloody five-year civil was has come to an end.
Or has it?
Democratic Republic of Congo
Writing in the May 10 International Herald Tribune, Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, co-chair of the advocacy group En Avant Congo!, charges the UN peacekeeping mission is failing its job.
In eastern Congo, where rape and insecurity are the daily lot of hopeless civilians, the mission has, in fact, become the symbol of impunity.India
The UN troops were sent to Congo in 1999, in the midst of a civil war that killed more than 3.3 million people. ...
In a 2002 agreement that established a power-sharing government in Kinshasa, the foreign troops were supposed to withdraw while the UN and Congo pledged to send home the insurgents.
Rwanda, however, saying that Congo hasn't held to its part of the agreement, has repeatedly violated the agreements with impunity, sending troops in and saying they are searching for rebels that stage raids on Rwandan villages. A run-in between UN troops and hundreds of Rwandan soldiers in eastern Congo last month underscores the mission's ineffectiveness.
In the confrontation, on April 21, the Rwandan Army ordered UN troops to withdraw from the area, and in a shocking reversal of roles, they complied - even though under their mandate they can use force to protect the peace. ..
[T]he UN seems reluctant to disturb the status quo.
But the trading of accusations about insurgents is merely a front for the real issue at stake, Congo's natural resources. ...
Rwanda and Uganda have no incentive to stop the financing and arming of their proxies. ...
The United Nations must take an active and forceful role in its Congo mission. Their passive presence has become a mockery of peace.
As reported by the May 13 Toronto Globe & Mail,
[t]he ruling party of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee conceded defeat Thursday in parliamentary elections, opening the way for Sonia Gandhi to become India's prime minister in one of the most dramatic political upsets since independence.South Korea
Unofficial results indicate that millions of rural poor people abandoned Mr. Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata party believing they had been left behind by the country's economic boom. ...
It was an embarrassing defeat for Mr. Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist-led government, which had called elections six months early because it felt confident of winning an even bigger majority in Parliament, based on a booming economy and prospects of peace with Pakistan.
But Congress focused its campaign on the country's 300 million people who still live on less than a dollar a day. It hammered away at the lack of even basic infrastructure, electricity and potable water for millions of rural poor. ...
Ms. Gandhi has pushed for a secular India in contrast to the BJP's Hindu nationalist message.
From the Toronto Globe & Mail for May 14:
Seoul - President Roh Moo-hyun regained power Friday in a historic court ruling that overturned an opposition-led impeachment vote, giving him a fresh mandate to seek more latitude from Washington in negotiations with North Korea.Roh had been impeached in March on minor charges in what around 70% of South Koreans saw as politically-motivated move by conservatives angered over his intention to seek reconciliation with North Korea. The Constitutional Court had to uphold the impeachment for Roh to be removed from office; instead, it dealt an embarrassing defeat to the conservatives by ruling that of the three charges against him, he was innocent of two and the other was too minor to justify removing him from office.
Mr. Roh will be working with the first liberal National Assembly in four decades, one that supports him and wants a foreign policy less dependent on the United States.That was as the result of last month's general election, won by the pro-Roh Uri Party in an apparent rebuke to the conservative parties that impeached him.
Footnote: Following the decision, Reuters says, Roh apologized to the nation for his part in causing the constitutional crisis, saying "Even though the impeachment was overturned it does not mean I have escaped political and moral responsibility." He pledged to let the new parliament take the lead in making reforms.
Notable quotable
This from Sidney Blumenthal, writing in the Guardian for May 13:
What does it say about Bush when he's lost the support of people at the Hudson Institute?
Set the date and get out.
William Odom, a retired general and former member of the National Security Council who is now at the Hudson Institute, a conservative thinktank, reflects a wide swath of opinion in the upper ranks of the military. "It was never in our interest to go into Iraq," he told me. It is a "diversion" from the war on terrorism; the rationale for the Iraq war (finding WMD) is "phoney"; the US army is overstretched and being driven "into the ground"; and the prospect of building a democracy is "zero". In Iraqi politics, he says, "legitimacy is going to be tied to expelling us. Wisdom in military affairs dictates withdrawal in this situation. We can't afford to fail, that's mindless. The issue is how we stop failing more. I am arguing a strategic decision."There is the well-known story of how Lyndon Johnson's advisors were dejected when Walter Cronkite came out against the war in Vietnam. "If we've lost Walter," the thinking went, "we've lost middle America."
What does it say about Bush when he's lost the support of people at the Hudson Institute?
Set the date and get out.
Friday, May 14, 2004
Jeopardy!
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is the Green Room?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fun with Colors for $1200
This card game is also called Twenty-One or Vingt-et-Un.
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is the Green Room?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fun with Colors for $1200
This card game is also called Twenty-One or Vingt-et-Un.
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who was Michelangelo?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fun with Colors for $400
Before they appear on shows like David Letterman, guests are sequestered in this waiting area.
Who was Michelangelo?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fun with Colors for $400
Before they appear on shows like David Letterman, guests are sequestered in this waiting area.
"It's not what you say that counts...."
Is there anybody else here who remembers the old TV game show "You Don't Say?" The idea was to give your partner hints to a well-known name or phrase by making a statement but leaving off the last word ("That's the word you don't say," as the show's slogan had it.), which was supposed to sound like part of the answer.
It's not the same thing, but I'm repeatedly reminded of that idea when I listen to statements by politicians, governments, and the like and notice that despite the attempt to create a certain appearance, what they're not saying is as important as what they are saying.
Case in point: I'm sure you've heard about the pictures published by the Daily Mirror purportedly showing UK soldiers, among other things, urinating on hooded, bound prisoners. From today's news:
In fact, no such assertion was made. Even if the government is technically correct, the pictures could still portray real abuse, just somewhere at some facility outside Iraq where UK soldiers are involved.
Of course, this does not mean the pictures weren't faked - in fact, I have real doubts about them; when I first saw them, as a photographer they just didn't look right to me - but rather that the government hasn't shown or actually even claimed to have shown that they were. But the usual suspects are taking it as a complete refutation, as the rest of us are supposed to.
Personally, what I think Tony Blair & Co. should do is tell everyone how they identified the particular truck (and how they know it's that truck as opposed to any other truck), how they know it was never in Iraq, list every place it has been (so we have a list of potential sites where the pictures were taken and which they must have in order to know it was never in Iraq), and discuss what it means to have what they seem to have admitted is a UK Army truck appear in pictures of abuse of prisoners, regardless of whether those pictures were taken in Iraq.
And even that, of course, still doesn't answer the question of if the photos are real or not.
Update May 14: The Daily Mirror has conceded that it fell victim to a "calculated and malicious hoax" and the pictures were indeed faked, the BBC reports. Editor Piers Morgan has been fired.
It's not the same thing, but I'm repeatedly reminded of that idea when I listen to statements by politicians, governments, and the like and notice that despite the attempt to create a certain appearance, what they're not saying is as important as what they are saying.
Case in point: I'm sure you've heard about the pictures published by the Daily Mirror purportedly showing UK soldiers, among other things, urinating on hooded, bound prisoners. From today's news:
London, England (CNN) - Dramatic pictures said to show British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners were not taken in Iraq, the UK government has said.The predictable result was trashing of the newspaper, demands for heads to roll, shooting the messenger, the whole nine yards.
Armed forces minister Adam Ingram told MPs Thursday an inquiry by military police found the truck seen in the photos published by the Daily Mirror newspaper "was never in Iraq."
The Conservative opposition asked the Mirror's publishers what action they intended to take against [Daily Mirror Editor Piers] Morgan.Uh, huh. Sure. Right. But explain something to me first: What part of the government's statement said that the pictures were faked?
"Those who connived with the production of those photographs and those who published them did a great wrong," said Conservative defense spokesman Keith Simpson.
In fact, no such assertion was made. Even if the government is technically correct, the pictures could still portray real abuse, just somewhere at some facility outside Iraq where UK soldiers are involved.
Of course, this does not mean the pictures weren't faked - in fact, I have real doubts about them; when I first saw them, as a photographer they just didn't look right to me - but rather that the government hasn't shown or actually even claimed to have shown that they were. But the usual suspects are taking it as a complete refutation, as the rest of us are supposed to.
Personally, what I think Tony Blair & Co. should do is tell everyone how they identified the particular truck (and how they know it's that truck as opposed to any other truck), how they know it was never in Iraq, list every place it has been (so we have a list of potential sites where the pictures were taken and which they must have in order to know it was never in Iraq), and discuss what it means to have what they seem to have admitted is a UK Army truck appear in pictures of abuse of prisoners, regardless of whether those pictures were taken in Iraq.
And even that, of course, still doesn't answer the question of if the photos are real or not.
Update May 14: The Daily Mirror has conceded that it fell victim to a "calculated and malicious hoax" and the pictures were indeed faked, the BBC reports. Editor Piers Morgan has been fired.
At a news conference in Preston on Friday afternoon, the regiment demonstrated to reporters aspects of uniform and equipment which it said proved the photographs were fake.Fine; I'm not even surprised - I said the pictures didn't look right. But - assuming that there is a way to show the truck in the picture and the one in Lancashire are one and the same - I still wonder how a UK army vehicle wound up in the pictures.
The regiment's Brigadier Geoff Sheldon said the vehicle featured in the photographs had been located in a Territorial Army base in Lancashire and had never been in Iraq.
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
My heart isn't the only thing you stole
Another tip from another blog, this one from Eric, aka "The Hamster."
The Western Prison Project has some interesting numbers about crime as opposed to the perception of it. You should go directly to the site to see it laid out in detail graphically, but what they show in a nutshell is that the risk of being a victim of burglary drops with rising income. That is, the richer you are, the less likely you are to be burglarized.
These were the numbers:
The Western Prison Project has some interesting numbers about crime as opposed to the perception of it. You should go directly to the site to see it laid out in detail graphically, but what they show in a nutshell is that the risk of being a victim of burglary drops with rising income. That is, the richer you are, the less likely you are to be burglarized.
These were the numbers:
Burglaries/1,000 households, income <$7,500: 67.0Just like every other way, it's the poor who get screwed and the rich who get all the fawning attention.
Burglaries/1,000 households, income $7,500-$14,999: 44.2
Burglaries/1,000 households, income $15,000-$24,999: 38.9
Burglaries/1,000 households, income $25,000-$34,999: 37.1
Burglaries/1,000 households, income $35,000-$49,999: 30.9
Burglaries/1,000 households, income $50,000-$74,999: 24.1
Burglaries/1,000 households, income >$75,000: 23.1
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is "Red Dawn?"
JEOPARDY!
Dawn for $1000
On the Medici tomb he designed, he had nudes representing dawn and dusk under the seated Lorenzo.
What is "Red Dawn?"
JEOPARDY!
Dawn for $1000
On the Medici tomb he designed, he had nudes representing dawn and dusk under the seated Lorenzo.
Feelings, woe woe woe feelings....
Have you wondered why, if the economy was improving so much with all those brand new jobs, it feels no different on the street? That even though things might be looking up for the bosses, it doesn't seem to be any better for the rest of us? There may be a reason for that feeling beyond your own shameful lack of good old American forward-looking optimism.
Atrios tips us to this column by business writer John Crudele in the May 11 New York Post:
In other words, of the 625,000 jobs supposedly created in March and April, as many as 270,000 of them - 43% of the total - may not exist.
Back to the want ads.
Atrios tips us to this column by business writer John Crudele in the May 11 New York Post:
Don't get too excited about all those new jobs that were supposed to have been created in April.The problem, as Crudele explains, is that the government uses a standardized "birth/death model" that makes unverified (and unverifiable) assumptions about seasonal changes in employment through the creation of new businesses. For example,
I'm not going to waste a lot of my precious space on this, but the bottom line is that most of the 288,000 jobs that the Labor Department says were created last month may not really exist.
in the March employment report, the government added 153,000 positions to its revised total of 337,000 new jobs because it thought (but couldn't prove) loads of new companies were being created in this economy.Then for the April report, the Labor Department assumed an additional 117,000 such new jobs came into existence.
In other words, of the 625,000 jobs supposedly created in March and April, as many as 270,000 of them - 43% of the total - may not exist.
Back to the want ads.
Just to say it
I will just say this now. I may have more to say later, but I want to say this now.
I have seen the video.
The video of the beheading of Nick Berg. And it's every bit as gruesome as you might have imagined. Every bit as - words just don't do justice. Our normal language is not designed to describe such as this. And frankly, those who commit such acts don't deserve the "big" words we often apply, words like heinous, monstrous, inhuman. They are, rather, petty, cheap, sordid little cowards skulking behind their ski masks while talking tough and needing five of them to deal one man bound hand and foot.
Of course, the conspiracy theories are already spreading, suggesting it was actually the work of the CIA or some other US agency to distract attention from the torture of US-held prisoners as Abu Ghraib and, it is apparent, other places as well. The big talking point seems to be that Berg was wearing a "Guantanamo-style" orange prison jumpsuit. Exactly why US spooks would be that incompetent at making a fake is unexplained.
I don't have any trouble believing that the beheading was both real and carried out by small t terrorists (that, as opposed to capital T terrorists like nation states). But I do have my own questions about it. One is that, as news reports have noted, based on the time stamp on the video, there is an 11 hour gap between the time they force Berg down and the time they start to actually cut. (There are a few other jumps of a few to several seconds earlier; perhaps there were a few second takes of parts of the speech.) What happened during those 11 hours?
Another thing is that when the actual beheading starts, there is a momentary closeup of Berg's face in which he appears to be grimacing but the quality of the video is so poor it's hard to tell. What struck me is the blood. It flowed and flowed freely - but you would have thought Berg would be terrified, his heart pounding, his blood pressure skyrocketing. You would have thought the blood would spurt, gush, when his throat was cut. And it didn't. It flowed on to the floor, but none, it seemed, got on his murderers anywhere except their shoes. Which just makes me wonder: Was Nick Berg killed during that 11-hour gap? And did they behead a dead body?
That doesn't make it any less an evil thing and may in fact make it worse since I'm told that beheading is a quick way to die - so if he was killed earlier in a different way it might have been more painful. It's more a matter of what struck me watching it and if the beheading was meant less as a means of execution than of desecration.
One other thing struck me and I wonder if it surprised the killers: The head did not come off easily. They had to struggle, cut repeatedly, twist the head. I remember Alfred Hitchcock in one of his movies showing a couple trying to kill a man. It was a long slow struggle and Hitchcock said later that he wanted to do that because it's actually not easy to kill someone. We tend to think of it as quick, one thrust with a knife, a quick shot from a gun and poof it's done. But life is tenacious, our bodies sturdier than we sometimes realize, and the soldier - or civilian - shot may lie in agony for hours before death comes.
I don't know how to wrap this up cleanly, so I'll leave it at that for now. I may come back to this later, I may not. We'll see.
I have seen the video.
The video of the beheading of Nick Berg. And it's every bit as gruesome as you might have imagined. Every bit as - words just don't do justice. Our normal language is not designed to describe such as this. And frankly, those who commit such acts don't deserve the "big" words we often apply, words like heinous, monstrous, inhuman. They are, rather, petty, cheap, sordid little cowards skulking behind their ski masks while talking tough and needing five of them to deal one man bound hand and foot.
Of course, the conspiracy theories are already spreading, suggesting it was actually the work of the CIA or some other US agency to distract attention from the torture of US-held prisoners as Abu Ghraib and, it is apparent, other places as well. The big talking point seems to be that Berg was wearing a "Guantanamo-style" orange prison jumpsuit. Exactly why US spooks would be that incompetent at making a fake is unexplained.
I don't have any trouble believing that the beheading was both real and carried out by small t terrorists (that, as opposed to capital T terrorists like nation states). But I do have my own questions about it. One is that, as news reports have noted, based on the time stamp on the video, there is an 11 hour gap between the time they force Berg down and the time they start to actually cut. (There are a few other jumps of a few to several seconds earlier; perhaps there were a few second takes of parts of the speech.) What happened during those 11 hours?
Another thing is that when the actual beheading starts, there is a momentary closeup of Berg's face in which he appears to be grimacing but the quality of the video is so poor it's hard to tell. What struck me is the blood. It flowed and flowed freely - but you would have thought Berg would be terrified, his heart pounding, his blood pressure skyrocketing. You would have thought the blood would spurt, gush, when his throat was cut. And it didn't. It flowed on to the floor, but none, it seemed, got on his murderers anywhere except their shoes. Which just makes me wonder: Was Nick Berg killed during that 11-hour gap? And did they behead a dead body?
That doesn't make it any less an evil thing and may in fact make it worse since I'm told that beheading is a quick way to die - so if he was killed earlier in a different way it might have been more painful. It's more a matter of what struck me watching it and if the beheading was meant less as a means of execution than of desecration.
One other thing struck me and I wonder if it surprised the killers: The head did not come off easily. They had to struggle, cut repeatedly, twist the head. I remember Alfred Hitchcock in one of his movies showing a couple trying to kill a man. It was a long slow struggle and Hitchcock said later that he wanted to do that because it's actually not easy to kill someone. We tend to think of it as quick, one thrust with a knife, a quick shot from a gun and poof it's done. But life is tenacious, our bodies sturdier than we sometimes realize, and the soldier - or civilian - shot may lie in agony for hours before death comes.
I don't know how to wrap this up cleanly, so I'll leave it at that for now. I may come back to this later, I may not. We'll see.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
What's wrong with the US in a nutshell, part three
From Newsday:
The price of decency.
It was [Specialist Joe] Darby, an automobile mechanic in his civilian life, who became deeply troubled after looking at a CD that included dozens of photographs [of torture and mistreatment of prisoners]. ...Meanwhile, AP quotes his sister-in-law Maxine Carroll as saying
Because of what he did, seven members of the 372nd now faces charges of abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib. ...
In nearby Cumberland, Md., where many of the 372nd members live, Darby is now a controversial figure.
"Darby's going to be shunned," said Tanya Vargas, 29, a former weekend reservist with the 372nd. "He's going to be blackballed. His life is in jeopardy, because he's a snitch. I hope they have protection for him."
the family is concerned some people will view Darby's decision to turn in fellow soldiers as traitorous, rather than heroic, especially in Cresaptown, Md., where he lives and where the 372nd is based."Some people" like Tanya Vargas, for example?
"It scares you a little," she said.
The price of decency.
What's wrong with the US in a nutshell, part two
ABS-CBNNews of the Philippines notes that before his report on the horrendous conditions at Abu Ghraib prison, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba was known pretty much only for "being the second Filipino American to become a general in the U.S. Army." Now, however, he is
being spoken of in hushed tones as someone who may have written a death warrant to his career.The price of truth.
What's wrong with the US in a nutshell, part one
From the Christian Science Monitor for May 6:
Jackson, WY and Asheville, NC - In this famously beautiful Wyoming valley, where world leaders come to relax in trophy homes behind big picture windows, a mountain view of the rugged Tetons can do far more than inspire."What's mine is mine and what's yours depends on if I want it or not."
In fact, those awe-inspiring views of "God's country" sometimes cause overzealous landowners to break the law - by firing up the chain saw to topple trees that block the grandiosity. ...
From the Tetons to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the phenomenon of felling trees for personal enrichment and financial gain is known as "vanity logging." ...
Vanity logging is hardly widespread. But land use experts say it's more common as Baby Boomers flock to mountain nests, changing culture, economies, and privacy attitudes. Often, logging comes after permission is denied, and clear-cutters move in under cover of darkness.
Case in point: In the well-to-do mountain hamlet of Highlands, N.C., near Whiteside Mountain - a slab of granite in the southernmost Appalachian highlands, a newcomer challenged local customs and understandings when he took matters - and a chain saw - into his own hands.
"There was this very nice house that was built in an area where it would have a great view of Whiteside Mountain - if only the neighbor's trees weren't there," says Martin Reidinger, a lawyer in Asheville.
So the owner - a wealthy Atlantan - made some calculations and came to a decision: Cut 'em anyway. After finding the acre's worth of his trees chopped down during a long walk through the woods, the neighbor sued - and won $40,000. But experts estimate that the Atlanta man still came out on top: He increased his property value by at least $100,000. "It happens fairly frequently," says Mr. Reidinger. "Sometimes the cutting is innocent, but other times I think it's very purposeful.
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is dishwashing liquid? (Acceptable: soap)
JEOPARDY!
Dawn for $600
This film with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey was about a Communist invasion.
What is dishwashing liquid? (Acceptable: soap)
JEOPARDY!
Dawn for $600
This film with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey was about a Communist invasion.
Some bits of good news, part two
I overlooked posting this when it happened a week ago, but it certainly deserves mention even now. From the Washington Post for May 4:
The rules changes under the new proposal would have reduced the number of higher-paid workers eligible for overtime by as many as 4 million while allowing more low-paid workers to get overtime pay by raising the income limit below which employees are automatically eligible. The plan passed by the Senate blocked implementation of the first part of those changes while allowing the second.
The House, which voted to block the new regulations last year, hasn't taken a vote this session, but Senate supporters of protecting overtime expressed confidence the House would go along with the Senate.
*WHS = White House Sociopaths
The Republican-controlled Senate voted yesterday to block new Labor Department rules that critics said would deny overtime pay to millions of white-collar workers, handing an embarrassing rebuff to the Bush administration on a politically sensitive jobs issue.The original proposal would have cost 8 million workers their eligibility for overtime, while adding a fraction that number. Under pressure and the real threat of an embarrassing defeat, the WHS* revamped the plan to reduce the pernicious effects which they originally denied existed. Happily, that wasn't enough.
The Senate voted 52 to 47 to scrap the new rules despite recent changes to address earlier criticism, an intense lobbying campaign by Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao and a last-ditch GOP effort to avert defeat by proposing a long list of jobs for which overtime pay could not be eliminated.
The rules changes under the new proposal would have reduced the number of higher-paid workers eligible for overtime by as many as 4 million while allowing more low-paid workers to get overtime pay by raising the income limit below which employees are automatically eligible. The plan passed by the Senate blocked implementation of the first part of those changes while allowing the second.
The House, which voted to block the new regulations last year, hasn't taken a vote this session, but Senate supporters of protecting overtime expressed confidence the House would go along with the Senate.
*WHS = White House Sociopaths
Some bits of good news, part one
From the Washington Post for May 11:
Right. And if you believe that, I have some genetically engineered bridges to sell you.
As the article notes, some GM (genetically-modified) crops have had market success, but they are not primarily food crops. And there is reason to hesitate about GM plants in general since so much remains unknown. Indeed, even the process remains much a hit-or-miss affair, with genetic modifications introduced in many cases almost randomly and then tests run to see what the results are. And the possible effects in the wild, where genetic material can at least in theory be spread far and wide, are little known and no better understood.
But I think what most galled me about Monsanto's GM wheat is that it was known as "Roundup-ready." That is, it wasn't designed to enable the plant to resist insects or blight or any such thing, but to withstand heavy applications of the powerful pesticide glyphosate, known commercially as Roundup.
No prizes for guessing who makes Roundup.
The Monsanto Co. yesterday scrapped plans to commercialize genetically engineered wheat, the biggest defeat yet for advocates of agricultural biotechnology - and a victory for skeptics who said the company was trying to foist on the world a crop it did not want or need.The victory was the result of the work of an alliance of farmers concerned about the marketability of the crop and environmentalists opposed to genetic engineering. Monsanto (of course) denied that had anything to do with the decision, saying it was just a matter of "better opportunities elsewhere."
Monsanto said it would indefinitely delay plans to commercialize Roundup Ready wheat, a product that three years ago seemed headed for quick approval in the United States and Canada. The company said it would cut most of the $5 million it spends annually to develop the crop.
Right. And if you believe that, I have some genetically engineered bridges to sell you.
As the article notes, some GM (genetically-modified) crops have had market success, but they are not primarily food crops. And there is reason to hesitate about GM plants in general since so much remains unknown. Indeed, even the process remains much a hit-or-miss affair, with genetic modifications introduced in many cases almost randomly and then tests run to see what the results are. And the possible effects in the wild, where genetic material can at least in theory be spread far and wide, are little known and no better understood.
But I think what most galled me about Monsanto's GM wheat is that it was known as "Roundup-ready." That is, it wasn't designed to enable the plant to resist insects or blight or any such thing, but to withstand heavy applications of the powerful pesticide glyphosate, known commercially as Roundup.
No prizes for guessing who makes Roundup.
Mark your calendar
Something else from Josh Marshall, this from yesterday.
We'll see what develops; in the meantime, it might be wise to pass this tidbit around so just in case, there will be some more awareness of what was going on.
Footnote: For those that didn't get it - the Democratic National Convention is July 26-29.
There is chatter in Pakistani intelligence circles that the US has let the Pakistanis know that the optimal time for bagging "high value" al Qaida suspects in the untamed Afghan-Pakistani border lands is the last ten days of July, 2004.If it's true, it just goes again to prove that they are sociopaths.
We'll see what develops; in the meantime, it might be wise to pass this tidbit around so just in case, there will be some more awareness of what was going on.
Footnote: For those that didn't get it - the Democratic National Convention is July 26-29.
MIA
Or MIM, Missing in Media.
I don't know about you, but I don't recall hearing a lot about the supposed scandal involving the Iraqi oil-for-food program of late. For those with short memories, this was the claim that Saddam Hussein in effect ran rings around the UN by salting away billions of dollars via a system of payoffs to political leaders and journalists to overlook his sticky dealings with the companies distributing the oil, which, in exchange for some kickbacks, claimed they paid a lot less for Iraqi oil than they really did, with the excess going to Saddam.
Got that? It's charged that over the 7 years the program was running, Saddam may have skimmed off around $10 billion - about $1.4 billion a year. That's a good hunk of change.
The problem with the whole business, especially the part trying to implicate high UN officials in the scandal, is that
Ahmed Chalabi and
the man picked personally by
Ahmed Chalabi
to head the investigation is Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British financial adviser and an old friend of
Ahmed Chalabi.
Marshall says
Frankly, while it's altogether possible that Saddam pocketed trunkfuls of bucks is this deal quite apart from any potential guilt on the part of UN officials, it's also clear that Chalabi has a real interest in discrediting the UN as an agency in Iraq. If he's to maintain his dream of political power in the future, it can't be based on his popularity among Iraqis - he has none - but only on the continued support of his backers in the US. The more the UN is involved, the less his influence.
Of course, those over at the extreme starboard side of the USS America worked themselves into a froth about this, but even they have been relatively silent the last week or so. (Fox News was reduced today to blaring "Ex-Oil-for-Food Head Defiant to Questions" in an article that really boiled down to his refusing to be interviewed by a reporter who approached him on the street.)
Now personally, I can't help but wonder if all the fuss and fuming over what Saddam Hussein did years ago (You mean he was not only a brutal tyrant, he was crooked? Oh my gosh! Well, I guess the invasion was the right thing to do, then!) was to provide covering fire for this, from EPIC, the Education for Peace In Iraq Center:
The link to the NPR series is here.
I don't know about you, but I don't recall hearing a lot about the supposed scandal involving the Iraqi oil-for-food program of late. For those with short memories, this was the claim that Saddam Hussein in effect ran rings around the UN by salting away billions of dollars via a system of payoffs to political leaders and journalists to overlook his sticky dealings with the companies distributing the oil, which, in exchange for some kickbacks, claimed they paid a lot less for Iraqi oil than they really did, with the excess going to Saddam.
Got that? It's charged that over the 7 years the program was running, Saddam may have skimmed off around $10 billion - about $1.4 billion a year. That's a good hunk of change.
The problem with the whole business, especially the part trying to implicate high UN officials in the scandal, is that
none the documents which are said to support this claim have been seen, let alone authenticated by any neutral observers,as Josh Marshall reminded us last week. The documents were then, and as far as I can tell from a Google news search still are, in the control of the Finance Committee of the Iraqi Governing Council. (Sidebar: Marshall says the actual name is the Interim Governing Council and I'm prepared to concede his greater knowledge of such matters, but as I have seen it repeatedly referred to in other media as the Iraqi Governing Council, I'm going to continue to do so until I can determine it should be otherwise.) The Finance Committee is controlled by
Ahmed Chalabi and
the man picked personally by
Ahmed Chalabi
to head the investigation is Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a British financial adviser and an old friend of
Ahmed Chalabi.
Marshall says
thus far, Hankes-Drielsma and Chalabi have resisted turning over the relevant documents to either the investigators at the CPA or the Volcker Commission which was appointed by Kofi Annan to investigate the matter on behalf of the UN.Again, I've seen nothing in recent days saying that situation has changed.
Frankly, while it's altogether possible that Saddam pocketed trunkfuls of bucks is this deal quite apart from any potential guilt on the part of UN officials, it's also clear that Chalabi has a real interest in discrediting the UN as an agency in Iraq. If he's to maintain his dream of political power in the future, it can't be based on his popularity among Iraqis - he has none - but only on the continued support of his backers in the US. The more the UN is involved, the less his influence.
Of course, those over at the extreme starboard side of the USS America worked themselves into a froth about this, but even they have been relatively silent the last week or so. (Fox News was reduced today to blaring "Ex-Oil-for-Food Head Defiant to Questions" in an article that really boiled down to his refusing to be interviewed by a reporter who approached him on the street.)
Now personally, I can't help but wonder if all the fuss and fuming over what Saddam Hussein did years ago (You mean he was not only a brutal tyrant, he was crooked? Oh my gosh! Well, I guess the invasion was the right thing to do, then!) was to provide covering fire for this, from EPIC, the Education for Peace In Iraq Center:
According to a special investigation by National Public Radio's Marketplace and the Center for Investigative Reporting, it is estimated that 20% of Iraq Reconstruction funds are being lost to corruption. The report documents the failure of the US government to effectively oversee expenditures in a reconstruction effort that is costing 10 times more per capita than the Marshall Plan.No way Saddam is going to outdo the entrepreneurial spirit of the good old US of A!
Another 20% of the reconstruction funds are being used to provide security for contractors, though many contractors are leaving Iraq. According to a coalition source, 25% of contractors have currently pulled out of Iraq and the other 75% have pulled back to their base. There appear to be major delays with the disbursement of reconstruction funds. As of early April, only $2 billion of the $18 billion allocated by Congress last October had been disbursed. The corruption, security environment and delays are putting U.S. efforts to rebuild and stabilize Iraq in grave danger.
The link to the NPR series is here.
Oh the things you find
While I was looking for the link to a June 20, 2003 article in the Daily Mirror (UK) as an update to this post, I found the following, by columnist Tony Parsons in the May 10 issue of the paper. I've included it here in full, as I thought it was worth your while.
Stop me if I am missing something here, but if former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic can end up on trial for war crimes committed under his leadership, then why can't Tony Blair?Would that such a level of intellectual courage was more common among the punditry on this side of the big pond.
Former Yugoslav President Milosevic didn't personally murder anyone. He didn't actually rape anyone. And he didn't soil his suit by torturing anyone in a stinking prison cell.
And yet Milosevic stands accused of crimes against humanity. He faces life imprisonment for unspeakable atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo that happened when he was many miles away.
But Milosevic was dragged to The Hague because he was the man at the top, and the indisputable architect of a mountain of misery.
"He (Milosevic) controlled events," the judges at The Hague were told when his trial began, "because he controlled the people who constituted the bodies that did evil."
Which is a perfect definition of Tony Blair's moral responsibility for everything that has been done in this country's name in Iraq.
Just as Milosevic bears ultimate responsibility for the slaughter and torture in the Balkans, so Blair must shoulder ultimate responsibility for the carnage and - even worse - the enduring hatreds that have been stirred up in Iraq.
Britain's involvement could not have happened without Tony Blair. First, it was because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction ready to rain down on Croydon.
When that turned out to be tosh, the justification for war was the moral imperative - we were bringing freedom, democracy and enlightenment to a wretched and oppressed people.
And I am sure the Iraqis would thank us, if only someone would remove the dog collar, the boot and the rifle butt from their throats.
Blair is guilty as sin. He will not stand trial, of course. There will be no ritual humiliation and bringing to book for the Butcher of Baghdad, the way there was for the Butcher of Belgrade.
Blair will not stand trial for the 16,180 Iraqis who have been slaughtered on his watch, or the 1,195 Allied soldiers who have wasted their lives.
The Prime Minister will eventually go, but he will spend the next two decades or so swanning around the lucrative lecture circuit of the United States, smiling his pious, why-hast-thou-chosen-me-oh-Lord? grin, until he slides into the dribbling senility currently being enjoyed by his hero, Lady Thatcher. Unlike Milosevic - who was undoubtedly convinced of the rightness and goodness of his cause - Blair will get off without charge, and without any blood or brain sticking to his halo.
But that doesn't stop him being guilty as sin.
And there are plenty of others who are guilty too - especially those of us who supported the war in Iraq.
It is time to come clean - before they release the pictures of Iraqi women being abused in those rancid cells, before the pictures of children being tortured come out, before a bomb goes off on the London Underground. Time to say all of us who supported this war were wrong.
Hideously, horribly wrong. About as wrong as we could possibly be.
We should have been marching with the peaceniks, no matter how much we secretly despise them, and all their pacifist tendencies - and until the day I die I will believe that many in the peace camp would have rolled over in 1939.
But it doesn't matter why we supported the war - because we truly believed the lies our Prime Minister told us about weapons of mass destruction, because we thought that Saddam deserved to be buried by history, or because we have a sentimental attachment to the armed forces of this country and could not contemplate criticising our soldiers when they were fighting and dying - we were wrong.
Whatever the reason, we were dead wrong.
The pictures of American and British troops in all their sadistic glory will keep on coming now, and they will store up loathing that will last a lifetime.
And one day, possibly one day soon, there will be a bomb in a major British city, and innocent men, women and children will be maimed and killed, and then we will have injustices of our own to nurse, and then we will have our own burning hatreds to cultivate, and our own vengeance to claim.
So it goes - the never-ending enmity of the Middle East taken up residence in this rainy little island.
Most of us are sick of the sight of Tony Blair now, but he is ultimately irrelevant - just another lying, self-serving politician, just one more thing we were wrong about all along.
What matters are the unimaginable forces that Blair has unleashed, and the hatred that will last for a thousand years.
Another week, another cell, another image to haunt our dreams.
Are we really torturing the children now? Are we raping their women, and taking a few happy snaps to gloat about with the boys back home?
Are these really the mad acts of a few rotten eggs?
To this former supporter of the war in Iraq, it looks like the whole damn farm is rotten to the core.
Monday, May 10, 2004
Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Marie Antoinette?
JEOPARDY!
Dawn for $200
Dawn Special Care is a type of this that's good for hands.
Who is Marie Antoinette?
JEOPARDY!
Dawn for $200
Dawn Special Care is a type of this that's good for hands.
You still don't get it, do you?
This is from AP for May 10:
But the economy is recovering! Jobs are up and Karl Rove is grinning! In fact, the figures for March were revised upward to 377,000 new jobs! So why the hey is Wall Street grumbling and fumbling?
Because, friends, our economy is a zero-sum game and what's good for us (jobs) is bad for the fat cats. Because jobs mean more competition to get workers. And that means - oh the horror! - possible wage hikes and a (possibly) better life for the greater number of us. And that in turn means - oh the horror! - "inflationary pressures." And banks hate inflation because it reduces the real value of repaid loans (since you borrow current, that is, present-day dollars, but pay back with inflated, that is, lower real value, dollars).
And since the Fed is nothing if not protective of the banks, at the first sign of "inflationary pressures" it can be counted on to raise interest rates, slowing economic growth by increasing the cost of borrowing (and thus of financing expansion), constricting corporate profits (and thus the value of stock, reflected in the selloff of late), reducing the demand for workers, keeping unemployment well above 5% - but helping the banks.
Bottom line: What's good for you is bad for the banks and corporate America. And vice-versa. And don't let anyone ever tell you any different.
Interest rate fears drove a major selloff on Wall Street Monday, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing below 10,000 for the first time since Dec. 10 and all three major indexes dropping to their lows for the year.According to the radio news this afternoon, stocks dropped again on Tuesday.
The dread that has sent stocks tumbling over the past four weeks intensified in response to Friday's employment report from the Labor Department that the U.S. gained 288,000 new jobs in April. Investors feared the news would prompt the Federal Reserve to raise rates as early as next month, and selling spread around the globe Monday before sending Wall Street skidding as well.
But the economy is recovering! Jobs are up and Karl Rove is grinning! In fact, the figures for March were revised upward to 377,000 new jobs! So why the hey is Wall Street grumbling and fumbling?
Because, friends, our economy is a zero-sum game and what's good for us (jobs) is bad for the fat cats. Because jobs mean more competition to get workers. And that means - oh the horror! - possible wage hikes and a (possibly) better life for the greater number of us. And that in turn means - oh the horror! - "inflationary pressures." And banks hate inflation because it reduces the real value of repaid loans (since you borrow current, that is, present-day dollars, but pay back with inflated, that is, lower real value, dollars).
And since the Fed is nothing if not protective of the banks, at the first sign of "inflationary pressures" it can be counted on to raise interest rates, slowing economic growth by increasing the cost of borrowing (and thus of financing expansion), constricting corporate profits (and thus the value of stock, reflected in the selloff of late), reducing the demand for workers, keeping unemployment well above 5% - but helping the banks.
Bottom line: What's good for you is bad for the banks and corporate America. And vice-versa. And don't let anyone ever tell you any different.
Belated but heartfelt
I actually knew this but had forgotten it. It's a couple of days late now, but still much worth noting. From the Institute for Public Accuracy, May 7.
Footnote: And more, actually. Among the proposed Mother's Day gifts I heard advertised were cell phones, gift certificates to Home Depot (a DIY store, in case you don't know), and laser eye surgery, the latter with the tag line "give her the gift she'll open every day."
Each year the president issues a Mother's Day Proclamation. The original Mother's Day Proclamation was made in 1870. Written by Julia Ward Howe, perhaps best known today for having written the words to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" in 1862 when she was an antislavery activist, the original Proclamation was an impassioned call for peace and disarmament. In the years following the Civil War her political activism increased, as did her condemnation of war. Here are the words to the original Mother's Day Proclamation:Another holiday of noble beginnings stripped of all content and reduced to an opportunity to sell greeting cards.Arise then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly: 'We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own, it says "Disarm! Disarm!" The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.'
As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his time the sacred impress not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
Footnote: And more, actually. Among the proposed Mother's Day gifts I heard advertised were cell phones, gift certificates to Home Depot (a DIY store, in case you don't know), and laser eye surgery, the latter with the tag line "give her the gift she'll open every day."
Footnote to the preceding
You know, about three weeks ago I wrote that because I was in a safe state, I was going to vote for an actually progressive candidate rather than John Kerry. I did say, however, that if I lived in a tossup state, I'd be tempted to vote for him.
Apparently victory isn't enough. It's not enough to overcome the opposition, the goal is to eliminate opposition.
They are sociopaths.
I'd actually have to flip the lever with my tongue, because I'd be holding my nose with one hand and covering my eyes with the other. I'd be doing it in the hope to gain a pause in the decline with no expectation of thereby ending or reversing it; to try to gain some time, knowing this is no win - but, hopefully, it can be a sort of time out.Okay, well, the truth is, I would do it. No maybe about it. This is from an excerpt from Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing Is Turning America into a One-Party State, by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, editors of PRWatch.
If, however, a single viewpoint or party is able to drown out or suppress the views of others, a different dynamic sets in. One-party dominated states and hierarchical, command-driven social systems are notorious for their tendency to make disastrous decisions, in the areas of both domestic and foreign policy. ...What gave that special emphasis was that I read it the same day I came across this from the Washington Times:
The U.S. military has a term for this type of information system: "incestuous amplification," which Jane's Defense Weekly defines as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for miscalculation." Psychologists have a similar term: "group polarization," which describes the tendency for like-minded people, talking only with one another, to end up believing a more extreme version of what they thought before they started to talk.
The Republican Party's philosophy and political organizing strategies have been remarkably successful at helping the party achieve and consolidate power in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Simultaneously, however, they have created conditions that make incestuous amplification and group polarization more likely in disparate areas of America's political arena.
This is the first of three reports based on the new book "Misunderestimated: The President Battles Terrorism, John Kerry and the Bush Haters" by Bill Sammon, senior White House correspondent for The Washington Times."Vanquish, tr.v., to win a decisive victory over; to bring about the downfall of. Syn: defeat, clobber, cream, crush, drub, make mincemeat of, rout, thrash, trounce, whip, wipe the floor with, bring down, conquer."
President Bush is resolved not to repeat what he thinks were the two fundamental blunders of his father's one-term presidency: abandoning Iraq and failing to vanquish the Democrats.
Apparently victory isn't enough. It's not enough to overcome the opposition, the goal is to eliminate opposition.
They are sociopaths.
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