April 30, 2003

That's what Howard Dean is doing, and he and his staff are blogging it very well.

I took particular notice of the blog entry that quotes Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post:

It seems this morning that bloggers have taken over the world.

Or at least the 2004 presidential campaign.

The pundits are blogging. The journalists are blogging. And now the candidates are blogging.

Who needs television? Let's just eliminate the middleman.

We couldn't agree more.

So now we have the following exciting scenario: Candidate gives speech. ABC News reports speech. ABC's Note blogs speech. Then candidate blogs his own speech, knocking down any negative interpretation by other bloggers. And we blog the whole incestuous process.

Seems like democracy in action to me. And, while I've never really actively campaigned for a politician, Dean is one that just might get me going. I like his politics and his person, particularly how he and his wife (who uses her own last name professionally) manage a two-demanding-careers marriage.

Give 'em hell, Howard!

My mother calls and tells me to put on CNN. (I'd rather not, but I humor her. She's like a spoiled 7 year old these days. Except that she's not; she's my mother and still wants to act like I'm the one who's seven. Bleh!)

On CNN, Rumsfeld is "Rallying the Troops," talking to them as though they were 7 years old, playing the good 'ol boy, playing to the good ol' boys among them. Only they're not all stunted minds. Some are asking intelligent questions about what their lives as soldiers are going to be like now in both the Big Picture and Little Picture. (After all, Rumsy IS Secretary of Defense; if anyone should have those answers, he should.) But, as Rumsy himself said he would do, he "responds" rather than "answers," aiming jokes about his lack of "diplomacy" to the least common denominator in the crowd and getting just the cheers he expects. He repeats the lines, the lies, that he's been throwing out to cheering crowds all along: the Iraqis love us, we are their liberators, their heroes etc. He doesn't really answer any questions, and no one even bothers to ask the ones (listed by myrln in a comment to the previous post) that he and Bush insisted were the ones that would be answered by this war.
-- Where is bin Laden?
-- Where is the anthrax mailer?
-- Where are the WMDs?
-- Where is Saddam?

No answers. Not even any Rumsy Responses.

Meanwhile, Salon.com confronts the lies.
This from here:
Before the war, the Bush administration said the weapons existed and we would find them. Now, it's saying maybe we won't find them after all -- and the rest of the world smells a rat. .....despite months of reassuring Americans that WMD would be found (including most recently earlier this month, when Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer called the weapons "what this war was about") the administration seems to be preparing the country for news of evidence that WMD once existed in Iraq -- with no actual WMD -- and calling it a victory.

And this from here:
Forget truth. That is the message from our government and its apologists in the media who insist that the Iraq invasion is a great success story even though it was based on a lie. .....That claim of urgency -- requiring us to short-circuit the U.N. weapons inspectors -- has proved to be a whopper of a falsehood. Late Sunday, the U.S. Army conceded that what had been reported as its only significant WMD find -- two mobile chemical labs and a dozen 55-gallon drums of chemicals -- "showed no positive hits at all" for chemical weapons.

But there's Rumsy on CNN playing the troops and playing the fool. And all the seven-year-old minds continue to cheer, including my mother.

April 29, 2003

Withhold information. Ignore and hide what doesn’t support your point of view. Manage facts. Demonize opponents. Over on Insiteview, Tom Shugart cites some frightening quotes from a truly disturbing review of a new book, 'The Language Police,' by educational authority, Diane Ravitch, appearing in today’s New York Times.

The book apparently documents the ridiculous levels of censorship and educational manipulation that occurs when both the 'compassionate conservatives' and the 'politically correct' exert their influence over not only what gets taught, but even what is allowed to come up for discussion in the classroom.

No wonder the Little Picture is so skewed. Look at what the even some mainstream media is finally admitting about the behavior and attitudes of our fearless American leaders as they model what it means to be educated, thoughtful, responsible, adult citizens and role models in the Really, Really Big Picture:

From ABC News: To build its case for war with Iraq, the Bush administration argued that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but some officials now privately acknowledge the White House had another reason for war — a global show of American power and democracy.

From the Independent: The case for invading Iraq to remove its weapons of mass destruction was based on selective use of intelligence, exaggeration, use of sources known to be discredited and outright fabrication, The Independent on Sunday can reveal…. A high-level UK source said last night that intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic were furious that briefings they gave political leaders were distorted in the rush to war with Iraq. "They ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat," the source said.

If we want our kids to become educated, thoughtful, responsible, adult citizens, we're going to have to start making changes at the very heart of who we are as role models -- Big Picture and Little Picture.

I’m so frustrated all the time I just want to choke somebody off.

That’s just one of the statements made by one American soldier back from Iraq in a counseling session with soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division. They confront their memories, fears and demons from the battlefield - and deal with them before they return home.

You can read reporter Mike Taibi’s piece and watch the video that was aired on MSNBC from here.

They’re called 'critical event stress debriefing sessions,' Taibi explains, and they’re now mandatory for U.S. soldiers heading home. The aim is to help those returning from combat know when and how to stop acting — and reacting — like soldiers. Last year, after Afghanistan, Americans were horrified when a number of returning soldiers brought the violence of the battlefield home with them. Four combat veterans at Fort Bragg alone killed their spouses, and two of them then turned their guns on themselves.

The debriefing sessions, which took place on Saddam Hussein’s palace grounds, are intended to head off the potentially explosive consequences of 'post-traumatic stress syndrome.'

Yes, the troops are coming home, but they’re not the same sons daughters and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives who left to fight Bush’s war for oil and power. They are damaged, and it’s not just the physical damage that they will have to find a way to live with for the rest of their lives. It’s not only the deaths of their comrades that many of them had to witness and then turn away from to keep the war going. It is the agonized screams and bloody bodies of Iraqi non-combatants that they to stand before, helpless in their knowledge that they are responsible for all of that needless pain and suffering.

When we send off our troops to kill and be killed, we are ensuring another generation riddled with men and women who are damaged and don’t know how to stop doing damage. Lets see how much money our government is willing to spend to support those troops now.

Paul Krugman's op ed piece in the NY Times emphasizes the lies that the Bush administration has been laying on the American pubic, speculating

One wonders whether most of the public will ever learn that the original case for war has turned out to be false. In fact, my guess is that most Americans believe that we have found W.M.D.'s. Each potential find gets blaring coverage on TV; how many people catch the later announcement — if it is ever announced — that it was a false alarm? It's a pattern of misinformation that recapitulates the way the war was sold in the first place. Each administration charge against Iraq received prominent coverage; the subsequent debunking did not.

Krugman also reminds us of various specific times that this administration opted out of supporting health efforts in other parts of the world that could have saved countless lives, claiming it was too expensive.

Like most people, I've had ups and downs in my life, but I've always been able to feel that on a grander scale there was always hope -- that I lived in a country in which the good guys would always ultimately prevail. It's taken a long time for my childhood to end, and it's been ended by the deeds of the evil men who are making these deadly decisions in my name. Not only have they stolen the lives of innocent people on and off the battlefield; they've stolen my voice, my choice, my hope.

As Krugman says, ...a democracy's decisions, right or wrong, are supposed to take place with the informed consent of its citizens. That didn't happen this time. And we are a democracy — aren't we?

April 28, 2003

At this weekend's White House Correspondents Dinner, the following
exchange apparently occurred between Al Franken and Paul Wolfowitz:

Franken: “Clinton’s military did pretty well in Iraq, huh?”
Wolfowitz: “Fuck you.”

It actually used to be said by insiders that a President fights a war using the military his predecessor created. So, after all the yelling the GOP did about Clinton ruining the nation's military, that very GOP just conquered Iraq using Clinton's army. More evidence of the lack of continuity in how Americans view their own history.

April 27, 2003

Sunday Morning
by Wallace Stevens

Complacencies of the penoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe
As a calm darkens among water-lights.

Sunday mornings are the only times I sit down and have lox and bagels and thick slices of Vidalia onion and read the newspaper. Today, Stevens' poem pops into my mind. (I know the beginning by heart because I 'performed' it as my final project for a graduate course in 'Oral Interpretation of Poetry.' Funny that after 43 years I still remember those lines.)

My local newspaper is filled with headlines that point toward new catastrophes:

-- Munitions explosion kills Iraqis: Blast at U.S. military encampment infuriates Baghdad citizens.
-- Shiites prepare to impose Islamic law on Iraq: Many among oppressed majority stand ready to force rest of nation ot bow to ayatollahs.
-- Rumsfeld hads to Persian Gulf with a message: He says U.S. is committed to working toward democracy in the region.
-- Iraq's neighbors face U.. clout: new dominance puts America's traditional alllies in uneasy roles
-- Corruption needs our apathy to keep thriving: In our public lives, the line between notable and notorious seems to have vanished. Those who debase our society end of hosting a TV dating show or a radio talk show.
My mother calls to tell me that she's watching a TV program on the life of the Pope.

After breakfast and blogging, I will go back to the supermarket to return a bottle of Clorox cleaner that my mother insisted was the one she wanted as we made our slow way up and down Hannaford's aisles yesterday. Today she insists it's not the one. She's gotten very spacey lately. Sleeps on and off all day long. Obsesses on her few shares of stock in the Polish Community Center back 'home.' She's wearing me down, wearing me out.

But activist/pacifist Grace Paley has been named Vermont State Poet, and that's good news.

Here
by Gracy Paley

Here I am in the garden laughing
an old woman with heavy breasts
and a nicely mapped face

how did this happen
well that's who I wanted to be

at last a woman
in the old style sitting
stout thighs apart under
a big skirt grandchild sliding
on off my lap a pleasant
summer perspiration

that's my old man across the yard
he's talking to the meter reader
he's telling him the world's sad story
how electricity is oil or uranium
and so forth I tell my grandson
run over to your grandpa ask him
to sit beside me for a minute I
am suddenly exhausted by my desire
to kiss his sweet explaining lips.

---------------
But I am still stuck in Sunday Morning:

We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.

April 25, 2003

The weblog community is very much like a neighborhood. We know who are neighbors are, know which ones we like and like to visit. We don’t know everything about all of them but we know enough to be glad that some of them live so close by, and we would hate to see them move out of our reach.

So, I’m personally glad that the campaign to Save the Bird has worked. It looks as though Jonathan Delacour raised enough money to keep the Bird Burning. Getting together to help out neighbors who need our help can work as well online as it can in the real world. It all depends on the kind of people those neighbors are.

Meanwhile, I got a really nice boost from some non-blogger netsurfer whom I don’t know at all. Back around Thanksgiving he emailed me to say how much he liked reading my weblog, and recently (as I was bemoaning my lack of fame) emailed me again. There’s something very touching about a stranger going out of his way to send you a “thumbs-up.” Those of us who blog do so in hopes of being read, of having what we write mean something to someone other than ourselves. If we didn’t, we’d just type our thoughts into a Word document and file it away.

I don’t know what percent of Net users are bloggers, but a recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project cited by CNN states that 42 percent of Americans do not use the Internet. The study goes on to report that 56 percent of nonusers say they will probably never go online. Sometimes we bloggers forget that most of the rest of the world does not care about what we do here. But that’s how it tends to go with neighborhoods anyway.

On the eve of their U.S. tour, the Dixie Chicks -- who raised a ruckus last month with lead singer Natalie Maines' comments about President Bush and the war in Iraq -- have blasted back with both barrels, CNN reports.

I missed their interview with Diane Sawyer last night because I got a free last-minute $176 ticket to the Eton John-Billy Joel “Face to Face” concert. Couldn’t miss that and didn’t have time to set my VCR.

When you’re as comely as the Dixie Chicks are, it doesn’t take much guts to bare your body on the cover of Entertainment Weekly (as they are doing, with a variety of epithets stamped over unstrategic body parts.)

Given the conservative politics of the many of the country music fans who are their bread and butter, however, I give them credit for having the courage to publicly affirm their opposition to the war. (Bruce Springsteen said it right on his site.) Actually, doing so might even work to their career advantage, bringing what they offer the music world more into the awareness of those who don’t share the politics of their traditional fans. And exposing their only slightly compromised positions on a magazine cover can’t hurt either.

I was a big fan of country music in high school -- hung around with a bunch of friends who had a country-western band -- learned to play three cords on a guitar and loved Kitty Wells ("It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels"). Obviously, my taste in music had broadened considerably, but I still can't get into Rap. Maybe it's my age, but lyrical introspective story-teller/poets/musicians like Billy Joel remain my preference. As a side note, it was not surprising for me to note that 99% of the audience at the "Face to Face" concert was white, middle-aged, and very self-controlled.

I wasn’t planning to go, but one of my friends called at 5:30 and said that her son-in-law gave her his two tickets to the Elton John – Billy Joel concert at the Pepsi Arena in Albany, and she’d pick me up in an hour.

I figured wotthehell, right? Threw on a clean pair of jeans, put on some make-up and earrings, and left my mother and the dinner dishes behind.

Here’s the stub from my ticket. Note the price at the upper left, just before the word "Suite." Gulp.

Our seats were in the Pepsi box. Free Pepsi products to drink and a private bathroom and space to get up and boogie. Now, that’s the way to see a rock concert, especially if the ticket is paid for by someone else.

What about the concert? Elton John has fat stubby hands, a cute little-boy smile, and really does look like a Munchkin. Billy Joel’s a better pianist, has long fingers, and is also a better showman. They both are thick around the middle and have obvious jowls.

Oh, the concert. Just what you’d imagine it to be – amazing music from amazing musicians, including both back-up bands. It was worth going just to see Elton John perform in person; I saw Billy Joel about a decade ago. Oldies but goodies. My kinda guys.

April 24, 2003

I should be "working," but I couldn't resist posting this from here (with a few typos corrected):

George W. Bush Resume

Past work experience:
--Ran for congress and lost.
--Produced a Hollywood slasher B movie.
--Bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas, company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.
--Bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in a sweetheart deal that took land using tax-payer money. Biggest move: Traded Sammy Sosa to the Chicago White Sox.
--With father's help (and his name) was elected Governor of Texas.

Accomplishments:
--Changed pollution laws for power and oil companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the Union. Replaced Los Angeles with Houston as the most smog ridden city in America. Cut taxes and bankrupted the Texas government to the tune of billions in borrowed money. Set record for most executions by any Governor in American history.
--Became president after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes, with the help of my fathers appointments to the Supreme Court.

Accomplishments as president:
--Attacked and took over two countries.
--Spent the surplus and bankrupted the treasury.
--Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.
--Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period.
--Set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
--First president in decades to execute a federal prisoner.
--First president in US history to enter office with a criminal record.
--First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.
--After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, presided over the worst security failure in US history.
--Set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips than any other president in US history.
--In my first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their job.
--Cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any president in US history.
--Set the all-time record for most foreclosures in a 12 month period.
--Appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history.
--Set the record for the least amount of press conferences than any president since the advent of television.
--Signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any president in US history.
--Presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed.
--Presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history and refused to use the national reserves as past presidents have.
--Cut healthcare benefits for war veterans.
--Set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind. (http://www.hyperreal.org/~dana/marches/)
--Dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history.
--My presidency is the most secretive and un-accountable of any in US history.
--Members of my cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (the 'poorest' multi-millionaire, Condoleeza Rice has an Exxon oil tanker named after her).
--First president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously go bankrupt.
--Presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in any country in the history of the world.
--First president in US history to order a US attack and military occupation of a sovereign nation.
--Created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States.
--Set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any president in US history.
--First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the human rights commission.
--First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the elections monitoring board.
--Removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history.
--Rendered the entire United Nations irrelevant.
--Withdrew from the World Court of Law.
--Refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoners of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions.
--First president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US elections).
--All-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations.
--My biggest life-time campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).
--Spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history.
--First president in US history to unilaterally attack a sovereign nation against the will of the United Nations and the world community.
--First president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied saying the enemy had the code to Air Force 1)
--First US president to establish a secret shadow government.
--Took the biggest world sympathy for the US after 911, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).
--With a policy of 'dis-engagement' created the most hostile Israeli-Palestine relations in at least 30 years.
--First US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view my presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability.
--First US president in history to have the people of South Korea more threatened by the US than their immediate neighbor, North Korea.
--Changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts.
--Set all-time record for number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling huge investments in corporations bidding for government contracts.
--Failed to fulfill my pledge to get Osama Bin Laden 'dead or alive'.
--Failed to capture the anthrax killer who tried to murder the leaders of our country at the United States Capital building. After 18 months I have no leads and zero suspects.
--In the 18 months following the 911 attacks I have successfully prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States.
--Removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.
--In a little over two years created the most divided country in decades, possibly the most divided the US has ever been since the civil war.
--Entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.

Records and References:
--At least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available).
--AWOL from National Guard and Deserted the military during a time of war.
--Refuse to take drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.
--All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.
--All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.
--All minutes of meetings for any public corporation I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.
--Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public review.

For personal references please speak to my daddy or uncle James Baker (They can be reached at their offices of the Carlyle Group for war-profiteering.)

I strongly suggest saving this so that you can distribute it broadly come election time.

April 23, 2003

That is, help preserve Burningbird's weblog. While I temporarily join the workforce to give me a few bucks above my pension, Shelley Powers is struggling to find money enough to pay to keep her web presence fired up. Jonathan Delacour launches a campaign to keep the bird burning. There are lots of us who agree is with Jonathan:

I hate the thought of losing Shelley’s unique, powerful, generous presence and I trust that enough people agree with me to ensure that the flame is not extinguished but rather will continue to burn even more brightly than before.

To that end, he says, I’ve set up a PayPal donation account called Keep the Bird Burning and I’m now officially soliciting donations. Clicking on the button below will take you to a PayPal Payment Details page displaying the details of the donation you are (hopefully) about to make. If you don’t have a PayPal account, you can quickly and easily set one up.

I have been a fan of Shelley's since I started blogging. She's sharp and incisive in all of the meanings of those words. She's also honest and open and writes with a strong, informed voice. She reflects the best of what bloggers are.

A while ago I had the notion that I should take a free-lance writing job offered me by a former colleague. In this economy, we call all use a few extra bucks. Well, the notion is now a reality, and tomorrow I start using parts of my brain I haven't used for the past two years. If I don't show up here too often for a while, it's just that all of my best words are going to earn me fortune instead of fame. Oh wait. What fame?

The pressure coming from the government and big business to enforce conformity of thought concerning the war and politics goes against everything that this country is about - namely freedom. Right now, we are supposedly fighting to create freedom in Iraq, at the same time that some are trying to intimidate and punish people for using that same freedom here at home.

The Boss says it straight and clear and true.

Only trouble is, gee wiz, I'm dreamin' my life away. The Everly Brothers song is really a love song, so the rest of the lyrics don’t apply to me these days, but that one particular line does. My sleeping dream time seems to begin at just about the time when everyone else is starting to wake up, and I always seem to be in the middle of the most interesting, complex dreams when I should be hauling myself up to face the day. But I don’t want to wake up because my dreams tend to have lot more going on in them than my real life. Only my dreams also ultimately bog down in complex plots that refuse to resolve themselves. Sort of like the nightmarish world-wide situations that I finally wake up into.

I’ve heard it said that “Dreams are private myths. Myths are public dreams.” I reflect on my dreams and usually see mythic patterns.

I look at the nightmarish public actions of George Bush Jr. and see him playing out the myth of Pandora’s Box.

One day she [Pandora] lifted the lid­and out flew plagues innumerable, sorrow and mischief for mankind. In terror Pandora clapped the lid down, but too late. One good thing, however, was there ­ Hope. It was the only good the casket had held among the many evils, and it remains to this day mankind's sole comfort in misfortune.

Now, using the following interpretation, doesn’t it seem that Bush has dreamed himself into Pandora’s mythic skin and has done the deed that is sending us into another Bronze Age?

Before Pandora's opened the box, Civilization had passed through two ages: the Golden Age (a time of peace) when laws, judges and the plow were not needed; and the Silver Age (a time of plenty) when Zeus made winter and mortals began to plow the earth and plant their food. After Pandora's box was opened, the Bronze Age (a time of crime) began. Mortals made weapons and property was divided up between people. Some got more, some got less, and inequality and injustice were widespread. During the Bronze Age, crime became so terrible that Zeus decided to walk the Earth to see what motivated humans to commit crimes against other humans. [emphasis mine]

In Maureen Dowd’s NY Times piece on "Chest Banging" is an echo of both the evils that Bush has unleashed upon Amnerica as well as of his Bronze Age criminal mentality, including this:

The Bushies pretend that we don't want an all-access pass to Iraqi bases (we do); that we are not interested in influencing the disposition of Iraqi oil (we are); that we will stay out of Iraqi politics, even if they go fundamentalist (we won't); and that we will leave Iraq soon (we can't).

Even as they stifle their Pax Americana impulses in Iraq, the imperialists swagger with a Pox Americana at home. Karl Rove has broken creative new ground in appalling political opportunism by pushing back the Republican National Convention in New York City to September 2004, the latest date for a convention in the party's history and only days away from you-know-when….

The Bushies were unpleasantly surprised by the sudden muscularity of the Shiite clerics in southern Iraq. According to The Times's Douglas Jehl, Iranian-trained operatives have crossed into southern Iraq to help the Shiites who are demanding a state like Iran's....

Administration officials have whispered other fears to reporters — that some of the weapons of mass destruction may have been removed to sell on the terrorism black market, accelerating the proliferation they had hoped to prevent. Or that Saddam loyalists are sneaking back into the government, waiting for the Americans, with their short attention spans, to pull out.

Like his mythic model, Bush is not going to be able to undo what he’s done.

On top of that, as his administration sets the standards for deception and manipulation, their minions in the press are having a great time wallowing in the same unmythic shit.

An article at Salon.com actively confronts the purposeful misinformation spread in both print and broadcast about statements made Salon.com editor Gary Kamiya in an article previously available only to the Salon subscriber list. In opening his own version Pandora’s Box, Bush has given permission for the Self-righteous Right to lie their way across the dulled minds of America. Good for Salon for inviting the culprits to have an online debate, where they

hereby invite O'Reilly to debate Kamiya, one-on-one, via e-mail. Let the unedited exchange become part of the public record on the Net. Let O'Reilly leave the home-turf advantage of his studios. Let's see how he fares when he can't simply yank the mike from a guest who disagrees with him too articulately.

Read Kamiya’s original article here and then take a look at the ridiculously misleading Washington Times and Newsmax pieces that followed.

Meanwhile, tv news continue with reports of American G.I.s and reporters stealing money and art works from the Iraqis. Oh yeah. Lie, kill, plunder. Follow the leader.

April 22, 2003

On the first Earth Day 33 years ago, when I lived in a rural area where we got our water from wells and most of our neighbors were farmers, one of my (non-farmer) neighbors and I packed up our total of five kids and went out at 5:30 a.m. to post signs at all the local supermarkets about the dangers of phosphates to our water quality. A small act, granted, but it got me an interview on a local radio station about that issue and it was something I could actually get done and feel good about.

This from Earth Day 2003 – A Time for Mourning, Not Craft Fairs by Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D via Natalie Davis on Blog Sisters.

On Earth Day this year, while speeches, conversations and trinket sales take place:

603 people worldwide will die from exposure to pesticides and countless more will suffer serious health threats from chronic exposure.

5,400 to 11,000 children will die from diarrhea from polluted drinking water.

27,000 children will die from curable infectious diseases.

164 babies will be born that are effected by mercury poisoning because their mothers ate contaminated fish, while government agencies recommend that pregnant women eat several servings of fish each week.

Over 103,000 animals will be killed for fur coats.

Nearly 2 million gallons of engine oil will be poured down the drain and will enter our nation’s waterways.

Over 41 million pounds of trash will be dumped at sea worldwide. About 77 percent of all ship waste comes from cruise ships.

Over 3 million pounds of hydrocarbons will be released into the atmosphere just from jet skis, lawn mowers, boat engines, and other 2-cycle motors.

At least 1,200 gallons of oil and fuel will leak from aging and malfunctioning pipelines in the US, polluting groundwater, lakes, rivers, oceans and soil.

313 million gallons of fuel - enough to drain 26 tractor-trailer trucks every minute – will be used in the US

18 million tons of raw materials will be taken from US soil.

Miscarriages will continue to take place among women of the Shoalwater Bay Tribe in Washington State, possibly from pesticide contamination in cranberry bogs. Earth Day has become a time when the right wing corporate, industrial, and political leaders probably rejoice in the passivity of the population. Of course, there are exceptions and a number of groups throughout the nation will be mindful of the significance of the day

Also on Blog Sisters, Alaskan resident Klondike Kate states the following as she points out how the Bush administration is moving toward further environmental destruction:

...As thirsty America sucks down 20 million barrels a day, even if we could use all that was drilled in the Arctic Refuge, it would be less than six months' worth, although oil industry puts that estimate much longer, of course, used in combination with imports--to several years' worth. But by that time, the flora and fauna would have suffered irreversible, irreparable damage. And there is more oil than that off the Florida coast. (Oh wait. That's where the "other" Bush lives. Never mind. He probably wouldn't want to look out his window at oil derricks.)

It's not just that the caribou herds will suffer and may be deccimated entirely, and that several Native tribes have lived on those herds for thousands of years, no; there is a world teeming with life in the aptly named Wildlife Refuge (see the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for descriptions and pictures) of: rare plants, slow-growing tundra, 160 species of birds, Arctic wolves, Arctic fox, grizzlies and polar bears, even a survivor from the last Ice Age, though endangered now--the shaggy musk ox, distant cousin to the wooley mammoth, Wooley Booley.

So....if you're the President and you want all those kickbacks promised to you by the oil industry, and everybody keeps telling you no....how do you get to those dollar bills?

You start a war, silly.

And you continue destroying people, cultures, and the land that sustains them.

April 21, 2003

I'm so tired of reading and writing about war. But I know this isn't the time to stopl The struggle of the people of Iraq to rid themselves of oppressive and manipulative leadership isn't over. The Campaign to Reclaim America is just beginning.

Jim Culleny's No Utopia site leads with this Hungarian Proverb: The believer is happy; the doubter is wise. I guess the path you take depends on what you believe about what it means to be human.

Some salient points from recent posts on No Utopia (which include links to all the citations):

--The United States consumes a quarter of the world’s total oil production, but controls a mere 3 percent of known reserves. With an oil habit like this you don’t have to be Steven Hawkings to add the whole thing up. Why do you think we need such a strong military?

--Cartoonist and commentator Ted Rall eyeballs the trumped-up nature of Bush's war and, despite pop news reports to the contrary, figures we lost it. He says (referring to the staged photo-op of Saddam Hussein's toppling statue, which was brought down by the U.S. marines and imported muscle), "It was a fitting end for a war waged under false pretexts by a fictional coalition led by an ersatz president. Bush never spent much time thinking about liberation, and even his exploitation is being done with as little concern as possible for the dignity of our new colonial subjects."

--From a NY Times article: "Awarding the first major contract for reconstruction in Iraq to a politically connected American company under restricted bidding procedures sends a deplorable message to a skeptical world."

--Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, another one of those Tax-Cut-And-Spend Republicans.... helped revive the practice of letting corporate interests provide free vacation trips billed as charity events. Mr. DeLay's aim was to increase members' attendance at a recent Key Largo getaway for lawmakers and lobbyists that raised money for his foundation for children."

Anyone who thinks corporations fund these trips to influence congressional votes must be a left-wing conspiracy theorist, an anti-patriot, or have a high degree of common sense.

--North Korea, learning it's lesson from the invasion of Iraq, figures its best bet is to turn out enough nuclear material for several nuclear weapons.

And, affirming what Betsy Devine has been saying all along about Howard Dean being the best option for a Democratic challenger to Bush:

--In a statement in Common Dreams News Center Democratic presidential candidate, Howard Dean, gives his views of the Bush administration. He says the people of this country must understand this Administration's concept of the role of America in the world. "This concept," Dean points out, "involves imposing our will on sovereign nations. This concept involves dismantling the multilateral institutions that we have spent decades building. And this concept involves distorting the rule of law to suit their narrow purposes. When did we become a nation of fear and anxiety when we were once known the world around as a land of hope and liberty."

It's sounding more and more like Dean is the one to lead us Patriots for Peace in the Campaign to Reclaim America.

April 20, 2003

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Over at Shelley’s there was one of the best posts and affiliated comments I’ve come across on the soul of weblogging and telling – or not telling – the truth. At the end of her post, Shelley says: Sometimes to tell the truth, you have to lie a little…. Someday when I write a book, a real book, I'm going to start it off with "Assume everything you read from this point on, is a lie... "

Let me assure you that everything you read on this weblog is NOT a lie.

I don’t really celebrate Christian traditions; rather I celebrate the original intentions of the festivals that Christianity co-opted for is own purposes. In supporting the lore of the Easter Bunny, local columnist Diane Cameron writes this reminder:

This accusation that the Easter Bunny takes something away from Easter ignores the fact that the creators of Easter did a teensy bit of taking from previous holidays. The celebration of spring, of light returning from darkness, is ancient. It was part of Celtic and Mesopotamian cultures. The bunny -- well, then he was a rabbit -- was part of Phoenician festivals as early as 1100 B.C. Because rabbits are energetic and prolific, they were considered expressive of the power of life to wake from death in the spring.

While our Christian Easter celebrates Christ rising from the dead, the holiday is named after the dawn goddess Eastre and her celebration of the rebirth of the sun this time of year.

So, in celebration of the Vernal Equinox (and to try to get in a little relaxation/meditation), on Saturday night I sat in with a local drumming circle. (Oddly enough the day before, I caught a bit on CNN about drumming being used in therapy for addicts, but I couldn’t find a link to any story.)

The circle with which I drummed was based in a Native American tradition and overlaid with New Age mysticism. Not a problem for me; I look at it all as metaphor, poetry, sacred theater. After 20 minutes or so of drumming, I started hearing a strange hum in the background, sort of like the sound of a Jew’s Harp – except the only instruments in the place were drums and rattles. I figured it was just me – some strange aberration of my aging hearing mechanisms. But it turns out everyone else heard it too. The only thing I could figure that has any basis in the rational world is that the combined vibrations of all of our drums were somehow producing this separate non-percussive sound. Of course, others figured that it was the spirit world singing along with us. Oh well.

But that’s not the kicker. The kicker was my visit from the Eostre Skunk.

Let me digress a little.

Last week, as I was taking one of my walks around the new park that adjoins a cow pasture, I caught a strong whiff of cow manure – which started my mind on this strange olfactory journey, beginning with the sense that I don’t like the smell of cow manure but, unlike most other people, I don’t mind the smell of skunk.

That led me to remember when I was a toddler in the early 40s and my mom wore a skunk coat. (It was the rage then, I guess.) I remember burying my face into the fur, letting it stroke my face, smelling the vague lingering scent of skunk, especially when it got wet. With my face buried in my mother's skunk coat, I was safe.

My last apartment has a small storage space that adjoined my patio and living room. During the last spring I was there – after finally going in to find out what the scraping noises were that I had been hearing for weeks – I discovered a young skunk sleeping in the middle of the bed of insulation that he/she had created by pulling strands out from between the walls. The apartment management found someone to come and get the little critter out. I have to admit that, if I hadn’t already had a cat, I was considering getting the cute little thing de-odored and keeping him/her as a pet.

Back to the mystical New Age drumming circle.

After the drumming, we were asked to choose a card from a deck of Animal Medicine Cards to see what guidance our animal spirits had to offer.

As the person next to me began to spread out the deck so that I could pick a card, I asked her to please shuffle them first. As she began to shuffle them, two cards dropped out of the deck and fell on the floor in front of me. The one on top, face up, was a skunk. I didn't pick the skunk; the skunk picked me.

I pay close attention to those kinds of synchronicities. (While I don’t believe in any God-type Great Spirit, I am fascinated by the unified field theory, which might make a sense of synchronicities beyond the Jungian understanding of them. Who knows.)

And what can I learn from my new totem animal, the Eostre Skunk? Among other things:

The skunk is one of the most widely recognized mammals, but it is also one of the most misunderstood. It is a very powerful totem with mystical and magical associations. Just look at how people respond to it. They show great respect for it and what it can do. This is part of what skunk teaches. It teaches how to give respect, expect respect, and demand respect. It helps you to recognize your own qualities and to assert them

Skunks are fearless, but they are also very peaceful. They move slowly and calmly, and they only spray as a last resort. Because they are peaceable by nature, they always give warnings before spraying.

Heh. Read the rest here.

This morning, as I made the sacrifice and took my mother to Mass in a nearby Polish church, while she prayed for the forgiveness of my sins, I contemplated the meaningful messages of the Eostre Skunk. And I let the scent of incense carry me full circle back to my childhood and the safety of my mother's skunk coat.

April 17, 2003

I’m going to explain how I meditate so that I can respond to a question posed in a comment on this post. But first…

I tend to avoid following rules exactly. Rather I go about adjusting them to fit what I need/want.

When I buy a new piece of clothing, my next move is to take it in, take it out, hem it up, put in darts – whatever it takes to make it fit the way I want it to fit. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.

When I find a sweater pattern I like, I almost always don’t like the yarn or the size needle I’m supposed to use, so I go about applying the little algebra I remember to alter the gauge so that I can use the yarn I want. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.

When I cook, I never go by the recipe exactly. I like to improvise. And use lots of garlic. And invent desserts using Kefir and jello. It usually all works out just fine.

I hung a beautiful landscape photo -- that my daughter took and gave me as a gift – upside down; I liked the abstract image it made hung that way.

I will read directions and instructions that come with whatever I buy and then go about assembling or installing it in a less direct way -- often with strange results that I just decide to live with.

I can’t learn using an instructional manual. I like to do it by trial and error. That includes learning to use computer software (which is why my technical expertise is severely limited).

I think it has something to do with my liking to improvise/create processes; I think that creating my own process is more important to me than the product.

OK. Now, on to meditation.

Back in the 70s, I tried Transcendental Meditation. I took the training, got my mantra, did my 20 minutes a day for a while, and that was it. I get bored too easily and I don’t have the patience to sit still long enough for all of the extraneous details playing tag with the synapses in my brain to get tired and take a nap. But, most of all, being irreverently anti-established-religious-paths, I couldn't take the applied reverence.

I tried breathing meditation and staring at a candle. Couldn't sit still long enough to have it work.

I tried Yoga, Tai Chi, and other moving meditations. Since I was always an avid social dancer, I figured that maybe I needed to move. Nope. It all just reaffirmed the fact that I have no self-discipline.

Then – for reasons other than the fact that I have no self-discipline -- I got into therapy with a healer who uses guided imagery to lead you out of that tiresome “left-brain” thinking cycle and into more “right-brained” relaxation; he uses active imagination, vision questing, and a sort of self-hypnosis kind of thing. The process he used with me made me realize that I need something or someone to audibly lead me out of myself, away from my constantly firing gray matter neurons and into a calmer, peaceful, and healing place. I need to close my eyes to shut out the external world and let my ears focus on the siren song.

Guided imagery meditation tapes work best for me. At least they used to, when I lived alone and had all kinds of private, quiet time. (And when I didn’t spend all my free time thinking/writing/blogging.)

For a while years ago I was part of a meditative drumming circle, and that worked too – closing my eyes and losing myself in the complexity of rhythms of which I was a part, feeling the timpanic vibrations in my bones. I’m going to try that again on Saturday night – a drumming circle. I have a really pretty ceramic Dumbek – blue and white, emblazoned with a soaring bird. It’s been hanging on my wall now for three years. Time to dust it off and find out if it can still take me away.

When a blogger posts outright lies, it stirs a little wave of annoyance and criticism in blogdom -- as it should.

When our American president lies outright, it should stir up a whole lot more.

...It is no exaggeration to say that lying has become Bush's signature as president./.... The pattern is now well established. Soothing rhetoric -- about compassionate conservatism, about how much money the "average" American worker will get through the White House tax program, about prescription-drug benefits -- is simply at odds with what Bush's policies actually do. Last month Bush promised to enhance Medicaid; his actual policy would effectively end it as a federal entitlement program.

So, why isn't there revolution stirring among the American people? Or at least impeachment?

More distressing even than the president's lies, though, is the public's apparent passivity. Bush just seems to get away with it. The post-September 11 effect and the Iraq war distract attention, but there's more to it. Are we finally paying the price for three decades of steadily eroding democracy? Is Bush benefiting from the echo chamber of a right-wing press that repeats the White House line until it starts sounding like the truth? Or does the complicity of the press help to lull the public and reinforce the president's lies?

Go here to read documentation of only some of the little man's lies.

Hypocrisy has been defined as the tribute that vice pays to virtue. George W. Bush lied about all these policies because the programs he pretends to favor are far more popular than the ones he puts into effect. But unless the voters and the press start paying attention, all the president's lies will have little political consequence -- except to certify that we have become something less than a democracy.

While conversations go on about allegory, good writing, truth, lies, and authenticity, I keep going back to poetry. It's all there.

'Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front' - from The Country of Marriage (1973) by Wendell Berry

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion---put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark a false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

*******
'You're the Top,' by Tony Hoagland from Sweet Ruin (University of Wisconsin Press).

You're the Top

Of all the people that I've ever known
I think my grandmother Bernice
would be best qualified to be beside me now

driving north of Boston in a rented car
while Cole Porter warbles on the radio;
Only she would be trivial and un-

politically correct enough to totally enjoy
the rhyming of Mahatma Ghandi
with Napoleon brandy;

and she would understand, from 1948,
the miracle that once was cellophane,
which Porter rhymes with night in Spain.

She loved that image of the high gay life
where people dressed by servants
turned every night into the Ritz:

dancing through a shower of just
uncorked champagne
into the shelter of a dry martini.

When she was 70 and I was young
I hated how a life of privilege
had kept her ignorance intact

about the world beneath her pretty feet,
how she believed that people with good manners
naturally had yachts, knew how to waltz

and dribbled French into their sentences
like salad dressing. My liberal adolescent rage
was like a righteous fist back then

that wouldn't let me rest,
but I've come far enough from who I was
to see her as she saw herself:

a tipsy debutante in 1938,
kicking off a party with her shoes;
launching the lipstick-red high heel
from her elegant big toe

into the orbit of a chandelier
suspended in a lyric by Cole Porter,
bright and beautiful and useless.

April 16, 2003

There are some individuals who are extraordinary human beings -- talented artists, intelligent thinkers, articulate speakers, passionately responsible citizens. Tim Robbins is one of these. (Of course, I also have to note that he also has the smarts to team up with "older/wiser woman" Susan Sarandon.)

The following is excerpted from his April 15th address to National Press Club"

For all of the ugliness and tragedy of 9-11, there was a brief period afterward where I held a great hope, in the midst of the tears and shocked faces of New Yorkers, in the midst of the lethal air we breathed as we worked at Ground Zero, in the midst of my children's terror at being so close to this crime against humanity, in the midst of all this, I held on to a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption that something good could come out of it.

I imagined our leaders seizing upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk about Democrat versus Republican, white versus black, or any of the other ridiculous divisions that dominate our public discourse. I imagined our leaders going on television telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero, we can't, but there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers to tutor children, to teach them to read. Our work is needed at old-age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed; in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots to baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9/11, a new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us, we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, and more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a Phoenix out of the fire, we will be reborn.

And then came the speech: You are either with us or against us. And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior.

In the 19 months since 9-11, we have seen our democracy compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public has grown bitterly divided, and a world population that had profound sympathy and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state.....

And he finishes with:

We lay the continuance of our democracy on your desks, and count on your pens to be mightier. Millions are watching and waiting in mute frustration and hope - hoping for someone to defend the spirit and letter of our Constitution, and to defy the intimidation that is visited upon us daily in the name of national security and warped notions of patriotism.

Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy's defeat. These are challenging times. There is a wave of hate that seeks to divide us -- right and left, pro-war and anti-war. In the name of my 11-year-old nephew, and all the other unreported victims of this hostile and unproductive environment of fear, let us try to find our common ground as a nation. Let us celebrate this grand and glorious experiment that has survived for 227 years. To do so we must honor and fight vigilantly for the things that unite us -- like freedom, the First Amendment and, yes, baseball.

Hey, Ronnie Reagan got himself elected president, and he wasn't half as talented, smart, articulate, intelligent, or brave. I wonder if Robbins ever thought about running. Susan Sarandon as (unmarried) First Lady. Now there's Crone Power!

Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us," said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organized by Conference Board (news - web sites).
"And if they don't, they can go straight to hell."

The Democratic former president, who preceded George W. Bush at the White House, said that sooner or later the United States had to find a way to cooperate with the world at large.

"We can't run," Clinton pointed out. "If you got an interdependent world, and you cannot kill, jail or occupy all your adversaries, sooner or later you have to make a deal....

"Since September 11, it looks like we can't hold two guns at the same time," Clinton said. "If you fight terrorism, you can't make America a better place to be."

Clinton said that if he were at the White House right now he would scrap a 726-billion dollar tax cut proposal made by the president in January to stimulate the flagging economy.

Read the whole article.

Now, here’s a website (I wouldn’t call it a weblog) that skillfully dares you to contemplate what is true. Are they really a coalition effort of bloodthirsty hawks and ineffectual doves who think that Iraqi Information Officer al-Sahaf is the coolest? Who they are doesn’t really matter. The matter is cleverly stated in this sidebar quote:

In an age of spin, al-Sahaf offers feeling and authenticity. His message is consistent -- unshakeable, in fact, no matter the evidence -- but he commands daily attention by his on-the-spot, invective-rich variations on the theme. His lunatic counterfactual art is more appealing than the banal awfulness of the Reliable Sources. He is a Method actor in a production that will close in a couple of days. He stands superior to truth.
-- Jean-Pierre McGarrigle

Would this site work better as a weblog? I don’t think so. Its purpose isn’t conversation and/or the public recording of personal perceptions about life, the universe and everything; it’s a performance. And it works well as that.

Maybe some sites that market themselves as weblogs are really internet performance art. Maybe they should dare to admit that truth.

In the case of www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com, the medium is the message. A performance art about a performance art. Of course, the performance of al-Sahaf is on a different scale, a very dangerous scale because so many people believe his performance is real. Including himself.

April 15, 2003

I have a craving for oranges lately. Oh, you do too? Don’t you just love how they taste when you’re really hot and thirsty? That wonderful drippy sweetness. Oh, you like them tart rather than sweet? And you don’t like them dripping down your chin? Are we talking about the same fruit?

Satsumas, Navels, Mineolas, Temples, Valencias, Hamlins. They’re all oranges. But they all have different flavors, textures, colors, juiciness quotients. I prefer Mineolas. You like Temples. I don’t like Temples; they’re too hard to peel.

Most of my career as a writer was spent spinning what other people wanted to communicate into more clear and engaging prose. My biggest challenge always was to get those people to define what they really meant by terms that they used that I was expected to incorporate into whatever I spun. Lots of people use the word “diversity,” and there are probably as many interpretations of that word are there are bureaucrats who use it. The same is true (in my area of expertise: education) of words like “integrated curriculum,” “experiential learning,” “team-teaching,” and “art.” And the same defining confusion occurs in almost every field. Including weblogging.

I have found that different people define “weblog” differently. So, when a discussion starts about what a good weblog is, what good weblog writing is, or even how truthful weblog writing should be, the conversation goes around in circles, because there are so many and varied beliefs about what a weblog is for. That kind of conversation sometimes is an interesting intellectual exercise, but it sure doesn’t lead anywhere in particular.

In my various previous writing jobs, I often had to write “white papers” – position/policy papers that then became the focal point for conferences and group discussions. Unless there was some definition of crucial terms up-front, no two people wound up really talking about the same thing. It was very frustrating for me, being also the writer who was then supposed to write a summary report describing the conclusions – or at least the general directions – of the various discussions. Kinda hard to do when no two people were really talking about the same thing because they each defined crucial terms differently.

I thought I had left all that bureaucratic mumbo jumbo tail-chasing behind when I retired from my paid work. But here it is, in blogland too. Maybe it’s just part of the confusing and complex human condition. But I don’t think it has to be. It’s a simple matter of those involved in the discussion first agreeing on the definition of the core terms around which the discussion is set up to evolve. Unless, of course, those invovled really like running around in cicles. I guess, at my age, I feel that I don't have that kind of time to waste.

No, that's not an affirmation. That's an accusation. America is continually proving just what a bully we are.

..... thousands of Iraqis protested that they did not need American help now Saddam Hussein had gone. "No to America, No to Saddam," chanted Iraqis from the Shia Muslim majority long oppressed by Saddam, who is from the rival Sunni sect. Arabic television networks said up to 20,000 people marched.

At talks that began after a delay, skepticism ran deep among groups united by little more than joy at Saddam's fall and unease at getting too close to Washington.

But are our leaders listening? Of course not.

Speaking of listening to people that should (or shouldn't) be listened to, myrln reminds us:

If Paula Zahn is a journalist (a wholly unsubstantiated assumption, I know) rather than an informal Israeli cheerleader, then why doesn't she insist that an Israeli minister (preferably Sharon himself) be booked on the show to answer the same questions she put to the Syrian minister today? Her bias is always evident, and it diminishes CNN's already questionable credibility.

Perhaps she could also ask if it's true Israel is looking for an oil pipeline from Iraq which must route through Syria, and how much that influenced the US invasion of Iraq and the current accusations against Syria. Oh, wait, you can't do that because the invasion wasn't about oil. Dubya said so, and you guys believed him.

Oh yes, bully, bully for us:

At least 10 people were shot dead and scores wounded in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul, a hospital doctor said, with witnesses claiming US troops had opened fire on a crowd after it turned against an American-installed local governor.

By the time a post has more than 10 Comments, the only people reading them are the ones who are adding theirs to the others. Yet, I find that some of my writing that states my positions most clearly are the ones I put in my Comments. I think it has to do with the fact that Comments become real conversations. Not real-time conversations, but thoughtful exchanges nonetheless. So, I'm repeating here some of what I wrote as Comments here:

Using [Jessica] Lynch as some kind of catalyst for a discussion of violence toward women on the home front was a bit of a stretch. I see her more as a victim of our military system, which promises a better life for those who serve. Except first, they have to survive the service itself, and that's the part that's not empahsized enough.

The older I get, the more I realize that everything in life is a trade-off. You have to be careful to make sure that you understand what you're trading off for what you think you're going to get.

....we make our choices and we take our chances when it comes to women joining the military. (I wonder, though, how many women in the military really thought through the choice they were making.) There's a lot of cultural conditioning that gets in the way of letting us do our jobs no matter what our jobs are. We're often damned if we do and damned if we don't. And the men who work with us (on and off the battlefield) often make it harder on themselves as well as us because they don't know how to get past that cultural conditioning. (And, as I've said before -- much to the annoyance of both males and females I know -- they don't know how to control their testosterone surges.)

So, my choice is just about always to go where I'm not expected to play by the rules that have been set up by men primarily. I just don't expect them to really understand how I think, make decisions, get things done. If, by chance, they do, terrific. That means we'll work well together because I'll go out of my way to try to meet them half-way. Now, none of that would hold true in the military. It's a man's game all the way.

I operate from the perspective that males and females are equal but different. We are of equal value as humans and have the same potential to succeed as far as brain-power is concerned. We might work out problems using different thought and interpersonal processes, but our solutions to those problems will be just as exquisitely forumulated as those of men. Different, maybe, but just as valid, just as deliberate, just as well-constructed.

In general, we don't have the level of brute physical strength that men have, and if we choose to give birth, we have the constraints of our biology. But those are -- or at least they should be -- minor obstacles to success in just about any area of intelligent human activity. Except, I think, the military. It's really beyond me why any female would honestly want to be a part of all that phoney baloney machismo. It's not that I don't think we need a military, but it has to evolve into a horse of different color before I would consider it worth riding on into the sunset.

April 14, 2003

It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood. I want to go out and take a walk. But I check my email first and start checking out the sites that my anti-war email pals are telling me about. I should get out and get some fresh air. But this stupid war...the stupidity of the stupid men waging this stupid war -- holds me here at the keyboard, seething instead of sunning.

The truth is, I don't want to hide in the sun. I want to keep shouting into the wind -- which is what this blogging is, I know. But it's war. It's a war against everything I hope for and believe in. I'm not going to hide.

What I'm going to do is point you to some truths that need to be more broadly known, and they're not being broadcast, at least not the way they should be.

Example 1:
Yesterday, Lawrence Eagleburger, who was US Secretary of State under George Bush Sr., told the BBC:

"If George Bush [Jr.] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes. In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can't get away with that sort of thing in this democracy."

The above quote is taken from a report on BBC television, but has so far not appeared on their Website. The quote is mentioned near the bottom of an article in today's Independent. It is also referenced in today's Mirror and Pakistan Tribune.

Example 2:
In the second of his dispatches from the million-dollar media centre at Qatar, Michael Wolff recounts how he angered the US right

Wolff:
But I was not a war reporter. I did not have to observe war-time propriety, or cool. I was free to ask publicly (on international television, at that) the question everyone was asking of each other: "I mean no disrespect, but what is the value proposition of these briefings. Why are we here? Why should we stay? What's the value of what we're learning at this million dollar press centre?"

What happens to him could have been taken right out of a movie script (except is was for real), including:
The next person to buttonhole me was the Centcom uber-civilian, a thirty-ish Republican operative. He was more full-metal-jacket in his approach (although he was a civilian he was, inexplicably, in uniform - making him, I suppose a sort of para-military figure): "I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don't talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning." And: "A lot of people don't like you." And then: "Don't fuck with things you don't understand." And too: "This is fucking war, asshole." And finally: "No more questions for you."

Example 3:
An emailed essay from a Daniel Patrick Welch, who points to this site, is a lengthy piece that pretty much covers everything I believe, but stated in a much more reader-friendly prose than mine usually is, including this:

And what is all this focus on civilian dead? I mean it's horrific, of course--it's the whole ball of wax, really. But soldiers aren't people? When the tables are turned, the U.S. screams bloody murder if one of our boys is killed, TV up close and personals, etc. Enemy soldiers don't have mothers? They can be blithely incinerated from 40,000 feet by fuel-air bombs and other weapons more horrific than anything currently banned--international law, thankfully for the Americans, hasn't had time to catch up to the technology. I guess that undermining, bribing, and threatening pays off. Bush and Rumsfeld (dubbed Chemical Donald by a British columnist) even insist that we have the right to use nuclear weapons, or other gases only allowed for domestic crowd control.

and this:

The Stupidity Factor doesn't appear to be evaporating any time soon. Many Americans are perfectly happy to have a "president" who is no smarter than they are--it's not threatening unless you get on his bad side. .... I used to think that the monopoly corporations who funded Bush's rise to power had picked wrong--and it may still be shown that they overplayed their hand. But my cynicism and despair have deepened in the past few months. What a coup (pun intended) to have picked a true idiot, a mean, drunken frat boy who does what he's told and then some, sticking to it like a rabid pit bull.

And then there's this eloquent and moving right-on-the-money piece by a mom whose daughter was arrrested for protesting:

Don't all parents want the world for their children? Fellow parents, tell me, wouldn't we do anything for them? To give them big houses, we will cut ancient forests. To give them the best education, we will invest in companies that profit from death.

To keep them safe, we will deny them the right to privacy, to travel unimpeded, to peacefully assemble. And to give them peace, we will kill other people's children or send them to be killed and amass enough weapons to kill the children again, kill them 20 times if necessary.

We would do anything for our children but the one big thing: Stop and ask ourselves, what are we doing and allowing to be done? Frank and I go busily about, buying this or that, voting or not -- on a small scale, in the short term, making things work for our children -- forgetting that whatever is left of the world is the place where they will have to live.

What will our grandchildren say? I think I can guess:

How could you not have known? What more evidence did you need that your lives, your comfortable lives, would do so much damage to ours?

Did you think you could wage war against nations without waging war against people and against the land? Didn't you wonder what we would drink, once you poisoned the aquifers? Didn't you wonder what we would breathe, once you poisoned the air? Did you stop to ask how we would be safe, in a world poisoned by war?

I'm thinking about how I will answer those questions when my grandson is old enough to ask me. I will think about that as I go outside to walk among the long afternoon shadows.

April 13, 2003

In the new park that the town is building next door to where I live, there are signs around the little lake that say "Keep away. Treated with Canada Geese deterrent."

So, instead, the geese -- along with flocks of sea gulls (sea gulls??) -- are gathering around the large areas of the grassy park land that have flooded because they weren’t graded correctly to begin with. One way or another, the birds will assert their squatters’ rights whether the town likes it or not.

I can’t help wonder why (knowing that this park is taking over a farm area to which the geese come every spring) the town didn’t factor into the park design a special pond where the birds could go and continue to do whatever it is that birds do. The park is big enough; the designers could have constructed the birdpond in a secluded corner, while still leaving the people-oriented lakeside in its deterring state.

It’s like we’re so used to assuming that whatever doesn’t fit into our landscape the way we want it to fit needs to be eliminated. It’s like we assume that we don’t have to find ways to co-exist with other living things who share this world with us. We don't have to bother to use our high human intelligence to find win-win solutions. Instead, we wage a war that we expect to win.

I don't think that the birds give a hoot about what we expect. After all, birds will be birds.

In America, we say that we should respect/honor/enable diversity – racial, ethnic, etc. etc. (At least we give lip service to that ideal, even though many of us don’t practice it.) But we don’t even give lip service to that assumption about diversity as far as our feelings about the governments of the rest of the world are concerned. Note how we’re trying to create a Middle East in our own image. Diversity is OK, I guess, except when it comes to systems of government and cultures other than American.

Karen Hanson, in her beautifully composed weblog posts:
My question is this: why should Western cultures be so self important as to assume that they have the right to tell other countries how to govern themselves or how individuals within those countries should live their lives?.... I sincerely doubt that Washington is going to be very supportive if the Iraqi people rise up together and announce that they want a strict Islamic government – even though as a “democratic” government America should support the right of people to determine their own path. It’s a case of “you can be anything you want, as long as we approve.”

Here are my questions:
1. As long as a culture actively respects and supports human rights and personal choice, what difference does it make what kind of political system it has to make it run smoothly and humanely?
2. Is it possible for forms of government other than democracy to succeed in maintaining a system that ensures rights similar to our Bill of Rights? (Not that our democracy is being so successful doing that these days anyway.)
3. And, to repeat, what right has America to tell other countries how to govern themselves – especially cultures so different from Western ones? There’s plenty of evidence of how our version of “freedom” gets mistranslated when imposed on another culture. This is about how it’s working (or not working) in Turkey, for example:

This headscarf ban is the most strictly enforced since the coups of the 1980’s. Treason covers many ‘crimes’ and few Deans are brave enough to allow their students a choice. A daily battle of wills between students and academics, more fearful for their liberty than any ‘Islamic’ threat, has ensued. Everyday groups of students arrive at class. Everyday the police remove them. Everyday the students show their defiance by holding their own classes on the pavements outside…… The countrywide demonstrations in support of veiled students, in October 1998, saw 4 million protestors male, female, veiled and mini-skirted, hold hands. However, only a skirmish between police and protestors in Ankara, made news. Inevitably such incidents are attributed to ‘foreign’ agitation.

Hmm. Actually, that does sound like America. Some of the worst of America.

And this:
Istanbul’s elected mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was prosecuted for statements purporting to cause division in society (treason once more) – he read out Ottoman poetry in public. He was sentenced last September to one year of imprisonment and a lifetime ban from all political activities, to run from the 75th anniversary of the Republic in October.

Now, that sounds a little like Lady Bush’s cancellation of her meeting of American poets.

4. Why isn’t America taking the lead in bringing together all countries that practice humane governance, and that actually do adhere to a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and facilitate a subset of the United Nations, the mission of which would be to help other governments figure out how to do the same. Oh, I know the answer to that one: because there are no governments, including American, that really take a Declaration of Human Rights seriously. So, there’s no one to take the lead. Oh wait. America is taking the lead. And, I’ll bet, will wind up turning Iraq into another Turkey.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
idealism: 3: elevated ideals or conduct; the quality of believing that ideals should be pursued [syn: high-mindedness, noble-mindedness

Over on several other posts, I’m having an on-going political discussion with DD, who is, so DD asserts, a realist. I don’t know who DD is; don’t know if DD is male or female, American or other citizen. DD leaves no url or legitimate email address. No matter. DD makes a strong realistic/pragmatic case in support of the decisions America’s leaders are making to strong-arm the Middle East into making the regime changes that America’s leaders want them to make. DD says I’m an idealist.

Well, duh, yeah!

Back in my graduate school days, I took a class on group dynamics. The oversimplified point was that the individuals in any group take on roles – some because that’s the nature of their personalities, some because they see jobs that need to be done, some because they're persuaded by the others. Leaders will emerge; as will followers, spoilers, gadflies, peacemakers, and hangers-on. Because human nature is so complex, we can never assume that all humans will behave ethically, morally, compassionately, honestly. It’s the role of the idealist to press for that kind of behavior, to set standards for ethical, moral, compassionate, and honest behavior, to keep reminding other group members that we all have a human responsibility to strive to meet those standards of behavior. If there are not enough activist idealists to be influential, the tendency is for the most aggressive person to become the leader and assert his/her priorities over the rest of the group. Both Hussein and Bush are good examples of that kind of behavior over their citizens.

While realists and pragmatists are usually the ones who “get things done,” the manner in which things get done needs the idealists’ influence.

If we had more idealists, maybe this, for example, wouldn’t happen so often:

Government work granted without competition to a Halliburton Co. subsidiary to fight oil-well fires in Iraq could be worth as much as $7 billion over two years, but just a fraction of that has been spent, the Army Corps of Engineers has disclosed…. The deal also allows Halliburton subsidiary KBR, an engineering and construction company, to earn another 7 percent in profit.

We all know about the Bush administration's ties to Halliburton. War, graft, corruption, tyranny – pragmatism in action.

This world has more realists and pragmatists than it needs. It needs more idealists. And so this weblog is about idealism, modeling what I believe and have tried to bring my kids up to believe. If I were pragmatic, I never would have opted to set my own life aside for a while to be here for my elderly mother. If I were pragmatic, I wouldn’t have spent 20 years trying to change a reactionary (government) educational system from within.

Meanwhile, my kids’ dad emails us a link to this song:

Footprints
(c) 1995 John McCutcheon/Appalsongs (ASCAP) & Si Kahn/Joe Hill Music (ASCAP)

On the day that school let out
My sister, Anne, and me
Crossed the field behind the house
To find our Christmas tree
She was six years older
And so she led the way
As we went out to find the tree
We'd have on Christmas Day
Now, weeks of late November rain
Had brought the creek to flood
So as we walked across the field
Our boots sank in the mud
But soon I realized I could step
Inside her prints so grand
`Til I felt like I was walking
Across the driest land

Chorus
I was walking in your footprints
Counting every step
Measuring every move you made
And every word you said
I was dancing in your shadow
Doing what you'd do
I was learning how to be like me
By being just like you

Now, Mom could hit a baseball
And Lee could fly a kite
And Dad knew every constellation
In the sky at night
And Anne could sing `bout every song
That Elvis ever sung
And it wasn't long before it seemed
That I knew every one

Bridge
I was watching how you walked and talked
How you held your head
Every joke that made you laugh
Every book you read
How you always did your best
When no one seemed to care
How you did your duty
And how you did your share
And now as I grow older
It's so easy to forget
The ones who'll follow after me
I can't imagine yet
Who'll learn what I remember
Who'll do what I have done
And every step I travel now
I walk for more than one

I've already grown older. I hope a little wiser, too. That Crone thing, you know.

April 12, 2003

Myrln emails about our leadership's innate perceptual disability:

Meanwhile, they're rioting and looting in Iraq. Rummysfeld says it's being overemphasized. A period of looting and rioting, he says, is a small price to pay for freedom. Any society, he goes on, needs a transition from suppression to liberty. Rioting is just a reaction to suppression. Looting comes from pent-up feelings.

Remember that the next time a ghetto goes up.

And US forces are not acting as police or guarding buildings, except for a single building, that of the oil ministry. But it's not about oil.

The House of Representatives passes a bill approving drilling for oil in Alaska.

It's not about oil.