I started this weblog for lots of reasons, most of which have to do with my needs, as a writer, to have readers, and my needs, as a thinker, to prefer to formulate my thoughts outside my head. I started this weblog as a way to reflect on the world in general and on my world in particular. These days both of these worlds have collided in the virtual and the real spaces of war. It

Every living thing wants to keep living.
I admit it. I would kill if it were the only way to defend myself or anyone else around me who was in danger of being killed by an attacker. And I would carry the awful memory of that kill for the rest of my life. I would lie in bed at night and see the dying face of the person I killed, imagine reaching out and asking for forgiveness for choosing to commit the most immoral of all acts. If I had to kill, doing so would diminish me irreversibly. And it should.
If I had to hunt and kill my food, I would keep the thought of that prey in my heart, offer silent words honoring its life and the life

Here’s what happened to some who did.

Jesus Christ!
This via Tom Tomorrow:
From ABC News:
They may be the ones facing danger on the battlefield, but US soldiers in Iraq are being asked to pray for President George W Bush.
Thousands of marines have been given a pamphlet called “A Christian’s Duty,” a mini prayer book which includes a tear-out section to be mailed to the White House pledging the soldier who sends it in has been praying for Bush.
“I have committed to pray for you, your family, your staff and our troops during this time of uncertainty and tumult. May God’s peace be your guide,” says the pledge, according to a journalist embedded with coalition forces.
The pamphlet, produced by a group called In Touch Ministries, offers a daily prayer to be made for the US president, a born-again Christian who likes to invoke his God in speeches.
Sunday’s is “Pray that the President and his advisers will seek God and his wisdom daily and not rely on their own understanding”.
Yes, what, indeed would Jesus do? War? Kill? Lie? Relieve tax burdens for the rich? Cut education and social services? I think not.

Go there. Check it out. Found this flash animation linked from there.
People who say they can

Chris Hedges was a war correspondent for 15 years, initially as a free-lancer and eventually for The New York Times. A truthful online interview with him includes these honest remarks:
There is no just war. There is inevitable war, but it’s never just. War always taints, perverts, corrupts – not only those who bear the brunt of it, but those who carry it out. War is a poison. [Sometimes in history] you have to ingest that poison, as a cancer patient does to fight off disease. But if you don’t understand what that poison is, it can kill you just as surely as the disease.
Myth is essential for getting nations to support war and getting individuals to fight it. The state wants to help create a narrative of war, one that bestows on it an order and a meaning it doesn’t really possess.
It’s hard for us to confront not only war, but ourselves. Those of us who have spent a lot of time in war have to confront our own capacity for evil, our own capacity to commit atrocities, the fact that human beings find a perverse thrill in the destruction not only of things but of other human beings….
The lie of war is almost always the lie of omission: the blunders by our own generals, the mistreatment of civilians, the mistreatment of prisoners, the horrors of wounds – all of that is rarely seen by those who are not in combat….
…the broadcast media, with the exception of PBS, has been completely corrupted. It has ceased to employ reporters. It is actors and actresses pretending to be reporters. They’re standing on rooftops as their producers frantically rewrite Reuters copy. They don’t report! They’re playing parts in that myth that boosts ratings. It’s that mythic narrative that keeps CNN and Fox and MSNBC laughing all the way to the bank.

If you have been puzzled as to why the Bush regime has been so fiercely opposed to the new International Criminal Tribunal, the permanent forum for applying the Nuremberg Principles, you should no longer be.
“We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to an aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy”. — Supreme Court Justice Robert L. Jackson
PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW RECOGNIZED IN THE CHARTER OF THE NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL AND IN THE JUDGMENT OF THE TRIBUNAL
PRINCIPLE I
Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.
PRINCIPLE II
The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.
PRINCIPLE III
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him of responsibility under international law.
PRINCIPLE IV
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.
PRINCIPLE V
Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.
PRINCIPLE VI
(a) Crimes against peace:
(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned in (i).
(b) War crimes:
Violations of the laws and customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory; murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the Seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity:
Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.
PRINCIPLE VII
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

Myrln, who sometimes leaves comments on my posts, is a long-time friend in the real world. He

If you’re for this war, you’re probably not reading this weblog. But, just in case, please be sure to follow this link and read the whole story. It’s a true report. It’s the truth about how Americans fight a war that all those so-called pro-war patriots don’t want to believe.
Here’s a teaser:
Across the square, genuine civilians were running for their lives. Many, including some children, were gunned down in the crossfire.
‘The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy,’ said Corporal Ryan Dupre.’ I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin’ Iraqi. No, I won’t get hold of one. I’ll just kill him.’
Amid the wreckage I counted 12 dead civilians, lying in the road or in nearby ditches. All had been trying to leave this southern town overnight, probably for fear of being killed by US helicopter attacks and heavy artillery. Their mistake had been to flee over a bridge that is crucial to the coalition’s supply lines and to run into a group of shell-shocked young American marines with orders to shoot anything that moved. One man’s body was still in flames. It gave out a hissing sound. Tucked away in his breast pocket, thick wads of banknotes were turning to ashes. His savings, perhaps.
Just imagine if all this were being done here, in America, to us. Yet, there are our “boys,” doing it, doing it to other innocents — becoming the evil that we so despise. War. What the hell did you think it would be like!

There’s something about the perspective of age that’s beginning to make sense to me. There’s a younger memory in me that wants to argue with the statements make in this article. And then there’s me, today, watching the results of America-hating, allowing myself a longer, global view.
These are just some points Baltimore free-lance writer Paul Valentine makes in his opinion column today:
A major outcome of the culture wars of the last 50 years can be summarized in a single phrase: the juvenilization of America.
Its impact, fashioned by Madison Avenue, driven by the TV networks, crowned by Hollywood and bought by our social systems from education to religion to the courts, is so pervasive that the good that came out of those same culture wars is now substantively diminished….
Video games bristling with violence, voyeurism, even cop assassinations, hugely popular with the 18- to 34-year-old crowd.
Percussive, tuneless music and clunky rap lyrics inculcating hate, intolerance and greed — perpetuating juvenile tendencies into adulthood.
The Internet, encrusted with pop-up, pop-out commercials, along with huge segments of its global reach allotted to porn, gambling, teen chat rooms and an endless groaning table of beads-and-baubles consumer goodies.
High-decibel, drug-soaked rock concerts so disordered and anarchic they require flying squads of security and emergency medical personnel to minimize vandalism, personal injury and other violence.
Forced spontaneity at sports arenas, where flashing electronic signs and scantily clad cheerleaders relentlessly instruct fans when, how and at what noise levels to cheer — an exercise in mass infantilism.
Employees of major corporations so unsocialized and directionless that they must undergo instruction on appropriate attire, footwear, grooming, hygiene, punctuality, telephone manners and e-mail etiquette, as well as seminars on how to interact with other employees to avoid racial, ethnic and sexual conflict.
The blame game — Johnny made me do it, adult-style — in which refusal to accept personal responsibility has begotten a gargantuan industry of regulatory procedure and litigation: suing McDonald’s for causing obesity…..
These are not the progeny of some vast left-wing conspiracy to undermine the American way of life. On the contrary, they constitute a hallowed sector of the New Market Economy, molded and guided by mainstream entrepreneurs and their barristers, Wharton MBAs and college-trained PR shills, all boosting the new bread-and-circuses world of eye candy replacing substance, sound devolving to noise, brains surrendering to glands….
The ripple effect of this process is enormous, reaching many of America’s most basic institutions — dumbing down everything from news and late-night talk shows to college curricula and political campaign advertising.
It has helped fuel the upsurge of fundamentalist religion in America with its reduction of spiritual responses to bromides and child-like incantations (“God answers knee-mail”)…..
Many of the positive outcomes of America’s culture wars — expanded human rights, increased economic opportunity, greater artistic and literary freedom — resulted from the interaction of political protest and legislative process among thinking adults.
But somewhere along the way, the nation’s sense of proportionality and scale began to wobble and then to collapse. Pushed by the new hucksters, freedom became license; artistry became performance; self-interest became narcissism; excess became necessity. The perfect juvenile.
All of that feeds into why there exist non-Americans today who have little respect for the evidence of how we live the American way. Heh. There are even plenty of us Americans who feel the same way.
Back in the seventies, I saw ‘Wild in the Streets,’ a movie in which older people were rounded up and placed in containment camps so that the next younger generation could take over running society. Of course, “older” becomes relative, and by the end of the movie, it wasn’t “don’t trust anyone over 30.” It was “don’t trust anyone over 13.”
As I Googled for a link to the movie, I got on one web site that forced me to click off FIFTEEN pop-up advertising screens. I’m beginning to think it really IS all a part of a thoughtless conspiracy of juvenile American minds.