"Oh Yeah That!"
by
Mark Fiore
Thursday, September 29, 2005
'Frog-Marching' Bush to the Hague'
'Frog-Marching' Bush to the Hague'
from
AfterDowningStreet.org
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2005-09-29 11:23. Media
ConsortiumNews.comBy Robert Parry
Federal authorities “frog-marched” Private Lynndie England in handcuffs and shackles off to prison to serve three years for her role in abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.
The 22-year-old single mother from West Virginia joins a group of nine reservists punished for mistreating Iraqis, some of whom were stripped naked and forced to pose in mock sexual positions. England appeared in photos, pointing at a prisoner’s penis and holding a naked Iraqi by a leash.
While England’s punishment fits with George W. Bush’s pledge to prosecute military personnel for wrongdoing in Iraq, a larger question is whether low-ranking soldiers are becoming scapegoats for the bloody fiasco that Bush created when he ordered the invasion in defiance of international law. Pumped-up by Bush’s false claims linking Iraq to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S. soldiers charged into that Arab country with revenge on their minds.
In a healthy democracy, the debate might be less about imprisoning England and other “grunts” than whether Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other war architects should be “frog-marched” to the Hague for prosecution as war criminals.
The international community also has largely shied away from the issue of Bush’s criminality, apparently because of the unprecedented military might of the United States.
If the leaders of a less powerful nation had invaded a country under false pretenses – touching off a war that left tens of thousands of civilians dead – there surely would be demands for war crimes prosecutions before the International Criminal Court at the Hague. But not for Bush and his War Cabinet.
more
from
AfterDowningStreet.org
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2005-09-29 11:23. Media
ConsortiumNews.comBy Robert Parry
Federal authorities “frog-marched” Private Lynndie England in handcuffs and shackles off to prison to serve three years for her role in abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.
The 22-year-old single mother from West Virginia joins a group of nine reservists punished for mistreating Iraqis, some of whom were stripped naked and forced to pose in mock sexual positions. England appeared in photos, pointing at a prisoner’s penis and holding a naked Iraqi by a leash.
While England’s punishment fits with George W. Bush’s pledge to prosecute military personnel for wrongdoing in Iraq, a larger question is whether low-ranking soldiers are becoming scapegoats for the bloody fiasco that Bush created when he ordered the invasion in defiance of international law. Pumped-up by Bush’s false claims linking Iraq to the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S. soldiers charged into that Arab country with revenge on their minds.
In a healthy democracy, the debate might be less about imprisoning England and other “grunts” than whether Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other war architects should be “frog-marched” to the Hague for prosecution as war criminals.
The international community also has largely shied away from the issue of Bush’s criminality, apparently because of the unprecedented military might of the United States.
If the leaders of a less powerful nation had invaded a country under false pretenses – touching off a war that left tens of thousands of civilians dead – there surely would be demands for war crimes prosecutions before the International Criminal Court at the Hague. But not for Bush and his War Cabinet.
more
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Interesting story from News24-Chavez nails US again
| More news at http://www.news24.com/News24/Home/0,,,00.html Read the story online: Sent by: Chavez nails US again Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has suggested that chickens in Cuba get better treatment than black residents of hurricane-ravaged New Orleans. Washington - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez suggested on Sunday that chickens in Cuba get better treatment from authorities than black residents of the hurricane-ravaged US city of New Orleans. "In Cuba, when they know a hurricane is coming, chickens, hens and people are all evacuated," Chavez said in an interview with The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine, stepping up his rhetoric against the US government. "A hurricane recently destroyed many towns in Cuba but not a single person died because no one was there. The government prepared its people and took them to shelters, whereas here (in the United States) they left the poor without protection, especially the blacks." The US government has faced stark criticism over its response to Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast last month, leaving more than 1 000 dead and levelling whole communities in Louisiana and Mississippi. About 80% of the majority black city of New Orleans was flooded after several storm-battered levees gave way. The administration of President George W Bush as well as state and city governments have been accused of failing to implement a comprehensive evacuation plan in advance of the hurricane and to offer affordable transportation to poor New Orleans residents, most of whom do not own cars. 'Horrible' The Venezuelan president, who had offered the United States assistance in the wake of the storm, called this situation "horrible." "Be careful with the government you have," he added, pointing out that the United States has "a government with so much power that it can start a war and destabilise a country but doesn't take care of its own people." Chavez repeated his earlier description of the United States as "an empire" that has "a terrorist administration," which is "a threat to humanity." He claimed his government had evidence that Washington had a plan to invade Venezuela code-named "Balboa". "Our intelligence found this plan, and everything is spelled out there - the target is Venezuela," he said. "They have even calculated how many bombings they should do, how many soldiers they will require." But the Venezuelan leader warned that the Bush administration would regret it, if it ever tried to implement the supposed plan. "There will be such havoc in the whole hemisphere if this happens," Chavez said. "The United States invaded Iraq, but Venezuela is not Iraq. The price of oil would shoot up and reach what - $100 a barrel?" |
Monday, September 26, 2005
"Well-Intentioned"--And Arrested - Yahoo! News
It figures that Bushit would come up with something to get back at Cindy Sheehan. It's funny that the "President of the United States" would fear an innocent, peaceful, non-violent Mom of a slain soldier. I guess the truth and facing it is just way to hard for him.
"Well-Intentioned"--And Arrested - Yahoo! News
"Well-Intentioned"--And Arrested - Yahoo! News
Uncomfortably Numb by The Blacks
I don't remember much about the day before today,
All I know, is things are not the same,
I don't know the way, except the way to destruction,
All I had, is gone,
Every word's a waste of breath,
Living's a waste of death,
And our time,
Which we don't have enough of these days,
Are getting darker,
I feel it getting harder to breath,
Or I feel nothing at all,
I don't remember much, except the look upon your face,
All I know, is that it's not the same, (as it was)
I can't see the plus, but I breathe for the subtraction,
All I want, is you,
Every word's a waste of breath,
Living's a waste of death,
And our time,
Which we don't have enough of these days,
Are getting darker,
I feel it getting harder to breath,
Or I feel nothing at all,
Now I feel nothing at all,
Uncomfortably numb,
Won't you be,
My only one?
Every word's a waste of breath,
Living's a waste of death,
And our time,
Which we don't have enough of these days,
Are getting darker,
I feel it getting harder to breath,
Or I feel nothing at all,
Every thought's a piece of mind,
Of the things I left behind,
And you,
Now I feel nothing at all,
Uncomfortably numb,
Uncomfortably numb,
Uncomfortably numb,
Uncomfortably numb,
Uncomfortably numb,
All I know, is things are not the same,
I don't know the way, except the way to destruction,
All I had, is gone,
Every word's a waste of breath,
Living's a waste of death,
And our time,
Which we don't have enough of these days,
Are getting darker,
I feel it getting harder to breath,
Or I feel nothing at all,
I don't remember much, except the look upon your face,
All I know, is that it's not the same, (as it was)
I can't see the plus, but I breathe for the subtraction,
All I want, is you,
Every word's a waste of breath,
Living's a waste of death,
And our time,
Which we don't have enough of these days,
Are getting darker,
I feel it getting harder to breath,
Or I feel nothing at all,
Now I feel nothing at all,
Uncomfortably numb,
Won't you be,
My only one?
Every word's a waste of breath,
Living's a waste of death,
And our time,
Which we don't have enough of these days,
Are getting darker,
I feel it getting harder to breath,
Or I feel nothing at all,
Every thought's a piece of mind,
Of the things I left behind,
And you,
Now I feel nothing at all,
Uncomfortably numb,
Uncomfortably numb,
Uncomfortably numb,
Uncomfortably numb,
Uncomfortably numb,
TIME.com: How Many More Mike Browns Are Out There? -- Oct. 03, 2005 -- Page 1
TIME.com: How Many More Mike Browns Are Out There? -- Oct. 03, 2005 -- Page 1: "From the Magazine | Nation
How Many More Mike Browns Are Out There?
A TIME inquiry finds that at top positions in some vital government agencies, the Bush Administration is putting connections before experience
By MARK THOMPSON, KAREN TUMULTY, MIKE ALLEN / WASHINGTON"
How Many More Mike Browns Are Out There?
A TIME inquiry finds that at top positions in some vital government agencies, the Bush Administration is putting connections before experience
By MARK THOMPSON, KAREN TUMULTY, MIKE ALLEN / WASHINGTON"
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Yahoo! News Story - School Expels Girl for Having Gay Parents - Yahoo! News
School Expels Girl for Having Gay Parents - Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050923/ap_on_re_us/lesbians__daughter
USATODAY.com - Anti-war protesters rally in Washington, San Francisco
USATODAY.com - Anti-war protesters rally in Washington, San Francisco:
"Anti-war protesters rally in Washington, San Francisco
WASHINGTON (AP)
To chants of 'Impeach Bush,' thousands of anti-war protesters rallied in the nation's capital Saturday and delivered a scathing critique of President Bush and his Iraq policy.
Demanding an end to the U.S.-led occupation and the quick return of American troops, the demonstrators gathered on a sunny fall day at the Washington Monument to listen to speeches and songs of peace. "
"Anti-war protesters rally in Washington, San Francisco
WASHINGTON (AP)
To chants of 'Impeach Bush,' thousands of anti-war protesters rallied in the nation's capital Saturday and delivered a scathing critique of President Bush and his Iraq policy.
Demanding an end to the U.S.-led occupation and the quick return of American troops, the demonstrators gathered on a sunny fall day at the Washington Monument to listen to speeches and songs of peace. "
Some differences, but not about war
This story was sent to you by: Pam
--------------------
Some differences, but not about war
--------------------
Estimated 150,000 attend demonstration in Washington, D.C., including LI teens with boyfriends in Iraq
BY DANIEL WAGNER
WASHINGTON BUREAU
September 25, 2005
WASHINGTON - Stefanie Baum and Abi Carson hardly blended in to the "tattooed freaks and hippies and radicals" Baum saw around her at yesterday's anti-war demonstration here. Wearing bright red shirts that read, "George W. Bush stole my boyfriend" and "My other half is in Iraq," the two Seaford High School students attracted plenty of attention - not all of it positive.
While many of the thousands of marchers stopped them to say "God bless you," or "Good luck," others reacted with cluelessness, disbelief or outright hostility.
Baum said she has dealt with this before. On the day her boyfriend, a Marine, left for Fallujah last March, a girl in her art class asked if he was going to Iraq on vacation and said she thought the war was over.
"I had to leave class, I couldn't take it," Baum said. "That's when I decided to educate myself more on it, and read books - not exactly about the war itself, but about what they're doing there."
The two students, who asked that their ages not be printed, said they haven't been to a protest before but couldn't sit by while their boyfriends faced danger overseas. They and Carson's mother, Donna, joined more than 800 Long Islanders participating in what organizers hoped would be the largest peace demonstration since the Iraq war began. Police said there were about 150,000 participants, the Washington Post reported.
Protesters attended a rally near the White House where they heard the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain soldier who protested outside Bush's Texas ranch. Then they walked along a march route that passed the White House. Groups of counterprotesters stood along the path, shouting pro-Bush slogans.
The protest was organized to coincide with other, similar events in U.S. and foreign cities including London and Rome.
Long Island organizers said they were impressed with how many in their group were first-time protesters. Susan McKeon, a retired elementary school teacher who lives in Suffolk County, said, "It's a very representative slice of Long Island, not the usual people left over from the sixties."
Bert Napier, a World War II veteran from Roslyn Heights, has noticed a dramatic shift in public opinion on Long Island away from the Iraq war.
When he started participating in peace vigils just after the war began, he said, "People would come by and give us the finger and yell 'commie' out the window. Now everyone honks their horn, and it's rare that we get a derisive comment."
Carson and Baum said they were moved both by the gruesome images on some protesters' signs and by their first experience with such a large group of people who feel equally strongly about the war.
The two said they know at least six students from Seaford who enlisted in the military in the past year.
Baum said she opposes the war not out of fear for her boyfriend's safety, but out of confusion about its purpose.
"What's it about?" she asked. "Oil, maybe? Nobody knows. All I know is, every time I fill up my gas tank, I say thank you to my friends" who enlisted.
Copyright (c) 2005, Newsday
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
Saturday, September 24, 2005
MSNBC.com On the Scene: Hurricanes
| I'm praying for everyone going through such hell that is imposed upon them. NO ONE deserves this type of hardship and it is not God's will to be exposed to these types of catastrophes. It is all man made. Peace & Bright Blessings to all who are sufferring Latest post from on the scene: Seeking solace and soap operas ( http://onthescene.msnbc.com/hurricanes/2005/09/seeking_solace_.html) | |||
Friday, September 23, 2005
FOXNews.com - Politics - Anti-War Groups Prepare for Rally in D.C.
Anti-War Groups Prepare for Rally in D.C.Thursday, September 22, 2005
WASHINGTON — Anti-war groups are using a $1 million ad campaign and a demonstration they say will attract 100,000 people to try to re-energize their movement and pressure the Bush administration to bring troops home from Iraq.
more
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Apathy
"I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate -- it's apathy. It's not giving a damn."
Buscaglia, Leo
"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it. "
Einstein, Albert
"We may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings. "
Keller, Helen
"Most human beings have an infinite capacity for taking things for granted."
Huxley, Aldous
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Saturday, September 17, 2005
Articles of Impeachment of President George W. Bush
VOTE TO IMPEACH BUSH
Articles of Impeachment of President George W. Bush andVice President Richard B. Cheney,Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed fromOffice on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes andMisdemeanors. - - ARTICLE II, SECTION 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H.Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John David Ashcroft have committed violations andsubversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out withimpunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rightsof the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperialexecutive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States, by the following acts:
1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law;carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting in the death and maiming of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and hundreds of U.S. G.I.s.
2) Lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war.
3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilian facilities andlocations where civilian casualties were unavoidable.
4) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently changing itsgovernment by force and assaulting Iraq in a war of aggression.
4) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secretand other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion ofprisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments andindividuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agentselsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendmentsto the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and theInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
5) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreigngovernments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the mediaand foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to publicdiscussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtainweapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition toU.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks.
6) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, both apart of the "Supreme Law of the land" under Article VI, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, in anattempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars andthreats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the UnitedNations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejectingtreaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroyany means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate theexercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.
7) Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, orderingindefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and withoutopportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on thediscretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an "enemy combatant."
8) Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and withoutcharge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense.
9) Ordering and authorizing the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release ofdetainees under INS jurisdiction, even where the judicial officer after full hearing determines adetainee is wrongfully held by the government.
10) Authorizing secret military tribunals and summary execution of persons who are not citizenswho are designated solely at the discretion of the Executive who acts as indicting official,prosecutor and as the only avenue of appellate relief.
11) Refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities and locations of persons who havebeen arrested, detained and imprisoned by the U.S. government in the United States, including inresponse to Congressional inquiry.
12) Use of secret arrests of persons within the United States and elsewhere and denial of the rightto public trials.
13) Authorizing the monitoring of confidential attorney-client privileged communications by thegovernment, even in the absence of a court order and even where an incarcerated person has notbeen charged with a crime.
14) Ordering and authorizing the seizure of assets of persons in the United States, prior tohearing or trial, for lawful or innocent association with any entity that at the discretionarydesignation of the Executive has been deemed "terrorist."
15) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying byfederal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious andpolitical activity.
16) Refusal to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutionalright of legislative oversight of executive functions.17) Rejecting treaties protective of peace and human rights and abrogation of the obligations ofthe United States under, and withdrawal from, international treaties and obligations withoutconsent of the legislative branch, and including termination of the ABM treaty between theUnited States and Russia, and rescission of the authorizing signature from the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for the International Criminal Court.
Articles of Impeachment of President George W. Bush andVice President Richard B. Cheney,Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed fromOffice on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes andMisdemeanors. - - ARTICLE II, SECTION 4 OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H.Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John David Ashcroft have committed violations andsubversions of the Constitution of the United States of America in an attempt to carry out withimpunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes and deprivations of the civil rightsof the people of the United States and other nations, by assuming powers of an imperialexecutive unaccountable to law and usurping powers of the Congress, the Judiciary and those reserved to the people of the United States, by the following acts:
1) Seizing power to wage wars of aggression in defiance of the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Charter and the rule of law;carrying out a massive assault on and occupation of Iraq, a country that was not threatening the United States, resulting in the death and maiming of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and hundreds of U.S. G.I.s.
2) Lying to the people of the U.S., to Congress, and to the U.N., providing false and deceptive rationales for war.
3) Authorizing, ordering and condoning direct attacks on civilians, civilian facilities andlocations where civilian casualties were unavoidable.
4) Threatening the independence and sovereignty of Iraq by belligerently changing itsgovernment by force and assaulting Iraq in a war of aggression.
4) Authorizing, ordering and condoning assassinations, summary executions, kidnappings, secretand other illegal detentions of individuals, torture and physical and psychological coercion ofprisoners to obtain false statements concerning acts and intentions of governments andindividuals and violating within the United States, and by authorizing U.S. forces and agentselsewhere, the rights of individuals under the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendmentsto the Constitution of the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and theInternational Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
5) Making, ordering and condoning false statements and propaganda about the conduct of foreigngovernments and individuals and acts by U.S. government personnel; manipulating the mediaand foreign governments with false information; concealing information vital to publicdiscussion and informed judgment concerning acts, intentions and possession, or efforts to obtainweapons of mass destruction in order to falsely create a climate of fear and destroy opposition toU.S. wars of aggression and first strike attacks.
6) Violations and subversions of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, both apart of the "Supreme Law of the land" under Article VI, paragraph 2, of the Constitution, in anattempt to commit with impunity crimes against peace and humanity and war crimes in wars andthreats of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq and others and usurping powers of the UnitedNations and the peoples of its nations by bribery, coercion and other corrupt acts and by rejectingtreaties, committing treaty violations, and frustrating compliance with treaties in order to destroyany means by which international law and institutions can prevent, affect, or adjudicate theexercise of U.S. military and economic power against the international community.
7) Acting to strip United States citizens of their constitutional and human rights, orderingindefinite detention of citizens, without access to counsel, without charge, and withoutopportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on thediscretionary designation by the Executive of a citizen as an "enemy combatant."
8) Ordering indefinite detention of non-citizens in the United States and elsewhere, and withoutcharge, at the discretionary designation of the Attorney General or the Secretary of Defense.
9) Ordering and authorizing the Attorney General to override judicial orders of release ofdetainees under INS jurisdiction, even where the judicial officer after full hearing determines adetainee is wrongfully held by the government.
10) Authorizing secret military tribunals and summary execution of persons who are not citizenswho are designated solely at the discretion of the Executive who acts as indicting official,prosecutor and as the only avenue of appellate relief.
11) Refusing to provide public disclosure of the identities and locations of persons who havebeen arrested, detained and imprisoned by the U.S. government in the United States, including inresponse to Congressional inquiry.
12) Use of secret arrests of persons within the United States and elsewhere and denial of the rightto public trials.
13) Authorizing the monitoring of confidential attorney-client privileged communications by thegovernment, even in the absence of a court order and even where an incarcerated person has notbeen charged with a crime.
14) Ordering and authorizing the seizure of assets of persons in the United States, prior tohearing or trial, for lawful or innocent association with any entity that at the discretionarydesignation of the Executive has been deemed "terrorist."
15) Institutionalization of racial and religious profiling and authorization of domestic spying byfederal law enforcement on persons based on their engagement in noncriminal religious andpolitical activity.
16) Refusal to provide information and records necessary and appropriate for the constitutionalright of legislative oversight of executive functions.17) Rejecting treaties protective of peace and human rights and abrogation of the obligations ofthe United States under, and withdrawal from, international treaties and obligations withoutconsent of the legislative branch, and including termination of the ABM treaty between theUnited States and Russia, and rescission of the authorizing signature from the Treaty of Rome which served as the basis for the International Criminal Court.
Friday, September 16, 2005
"We are blessed"
"We are blessed"
09/14/05 08:20 AM
That was the message Governor Kathleen Blanco gave Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina first hit. The storm had changed from a Category 5 to a Category 4, was moving very quickly north, and had shifted eastward before landing, creating horrendous damage in Mississippi. Until the levees were breached, Louisiana's citizens thought they had been spared a major tragedy yet again.
But if Louisiana was "blessed," the only logical conclusion we can draw is that Mississippi was cursed. It made me cringe every time I heard someone use this language, and it angered me to hear the governor use it. Only yesterday, a radio reporter told the people of Jefferson Parish: "You ought to be thanking God that the levees were breached on the Orleans Parish side."
The language of religion is a powerful one, especially in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, where Southern Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, and conservative non-denominational Christian churches are plentiful. In south Louisiana, there is also a very big Catholic population, which includes Governor Blanco.
A few days ago, Blanco, while touring a section of storm-ravaged south Louisiana, told residents that they would never be able to get through the hurricane crisis "without faith." The faith to which she was referring wasn't faith in the government or faith in the strength of community, but religious faith. Though they may fly under the radar, many churchless and non-religious people live in Louisiana, and they were essentially being told by their leader that they had no hope for recovery.
Certainly, in a time of crisis, religious people are going to talk about religion, and I, for one, have no objection to their doing so. I have no objection to the governor's doing so, either, as long as her comments do not cause division among constituents or imply that people in other states somehow wound up on the wrong side of God's favor.(Such thinking isn't even rational within the religious paradigm--why would God spare what is probably the most corrupt state in the nation?)
The problem goes beyond careless statements made by public officials. One of the New Orleans television stations had a psychotherapist on to talk about stress reactions to the hurricane. After she said all of the standard things about dealing with a disaster, she launched into a speech about there "being a reason" for the devastation caused by Katrina. She was careful to be inclusive, and said she was addressing Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists--everyone. It was important, she said, to remember that these things happen "for a reason."
As a licensed psychotherapist, I was stunned by her remarks. I am as metaphysically ignorant as the next human, and do not wish to speculate about the possibility of mystical processes affecting natural phenomena. That is not the issue for me. My concern is that--in a culture in which people are constantly told that they are being punished for their sins--the last thing they need to hear is that there is a Big Reason for their having lost their homes, their jobs, and their loved ones. And bad theology aside, it is a remarkably stupid thing to say to people who have just suffered significant loss and disruption.
It is bad enough that the religious nuts want to blame some of our citizens for causing the hurricane to destroy New Orleans (though that theory does offer some other possibilities). Public officials and members of the clergy and other helping professions would be wise to stop and examine their religious rhetoric before broadcasting it to already victimized people.
- Diane E. Dees
Read the MoJo Blog online for more:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog
@2005 The Foundation for National Progress
Where was Cheney during Katrina? Handling his own emergency
isn't vp Cheney the real CEO of this corporation we call our home...the USA
Where was Cheney during Katrina? Handling his own emergency
09/13/05 04:14 PM
After Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, some of us were struck by the obvious absence of Dick Cheney from the media scene. It turns out he was very busy handling another emergency: His office called Southern Pines Electric Power Association and left two voice mail messages, ordering power to be immediately restored to Colonial Pipeline Company, which supplies power to the Northeast. The re-starting of two power substations in Collins, Mississippi delayed by at least 24 hours efforts to restore power to two rural Mississippi hospitals.
Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association, said that he "reluctantly agreed to pull half our transmission line crews off other projects...."
"We were led to believe a national emergency was created when the pipelines were shut down," Compton said. Power was not restored to the hospitals until six days after the storm hit. Crews working to restore power to rural water systems were also transferred to the Colonial Pipeline project. The workers faced significant safety issues because they had to work in the dark, and there were fires in the trees and broken power poles.
According to the Hattiesburg American, Cheney's office referred calls about the pipeline to the Office of Homeland Security, where calls were not accepted, but email requests were. The senior manager of corporate and public affairs of Colonial did not return calls.
- Diane E. Dees
Read the MoJo Blog online for more:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog
@2005 The Foundation for National Progress
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Concrete slab falls, classes cancelled
this is one of the towns that surrounds my hometown...it's sad that our kids can't learn in a safe enviroment because it appears that people around my section of the world like to pave roads more than they like to protect, or educate our children.
Classes were cancelled at Wahconah Regional High School on Wednesday after a large, heavy piece of concrete fell from above an entrance.
The Other America - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com
The Other America - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com:
"The Other America An Enduring Shame: Katrina reminded us, but the problem is not new. Why a rising tide of people live in poverty, who they are�and what we can do about it."
"The Other America An Enduring Shame: Katrina reminded us, but the problem is not new. Why a rising tide of people live in poverty, who they are�and what we can do about it."
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
My Account - tribe.net
tribe.net~boston
Peace...
Pam
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."
~Albert Einstien~
Peace...
Pam
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."
~Albert Einstien~
Monday, September 12, 2005
CNN.com - FEMA director Brown resigns - Sep 12, 2005
Ok, everyone knows what this is? It's a an amBUSH, politically speaking this dude is not only out of a job; but since he's the fall guy for bush I bet he'll get a hefty government check every week...month?
CNN.com - FEMA director Brown resigns - Sep 12, 2005
CNN.com - FEMA director Brown resigns - Sep 12, 2005
a very appropriate quotation for times like these...
very appropriate for times like these...
Peace
"God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects to receive it."
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Choose to Make a Difference
The disaster in New Orleans makes at least one thing clear -- the importance of serving our communities and being there for one another.
by Arthur I. Blaustein
September 08, 2005
THE TRADITIONS OF COMMUNITY SERVICE and citizen participation have been at the heart of American civic culture since before the nation was founded. Historically, our greatest strength as a nation has been to be there for one another. Citizen participation has been the lifeblood of democracy. As Thomas Paine put it, "The highest calling of every individual in a democratic society is that of citizen!" Accidents of nature and abstract notions of improvement do not make our communities better or healthier places in which to live and work. They get better because people like you decide that they want to make a difference.
Volunteering is not a conservative or liberal, Democratic or Republican issue; caring and compassion simply help to define us as being human.
It is within our power to move beyond a disaster and economic crisis like the one that has engulfed New Orleans and to create new opportunities. What it comes down to is assuming personal responsibility. If we decide to become involved in voluntary efforts, we can restore idealism, realism, responsiveness, and vitality to our institutions and our communities.
At her memorial service, it was said of Eleanor Roosevelt, the most influential American woman of the twentieth century, that "she would rather light a candle than curse the darkness." What was true for her then is true for us now. The choice to make a difference is ours.
How to help those individuals and communities hurt by Hurricane Katrina through donations and volunteering.
The following organizations and groups that provide direct emergency assistance:
American Red Cross
(800) HELP NOW (435-7669) English; (800) 257-7575 Spanish
America"s Second Harvest
(800) 344-8070
American Friends Service Committee
(215)241-7000
B'nai B'rith International
(888) 388-4224
Catholic Charities, USA
(703) 549-1390
Christian Disaster Response
(941) 956-5183
Church World Service
(800) 297-1516
Feed The Children
(800) 525-7575
Lutheran Disaster Response
(800) 638-3522
Oxfam America
(800) 77-OXFAM or (617)482-1211
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
(800)872-3283
Salvation Army
(800 725-2769
Southern Baptist Disater Relief
(800) 462-8657
Union For Reform Judaism
(212) 650-4140
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
(617)868-6600
United Jewish Communities
(877) 277-2477
United Methodist Committee On Relief
(800)554-8583
Volunteers of America
(800) 899-0089
YMCA of the USA
(800) 872-9622
YWCA of the USA
(800) YWCA US1
The following organizations and groups provide direct or indirect assistance and/or advocate for policies and programs to assist victims or stricken communities. This is particularly important because of the failure of the federal government and this administration to provide leadership and competence before and during the disaster. Voluntary efforts should not be a substitute for government action, and advocacy groups must take the initiative to assure that the government fulfills its responsibility to the American people.
ACORN
(877) 55ACORN
Campaign for America's Future
(202) 955-5665
Catholic Campaign for Human Development
(202) 541-3000
Center for Health, Enviroment and Justice
(703) 237-2249
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
(202) 408-1080
Children's Defense Fund
(202) 628-8787
City Year
(617) 927-2500
Coalition on Human Needs
(202) 223-2532
Common Cause
(800)926-1064
Community Action Partnership
(202)265-7546
Corporation for Supportive Housing
(212) 986-2966 ext. 500
Field Mobilization Departmentof the AFL-CIO
(202)637-5000
Habitat for Humanity
(229) 924-6935
MoveOn.org
NAACP
(877) NAACP-98
National Congress for Community Economic Development
(877) 44-NCCED or 202 289-9020
National Council of La Raza
(800)311-NCLR
National Neighborhood Coalition
(202) 408-8533
National Urban League
(212) 558-5300
National Mental Health Association
(800)969-6642
People for the American Way
(800) 326-7329
Project America
(804) 358-1605
Sierra Club
(415) 977-5500
In addition to contributing money, basic supplies and services; the
healthiest response for individuals is to volunteer to do community service in your own home town.
For a more complete in-depth list see: Make A Difference: America's Guide to Volunteering and Community Service by Arthur I. Blaustein (Jossey Bass/Wiley)
Please contribute to the health and vitality of our communities by sharing this list with as many people as possible.
Arthur I. Blaustein is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley
where he teaches urban policy and community development. He served as
chairman of the President's Council on Economic Opportunity under Jimmy
Carter. His most recent books are Make a Difference and The American
Promise: Justice and Opportunity.
@2005 The Foundation for National Progress
Check out the latest from Mother Jones
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Article from Tom Dispatch
posted September 10, 2005 at 10:07 pm
Tomdispatch Interview: James Carroll on Our Post-9/11 World
[Note to Tomdispatch readers: This is the second in an ongoing series of interviews at the site. The first was with Howard Zinn. More will appear later in the month or in October. Tom]
The Mosquito and the Hammer
A Tomdispatch Interview with James Carroll
We pull into the parking lot at the same moment in separate cars, both of us slightly vacation-disheveled. He wears a baseball-style cap and a half-length purple raincoat in anticipation of the downpour which begins soon after we huddle safely in a local coffee shop. As I fumble with my two tape recorders, he immediately demurs about the interview. He may have nothing new to say, he assures me, and then absolves me, now and forever, of the need to make any use whatsoever of anything we produce through our conversation.
The son of a lieutenant-general who was the founding director of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, a former Catholic priest and antiwar activist in the Vietnam era (the subject of his book, An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us), Carroll has long pursued his interest in the ways in which faith and force can coalesce into historically fatal brews. From this came, for instance, his bestselling book Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews.
Within days of the attacks of September 11, 2001, he became perhaps our most passionate -- and prophetic -- columnist in the mainstream media. His columns continue to appear, now every Monday, in the Boston Globe. The Bush administration, with its fundamentalist religious base, its Manichaean worldview, its urge toward a civilizational conflict against Islam, and its deeply held fascination with and belief in the all-encompassing powers of military force, was, in a sense, made for him. And he grasped the consequences of its actions with uncanny accuracy from the first moments after our President announced his "war on terror," just days after 9/11. A remarkable collection of his Globe columns that begins with the fall of the World Trade Center towers and the damaging of the Pentagon and ends on the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War, will certainly prove one of the best running records of that crucial period we have.
He speaks quietly and straightforwardly. You can almost see him thinking as he talks. As he reenters the world we've passed through these last years, his speech speeds up and gains a certain emphatic cadence. You can feel in his voice the same impressive combination of passion and intelligence, engagement and thoughtfulness that is a hallmark of his weekly column. I turn on the tape recorders and we begin to consider the world since September 11, 2001.
Tomdispatch: In September 2003, only five months after the invasion of Iraq, you wrote in a column, "The war in Iraq is lost. What will it take to face that truth this time?" Here we are two years later. What has it taken, what will it take, to face that truth?
James Carroll: It's interesting to me that the tribunes of the truth right now are the people who have felt the loss of the war most intensely, the parents of the dead American soldiers. I find it astounding that facing the truth in the month of August has been the business almost solely of these parents, pro and con. Cindy Sheehan on the one side, clearly saying that, whatever its imagined values, this war's not worth what it's costing us and it's got to end immediately; on the other side, parents, desperately trying to make some sense of the loss of their child, who want the war to continue so that he or she will not have died in vain. Both are facing a basic truth of parental grief and, I'd also say, responding to the same larger phenomenon: the war being lost. I'm not certain we'd hear from any parents if the war were being won. Given the great tragedy of losing your child to a war that's being lost, nobody gets to the question of whether it's just or not.
It's heartbreaking to me that, in American political discourse, what discussion there is of the larger human and political questions has fallen to these heartbroken parents. Where are the Democrats? Where, for that matter, are the Republicans? On the floor of Congress, has there been a discussion of this war? I mean in the Vietnam years you did have the astounding Fulbright hearings. [Democratic Senator William] Fulbright was in defiance of [Democratic President] Lyndon Johnson when those hearings were initiated, that's for sure. Where are the hearings today? We have a political system that is supposed to engage the great questions and they obviously aren't being engaged. How long will it take us to face the truth? It's just terrible that the truth has to be faced by these heartbroken parents, because even if they're opposed to the war -- as I am -- they're not the ones to whom we should look for political wisdom on how to resolve the terrible dilemma we're in.
TD: In March 2004, on the first anniversary of the invasion -- and this was the piece with which you ended your book , Crusade -- you wrote again, "Whatever happens from this week forward in Iraq, the main outcome of the war for the United States is clear, we have defeated ourselves."
Carroll: I was already instructed by the history of the twentieth century, summarized so well by Jonathan Schell in his book The Unconquerable World. He cites numerous instances in which broad-based, national resistance movements couldn't be defeated even by massively superior military power. It was his insight that the last century was rife with examples -- the most obvious for Americans being Vietnam -- where a huge superiority in firepower was irrelevant against even a minority resistance movement based in an indigenous population; and it's clear that this so-called insurgency in Iraq is a minority resistance movement, largely Sunni, and that it doesn't matter if it's a minority. There's an indigenous population within which it resides and which fuels it. And all of that was quickly evident. In fact, I think it was evident to George H.W. Bush in 1991. It wasn't Vietnam we needed to! learn from first in this case; it really was the first Gulf War and Bush's realpolitik decision to stop it based on the sure knowledge that there was no way of defeating an indigenous popular religious movement prepared to fight to the death.
Presiding Over the Destruction of the U.S. Army
TD: So where are we now as you see it?
Carroll: It's already become clear to people that we can't win this. Who knows what being defeated means? I said we had lost because there's no imposing our will on the people of Iraq. That's what this constitutional imbroglio demonstrates. A month ago, Donald Rumsfeld was insisting that there had to be a three-party agreement. In August, it became clear that there would be none. So now there's a two-party agreement and the Sunnis are out of it. Basically, this political development has endorsed the Sunni resistance movement, because they've been cut out of the future of Iraq. They have no share of the oil. They have no access to real political power in Baghdad. They have nothing to lose and that's a formula for endless fighting.
TD: I was struck by recent statements by top American generals in Iraq about draw-downs and withdrawals, all of them clearly unauthorized by Washington. At the bottom, you have angry military families, lowering morale, and the difficulties of signing people on to the all-volunteer army; at the top, generals who didn't want to be in Iraq in the first place and don't want to be there now.
Carroll: Well, they've been forced to preside over the destruction of the United States Army, including the civilian system of support for the Army -- the National Guard and the active Reserves. This is the most important outcome of the war and, as with Vietnam, we'll be paying the price for it for a generation.
TD: Knowing the Pentagon as you do, what kind of a price do you think that will be?
Carroll: I would say, alas, that one of the things we're going to resume is an overweening dependence on air power and strikes from afar. It's clear, for instance, that the United States under the present administration is not going to allow Iran to get anywhere near a nuclear weapon. The only way they could try to impede that is with air power. They have no army left to exert influence. If the destruction of the United States Army is frightening, so is the immunity from the present disaster of the Navy and the Air Force, which are both far-distance striking forces. That's what they exist for and they're intact. Their Tomahawk and Cruise missiles have basically been sidelined. We have this massive high-firepower force that's sitting offshore and we're surely going to resume our use of such power from afar.
One of the things the United States of America claims to have learned from the �90s is that we're not going to let genocidal movements like the one in Rwanda unfold. Well, we've basically destroyed the only military tool we have to respond to genocidal movements, which is a ground force. You can't use air power against a machete-wielding movement. And if you think that kind of conflict won't happen in places where poverty is overwhelming and ecological disaster is looming ever more terrifyingly, think again. What kind of response to such catastrophe will a United States without a functional army be capable of?
You know, in this way, we're now like the Soviet Union once it collapsed into Russia. When it could no longer pay the salaries of its soldiers, Russia fell back on its nuclear arsenal as its only source of power. In a way the Soviet Union never was, Russia is now a radically nuclear-dependent military power. The Red Army doesn't really count for much any more. And we've done that to ourselves in Iraq. This is what it means to have lost the war already. We didn't need an enemy to do it for us. We've done it to ourselves.
TD: "We" being the Bush administration?
Carroll: Yes, the Bush administration, but "we" also being John Kerry and the Democrats who refused to make the war an issue in the presidential election campaign last year. I fault them every bit as much as I fault the Republicans. At least Bush is being consistent and driven ideologically by his unbelievably callow worldview. The Democrats were radical cynics about it. They didn't buy the preventive war doctrine. They didn't buy the weapons of mass destruction justification for this war. They didn't buy any of it and yet they didn't oppose it! The cynicism of the Democrats is one of the most stunning outcomes of this war. And even now, as the political conversation for next year's congressional election begins, where's the discussion from the Democrats about this, the second self-inflicted military catastrophe since World War II. At least the first time, the Democrats were there. In the election of 1972, when they lost badly, George McGovern and company r! eally did engage this question.
We're desperately in need of a Eugene McCarthy, someone who will speak the truth in a really clear and powerful way and in a political context so that we can respond to it as a people. Eugene McCarthy is putting it positively. I'd say negatively what we could use is a Newt Gingrich, someone who could marshal political resistance going into this next election period in a way that would make the war a lively issue in every senatorial and congressional election. We really need someone. In America, our system requires someone of the political culture to invoke this discussion.
A Civilizational War against Islam
TD: In the first column you wrote after September 11, 2001, you said, "How we respond to this catastrophe will define our patriotism, shape the century, and memorialize our beloved dead." Four years later, how do you assess our response to each?
Carroll: Patriotism has become a hollow, partisan notion in our country. It's been in the name of patriotism that we've turned our young soldiers into scapegoats and fodder. The betrayal of the young in the name of patriotism is a staggering fact of our post-9/11 response. The old men have carried the young men up the mountain and put them on the altar. It's Abraham and Isaac all over again. It's the oldest story, a kind of human sacrifice, and that's what's made those cries of parents so poignant this August. But those cries also have to include an element of self-accusation, because parents have done it to their children. We've done it to our children. That's what it means to destroy the United States Army. Night after night, we see that the actual casualties of that destruction are young men, and occasionally women, between the ages of 18 and 30. And this in the name of patriotism.
On the second point, the shape of the world for the century to come, look what the United States of America has given us -- civilizational war against Islam! Osama bin Laden hoped to ignite a war between radically fundamentalist Islam and the secular West. And he succeeded. We played right into his hands. Now, we see that war being played out not just in Iraq and the Arab world generally, but quite dramatically in Europe.
TD: You picked up on this in the first few days after 9/11 when you caught Bush in a little slip of the tongue. He spoke of us entering a "crusade"�
Carroll: �"This war on terrorism, this crusade."
TD: Yes, which, you said, "came to him as naturally as a baseball reference." Are we now, with the protesting military families, seeing a retreat from this kind of sacralizing of violence?
Carroll: No! I think the warnings signs are all around us for what has happened -- the politicization of fundamentalist Christianity. I mean, we've had that since the early days of the Cold War when Billy Graham became a tribune of anticommunism. But what's new is the way in which this marginal fundamentalist Christianity has entered the political mainstream and taken hold on Capitol Hill. Dozens and dozens of congressmen and senators are now overt Christian fundamentalists who apply their theology -- including religious categories like Armageddon and end-of-the-world justifications for violence -- to their political decisions. The kind of apocalyptic political thinking that Robert Jay Lifton has written about has now become so mainstream that we even see it in the United States military. For the first time, at least in my lifetime, overt religiosity has emerged as a military virtue a! nd I'm not just talking about General [William] Boykin, the wacko who deliberately and explicitly insulted the Islamic religion�
TD: �and who was promoted.
Carroll: And is still in power. Not just him but this most alarming and insufficiently noted phenomenon of the rise of fundamentalist Christianity at the Air Force Academy, conveniently located in the neighborhood of the two most politicized fundamentalist religious congregations in the country, Focus on the Family and the New Life Ministries. A significant proportion of the cadet population is reliably understood to be overt, born-again Christians and the commandant has been explicit in his support of religious conformity in the cadet corps. These are the people we are empowering with custodianship over our most powerful weapons in a war increasingly defined in religious terms by the President of the United States. All of this is our side of a religious war against an increasingly mobilized jihadist Islam.
Meanwhile in Europe, Great Britain had, until recently, been a far more tolerant culture than the United States (as indicated by the British welcome to large populations of Muslim immigrants over the last generation). All of that is now being firmly and explicitly repudiated by British lawmakers. You see it in the great cities of Europe everywhere. When people in the Netherlands and France vote against the European Constitution in some measure because it represents to them an opening to Turkey and the world of Islam, something quite large is happening.
Lighting the Dry Tinder of History
TD: Doesn't this take us back to a period you've studied deeply -- the Middle Ages?
Carroll: It's true. We don't sufficiently appreciate how the paradigm of the crusades never ended for Europe. Europe came into being in response to the threat of Islam. The European structure of government, the royal families of Europe, they're all descended from Charlemagne, grandson of the man who defeated the Islamic armies at Tours. More than a thousand years ago, a system of identity first took hold in Europe that defined itself against Islam. This is the ultimate political Manichaeism in the European mind.
We're the children of this. Of course, Islam had been forgotten in our time. Never mind that there were more than a billion Muslims in the world. All through the Cold War, we thought that the other, the stranger, the enemy was the Communist. But the Muslim world never forgot about us. The crusades are yesterday to them. They've understood better than we have that the West has somehow defined itself against them.
It's in this context that we have to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A thousand years ago, as now, the political fate of Jerusalem was the military spark for the marshaling of a holy war. The crusaders, after all, were going to Jerusalem to rescue the Holy Land from the infidel, and the infidel was defined as a twin-set, Muslims and Jews. The attack on Muslims happened simultaneously with the first real attacks against Jews inside Europe. The ease with which, in the Middle East, the conflict in Israel has come to be subsumed as the defining conflict with the West is part of this phenomenon.
In Cologne [Germany] last week, I met with the head of the Jewish congregation and also the imam who heads the Muslim community, and they both reported the same experience. They both feel they're on the table -- the table of sacrifice -- in Europe. They're both feeling vulnerable to attack and they're right to feel that way. It's a very curious turn.
Anyway, the United States of America didn't understand the tinder it was playing with and George Bush, in his na�ve reference to the crusades, demonstrated his profound ignorance of how deep in the history of our culture these conflicts go. Osama bin Laden understood this much better than Bush. It's no accident that the two epithets of choice the jihadists use for the American enemy are "crusaders" and "Jews," and they're mobilizing epithets for vast numbers of Muslim Arabs.
TD: Do you think that, in dancing with Osama bin Laden, Bush has somehow turned him into something like a superpower? You know, a word you used early on caught my eye. You said, "Mr. Bush's hubristic foreign policy has been officially exposed as based on nothing more than hallucination." However clever bin Laden has been, isn't there also something hallucinatory about all this?
Carroll: It's true that if you begin to treat an imagined enemy as transcendent, at a certain point he becomes transcendent.
The Mosquito and the Hammer
TD: You said we "forgot" Islam. A theme of your writings and maybe your life -- if you'll excuse my saying so -- is an American-style willed forgetfulness. Two key concerns of yours that seem "forgotten" in American life are the militarization of our society and nuclear weapons. Your father was a general. Your next book is about the Pentagon. What's the place of the Pentagon in our life that we don't see?
Carroll: When George W. Bush responded to the crisis of 9/11, two things came into play: his own temperament -- his ideological impulses which were na�ve, callow, dangerous, Manichaean, triumphalist -- and the structure of the American government, which was sixty years in the making. What's not sufficiently appreciated is that Bush had few options in the way he might have responded to 9/11.
What was called for was vigorous diplomatic activity centered around cooperative international law enforcement, but our government had invested little of its resources in such diplomatic internationalism in the previous two generations. What we had invested in since World War II was massive military power, so it was natural for Bush to turn first to a massive military response. The meshing of Bush's temperament and a long-prepared American institutional response was unfortunate, but there it was. As somebody said, when he turned to his tool bag to respond to the mosquito of Osama bin Laden, the only tool he had in it was a hammer, so he brought it down on Afghanistan and destroyed it; then he brought it down on Iraq and destroyed it, missing the mosquito, of course.
Something has happened in our country since the time of Franklin Roosevelt that we haven't directly reckoned with. The book I've just written has as its subtitle, "The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power." That polemical phrase "disastrous rise" comes from Eisenhower's famous military-industrial-complex speech where he explicitly warned against "the disastrous rise of misplaced power" in America -- exactly the kind that has since come into being.
TD: And yet one of the hallucinatory aspects of this, don't you think, is that when we responded after 9/11�
Carroll: �the power was empty. That's the irony, of course. We've created for ourselves the disaster an enemy might have liked to create for us. That was the essence of the Eisenhower warning. We've sacrificed democratic values. What accounts for Abu Ghraib and Guant�namo? What accounts for the abandonment of basic American principles of how you treat accused people? We've abandoned this fundamental tenet of American democracy ourselves! We didn't need an invading force to take away this one chief pillar of the Constitution. We took it down ourselves.
And we've barely begun to reckon with the war machine that we created to fight the Soviet Union and that continued intact when the Soviet Union disappeared. Of course, that was the revelation at the end of the Cold War when the threat went away and our response didn't change. This isn't a partisan argument, because the person who presided over the so-called peace dividend which never came was Bill Clinton; the person who presided over the time when we could have dismantled our nuclear arsenal, or at least shrunk it to reasonable levels (as even conservative military theorists wish we had done) was Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was the person who first undercut the ideas of the International Criminal Court, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. When George Bush became president, he stepped into space created for him by Bill Clinton. This isn't to demonize Clinton. It's just to show that our political system had already been corrupted ! by something we weren't reckoning with -- and the shorthand for that something was "the Pentagon."
TD: The bomb also arrived at that moment 60 years ago and you often write about it as the most forgotten of things.
Carroll: Marc Trachtenberg, the political scientist, has this phrase "atomic amnesia." Everything having to do with atomic weapons we seem to forget which is why the United States of America has had such trouble reckoning with the authentic facts of what happened in 1945, the negotiations around the Japanese surrender impulse, the invasion of Japan, and all of that. The first week of August every year we see this flurry of American insistence on the necessity of the bomb (almost all of which has been thoroughly debunked by professional historians across the ideological spectrum). At the other end of the spectrum, we have not begun to reckon at all with the nonsense of American policies toward nuclear weapons today -- the fact that we're resuming their production even now, that we continue to threaten their use even now. How can these questions be so unreckoned with? Well, the answer is that they're part of this larger phenomenon, the elephant in the center of th! e American living room that we just walk around and nobody speaks about.
The Roman Empire -- and Ours
TD: I was thinking of that relatively brief moment just after 9/11 and before Iraq when pundits were talking about us as the new Roman Empire; when there was this feeling, very much connected to the Pentagon, that we had the power to dominate the world, from land, from space, from wherever. Do you have anything to say about that now?
Carroll: We're not sufficiently attuned to the fact that we of the West are descended from the Roman Empire. It still exists in us. The good things of the Roman Empire are what we remember about it -- the roads, the language, the laws, the buildings, the classics. We're children of the classical world. But we pay very little attention to what the Roman Empire was to the people at its bottom -- the slaves who built those roads; the many, many slaves for each citizen; the oppressed and occupied peoples who were brought into the empire if they submitted, but radically and completely smashed if they resisted at all.
We Christians barely remember the Roman war against the Jewish people in which historians now suggest that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed by the Romans between 70 and 135 CE. Why were the Jews killed? Not because the Romans were anti-Semites. They were killed because they resisted what for them was the blasphemous occupation of the Holy Land of Israel by a godless army. It would remain one of the most brutal exercises of military power in history until the twentieth century. That's the Roman story.
We Americans are full of our sense of ourselves as having benign imperial impulses. That's why the idea of the American Empire was celebrated as a benign phenomenon. We were going to bring order to the world. Well, yes� as long as you didn't resist us. And that's where we really have something terrible in common with the Roman Empire. If you resist us, we will do our best to destroy you, and that's what's happening in Iraq right now, but not only in Iraq. That's the saddest thing, because the way we destroy people is not only by overt military power, but by writing you out of the world economic and political system that we control. And if you're one of those benighted people of Bangladesh, or Ghana, or Sudan, or possibly Detroit, then that's the way we respond to you. We'd do better in other words if we had a more complicated notion of what the Roman Empire was. We must reckon with imperial power as it is felt by people at the bottom. Rome's power. America's.
Copyright 2005 Tomdispatch
the cat that ate the canary
remember the story of the cat that ate the canary? this picture reminds me of george w. bush...how he must feel most of the time...he eats alot of canaries and grins at you with feathers stuck between his teeth.
New Orleans by AnomalousNYC @ Flickr
New Orleans
(slideshow)
by
AnomalousNYC
The incredible devastation from Hurricane Katrine left me a little overwhelmed. Refugees in the news kept saying things like "Where is all the help? Don't you realize what has happened here? Doesn't anyone even care?" On friday I went out in the street and started talking with people about the Hurricane, asking them how they felt and asking them if they would like to hold this message for the people down there. The response was amazing: in the last four days, I've gotten nearly 1,000 of these portraits. Some people smiled and sent comforting faces. Some people frowned and sent faces that showed their grief and concern. Some people - in particular those people who are actually from New Orleans or who have family there - made very stony faces. These latter in particular moved me profoundly and sometimes I found myself crying while taking these pictures. It was as if they stepped beyond the theatricality and falsehood of photography to really say with their simple presence, shouting against all hope across a vast gap, I am thinking of you. I hope you get this message: I am here. I am really thinking of you.
(slideshow)
by
AnomalousNYC
The incredible devastation from Hurricane Katrine left me a little overwhelmed. Refugees in the news kept saying things like "Where is all the help? Don't you realize what has happened here? Doesn't anyone even care?" On friday I went out in the street and started talking with people about the Hurricane, asking them how they felt and asking them if they would like to hold this message for the people down there. The response was amazing: in the last four days, I've gotten nearly 1,000 of these portraits. Some people smiled and sent comforting faces. Some people frowned and sent faces that showed their grief and concern. Some people - in particular those people who are actually from New Orleans or who have family there - made very stony faces. These latter in particular moved me profoundly and sometimes I found myself crying while taking these pictures. It was as if they stepped beyond the theatricality and falsehood of photography to really say with their simple presence, shouting against all hope across a vast gap, I am thinking of you. I hope you get this message: I am here. I am really thinking of you.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Friday, September 9, 2005
Fourth Anniversary of September 11th Attacks~Commemoration Schedule
Commemoration Schedule
September 11th, 2005:
Fourth Anniversary of September 11th Attacks
From Heather Cross,
Your Guide to New York City for Visitors.
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Thursday, September 8, 2005
Foreign offers of help ready, waiting
MichaelMoore.com
Latest News
September 7th, 2005 1:11 pm
Foreign offers of help ready, waiting
By Elizabeth Williamson / Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Offers of foreign aid worth tens of millions of dollars — including a Swedish water-purification system, a German cellular-telephone network and two Canadian rescue ships — have been delayed for days awaiting review by backlogged federal agencies, according to European diplomats and information collected by the State Department.
Since Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast, more than 90 countries and international organizations have offered to assist in recovery efforts for the flood-stricken region, but nearly all endeavors remained mired yesterday in bureaucratic entanglements — in most cases, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
In Germany, a massive telecommunication system and two technicians await the green light to fly to Louisiana, after its donors spent four days searching for someone willing to accept the gift.
"FEMA? That was a lost cause," said Mirit Hemy, an executive with the Netherlands-based New Skies Satellite, who made the phone calls. "We got zero help, and we lost one week trying to get hold of them."
In Sweden, a transport plane loaded with a water-purification system and a cellular network has been ready to take off for four days, while Swedish officials wait for flight clearance. Nearly a week after they were offered, four Canadian rescue vessels and two helicopters have been accepted but probably won't arrive from Halifax, Nova Scotia, until Saturday. The Canadians' offer of search-and-rescue divers has gone begging.
Matching offers of aid — from Panamanian bananas to British engineers — with needs in the devastated Gulf region is difficult in a disaster whose scope is unheard-of in recent U.S. history, especially for a country that is more accustomed to giving than receiving aid.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday that to his knowledge, all offers of foreign aid have been accepted but must be vetted by emergency-relief specialists.
"I think the experts will take a look at exactly what is needed now," he said.
FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule said the foreign complaints echo those from governors and officials across the nation.
"There has been that common thought that because [offers of aid] are not tapped immediately, they're not prudently used," Rule said. "We are pulling everything into a centralized database. We are trying not to suck everything in all at once, whether we need it or not."
Soon after the flooding, the government of Sweden offered a C-130 Hercules transport plane, loaded with water-purification equipment, and a cellular network donated by Ericsson.
"As far as I know, it's still on the ground," said Claes Thorson, press counselor at the Swedish Embassy in Washington. He said that along with 20 other European Union nations that have pledged money and goods, "We are ready to send our things. We know they are needed, but what seems to be a problem is getting all these offers into the country."
So far, Thorson said, the State Department has denied Sweden's request for flight clearance.
German telecommunications company KB Impuls contacted another company, Unisat, based in Rhode Island, with the idea of contributing an integrated satellite and cellular-telephone system.
The $3 million system could handle 5,000 calls at once, routing them, if necessary, through Germany.
The donor, KB Impuls, would contribute the equipment and two engineers, supplied with their own food, water and generator fuel, to set it up. Unisat contacted another firm, New Skies Satellite, based in the Netherlands with offices in Washington, which agreed to contribute satellite capacity.
New Skies arranged transport, securing a C-130 cargo plane from the Israeli Air Force, to pick up the equipment and technicians from Germany and bring them to Louisiana.
"With one call, I got an airplane," Hemy said. For four days, she and the owner of Unisat, Uri Bar-Zemer, called contacts at FEMA, the American Red Cross, the State Department and members of Congress, trying to find someone to accept the gift.
Finally, the State Department told them that to receive flight clearance, the gift must have a specific recipient.
"I was ringing, ringing, ringing — and nothing," Hemy said. Finally, yesterday, she got a call from the U.S. Air Force Joint Task Force Katrina Communication Operations division, thanking the companies for the gift and inquiring about the system's technical specifications.
As of late yesterday the companies were waiting for a written order from the Northern Command to begin the mission.
Monday, September 5, 2005
Whereas This the Truth
Whereas This Is the Truth
Julie Polter
This is the big lie the world tells us: that the universe is connected by trade agreements, electronic banking, computer networks, shipping lanes, and the seeking of profit—nothing else. Whereas this is the truth of God: all creation is one holy web of relationships, and gifts meant for all; that creation vibrates with the pain of all its parts, because its true destiny is joy.
What does Labor Day mean to you?
Julie Polter
This is the big lie the world tells us: that the universe is connected by trade agreements, electronic banking, computer networks, shipping lanes, and the seeking of profit—nothing else. Whereas this is the truth of God: all creation is one holy web of relationships, and gifts meant for all; that creation vibrates with the pain of all its parts, because its true destiny is joy.
What does Labor Day mean to you?
TalkLeft: International Views of Bush: He Panicked
International Views of Bush: He Panicked
Sometimes it's good to see how others view us. The headlines say it all:
* England: The Week Bush Failed America
* Scotland: Bush Panics and Sends in the Marines and Katrina Reveals Truth About U.S. Poverty
* France: Le Monde Editorial: Catastrophe Sparks New Debate Over Wisdom of Iraqi War; Le Figaro: A Distressing End to Bush's Summer Vacation
* Italy: Storm Reveals Leader Who Divides America
* Germany: German Minister Says Part of Blame for Katrina Goes to Bush
* India: (Reuters) 'Bush doesn't care about black people, shame on America' and U.S. South Drowns in Bitterness
* Australia: Survivor's Fury at Relief Effort
I didn't even bother with the more obvious ones coming from Cuba (calling Bush criminally insane) or the Middle East.
Posted Sunday :: September 04, 2005 Katrina
Sometimes it's good to see how others view us. The headlines say it all:
* England: The Week Bush Failed America
* Scotland: Bush Panics and Sends in the Marines and Katrina Reveals Truth About U.S. Poverty
* France: Le Monde Editorial: Catastrophe Sparks New Debate Over Wisdom of Iraqi War; Le Figaro: A Distressing End to Bush's Summer Vacation
* Italy: Storm Reveals Leader Who Divides America
* Germany: German Minister Says Part of Blame for Katrina Goes to Bush
* India: (Reuters) 'Bush doesn't care about black people, shame on America' and U.S. South Drowns in Bitterness
* Australia: Survivor's Fury at Relief Effort
I didn't even bother with the more obvious ones coming from Cuba (calling Bush criminally insane) or the Middle East.
Posted Sunday :: September 04, 2005 Katrina
Sunday, September 4, 2005
Quote on Mankind
"Atoms for peace. Man is still the greatest miracle and the greatest problem on this earth."
~David Sarnoff~
~David Sarnoff~
A quote on friendship by Ralph Waldo Emerson
My Way - My Page: "The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~"
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~"
Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush
MichaelMoore.com
Mike's Letter
Friday, September 2nd, 2005
Vacation is Over... an open letter from Michael Moore to George W. Bush
Friday, September 2nd, 2005
Dear Mr. Bush:
Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.
Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?
Last Thursday I was in south Florida and sat outside while the eye of Hurricane Katrina passed over my head. It was only a Category 1 then but it was pretty nasty. Eleven people died and, as of today, there were still homes without power. That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news. Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!
I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?
And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!
On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.
There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.
No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!
You hang in there, Mr. Bush. Just try to find a few of our Army helicopters and send them there. Pretend the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are near Tikrit.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
www.MichaelMoore.com
P.S. That annoying mother, Cindy Sheehan, is no longer at your ranch. She and dozens of other relatives of the Iraqi War dead are now driving across the country, stopping in many cities along the way. Maybe you can catch up with them before they get to DC on September 21st.
Saturday, September 3, 2005
Yahoo! News Photo - U.S. Supreme Court on Yahoo! News Photos
i wonder if this is good....meaning the people (the citizens of this great country!) or bad where the government (BushCo) gets the stupid and the rich believing his lame-ass excuses for procrastinating (remember, he loves to party...afterall, he's an ex-coke head!),not caring unless your really wealthy, you're white...you vote...you're a republican...
NowPublic News Story - Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
http://www.NowPublic.com/node/18367
some friends of mine have told me while volunteering during major disasters such as 9/11 they felt it was a real eye opening expierence...when you donate 100 bucks $98 of your donation goes to administrative costs...only $2 got to the actual victims of the catastrophe...
Become a citizen reporter!
If you have news footage for this story you can send it in an email to news@nowpublic.com
To learn more about NowPublic visit our website http://www.nowpublic.com
http://www.NowPublic.com/node/18367
some friends of mine have told me while volunteering during major disasters such as 9/11 they felt it was a real eye opening expierence...when you donate 100 bucks $98 of your donation goes to administrative costs...only $2 got to the actual victims of the catastrophe...
Become a citizen reporter!
If you have news footage for this story you can send it in an email to news@nowpublic.com
To learn more about NowPublic visit our website http://www.nowpublic.com
Technology has broken the corporate news monopoly. Digital cameras, camera phones, blogs, and RSS put the tools of the news trade into the hands of the public, and now real news comes from real people everywhere. Now you can demand coverage of the stories you care about - all you need is nowPublic.
Here public demand launches investigations. Story Ideas come from people on the ground, insiders, community leaders. Footage comes from eye witnesses, citizen reporters, people close to the real story. It's open source news, and even in its infancy it’s richer, faster, more powerful than the infotainment it replaces.
We invite you to join this revolution. Take control of the news. Make it deliver information about your community, your interests, your life. It's time. The news is NowPublic.
NYTimes.com: From Margins of Society to Center of the Tragedy
NATIONAL / NATIONAL SPECIAL September 2, 2005
The Victims: From Margins of Society to Center of the Tragedy
By DAVID GONZALEZ
Many African-American leaders note that many of those still stuck at the center of the tragedy are largely black and poor.
NYTimes.com: A Can't-Do Government
OPINION September 2, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist: A Can't-Do Government
By PAUL KRUGMAN
America, once famous for its can-do attitude, now has a can't-do government that makes excuses instead of doing its job.
Citizens for Legitimate Government
"BREAKING NEWS AND COMMENTARY"
Last updated: Sat, 03 Sep 2005 19:58:42 GMT
'We want either a hammer or a fire, to break the spell or dissolve the ice.' Artisan radical freethinker, George Jacob Holyoake, Reasoner V (1848): 2.
more
Last updated: Sat, 03 Sep 2005 19:58:42 GMT
'We want either a hammer or a fire, to break the spell or dissolve the ice.' Artisan radical freethinker, George Jacob Holyoake, Reasoner V (1848): 2.
more
Ashamed of My Country
a great blog written by my partner and my friend Kathy...she is trying to help survivors of the hurricane...
GREAT WORK KAT!!!!!
GREAT WORK KAT!!!!!
Kanye West Slams Bush On NBC (Red Cross Relief Fundraiser)
You go Kanye!!! You speak the truth my friend. I have to add my own little part though...it's not only blacks...it's the poor...and women and children. None of us seem to have any worth to Bushco, to the rich, or republican right wing idiots that try and kill us off by letting people suffer after losing everything they have.
Wikipedia~Hurricane Katrina Help & Info
a great source of links and information about Hurricane Katrina...the storm itself....relief efforts...social and economic impact for the poor people of Louisiana, Missisippi, and Alabama...
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