Three times a charm, George?

From Americablog: Nancy Pelosi asks the question about the surge that we all want to ask:

PELOSI: He's tried this two times — it's failed twice. I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?'

BUSH: Because I told them it had to.

PELOSI: Why didn't you tell them that the other two times?

Iraq war: a street level view

Most Americans' view of the Iraq war is heavily filtered (no cameras at Dover) and mediated by politicians, pundits and the nightly news. Yet few get an "on the street" view. Lara Logan, CBS's chief foreign correspondent, produced such a view in a documentary that CBS won't air. Instead, it is available only on the Web. This AlterNet story gives the details:

The segment in question -- "Battle for Haifa Street" -- is a piece of first-rate journalism but one that appears only on the CBS News website -- and has never been broadcast. It is a gritty, realistic look at life on the very mean streets of Baghdad and includes interviews with civilians who complain that the U.S. military presence is only making their lives worse and the situation more deadly.

See for yourself what the controversy is all about. You can watch the video here (RealPlayer required):

Text of the email from Lara Logan:

From: lara logan
Subject: help

The story below only appeared on our CBS website and was not aired on CBS. It is a story that is largely being ignored, even though this is taking place every single day in central Baghdad, two blocks from where our office is located.

Our crew had to be pulled out because we got a call saying they were about to be killed, and on their way out, a civilian man was shot dead in front of them as they ran.

I would be very grateful if any of you have a chance to watch this story and pass the link on to as many people you know as possible. It should be seen. And people should know about this.

If anyone has time to send a comment to CBS -- about the story -- not about my request, then that would help highlight that people are interested, and this is not too gruesome to air, but rather too important to ignore.

Many, many thanks.

Darwin on poetry

Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds . . . gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for picture or music . . . My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive . . . If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

source

Masters Everywhere - a poem

Masters Everwhere
by Michael Attie

Passed a forest ranger on the trail.
Perhaps I looked lost, she asked
"Any questions?"
She was pretty
so I gave her my usual
smart-ass response,
"Are time and space real?"
She responded,
"What we love is real."
Met my match
on Saddleback Lakes Trail.

From Inquiring Mind

Can violins be an answer to violence?

Truthdig reports on a wildly successful Venezuelan governmental program that makes free musical instruments and training available to all children and should serve as a model for the U.S. as we struggle to keep guns out of kids’ hands.

Recently, I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about an astounding music education program in Venezuela known as “El Sistema” (The System). El Sistema is a government-sponsored program that provides free instruments and lessons to any child who wants them. Since its founding in 1975, more than 250,000 youngsters have gone through the program. Currently, there are nearly 500,000 children receiving free training at more than 120 centers around the nation, and more than 200 youth orchestras are functioning.

It is quite an achievement. What makes it even more laudable and remarkable is that there are no barriers. Low-income and at-risk Venezuelan children and youths can participate as easily as those who come from well-to-do families. To be sure, there are community schools of the arts across the United States, but nothing quite like this. Certainly nothing sponsored by the government. We are too busy piling up debt and deficit by funding arms races and by invading other countries to pay attention to the arts.

But back to El Sistema. It was founded by Jose Antonio Abreu, a Venezuelan conductor, economics professor and member of Congress, who had a vision of not only encouraging the arts but also giving at-risk youths an alternative to crime, drugs and other antisocial activities. He envisioned making both a social and artistic investment. The amazing conductor Gustavo Dudamel is but one such graduate of El Sistema.

Cut to a second article in the L.A. Times, on Jan. 14, which describes a plan to “attack” the gangs of Los Angeles through more incarceration and sending more police strike forces to crime hot spots. All well and good and perhaps necessary, but in the long run the Venezuelan approach of providing better societal alternatives to crime is far superior to programs that attack already existing failures. An ounce of societal prevention is far better than pounds of attempts to cure its ills.

Time and time again we read of individuals whose lives—in poverty, in prison, in desperate straits—were redeemed, regenerated and resurrected by experiences in the arts. The Venezuelan example is but one. Poetry in the prisons, juvenile camp drama programs (see my last blog) and skid row writing programs are but a few. Yet, we continue to undervalue the power of the arts, and our government provides paltry support. Billions for arms, pennies for the arts. Sadly, we reap what we sow, and we don’t harvest what we don’t plant. More violins in the hands of inner-city youths would inevitably lead to fewer guns. How can we get this message across to our citizens and our legislators?

Maybe we're not so hard-headed after all

Conventional wisdom has held that the adult human brain is "hard-wired" and "set" in its ways and that no changes can be made to it. However, new research on neuroplasticiy shows that it's possible to change the brain's structure and function through mental techniques. Foremost among them is meditation, which, according to the Dalai Lama could use thought to change the actual material composition of the brain. The following articles from the Alliance for Human Research Protection website detail what these new discoveries are and what they can lead to - including world peace.

Neuroscientists are venturing into new areas positing that through attentive thinking (meditating) we can reshape the hard drive of our brains.

Below are excerpts selected by Sharon Begley, Wall Street Journal science columnist, from her own book, "Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain."

The subject--mind over matter--would have been off-limits just a few years ago when biological psychiatry held an iron grip on scientific discourse about the brain, having banished even the concept of mind.

Neuroscience was revolutionized in 2004 when it was discovered contrary to previous dogma, that brain neurotransmitters are plastic rather than rigid. Adult brains, it was discovered, were plastic and changeable. The brain's neuroplasticity means that the brain has the ability to change its structure and function in response to experience.

Begley writes that the Dalai Lama added another dimension: namely, the theory that the mind has the ability--through directed meditation (rigorous thinking) to change the brain as well.

This, I believe, may be a scientific turning point away from the dogma of biological psychiatry and its reductionist approach to mental functions. That mechanistic simplification of the human dimension is likely to be relegated to the dust heap of history's long trail of failed theories.

The challenge posed by Canadian neuroscientist, Helen Mayberg, who in 2002 discovered that placebos - sugar pills - work the same way on the brains of depressed people as antidepressants do, has never been addressed by psychiatry's leadership. She reported that in both groups: "Activity in the frontal cortex, the seat of higher thought, increased; activity in limbic regions, which specialize in emotions, fell."

However, when using brain imaging to measure activity in the brains of depressed adults comparing brain responses of patients prescribed an antidepressant (Paxil) compared to patients receiving cognitive behavioral therapy, Dr. Mayberg and colleagues at the University of Toronto were surprised by their findings. They reported that all the patients' depression lifted, regardless of whether their brains were infused with a powerful drug or with a different way of thinking. Yet the only "drugs" that the cognitive-therapy group received were their own thoughts.

The scientists scanned their patients' brains again, expecting that the changes would be the same no matter which treatment they received, as Dr. Mayberg had found in her placebo study. But no. "We were totally dead wrong," she says.

"Cognitive-behavior therapy muted overactivity in the frontal cortex, the seat of reasoning, logic, analysis and higher thought. The antidepressant raised activity there. Cognitive-behavior therapy raised activity in the limbic system, the brain's emotion center. The drug lowered activity there. With cognitive therapy, says Dr. Mayberg, the brain is rewired "to adopt different thinking circuits." Thus, those patients who received cognitive therapy learned not to catastrophize. They were taught to break their habit of interpreting every little setback as a calamity, as when they conclude from a lousy date that no one will ever love them."

The possibility of reshaping one's emotions by redirecting one's own thought process--opens the way toward changing people's perceptions about themselves and others--violence (and wars) could be rendered as obsolete, unacceptable solutions to resolving disputes.

In that case, there may be real hope for the human race to survive the current era of bloodshed.

Continuation of this article including a Wall Street Journal article with further excerpts and commentary by Begley.

Wes Nisker: Why I Meditate

Why I Meditate
(After Allen Ginsberg)

I meditate because I suffer
I suffer, therefore, I am
I am, therefore, I meditate
I meditate because there are so many other things to do
I meditate because, when I was young, it was all the rage
I meditate because of Siddhartha Gautama, Bodhiharma, Marco Polo, the
British Raj, Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg, Alfred E. Newman, et al
I meditate because evolution gave me a big brain, but it didn't come with
an instruction manual
I meditate because I have all the information I need
I meditate because I want to touch deep time, where the history of humanity
can be seen as just an evolutionary adjustment period
I meditate because life is too short, and sitting slows it down
I meditate because life is too long, and I need an occasional break
I meditate because I want to experience the world as Rumi does,
or Walt Whitman or Mary Oliver
I meditate because now I know that enlightenment doesn't exist,
So I can relax
I meditate because of the Dalai's Lama's laugh
I meditate because there are too many advertisements in my head
And I'm erasing all but the very best of them
I meditate because I have discovered that my mind is a great toy
and fun to play with
I meditate because I want to remember that I'm perfectly human
Sometimes I meditate because my heart is breaking
Sometimes I meditate so that my heart will break
I meditate because an Vedanta master once told me that in Hindi my
name "niskar" means non-doer
I meditate because I'm growing old and want to become comfortable
with emptiness
I meditate because Robert Thurman calls it an evolutionary sport
And I want to be on the home team
I meditate because I'm composed of a hundred trillion cells, and
from time to time
I need to reassure them that we're all in this together
I meditate because it's such a relief to spend time ignoring myself
I meditate because my country spends more money on weapons than all the
other nations in the world combined
If I had more courage, I'd probably immolate myself
I meditate because I want to discover the fifth Brahma Vihara, the
divine abode of Ah
And then I'll go down in history as a great spiritual abbot
I meditate because I'm building myself a bigger and better perspective
And occasionally I need to add a new window.

Wes Nisker

Grand oops! We was duped!

On January 17, this blog published excerpts and a link to a story that claimed the National Park Service refuses to answer visitors' questions about the age of the Grand Canyon because of creationist pressures from the Bush administration. The editor of Skeptic Magazine discovers he - and therefore I - became victims of an environmental activist group's deliberate lies. Because this is a serious lapse, I present the complete text of Skeptic's retraction here.

How Skeptic Magazine Was Duped by an Environmental Activist Group (10 comments )
Michael Shermer, Washington, D.C.

Last week I edited and approved for publication in eSkeptic and www.skeptic.com (the electronic editions of Skeptic magazine) a story that included highlights from a press release issued by PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility), a Washington D.C.-based environmental watchdog group (www.peer.org). That press release, dated December 28, 2006, was headlined:

HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON?
PARK SERVICE WON'T SAY -- Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

The first sentence of the release reads:

Washington, DC -- Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees.

Unfortunately, in our eagerness to find additional examples of the inappropriate intrusion of religion in American public life (as if we actually needed more), we accepted this claim by PEER without calling the National Park Service (NPS) or the Grand Canyon National Park (GCNP) to check it. As a testimony to the quality of our readers, however, dozens immediately phoned both NPS and GCNP, only to discover that the claim is absolutely false. Callers were told that the Grand Canyon is millions of years old, that no one is being pressured from Bush administration appointees--or by anyone else--to withhold scientific information, and all were referred to a statement by David Barna, Chief of Public Affairs, National Park Service as to the park's official position. "Therefore, our interpretive talks, way-side exhibits, visitor center films, etc. use the following explanation for the age of the geologic features at Grand Canyon," the document explains. "If asked the age of the Grand Canyon, our rangers use the following answer:

The principal consensus among geologists is that the Colorado River basin has developed in the past 40 million years and that the Grand Canyon itself is probably less than five to six million years old. The result of all this erosion is one of the most complete geologic columns on the planet."

Understandably, many of our readers were outraged by both the duplicity of the claim and our failure to fact check it. One park ranger wrote us:

You're a day late and a dollar short on this one. As a national park ranger, I found most of PEER's findings to be bogus. So have others: http://parkrangerx.blogspot.com :

A Grand Canyon park interpreter wrote:

This is incorrect. I have NEVER been told to present non-science based programs. In fact, I received "talking points" demanding that Grand Canyon employees present programs BASED ON SCIENCE and that we must use the scientific version supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Sciences. As an interpreter I have shared the "creation" story of the Hopi people and the Paiute people because it is culturally relative. I used these stories as a tool to introduce the scientific story. Be confident there are good people running government, too.

One of our readers directly challenged Jeff Ruch, the Executive Director of PEER:

When I challenged that PEER guy to show me some evidence and provided him evidence to the contrary, he didn't have much. I would say PEER did more than jump the gun. I'd say they are spreading misinformation.

Another Grand Canyon park interpreter offered this explanation:

Ruch's attempts to insinuate a conspiratorial link between the NPS and organized religion are misguided and founded in fervent anti-Christian opposition, not reason or the law. Ruch's anti-Judeo-Christian bias is evidence by his lack of opposition to GCA's selling of Native American creation myths. His misinformation campaign aims to tarnish the reputation of the NPS to leverage his position that creationism books should not be sold in the GCA bookstore. I've emailed a few of my contacts at GRCA, and so far, all deny any conspiracy and all freely give the canyon's age in education programs (as does all official GRCA print material). I'll post updates as information becomes available. Until then, don't believe everything you read.

The reference to the creationism book being sold in the Grand Canyon bookstore--Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail--is true. It is sold in the "inspiration" section of the bookstore, alongside other books of myth and spirituality. In any case, the story is an old one now, and completely irrelevant to the claim that NPS employees are withholding information about the age of the canyon, and/or are being pressured to do so by Bush administration appointees.

Embarrassed and angered by all of this, I promptly phoned Jeff Ruch myself and inquired what evidence he has to support this claim. He initially pointed to the creationism book and the fact that the NPS has failed to address numerous challenges to the sale of same in their bookstore. When I pointed out that this is irrelevant to the claim in the press release, he then reminded me of the biblical passages that have been posted at places along the rim of the canyon. Again, I admonished, this is not evidence for his central claim. We went round and round on the phone until I finally gave up and hung up, convinced that he simply made up the claim out of whole cloth.

Not wishing to simply call Ruch a liar, and allowing myself to calm down a bit, I emailed him and asked:

Can you tell us who in the Bush administration put pressure on park service employees? Can you name one person in the GCNP staff who says that they are not permitted to give the official estimate of the age of the canyon?

He responded:

1. I do not know--it is at the Director's level or above. We have been trying to find out for three years.
2. Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times.

I contacted Julie Cart at the Los Angeles Times, who was out of town on assignment, and got her editor, Frank Clifford, on the phone. Clifford knew all about the creationism book and the biblical passages on the rim of the canyon, but said that he had heard nothing about this new claim of Bush administration appointees silencing park service staff, and that if Julie knew of such a thing the Times would be most interested in following up with the story. I then reached Julie by email, who said that she too knew of no such silence on the part of park staffers regarding the age of the canyon.

Once again outraged and enraged , I emailed Ruch to ask him why he referenced Cart, who denied his central claim. He responded:

I referred you to Julie because of the response she got from the superintendent's office when she covered the issue earlier--not for any new claim.

Thanks a lot. I wasted several hours tracking down that false lead. Now at my wit's end with this guy, I point blank asked him if he made it all up. He responded:

The interpretive staff at GCNP we are working with do not want to be identified and have gone into deep underground as the atmosphere at the park is now somewhat volatile.

Well, it would have been nice (not to mention ethical) if he would have said so in the first place. (I have now wasted about 10 hours of research time on this instead of other projects.) The referencing of sources who wish to remain anonymous is quite common in journalism and, in fact, there are laws protecting whistleblowers . The fact that no such reference was made until I pointedly accused Ruch of flatout lying makes me, well, skeptical of this explanation. His final statement to me doesn't make me any less skeptical:

We are issuing an amended release today that 1) deletes reference to what interpretive staff can and cannot say and 2) features the NPS official statement that they provide geological information to the public.

Then why did PEER issue that statement in the first place? In my opinion, this is why:

PEER is an anti-Bush, anti-religion liberal activist watchdog group in search of demons to exorcise and dragons to slay. On one level, that's how the system works in a free society, and there are plenty of pro-Bush, pro-religion conservative activist watchdog groups who do the same thing on the other side. Maybe in a Hegelian process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis we find truth that way; at least at the level of talk radio. But journalistic standards and scholarly ethics still hold sway at all levels of discourse that matter, and to that end I believe we were duped by an activist group who at the very least exaggerated a claim and published it in order to gain notoriety for itself, or worse, simply made it up.

To that end, shame on me for not fact checking this story before publishing it on eSkeptic and www.skeptic.com. But shame on you too, Mr. Ruch, and shame on PEER, for this egregious display of poor judgment and unethical behavior.

What even the Neanderthals knew better than most Americans

**RJ Eskow writes in The Huffington Post that the US is "almost last in understanding evolution." Christian fundamentalist activism, aided and abetted by the Bush administration's faith in all things "faith based," is the primary reason.

Americans rank next-to-last on a survey of 34 nations' acceptance of evolution as a scientific fact. (See the chart, below.) Our awareness of this scientific reality has actually gone down over the past 20 years, no doubt as a result of the so-called "intelligent design" movement and other Christian fundamentalist campaigns. In fact, frequent churchgoers in the US are most likely to doubt evolution. How will their children - and ours - become the great scientists, doctors, and engineers of tomorrow?

The US scores well behind nine European countries in its acceptance of scientific fact. Jon Miller, the primary author of the survey on evolution, notes one likely cause:

"The biblical literalist focus of fundamentalism in the United States sees Genesis as a true and accurate account of the creation of human life that supersedes any scientific finding or interpretation. In contrast, mainstream Protestant faiths in Europe (and their U.S. counterparts) have viewed Genesis as metaphorical and--like the Catholic Church--have not seen a major contradiction between their faith and the work of Darwin and other scientists."

A country that doesn't believe in evolution doesn't respect rational thought or the scientific process. It can't produce the scientists and leaders it needs to face the problems of the 21st Century. This is even a national security problem, since a nation that won't face and study reality can't defend itself. The situation should be of concern to every American.

Evolution is not a "theory" in the way that fundamentalists claim. It's verified scientific fact, developed through a rigorous method of observation, hypothesis, and confirmation.

Read the rest of the post here.

A lawyer tells why he defends Gitmo detainees

I thought we had learned from the McCarthy era, from the Nixon era from all the egregious inanities of the recent past. But apparently we have not. We will look back on the Bush era as a parade of inanities. One of the latest is the statement by deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs Cully Stimson, who apparently doesn't believe in the venerable principle of "innocent until proven guilty." His rank stupidity got the megaphone of a radio program recently, and then the media firestorm following it, when he flatly characterizes lawyers who defend detainees as representing "terrorists." One of those lawyers, Anant Raut, published an open letter to him that attempts to educate him on the law - and on what justice is all about. Apparently it had some effect because he shortly published an apology. Here is an excerpt from Raut's letter:

During the course of an interview on Federal News Radio, you named my law firm and 13 others whose attorneys have clients in Guantánamo and urged our corporate clients to take their business elsewhere. "You know what, it's shocking," you told your audience. "I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms." You then said our efforts might be funded by "monies from who knows where."

Mr. Stimson, I don't defend "terrorists." I'm representing five guys who were held or are being held in Guantánamo without ever being charged with a crime, some of them for nearly five years. Two have been quietly sent home to Saudi Arabia without an explanation or an admission of error. The only justification the U.S. government has provided for keeping the other three is the moniker "enemy combatant," a term that has been made up solely for the purpose of denying them prisoner-of-war protection and civilian protection under the Geneva Conventions. It's a term that was attached to them in a tribunal proceeding so inherently bogus that even the tribunal president is compelled to state on the record, in hundreds of these proceedings, that a combatant status review tribunal "is NOT a court of law, but a non-judicial administrative hearing."

Full text of letter here.

(via Salon.com)

HOAX!! How old is the Grand Canyon? Don't ask the Ranger

THIS STORY IS INCORRECT. SEE EXPLANATION AT JANUARY 19.

With rocks in their head, the creationist-centric Bush administration has ordered officials of the US National Park Service be agnostic about the age of the Grand Canyon. In a news release in late December 2006, an organization of environmental employees said:

Washington, DC — Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ‘no comment.’”

Full text of release



Technorati Tags: grand canyon, creationism, tom vail, nps, evolution

Administration taking troops as hostages

A posting on Daily Kos brings up a startling, and disgusting, tactic:

Buried in the middle of the NYT article headed "Pressure Builds Over Plan for Troop Increase" is the following report:

Mr. Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, said in an interview on "Meet the Press" on NBC that the White House has sufficient money under its control to deploy the troops as planned, and he suggested that once the troops are in place, Congress would be reluctant to cut off funding.

"I think once they get in harm's way, Congress's tradition is to support those troops," Mr. Hadley said.

Like the worst atrocities of the very insurgents, whose vile acts have fuelled so much hatred amongst our people, Hadley is saying that the White House will use the military men and women of its own nation as hostages in return for a demand that Congress pays a ransom in the form of approving the Iraq appropriations bill.

Obama's Presidential aspirations up in smoke?

Smoker's Voice: How Obama's filthy habit could win him the presidency.

So, will Obama abandon cigarettes altogether, or will he go the way of Cash and Dylan instead? It's a suitably tough decision for a man who aspires to be president: Quit now, and risk losing his vocal magic while campaigning, or puff on and pay later.

Obama announces!

Obama announcement via AlterNet.com video


Someone should have moved the teleprompter a bit to the left and tied his hands down.

Text of announcement:

As many of you know, over the last few months I have been thinking hard about my plans for 2008. Running for the presidency is a profound decision - a decision no one should make on the basis of media hype or personal ambition alone - and so before I committed myself and my family to this race, I wanted to be sure that this was right for us and, more importantly, right for the country.

I certainly didn't expect to find myself in this position a year ago. But as I've spoken to many of you in my travels across the states these past months; as I've read your emails and read your letters; I've been struck by how hungry we all are for a different kind of politics.

So I've spent some time thinking about how I could best advance the cause of change and progress that we so desperately need.

The decisions that have been made in Washington these past six years, and the problems that have been ignored, have put our country in a precarious place. Our economy is changing rapidly, and that means profound changes for working people. Many of you have shared with me your stories about skyrocketing health care bills, the pensions you've lost and your struggles to pay for college for your kids. Our continued dependence on oil has put our security and our very planet at risk. And we're still mired in a tragic and costly war that should have never been waged.

But challenging as they are, it's not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most. It's the smallness of our politics. America's faced big problems before. But today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common sense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can't tackle the big problems that demand solutions.

And that's what we have to change first.

We have to change our politics, and come together around our common interests and concerns as Americans.

This won't happen by itself. A change in our politics can only come from you; from people across our country who believe there's a better way and are willing to work for it.

Years ago, as a community organizer in Chicago, I learned that meaningful change always begins at the grassroots, and that engaged citizens working together can accomplish extraordinary things.

So even in the midst of the enormous challenges we face today, I have great faith and hope about the future - because I believe in you.

And that's why I wanted to tell you first that I'll be filing papers today to create a presidential exploratory committee. For the next several weeks, I am going to talk with people from around the country, listening and learning more about the challenges we face as a nation, the opportunities that lie before us, and the role that a presidential campaign might play in bringing our country together. And on February 10th, at the end of these decisions and in my home state of Illinois, I'll share my plans with my friends, neighbors and fellow Americans.

In the meantime, I want to thank all of you for your time, your suggestions, your encouragement and your prayers. And I look forward to continuing our conversation in the weeks and months to come.

Sincerely,

U.S. Senator Barack Obama

Poetry is a witness

** Gary Kamiya, in a Salon.com article, includes a statement about the function of poetry in a time of war:

Poetry, as the great Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz once wrote, is a witness...
Poetry, perhaps even more than pictures, makes war live. We understand the true horror of World War I not because of newsreels, but because of the searing words of Erich Maria Remarque and Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. And Iraq has produced its own poet, Brian Turner, who was an infantry team leader there for a year. In 2005, he published a collection of poems, "Here, Bullet," that is destined to endure long after the shrill arguments about the war have been forgotten.
...

2000 lbs

A flight of gold, that's what Sefwan thinks
as he lights a Miami, draws in the smoke
and waits in his taxi at the traffic circle.
He thinks of summer 1974, lifting
pitchforks of grain high in the air,
the slow drift of it like the fall of Shatha's hair,
and although it was decades ago, he still loves her,
remembers her standing at the canebrake
where the buffalo cooled shoulder-deep in the water,
pleased with the orange cups of flowers he brought her,
and he regrets how much can go wrong in a life,
how easily the years slip by, light as grain, bright
as the street's concussion of metal, shrapnel
traveling at the speed of sound to open him up
in blood and shock, a man whose last thoughts
are of love and wreckage, with no one there
to whisper him gone.

Sgt. Ledouix of the National Guard
speaks but cannot hear the words coming out,
and it's just as well his eardrums ruptured
because it lends the world a certain calm,
though the traffic circle is filled with people
running in panic, their legs a blur
like horses in a carousel, turning
and turning the way the tires spin
on the Humvee flipped to its side,
the gunner's hatch he was thrown from
a mystery to him now, a dark hole
in metal the color of sand, and if he could,
he would crawl back inside of it,
and though his fingertips scratch at the asphalt
he hasn't the strength to move:
shrapnel has torn into his ribcage
and he will bleed to death in minutes,
but he finds himself surrounded by a strange
beauty, the shine of light on the broken,
a woman's hand touching his face, tenderly
the way his wife might, amazed to find
a wedding ring on his crushed hand,
the bright gold sinking in flesh
going to bone.

Molly says "Raise hell!": March January 27

It's good to see Texan and syndicated columnist Molly Ivins back on the anti-war path (she's been ill). At alternet.comshe says:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on January 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"

Full text of article

Financial impact of a strike on Iran

**ING, a major investment bank has warned the financial community that a preemptive strike, by Israel or anybody else, would have the following consequences:

The financial market impact would be dramatic, even if Iranian retaliation were restrained. Risk assets have risen strongly over the past three years, and a surprise attack on Iran would catch out markets pricing in little volatility. The US dollar, government bond yields, stock markets and industrial raw materials would all fall. Oil and gold prices, could spike, boosting related equities, debt and currencies. Other credit spreads would widen, and the unwinding of carry trades would see funding currencies benefit, although Japan, dependent on Iranian oil, might lag others such as the Swiss franc. A prime casualty might be the Turkish lira, which could fall 10-20%. The duration of these effects would depend on the extent of Iranian retaliation: a constrained response would make them short-lived.

Why is this man smiling?

** Bob Cesca, in a HuffPost entry, comments on Bush's demeanor when discussing the most serious issues. These pix are from his recent 60 Minutes interview.

"Abu Ghraib was a mistake. Using bad language like 'bring 'em on.'"

"There's not enough troops on the ground right now to provide security for Iraq and that's why I made the decision I made."

"I think that what they're saying is is that the Iranians are providing equipment that is killing Americans. And therefor -- either way it's unacceptable."

When silence is betrayal - John Edwards speech

** Every second the warfare in Iraq continues - I won't call it a war because there really is no "enemy, just fighting - we support the murderous and suicidal actions of our government. John Edwards, a presidential candidate, articulates our moral obligation in terms of vision of the 20th century's moral giant, Martin Luther King, Jr. Opposing this country's actions doesn't mean we have no obligations to the country we destroyed in the process of trying to save it (which we weren't really trying to do anyway). But it does mean we need to stop supporting our aggressive killing of Iraqis. The following is from HuffPosts's Ari Melber.

To celebrate Reverend Martin Luther King this week, John Edwards delivered a stern anti-war speech at Harlem's Riverside Church, where King famously spoke out against the Vietnam war. Edwards cited Rev. King's anti-war legacy, clasped hands with his son, Martin Luther King III, and called on Congress to stop funding the war.

"If you're in Congress and you know this war is going in the wrong direction, it is no longer enough to study your options and keep your own counsel. Silence is betrayal. Speak out, and stop this escalation now," said Edwards.
...
But is this really the way to celebrate Reverend Martin Luther King? With political speeches, war debates and arguments over what his legacy means?

In a word, yes.

Reverend King was a politician and an activist. He knew the only way to solve America's most fundamental problems was through protest and political debate. As Americans commemorate his leadership and courage this week, we should continue his tradition of protest, politics and social change.

Full text
Video excerpts of Edwards speech

5 steps out of the Iraquagmire

Deepak Chopra puts forth 5 initiatives that could be a REAL way forward. Democrats in need of something concrete to offer should study these:

1. Apologize to the world at the U.N. and plead for help in keeping a fragile peace in Iraq, on the model of keeping the peace in Bosnia.

2. Federalize the country so that each sect has its own autonomous region with loose links to a central government.

3. Facilitate the movement of people to their new states, trying to avoid the same bloodbath that took hundreds of thousands of lives when Pakistan was partitioned from India.

4. Form an international agency to restore and run the Iraqi oil industry. This would be temporary until the federal state can divide the spoils without creating deeper rifts between Shia and Sunni.

5. Concentrate on money and jobs. One of the worst fruits of despotism is that the populace remains passive, uneducated, hopeless about the future, and indoctrinated with propaganda. For Iraq to live in peace, all these deficits must be lessened.

Full article.

Watch for "false flag" incident

**Rep. Ron Paul from - of all places - TEXAS says "I hope I'm wrong about this one" but he warns of a possible Gulf of Tonkin-type incident that could trigger a war with Iran. Israel might be the actual perpetrator, but for sure it will get the US involved once it starts. The US has probably already started by the recent Irbil action. But any shakeup now of the status quo - crappy as it is - would serve to hold the reformers at bay and keep Bush running things pretty much as he pleases for the next year or two.

This link includes video of the speech.

Furthermore by digby

Oops! "Surge" is purged

This article by Adam Green traces the short history of a current military term.

The Administration keeps trying to put one over on the public and test-drives words to see if we bite. Surge sucks, it turns out. So will we now accept Rice's "augmentation?" Probably not, since it will be as effective as some of the other products in that category.

Hear ye, hear ye!

Let word go out far and wide -"surge" has been purged from the lexicon of the Iraq war debate.

A term that once promised to join the ranks of "personal accounts," "clear skies," "healthy forests" and other Bush Propaganda All Starsmet a quick demise Wednesday when the president decided he could not credibly use the term to describe his Iraq escalation policy.

As you may know, "surge" was a recently invented term - leaked by Bush Administration officials to the press after the November elections that existed nowhere in Department of Defense's official Dictionary of Military Terms. By contrast, "escalation" is an official military term and has been used historically to describe troop increases (see Vietnam).

But for months, proponents of escalating the Iraq war have insisted
on using the term "surge" and the media have gone right along. Did you ever wonder why this word was pushed so hard?

A recent CBS poll lends a clue. Only 18% of Americans support putting more troops in Iraq. But when the question is framed as a "short-term" troop increase, support jumped to 45% (still a minority, but more substantial). And as CNN analyst Bill Schneider points out, "surge sounds temporary."

Some excellent research by Nico Pitney at Think Progress bolsters this theory. Between November 19 and November 22, there was a series of leaks by "senior officials" to the press - linking a possible "surge" to the concept of "short-term."

"Short-term surge," reported the New York Times and MSNBC. "Short period," reported the Washington Post. "Temporary surge," reported the Christian Science Monitor. ABC's Jonathan Karl even reported a "temporary surge of no more than 60 days."

We could win Iraq in 60 days, wow! The media was primed. The public was primed. There was just one small thing standing in the way - the truth.

That truth started coming out a month later - on December 27.

Rest of article from Huffington Post

Byrd says it again

In a post here on February 13, 2003, Senator Robert Byrd eloquently articulated his objection to our invasion of Iraq. Here's what he said back then:

To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war.

Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.

We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. Only on the editorial pages of our newspapers is there much substantive discussion of the prudence or imprudence of engaging in this particular war.

And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.

This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption -- the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future -- is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter. And it is being tested at a time of world-wide terrorism, making many countries around the globe wonder if they will soon be on our -- or some other nation's -- hit list. High level Administration figures recently refused to take nuclear weapons off of the table when discussing a possible attack against Iraq. What could be more destabilizing and unwise than this type of uncertainty, particularly in a world where globalism has tied the vital economic and security interests of many nations so closely together? There are huge cracks emerging in our time-honored alliances, and U.S. intentions are suddenly subject to damaging worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after September 11.

He continues the eloquence today. Will someone listen to him this time? We know it won't be the President or his handlers. But will members of the Congress of both parties listen and take ACTION to stop this no longer subtle commandeering of US democracy by a bunch of tyrannical madmen?

Here's the speech delivered on the floor of the US Senate Thursday afternoon, January 11, 2007

Via commondreams.org

A checklist of Bush blunders and lies - thanks Keith!

Crooks and Liars » Olbermann: A Look Backward at the Commander’s Credibility

Any meaningful assessment of the president's next step in Iraq must consider his steps and missteps so far.
So, let's look at the record:

• Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said he was no nation-builder; nation-building was wrong for America. Now, he says it is vital for America.
  
  
• He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Today, U.S. troops observe Iraqi restrictions.
  
  
• He told us about WMDs. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubing. Yellow-cake.
  
  
• He has told us the war is necessary…Because Saddam was a threat; Because of 9/11; Osama bin Laden; al Qaeda; Because of terrorism in general; To liberate Iraq; To spread freedom; To spread democracy; To keep the oil out of the hands of terrorist-controlled states; Because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.
  
  
• In pushing for and prosecuting this war, he passed on chances to get Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Muqtada al-Sadr, Osama bin Laden.
  
  
• He sent in fewer troops than recommended.
  
  
• He disbanded the Iraqi Army, and "de-Baathified" the government.
  
  
• He short-changed Iraqi training.
  
  
• He did not plan for widespread looting, nor the explosion of sectarian violence.
  
  
• He sent in troops without life-saving equipment.
  
  
• Gave jobs to foreign contractors, not the Iraqis.
  
  
• Staffed U-S positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.
  
  
• We learned that "America had prevailed", "Mission Accomplished", the resistance was in its "last throes".
  
  
• He has said more troops were not necessary, and more troops are necessary, and that it's up to the generals, and removed some of the generals who said more troops would be necessary.
  
  
• He told us of turning points: The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam, a provisional government,the trial of Saddam, a charter, a constitution, an Iraqi government, ¤elections, purple fingers, a new government, the death of Saddam.
  
  
• We would be greeted as liberators, with flowers.
  
  
• As they stood up–we would stand down, we would stay the course, we were never 'stay the course',
  
  
• The enemy was al Qaeda, was foreigners, terrorists, Baathists.
  
  
• The war would pay for itself, it would cost 1-point-7 billion dollars, 100 billion, 400 billion, half a trillion dollars.
  
  
• And after all of that, today it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Republicans, Democrats, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.

It's the oil, stupid

**Interesting thread on HuffingtonPost.com immediately after Bush's "surge" speech last night. In it is an intriguing, though convoluted argument that I feel needs to be set apart for scrutiny later if the events and logic cited actually come to pass.

It is McCain/Lieberman on a ticket for2008! McCain has already filed as a candidate for the Presidency in 2008 (Federal Election Commission). Bush has announced Lieberman to "head" the meetings on the progress with him in the White House on Iraq. McCain made the deal with the bankers of the U.S. several months ago in Europe when he accompanied Rumsfeld on a "briefing meeting on Iraq'". Eversince then, he has been in the loop with the White House (getting groomed).There are two outcomes for when withdrawal from Iraq occurs. Immediate withdrawal means that World Oil and Gas prices tumble and the Middle-East region National Leaders who have production commitments risk their overthrow from their partners within, and then the Bankers will renegotiate their "payoffs" with new oil price models for trading dollars, or second, National leadership over sectarian and extremists factions(which has been going on all the time in fluxuations amonst the various national leaders/players, keep their agreements for oil revenues at a "New Reduced Percentage" from the Banks in concert with the U.S. maintaining surface political stature, oil and gas supply lines, and continued arms/drug trades among the partners, and continued heavy U.S. Military support. McCain is being shown the ropes and Business As Usual. The political spectrum of Democrats will not be and are not of consequence. The Bush Administration (Conglomeration) had figured on losing in 2004, and was hoping to "sabatoge" another Democrat and work underneath the public scrutiny, as they did with Iran Hostages to Carter,and Iran-Contra under Reagan's Alzheimers, but the Poll Experiment worked well enough that they had to scramble for excuses to a false war in Iraq, to get the oil rights percentages up to 75% net. McCain is a willing partner, just remember the elimination of S & L's! He was brought in to that venture enabling the wholesale takeover of over 70% of single family mortgages being purchased by the banks for about 25 cents on the dollar! Vote NO ENCUMBANTS BACK IN OUR GOVERNMENT FOR AT LEAST THE NEXT THREE TERMS!!! Please.

By: spookcatcher on January 10, 2007 at 11:16pm

About midwifing democracy

** The late Jeane Kirkpatrick was appointed by Ronald Reagan as UN Ambassador. She was a major force in neoconservatism, and helped shaped American military, diplomatic and covert actions in the 80s. Here's what she said about the Carter foreign policy at the time:

"Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war." - Full Text

Wars and Lies: A Quiz

** Click here for the answers.

THE QUIZ

1. In the following statement, who is the person expressing his regrets?

"For the first time, he expressed his belief that the resolution had been extorted from Congress by deception, and said that he regretted his sponsorship of the resolution more than anything he had ever done in public life."

2. Who made the following statement about lying and withholding information from the Congress, the press, and the public?

"It was in the national interest, as we saw it, simply to tell them whatever would best serve to free the president from their interference."

3. When asked what would be revealed if many secret wartime documents were made public, who gave the following answer?

"the total lack of a good reason for what we were doing anywhere in the whole story"

4. When asked what he hoped to accomplish by revealing wartime information that was considered secret, who gave the following response?

"I hope the [Senators] discover that their responsibilities...go beyond getting re-elected...and that they can accept the responsibility of ending this war."

5. Who described this scenario?

"What we had come back to was a democratic republic - not an elected monarchy - a government under the law, with Congress, the courts, and the press functioning to curtail executive abuses, as our Constitution envisioned. [The legislature] was reclaiming, through its control of the purse, the war power it had fecklessly delegated years earlier. ...the war was going to end."

What does TSA stand for?

** Got this at the tail end of a trip report:

[My] carry-on bag is the same bag used to transport food and dishes to the boat during the summer. In an inside pocket, we discover that a steak knife has traveled to and from Chicago, totally undetected, however a sealed 12 ounce jar of pumpkin butter was confiscated. Also, [Companion] passed through security twice with a lighter in his pocket.

Can there be a productive conversation between Valhallans and athorists?

** Excerpted from an article in the Washington Post's On Faith:

Athorism is enjoying a certain vogue right now. Can there be a productive conversation between Valhallans and athorists? Naïve literalists apart, sophisticated thoreologians long ago ceased believing in the material substance of Thor's mighty hammer. But the spiritual essence of hammeriness remains a thunderingly enlightened relevation, and hammerological faith retains its special place in the eschatology of neo-Valhallism, while enjoying a productive conversation with the scientific theory of thunder in its non-overlapping magisterium. Militant athorists are their own worst enemy. Ignorant of the finer points of thoreology, they really should desist from their strident and intolerant strawmandering, and treat Thor-faith with the uniquely protected respect it has always received in the past. In any case, they are doomed to failure. People need Thor, and nothing will ever remove him from the culture. What are you going to put in his place?