Something we’ve already known, And Done Absolutely Nothing About, only this gets abit deeper than the War Profitteers:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration repeatedly ignored corruption at the highest levels within the Iraqi government and kept secret potentially embarrassing information so as not to undermine its relationship with Baghdad, according to two former State Department employees.
Coming from two civil servants who seem to understand who they are working for, one Arthur Brennan and James Mattil.
Brennan said that a congressional staffer visiting Baghdad couldn’t talk with staffers because they were too busy.
What were they busy doing in Baghdad:
the staffers were watching movies at the embassy and on their computers. The staffers’ workload had been cut dramatically because of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s “evisceration” of Iraq’s top anti-corruption office, he said.
And Condi is still around?
The State Department’s policies “not only contradicted the anti-corruption mission but indirectly contributed to and has allowed corruption to fester at the highest levels of the Iraqi government,” Brennan told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.
Want to find out about the Office of Accountability and Transparency, there’s a few sentences about this as well as Iraq’s Joint Anti-Corruption Committee
“Since we have done so little (to undercut corruption), it’s easy to see why the government of Iraq has not done more,” said Mattil, who left the accountability office last October after having served for a year as its chief of staff. “We have demanded no better.”
And how much has this cost our kids, hell the treasury was emptied way back, this comes to the tune of some 18 Billion, all on the credit card the Occupation is running on!
“One would have expected that our own government would have been doing everything it could to support” Iraq’s anti-corruption efforts, said Dorgan, D-N.D.
But “that was simply not the case. On the contrary, our own government contributed to the culture of corruption,” he added.
Hey everyone, just go shopping with the bailout monies, for retailers and credit card companies, you think is a tax rebate, that’s on your kids dime as well, and don’t forget to tune into your favorite reality show, after that stick head back up a**hole, where it’s been since allowing your Country to Crash!!!!!
As those who Serve are Killed and Maimed, as the country We Destroyed suffers more Destruction, Death and Maiming, In Our Names!
I should mention that I don’t believe in miracles, except that I have two to report.
First and foremost, I think both of my pups will be okay. Considering they were at death’s doorstep a mere two weeks ago, and that I had been convinced no less than four times that we were going to lose them, I would consider this a miracle. Not in the religious sense, mind you, though I can understand how some might feel that way. Instead, I consider it physiologically miraculous that they survived kidney failure, liver failure and loss of nearly 30% of body weight (while they were on fluids, I should add). They’re mostly back to normal, though we’re still trying to get them to eat appropriate dog food, as opposed to roasted chicken, kielbasa and bacon. Oh, and carrots. They LOVE carrots.
The second miracle to report involves my passport application. Specifically, I sent it by snail mail on a Thursday (can’t use a courier to send to a PO box). I received my new passport just eight days later. Granted, I did have it sent back by courier and I paid extra to expedite processing. But eight days? Especially when it had to traverse a border in both directions? I’d call that a miracle. I mean, this is the US government (and Canada Post) we’re talking about!
BTW – I’m going to be travelling (for work, alas) over the next few Mondays (and many other Mondays this summer). So, while I hope to have the foresight to set up a Party ahead of time, I will apologize in advance if I miss one!
A few days ago I accepted the mission to go undercover behind enemy lines in order to report back on the activities of the opposition. I have now safely returned and am ready to brief you all as thoroughly as possible. The specific activities that were undertaken included a trip to the heart of the Bible Belt, holding conversations with members of the 26% crowd and attendance at a “mega church” to scope out the organizational activities.
What all this really means is that I paid a visit to my family in Dallas, Texas this weekend. As most of you know by now, they are fundamentalist, right-wing, kool-aid drinking christians; the group that STILL says they view GW favorably.
Given that in 2000, this group HATED Senator McSame, my biggest question was whether or not they were going to support him this time around. Of course, the answer to that is “yes,” but I can say that answer was not given with much enthusiasm. The reason given for the support dovetails nicely with ek’s essay today titled Die Dolchstosslegende. You see, according to them, things are going much better in Iraq these days and they fear that the Dems will engage in a precipitous withdrawal just when we might be getting close to “winning,” much like we did in Vietnam.
In other election news, the view is that McSame can beat either Clinton or Obama, but the worry is that they’ll team up before its all over and take him down. But I’d say they have a bit more to worry about than what the Dems do or don’t do. That’s because they think the motivating issue for their crowd will be the presidential selection of Supremes Court justices in the next term. What that tells me is that the religious right won’t be able to embrace things like the war or the economy as a rallying cry, but will be looking for a re-birth of the culture wars.
In some circles we’ve heard that these folks are finally getting around to embracing the climate crisis. Not this crowd!! They’re still saying that scientists are split 50/50 on the issue and that we’re just in a “climate cycle” that is natural. Nothing to worry about here…move right along.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this trip was that I attended a Sunday morning service at one of Dallas’ most well-known mega churches, Lake Pointe. It was a bit surreal to be there after all I’ve heard about these places. And it was everything I’d heard it would be…and more. The “sanctuary” seats 7,000 and was almost 3/4 full for the one of three services that day that we attended. The “complex” looks almost like a mall from the outside with huge parking lots (they had to have public assistance from the small town its in to direct traffic between services) and HUGE buildings. Much like a rock concert, the minister is broadcast on 2 large screens during the service, complete with subtext for his sermon, so that everyone can follow along.
But there was controversy in the air yesterday!!! One of the area’s own “born-againers” and a former religion writer for the Dallas Morning News, Kristine Wicker, has written a book titled The Fall of the Evangelical Nation. Ms. Wicker’s book was the subject of an article in the most recent edition of Mother Jones titled The Myth of the Moral Majority
“The idea that evangelicals are taking over America is one of the greatest publicity scams in history,” Wicker concludes, “a perfect coup accomplished by savvy politicos and religious leaders, who understand media weaknesses and exploit them brilliantly.”
This information was shaking Lake Pointe Church Sunday morning because, in an article in this weekend’s Saturday Dallas Morning News, Wicker was interviewed and quoted the pastor there.
You use Lake Pointe Church in Rockwall and its pastor, the Rev. Steve Stroope, to illustrate some of your ideas. What does Mr. Stroope think about what you wrote?
He’s not too happy with me. I planned to do a very different book [about megachurches]. I let him know that it had changed. And in fact I got a quote from him that I was able to use in the book in which he says that sometimes something has to die for something new to be born.
Sunday morning Pastor Stroope opened the service by discounting what some may have read in the newspapers and declared that Lake Pointe was not engaged in political activities.
What I take from all this is several things: First of all, the number of “evangelicals” in this country has been oversold by millions. Secondly, Wicker says people are leaving these churches in droves. Here’s a quote from The Dallas Morning News that I found particularly interesting:
When I was a kid there may have been people who didn’t want to think we [Christians] were the only ones who were saved. But there weren’t many of them. It didn’t gag people. It does now. It just does. And that’s why the Baptists have lost their evangelical zeal, and that’s why they won’t get it back. Because the zeitgeist has shifted.
…
I didn’t choose to get out of evangelicalism. I had to. And that’s how this turn has done the most damage to Christianity. It’s kicked people like me out by the millions. They really aren’t going out on their own volition. They are thrust out despite the fact that they lose their security, they lose their hold on God, they lose their community, they lose their friends. No angels are rejoicing. And they’re still leaving.
I sense that there are deep fissures in the right-wing evangelical crowd these days and Wicker has tapped into some of this. I actually overheard one of my family members saying angrily that Dobson should go back to teaching people how to raise their families and stay out of politics.
The world thinks of microfinance as a tool to lift its poorest from grinding poverty. But in an age of pricey fuel and shrinking credit, the entrepreneurial movement that began in Bangladesh is taking off in the richest country of all.
Nobel prize winner Muhammad Yunus opened 11 branches of his Grameen Bank in New York City this spring, more than 30 years after he revolutionised foreign aid by delivering the first microloan to a group of rural Asian villagers.
If Yunus is the father of microfinance, his US offspring already are maturing quite nicely. The spectre of recession, combined with a diverse array of lending models, is sparking a new demand in America for small loans and business counselling…
Almost anyone can send a few dollars to Asia that can feed a family for weeks, thanks to Kiva and other groups that turn ordinary Americans into microlenders. But sending a few thousand dollars to a rural Pennsylvania craftsman is more difficult.
Micro Business Development Corporation, led by Denver lender Kersten Hostetter, has created thousands of jobs and boosted the local economy by more than $15m. Still, Hostetter is so keen for more investment that she has written a unique job ad seeking a celebrity spokesman for US microfinance.
“We’re the bridge between poverty alleviation and economic development, the guardians of the middle class,” Hostetter said. “We didn’t brand ourselves initially because there wasn’t a need for it.”
This will probably sound elitist. I think microloans are great, but using them to protect the American middle class, I think, is alarming. Just how far has the U.S. fallen? Micro-finance is about ending poverty. This is more evidence there are “two Americas” and parts of the U.S. are becoming more like some of the world’s poorest countries.
Four at Four continues with the spread of nuclear power, mixed environmental news, and locust swarms.
At least 40 developing countries from the Persian Gulf region to Latin America have recently approached U.N. officials here to signal interest in starting nuclear power programs, a trend that concerned proliferation experts say could provide the building blocks of nuclear arsenals in some of those nations.
At least half a dozen countries have also said in the past four years that they are specifically planning to conduct enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear fuel, a prospect that could dramatically expand the global supply of plutonium and enriched uranium, according to U.S. and international nuclear officials and arms-control experts.
The Bush administration and France have been pimping nuclear power to more than half the world, laying a foundation for tomorrow’s nuclear proliferation problems. Heckuva job.
A newly released 20-year study shows overall levels of pesticides and industrial chemicals generally are decreasing.
The Mussel Watch program of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration examined levels of 140 chemicals from 1986 to 2005 in coastal areas and estruaries of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the East and West coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes. Mussel Watch is the longest continuous contaminant monitoring program in U.S. coastal waters.
Gunnar Lauenstein, an oceanographer who’s the lead scientist of the program, said the levels are continuing to decrease, many years after environmental laws were enacted in the 1970s.”
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to new figures that renew fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control.
Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.
The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected…
Scientists say the shift could indicate that the Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up billions of tons of carbon each year.
BBC News reports on a Cannibal theory for locust swarms.”Scientists say they may have discovered the reason why swarms of locusts are driven to devour such huge quantities of vegetation. They suggest that locusts combine into swarms because they are frightened of being eaten by each other. The findings by researchers from the US, UK and Australia were published in the journal Current Biology. A swarm can contain billions of insects and eat tens of thousands of tonnes of vegetation in a single day.”
We are in power and thus we know what we are doing, because those in power are there because they know what they are doing, and that’s us…even though those in power obviously don’t know what they are doing because things are so fucked up….but those in power can’t even think that…because then they might have to examine the fact that things are fucked up because THEY are the ones in power.
In fact those in power cannot even admit that things are fucked up…. because then they might have to ask why things are fucked up, and deep down inside them is that nagging voice that if listened to would tell them that it could just be that they are the ones fucking things up. And hey, it’s a dog eat dog world out there and self-doubt or examination might lead to some form of weakness, like the self-esteem lowering questioning of your own infallibility ….like admitting that it is you who are fucking things up …and need to change. Or get gone.
That is not an iceberg, ok it is an iceberg, but we won’t hit it, ok we have hit it, but the ship is unsinkable, ok that was a iceberg and we did hit, but we won’t sink, ok that was an iceberg and we did hit it and the ship is sinking. Damn. We were sure we were infallible…until the ship sank, until we failed and killed a bunch of people. Too bad we didn’t listen to all those doubts and doubters, instead of steaming on, but it is too late now.
This Titanically bad metaphor comes to a crashing end though, when the Captain and crew muscle the civilians off of the lifeboats and start piloting a new ship the next day, shrugging off their mistakes in the name and service of the self confidence needed for their critical task….piloting ships around icebergs. The critical question of whether they are qualified never even arises, they have ships to steer, dammit! Now all you stupid people get off the bridge so we can do our job!
The Titanic Adventure Slide!
Oh well, now that the ship has sunk the important thing is… to find someone else to blame so we don’t have to admit fault or failure. If worst comes to worst we will blame “the media,” (as Tweety recently did) and hope the stupid people out there don’t make the connection in their minds that we are admitting responsibility
But: We Are Not Stupid
This sheer, bluff, completely unfounded self-confidence is what keeps change from happening. Undermining it is one of the keys to creating change. Creating uncertainty is one of the ways to undermine it. This is a precept of Guerrilla Warfare.
Entrenchment, status quoism, inertia, business as usual cannot be defeated head on by a small ragtag bad of rebels with just a few fighters and a princess wearing cinnamon rolls stuck to her head! Tactics and strategy are needed….and fun! It is in this spirit that I ask you to join me in mailing these four simple words: We Are Not Stupid to the entrenched ones.
AS your Princess (wait! Another bad metaphor! Damn!) I have selected a symbolic target… The submission box for MSNBC’s “Beat the Press,” which you will find on the lower right hand corner of this web page: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19…
E-mail as may times as you want! I will remind you to mail again tomorrow, I will be posting on Dkos ad other sites in a bit to ask folks there to e-mail too. We shall start with a trickle to wear away the stone…and perhaps, with the addition of the Maddow movement, (starting tomorrow) the trickle will turn into a flood which will sweep away the running dogs of entrenched media power and free the masses from their reign of ignorant bloviation!!!!!
Or not.
Who knows?
But if you tell me in the comments that you have mailed the words We Are Not Stupid to the above address…I will give you a pony! And everybody loves ponies! So try it, it is fun ….and good for you….and MIGHT even make a difference!
At 2:28 pm local time a major M 7.9 earthquake struck China near the city of Chengdu in Sichuan province. 9000 people are feared dead according to Chinese news reports , but USGS analysis shows that 200,000 people were exposed to violent to extreme shaking that could cause heavy damage in well built structures and very heavy damage in vulnerable structures.
The city of Chengdu, in the Sichuan basin with about 5 million inhabitants, 55 miles east of the rupture, was spared from heavy damage because the earthquake rupture propagated from the southeast to the northwest sparing the cities in the basin. However, towns near the fault rupture well to the northeast of the epicenter were hit hard even though they were as far from the epicenter as Chengdu. In an earthquake like this the distance from the epicenter may be a misleading indicator of potential damage.
We are just leaving the horrific scene at the Juyuan Middle School outside the city of Dujiangyan. Hundreds of parents are still standing in the rain as the army works to find children trapped in the rubble. One parent told us she could hear her son calling. A scene of utter desperation. Back a couple hundred feet was an area where rescuers — peoples armed police — were bringing bodies that had been retrieved. Families were rushing over to see whether the child was theirs. Under tents are families burning incense and candles and paper money next to the shrouded bodies of their loved ones. A terrible, terrible scene.
— Andrea Hsu
For those that may have family or friends in or near Chengdu, from a comment on an NPR blog:
Chengdu:
Please check with Consulate General of American in Chengdu.
The ACS Unit provides emergency assistance to American citizens in distress: when an American is destitute, arrested, separated from minor children, or sick. In an emergency, the Consulate Duty Officer can be reached at any time by calling 1370-800-1422.
Dial 01186 before you dial those numbers if you dial from USA.
360 km (225 miles) WNW of Chongqing, Chongqing, China
1545 km (960 miles) SW of BEIJING, Beijing, China
The aftershock sequence lines up along the rupture surface of the main shock. The epicenters of the aftershocks outline the area of maximum destruction on the surface.
Fortunately for the millions of people living in the basin that strongest shaking was in the mountains along the fault. The aftershock sequence shows that the primary shock began on the southeastern end of the rupture zone and propagated northeast. The heaviest damage can be expected along that rupture path to the northeast of the epicenter because that’s where the energy was focused on the surface as the rupture spread northeast.
I’m sitting at my desk on the 19th floor in Shanghai doing work and listening to bad 80’s music. I started to feel a little woozy, as if I was dizzy and needed to lay down for a minute. That’s when I noticed that the cords on my window shade were swinging back and forth. Earthquake!
The swaying lasted about a minute or two here. I’m sure it was much worse near the epicenter – no word on that yet.
The Sichuan earthquake of May 12, 2008, occurred as the result of motion on a northeast striking reverse fault or thrust fault on the northwestern margin of the Sichuan Basin. The earthquake’s epicenter and focal-mechanism are consistent with it having occurred as the result of movement on the Longmenshan fault or a tectonically related fault. The earthquake reflects tectonic stresses resulting from the convergence of crustal material slowly moving from the high Tibetan Plateau, to the west, against strong crust underlying the Sichuan Basin and southeastern China.
On a continental scale, the seismicity of central and eastern Asia is a result of northward convergence of the India plate against the Eurasia plate with a velocity of about 50 mm/y. The convergence of the two plates is broadly accommodated by the uplift of the Asian highlands and by the motion of crustal material to the east away from the uplifted Tibetan Plateau.
The northwestern margin of the Sichuan Basin has previously experienced destructive earthquakes. The magnitude 7.5 earthquake of August 25, 1933, killed more than 9,300 people.
FYI, The Richter scale has been replaced by the moment-magnitude scale which directly relates to the energy release of an earthquake. I was finishing grad school doing research on an earthquake prediction concept when Hiroo Kanamori
published the paper that lead to the replacement of the Richter scale.
Kathy Kelly has more than paid her dues in the movement for peace through non-violence, putting herself in harm’s way and risking her freedom.
She is the latest endorser of the Iraq Moratorium, a growing grassroots initiative which will be observed on Friday, May 16, as it is on the third Friday of each month. (She explains her endorsement below.)
The co-coordinator of Chicago-based Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Kelly helped initiate Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end UN/US sanctions against Iraq in 1996. For bringing “medicine and toys” to Iraq in open violation of the UN/US sanctions, she and other campaign members were fined $20,000, which they’ve refused to pay.
Voices in the Wilderness organized 70 delegations to visit Iraq in the period between 1996 and the beginning of the “Operation Shock and Awe” warfare (March 2003). Kelly has been to Iraq 24 times since January 1996. In October 2002, she joined Iraq Peace Team members in Baghdad where she and the team maintained a presence throughout the bombardment and invasion. Kelly left Iraq on April 19, 2003 and has returned three times, most recently in May of 2006 when she traveled to northern Iraq.
Along with three other Voices activists, Kathy was in Beirut, Lebanon during the final days of the Israel-Hezbollah war in the summer of 2006. (Photo at right.) They subsequently reported from southern Lebanon following a ceasefire.
In the spring of 2004, she served three months at Pekin federal prison for crossing the line as part of an ongoing effort to close an army military combat training school at Fort Benning, GA. In 1988 she was sentenced to one year in prison for planting corn on nuclear missile silo sites. Kelly served nine months of the sentence in Lexington KY maximum security prison.
She is currently organizing Witness Against War 2008,a nonviolent walk for peace from Chicago to the site of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.
Kathy Kelly: Why I endorse the Iraq Moratorium
Kathy Kelly: Why I endorse the Iraq Moratorium
In 1991, the United States deliberately targeted, bombed and destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure-in particular its water treatment plants, its electrical plants, and its electrical power grid. This damage was exacerbated over the next 13 years as the U.S. and UK insisted that the UN maintain brutally punitive economic sanctions that prevented Iraq from substantively rebuilding and caused further decay and debilitation in every sector of Iraq’s infrastructure. The sanctions also caused widespread disease, starvation and impoverishment – directly contributing toward the deaths of over one half million children under age five.
Today, available statistics about the consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq speak of misery and chaos nearly unimaginable to most U.S. people. One out of six Iraqis has been displaced from their homes. A March 2007 report from Save the Children, a US based NGO, stated that 122,000 Iraqi children didn’t reach their fifth birthdays in the year 2005 alone. UNAMI, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, in its most recently issued report on humanitarian conditions in Iraq, stated that 54% of Iraqis live on less than $1 per day, including 15% who are forced to live on less than 50 cents per day. 70% of Iraq’s people lack access to potable water. 43 % of Iraqi children under age five suffer a form of malnourishment, with 23% suffering from chronic malnourishment and 8% suffering acute malnourishment. 40% of Iraq’s population are children under 15 years of age. Should these children be deprived of food and clean water so that their country is instead forced to pay U.S. forces to drop bombs on them, shoot at them, and exacerbate any or all of the three civil wars which analyst Juan Cole says are now well underway in Iraq?
The risks we may take now, to stop the war, — and for many of us we’ll be risking convenience and an interruption of comfortable routines, – are far less than the risk next generations will pay if we are negligent. U.S. wealth and productivity spent on war diverts resorces acutely needed to resolve problems our planet faces because of our reckless consumption, waste and pollution. I hope the Moratorium helps all of us slow down, think about where we’re going, and find, together, ways to put an end to war.
In the past year, U.S. aerial bombardments of Iraqi neighborhoods increased five fold while the number of Iraqis incarcerated in U.S. prisons in Iraq has doubled. (Some 24,000 Iraqis are now imprisoned by U.S. forces, approximately 650 of whom are juveniles). If a foreign country were bombing U.S. cities and imprisoning U.S. civilians, would we ever agree to pay the invaders’ military expenses? Would we agree that the aggressor nation had no fiscal responsibilities to pay for reparations?
Perhaps news of U.S. lawmakers’ weariness over Iraq’s “free ride” will prompt some Iraqis currently aligned with U.S. forces to stop aiming their weapons against other Iraqis and to instead find common cause, using all means of nonviolent resistance, to defy the U.S. occupation.
But what of our own culpability? What about our options for nonviolent resistance?
We do have options. We each can, at the very least, pressure our elected representative, through legal or extralegal lobbying, to vote against President Bush’s $102-billion supplemental funding request which the U.S. House of Representatives will likely vote on soon, with the Senate following suit shortly thereafter.
Another option was pursued, this year, by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Campaign’s “War Tax Boycott.” This project helped people eliminate at least a portion of war making from their personal budget. They did so by collectively redirecting $100 of their federal income tax to assist Iraqis who’ve been forced to flee their country as well as victims of Hurricane Katrina whose needs remain unmet. (See www.nwtrcc.org).
Yes, it’s outrageous to think that U.S. lawmakers could propose that Iraq’s people should be asked to pay for any aspect of U.S. occupation. But it’s also an outrage for U.S. people to foot the bill for the continued military occupation. We owe the Iraqi people reparations for the damage our country has caused over these past 18 years of economic and military warfare – not an ever-lasting occupation. If you’re among those who are wearied and exasperated by the wrongfulness of this ongoing war, allow yourself some relief: Don’t collaborate.
The stab-in-the-back legend (German: Dolchstosslegende (help·info), literally “Dagger stab legend”) refers to a social myth and persecution-propaganda theory popular in Germany in the period after World War I through World War II. It attributed Germany’s defeat to a number of domestic factors instead of failed militarist geostrategy. Most notably, the theory proclaimed that the public had failed to respond to its “patriotic calling” at the most crucial of times and some had even intentionally “sabotaged the war effort.”
The legend echoed the epic poem Nibelungenlied in which the dragon-slaying hero Siegfried is stabbed in the back by Hagen von Tronje. Der Dolchstoss is cited as an important factor in Adolf Hitler’s later rise to power, as the Nazi Party grew its original political base largely from embittered World War I veterans, and those who were sympathetic to the Dolchstosslegende interpretation of Germany’s then-recent history. – Wikipedia
For those of you unfamiliar with this blood libel the melody goes kinda like this-
We were winning our war of aggression until those Jewsdirty fucking hippies meddling kids stabbed us in the back.
What makes it blood libel is the implication that people who were against the war and saw the utimate futility of it “sacrificed” the blood of our brave soldiers for nothing as if to have “sacrificed” it to a real God like Mars or Mammon were any better.
Once you put your money in the pot boys, it’s gone. I could so kick your ass at poker.
It’s hardly surprising that the American Theo-Corporatist Party is resurrecting this meme and their Presidential nominee is endorsing it-
Former Army Captain and military analyst Phillip Carter writes today in his Washington Post blog of the “stabbed in the back narrative” of Vietnam in the context of a new book advancing that narrative by Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of coalition forces during the disastrous 2003-2004 period when, among other things, the Abu Ghraib abuses occurred. That narrative, says Carter, “is popular among American military officers of a certain age, who believe if only they’d had gutsy political leadership, support from the homefront, and a willingness to steamroll North Vietnam with overwhelming force, we might have won the war.” As Carter documents (emphasis in original): “It’s a good story, but it’s wrong. No amount of America firepower could have crushed the North Vietnamese people’s will.”
…
That’s the very embodiment of the “stabbed-in-the-back” Vietnam narrative. We had our greatest success when we could bomb North Vietnam “not constrained by either congressional or presidential mandate.” That’s when we almost brought them “to their knees.” But incessant complaints about civilian casualties and anger over irrelevant matters such as the bombing of hospitals is what prevented us from winning — “which still angers him,” because the number of dead North Vietnamese wasn’t really “exorbitant.” There was room for plenty more. Ponder what that means for Iraq, Afghanistan and any other new countries on which a President McCain decides to wage war.
…
McCain also warned that “we need a constructive domestic debate” and that those who were opposing the war were being “irresponsible”: “We must show bipartisan resolve to prevail in Iraq, and not allow the insurgents to believe that they are winning minds in Washington. Our troops, the Iraqi people, and the world need to see unified American political leadership.”
…
It’s hard to overstate how pervasive this mindset was and is among the Pentagon leadership over the last seven years. In fact, the 8,000 pages of documents which the New York Times forced the Pentagon to release concerning its “military analyst” program is suffuse with arguments of this type concerning both Vietnam and Iraq. It was that mentality which spawned the domestic propaganda campaign.
…
John McCain is the ultimate embodiment of America’s hoary, Vietnam era “stabbed-in-the-back” myth. We should fight wars with massive bombing campaigns and unleashed force, unconstrained by excessive concerns over “collateral damage” and unimpeded by domestic questioning. That’s how we could have (and should have) “won” in Vietnam and how we’ll “win” in Iraq. That’s why the central truth of the 2008 election is that, when it comes to foreign policy, the Kristol/Lieberman-supported John McCain is a carbon copy of the Bush/Cheney warmongering mentality except that he’s actually more extreme about its core premises.
So this off topic from my Pentagon dump, but is a pretty wild story in of itself. It seems in a cost cutting measure, US soldiers are being cremated at a facility meant for pets.
As the Friends Forever Pet Cremation Service says at their website:
As pet owners ourselves, we understand the need for a more dignified alternative when a beloved pet passes away.
If this wasn’t screwed up enough, Bush and the Pentagon viewing our soldiers as pets, they also sent friends and families to the pet crematorium for services!
This whole fiasco came to light when an Army officer who works at the Pentagon traveled to Delaware on Thursday to attend the cremation of a military comrade.
Pentagon officials said they do not think that human remains and animal remains were ever commingled at the facility. “We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever at this point that any human remains were at all ever mistreated,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said at a news conference hastily convened last night.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates found “the site and signage insensitive and entirely inappropriate for the dignified treatment of our fallen,” Morrell said. “The families of the fallen have the secretary’s deepest apology,” he said.
Lt. Gen. Frank G. Klotz, director of the Air Force Staff, said he does not know whether any military officer had ever inspected the contracted crematories. “That is something which we need to take a look at,” he said.
You see, that is something you look at before our soldiers are cremated in the puppy’s last bed. I mean, how could the Army be this callious and dumb?
“Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” – Henry Kissinger
Oh yeah, Kissinger is still consulting the White House and running the show with his puppet master strings. Should have known.
Here is the worst case scenerio for the fate of some of our fallen heroes at Friends Forever Pet Cremation Service:
Group – your pet is cremated with other pets, and the cremains are not returnable.
I’m including a movie trailer in this pony….but not to tell you about a movie, but to ask about one.
Below is the trailer for the movie ‘Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans’, also mentioned on the San Francisco IFF website. Apparently it is, as the title would suggest, a discussion of the history of the Faubourg Treme section of New Orleans, called simply ‘Treme’ by its residents, and otherwise known as the 6th ward.
Apparently the film’s makers are in the process of fundraising, and we know how i love to support a cause 😉 ..but i know very little about the film…
It’s been shown in NY and CA, and im wondering if any of you…or anyone you know…has seen it?? eh?? it looks pretty awesome…
First, breaking news this morning. There has been a 7.8 earthquake in China that has left four schoolchildren and one adult dead:
Chinese President Hu Jintao has called for “all-out” efforts to rescue victims of an earthquake measuring 7.8 that has hit south-western China.
The quake struck 92km (57 miles) north-west of Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu, at 1428 (0628 GMT).
The children were killed, and more than 100 others injured, when primary school buildings collapsed in the Chongqing area, a large municipality near Sichuan province, Xinhua added.
Another person is reported to have died when a water tower collapsed in the city of Mianyang, in Santai County.
The Bangkok Post gives further details of the magnitude of the quake:
Government and local officials said the quake struck at 2:28pm local time (1:28pm in Thailand) in Wenchuan county, Sichuan province. It was felt in cities hundreds of kilometres away, including Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, in addition to Bangkok.
“Major tremors” were felt by residents of cities closer to the epicentre, including Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu, and nearby Chongqing, the official news agency Xinhua said.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Myanmar coverage of the disaster caused by Cyclone Nargis has been driven underground, with journalists ducking the police. If there was a Pulitzer Prize given out for YouTubes, this would be my choice:
The above video tells the story of vlogger cmozart and his attempt to evacuate his wife before the May 10th elections, anticipating the violence this event may cause. He was in country when the cyclone struck, and his local footage reveals not only the extent of the damage the cyclone caused but also provides a first-hand look at the utter lack of response by local authorities to immediately deal with the devastation.
The iconic moment of a bus attempting to negotiate a busy intersection while getting caught by a downed power line, and an anonymous citizen grabbing the line with his bare, unprotected hands and then becoming a default traffic cop is a powerful metaphor of the military junta’s handling of this situation (or lack thereof).
CNN’s Dan Rivers documents his ducking through a back staircase to avoid local police, attempting to come to terms with the target local authorities have placed on his back:
Even Al Jazeera, once singled out by US officials in Iraq (and possibly the target of a US airstrike during the invasion of Baghdad) admits to having to “film covertly” to avoid authorities:
Canada’s Globe and Mail reports that UN officials are now estimating the number of dead from the cyclone at over 200,000, while local authorities – who apparently have so much on their plates with dissembling, and holding faux elections, and distributing a small number of aid packages in staged photo ops with the names of generals lovingly inscribed on the side (just to make sure folks understand who’s really in charge of whether they live or die) – either do not understand or do not care about the actual extent of the suffering their citizens are going through:
At a meeting in Rangoon yesterday, a Myanmar cabinet minister told relief agencies that foreign aid workers are prohibited from entering the disaster zone and must give all of their supplies to the government for distribution.
A few relief agencies have managed to evade those rules, but the minister’s statement was a sign that the military regime is determined to maintain a tight grip on the entire relief operation, even though its restrictions have hampered the aid distribution.
snip
The military junta has been minimizing the death toll by denying that any survivors have died since the start of the relief operation, sources say. At the meeting yesterday, for example, the Myanmar cabinet minister insisted that not a single person has died of thirst, hunger or disease in the aftermath of the cyclone. Nobody believed the statement, according to a relief worker who attended the meeting.
The Chicago Tribune reports that the addition of another unstable element – the weather – could make things even more dire:
U Maung Saw and his family are in a race against the rain.
Cyclone Nargis pounded their house as flat as the mud where the broken pieces now lie. A 5-foot wave, driven by a storm surge that rolled 20 miles upriver from the Andaman Sea, crashed onto his doorstep, washing away almost everything the family of seven owned.
The flooding and torrential rain May 4 also ruined a fifth of the unmilled rice they had stockpiled since harvesting the paddy in the Irrawaddy River delta in late March. A week after the storm, the rest of the rice is so damp that it must be spread on the mucky ground to dry in the sun before it rots.
And therein lies the problem: A tropical depression is bearing down on southern Myanmar. And in countless villages like this, where no one has received outside aid, the clock is counting down to another potential disaster.
Vloggers on YouTube have had different responses to this unfolding tragedy.
One vlogger has issued a challenge to the YouTube community: respond to his YouTube with a video of support to the people of Myanmar, and he will donate five dollars to the Red Cross for each response. If he loves your video he’ll up his response to ten dollars:
Vlogger myochitmyanmar posted this time lapsed video of artist and former Iranian political prisoner Davood Roostaei painting a portrait of opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi:
Still others post images timed to music, like this one done by Smakgakgak (please note that some of these images from the disaster are disturbing):
In the face of the head-in-the-sand approach of Burma’s military junta, sometimes it’s cathartic to look at someone’s raw, blunt and unvarnished opinion. I’m not a fan of rants (as I’ve expressed to some folks in the threads of some of my diaries), but if you’re searching for a rant that says everything you wish you could yell from your rooftop this post from weezie63 is a particularly effective one:
You know, I have tried to, uh, see things from their [the military junta’s] perspective, but I just can’t get my head that far up my a**.
Please all of the people in Burma – and the victims of the earthquake in China – in your thoughts, prayers and meditations.
UPDATE The AP is now reporting that the earthquake in China has buried 900 students:
State media report that a powerful earthquake has buried nearly 900 students in China’s Sichuan province.
The Xinhua News Agency did not immediately give any other details or say if any of the students were thought to be alive.
It has also reported that four students were killed and more than 100 students injured when the 7.8-magnitude quake knocked down two schools in neighboring Chongqing municipality
UPDATE (2x) The New York Times has now confirmed over 100 are dead as a result of the earthquake:
Xinhua, the official news agency, said the 107 fatalities were spread across Sichuan, neighboring Chongqing Municipality as well as in Gansu and Yunnan provinces. Damage is believed to be especially severe in Dujiangyan, a county of 600,000 people located near the epicenter. One local official described rows of collapsed houses, Xinhua reported.
Please take a moment to honor those recently deceased in this earthquake, and those who are fighting right now to save lives.
UPDATE (3x) The BBC is now reporting that thousands are dead in China:
Between 3,000 and 5,000 people may have been killed by an earthquake measuring 7.8 in just one county of south-western China’s Sichuan province, reports say.
Some 10,000 people are also feared to have been injured in Beichuan county.
snip
Teenagers buried beneath the rubble of the three-storey Juyuan Middle School building were struggling to break free, while others were crying out for help, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Parents were watching as cranes excavated the site. Villagers rushed to help with the rescue.
Two girls said they escaped because they had “run faster than others”.
News Organizations Are Reporting Between 3,000 and 5,000 Dead in One County
‘Hundreds buried’ by China quake
Almost 900 students are buried after an earthquake measuring 7.8 caused a building to collapse in south-western China, state media reports.
President Hu Jintao urged “all-out” efforts to rescue victims of the quake, which hit 92km (57 miles) from Chengdu, Sichuan’s provincial capital.
Premier Wen Jiabao is travelling to the area and troops are being sent to help with disaster relief efforts.
Officials have confirmed 107 deaths in the area but the figure could rise.
Cries for help
There are harrowing reports from the scene of the collapse in Dujiangyan city – about 100km (60 miles) from the epicentre in Wenchuan county.
U.S. spying is up, but not prosecutions
As more Americans are watched, fewer cases are made. The trend concerns civil liberties groups as well as some lawmakers and legal experts.
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans being secretly wiretapped or having their financial and other records reviewed by the government has continued to increase as officials aggressively use powers approved after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the number of terrorism prosecutions ending up in court — one measure of the effectiveness of such sleuthing — has continued to decline, in some cases precipitously.
The trends, visible in new government data and a private analysis of Justice Department records, are worrisome to civil liberties groups and some legal scholars. They say it is further evidence that the government has compromised the privacy rights of ordinary citizens without much to show for it.
The emphasis on spy programs also is starting to give pause to some members of Congress who fear the government is investing too much in anti-terrorism programs at the expense of traditional crime-fighting. Other lawmakers are raising questions about how well the FBI is performing its counter-terrorism mission.
Support disaster relief in Myanmar (Burma)Through the UN
USA
Voter ID Battle Shifts to Proof of Citizenship
The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.
The measure would allow far more rigorous demands than the voter ID requirement recently upheld by the Supreme Court, in which voters had to prove their identity with a government-issued card.
Pollution levels have dropped in U.S. coastal waters
Some good news from the government scientists who study pollution in U.S. coastal waters:
A newly released 20-year study shows overall levels of pesticides and industrial chemicals generally are decreasing.
The Mussel Watch program of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration examined levels of 140 chemicals from 1986 to 2005 in coastal areas and estruaries of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the East and West coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and the Great Lakes. Mussel Watch is the longest continuous contaminant monitoring program in U.S. coastal waters.
Gunnar Lauenstein, an oceanographer who’s the lead scientist of the program, said the levels are continuing to decrease, many years after environmental laws were enacted in the 1970s.
Asia
First US aid flight reaches Burma
The first US aid flight for Burma took off today as relief supplies begin to trickle into the country nine days after it was devastated by Cyclone Nargis.
After prolonged negotiations with the ruling military junta, the US finally got permission to send a cargo plane carrying water, mosquito nets and blankets to Rangoon. Two more planeloads are scheduled for tomorrow.
“Today’s flight is just the first step and we hope they will allow us to do more in the future,” said Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Powell, a spokesman for the US military. “It’s really just up to what the Burmese will allow us to do.”
The Burmese regime has been condemned for its callous response to the tragedy, barring access to most international disaster relief specialists and blocking aid.
Earthquake strikes Western China
Thousands flee buildings as earthquake strikes
Thousands of people were evacuated from buildings today as an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale struck western China.
The tremor was felt as far away as Thailand and Vietnam.
The earthquake struck 57 miles north-west of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu at 2.28pm (0628 GMT), the US Geological Survey said on its website. It said the quake was centred 6.2 miles below the surface.
An eyewitness in Chengdu, reached by phone, said people flooded from buildings, but there was no immediate sign of damage or injuries.
The quake was centred on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, where mountains rise sharply and the population density is generally thin.
Middle East
‘Ghost city’ Mosul braces for assault on last bastion of al-Qa’ida in Iraq
By Patrick Cockburn in Mosul
Monday, 12 May 2008
Mosul looks like a city of the dead. American and Iraqi troops have launched an attack aimed at crushing the last bastion of al- Qa’ida in Iraq and in doing so have turned the country’s northern capital into a ghost town.
Soldiers shoot at any civilian vehicle on the streets in defiance of a strict curfew. Two men, a woman and child in one car which failed to stop were shot dead yesterday by US troops, who issued a statement saying the men were armed and one made “threatening movements”.
Mosul, on the Tigris river, is inhabited by 1.4 million people, but has been sealed off from the outside world by hundreds of police and army checkpoints since the Iraqi government offensive against al-Qa’ida began at 4am on Saturday.
Lebanese Army caught in crossfire between Druze and Hezbollah gunmen
Nicholas Blanford in Shwayfat
Heavy clashes erupted south of Beirut yesterday between mainly Shia and Druze militants, breaking a tense calm that had taken hold after feuding factions reached a tentative agreement to end four days of fighting.
The crackle of machinegun fire and thump of exploding mortar rounds echoed through the town of Shwayfat on the lower slopes of the Chouf mountains overlooking southern Beirut as fighters from the Shia group Hezbollah and its allies fought Druze gunmen loyal to Walid Jumblatt, a key government ally.
Africa
Beatings and torture intensify as Zimbabwe prepares to vote again
Solomon was naked and lying on his back in the bath. He smiled in greeting. For a man in hospital he looked fine. Then he turned over to show his wounds.
In each buttock there was a dark hole into which you could put both fists. The edges of the holes were ragged frills of dead grey tissue.
At 4am a week ago, about 200 members of President Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) militia arrived at the peasant farmer’s village in Chiweshe, communal land north of Harare. Solomon, 33, and 60 others were rounded up as supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), handcuffed and forced to lie with their stomachs on the ground and with someone sitting on their backs.
South Africa’s unseemly alliance
Its president stands idly by as Mugabe and his thugs ruin Zimbabwe.
The tendency to compare contemporary political events to the Third Reich is called reducto ad Hitlerum, so facile are the alleged similarities and so often is this tactic employed. With that caveat, when I saw a photograph Friday of smiling, garland-laden South African President Thabo Mbeki holding the hand of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, I couldn’t resist drawing a mental parallel: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 waving his copy of the Munich treaty before a crowd of thousands, boasting that he had achieved “peace for our time.”
That Mbeki, who last month insisted there was “no crisis” in Zimbabwe, continues to glad-hand Mugabe represents a complete abandonment of moral responsibility. As he provides diplomatic cover, Mugabe’s armed thugs roam Zimbabwe’s countryside threatening, torturing and killing people believed to have voted for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. The MDC claims 25 of its supporters have been murdered and 40,000 people have been displaced since the March 29 parliamentary and presidential election. The regime has detained journalists and trade union leaders as well as members of the country’s electoral commission, the body that verifies election results.
Europe
Tadic claims victory for pro-Europeans in Serbian elections
Serbs have voted for close ties with Europe in parliamentary elections seen by many as crucial to the country’s future.
With 85 per cent of the votes counted nationwide, the prominent election monitoring agency CeSID said that President Boris Tadic’s pro-European block won 39 per cent of votes, leaving the ultranationalists in the Serbian Radical Party well behind with 29 per cent.
The conservative block of outgoing Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica stood at just 11 per cent of votes.
The results surprised most analysts, as opinion polls prior to the elections showed anti-European parties taking a strong lead
Polish Holocaust hero dies at 98
WARSAW, Poland – The family of a Polish social worker credited with rescuing 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis says she has died.
rena Sendler’s daughter, Janina Zgrzembska, says her 98-year-old mother died Monday morning in a Warsaw hospital.
Sendler organized the rescue of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during Nazi Germany’s brutal World War II occupation.
Latin America
Venezuelan president criticizes German chancellor
CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez lashed out at Germany’s chancellor on Sunday, suggesting that her party shares the political ideals of Adolf Hitler
The Venezuelan leader criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel for belonging to the conservative Christian Democratic Union, calling the movement “the same right wing that supported Hitler and fascism.”
Chavez was on the verge of launching more insults at Merkel, but suddenly stopped short.
“Ms. Chancellor, you can go to …” he said during his weekly television and radio program, before pausing. Then he added: “Because you are a lady, I won’t say any more.”
