1. The Los Angeles Times reports Bush opens summit with leaders of Canada and Mexico. George W. Bush, Felipe Calderón of Mexico, and Stephen Harper of Canada are meeting for the fourth annual summit between the three nations. New Orleans was chosen as a venue by the Bush administration for propaganda value. Bush said he was celebrating “the comeback of a great American city” that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

   The summit will focus on trade, immigration, and cross-border drug and weapons smuggling, just as free-trade agreements and NAFTA in particular are under political attack more than at any time since the U.S.-Canada-Mexico agreement began eliminating tariffs and other barriers to North American trade 14 years ago.

   Three-way trade among the United States, Canada and Mexico has grown since 1994 from about $290 billion to $930 billion, according to U.S. government statistics.

   But Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, long an opponent of the pact, said the increase was largely the result of a “massive surge in imports” into the United States, bringing with it what the group calculated was a 691% increase in the trade deficit attributed to NAFTA.

   According to the AP, Bush refuses to admit the U.S. is in a recession. “Bush, replying to criticism from Democratic presidential candidates, said Tuesday that ‘now is not the time to renegotiate … or walk away from’ the North American Free Trade Agreement… Asked about the state of the U.S. economy, Bush said: ‘We’re not in a recession. We are in a slowdown.‘”

Four at Four continues below the fold with stories of big oil supporting state-sponsored terrorism, a plea to “eliminate capitalism” to save the planet and humanity, and an update on the Chinese arms ship en route to Zimbabwe.

2. The New York Times reports Big Oil champions Libya’s cause for exemption from its dept to victims.

   One by one, top executives of American oil companies met privately over the last year with Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, often in his signature Bedouin tent, as they lined up contracts allowing them to tap into the country’s oil reserves.

   But now, the new allies are working Capitol Hill, trying to weaken a law that threatens those deals. The Libyan government, once a pariah, and the American oil industry have hired high-profile lobbyists, buttonholed lawmakers and enlisted help from the Bush administration, all in an effort to win an exemption from a law that Congress passed in January that is intended to ensure that victims of terrorist attacks are compensated.

   The law allows victims of state-sponsored terrorism to collect court judgments by seizing foreign assets in the United States or money from those governments held by American companies doing business with them. If Libya loses a half-dozen court cases still pending, $3 billion to $6 billion could be at stake, according to lawyers’ estimates…

   A battalion of top oil industry executives – from companies including ConocoPhillips, Hess, Occidental and Marathon Oil -have been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, focusing on members from refinery-rich Texas, according to two lobbyists who attended the gatherings. ExxonMobil, Chevron and Dow Chemical also support the effort, participants said.

3. The Guardian reports Leaders tell the UN that Biofuels starving our people. “The leaders of Bolivia and Peru have attacked the use of biofuels, saying they have made food too expensive for the poor. Speaking at the United Nations, the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, said the increased use of farmland for fuel crops was causing a ‘tremendous increase’ in food prices.”

   In his UN comments, Morales criticised “some South American presidents” for pushing biofuels. The Bolivian president did not name them but his views are in sharp contrast to those of the Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has said developing countries have enough land to produce both food and biofuels.

   Morales called on developed nations to accept that problems created by biofuels in developing countries were partly their responsibility. After his speech, he told a news conference that “it is not an internal problem, it is an external problem”.

   “This is very serious,” he said. “How important is life and how important are cars? So I say life first and cars second.“

   The MercoPress also reports that Morales advocated to “eliminate capitalism” to save planet and mankind.

   “If we really want to save the planet, we must eliminate the capitalist system” Bolivia’s first indigenous president told delegates from around the world at the United Nations in New York.

   Mr Morales argued that the capitalist system was mainly responsible for climate change and for the “accumulation of waste”.

   He also railed against the development of bio-fuels which he said only serve to fuel “poverty and hunger” and he instead expressed strong support for clean energies.

   Funny how that part of Morales remarks to the UN didn’t get covered elsewhere.

4. Here’s an update on China’s efforts to arm Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. The Christian Science Monitor reports China slammed for arming Zimbabwe’s Mugabe.

   Hammered by criticism over its own human rights record and perhaps worried about its reputation ahead of the upcoming Summer Olympics, China signaled Tuesday that it might turn around a ship full of arms bound for its longtime ally, Zimbabwe.

   The ship had docked first at South Africa’s main port, Durban, where South African dock workers refused to offload the nearly 3 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition and thousands of rounds of rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, all bound for the troubled regime of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia have also said the ship is not welcome in their ports.

   The apparent withdrawal of the arms shipment by China comes at a time of growing criticism from African leaders for Mr. Mugabe’s iron-fisted handling of his domestic opposition in the March 29 elections – where Mugabe’s party fared badly in parliamentary elections and where the presidential results have still not been released.

   The New York Times notes the Zimbabwe Arms Delivery May Turn Back and notes “South Africa’s dock workers also said through their union they would refuse to unload the shipment, a call backed up by the country’s powerful coalition of trade unions.” Trade unions can and do make a difference.

   The arms are being transported by ship owned by a large Chinese state-owned company, COSCO. “Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said at a press briefing in Beijing that the shipment was part of ‘normal military trade’ between Zimbabwe and China and called on other nations not to politicize the issue.” ‘It’s just business’, she added.

   Lastly, McClatchy Newspapers report Turned away, Chinese weapons for Zimbabwe head home.

   A Chinese ship carrying weapons for Zimbabwe’s security forces that’s been blocked from unloading in four African nations headed home Tuesday with its cargo still aboard.

   The return of the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, is an embarrassment for China in Africa, where it has growing trade and political influence, and signaled new woes for Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s leader, who’s fighting to retain power after disputed elections three weeks ago.

   Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu called the sale of the weapons “a totally normal transaction” and said that their attempted delivery “has nothing to do with the latest situation in Zimbabwe.” …

   Jiang lashed out at reports that the Bush administration had pressured Zimbabwe’s neighbors not to accept the An Yue Jiang in their ports, saying that China’s weapons trade is miniscule compared with that of the United States.

   “China takes only a small portion of the world’s weapons market,” she said, noting research that the United States is ranked as the world’s No. 1 arms merchant, Britain No. 6 and China No. 9. “Last year, we accounted for only 2 percent of world exports while the U.S. took 30 percent, so the U.S. is the world’s biggest exporter.”

   Jiang said the arms deal was arranged with Zimbabwe late last year, well before the election crisis.

   I wonder if the shipment was late?

The Rant, a fine human tradition. And one I occasionally trade on shamelessly. Humans have odd social rules, especially those of us humans descended from the Puritan/Protestant tradition of hiding our emotions. But it seems to be somewhat socially/politically acceptable to, every once in a while, but not too often, let our emotions out in one big burst. Our fellow humans seem to, for the most part, understand that this is a necessary, or at least inevitable, part of living in an emotionally repressed society.

Iow, we are ‘allowed’ to let our true feelings, such as frustration and anger out once in a while, as long as we ‘act normal’ the rest of the time. And I agree. And so I do my best, lol, to act normal. Ranting makes people uncomfortable, rants are usually mostly raw emotion. Raw emotion is in itself uncomfortable, because it triggers an emotional response in us, and we don’t like to be emotional. We are not good at it, we haven’t been trained to deal with it, we don’t know how to respond to it. It makes us uncomfortable, in a society built around the idea that comfort is the highest goal.



Abandon Comfort, All Ye Who Enter Here

And as with most raw emotion that has been repressed and then suddenly bursts out, they have some element of truth, at the very least a emotional truth. The truth of the true feelings of the ranter, but often as well, a real truth about whatever situation spurred the repression, and thus the need to rant about as opposed to discuss, the situation. Very often, that truth has been repressed because there is simply nothing constructive to do about that particular situation no matter how frustrating it is, so discussing it isn’t productive. And bringig it up again and again is actually counterproductive, as their is no perceived solution. It then just annoys us to be reminded of …whatever it is. If there is no solution, no hope of resolution, bringing up a subject that rouses the emotions again and again…is indeed pointless…and annoying.

Impeachment is a great example, yes Bushco are War Criminals and Torturers and Congress is complicit and we are paying for it with our taxes and it is all being done in our name….but there is nothing I can do about it…so just Shut The Fuck Up. I don’t want to be reminded of a inconvenient truth that makes me uncomfortable as hell, but about which there is nothing I can comfortably do. So talking about it just makes me feel powerless. I don’t want to feel powerless. Hell, with all the shit going on in my daily life, with all the struggles I have to face just to survive and try to prosper…I can’t afford to feel powerless.

Thus the resonant saying; (for those with empathy) Be kind to everyone you meet, for we are all fighting a great battle. No one wants to hear that they have to add another element, another foe, to their daily battle, life is tough enough as it is. Especially on the grand scale, where we already feel powerless enough, thank you. Ranting about it doesn’t help, so be quiet and let me get on with my life, which, btw, sucks enough already. But, LOL, I suppose if you HAVE to rant occasionally, I am powerless to do anything about that too! After all, I myself need to rant sometimes, so I will grudgingly excuse you for reminding me of my powerlessness.

As I say above, in my writing I take advantage of this clause in the social contract to, hopefully not too often, ….Tell You How I Really Feel. And I shall do so again…right now

.

WE ARE NOT POWERLESS

Even if you have no political clout. No worldly power. Even if you are broke. Even if you spend all of your time just working to make enough money to survive and the rest of your time recovering so you can get up and do it all again. Even if you feel powerless…..you are not powerless.

You have a brain, you have a voice, you have a will.

You can change things.

You can change things.

YOU have the power to change the world.

In fact it is your responsibility to do so.

(sorry if that makes you uncomfortable!)

In point of fact, you DO change the world everyday, just by the mere fact of your existence.

The power you have is in choosing how you change the world everyday.

Where you live, where you work, how you get to work, what you buy, what you eat, what you watch, what you read, how you think, even down to how you breathe…all of these things change the world…everyday.

And all of them are your choice, whether you like it or not. You are not powerless. You do have the power to change things.

(sorry again!)

Allow me to state at this time in a VERY clear and unequivocal way….I am NOT condemning you or your lifestyle or your choices. I am not judging you or your lifestyle or your choices.

I am, however, asking you to change. And I will not even ask you to change your lifestyle. I will only ask you, today on Earth Day, to change one thing…your thoughts.

Though I have no right to, no moral or worldly authority to do so, and you have absolutely no reason to listen to me or do what I ask…I will ask anyway.

Please, change the way you think about our world, our planet.

The earth does not belong to mankind, mankind belongs to the earth.

We do not own it and we have no right to destroy it.

That is where it starts. We are not separate. We and the planet are one. We, the planet and all life upon it are one thing, inseparable. We do not own it and we have no right to destroy it. In fact we have a responsibility to preserve it, to make it better, to pass it on unharmed, if not improved to the next Seven Generations of humans who will follow us. It gave birth to us, it keeps us alive, it feeds and nurtures us everyday. It is all that allows us to live.

It is all that allows every pleasure that we know. Every good thing we have ever experienced or ever will. Without it we are not even dust in the wind, we are nothing. We do not exist. And therefore there is nothing more important. (Not even YOUR candidate!) If we can not find it in ourselves to respect and be responsible to the very thing…the very entity, that gives us life…what can we, what do we truly, respect?  

Honor her, respect her, try to nurture and protect her as she protects you and has protected you every day of your life. Do whatever you can to help her….and all of us, even unto the very least of us, in the web of life…to be healthy and to thrive.

Realize, reflect upon, and hold in your thoughts everyday that we have only one planet, only one home in the cold vast expanse of space that surrounds us. That if not for her, we would not exist. YOU would not exist, none of the incredibly important things you have to do today would exist. That she is in fact, by the dint of giving us our very lives, our Mother. A living, breathing entity, to whom we all owe everything we have and value.

I ask for nothing else, for if you do this, all else will follow.

Thank you.

/rant

Here’s a short little ditty for your consideration…

My youngest sister once asked my mom what the difference between a republican and a democrat was.

she answered with this story…

My side of the family were mostly democrats so that’s what I first registered as.  Your father is republican and your grandfather was involved in local politics.  He told me that no member of his family could be a democrat and that he wouldn’t marry me unless I was a registered republican.  So I changed my registration.

Years later I decided to switch back….

When he found my new voter registration card he ripped it up in front of me, walked me out to the car, drove me downtown and watched while I changed my registration back to republican.

One of the first things I did after the divorce was re-register as a democrat.

and that’s the difference.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Soon I’m going to walk down to my polling place and vote in my first ever presidential primary….as of right now I’m still undecided…

I’m between Obama, Kucinich or Wiggum…

sigh…

Up yours, America!

Remember when the Chicken Hawks thought this image was SO cool?

That was because they understood the idea of hiding from anything more dangerous than a Cheeto was really important, and they needed someone else to do what they would not, could not and never would.

Move forward a number of long years since those Chicken Hawks went into the basement to keep from being spotted on the streets as possible chubby and geeky “warriors.”

From BBC News:

US MILITARY RECUITS MORE EX-

CONS

The US Army and Marine Corps recruited significantly more people with criminal records last year than in 2006, amid pressure to meet combat needs.

You and I may wonder about the “BE all that you can BE and don’t forget to use a Shiv In the Army” commercials we are seeing on the TV these days, but obviously there is a need for new recruits with the right stuff.

NOT THE RIGHT CANDIDATE, ALTHOUGH HE SPEAKS LOUDLY AND CARRIES A BIG CHICKEN

or, should I say, IS a BIG CHICKEN. HAWK.

At least he is pulling more than his own weight, which is MUCH more than we can say for his Right Wing bretheren and sisteren.

Statistics released by a congressional committee show 861 people were granted waivers to enlist, up from 457 in 2007.

The crimes included assault, sex crimes, manslaughter and burglary.

The Army says waivers are only granted after careful review and are in response to the challenges of recruiting in a changing society.

The challenges of recruiting must be daunting in this current climate.  

The beauty of joining the Armed Forces and going to Iraq without proper training, proper armor, proper leadership and a real plan might be impressive to some, however those people that ARE impressed obviously are staying home and in the basement.

BUT, they do Support the Troops!  From a distance, of course.

Or until said troop(s) is dead or even worse! Injured and sent home where the Chicken Hawk’s tax money might be spent to take care of the useless husk.  

I mean, pull yourself up by your bootstraps Soldier, OK?

As per usual, the Right Wing is wrong about everything.

And as for this guy above?  He is so correct.  We are coming for your asses you Neo-Con greedy bastards.  With the touch of a peaceful vote against you, you will be vanquished.

The touch screen is mightier than the sword, n’est pas?

x-posted at EENRblog

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Happy Earth Day.

Maybe we should start with a disclosure that I am Gaylord Nelson’s biographer, which may give me a somewhat different perspective on Earth Day, founded by Senator Nelson (pictured), than some others.

That said, do take time to read Meteor Blade’s commentary and Q-A with Denis Hayes, who has been associated with Earth Day since Gaylord Nelson hired him to coordinate the first one in 1970.

Earth Day, it is true, has not solved all of the world’s environmental problems.  But it has had, and continues to have, a profound impact on how people think about and relate to the environment.

Gaylord Nelson’s primary goal in launching Earth Day was to get environmental issues a prominent place on this country’s political agenda, and it certainly accomplished that long ago.  On the first Earth Day, seven months after Nelson announced plans for what he envisioned as a campus environmental teach-in, 20 million people — 10 per cent of the US population at the time — participated in some way.

Earth Day introduced the Environmental Decade, an unparalleled period of legislative and grassroots activity to protect the nation’s environment. More significant environmental legislation was signed into law during the eleven-year “decade” (1970-1980) than during the 170-year period prior to Earth Day.  Congress passed twenty-eight major environmental laws, and hundreds of other public lands bills to protect and conserve natural resources.

Philip Shabecoff, a noted environmental writer, described it this way:

After Earth Day, nothing was the same. Earth Day brought revolutionary change and touched off a great burst of activism that profoundly affected the nation’s laws, its economy, its corporations, its farms, its politics, science, education, religion, and journalism… Most important, the social forces unleashed after Earth Day changed, probably forever, the way Americans think about the environment.

There’s a suggestion in the Meteor Blades piece that Earth Day was a diversion from other issues like racism, poverty and the Vietnam war, echoing some complaints from the left at the time.

From my biography of Nelson:

“The nation’s concern with the environment has done what George Wallace was unable to do: Distract the nation from the human problems of the black and brown Americans, living in just as much misery as ever,” Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana said.

Journalist I.F. Stone, speaking at the rally at the Washington Monument, called Earth Day a “beautiful snow job” designed to distract attention from government military and spending policies.  “We here tonight are being conned,” Stone said.  “The country is slipping into a wider war in Southeast Asia and we’re sitting here talking about litter bugs.”

But Nelson, an early outspoken opponent of the war who was one of only three Senators to vote against appropriations for the war in 1965, wasn’t just talking about litter bugs.

In his speech at the University of Wisconsin in Madison on the eve of Earth Day, Nelson made it clear he saw the movement as broadly focused.

“Our goal is not to forget about the worst environments in America – in the ghettos, in Appalachia and elsewhere,” he said.  “Our goal is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all human beings and all other living creatures – an environment without ugliness, without ghettos, without poverty, without discrimination, without hunger and without war.  Our goal is a decent environment in its deepest and broadest sense.

The Meteor Blades post suggests that enthusiasm and participation lagged over the next 20 years, and were only revived for the 20th anniversary of the event.

But that misses the real genius of Earth Day, and its most singular accomplishment.

Earth Day became institutionalized, and took root in the schools, where it blossoms every spring with little or no nurturance or cultivation from outside.  It happens at the local level, whether there is a national organization holding huge concerts, rallies, and demonstrations or not.

That is what truly has transformed the way people relate to the environment.

Because of environmental education, we now have a generation of young people who grew up with what Gaylord Nelson called an environmental ethic:

“We need a generation imbued with an environmental ethic,” Nelson said repeatedly over the years, “which causes society to always ask the question: ‘If we intrude on this work of nature, what will the consequences be?'” Such an ethic would recognize “the bonds that unite the species man with the natural systems of the planet” and would affirm humans’ stewardship role on the planet, he said

The message and goal had not changed in the half-century since Aldo Leopold wrote, in A Sand County Almanac, of the need for what he called a land ethic. “A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land,” Leopold wrote. The land ethic “changes the role of Homo Sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to a plain member and citizen of it.’ That, in a few sentences, was what the environmental movement was all about. Nelson’s environmentalism was a direct descendant of Leopold’s conservation.

An example:

In his visits to grade schools in the 1990s, Nelson found that nearly every pupil knew about the issue of dolphin-safe tuna. He told of one young girl who proudly told him that when her mother had come home with a can of tuna that did not have a “dolphin-safe” symbol, she made her mother drive back to the grocery store and exchange it. “This is the evolution of an ethic,” he said. It is due in large part to Earth Day, Earth Week, and the ongoing environmental education the movement spawned in the nation’s classrooms. “That’s the heart of the matter,” he said.

And that is Nelson’s real legacy.

It’s not like there’s nothing happening on the Olympic torch front. There are already protests in Australia as the torch heads toward that country: http://www.news.com.au/heralds…

Lin Hatfield Dobbs, a social justice campaigner, has pulled out of the Olympic torch relay in Australia, saying of the torch, “For a lot of people it still carries the meaning of harmony but for an increasing number of the global community watching it’s carrying a lot of meaning around human rights.” link: http://afp.google.com/article/…

And the International Herald-Tribune reports that in Japan, instead of the torch relay starting at the enigmatic Zenkoji Temple, it will begin in a parking lot: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap…

But all of that really pales in comparison to an event happening right now, involving multiple countries, including the United States and China. It includes an act of non-cooperation by trade union workers. A political party has spoken out, expressing fears that its members would become the victims of violence.

And yet we are treated to the same response by the Chinese government, that this event shouldn’t be “politicized”.  

But this is no “internal domestic affair” in China. It started last Friday when a Chinese ship, the An Yue Jiang, arrived at a South African harbor. It was carrying weapons which were bound for Zimbabwe. For those unfamiliar with the situation there, Zimbabwe had recent elections where it appeared that President Robert Mugabe’s party lost. After days, there was a recount. The recount was disputed by the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which called the recount illegal.

Church leaders have issued a statement asking for help from the international community:

Church leaders in Zimbabwe warned that Robert Mugabe’s opponents were being tortured and murdered in a deliberate campaign that could reach “genocidal” proportions.

Leaders of all denominations called for international intervention to help end the country’s post-election crisis.

They also demanded the immediate announcement of results from the March 29 presidential election that long-time Mugabe is widely believed to have lost.

In a joint statement the leaders said “the nation is in a crisis.”

link: http://ukpress.google.com/arti…

So, with a disputed election, no clear head of government and discussions of the use of violence against the opposition party, the union workers at the port where the An Yue Jiang was docked refused to unload the ship and aid the transfer of arms to this potential powderkeg.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions issued a statement after the noncooperation by union workers:

“This vessel must return to China with the arms on board, as South Africa cannot be seen to be facilitating the flow of weapons into Zimbabwe at a time where there is a political dispute and a volatile situation,” the union congress said in a statement.

link: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap…

Meanwhile, the An Yue Jiang, unable to unload its cargo in South Africa, apparently set sail for neighboring Angola, which is when US Intelligence Services got involved:

U.S. intelligence agencies are tracking the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, and American diplomats have been instructed to press authorities in at least four nations – South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia and Angola – not to allow it to dock, the officials told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss delicate diplomatic talks.

link: http://ap.google.com/article/A…

The BBC is reporting that the International Transport Workers Federation is calling on all of their workers in Africa to not unload this ship: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/afr…

The MDC was blunt about this arms shipment:

The MDC said in a statement on Tuesday, “Those weapons were not going to be used on mosquitoes, but (were) clearly meant to butcher innocent civilians whose only crime is rejecting dictatorship and voting (for) change.” The statement was carried by South Africa’s SAPA news agency.

link: http://africa.reuters.com/wire…

But both Mugabe’s party and the Chinese government seem befuddled at all of the hubub and consternation surrounding this shipment of “…three million rounds of ammunition, 1,500 rocket-propelled grenades and 2,500 mortar rounds”:

Zimbabwe’s Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said it was their right to defend themselves and buy weapons from any legitimate source.

“I don’t understand all this hullabaloo about a lone ship,” he told reporters.

link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/afr…

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu called the military shipment a normal commercial transaction. She told a regular news conference Tuesday that the contract on the shipment was signed last year and that the shipment was not related to the current internal situation in Zimbabwe. “The issue should not be politicized,” she said.

link: http://ap.google.com/article/A…

News agencies are reporting that the ship may head back to China due to lack of a port that will accept its cargo.

Okay, now at this point ya just gotta ask, if a Chinese ship carrying arms in international waters unable to unload its cargo at several ports of call due to a concern by these countries that the weapons are bound for an unstable area with no clear governing authority and reports of violence being used in the aftermath of an election isn’t something that should be openly discussed, what is?

If this isn’t something that the Chinese government deserves some amount of criticism over, what is?

If this were another George W. Bush “mistakes were made” mess-up, my head would be exploding right now.

The call to not “politicize” this event sounds like a plea to the international community to just let Chinese authorities sweep this one under the rug at a time when the world’s attention is focused on this government due to the Olympic games, and the thousands of miles that the Beijing organizers decided the torch needed to travel to get there.

Well, it’s their games and they asked for them. When you shine a spotlight on a country don’t be surprised if it illuminates the dirt in the corners just as much as the fragrant centerpiece on the dining room table.

Please keep all sides of these conflicts in your thoughts, prayers and meditations, and please keep Jamyang Kyi at the forefront of your minds, as there has been no updates regarding her status or whereabouts.

UPDATE  Here’s an interesting twist. A German bank has been trying to impound the cargo of the An Yue Jiang to pay off debt owed by the Zimbabwean government…but no one knew it was carrying weapons:

On Thursday, KfW IPEX-Bank obtained an court order in Durban, South Africa, to impound the ship’s Zimbabwean-owned cargo because the Zimbabwean government still owes the German bank about €40 million (US$63 million at current rates), Strumpf said.

“We did not know at any time that the ship was carrying weapons,” Strumpf said. “We would have never accepted weapons.”

snip

In 2006, the bank obtained an arbitration ruling from the International Chamber of Commerce in London, allowing it to impound Zimbabwean property abroad to recover its losses.

“As is common, we then hired an internationally operating company, in this case Commercial Intelligence, to track down Zimbabwean overseas-property for us and impound it,” Strumpf said.

She added that Commercial Intelligence, which obtained the impounding order for the An Yue Jiang on the bank’s behalf, also did not know that the Chinese vessel was carrying weapons.

link: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap…

Curious.

According to this Yahoo!News story…

…for those living in the Northern Hemisphere, a great “window of opportunity” for viewing Mercury in the evening sky is about to open up.

Tomorrow night, April 23, Mercury will be visible to the naked eye within 30 minutes after the sun sets, and should be the brightest object in the sky that night.

By April 30, Mercury will be setting as late as 85 minutes after the Sun. That evening, binoculars may show the Pleiades star cluster 4 degrees directly above it. (Your clenched fist held at arm’s length measures about 10 degrees in width.)

More information on the planet Mercury is available at this site…or, of course, at Wikipedia..

Mercury was named for the Roman god of commerce, travel, and thievery…whose Greek counterpart, Hermes, was the messenger of the gods.  It was probably so named due to the speed at which it appears to travel when viewed from Earth and its proximity to the sun.  In astrology, it is designated as the planet which influences communication, ideas, the media, travellers, and consultants.  It is the planet of silver tongues and trickery 😉  

Besides being super-excited to see Mercury again, I’m also focused and determined to use the energy of her ‘exposure’ to bring about more exposure of silver-tongued tricksters (media included!)…I wont get too confusing here about how she’s also moving into Gemini, the sign she rules, or the upcoming retrograde….i’ll only say that the heavens say that the upcoming months are a good time to bring scandals to the fore 😉  

As above, so below…

~73v

(Since the progress-o-sphere is about to go primary-day-crazy, here’s something to possibly counter all the primary talk from the state of Maine! Ohio? Mississi– Um, which state is it again?)

So, I wouldn’t call myself a “pacifist”  in the classic sense, but I come from city-liberals who saw weapons as, at best, a necessary evil. They never owned a gun… I’ve never owned a gun… and I honestly never remember WANTING a gun, even as a kid.

I was more “sports-and-fantasy-games-dork” then “don-a-collender-on-my-head-and-use-a-cucumber-sidearm-to-reenact-the-invasion-of-Normandy-dude-muffin.

So, imagine my  surprise, chagrin and confusion when I realize my three year-old son is… well… TOTALLY a “don-a-collender-on-his-head-and-use-a-cucumber-sidearm-to-reenact-the-invasion-of-Normandy-dude-muffin”.

EVERYTHING he picks up somehow turns into a weapon.

A spoon… a piece of bread… a crayon… a pillow (and not even a gun-shaped-pillow, but a totally square pillow, held at it’s corner and activated with mouth “pow-pow”.)

One time I looked over to find him standing in front of a mirror, posing; his six-shooter of choice… a tampon, still in the wrapper.

“This do some shooting?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, “That don’t do no shooting.”

(Oh, and, YES when Truman came down the stairs with the… you-know-what-tu… he was absolutely using THAT as a sword at the time.)

On the rare occasion he’s not “don-a-collender-on-his-head-and-use-a-cucumber-sidearm-to-reenact-the-invasion-of-Normandy-dude-muffin”, he’s instead “tape-a-kitchen-towel-on-his-back-and-use-a-whisk-to-portray-the-death-of-Obi-Won-Kenobi-son”.

Oh, and by the way… he’s playing Darth Vader.

Every time Darth Vader comes on screen he screams… “THERE I AM! THAT’A ME!”

And not just Vader, either. The Emperor. Apparently, my Son ?’s oatmeal face.

Anyway. Off track here. Back to guns.

Wife is out of town this weekend and so I decide to take the kids for dim sum in downtown LA and then to wander the block of stands filled with all the crap that essentially makes up our national trade deficit with China.

My daughter, Josephine, picks out a hideously strange, seven-dollar, year-of-the-rat piggy bank and Truman chooses… a three dollar plastic, rat-a-tat-tat, army-guy machine-gun.

Now, I considered trying to talk him out of the faux firearms, but I’m convinced that one gets the kid they get and the kid I’ve got has something he needs to work out here.

He’s got NO love for actual violence… is not a hitter or a biter or even a pusher… and the gun thing appears to be a natural outcropping of his role playing.

Also, if we don’t get the gun, he’ll ask for a sword, and if I don’t buy a sword, he’ll buy a stuffed alligator and eventually use it as a gun and a sword.

Plus, why stigmatize it and turn it into something forbidden and therefore fascinating?

Aaaaand… its not the gun but the mentality of violence.

Or, that’s how I’m badly, desperately, hopelessly trying to justify it.

Clearly I’m CONFLICTED, right? Clearly I’m trying to find the balance between responsible progressive father and confused, non-hunting, mocha-drinking, liberal elitist.

Anyway, after China Town we head to the park to meet friends.

Jo runs off to involve “Ratty” in some role-playing game of emotional substance, while Truman and his best-buddy… preemptively invade an empty sandbox.

As I watch the two boys shooting and running and laughing I turn to see another mother eyeing them and out of my guilty mouth pops:

“They– Its– a peace keeping mission. NATO! They’re… you know… country in turmoil… protecting against genocide… you know, like… think… what we should’ve done in Darfur.”

But just as I’m getting my story straight, Truman rushes underfoot screaming gleefully, “All dead, Daddy! I got them all! All dead! Pow-pow-arggargaspha!”

I hang my head and flash my best sheepish grin: “More Blackwater then NATO, huh?”

OK, still working out the kinks here…