Pope Says Church Will Not Allow Pedophile Priests

Talk about infallible!

Well, Saint McSame has some good news and some bad news for Americans.  I would love to do a “first the good news and then the bad news” sort of diary, but with McSame, it is all bad news for those of us that pay attention to current events once again.

From CNN:

An end to earmarks, a gas-tax holiday, government-backed mortgages — they’re all part of GOP Sen. John McCain’s “big and ambitious” plan to revive a flailing economy, a top aide said Tuesday.

OK.  Big and ambitious usually means someone is making money, and that someone isn’t you or me.  Hmmmmmmm.  Could it be Corporations again?  You make the call.

The senator from Arizona is proposing an income tax system that offers two basic rates and a “generous standard deduction,” according to his prepared remarks. McCain is proposing letting Americans choose between the new system and the present one.

“Americans do not resent paying their rightful share of taxes — what they do resent is being subjected to thousands of pages of needless and often irrational rules and demands” from the Internal Revenue Service, he will say. “We are going to create a new and simpler tax system — and give the American people a choice.”

The presidential candidate also will call for doubling the federal income tax for dependents, from $3,500 to $7,000.

Well, gee!  That sounds nice, doesn’t it?  Except for the part that, of course, he does not say how we as a country will pay for it.  

I suppose he has a plan to continue the George W. Bush Personal US Tresuary Money Printing and Inflation Building corporate welfare account.  

There is more, unfortunately.

McCain also will say he wants Congress to declare a summer gas-tax holiday, suspending the 18.4-cent gas tax and 24.4-cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day this year. Because so many industries rely on gas for production, “these immediate steps will help to spread relief across the American economy,” he will say.

McSame didn’t mention that during this gas-tax holiday that fuel prices will no doubt rise beyond the possible 18.4 cents for gasoline or 24.4 cents for diesel fuel that his “plan” will call for.  Not to mention, how is that money going to be replaced in the National coffers?  

I’m guessing it will come from the George W. Bush Personal US Tresuary Money Printing and Inflation Building corporate welfare account.

Now, we know many promises are made in Campaigns, and quite a few of them are never meant to be kept.  

All of a sudden, Saint McSame wants to help the American homeowner.  

Oh YES!  After not giving a shit for some time now, the polls have his Wingnut Wurlitzer message machine spouting out new lies to tell us.

And he plans to address the subprime mortgage crisis by offering people at risk of foreclosure a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage loan backed by the federal government. People will be able to pick up applications at any post office, he will say.

“Citizens will keep their homes, lenders will cut their losses, and everyone will move on — following the sounder practices that should have been observed in the first place,” he is expected to say.

On March 26, 2008, Saint McSame had this to say about the sub-prime mortgage mess:

“It is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.”

Only a couple of weeks ago, his AssHoliness was telling Americans to SUCK IT UP.  

Today, he plans to read the tea leaves and lie to us about What we Want To Hear and tell us what he would do if elected Presnit Bush (third term) while every second knowing he would do nothing of the sort.

But of course, the coup de grâce is again corporate welfare.  

Despite the promised assault on corporate loopholes, McCain will say he will use the money saved via his proposals to ease the burden on employers by lowering the business income tax from 35 percent to 25 percent.

The lie.  The money saved via his proposals.

The pitch to rally Corporate America.  To ease the burden on employers by lowering the business income tax from 35 percent to 25 percent.

If this were a movie, it would be sub-titled

Evil returns, the Third Term.

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Recent revelations that torture was approved, applauded, and enjoyed by senior Bush administration officials have caused quite a stir. Bush now freely admits that he “approved” of the CIA torturing a few “high value” terrorism suspects in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. All those assertions that the United States does not torture were knowingly false. While lying to Congress, the American people, and the world community might get another president in trouble, even impeached, war crimes appear to be much more acceptable in post-9/11 America. The mea culpa simply forces the administration and its supporters to create a new mythology of torture.  

Myth 1: We only tortured a few “high value” terrorism suspects.

The media has myopically focused on the abuse of three prisoners – Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammad, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Since these three men have been presented to the American people as high level members of al Qaeda and involved in the 9/11 plot, they provide a more palatable target for torture.  As long as attention remains focused on these three figures, Americans can be seduced into believing the following story line.  Our government only used torture as a last resort on three captured al Qaeda operatives responsible for the 9/11 attacks to prevent future attacks. Even if you are squeamish about torture or understand that it is a violation of international law, you can take some comfort that our government was extremely reluctant to use “enhanced interrogation” techniques, making exceptions for the worst of the worst during a national emergency.

The myopia is understandable. The Bush administration and the CIA have fostered the misperception.  For example, when Michael Hayden finally admitted to Congress that terrorism suspects were waterboarded, it presented as a slam dunk. Here is how the BBC reported the event:

The CIA has for the first time publicly admitted using the controversial method of “waterboarding” on terror suspects.

CIA head Michael Hayden told Congress it had only been used on three people, and not for the past five years.

To bolster the association in the feeble minds of the inattentive, all public statements from the Bush administration have been careful to link any discussion of torture (enhanced interrogation techniques if you prefer) to Satan’s brother-in-law, Khalid Sheik Mohammad (the cool kids like to call him KSM). I dare you to find a discussion of waterboarding or other form of torture paid for by your tax dollars that does not mention KSM. Here is the obligatory KSM sighting in the BBC report on Hayden’s testimony.

He said the technique had been used on high-profile al-Qaeda detainees including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Kuwaiti-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accused of masterminding the 11 September attacks on the United States.

See?  We only tortured the 9/11 mastermind.  Conservatives love to regurgitate this frame.  It even filters down to the lower echelons of the wingnut world web.

The problem, of course, is that it is not true.  In 2005, even the Wall Street Journal was willing to print that “11 of 12 captured al Qaeda kingpins who have talked only did so after being waterboarded.”  If you count torture outsourced to other countries, the Bush Inquisition has been remarkably busy.

“The Bush administration claims that it has not transferred people to foreign custody for abusive interrogation,” said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. “But we’ve documented more than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture.”

…

The exact number of people that the United States has subjected to rendition abroad is not known. CIA Director Michael Hayden suggested in a September 7, 2007 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations that far fewer than 100 people – “mid-range two figures” – had been rendered abroad since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Source

No one knows the exact number of people we have tortured, but it is many more that the three original al Qaeda “kingpins” and we are still going strong. Torture is illegal no matter how many times you engage in it.

Myth 2: We have gotten valuable information from torture.

Here is the sum total of all the fabulous “intelligence” we gleaned from torture. Zubaydah gave up his two buddies.

The CIA has confirmed Zubaydah was one of three al Qaeda suspects subjected to waterboarding. After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Source

But what about that evil genius KSM? He must have provided enough actionable intelligence to round up all the al Qaeda leadership and win the first major battle in the “war on terror.” Not quite. KSM was impressive in his ability to do the backstroke and breaststroke during the water torture sessions at Spa Americana, but gave us very little more than a hummus recipe or two.

Bush supporters are quick to say that the use of torture is one of the reasons we have not been attacked again, by faith assuming that torture gave us information to thwart subsequent attacks.  The fallacy in the argument is that there is not one shred of evidence that we uncovered any planned attacks with torture.  If such evidence actually existed, it would have been leaked to bolster public support.  These men are not being tried in a US court of law under our legal standards of jurisprudence, so disclosure is not an issue.  The three al Qaeda stooges have been in custody so long that any actionable intelligence has long outlived any need for secrecy.  The office of the Vice President has already shown its willingness to leak classified information and jeopardize CIA operations and operatives, so obviously that is not a consideration.  All we got from torture was confessions of complicity that we intend to use in the military tribunal “trials” to convict and punish them.

Humane treatment is the only way to get cooperation.  Torture never works.  

Myth 3: Our harsh interrogation methods are not torture..

This farcical idea comes from none other than Steven Bradbury, the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. On February 14, 2008, Bradbury testified before the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) that we practice a kinder and gentler form of waterboarding. He explicitly stated our methods of waterboarding do not violate US and international laws.  Here is what makes American waterboarding merely unpleasant rather than a war crime:

Waterboarding as practiced by the CIA bears “no resemblance” to what torturers in time past have done. “There’s been a lot of discussion in the public about historical uses of waterboarding,” Bradbury says. The “only thing in common is the use of water.” Spanish and Japanese water torture techniques “involved the forced consumption of a mass amount of water.” When asked if he is aware of any “modern use” of waterboarding that involves the “lungs filling with water,” Bradbury says he is not. Bradbury says that the Japanese forced the ingestion of so much water that it was “beyond the capacity of the victim’s stomach.” Weight or pressure was then applied by standing or jumping on the stomach of the victim, sometimes leading to “blood coming of the victim’s mouth.” The Spanish Inquisition would use the technique to the point of “agony or death.” The CIA does not do that, Bradbury says. “Strict time limits” are involved-presumably governing the length of time that interrogators can induce the sensation of drowning. Additionally, “safeguards” and “restrictions” make waterboarding a much more controlled procedure. Together, waterboarding as practiced by the CIA is not torture. However, Bradbury admits that recent Supreme Court decisions have changed the OLC’s analysis, and says that in 2006 the CIA stopped using waterboarding.

Source

So as long as we do not let the victim swallow or aspirate too much water, apply weight or pressure to their gut, or allow the festivities to go on too long, we can practice waterboarding legally and in good conscience. Since Bradbury graduated from a prestigious law school instead of the Regent or Liberty clown colleges, this is not ignorance, but rather studious deception. Here is video of Bradbury’s testimony before the HJC.

Steven Bradbury is not simply guilty of spinning waterboarding as harmless, he is responsible for providing the legal cover for the Bush administration’s torture policies along with John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales.  Bradbury still works for the DoJ and has been nominated to be Assistant Attorney General as head of the Office of Legal Counsel.

Myth 4: There is nothing you can do to stop torture.

The Bush administration can no longer keep its torture policy secret so it is trying to increase the acceptability of torture with the American people.  Although Congress managed to pass a bill to prohibit the US military from engaging in acts that violate the Geneva Conventions, Bush has vetoed a bill that would hold the CIA to the same standard. Exemptions for the CIA means that America will continue to torture.  Here are few ways you can help put a stop to torture.

1. Help build awareness.

Keep the issue alive with visibility.  The media largely ignored the latest revelations in the ABC News reports. Few big market newspapers covered the story.  The Washington Post had one small story on page 3.  All of the cable news covered “bitter-gate” in excruciating detail but none covered direct involvement in torture by senior members of the Bush administration.  It was swept under the rug in America, but China was paying attention.

2. Help prevent the confirmation of Steven Bradbury to become Assistant Attorney General.

Letter Opposing the Nomination of Steven Bradbury to Be Assistant Attorney General

March 26, 2008  

The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy  

Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee  

433 Russell Senate Office Building  

Washington, DC 20510-4502  

The Honorable Arlen Specter  

Ranking Member, Senate Judiciary Committee  

711 Hart Senate Office Building  

Washington, DC 20510-3802

Dear Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Specter:  

We are writing to urge you to oppose the nomination of Steven Bradbury to be Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). While the undersigned groups rarely take positions on nominations, we believe that Bradbury’s role in authorizing torture makes this an extraordinary case.  

As you know, Bradbury has been effective head of OLC since June 2005. The OLC is entrusted with providing the president and other executive branch agencies with legal advice that is an accurate and honest appraisal of applicable law, even if it places constraints on the policies of the executive. Bradbury’s approval of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading techniques to interrogate detainees defies applicable law and precedent. It is an affront to fundamental American values and has done enormous damage to America’s authority and reputation in the world.  

Soon after joining OLC, Bradbury is believed to have signed off on still-secret OLC legal opinions authorizing the use of “waterboarding” in combination with other abusive interrogation techniques, such as head-slapping, and extended exposure to cold. James Comey, then deputy attorney general, reportedly told his colleagues that they would be “ashamed” when the opinion became public.  

Many of the interrogation techniques Bradbury reportedly approved have been prosecuted by US military and civilian courts as torture over the past 100 years. As recently as 1983, the Justice Department prosecuted a Texas sheriff for subjecting prisoners to “water torture” in an attempt to coerce confessions. Bradbury apparently ignored these precedents. In so doing, he placed in legal jeopardy everyone from the president of the United States to CIA interrogators in the field who trust the Justice Department to provide responsible legal guidance.  

In late 2005, as the McCain amendment prohibiting cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment was working its way through Congress, Bradbury is believed to have signed off on another legal memo which concluded that none of the interrogation techniques already authorized would violate the amendment, despite the clear contrary intent of the Congress.  

Last month, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility announced that it was investigating whether those who gave legal approval to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques violated the department’s professional standards.  

Still, Bradbury continues to offer a legal justification for the use of waterboarding. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in February 2008, he argued that waterboarding, as has been used by the US government, was not torture. He explained that this was because US interrogators did not allow “mass amounts” of water to enter the lungs of the victims, nor did they jump on the victims’ distended bellies, as was done during the Spanish Inquisition, and by Japanese soldiers prosecuted by the United States after World War II.  

This is the kind of legal analysis one would expect from a defense counsel trying to keep his client out of prison, rather than an objective analyst of the law. But however you parse it, waterboarding is torture.  

Bradbury’s public testimony sends a profoundly dangerous message to potential adversaries of the United States about the kind of treatment the US government would consider acceptable if inflicted on Americans in custody. Imagine if North Korea captured an American soldier and said to the United States, “Don’t worry. We only used the good waterboarding on the American in our custody. We made sure that his stomach never became distended, and we didn’t jump on it. We just made sure he thought he was going to suffocate, but stopped after he went into terrible hysterics.” This is precisely what Bradbury suggests would be acceptable.  

The United States needs someone to head the Office of Legal Counsel who can maintain the highest legal standards and provide the president a reliable interpretation of what the law is — rather than what the president wants the law to be. Steven Bradbury has proven unable to do so, and we urge you to oppose his nomination.  

Sincerely,  

Kenneth Roth  

Executive Director  

Human Rights Watch

Source

3. Support the ACLU effort to have a special prosecutor appointed by Congress.

ACLU’s Top 10 Reasons To Appoint a Special Prosecutor

10. Congress and the Agencies Have Failed in Holding Torture Perpetrators Accountable

9. Further Delay in Criminal Investigations Could Put Some Crimes Outside the Statues of Limitations

8. Military Prosecutors Have Not Gone Up the Chain of Command

7. The Justice Department Has Failed to Bring Any Indictments Based on 20 CIA and DOD Referrals of Possible Crimes by Civilians

6. The Justice Department Wrote the Legal Opinions Authorizing Torture

5. The Past Head of the Criminal Division Reportedly Advised on Interrogation Practices, Possibly Including the Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah

4. The Current Head of the Criminal Division Was in Meetings on Interrogations

3. Attorney General Mukasey Still Refuses to Say Whether Waterboarding and Other Forms of Torture Are Illegal

2. Attempts to Shield Government Officials from Criminal Prosecution Were Pursued by the White House, Including by the President and Vice President

1. There Is Credible Evidence of Numerous Federal Crimes

4. Help Amnesty International stop renditions and illegal detentions.

Today, the sad news has broken: there will not be democracy, or freedom from despotism in Zimbabwe.  

The call by Zimbabwe’s political opposition for people nationwide to stay away from work began to take effect on Tuesday, but it did not succeed in shutting down the capital, Harare.

Election officials, citing voting irregularities, have refused to release the outcome of the contest, between Zimbabwe’s autocratic president, Robert G. Mugabe, who has ruled for 28 years, and the MDC candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai.

The High Court Monday rejected an opposition demand that it force Zimbabwe’s electoral commission to publish the results, prompting the opposition to go ahead with the strike.

The opposition, which analysts say does not have a strong track record of organizing large public protests, decided against calling on its followers to take to the streets.

Police have banned all public rallies. And in recent days, opposition leaders have said in interviews they believe Mr. Mugabe’s government is looking for reasons to crack down and declare a state of emergency that would allow him to rule by decree.  They hoped a stay-away would enable them to avoid violent confrontations with the police and the army.

With the cave-in over the last week of South African President Thabo Mbeki, who somehow found that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe (clearly, Fred Kagan has found time to give Mbeki policy advice), there is now no apparent hope that Mugabe’s disastrous reign will end, despite his obvious defeat at the ballot box.  The victorious opposition lacks the organization of its counterparts in Pakistan, and the crippling poverty and unemployment which has devastated Zimbabwe made the hope of a non-violent general strike a mirage.  And while no cost in human blood and American treasure is too high to ensure the right to vote in Mesopotamia, the Mutupa Empire cannot be spared even high-minded American words, righteously demanding justice even if the words are as hollow as our government’s rhetoric has ever been.

But President Bush, not content with all else that he has taken from Americans, has seized that as well.

When I was growing up, the smear used against Mondale and Dukakis was always, “Is this man fit to be the leader of the free world?”  That was the term that I always heard them use about Reagan.  Leader of the free world.  That was why Dukakis looked so damn stupid in that tank.

I don’t hear that term anymore.  No one really uses it.  And I wouldn’t have thought that would bother me, but it actually does.

The expression that people never imagined that, in their lifetime, they never imagined that the United States would be a nation with secret prisons and legalized torture has become so commonplace as to nearly be a cliché, although of course I feel that way.  But I honestly never imagined that in my lifetime, people would no longer say that the President of the United States was no longer the leader of the free world.  A little less than twenty years ago, when Tiananmen Square erupted, President George H.W. Bush enacted sanctions against China and was rightly deemed to have done too little.  Today, as China does so further west from Shanghai, our President’s administration patiently explains that the Olympics are all about the running and jumping.

We don’t even get the self-righteous preening from Jesse Helms anymore.  That is how low we’ve sunk.  We torture and have a Stasi and go to war for the first time in a century without our oldest ally, whose aid in war predates our nation, while we mock them and rename Belgian snack foods to spite them.  We have to beg the alliance which we held together through forty years of the Cold War to aid our campaign against those who attacked my city.

And so what can we possibly have left for Felix Muzambi, a grandfather who had the temerity to run for election against Mugabe’s party and was beaten for his victory?

“We’re in trouble,” said Muzambi, who won a seat on Marondera’s council, a humiliating loss for Mugabe’s party, which has controlled this town since Zimbabwe’s birth in 1980. “Everybody is scared because they know he kills.”

Not even pretty words, letting him know that whatever price he is forced to pay to attempt to join us in the “free world”, America is on his side.  President Bush had to steal that from us as well.

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

Lost in the daily headlines surrounding the events in China, Tibet and the Olympic Games is the Dalai Lama’s message of compassion. He has been in Seattle these past few days to speak about this message at the Seeds of Compassion conference.

This local broadcast gives a flavor of the goals of the conference:

Full disclosure here – I am not a Buddhist. I am a Christian, and an avid admirer of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his philosophy of nonviolence. It was this admiration of King that drew me to become interested in the Dalai Lama and the recent events in Tibet.

I started researching the Dalai Lama’s views regarding world peace – as at this time given recent events it seems particularly relevant what his personal views are – and was struck by how similar they are to the observations King made on the state of our world.

For instance:

Science and technology, though capable of creating immeasurable material comfort, cannot replace the age-old spiritual and humanitarian values that have largely shaped world civilization, in all its national forms, as we know it today. No one can deny the unprecedented material benefit of science and technology, but our basic human problems remain; we are still faced with the same, if not more, suffering, fear, and tension. Thus it is only logical to try to strike a balance between material developments on the one hand and the development of spiritual, human values on the other. In order to bring about this great adjustment, we need to revive our humanitarian values.

link: http://www.dalailama.com/page….

Compare this with King’s comments on science and technology:

Through our scientific genius we have made of this world a neighborhood. Now through our moral and spiritual development, we must make of it a brotherhood. In a real sense we must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools.

And then there is the central question of how to re-order our thinking away from a world that pursues violence in the name of materialism.

The Dalai Lama:

According to Buddhist psychology, most of our troubles are due to our passionate desire for and attachment to things that we misapprehend as enduring entities. The pursuit of the objects of our desire and attachment involves the use of aggression and competitiveness as supposedly efficacious instruments. These mental processes easily translate into actions, breeding belligerence as an obvious effect. Such processes have been going on in the human mind since time immemorial, but their execution has become more effective under modern conditions. What can we do to control and regulate these ‘poisons’ – delusion, greed, and aggression? For it is these poisons that are behind almost every trouble in the world.

snip

As one brought up in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, I feel that love and compassion are the moral fabric of world peace. Let me first define what I mean by compassion. When you have pity or compassion for a very poor person, you are showing sympathy because he or she is poor; your compassion is based on altruistic considerations. On the other hand, love towards your wife, your husband, your children, or a close friend is usually based on attachment. When your attachment changes, your kindness also changes; it may disappear. This is not true love. Real love is not based on attachment, but on altruism. In this case your compassion will remain as a humane response to suffering as long as beings continue to suffer.

This type of compassion is what we must strive to cultivate in ourselves, and we must develop it from a limited amount to the limitless. Undiscriminating, spontaneous, and unlimited compassion for all sentient beings is obviously not the usual love that one has for friends or family, which is alloyed with ignorance, desire, and attachment. The kind of love we should advocate is this wider love that you can have even for someone who has done harm to you: your enemy.

snip

When we take into account a longer perspective, the fact that all wish to gain happiness and avoid suffering, and keep in mind our relative unimportance in relation to countless others, we can conclude that it is worthwhile to share our possessions with others. When you train in this sort of outlook, a true sense of compassion – a true sense of love and respect for others – becomes possible. Individual happiness ceases to be a conscious self-seeking effort; it becomes an automatic and far superior by-product of the whole process of loving and serving others.

link: http://www.dalailama.com/page….

Martin Luther King, Jr.:

I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

link: http://www.wagingpeace.org/art…

There are still further similarities – too many to comfortably cover in one short blog posting that is meant for quick digestion and provocative thought.

But this raises an interesting question. Here are two men, from two very different societies, two different religions, who reach the same conclusion. One could look back at Gandhi and see that he also reached these conclusions. One could look further back secularly at Thoreau, and then religiously at Buddha, and Jesus, and see the same similarites.

All of these different individuals, all speaking to us in different ways at different times.

Why don’t we listen?

What is it about us, as a people, that makes us all collectively nod our heads and then move on, feeling that having sat through the lecture we can comfortably check off that internal box on our check list of What I Need To Do To Be A Good Person?

And why is it that when personal sacrifice is required to put these lofty ideals into practice our first impulse is to demonize, and denounce, and fill the world with as much invective as our souls can muster? Why do we need to make so much noise to drown out the truth of these simple messages?

I don’t think I’ll ever get to the bottom of these questions. But I think they need to be asked as part of our endeavor to move our society forward.

Please keep all sides of this conflict in your thoughts, prayers and meditations.

I’ll leave you with this:

Please see this site for information regarding a tax-day call-in which is being sponsored by (i believe….if not, promoted by, on this site) by the Quaker ‘American Friends Service Committe’.  And tell a friend.  The link has a suggested script as well.

And make sure you do something nice for yourself today, too.  You’ve earned it!!

Got styrofoam boxes

for the ozone layer

Got a man of the people,

says keep hope alive

Got fuel to burn,

got roads to drive.

Tuesday’s Headlines: Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies: Delta, Northwest Agree to Merger: Zimbabwe braced for strike action: 19 children die in Uganda school fire: Berlusconi sweeps back to power as left concedes defeat in Italian elections: Stalin’s space monkeys: Iraqi troops free British journalist: Devising Survival at Factory in Iraq: Beijing bans construction projects to improve air quality during the Olympics: Tibetan monks resist ‘education’ campaign, say rights groups: Mexico opposition barricades Congress

Biofuel: the burning question

The production of biofuel is devastating huge swathes of the world’s environment. So why on earth is the Government forcing us to use more of it?

From today, all petrol and diesel sold on forecourts must contain at least 2.5 per cent biofuel. The Government insists its flagship environmental policy will make Britain’s 33 million vehicles greener. But a formidable coalition of campaigners is warning that, far from helping to reverse climate change, the UK’s biofuel revolution will speed up global warming and the loss of vital habitat worldwide.

Amid growing evidence that massive investment in biofuels by developed countries is helping to cause a food crisis for the world’s poor, the ecological cost of the push to produce billions of litres of petrol and diesel from plant sources will be highlighted today with protests across the country and growing political pressure to impose guarantees that the new technology reduces carbon emissions.

USA

Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies

The consumer spending slump and tightening credit markets are unleashing a widening wave of bankruptcies in American retailing, prompting thousands of store closings that are expected to remake suburban malls and downtown shopping districts across the country.

Since last fall, eight mostly midsize chains – as diverse as the furniture store Levitz and the electronics seller Sharper Image – have filed for bankruptcy protection as they staggered under mounting debt and declining sales.

But the troubles are quickly spreading to bigger national companies, like Linens ‘n Things, the bedding and furniture retailer with 500 stores in 47 states.

Delta, Northwest Agree to Merger

Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines last night announced a proposed merger that would create the world’s largest carrier and possibly spur an industry-wide round of restructuring that could vastly change air travel for millions of Americans.

The proposal, which was months in the making, would create a global airline with seven domestic hubs and international destinations stretching from Asia to South America to Europe. It comes as new international agreements have reduced barriers to competition, fuel prices have skyrocketed and the economy has weakened. In the past month, four discount airlines have sought bankruptcy protection.

The merger of the two carriers is far from a certainty, however. It would need to pass regulatory muster, and Northwest has yet to reach an agreement with its pilots, an employee group that could complicate integrating the airlines.

Africa

Zimbabwe braced for strike action

Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change has called a general strike, with tight security even though no demonstrations are planned.

It comes after the High Court ruled against an MDC demand for the release of presidential election results.

The opposition says Morgan Tsvangirai beat President Robert Mugabe in the vote and one of its poll agents has since been killed by Zanu-PF militia.

Police accuse the MDC of “agitating for violence” by calling for the strike.

Rather than street protests, opposition officials have called for a “mass stay-in until the results are released,” MDC Vice-President Thokhozani Khupe was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

19 children die in Uganda school fire

A fire killed 19 schoolchildren and two adults at a primary school dormitory in Uganda last night, police said.

Most of the girls’ dormintory had burned down by the time firefighters arrived. The students were between the ages of seven and 10.

Authorities were investigating the blaze at Buddo primary school, seven miles (12km) from the capital, Kampala, said a police spokeswoman, Judith Nabakooba.

The doors to the dormitory had been locked from the outside and the electricity was off at the time, said a school worker, James Kiiza.

Europe

Berlusconi sweeps back to power as left concedes defeat in Italian elections

· Government likely to be most rightwing in 14 years

· Two-party divide seen as basis for political stability

Silvio Berlusconi was last night set to return to power at the head of Italy’s most rightwing government since he first came to office 14 years ago. Projections from the general election held yesterday and on Sunday gave his Freedom Folk movement a convincing victory over Walter Veltroni’s centre-left Democratic Party (DP).

After Veltroni conceded defeat, an uncharacteristically subdued Berlusconi said: “I feel a great responsibility, because the months and years ahead will be difficult ones.” They would, he said, be “decisive for the modernisation of the country”.

Stalin’s space monkeys

It looks like a neglected zoo. But the Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy has its own macabre chapter in the history of the Soviet Union. Shaun Walker reports from Sukhumi, Abkhazia

From the old railway station, now a hollow shell covered in weeds, a long concrete stairway, sheltered by sub-tropical foliage, winds from the centre of Sukhumi up to a collection of buildings, many pocked with bullet holes or crushed by bombs.

The first thing that registers is the putrid smell of animal faeces, then from inside one building comes a primeval squawking that sounds like a child being tortured. Cage after cage of distraught-looking monkeys come into view, nearly 300 in all, gnawing at mandarins and scampering around their enclosures.

Middle East

Iraqi troops free British journalist

A British journalist kidnapped in Basra was freed after two months in captivity when Iraqi security forces raided the building where he was being held.

Richard Butler, a photojournalist with CBS, was found hooded and with his hands tied behind his back by soldiers searching an area which previously had a heavy militia presence.

The soldiers came under fire, according to Iraqi officials, from four gunmen, one of whom they captured.

Mr Butler told Iraqi television: “The Iraqi army stormed the house and overcame my guards and then burst through the door.

Devising Survival at Factory in Iraq

BAGHDAD – Before April 2003, when the maze of crooked lanes that branch away from Rasheed Street downtown were crammed with hundreds of small leather goods factories, Hassan Attiya, now 43, designed fancy women’s shoes under his signature “Cowboy” label. And his workers manufactured and sold them by the thousands.

Now Mr. Attiya, humbled by security fears, the shuttering of Iraqi tanning factories that provided his raw materials and an avalanche of cheap imports from China and Syria since the invasion, hangs on in a crumbling former dentist’s office with a handful of workers.

Asia

Beijing bans construction projects to improve air quality during the Olympics

· £8.6bn being spent to tackle smog, say officials

· Factory closures also part of pollution-cutting plan

China yesterday unveiled ambitious plans to improve its capital’s heavily polluted air in time for the Olympics, including halting construction and heavy industry.

Beijing’s Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau laid out a range of tough measures to cut back pollution, such as closing numerous petrol stations and even banning spray-painting.

The bureau’s deputy director, Du Shaozhong, warned that even more “strident” measures would be taken if the weather was unfavourable by the time the games begin in August. The month is regarded as one of the worst in terms of pollution in the city because the air is humid and often stagnant.

Tibetan monks resist ‘education’ campaign, say rights groups

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A number of monks were detained at a key Buddhist monastery near the Tibetan capital Lhasa after they resisted efforts to force them to denounce the Dalai Lama, an overseas Tibet group said.

The report was the latest to indicate continued simmering tension in the Himalayan region after Chinese security forces moved in to quell widespread protests against Beijing’s rule last month.

Security forces were called in to the Drepung monastery at the weekend after the monks protested the arrival of a “patriotic education” team, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said in a notice posted on their website Monday.

Latin America

Mexico opposition barricades Congress

MEXICO CITY – Leftist lawmakers erected makeshift barricades Monday around the podium in Mexico’s lower house of Congress, where they have been camped out for more than five days to protest the president’s oil reform proposal.

They piled heavy chairs around the speaker’s platform, while their colleagues in the Senate began fasting to demand that Congress schedule a four-month national debate on the energy bill backed by President Felipe Calderon.

Seeking to end the takeover, senators with Calderon’s National Action Party, or PAN, and the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, offered later Monday to compromise and debate the issue for 50 days.

At the risk of getting screamed at and having the Polizi drag me to Gitmo in defense of their twisted fucking culture, here comes my homage to my vagina for V-Day.

Cross-posted from GentillyGirl :

I came into this world with a vagina. (And I came out of one too) It was part of my being, the plan… Nature. Bio-chemistry and genetics created a very different creature… one that contained all forms of Humanity. I was just a little collection of protoplasm who had a vagina. Had…

They took it away from me. That little part of my body that was mine by birthright, and they took it away. Why did this happen? Well, my being violated a bullshit Societal concept: I didn’t fit the Gender Polarity rules. I had to be “fixed” in order to preserve the status quo. I was a teratology (literally: a monster) that had to be exorcised. Having something resembling a penis and a vagina? Shocking.

So they sewed my vagina shut, and then proceeded to create an extension of my urethra to give me a viable penis. Didn’t matter if I was rendered sterile… I just had to look right and fulfill a role as the first-born male. Maybe I wanted to be a woman, but once again, I didn’t get to make that call.

No one asked me what I wanted to be. I was just a piece of meat to be molded for Society’s shit. Call it a form of Female Genital Mutilation. That little part of me that could allow the creation of new Life was gone. My part in the great Chain of Life was negated. I would never be able to feel myself, my special gift, again. So much Light and love left me.

I couldn’t find my vagina for decades. That which I knew was mine was invisible. I had been “raped” in the most horrible of ways: my “self” was taken away. In time this would prove how close to the edge I felt inside. Trying to live up to expectations brought me to many dangerous situations… all because I had to Be, but my vision was not what others saw. I was looking for my vagina.

After many years of research, I figured I was a Transsexual. Something went wrong hormonally in utero. I had one false start on correcting this, but later would take the plunge into Living. This though was only swapping one role in Life for another. My freakin’ life was nothing but a vast stage, an act, a sham. I was still looking for my vagina.

Look at it this way: I gave up family and friends in order to take this “other path”. That’s what the psyches told us years ago. We had to be created again. We were convinced to start living a lie. It was, supposedly, the only way to find ourselves. We had to kill our pasts. This is a terrible road to walk down… half of my tribe will not live past the age of thirty. It’s a lonely walk.

Been there and done it, but I still couldn’t find my vagina.

Since ’01 I have been living a life that is closer to what I am. I have been vocal about who I am and what I am not. Living a lie would not end the pain I have lived with for an entire life. My life has meaning, and I am that meaning even though I couldn’t find my vagina. To know thyself is everything. Actually, it’s the only important thing in Life. From that point all flows. It’s the epiphany that all of us must come to in our lives. It is the end game.

Even with the above thoughts I was still in turmoil. My vagina was missing and I had no way to create new life. My purpose in this life was stymied. I continued to mourn over my missing vagina. I was not complete, even though I have a wonderful life partner, many fantastic people in my life and own a house in my most beloved New Orleans. I have the American Dream, but something was still “not there”.

Three days after the Federal Flood of New Orleans, I found my vagina, my little friend that was always with me in spirit, but not visible to me. One of my aunts told me the truth: I came into this life as both, everything… I am all, and that was taken away because of Patriarchal fuckmooks and their putrid shit mores. My vagina is still between my thighs. It may be only marked by the scar of my mutilation, my violation, but it’s still there. My vagina talks to me, reminds me of what I’m supposed to be doing in this incarnation.

I can’t cry over the Past anymore. It’s water under the bridge, and I found my little friend and in doing so, I found my life. My life is finally real. There can be no other form of living.

I rub my little friend, my vagina from time to time. I feel her inside of me, right to the centre of my being. Life courses through my body as it was meant to do. The vibrations of these feelings touch every part of my soul. I have come full circle, and it freakin’ feels good.

And in closing this out, though I may not be able to physically give life now, I can do so in other ways. I am a friend, a confidant… the fighter from Hades. I am a “Mother”. Helping folks realize their selves is a form of birth, and I can do that.

But I couldn’t do that without my vagina.

During the writing of this PhDaisy turned me onto a quote from Eudora Welty that sums up so much of what I “feel”:

“Greater than scene…is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame”

I’m bitter.

What drives me nuts is that they think we’re stupid.

Too stupid to see what vacuous gas bags they are.

Too stupid to remember what they said.

So stupid that we’ll continue to buy their crap and vote for them.

They’re wrong.

Everyone gets the same TV and we can see them strut and preen and lie all day and you know what?

We hate them.

I don’t know why any of them thinks I haven’t spit in their coffee.

Because I have.