[RED/GLARE]

Politics. People. Decline. History. Music. Redemption. Thoughtcrime. Humor. Revenge. Mistakes. Fear. Media. Antiauthoritarianism. Truth. Longing. Insecurity. Schadenfreude. Complaint. Peace. Love. Nothingness. Nature. Something new all the time.

29 April 2006

Neil Young's LIVING WITH WAR

Yesterday Neil Young released a devastatingly beautiful piece of musical and political pop art - a gospel/folk/metal cry from America's musical heartland called LIVING WITH WAR - that streams free now at a server near you. I'm ashamed to say that it was not my own GenX nor the younger kids to make the penultimate antiwar, anti-Bush rock opus. I would've thought Radiohead or The Strokes could have done it. But, bands like these abandoned this low hanging fruit to an old-timer like Neil Young, a proven maestro of enduring protest song-craft (e.g., CSN&Y's "Ohio") to put out this soulful and indignantly righteous kick to Bush's lyin' solar plexus. Heck, maybe it took a Canadian to do it right!

The album's opener, "After The Garden Is Gone," centers upon death, like all great lyric poetry. Here, the topic is the death of our environment.

Won't need no shadow man running the government
Won't need no stinking war!
Won't need no haircut
Won't need no shoe-shine
After the Garden Is Gone
After the Garden Is Gone
What Will people Do?
After The Garden Is Gone
What Will People Say
After The Garden Is Gone?


In case it's not self-evident, Young means our Planet Earth by the Garden that will be gone, and this could easily serve as the first Peak Oil Anthem or maybe the musical companion piece to Gore's new flick, "An Inconvenient Truth." Anyway, people can read all about the death of our planet in Jared Diamond's Collapse, or Time magazine.


Musically, Young is rocking out in high style, with shimmering guitar leads running through gorgeous, crashing chords backed by loosely rocking bass and drums. The musical kicker to this album is the 100-voice gospel choir - something that could have come across gimmicky, but doesn't - which makes all this Ragged Glory noise so transcendent. But on this first track, the 100 voices are more muted, simply doubling Neil's melody like Gregorian chanters.


Next, the title track, "Living With War," opens with trumpets echoing the distorto-Spanish guitar lead, to haunting effect. The choir becomes more present now, sining this heartrending lullaby along with Young, which adds a full, rich dimension to the recording's traditional power trio sound.


"Living With War" is a lingering beauty of a tune, full of shame and a glint of hope, or resolve at least. If you've ever read Chris Hedges' "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning", this could be it's musical equivalent.


"Restless Consumer" and "Shock and Awe" are pissed off rockers - the first about excessive consumption of lies and products and the latter about being duped by politicians into a no-good war and looking back with cynicism. The best line in the song is ...



History was the cruel judge of overconfidence



"Flags of Freedom" is pure Bob Dylan, whom Young name checks in the lyrics. A song of sons sent to war in the name of false ideals. There's even a harmonica solo!


Of course, the album's piece de resistance is the incomparable "Let's Impeach The President," which has the stadium sing-along-ability of Queen's "We Will Rock You," but propped up mightily by a 100-voice choir that may as well be the millions of voices of the majority of Americans who want Bush out. It should be the temporary National Anthem, and Young should release a Spanish language version.


By now, the lyrics are becoming well known:



Let's impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones



The outro of "Let's Impeach the President" brilliantly employs an audio montage of Bush's contradictory bravado and nonchalance about catching Usama bin Laden; Bush's prewar lies about WMD in Iraq, and subsequent lying about ever telling lies in the first place. All the while, Mr. Young and his mighty gospel choir chant "Flip" then "Flop" to punctuate Bush's self-contradicting bullsh*t.


"Looking for a Leader" is about the nation's forthcoming search for a decent man to occupy the oval office, a man "with the great spirit on his side." Young name even checks Barak Obama and Colin Powell, whom Young thinks may still become a leader "to right what he's done wrong." (Personally, I think Colin Powell should never be any position of power again, but here Young betrays his Republican sympathies a little. It's hard to mind it in the midst of such a grandiose, accurate denunciation of the Bush regime. A musical "J'accuse!" that covers the waterfront of Bush's high crimes).


That this album ends with an a cappella version of "America the Beautiful," faithfully sung by Neil Young's 100-voice choir, sort of speaks for itself. Perhaps Young was trying to inoculate himself from those FOX NEWS "Canadian Rocker Attacks America" headlines. But the album is so downright patriotic anyway, with a romantic's love for America underlying nearly every track, that America the Beautiful probably was an unnecessary addition to this record. But it is indeed beautiful.





28 April 2006

Talking Heads are On The Take!

Alas, it really comes as no huge surprise that corporations are bribing TV pundits to promote pro business opinions. After all, in Bush’s America we’ve seen our own government bribing columnists such as Armstrong Williams, and even planting the likes of Jeff Gannon / James Guckhert in the White House Press Corps to lob canned softballs at Scotty McClellan. Oh yeah, and there are those video news releases produced by the government that star fake journalists. Now, the daily FOXNews/White House “Snow Job” has further rubbed the line between news and shilling. Is anyone shocked that corporations are now paying pundits to toe their party line on all the talk shows? Today’s Gray Lady has the sordid details:
A public relations firm has apologized to General Motors after acknowledging that it may have offered money to former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich in exchange for public comments supporting the automaker's employee buyout program.
Luckily, there are still a few public officials with integrity around. Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor is among them, and he’s blown the whistle on Punditry Payola.


Mr. Reich, who was labor secretary under President Bill Clinton and is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, had complained publicly about the incident, which he said occurred three weeks ago. He described the offer of payment as a new instance of how "corporate America is paying pundits to shill for them."

Neither Mr. Strauss nor Mr. Reich would respond to questions about how much money might have been offered. A spokesman for General Motors said the company had a strict policy barring payment to outside commentators to promote its interests.

So who among the small coterie of usual suspects on the Sunday and cable opinion shows is on the take? I recently wrote a diary about Andrea Mitchell misinforming America about energy policy on the Chris Matthew Show, which is sponsored by ConocoPhillips. I mean, where does the line between sponsorship, paid travel, speaking fees and downright bribery get drawn? Well, in this case it seems pretty clear that THIS …

In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Strauss said, "I may have mentioned the possibility of an honorarium" to Mr. Reich "out of deference and respect to him and his position."

…constitutes bribery.

On his personal blog on April 7 and in a subsequent article for The American Prospect magazine, Mr. Reich said, "A public relations firm working for General Motors phoned to ask if I'd say on the media that the buyback G.M. was offering its employees was a good deal for them."

"G.M.'s public relations firm said they'd offer me money if I did this, as a show of respect," he wrote. "I told them I'd look at the deal and make up my own mind, and I told them to keep the money."

He described the offer of payment as "an integrity buyout" and said that "if we've got to the point in this country when big corporations feel free to offer what are essentially bribes to columnists and commentators, we're really in trouble."

Amen, Mr. Reich. I fear that we’re really in trouble.

26 April 2006

King George 43 will be MOST DANGEROUS in his last 1,000 days!

Watergate veteran John Dean has penned a frightening essay explaining why the ever-more-loathed Smirker-in-Chief will be in ideological/reality-denying overdrive during his last 1,000 days in power, and should be counted on to take big, stupid risks that will damage the American prospect. That means bad things for you, me and our kids...


If there is no "October Surprise," I would be shocked. And if it is not a high-risk undertaking, it would be a first. Without such a gambit, and the public always falls for them, Bush is going to lose control of Congress. Should that happen, his presidency will have effectively ended, and he will spend the last two years of it defending all the mistakes he has made during the first six, and covering up the errors of his ways.

But that is a best case scenario! According to Dean, the only true "October Surprise" in the run up to the 2006 elections would be no October Surprise.

Possibilities include a Cheney resignation (to be replaced by Condi, Rudi or McCain - whoever the necons crown as their next king or queen), a unilateral attack upon Iran ...  or ... catching Usama. (That John Dean thinks this last feat can be done on schedule for political effect speaks a million volumes - maybe we have UBL already! - yet I seem to remember this same speculation before Nov. 2004).


Anyhow, the whole point is that we are being screwed royally and should expect more, much more! Personally, I'm scared, very scared. After all, JFK only had about 1,000 days -- all told -- and he took us through the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, he was a good guy ...

25 April 2006

"Hi, I'm Evil!"

Charles Dickens himself might have named one of his characters "Tony Snow" - as the "front" for a deceptive, secretive and dishonest endeavor, such as being press secretary for the Bush Administration. After all, the man who created characters with comically apropos names such as Mrs. Leo Hunter, Mr. Nupkins, Dodson and Fog, Gradgrind, M'Choakumchild, Bounderby would have appreciated a spokesman whose very name evokes cold white haze. Indeed, Merriam-Webster offers only this for "snow job:"


Main Entry: snow job

Function: noun

: an intensive effort at persuasion or deception

But, then again, Republicans have always promoted leaderhip with appropriate-enough names. I still miss having their House leader actually be called "Dick Armey." I mean, to paraphrase the late, great Joseph Brodsky, so rarely does evil cross your threshold and announce, "Hi, I'm evil!"


Where did Newt Gingrich spring from to kick people off welfare but the pages of Dr. Suess? Where did that exterminator cum legislative hitman named DeLay crawl from but the purple prose of a bad western dime novel? My Microsoft Word spell check suggests "scalier" when I type the name Scalia! Do we really have a vice president and president named Dick and Bush?

I tell you: the dark overlords of Republican politics and power have a downright Dickensian sense of humor. Tony Snow fits right in!

So, Tony, Snowman!, dude, settle in to your new office, make sure to get all those IRS forms signed and turned back into the personnel office, and make sure that the briefing room microphone is set at the correct height and adjusted perfectly to the level of your speaking voice, because we want the press corps, the American people and the whole world to be able to hear you well when you introduce yourself.

24 April 2006

Let's Talk About Rural B*llsh*t!

Such as ...



We are born of an agrarian society filled with little farmers, and despite the industrial revolution, those Norman Rockwell images of the heartland in large part resonate as our national persona even among those who have never been through Kansas' never-ending flats of corn or have ever had to drive ten miles to a grocery store.


(This is a rebuttal diary to the hugely popular Daily Kos dairy, "Let's Talk About Rural Poverty and Long Commutes.")



Look, I'd like a new FDR too, but this paint-by-numbers feel-good summary of rural America belongs on Joe Scarborogh's Heartland Hoe-Down. For instance, I'm a fourth generation Kansan. There are no "neverending flats of corn" there! It's a wheat-growing state! Another fallacy, Kansas ain't flat folks, it starts out around 800 feet at the Eastern border and rises at is goes west, to something like 4,000 feet at the Colorado border on the High Plains.


The High Plains were overbuilt in the 1880's by speculators and real estate sharks who convinced Easterners that the Plains offered much more rainfall and excitement than was indeed the case. Many of these little towns - which are comparable to failed nineties dotcoms - are now ghost towns, and largely because the area is too arid and remote for large scale habitation. The agriculture that exists depends on the Ogallala reservoir, which in another example of the "Tragedy of the Commons," is just about tapped out by the farmers and industrial farming operation. Think: Peak Ogallala.


Anyhoo, the long and short of it is that we kicked the original inhabitants off much of this Norman Rockwell-esque Grotesquerie called rural America. We did that so that we could exploit the land. Who among us can trace our ancestry beyond the 1630s? If so, you're a Native American and I WOULD LOVE your opinion about all these commuters complaining about the long drive to the Gap or wherever they slave away to make the SUV payments.


Look, if communities aren't sustainable, we shouldn't sustain `em. That goes double for the 'burbs! If the kids are leaving, maybe it's for a damn good reason. What agrarian society are you hoping to sustain? The one in Kansas with all the corn? Well, sorry to break it to you, but that's a lie that never existed.

23 April 2006

Miss Information

One of the problems with public discourse in this country is how few different voices are amplified through the media. There seems to be a coterie of about fifty Beltway/media insiders who play musical chairs on all the cable news analysis shows, and they act as an echo chamber for one another. You know these people: the loathsome Tucker Carlson, Joe Klein, James Carville, Presidential plagiarist … I mean historian, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pat Buchanan, and the rest of the talking head set. Surely, the most ubiquitous of these mainstream media analysts is the near omnipresent Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.

Today the Chris Mathews Show, sponsored by ConocoPhillips, among others, was an ugly farce of a news analysis show. they spend the whole first segment on this pressing topic:

“Perfect Failures? Why do Democratic candidates campaign like robots? Will Hillary Clinton make the same mistake?”

Okay, yeah, right, all Democrats are like robots … and if they don’t act like robots the media, including you Chris Matthews, savage them as you did Howard Dean or Theresa Heinz Kerry; oh yeah, and Bill Clinton was no robot, but why let facts get in the way of trashing Democrats?

After five minutes of condescendingly tearing at Hillary Clinton (including a video montage edited to show that “she is trying to play it safe on immigration, Iraq and abortion”), John Kerry and even Michael Dukakis (I’m not making this up!), the topic turns to something that actually matters: the high cost of oil and gasoline.

First they show oilman Bush in the Rose Garden taking his usual incompetent, grammatically-challenged B.S.:

BUSH: I’m concerned about higher gasoline prices, I’m concerned about what it means to the working families and small business and I’m mindful that the government has the responsibility to make sure that we watch very carefully.

Chris Matthews throws the discussion to Mitchell, saying, "Well, Andrea, he’s concerned and he’s watching, but he’s not promising to cut those prices."

Andrea Mitchell, dressed in a bright orange Mao tunic like she waited tables at Chinese restaurant on Venus, proceeds to totally misinform the American public about the causes of and possible solutions to high gas prices.

ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC NEWS: He can’t. He has no control over this. This is completely outside of his control.

Yeah, right. The President of the United States can do nothing, Andrea. He can’t release oil stocks from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, right? Or he couldn’t, say, impose a $2/gallon tax on gasoline to stanch demand here in the oil consuming capitol of the world? What about sitting down for diplomatic talks with Iran, what would that do to the price of crude? What about slapping a tariff on Chinese imports, to slow their oil-sucking economy? What about demanding fuel efficiency from Detroit, especially for those f*cking SUVs? But wait, Mitchell is just talking the ConocoPhillips corporate line.

MITCHELL (Cont’d):First of all china and India, China in particular. Huge growth, soaking up energy, buying energy contracts anywhere they can get it. And very thin margins, thin supplies, because countries like Nigeria and Iran and Venezuela are not really motivated to overproduce the way the Saudis have been, frankly.

So far, this is all true, and it's interesting that Mitchell acknowledges the special relationship between the Saudis and the USA, whereby we keep them in power and buy their oil, and, in exchange, the Saudis invest their enormous profits in U.S. Treasury bills and manages the world price of oil in keeping with U.S. interests. But now Mitchell reveals her ignorance… a strange gap in knowledge for the wife of the former Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank.

MITCHELL (Cont’d): Their nationalized countries their oil companies don’t have any real incentive to produce the way some of the other countries and American companies, Armamco in Saudi Arabia in particular. So you’re not going to see a change in this.

Uh, “Aramco” is not an American company, Andrea. Aramco was nationalized by Saudi Arabia which had 100 percent control as of 1980, and the company’s US managers were replaced by Saudi management in 1990. By the way, it’s called “Saudi Aramco” now. Furthermore, Nigeria has plenty of American companies working there like Texaco and ExxonMobil.

MITCHELL (Cont'd):As long as the Iran crisis continues and as long as these thin margins continues. And all of this was exacerbated by something we put on our own selves. Congress passed a new ethanol blend for gasoline, and refineries weren’t ready, geared up to produce it.

I’m surprised she blames Congress here, instead of environmentalists. Also, that we have an “Iran Crisis” that Bush can’t affect is laughable. Where do these people find such nonsense, and how do they get to be thought leaders? Andrea Mitchell is truly Miss Information.

Bt wait, here comes Chris Matthews, echoing the talking points.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: The situation of a low production and high demand worldwide, that’s a reality that the president can’t change. He can’t get these countries like Venezuela and Nigeria to pump more and can’t get these big countries like India and China to buy less.

Yeah, right.

We need more, better voices on TV. Until then, thank goodness for the Internet. At least there you can read about the reality of
Peak Oil.

21 April 2006

Who's the Decider?

Bush’s “I’m the Decider” tirade has been stuck in my mind, and for a while I couldn’t figure out why it was so bothersome. Then I realized it was because Dubya in his shrill declaration reminded me of my two-year-old daughter, throwing a fit if she can’t have more grapes, or doesn’t want to go to bed.

"I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense."

Bush was being a crybaby because the press was abuzz over the sweeping power handed to Josh Bolton, the new chief of staff. Check out David Gergen, presidential advisor and talking head, on Anderson Cooper’s CNN broadcast on the 17th of April:

COOPER: So, David, what do you make of this, Josh Bolten saying there are -- there are probably going to be changes to -- to refresh the Bush administration?

DAVID GERGEN, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: I find the story that has emerged from the White House today absolutely extraordinary, even bizarre.

The -- Scott McClellan, the press secretary, has come in front of the press today to say that Josh Bolten, at a senior staff meeting, said that he was going to refresh and reenergize the White House. That's entirely understandable.

But Scott McClellan is quoted by "The New York Times" as going beyond that, to say that the president has given his new chief of staff wide latitude to not only shake up the White House staff, but to even choose new Cabinet members.

The last time I looked, Josh Bolten was not President Bolten. Now, if the -- the -- under our system, it's the president who chooses his Cabinet, sends the names up to Congress, up to the Senate, and they're confirmed. So, to have a situation -- Scott McClellan went on to say that Josh -- Josh Bolten might start by naming his own successor at OMB. That's a Cabinet-level position.

Is the president really surrendering his appointment capacity to his chief of staff? That would be the first time in my memory...

COOPER: Do you think it's -- it's a...

GERGEN: ... it has ever happened.

Indeed, I think Bolton does have “decider” power, since the new rumor is that they’re looking to dump Harriet “You’re the best governor ever” Miers, longtime confidant/suck up to King George 43.

Bush is not the Decider. He’s the Strawman for the Deciders – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Rove and the rest of the military industrial complex. Look for yourself! Here the “Decider” asks Condi Rice if he can go potty at the United Nations ….




Furthermore, was it not Cheney who decided to name himself the Vice President?


Some see Cheney as perfect choice

By Kathy Kiely, USA TODAY, 7/24/00

WASHINGTON — He's said to be unassuming and quietly humorous, with a tendency to low-ball his own abilities. So could Dick Cheney's effort to find a Republican vice-presidential candidate lead to none other than...himself?

With GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush preparing to announce his running mate this week, Cheney's name suddenly surged to the fore of the speculation game Friday. The former congressman, who served as secretary of Defense for Bush's father, made a quick trip to Wyoming to switch his voter registration back to the state he represented for more than a decade.

The change of voting address, made just a few hours before Wyoming election officials closed their books before next month's primary, would avoid an Electoral College snafu if Cheney, who heads the Halliburton Co. in Dallas, were on the same ticket with Bush, the Texas governor.

Of course, it could all be an elaborate ruse: The Cheney rumors surfaced just in time to take a late-breaking veep boomlet for Bush's former rival, John McCain, out of the headlines. And Cheney, who has been heading Bush's vice-presidential search since April, assured Halliburton shareholders at their annual meeting in May that he had no intention of leaving to join another Bush administration.

Was it not Cheney who gave the shoot down orders on 9/11? Here’s Sec. of Transportation Norm Minetta’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission:

Mineta: “During the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President…the plane is 50 miles out…the plane is 30 miles out….and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the vice president “do the orders still stand?” And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said “Of course the orders still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary!??”


See what I mean? Here’s Bush “deciding” to go forward in a Segway ….


I just don’t believe he’s really the day-to-day decider, the cool man of judgment in a crisis, except in the sense that that’s his job description in the Constitution. Really, he’s the face man, the puppet, the guy with the famous last name, the monkey, the boy king, the … oh, you know what I mean.

20 April 2006

The Neocons Knew

An extra-insightful letter to the editor in today’s New York Times deserves attention ...

To the Editor:

Re "The Decider Sticks With the Derider" (column, April 19):

There's a conundrum hidden within Maureen Dowd's column about the failure of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. It's one I've been puzzling over since the Bush administration began its drumbeat for war in Iraq.

There is now considerable evidence — from Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism adviser, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and other former members of the administration — to support Ms. Dowd's statement that Mr. Rumsfeld "wanted to invade Iraq because he thought it would be easy."

But if Mr. Rumsfeld and his colleagues truly believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, how easy could the invasion be?

Common sense suggests only one answer: We invaded Iraq not because we thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but because we thought he didn't.

The administration would like us to think that it was simply mistaken about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein; but that's yet another lie, and perhaps the biggest one of all.

Jack Lechner

New York, April 19, 2006

The writer was an executive producer of "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons From the Life of Robert S. McNamara."

Common sense. I’ll leave it at that.

19 April 2006

A Collapsible Spring

It’s impossible to enjoy a spring day like today in my America unless you love the whiff of cigarette smoke and the chirp of cell phone walkie-talkies. The place where I work, a mall cum office park across the polluted Hudson from NYC, is bound in every direction by interstates, onramps, parkways and roads, none of which have sidewalks for pedestrians. So, there is really no escape to exercise, or getting away for a minute of quiet, unless you think you can somehow slip through the constant stream of SUVs chugging past at 65 m.p.h. with grimacing grilles shining.

I take the bus to this office complex from New York City every day. Basically, if you work here without a car, you’re stuck here.

The denizens of this corporate park are, on the main, portly and sorrowful-looking working men and women with bad haircuts – Americans who pay taxes and play by the rules. Some of the guys walk with clenched fists or jaws, with cell phones strapped to their hips like guns. Jersey Girls teeter around in giggling gaggles, puffing smokes and snapping gum, leaving behind perfumed benzene. Restaurants in the outdoor plaza ‑ the Hoolihans, and the Unos and the Red Lobster ‑ blare 1980s music from bullhorn-like speakers fixed to their facades. Sometimes the songs are loud enough that they “smoosh” together, creating a cacophony that can feel like butterflies in your brain. Want to sit and read a book? Fuhgedaboudit!

Yes, please come along on a noontime stroll around this American corporate oasis! Security guards are everywhere, staring sullenly from their station near the Dunkin’ Donuts or riding around the multi-deck car garages in small red pickups with flashing lights, guarding the SUVs from … what? Usama and Saddam? Environmentalists? Meantime, the grounds crew operate howling leaf blowers to rid walkways of the tender blooms of budding trees, lest the plaza look blighted.

There is a construction crew here as well, converting the failed Sizzler into a soon-to-fail Chili’s. They have set up a pitch cooker for the roof work, which belches tar smoke and makes the air stink. In fact, there has been much construction around here as of late. Recently, a Wal-Mart box was erected just across the highway from my office park, and it’s bigger than a convention center. It replaced a field that was … well, a wetland.

I just finished reading Jared Diamond’s Collapse, which everybody should read. At the end of the book, Diamond presents the twelve most serious dilemmas facing humanity which we must solve in the coming years or decades. Each is as daunting and deadly as the next, but the first on his list was …


At an accelerating rate, we are destroying natural habitats or else converting them to human-made habitats, such as cities and villages, farmlands and pastures, roads, and golf courses. The natural habitats whose losses have provoked the most discussion are forests, wetlands, coral reefs, and the ocean bottom. …More than half of the world’s original areas of forest have already been converted to other uses and at present conversion rates one quarter of the forests that remain will become converted within the next half-century.
[…]
An even larger fraction of the world’s original wetlands than of its forests have been destroyed, damaged, or converted. Consequences for us arise from wetlands’ importance in maintaining the quality of our water supplies and the existence of commercially important freshwater fisheries, while even ocean fisheries depend on mangrove wetlands to provide habitat for the juvenile phase of many fish species.
[…]
About one-third of the world’s coral reefs‑ the oceanic equivalent of tropical rainforests, because they are home to a disproportionate fraction of the ocean’s species ‑ have already been severely damaged. If current trends continue, about half the remaining reefs will be lost by 2030.

There was a deal whereby the Wal-Mart near my office park had to set aside some wetlands as an offset for destroying some wetlands, and basically protect it as a habitat and a park. I’m proably woring on the specifics. But if you can make it through the 60 m.p.h. parade of SUVs, and walk over an overpass, and down to the enormous parking lot of the other mall across the highway, there is a wetlands park. I go there for my lunch hour when the sun is out on a warm day.

There are some beautiful birds, large and small, that I see there but not anywhere else. The park is bordered on one side by an Interstate; on the other side by housing and a complex of petrochemical storage tanks; and on the last side a mall and the mall’s extensive parking lot. So, no matter how deep into the park you walk, there’s a woosh of traffic and horns and lots of construction noise since something new is always going up around here. A Petco, a Bed, Bath and Beyond. Some shit like that.

Beyond the noise and pollution all around, the park is absolutely full of trash. Plastics, metal push carts, a hardhat, bottles of laundry detergent, clothing, you-name-it. It’s like a dumping ground now, or was before and they never cleaned it up. I can’t figure out which.

In case you don’t know, Al Gore is about to come out with the rockin’est movie on the environment ever, entitled “An Inconvenient Truth.” The trailer gives you goosebumps.

12 April 2006

Spring Break Madness

While young men and women of the United States military fight, kill and die in the Iraq war sparked by the outright lies of his administration, the leaker-in-chief himself slipped away to Cancun for Spring Break and some bodacious waves. The place that lavishly hosted him has put out a press release detailing the splendid comfort provided to Dubya as he contemplated skimpy bikinis and nuking the bejesus out of Iran.



President George W. Bush Guest

of Le Blanc Spa Resort

Cancun Resort Hosts U.S. President During Recent

Mexico Summit


April 11, 2006, Miami, FL – Le Blanc Spa Resort is pleased to announce it hosted sitting United States President, George W. Bush, during his recent visit to Cancun for the two-day Mexico Summit with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

While at Le Blanc Spa Resort, President Bush stayed in the property’s palatial “Presidential Suite,” which features a plush sitting room, formal dining room, 1 1/2 well-appointed bathrooms, a full-service kitchen and a luxurious master suite that overlooks the crystal blue water of the Caribbean Sea.

“It was an honor and a privilege to host President Bush and his staff during his recent visit to Cancun,” said Roberto Chapur, President of Palace Resorts. “At Le Blanc Spa Resort we pride ourselves on the level of service we provide all of our guests and were pleased to accommodate the President while he was in Mexico.”

In addition to being the President’s home-away-from-home, Le Blanc Spa Resort also acted as the official “West Wing.” The resort’s 10,000 square foot, state-of-the-art convention center became the headquarters for the President’s staff for the duration of their stay. While at the resort, they took advantage of the elegantly appointed meeting facilities and the modern banquet rooms confirming that the facilities at Le Blanc can easily handle the demands of a Presidential staff.

During the President’s spare time, it was well noted in the U.S. media that he took advantage of the resort’s fully-equipped fitness center that offers a complete line of Life Fitness equipment. Here he used the LX1 2005 Life Fitness ecliptic machine and was given fitness advice by one of the trainers before returning to the meetings of the day.

The Le Blanc Spa Resort staff also went above-and-beyond to make the President’s stay as comfortable as possible by providing an array of special amenities like 5 different types of hand-rolled Mexican cigars and a beautiful display of Mexican candies that were delivered to his room. In addition, the staff created a unique menu that included a selection of specially prepared Mexican dishes that were known to be the President’s favorite.

In appreciation of the hospitality extended to President Bush and his staff, Le Blanc Spa Resort received a Letter of Appreciation from the White House Communication Agency as well as from the U.S. Ambassador in Mexico thanking the resort and its staff for the outstanding service provided during the President’s stay.

A Le Blanc Spa Resort vacation package ranges from $482 - $662 per room, per night, depending on time of year. It includes luxurious all-suite accommodations with double Jacuzzis, haute cuisine, premium drinks, dazzling entertainment, taxes and gratuities.

11 April 2006

Protesting Prisons

With the breathtaking immigration protests commandeering the streets in dozens of U.S. cities yesterday, it may behoove us to look back and remember how quickly the reprehensible, anti-family House Resolution 4437, introduced by GOP Rep. James Sensenbrenner (just in time for Christmas) on December 6, 2005 was followed by an announcement that Halliburton would build $385 million worth of new prisons to jail immigrants.

As much as any other factor, the threat of internment has put people into the streets. On Feb. 3, the New York Times reported …

The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.

KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said.


Later in the story comes this telling factoid …

In recent months, the Homeland Security Department has promised to increase bed space in its detention centers to hold thousands of illegal immigrants awaiting deportation. In the first quarter of the 2006 fiscal year, nearly 60 percent of the illegal immigrants apprehended from countries other than Mexico were released on their own recognizance.

So, the United States is more likely to detain “illegal” Mexican immigrants than “illegal” immigrants from other countries. Thus, if were detaining just 40 percent of Other than Mexicans, it’s safe to assume that we’re detaining a higher percentage Mexicans before deportation – perhaps half or more. Therefore, these Halliburton detention centers are clearly meant to jail mostly Mexicans, the very people out in force on American streets yesterday with kids and grandkids, waving Old Glory.

Advocates for immigrants said they feared that the new contract was another indication that the government planned to expand the detention of illegal immigrants, including those seeking asylum.

"It's pretty obvious that the intent of the government is to detain more and more people and to expedite their removal," said Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center in Miami.

Hand in hand, the GOP and their corporate overlords have stupidly driven millions of hard-working family-oriented Mexicans and other Latinos and Hispanics into the streets to demand their unalienable rights as people to live free in the United States.

These newly minted Americans demand to be free people, not felons or detainees or members of a guest worker class to be exploited and barred from voting. This courageous stand for dignity and justice is played out in the shadow of looming Halliburton/GOP prisons where indefinite Guantanamo-style detention awaits “illegals” and their kids.

Progressive native-born Americans should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these new Americans, in the grille of the GOP and the xenophobes. Where are the Democratic politicians?

Is this the new wave of radical-left Latin American politics coming up from Venezuela, from Peru, from Mexico? Is the domino theory correct? Is the United States the next country to fall? The GOP sure seems to be paving the way for some radical, New Deal-type renegotiation of the social order with their threat of Halliburton prisons for these Mexican-American families.

10 April 2006

Who Will Stop Them?

I must admit, after reading Seymore Hersh's latest story in the New Yorker magazine, I fear my country is going to use nuclear weapons against another country in another “pre-emptive” war. That country? Iran.

Hersh writes ….

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

Hmmm, reminds me of Sept. 2002, before the stupid Iraq invasion, when our top officials were busy comparing Saddam Hussein to Hitler. Maybe these losers running our government should start a “Hitler of the Month” club.

Naturally, Israel plays a huge part in our Middle East policy and our relationship with the entire Islamic world. And, in the case of attacking Iran, it seems that one justification will be that we’re defending Israel from destruction via the Iranian bomb. Hersh continues …

I was told by several officials that the White House’s interest in preventing an Israeli attack on a Muslim country, which would provoke a backlash across the region, was a factor in its decision to begin the current operational planning. In a speech in Cleveland on March 20th, President Bush depicted Ahmadinejad’s hostility toward Israel as a “serious threat. It’s a threat to world peace.” He added, “I made it clear, I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel.”

This is a confusing rationale for attacking Iran to me, I must admit. The United States says it fears the angry Islamic backlash an Israeli attack on the Iranian nuke program would provoke. Yet our confused leaders shows no worry over the fallout of an American bombing of Iran: like a potential terror campaign against us at home and abroad, boosted Iranian backing of insurgents in Iraq, an oil cutoff and another spike in worldwide revulsion over American cowboy-ism.

Also: we’ve armed Israel to the teeth, at great expense to the American image in many parts of the world and at great expense to the American taxpayer. If Israel sees Iran as a bona fide threat, let the Israelis take out the mullahs’ enrichment program. The Israeli Air Force is more than capable!

But perhaps protection of Israel is not the main rationale for our attack on Iran. Nor are fears of a nuclear Iran becoming more of a regional power. The primary issue may be, oh yeah, our “addiction to oil.”

“This is much more than a nuclear issue,” one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. “That’s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.”

Isn’t it amazing that rather than undertaking a national crash diet on oil consumption and funding a Apollo Program/Manhattan Project–type endeavor to develop alternative energies, we’ve decided it’s better policy to invade and occupy countries possessing the last plentiful oil reserves on Earth? It’s high-octane madness. And who will stand up to the retardo-cons in charge of the U.S. military? Nobody!

In recent weeks, the President has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of Congress, including at least one Democrat.


If this isn’t Joe Lieberman, I’ll eat my blog.

A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, who did not take part in the meetings but has discussed their content with his colleagues, told me that there had been “no formal briefings,” because “they’re reluctant to brief the minority. They’re doing the Senate, somewhat selectively.”

[…]

“The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it.” Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, “The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision.”

Here’s the kicker: because the Iranian nuke program is spread over many fortified and dug-in locations, our genius planners (who brought you the wonderfully well thought out Iraq War) hope to utilize nuclear weapons in Iran!

The lack of reliable intelligence leaves military planners, given the goal of totally destroying the sites, little choice but to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons. “Every other option, in the view of the nuclear weaponeers, would leave a gap,” the former senior intelligence official said. “ ‘Decisive’ is the key word of the Air Force’s planning. It’s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.”

He went on, “Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout—we’re talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don’t have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out”—remove the nuclear option—“they’re shouted down.”

According to Hersh, the self-evident insanity of a preemptive nuclear war on Iran has prompted at least a few uniformed leaders to consider stepping down, including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It’s nice to know the yahoos in the military are somewhat saner than the Cult of Bush’s nuclear warmongers.

Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’ ”

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror confirmed that some in the Administration were looking seriously at this option, which he linked to a resurgence of interest in tactical nuclear weapons among Pentagon civilians and in policy circles. He called it “a juggernaut that has to be stopped.”

One thing Hirsch doesn’t mention in the piece is U.S. domestic politics. Note to the Democrats in Congress: wake up. Iran is next, and it could happen in the lead-up to the 2006 mid-terms. What could wash away the low Bush poll numbers, the bitter memories of Katrina, revulsion over Abramoff, DeLay and Cunningham, as well as the pitiful quagmire in Iraq, better than a new war? Imagine the screaming graphics on TV, the headlines, the excitement, the war footage, the sickly sweet thrill of being on the march.

The GOP, Bush, the military, the oil companies all need a war with Iran. Who will stop them?

04 April 2006

People's General

Retired U.S. Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni’s appearance on Meet the Press last weekend is worth another look. The 35-year veteran was the Commander-in-Chief of CENTCOM, meaning he ran America’s military in the entire Middle East from 1997-2000. Before U.S. tanks rolled on Baghdad, Zinni predicted the U.S. invasion of Iraq would be a “Bay of Goats.” He is worth listening to now.

Zinni is promoting a new book, "The Battle for Peace". Here are a few selected quotes from the transcript at the Meet the Press web site.

On the battle for Iraqi “hearts and minds:”


If, like General Casey said a week or so ago, 99.9 percent of the people are opposed to the violence and the perpetrators of these violence. Well, all those people have to do is call up on the phone and tell you where the insurgents are, tell you in the two to four provinces that everybody said this is concentrated in where the issues are, where the problems are, where the people that are doing this are, and you wouldn’t need much more than you have right now. And the security forces and the Iraqis would be able to handle it. We’re not fighting the Waffen SS here. You know, we’re fighting a bunch of ragtag people with AK-47s and IEDs and RPGs. They can be policed up if the people turn against them. We haven’t won the hearts and minds yet.


On the job of the U.S. media (think Jill Carroll):


I think the American media’s being made a scapegoat for what’s going on out there. At last count, I think something like 80 journalists have been killed in Iraq. It’s hard to get outside the green zone and not risk your life, or risk kidnapping, at a minimum, to get the story. And it’s hard to blame the media for no good stories when the security situation is such that they can’t even go out and get the good stories without risking their lives. And you have to remember that it’s hard to dwell on the good things when the bad things are so overwhelmingly traumatic and catastrophic, you know? So I think that’s an unfair blame that’s put on the media.


Lastly, here’s Zinni on Bush regime lies that took us to war:


Well, I—first of all, I saw it in the way the intelligence was being portrayed. I knew the intelligence; I saw it right up to the day of the war. I was asked at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing a month before the war if I thought the threat was imminent. I didn’t. Many of the people I know that were involved in the intelligence side of this, or, or in the military felt the same way. I saw the—what this town is known for: spin, cherry-picking facts, using metaphors to evoke certain emotional responses, or, or shading the, the context. We, we know the mushroom clouds and, and the other things that were all described that the media’s covered well. I saw on the ground, though, a sort of walking away from 10 years worth of planning.

You know, ever since the end of the first Gulf War, there have been—there’s been planning by serious officers and planners and others, and policies put in place. Ten years worth of planning, you know, were thrown away; troop levels dismissed out of hand; General Shinseki basically insulted for speaking the truth and giving a, an honest opinion; the lack of cohesive approach to how we deal with the aftermath; the political, economic, social reconstruction of a nation, which is no small task; a belief in these exiles that anyone in the region, anyone that had any knowledge would tell you were not credible on the ground; and on and on and on. Decisions to disband the army that were not in the initial plans. I mean there’s a series of disastrous mistakes. We just heard the secretary of state say these were tactical mistakes. These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policy made back here. Don’t blame the troops. They’re the ones that perform the tactics on the ground. They’ve been magnificent. If anything saves this, it will be them.

We shouldn’t ask troops to put themselves in this situation. Let’s get the f*ck out of Iraq now. Bush lied, Rumsfeld trashed the good war plans and ruined the Army -- and they want to do it all again in Iran! Let’s declare victory and leave already.

02 April 2006

Attacking a Victim

It’s sad to say: right wing boosters of the disastrous Iraq War couldn’t help themselves. They all but accused journalist kidnap victim Jill Carroll of treason based on her obviously forced interview – given at the point of a gun to her captors – and released to the media last week as Carroll herself was let go.

Leading the Carroll witchhunt was Charles Osgood on New York’s WCBS 880 this past Friday.

Osgood couldn’t wait until Carroll was out of Iraq, or even free of her captors, before accusing her of being a mouthpiece of the terrorists, i.e., “telling their story” because of the interview she was forced into. He even implies they let her go so she could be their spokesperson!

Here’s Osgood in his own shameful words (emphasis is mine) ...


Posted: Friday, 31 March 2006 1:48PM Charles Osgood Reporting

Why did they let her go?

Why did the terrorist kidnappers of Jill Carroll who shot her Iraqi interpreter not kill her too as they threatened to? Richard Bergenheim, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, says no ransom was paid. And that pressure from Muslim leaders might be one reason they let her go.

"The chorus of Muslim leaders condemning this kidnapping has been larger and louder than has been heard for some time," said Bergenheim.

Jill's family did all they could. Sister Katie was on Iraqi radio as recently as this Wednesday. "I hope that someone listening to me now has information that could help Jill," said Katie Carroll.

Some other relatives directed their pleas to the kidnappers themselves.

"Jill started to tell your story, so please let her finish it," said a relative.

And in that regard Jill has wasted no time, telling their story.

"I feel guilty, honestly. I've been here, treated very well, like a guest. Given good food, never, never hurt. All those women are in Abu Ghraib, terrible things are happening to them," said Jill Carroll.

Telling their story that the Mujahadeen are winning.

"Everyday there are soldiers killed. Everyday Humvees are blown up. Helicopters are shot down, everyday. It's very clear the Mujahadeen have the skills and the ability and the desire and the good reasons to fight and they'll ensure they will win," said Jill Carroll.

A freed Jill Carroll on President Bush:

"Hopefully somehow he'll get the message and that this war was wrong, and the continuing occupation is wrong, and that he could change his policies," said Jill Carroll.

President Bush on the freeing of Jill Carroll:

"Just really grateful she's released and I want to thank those who worked hard to release her," said Bush.


I suppose Carroll became a target for right wingers like Osgood because 1) she was a journalist 2) she was seen in photos before and during her kidnapping dressed in a burqa and 3) they're too dense to know propaganda from the truth, which is why they're Bush supporters in the first place.

Carroll must have been a terrorist sympathizer in the us-against-them mentality of the Cult of Bush. They were probably excited about it! These Repugs are always more hateful of their fellow Americans who dissent, like Michael Moore or the Dixie Chicks, then they are of the terrorists themselves.

In Carroll’s gunpoint interview and burqa-wearing, they sensed a traitor in their midst and went after her with their media plants, like you-know-who at CBS Radio.

But if Osgood and other salespeople for the Iraq disaster had only waited until Carroll was at liberty to express herself, this is what they would have heard ...


"During my last night in captivity, my captors forced me to participate in a propaganda video. They told me I would be released if I cooperated. I was living in a threatening environment, under their control, and wanted to go home alive. So I agreed," she said in a statement read by her editor in Boston.

"Things that I was forced to say while captive are now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views. They are not."


Charles Osgood owes Jill Carroll an apology! So does every other blogger, commenter and “journalist” who attacked her based on the terrorists’ propaganda. You all were suckered by the enemy into attacking a woman and a good American.

If the brainwashed goons who attacked Carroll had any understanding of the kind of professional journalistic integrity she has, they would have understood she would never have given such a partisan opinion in the context of an interview.


UPDATE 4/4/06: Osgood dedicated his Monday braodcast on WCBS to Carroll, taking pains to point out she was under duress during her earlier statement. But he didn't mention his attack on Carroll, nor did he apologize.