Endlessly Banging Our Heads Against History

Posted on May 1, 2008 by RagBlog

Raw sewage in the Gaza

Israel is suppressing a secret it must face
By Johann Hari / April 28, 2008

How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago end up throwing filth at cowering Palestinians?

When you hit your 60th birthday, most of you will guzzle down your hormone replacement therapy with a glass of champagne and wonder if you have become everything you dreamed of in your youth. In a few weeks, the state of Israel is going to have that hangover.

She will look in the mirror and think – I have a sore back, rickety knees and a gun at my waist, but I’m still standing. Yet somewhere, she will know she is suppressing an old secret she has to face. I would love to be able to crash the birthday party with words of reassurance. Israel has given us great novelists like Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, great film-makers like Joseph Cedar, great scientific research into Alzheimer’s, and great dissident journalists like Amira Hass, Tom Segev and Gideon Levy to expose her own crimes.

She has provided the one lonely spot in the Middle East where gay people are not hounded and hanged, and where women can approach equality.

But I can’t do it. Whenever I try to mouth these words, a remembered smell fills my nostrils. It is the smell of shit. Across the occupied West Bank, raw untreated sewage is pumped every day out of the Jewish settlements, along large metal pipes, straight onto Palestinian land. From there, it can enter the groundwater and the reservoirs, and become a poison.

Standing near one of these long, stinking brown-and-yellow rivers of waste recently, the local chief medical officer, Dr Bassam Said Nadi, explained to me: “Recently there were very heavy rains, and the shit started to flow into the reservoir that provides water for this whole area. I knew that if we didn’t act, people would die. We had to alert everyone not to drink the water for over a week, and distribute bottles. We were lucky it was spotted. Next time…” He shook his head in fear. This is no freak: a 2004 report by Friends of the Earth found that only six per cent of Israeli settlements adequately treat their sewage.

Meanwhile, in order to punish the population of Gaza for voting “the wrong way”, the Israeli army are not allowing past the checkpoints any replacements for the pipes and cement needed to keep the sewage system working. The result? Vast stagnant pools of waste are being held within fragile dykes across the strip, and rotting. Last March, one of them burst, drowning a nine-month-old baby and his elderly grandmother in a tsunami of human waste. The Centre on Housing Rights warns that one heavy rainfall could send 1.5m cubic metres of faeces flowing all over Gaza, causing “a humanitarian and environmental disaster of epic proportions”.

So how did it come to this? How did a Jewish state founded 60 years ago with a promise to be “a light unto the nations” end up flinging its filth at a cowering Palestinian population?

Read the rest of it here. / The Independent

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Quote of the Day – Noam Chomsky

Posted on May 1, 2008 by RagBlog

Chomsky on American elections:

If one is flipping a coin to pick the king, it is of no great concern if the coin is biased. Failed States, p.223.

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Juan Cole Reviews Junior’s Lies of 5 Years Ago

Posted on May 1, 2008 by RagBlog


5 Years after Mission Accomplished:
April US Troop Toll 50 Killed;
1,073 Iraqis Killed this Month
By Juan Cole / May 1, 2008

5 Years after George W. Bush’s infamous speech aboard the USS Lincoln, the mission seems incomplete. Bush imagined that he could get rid of Saddam Hussein and install exiled businessman and bank fraudster Ahmad Chalabi in his place. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that the US would be out of Iraq, except for a division (20,000 men or so), by October of 2003. Wolfowitz and other Bush officials depicted Iraqis as secular and downplayed the possibility of ethnic violence in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Baath Party.

Here are some memorable phrases from Bush’s mendacious speech half a decade ago:

‘ . . . major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. . .

And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country. . .

In this battle, we have fought for the cause of liberty and for the peace of the world. . .
Because of you our nation is more secure. . . [Note that he is trying to attribute to the poor enlisted men his policies.] . . .

In the images of fallen statues we have witnessed the arrival of a new era. . . [The statue was pulled down by the US military and the whole thing was staged before a tiny Iraqi crowd, the small size of which media close-ups disguised.] . . .

In defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation. Today we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. . . [The US has probably directly killed about 200,000 Iraqis and destroyed the city of Fallujah as well as damaging and repeatedly bombing others. Bush’s fascist attempt to reconfigure warfare as a humanitarian gesture is the biggest lie of all] . . .

Men and women in every culture need liberty like they need food and water and air. [Foreign military occupation is not generally considered ‘liberty’ by most people.] . . .

We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. [The sites were being investigated before the war, and nothing was being found, so Bush pulled out the inspectors and went to war. Nothing ever was found.] . . .

Our coalition will stay until our work is done and then we will leave and we will leave behind a free Iraq. [When will that be exactly?] . . .

In the battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban . . . [ Maybe not so much; this ‘mission accomplished’ passage has not been sufficiently criticized] . . .

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of Al Qaida and cut off a source of terrorist funding. [There was no operational connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. None. And the US occupation of Iraq gave al-Qaeda a new lease on life ] . . .

We are committed to freedom in Afghanistan, Iraq and in a peaceful Palestine. . . [90% of the world fell down laughing at that point in the speech; only gullible, self-righteous Americans could even think about taking this snow job seriously] . . .

Source / Informed Comment

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Denial and the Oil Crisis

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

When you are living inside a failing empire, of course there is going to be massive denial. The last thing to go will probably be the satisfied consumerist imagery that is the stock in trade of TV commercials.

Kunstler isn’t a leftie; he’s more of a social critic of an increasingly dysfunctional society.

Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

Belief System
By Jim Kunstler

A friend asked me how come the public apparently grasps the reality of climate change but can’t seem to wrap its collective brain around the unfolding oil crisis.

I’m not convinced that the public does grasp climate change. It’s perceived, perhaps, as a background story to daily life, which goes on regardless. Are you even sure Hollywood didn’t invent it — and maybe some boob at Time Magazine is selling it as though it were really happening?

Few have anything to gain by espousing denial of climate change. It’s hard for most people to tell if they have been affected by it. It doesn’t quite seem real. Those who actually make gestures in the face of it –- screwing in compact fluorescent lightbulbs, buying Prius cars — end up appearing ridiculous, like an old granny telling you to fetch your raincoat and rubbers because a force five hurricane is organizing iself offshore, beyond the horizon.

The public appears aggressively clueless about the peak oil story. They do not accept any threats to the motoring regime. The news media is surely not helping sort things out. I saw a remarkable display of ignorance on CNN last week when the new resident idiot-maniac Glenn Beck hosted Teamster Union boss James Hoffa and they agreed that the oil companies were to blame for high fuel prices. To put it as plainly as possible, Beck doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, and it’s disgraceful that CNN gives free reign to this moron to misinform the public. It’s perhaps equally amazing that Hoffa doesn’t know we have entered a permanent global oil crisis based on demand having outrun supply. These two idiots think that if Exxon-Mobil built a new refinery down in Louisiana, everything would be fine, diesel fuel would go back down to 99 cents a gallon, and it would be Christmas every morning.

This has been a pretty remarkable month, actually, with all the problems of “The Long Emergency” accelerating impressively. Oil is now testing the $120 mark, the airline industry is imploding (largely over fuel costs), the housing scene has reached a degree of collapse unseen since the 1930s, food shortages have strayed out of the Third World and begun to affect Japan and the USA, bats are dying of a mysterious disease in the Northeast, and the Arctic sea ice is shrinking away to nothing.

We’re in a strange collective psychic bubble. We’d like to forget about all these troubling rumors of hardship and bad weather and just get on with the daily task of making a living and paying for stuff and enjoying our customary entertainments. The comforting ceremonies of everyday life seem to continue. The freeways are still full of cars. Nancy Grace comes on TV dependably at 8 p.m. and is there deploring the latest pervert arrest. The baseball season has ramped up and the teams are criss-crossing the nation in their chartered airplanes. The stock market is actually going up — what’s wrong with that?

But there’s an equally eerie vibe out there that things are seriously out-of-whack. We’re on the edge of something. We’re at the entrance of a dark passage where some of the ceremonies of daily life meet resistance. You go to the WalMart and five of your six credit cards are refused. Uh oh. It begins to dawn on you that you’re spending a quarter of your take-home pay filling up the gas-tank every week. There’s no dial tone when you pick up the telephone. How could all the supermarkets in town be out of rice? The local hospital just declared bankruptcy. The neighbors down the street auctioned off all their furniture in the driveway last week. Why does the cat pick up so many ticks these days?

Events are not through with us this year. They’ll keep moving where they will whether we believe in them or not. I’m hardly even convinced that it matters who wins the presidential race this year. It could end up being the world’s biggest booby prize.

Source. / Clusterfuck Nation / April 28, 2008

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May Day : Iraqi Workers Declare Solidarity With U.S. Unions

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Union solidarity in the face of war
From The Rag Blog / May Day / May 1, 2008

The following comes to us from U.S. Labor Against the War. It includes two May Day communications from the working people of Iraq to the workers and people of the world.

The first is a statement of solidarity from the General Union of Port Workers in Iraq to the members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in support of the decision by ILWU members to shut down all the ports on the West Coast as a demonstration of their opposition to the war and occupation of Iraq.

To show their solidarity, members of the Port Workers Union of Iraq have announced plans to shut down the ports of Umm Qasr and Khor Alzubair for one hour today, May Day, in solidarity with the shutdown of all West Coast ports by members of ILWU in opposition to the occupation of Iraq

May Day Message

From: The General Union of Port Workers in Iraq
To: The International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the United States

Dear Brothers and Sisters of ILWU in California:

The courageous decision you made to carry out a strike on May Day to protest against the war and occupation of Iraq advances our struggle against occupation to bring a better future for us and for the rest of the world as well.

We are certain that a better world will only be created by the workers and what you are doing is an example and proof of what we say. The labor movement is the only element in the society that is able to change the political equations for the benefit of mankind. We in Iraq are looking up to you and support you until the victory over the US administration’s barbarism is achieved.

Over the past five years the sectarian gangs who are the product of the occupation, have been trying to transfer their conflicts into our ranks. Targeting workers, including their residential and shopping areas, indiscriminately using all sorts of explosive devices, mortar shells, and random shooting, were part of a bigger scheme that was aiming to tear up the society but they miserably failed to achieve their hellish goal. We are struggling today to defeat both the occupation and sectarian militias’ agenda.

The pro-occupation government has been attempting to intervene into the workers affairs by imposing a single government-certified labor union. Furthermore it has been promoting privatization and an oil and gas law to use the occupation against the interests of the workers.

We the port workers view that our interests are inseparable from the interests of workers in Iraq and the world; therefore we are determined to continue our struggle to improve the living conditions of the workers and overpower all plots of the occupation, its economic and political projects.

Let us hold hands for the victory of our struggle.

Long live the port workers in California!

Long live May Day!

Long live International solidarity!

The General Union of Port Workers in Iraq An Affiliate Union with General Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (GFWCUI) 28-4-2008

The second message is a May Day greeting from a broad cross-section of union leaders from many different unions and labor federations in Iraq as an expression of their appreciation for the solidarity demonstrated by organized labor, working people and all peace-loving people of the world in support of their efforts to end the foreign occupation of Iraq and the sectarian violence that occupation has spawned.

May Day 2008 Statement from the Iraqi labour movement to the workers and all peace loving people of the world.

On this day of international labour solidarity we call on our fellow trade unionists and all those worldwide who have stood against war and occupation to increase support for our struggle for freedom from occupation – both the military and economic.

We call upon the governments, corporations and institutions behind the ongoing occupation of Iraq to respond to our demands for real democracy, true sovereignty and self-determination free of all foreign interference.

Five years of invasion, war and occupation have brought nothing but death, destruction, misery and suffering to our people. In the name of our “liberation,” the invaders have destroyed our nation’s infrastructure, bombed our neighbourhoods, broken into our homes, traumatized our children, assaulted and arrested many of our family members and neighbours, permitted the looting of our national treasures, and turned nearly twenty percent of our people into refugees.

The invaders helped to foment and then exploit sectarian divisions and terror attacks where there had been none. Our union offices have been raided. Union property has been seized and destroyed. Our bank accounts have been frozen. Our leaders have been beaten, arrested, abducted and assassinated. Our rights as workers have been routinely violated.

The Ba’athist legislation of 1987, which banned trade unions in the public sector and public enterprises (80% of all workers), is still in effect, enforced by Paul Bremer’s post-invasion Occupation Authority and then by all subsequent Iraqi administrations. This is an attack on our rights and basic precepts of a democratic society, and is a grim reminder of the shadow of dictatorship still stalking our country.

Despite the horrific conditions in our country, we continue to organise and protest against the occupation, against workplaces abuses, and for better treatment and safer conditions.

Despite the sectarian plots around us, we believe in unity and solidarity and a common aim of public service, equality, and freedom to organise without external intrusions and coercion.

Our legitimacy comes from our members. Our principles of organisation are based on transparent and internationally recognised International Labour Organisation standards.

We call upon our allies and all the world’s peace-loving peoples to help us to end the nightmare of occupation and restore our sovereignty and national independence so that we can chart our own course to the future.

1) We demand an immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from our country, and utterly reject the agreement being negotiated with the USA for long-term bases and a military presence. The continued occupation fuels the violence in Iraq rather than alleviating it. Iraq must be returned to full sovereignty.

2) We demand the passage of a labour law promised by our Constitution, which adheres to ILO principles and on which Iraqi trade unionists have been fully consulted, to protect the rights of workers to organize, bargain and strike, independent of state control and interference.

3) We demand an end to meddling in our sovereign economic affairs by the International Monetary Fund, USA and UK. We demand withdrawal of all economic conditionalities attached to the IMF’s agreements with Iraq, removal of US and UK economic “advisers” from the corridors of Iraqi government, and a recognition by those bodies that no major economic decisions concerning our services and resources can be made while foreign troops occupy the country.

4) We demand that the US government and others immediately cease lobbying for the oil law, which would fracture the country and hand control over our oil to multinational companies like Exxon, BP and Shell. We demand that all oil companies be prevented from entering into any long-term agreement concerning oil while Iraq remains occupied. We demand that the Iraqi government tear up the current draft of the oil law, and begin to develop a legitimate oil policy based on full and genuine consultation with the Iraqi people. Only after all occupation forces are gone should a long term plan for the development of our oil resources be adopted.

We seek your support and solidarity to help us end the military and economic occupation of our country. We ask for your solidarity for our right to organise and strike in defence of our interests as workers and of our public services and resources. Our public services are the legacy of generations before us and the inheritance of all future generations and must not be privatised.

We thank you for standing by us. We too stand with you in your own struggles for real democracy which we know you also struggle for, and against privatisation, exploitation and daily disempowerment in your workplaces and lives.

We commend those of you who have organised strikes and demonstrations to end the occupation in solidarity with us and we hope these actions will continue.

We look forward to the day when we have a world based on co-operation and solidarity. We look forward to a world free from war, sectarianism, competition and exploitation.

Endorsed by:

Hassan Juma’a Awad, President, Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU)

Faleh Abood Umara, Deputy, Central Council, Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU)

Falah Alwan, President, Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI)

Subhi Albadri, President, General Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (GFWCUI)

Nathim Rathi, President, Iraqi Port Workers Trade Union

Samir Almuawi, President, Engineering Professionals Trade Union

Ghzi Mushatat, President, Mechanic and Print Shop Trade Union

Waleed Alamiri, President, Electricity Trade Union

Ilham Talabani, President, Banking Services Trade Union

Abdullah Ubaid, President, Railway Trade Union Ammar Ali, President, Transportation Trade Union

Abdalzahra Abdilhassan, President, Service Employees Trade Union

Sundus Sabeeh, President, Barber Shop Workers Trade Union

Kareem Lefta Sindan, President, Lumber and Construction Trade Union, General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW)

Sabah Almusawi, President, Wasit Independent Trade Union

Shakir Hameed, President, Lumber And Construction Trade Union (GFWCUI)

Awad Ahmed, President, Teachers Federation of Salahideen Alaa

Ghazi Mushatat, President, Agricultural And Food Substance Industries Adnan

Rathi Shakir, President, Water Resources Trade Union

Nahrawan Yas, President, Woman Affairs Bureau

Sabah Alyasiri, President (GFWCUI) Babil

Ali Tahi, President (GFWCUI)

Najaf Ali Abbas, President (GFWCUI) Basra

Muhi Abdalhussien, President (GFWCUI), Wasit

Ali Hashim Abdilhussien, President (GFWCUI) Kerbala

Ali Hussien, President (GFWCUI) Anbar

Mustafa Ameen, President, Arab Workers Bureau (GFWCUI)

Thameer Mzeail, Health Services, Union Committee

Khadija Saeed Abdullah, Teachers Federation, Member

Asmahan, Khudair, Woman Affairs, Textile Trade Unions Adil

Aljabiri, Oil Workers Trade Union Executive Bureau Member

Muhi Abdalhussien, Nadia Flaih, Service Employees Trade Unions

Rawneq Mohammed, Member, Media and Print Shop Trade Union

Abdlakareem Abdalsada, Vice President (GFWCUI)

Saeed Nima, Vice President (GFWCUI)

Sabri Abdalkareem, Member, (GFWCUI) Babil

Amjad Aljawhary, Representative of GFWCUI in North America

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Red Headed Stranger Turns 75

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Part of Willie Nelson’s appeal has been the lack of certainty about his life, including the exact date of his birth. Some sources say it is April 28, some say it’s April 30. Photo by Bill Olive / Houston Chronicle

Friends and fans recall memories of the singer on his birthday
By Andrew Dansby / April 28, 2008 (or is it April 30?)

There was an uncomfortable silence when the subject of Willie Nelson came up. The conversation was about the song Luckenbach, Texas. Waylon Jennings talked about Nelson’s proposal that the two of them purchase the town. Jennings said he wouldn’t if Nelson had anything to do with the bank or the town’s finances. He called his old friend and Luckenbach duet partner a “crook.”

I laughed.

“No, I’m not kidding,” Jennings said.

Then the silence.

Jennings made a few complimentary concessions to Nelson’s unique spirit. But he seemed deadly serious. He said he’d had his fill of business dealings with Nelson.

Seven years later, I brought up that conversation to another Nelson friend, Ray Price, who seemed convinced it was a joke.

“Waylon was pulling your leg,” he said. “Willie’s no crook. (Pause.) He’s just surrounded by them.”

Who knows who’s right. Certainty would make Nelson less interesting.

He turns 75 today (some sources list his birthday as April 30, but most suggest he was born before midnight on the 29th), which seems remarkable given some of the myth and facts about his life. I could putter on about his discography, which I’ve owned in every format, from 45s and LPs to 8-tracks and cassettes to CDs and downloads.

Nelson’s work has been equally varied. There are the agreed-upon classics — Country Willie, Shotgun Willie, Yesterday’s Wine, Phases and Stages, Red Headed Stranger, Stardust, etc. — and others such as Tougher Than Leather and Spirit that reveal their beauty and craft later.

Even uneven albums have gems: Write Your Own Songs on WWII; Reasons to Quit, which gets hidden in Pancho and Lefty’s shadow; She’s Not for You, which is buried on Across the Borderline. The way his voice nearly breaks on the bridge of Always on My Mind remains sublime.

I’m not about to unravel Nelson’s mystique for anybody. It can be partly attributed to the seemingly leisurely phrasing, the reedy voice, the simplicity of the original songs and the comfortable rejiggering of the covers, the underrated guitar playing, the worn-out guitar itself, the loyalty to his band, the pigtails, the laid-back manner, the pugnacious streak that flickered up on creative matters.

Contradictory forces are no small part of his enduring allure, and more than the hillbilly/ hippie thing that prompts musician Jesse Dayton to call him “my spiritual hillbilly guru.”

Whether Nelson is a crook or a guy surrounded by crooks wouldn’t matter much if the songs weren’t great. The One Hell of a Ride box set, released earlier this month, is a great sampler, ranging from the mid-’50s to the present. It’s bookended by When I’ve Sang My Last Hillbilly Song, a version from 1954 and another from 2007. Ninety-eight songs come in-between, but most everybody finds some personal favorites in Nelson’s catalog.

Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Family, friends and fan favorites

Here, a few musicians, friends and/or fans offer some of their favorite Willie Nelson songs, both covers and originals.

Ray Price
“Willie always had his own way of singing, and I don’t see anything wrong with it. In that style, Still Not Over You is a favorite. He don’t sing it much, but I do.”

Billy Joe Shaver
“I’d have to say Crazy, it’s probably the best song ever written. I also like Healing Hands of Time. That helped me out when I was getting out of a relationship. His songs are healing songs. All of ’em. They’ll heal you if you listen.”

Ray Benson of Asleep at the Wheel
“My favorite is one Willie and I recorded called Write Your Own Songs. We were on the golf course one day, and he said, `Hey I just wrote a song, wanna hear it?’ At the time I was without a record deal; Willie was financing my album. There’s a line in it about how lousy the music business is. We never got that record deal.”

Johnny Bush
“What do you want from me? To tell you what an old fart he is? I lean toward Opportunity to Cry and Funny How Time Slips Away. He don’t write bad songs. In my opinion, he’s the greatest songwriter of the 20th and 21st centuries.”

Carolyn Wonderland
“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain was my grandma’s song, so I heard it a whole lot. As you get older the words hit home a little differently. It’s so sad and beautiful the way he sings it. There’s that great twinge of hope that only he can do, even in that dark, dark corner.”

Jesse Dayton
“The thing I like about Me and Paul is it’s so conversational, you feel like Willie’s letting you in on it. I should also say that Home in San Antone backed by the Texas Troubadours is the swing-ingest stuff to ever come out of Texas. It’s a whole different kind of hillbilly jazz.”

Gene Watson
“I’ve always been a great admirer of Willie’s versatile songwriting ability. Just like he can bend a phrase when he sings, he phrases his songs in a unique way. Darkness on the Face of the Earth has always been one of my favorite Willie Nelson songs.”

Shelby Lynne
“Whiskey River, and the reason is I love the line `feeling the amber currents flowing from my mind.”’

Vince Bell
“Over the years, Willie has covered the writers from the Lone Star State righter’n hell. It’s hard to have favorites, but one of my all time favorites will remain his duet of the Townes Van Zandt song Pancho and Lefty with Merle Haggard.”

Leslie Sloan of Miss Leslie and Her Juke Jointers
“My heart has always rested with Willie’s early songs – written in the ’50s and ’60s. I love the hooks he wrote: `But there’s more old drunks than there are old doctors so I guess I’d better have another round’ from I Gotta Get Drunk. A perfect dancehall song.”

Mary Gauthier
“Nightlife; it’s my life too. Willie said it best.”

Todd Snider
“I consider all Willie Nelson songs locked in an infinite tie with themselves for first place. Why? Judging Willie Nelson songs is like trying to figure out whether you should thank God for the oceans or the mountains . . .”

Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top
Angel Flying too Close to the Ground . . . it’s the incongruous coupling of country and western sounds with the surreal structural content.”

Source. / Houston Chronicle

Also see Willie, Waylon.. and a Girl. / LincolnLady / Folsum Telegraph
And 75 Essential Willie Nelson songs / MySA.com

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New Math from the Sec’y of Defense

Posted on May 1, 2008 by RagBlog


New U.S. carrier in Gulf a “reminder” to Iran: Gates
By David Morgan / April 30, 2008

MEXICO CITY — The U.S. Navy has temporarily added a second aircraft carrier in the Gulf as a “reminder” to Iran, but this was not an escalation of American forces in the region, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday.

Speaking to reporters during a trip to Mexico, Gates flatly denied a suggestion that the presence of two U.S. carriers in the Gulf could be a precursor to military action against Tehran.

“This deployment has been planned for a long time,” Gates said. “I don’t think we’ll have two carriers there for a protracted period of time. So I don’t see it as an escalation. I think it could be seen, though, as a reminder.”

He declined to elaborate on his remarks and provided no details about the deployment.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said the second carrier arrived in the Gulf on Tuesday to replace one on duty that was expected to depart the region in two days.

U.S. Navy officials were not immediately available for comment.

News of the second carrier came amid simmering tension between the United States and Iran that has fed speculation about a possible U.S. military strike.

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week that the Pentagon had military options it could consider against Tehran but stressed that the United States would continue to rely on diplomatic and economic methods to address its concerns.

Iran and the United States have repeatedly clashed over U.S. claims that Tehran is pursuing nuclear arms and aiding Shi’ite militants in Iraq who have recently stepped up attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces.

Tehran maintains it is pursuing a civilian nuclear energy program and blames violence in Iraq on the presence of about 160,000 U.S. forces.

There have also been confrontations between U.S. ships and small boats in the region, including vessels the Pentagon has described as Iranian craft.

Last week, a cargo ship hired by the U.S. military fired warning shots in the Gulf at two unidentified boats that approached the U.S. vessel while ignoring radio communications and a warning flare. The boats left the area after what the Navy described as “a few bursts” of machine gun fire.

(Editing by Chris Wilson)

Source / Reuters / Bad Attitudes

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A Cacophony of Inanity

Posted on May 1, 2008 by RagBlog


Fastened to a Dying Animal
By Phil Rockstroh / April 30, 2008

Here in this crumbling empire once known as the American Republic, here in a nation that, at present, for all practical purposes, only produces Cheetos and killer drones, whose architecture is being winnowed down to thriving rural meth houses and foreclosed upon suburban mchouses, whose corrupt corporate culture has bequeathed upon our suffering planet dying oceans and the hyper-caffeinated tsunami of Red Bull Capitalism — the essential question confronts us — how does one retain (not retail) one’s humanity amid the catastrophic machinery and inane accouterment of our age?

“Show your wounds,” exhorted the late 20th Century artist Joseph Bueys. The wound becomes the womb, poets tell us.

Out of painful truth, beauty is born. But, antithetical to the orthodoxies of consumer capitalism, there are no shortcuts.

According to legend, Faust sold his soul for a glimpse of eternal beauty and the hidden knowledge of the world. Sadly, we’ve done likewise (but worse, pathetically) for a glimpse of Paris Hilton’s privileged (but hardly gated and guarded) cooter.

Here, now, sprawled upon the detritus of our dignity, we are confronted by the exponential dynamics of decay known as the U.S. Presidential Election cycle. In this, all three corporate candidates are of little use to us.

Although all three have done very well for themselves by the present and prevailing arrangement known as Disaster Capitalism.

What motivation do they have to change the system by which they’ve thrived? McCain, Clinton, and Obama must serve the interests of the corrupt corporate class — or else they would be marginalized.

Paradoxically, as we have witnessed, as of late, if they make even the most minute rumblings to the contrary — as for example, blundering into a steaming pile of the obvious such as the observation that the battered laboring class of the nation might be embittered by their lot — they risk political immolation by being labeled an elitist.

Of course, Obama is an elitist. (As are Clinton and McCain.)

Read the rest here. / Information Clearing House

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Albert Hofman, Who Took Hundreds of Trips, 1906-2008

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Dr. Hofmann, date unknown, with a chemical model of LSD.Photo by Novartis, Getty Images

Albert Hofmann, the Father of LSD, Dies at 102
By Craig S. Smith / April 30, 2008

PARIS — Albert Hofmann, the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known, died Tuesday at his hilltop home near Basel, Switzerland. He was 102.

The cause was a heart attack, said Rick Doblin, founder and president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a California-based group that in 2005 republished Dr. Hofmann’s 1979 book “LSD: My Problem Child.”

Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.

He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life.

Dr. Hofmann was born in Baden, a spa town in northern Switzerland, on Jan. 11, 1906, the eldest of four children. His father, who had no higher education, was a toolmaker in a local factory, and the family lived in a rented apartment. But Dr. Hofmann spent much of his childhood outdoors.

He would wander the hills above the town and play around the ruins of a Hapsburg castle, the Stein. “It was a real paradise up there,” he said in an interview in 2006. “We had no money, but I had a wonderful childhood.”

It was during one of his ambles that he had his epiphany.

“It happened on a May morning — I have forgotten the year — but I can still point to the exact spot where it occurred, on a forest path on Martinsberg above Baden,” he wrote in “LSD: My Problem Child.” “As I strolled through the freshly greened woods filled with bird song and lit up by the morning sun, all at once everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light.

“It shone with the most beautiful radiance, speaking to the heart, as though it wanted to encompass me in its majesty. I was filled with an indescribable sensation of joy, oneness and blissful security.”

Though Dr. Hofmann’s father was a Roman Catholic and his mother a Protestant, Dr. Hofmann, from an early age, felt that organized religion missed the point. When he was 7 or 8, he recalled, he spoke to a friend about whether Jesus was divine. “I said that I didn’t believe, but that there must be a God because there is the world and someone made the world,” he said. “I had this very deep connection with nature.”

Dr. Hofmann went on to study chemistry at Zurich University because, he said, he wanted to explore the natural world at the level where energy and elements combine to create life. He earned his Ph.D. there in 1929, when he was just 23. He then took a job with Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, attracted by a program there that sought to synthesize pharmacological compounds from medicinally important plants.

It was during his work on the ergot fungus, which grows in rye kernels, that he stumbled on LSD, accidentally ingesting a trace of the compound one Friday afternoon in April 1943. Soon he experienced an altered state of consciousness similar to the one he had experienced as a child.

On the following Monday, he deliberately swallowed a dose of LSD and rode his bicycle home as the effects of the drug overwhelmed him. That day, April 19, later became memorialized by LSD enthusiasts as “bicycle day.”

Dr. Hofmann’s work produced other important drugs, including methergine, used to treat postpartum hemorrhaging, the leading cause of death from childbirth. But it was LSD that shaped both his career and his spiritual quest.

“Through my LSD experience and my new picture of reality, I became aware of the wonder of creation, the magnificence of nature and of the animal and plant kingdom,” Dr. Hofmann told the psychiatrist Stanislav Grof during an interview in 1984. “I became very sensitive to what will happen to all this and all of us.”

Dr. Hofmann became an impassioned advocate for the environment and argued that LSD, besides being a valuable tool for psychiatry, could be used to awaken a deeper awareness of mankind’s place in nature and help curb society’s ultimately self-destructive degradation of the natural world.

But he was also disturbed by the cavalier use of LSD as a drug for entertainment, arguing that it should be treated in the way that primitive societies treat psychoactive sacred plants, which are ingested with care and spiritual intent.

After his discovery of LSD’s properties, Dr. Hofmann spent years researching sacred plants. With his friend R. Gordon Wasson, he participated in psychedelic rituals with Mazatec shamans in southern Mexico. He succeeded in synthesizing the active compounds in the Psilocybe mexicana mushroom, which he named psilocybin and psilocin. He also isolated the active compound in morning glory seeds, which the Mazatec also used as an intoxicant, and found that its chemical structure was close to that of LSD.

During the psychedelic era, Dr. Hofmann struck up friendships with such outsize personalities as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Aldous Huxley, who, nearing death in 1963, asked his wife for an injection of LSD to help him through the final painful throes of throat cancer.

Yet despite his involvement with psychoactive compounds, Dr. Hofmann remained moored in his Swiss chemist identity. He stayed with Sandoz as head of the research department for natural medicines until his retirement in 1971. He wrote more than 100 scientific articles and was the author or co-author of a number of books

He and his wife, Anita, who died recently, reared four children in Basel. A son died of alcoholism at 53. Survivors include several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Though Dr. Hofmann called LSD “medicine for the soul,” by 2006 his hallucinogenic days were long behind him, he said in the interview that year.

“I know LSD; I don’t need to take it anymore,” he said, adding. “Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley.”

But he said LSD had not affected his understanding of death. In death, he said, “I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that’s all.”

Source. / NY Times
Also see LSD inventor… / Wired

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Happy Birthday To You…

Posted on April 30, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

MoveOn.Org Celebrates Birthday of ‘Mission Accomplished’

The liberal terrorists at MoveOn.org are launching a $1 million ad campaign (heyo!) against John McCain, because who the hell else is gonna do it, JESUS H. CHRIST (Mike Huckabee)? The first ad is running in some states where McCain has been running his own ads unopposed, and it features a birthday cake. Or an anniversary cake. It’s an Iraq Birthday-Anniversary Cake, celebrating 5-100 years of fun in the sun! Stupid liberals always miss the point — if you make cake analogous to a vote for John McCain, everyone will vote for John McCain.

Source. / Wonkette / March 30, 2008

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Our Hands Are Tainted with Innocent Blood

Posted on April 30, 2008 by RagBlog


‘Blood Diamonds’ ‘Blood Oil’ and ‘Blood Food’
By Pablo Ouziel

True commitment to stopping the war in Iraq requires a global human rights strike, in which the working population of the world stops producing, until the governments and the corporations realize that the voice of the people does indeed matter, says Pablo Ouziel.

For a while now, I have been thinking about what George W. Bush signifies from a socio-political perspective. Looking at the world from the time of the ‘Big Bang’ of September 11th, 2001, until today almost seven years later, one can clearly observe how monstrous our human interaction has become. After much reading and analysis, I now understand that September 11th was not the starting point of a new world order, but to the contrary, it was purely the end of a specific human state of affairs.

When one grows up in the west, our history books tell us stories about past events in our world. As we grow up, those same stories shape the way in which we look at the world around us. Once this history is indoctrinated into our minds, it frames the scope of our objective judgment. This in turn, leads to a very narrow analysis of our current reality.

As westerners we have the tendency to feel superior to the rest of the human species. Somehow, we have come to believe that our crusades, empires and colonization have led us to a higher understanding of kindness, compassion, love and equality. As westerners, we seem to see ourselves in a higher plane of collective awareness, intellectual and spiritual attainment. I do not doubt for a single minute that in other cultures they have similar prejudices, but I learned from an early age through Christian scriptures, that one must look deep into his or her consciousness, in order to identify mistakes and make corrections. Therefore, for me it is important to focus only on the culture that I know, I live, and that I am an active member of — the western world, as defined by the politicians of the ‘Axis of Good’ who govern us.

We are very comfortable in the west, all of us. Even the most deprived are not as deprived as the whole of Iraq, and by the whole of Iraq, I do mean everyone including the Al Qaeda terrorists, the international soldiers, the Iraqi militias, the possible Iranian insurgents, the government officials, doctors and nurses, contractors, private army operatives, NGO workers, the rich, the poor, the women, men and the children. Nobody there is as good as we are here. Iraq is just one of the many examples of places where the whole population is on its knees as we in the west enjoy our ‘morally evolved’ societies.

People in Haiti are eating mud cakes because of the soaring food prices, the people in Gaza have no electricity, in Afghanistan, the only royal visit they receive, is of a British prince dressed in military gear going to kill on Afghan soil. In India, the farmers are committing suicide due to failed harvests of genetically modified Monsanto crops. Around the world, people are rioting because of lack of food or basic human necessities. Yet in the west, we can move around freely, we can cross borders and fly our budget airlines from capital to capital, observing the comforts of western existence. Organized streets, clean cars, wonderful shopping malls, great monuments, everything is civilized and could be admired, that is, if it was honest. But it isn’t, it is morally wrong and deep down we all know it. We know it, but we just don’t want to do anything about it, because we are comfortable. Only a very small proportion of the population would truly change their position for that of a person in Iraq. I suppose that is why we choose to keep Iraq as a problem of our governments, and the terrorists whom must be eliminated to protect us from ‘evil’.

Read all of it here. / Middle East Online

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"Mission Accomplished" : Five Years and Counting!

Posted on April 30, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


White House: We ‘paid price’ for ‘Mission Accomplished’
By Michael Moore / April 30, 2008

WASHINGTON – The White House said Wednesday that it had “paid a price” for the “Mission Accomplished” backdrop to US President George W. Bush’s May 1, 2003 Iraq speech, saying it left the wrong impression.

“President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific, and said, ‘Mission Accomplished For These Sailors Who Are On This Ship On Their Mission,'” said spokeswoman Dana Perino.

“We have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year,” she said.

The “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging behind Bush on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier has become a powerful symbol to his critics of how badly he underestimated the difficulties ahead in Iraq, where more than 4,000 US soldiers have paid the ultimate price.

What has become an annual act of political contrition, mixed with defiance, had special import because of November US presidential elections shaped by the war and its architect — both hugely unpopular with the US public.

The White House’s explanation for the banner repeatedly changed as the insurgency in Iraq revved up, though aides have steadfastly pointed out that Bush never said “mission accomplished” in his speech.

Bush said “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” and declared that “the battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 — and still goes on.”

But even that has drawn pointed questions, with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saying he had fought to have the White House remove the phrase from the remarks. The White House denies Rumsfeld’s account.

And one week later, on June 5, 2003, Bush told US troops at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar: “America sent you on a mission to remove a grave threat and to liberate an oppressed people, and that mission has been accomplished.”

The White House says that Bush was plainly referring to the goal of ousting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the chief aim of the March 2003 US-led invasion.

And the official answer to “who put up the banner” has changed — as the death toll rose, the White House and Bush himself said the sailors had put it up on their own, even though aides had initially boasted of their stagecraft.

Then Bush aides admitted that the White House designed and built it, but insisted they did so at the sailors’ request, and that it celebrated the ship and its crew — not victory in Iraq.

Source. / MichaelMoore.com
Also see Remembering ‘Mission Accomplished’, / NY Times Political Blog

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