Stick it To Him Like He’s Been Sticking it to You
By Buck Batard
In case you’re one of the lucky few who’s still flush with cash, Amazon has just the ticket to deal with the problems facing the economy right now. Along with some other useful items. In case that doesn’t work, I know some good root doctors on the South Carolina coast who will be glad to help you out. Just in case voting doesn’t do the trick.
I usually speak to political groups and literary groups and their awareness tends to be political or intellectual. The word spiritual is a big no-no in both circles these days. All solutions are supposed to be political or intellectual.
However, it is more than just a political or intellectual failure when we turn our backs on our own laboring people, denying them such things as basic health care and liberation from darkness through true education. Or when that quintile of our populace who are fortunate enough to be truly middle class and ehjoy all that entails, pretend there is no class system in America and that we are all equal.
What is left of the diminishing American middle class is at a critical juncture in history. We have become a nation whose survival and comfort depends not only upon the clothing and electronic sweatshops in the smoking trash heaps of Latin America, Africa and Asia, but also upon domestic denial of the gaping and widening disparities among our very own people. We let millions of Americas hardest toiling folks suffer sickness and go uneducated because we are in the middle class — the class that is paid to manage our little corner of the system, not to be our brother’s keeper.
As members of the fifth or so of Americans among America’s true middle class, we must decide whether to be selfish or to be unselfish. There is no middle ground. No acceptable level of misery for the elderly or poor, no acceptable level of ignorance for any American. It’s an ethical and spiritual problem every American should face up to and personally solve for himself or herself. Because if we fail to solve it, then our life has been a spiritual failure.
Now if this event is like every other one I’ve spoken at, someone is going to ask me: “Mr. Bageant, what can we do as citizens to . . .?” Blah blah, blah.
If I knew what YOU should do, I’d be God, or at least Dear Abby. But the fact that we all look to other people, politicians, police, supposed experts (even dumb rednecks like me who write a book) for answers or solutions shows how we have learned to be helpless. In fact, psychologists call it “learned helplessness.”
Yet, none of us is truly helpless. The truth is that at any given moment in any given day, we can simply do something to help someone else in need. Which also helps us and the world in the same process.
Let’s do this. Let’s all stand up.
Everybody standing up?
OK now don’t sit down until you have thought of something you are going to do to help a fellow human being, someone we actually know in real need, such as hunger or perhaps cursed by mental disorder — or homeless, or an ex-convict or drug addict trying to regain a hold on his or her life. And do this before you go to bed tonight. Find some small way to remove a little bit of misery from the world and the human race. Sit down when you have decided on something to do.
[People stand for 60 seconds. Some sit down.]
OK. Let’s sit down. Hard wasn’t it? Most of us probably had a tough time thinking of a truly needy person to help, much less a way to help them. Yet eliminating the world’s misery, as any Buddhist monk or Third World Catholic priest, can tell you, is done mostly face to face, people helping people one at a time.
And we do know people we can help. We meet them every day and are blind to them because we are in a different social caste. What about that young single mom with the tattoo and the bad teeth scrubbing out the steamer pans at the school cafeteria? What about that redneck Pentecostal fella with four kids who empties the waste basket in your office or classroom at night while you sleep?
“Oh, that’s a problem for social services,” we say. Or “I give to United Way,” or some such charity. Yet our social services are collapsing and nearly every major American charity has proven to be suspect at best.
So you see how learned helplessness works. Helpless people are conditioned to spend money instead of deal honestly and face to face with people and their problems: as in ‘I’ll write a check to Catholic Relief, then jump in my car and go grab an organic salad at the café.’ Helpless middle class Americans are helpless not because they are lazy, but because they are conditioned to believe they have no personal power to change the world, just the money to buy it. Or help sponsor the least offensive of the political candidates offered to us by the political machinery of the state. Anybody here really believe that Barack Obama or John McCain can overcome a bought and paid for Congress to give all Americans the same free health care and free higher education enjoyed by nearly every other developed nation on earth? — assuming they even wanted to do so. Then again, them thar’s mighty big problems — too big for the average guy to tackle.
When we have learned to tell ourselves that our fellow American’s problems are too big for us to deal with as individual human beings, we’ve thrown away our humanity. We’ve denied ourselves a meaningful existence. Exiled ourselves from the spirit.
There are an awful lot of smart people here tonight, and collectively, there is more intelligence on the other side of this microphone than I will ever possess. In truth — and this is no exaggeration — the solution to every one of America’s problems — whether it is the injustice of class in America or the dark poverty of ignorance — is in this room right now.
It’s not about political morality or good and evil. There is no evil but meanness, stupidity, insensitiveness, and lack of imagination — which has become active in human beings as fear, greed and cruelty: the fear of losing the obvious advantages of our middle class status, education, 401-Ks, etc.; the greed that is inherent in a consumer based society and culture; and the cruelty that comes with not only the denial of a class system in America, but the failure of the middle class to stand up and reject the televised spectacle and sham that has been substituted for politics in our nation because true politics is about class and always has been.
The antidote is personal non-media produced awareness. That and unsentimental compassion. I believe that every soul here tonight has at least a little of those to offer the world.
Thank you all for taking of your valuable time to be here tonight.
Dr. Sami Al-Arian vs Big Brother
by Eileen Fleming / March 15th, 2008
American Palestinian Professor Dr. Sami Amin Al-Arian, has spent the last five years behind bars although NO jury ever returned a single guilty verdict against him. On March 3, 2008 he began his third hunger strike in Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Va. after learning he would face a third grand jury, instead of being released and deported this April.
After losing fifteen pounds, the diabetic Dr. was moved to Butner Medical Center. I phoned the center [919- 575-3900] on March 14, 2008, seeking a condition update, but only got as far as leaving a voice mail.
I then phoned Melva Underbakke, who was driving to Phoenix to show the documentary USA vs Al-Arian.
Melva informed me, “I have known Sami for fifteen years, we both taught at the University of South Florida. When he was indicted he lost his tenure. We lived a mile from each other and were both on the educational committee of HOPE, a volunteer organization in the community that works to strengthen the community. Sami and I were both on the committee that helped the public schools develop an alternative to out of school suspension by keeping the suspended kids in the school system.
“After 9/11, Sami was instrumental in outreaching to the entire community by inviting the churches and all others to the mosque to express our shared grief and sorrow.
“Sami has won many awards for teaching. He worked to get people out to vote and he lobbied in Washington.
“It’s a big loss to our community–a big loss to our country to lose such a person as Sami.
“Even during his pretrial incarceration the conditions were very harsh. He was always behind a glass; no physical contact was allowed, even for his family. I think maybe once a year they were allowed to be in the same room with him. The last time I saw him was just after his second hunger strike. He was still joking and in good spirits. He was strong and it was a happy visit.
“Sami was always a big believer in the American system. He felt justice would be done. But, I think because this case goes all the way to Washington, and they have been loosing these terror cases, they want to save face and don’t want to give up persecuting Sami.”
Dr. Al-Arian has stated:
“To be patriotic is to be able to question government policy in times of crisis. To be patriotic is to stand up for the bill of rights and the Constitution in times of uncertainty and insecurity. To be patriotic is to speak up against the powerful in defense of the weak and the voiceless. To be patriotic is to challenge the abuses of the PATRIOT Act.”
“A great nation is ultimately defined and judged by its system of justice. When the system is manipulated by the powerful and tolerates abuses against the minorities or the weak members of society, the government not only loses its moral authority and betrays future generations, but will also be condemned by history.”
The diabetic Dr.’s first hunger strike, lasted 140 days, he survived on nutritional liquids and lost 45 pounds. In 2007, he went on a two month hunger strike, drank only water and lost 55 pounds. His third hunger strike began March 3, 2008 and he is refusing fluids.
The documentary USA vs Al-Arian that Melva is taking around the country, details “the absurdity of the show trial held in Florida and the hollowness of the government’s case against Al-Arian. When the film was awarded Best Nordic Documentary at the Nordic Panorama in Finland the jury wrote: ‘The film shows precisely how a common man becomes a victim of the situation in the contemporary world, where the Big Brother is watching you even when you’re ordering pizza.’”
The film is also “a close portrait of an Arab-American family facing terrorism charges leveled by the U.S. Government. The film shows a personal story of a family living in a society where fear of terrorism has resulted in increasing stigmatization and discrimination against Muslims. For years, Nahla Al-Arian and her children have been fighting to prove the innocence of husband and father Sami, a Palestinian refugee, university professor and civil rights activist, who has lived in the USA for more than thirty years. In 2003, Sami Al-Arian was accused of giving material support to a terrorist organization and held in solitary confinement for over three years. His six-month trial ended without a single guilty verdict. The failure to convict Dr. Al-Arian was seen as a stinging rebuke for the federal government. While the Bush administration considered this a landmark case in its campaign against international terrorism, Sami Al-Arian claims he has been targeted in an attempt to silence his political views. Because the jury hung on some of the counts, however, Dr. Al-Arian remained in jail as the prosecution threatened to retry him. In May 2006, he agreed to a plea bargain with the US Government in order to put an end to the ordeal and to be reunited with his family. A federal judge sentenced him to 57 months in prison and subsequent deportation… The case of Sami Al-Arian is one of the first major tests of the USA Patriot Act, a controversial law passed hastily after September 11, 2001.”
So far the American taxpayer has provided approximately $50 million dollars to persecute Dr. Al-Arian. “The government has called 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to hundreds of hours of often absurd phone transcriptions and recordings made over a 10-year period, which the jury dismissed as “gossip.” Of the 17 charges against Al-Arian—including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad”—the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors disagreed on the remaining charges, with 10 of the 12 jurors favoring his full acquittal… Following the acquittal, a disaster for the government, especially because then-Attorney General John Ashcroft had announced the indictment, prosecutors threatened to retry Al-Arian. The Palestinian professor, under duress, accepted a plea bargain agreement that would spare him a second trial, saying in his agreement that he had helped people associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad with immigration matters. It was a tepid charge given the high profile of the case.”
*****
USA vs Al-Arian
Contact Melva Underbakke to schedule a screening in your city.
Call (813) 215-3403
E-mail: melvau@earthlink.net
Eileen Fleming is the author of Keep Hope Alive and Memoirs of a Nice Irish American Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory and the producer of 30 Minutes With Vanunu. Email her at ecumei@gmail.com.
For God’s Sake, Don’t…!
by Dr. Haider Mehdi / March 15th, 2008
The news all over the media is that the US army “is developing a plan to send around 100 trainers to work with a Pakistani para-military force that is the vanguard in the fight against Al Qaida and other groups in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas.” This report further states that “US trainers initially would be restricted to training compounds, but with Pakistani consent could eventually accompany Pakistani troops on missions ‘to the point of contact’ with militants as American trainers now do with Iraqi troops in Iraq.” Eventually, the Pentagon plans to build a training base and spend more than $400 million over the next several years on this project. US officials are giving the impression that all of this is being planned as a benevolent act of American altruism and generosity to help a friendly country (Pakistan) to fight a counterinsurgency that is threatening its very existence.
In other words, in America’s view (and of the apologists for Musharraf’s and the US perspective in Pakistan), Pakistan is facing so-called “extremism” and “terrorism” on its soil and the war against it will have to continue indefinitely. The implicit message is that the “war on terror” is neither only an American war nor one of General (retd) Musharraf’s exclusively designed political doctrine — it is Pakistan’s war, where a specific segment of its citizenry (especially Pashtuns in the northern area of the country) have gone ideologically berserk (because Islam is violent) seeking martyrdom for “hoors” (heavenly beauties) in the life hereafter. The road to this imaginary Heavenly Kingdom is sought by these misled miscreants by identifying Bush’s noble and cavalier America as the enemy. In addition, all those who support Bush’s so-called worthy enterprise of democracy and freedom are on the death list of these gone-mad Muslim terrorists.
Indeed, this whole approach is absurd. In fact, all this anti-Islamic propaganda is a set-up to plan American military presence in Pakistan that will expand gradually with time and finally give the Americans a permanent military base (or bases) from which to conduct its global agenda of economic-military-political expansion all the way to the Central Asian Islamic States. It is precisely for this reason that the Americans are supporting Musharraf’s presidency and prefer to deal with a dictator rather than a democratic establishment in Islamabad.
If Pakistan has to survive as a peaceful progressive democratic nation then four matters will have to be settled at once: First, General (retd) Pervez Musharraf will have to go immediately; this will deprive the Americans of their vital contact and present control over instant decision-making in Islamabad (in accordance with their dictates). Equally important is the need to develop political processes by which all matters relating to any kind of military or civil engagement with the United States will have to be decided in the Pakistani parliament by a competent and appropriate legislative body. Three, Pakistan’s military establishment from now on should have only an advisory role (through parliamentary hearings) even when business with the US is purely of a military nature. Fourth, in all matters pertaining to American engagement with Pakistan, the media’s involvement as a forum of debate will have to be an integral mechanism of political decision-making in this country. This will promote the democratic process and public input in national policy-making.
However, the immediate concern that Pakistan’s newly elected parliament should have is the Pentagon’s plan to send over 100 American trainers to the work with and train the Frontier Corps, paramilitary forces of nearly 85,000 members recruited from ethnic groups on the border. For God’s sake, don’t let this happen. It is a plan, if it materializes, that will have catastrophic effects and lasting impacts on Pakistan’s recently elected democratic establishment’s ability to promote its own independence, free of American pressures, and to pursue its national interests in all of its political-military decision-making vis-à-vis the US.
Read all of it here.
Lou Reed photo: Jonathan Snyder/Wired
1,700 Bands, Rocking as the CD Industry Reels
By Jon Pareles / New York Times / March 15, 2008
AUSTIN — “I don’t want to feel like I don’t have a future,” sang the Shout Out Louds, one of more than 1,700 bands that have been performing day and night at Austin’s clubs, halls, meeting rooms, parking lots and street corners since Wednesday.
The Shout Out Louds, from Stockholm, were singing about a romance, but they could have been speaking for thousands of people attending the 22nd annual South by Southwest Music Festival. It is America’s most important music convention, particularly for rising bands, gathering a critical mass of musicians and their supporters and exploiters from the United States and across the world. While major labels have a low profile at this year’s gathering, other corporations are highly visible, using sponsorships to latch on to music as a draw and as a symbol of cool.
Southwest is a talent showcase and a schmoozathon, a citywide barbecue party and a brainstorming session for a business that has been radically shaken and stirred by the Internet. For established recording companies, the instantaneous and often unpaid distribution of music online is business hell; CD album sales are on an accelerating slide, and sales of downloads aren’t making up for the losses. But for listeners, as well as for musicians who mostly want a chance to be heard, the digital era is fan heaven.
As major labels have shrunk in the 21st century, South by Southwest has nearly doubled in size, up to 12,500 people registered for this year’s convention, from 7,000 registered attendees in 2001, not including the band members performing. In an era of plummeting CD sales and short shelf lives even for current hit makers, the festival is full of people seeking ways to route their careers around what’s left of the major recording companies.
Sooner or later, public forums and private conversations at this year’s festival end up pondering how 21st-century musicians will be paid. For nearly all of them, it won’t be royalty checks rolling in from blockbuster albums. Musicians’ livelihoods will more likely be a crazy quilt of what their lawyers would call “alternative revenue streams”: touring, downloads, ringtones, T-shirts, sponsorships, Web site ads and song placements in soundtracks or commercials. Festival panels offer practical advice on all of them, for career-minded do-it-yourself-ers.
The key is to gain enough recognition to find an audience. Over its four days, SXSW, as the festival is called, is like MySpace moved to the physical realm: more music than anyone could possibly hear, freely available and clamoring to be heard.
Major labels used to help create stars through promotion and publicity, but their role has been shrinking. Multimillion-selling musicians who have fulfilled their major-label contracts — Radiohead, the Eagles, Nine Inch Nails — are deserting those companies, choosing to be free agents rather than assets for the system that made them famous.
Even a moderately well-known musician can reach fans without a middleman. Daniel Lanois, who has produced U2 and Bob Dylan and is also a guitarist and songwriter, noted during his set that he now sells his music directly online in high fidelity at the Web site redfloorrecords.com.
“We can record something at night, put it on the site for breakfast and have the money in the PayPal account by 5,” he said. “With all due respect for my very great friends who have come up in the record-company environment, it’s nice to see that technology has opened the doors to everybody.”
South by Southwest has insisted, ever since it started in 1987 as a gathering for independent and regional musicians, that major-label contracts have never been a musician’s only chance. Musicians who have had contracts are lucky if they recoup their advances through royalties. Lou Reed, who gave an onstage interview as a convention keynote, was terse about getting a label contract. “You have the Internet — what do you need it for?”
There’s never a shortage of eager musicians. Many bands drive cross-country by van or cross an ocean to perform an unpaid showcase at South By Southwest, and the most determined ones play not only their one festival slot but also half a dozen peripheral parties as well, hoping to be noticed. Sixth Street and Red River, two downtown streets lined with clubs, are mobbed with music-hopping pedestrians until last call.
Musicians make the trek even though discovering a local band from another town or another country is just a few clicks away. That spread of information opens new career paths, from tours stoked by blog buzz to recognition for a song tucked into a commercial or a soundtrack. South by Southwest draws like Ingrid Michaelson and Sia got big breaks through songs that appeared in television shows, while Yael Naim found an international audience through a MacBook Air commercial.
With music whizzing across the Internet, South by Southwest probably has fewer completely unknown so-called baby bands, but hundreds of more toddlers. They have unlikely allies now. If record labels can’t help them, corporations might. Few musicians worry about selling out to a sponsor; now it’s a career path. This year’s festival has brand-name sponsors everywhere, from Citigroup and Dell to wineries, social-networking Web sites and the chef Rachael Ray (who is the host of her own day party).
Read all of it here.
SXSW : The Return of R.E.M.
By Angela Watercutter / Wired / March 14, 2008
AUSTIN — It’s been almost four years since we’ve seen a proper R.E.M. studio album and it’s felt like a long time, even with last year’s live record to curb the hunger. And, frankly, the time span since the last really great R.E.M. record has felt even longer.
But if R.E.M.’s performance at Stubb’s for SXSW is any indication, the band seems to be be back in top form. “Seems to be” is important to note here because Michael Stipe and co. have always been an amazing live rock band, so judging their level of “back”-ness is hard because it’s easy to be sucked in to Stipe’s easy charisma and get swept away (the concert is available for streaming from NPR.org if you want to experience it for yourself).
That said, the new songs they played from their upcoming album Accelerate (out April 1) sound like classic R.E.M., but for the new millennium. In this clip from an interview with music site Mog, Stipe himself mentions that the band has been working better as a cohesive unit on the upcoming record and that level of tightness was definitely on stage at Stubb’s. This clip is the first of a few where the frontman discusses the new album, the rest are here.
Really what seems to be back with the new R.E.M. is their passion. During the set Stipe made quite a few references — in both words and song — to the state of the world, particularly the political climate in America. (New track “Houston,” for example, is a response to Barbara Bush’s comments following Hurricane Katrina. Stipe didn’t say which comments, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say these were the ones.)
“I know Austin came out strong for Barack Obama and I want to salute you for that,” Stipe told the cheering crowd at Stubb’s, becoming the latest rock star to throw his weight behind the presidential hopeful.
Not everyone appreciates rock stars telling them who to vote for or how to feel about the issues, but you have to admit when a band like R.E.M. is excited about something the music is better. And one of the things that R.E.M. does best is have a message without sounding overly preachy, so the new fire in the belly could be a strong indicator of good things to come.
Lou Reed : Shove it in a Cow!
By Daily Dish / SF Gate.com / March 14,2008Surly Lou Reed admonished a fan when his cell phone rang during the rocker’s keynote speech at the South By Southwest Festival in Texas on Thursday.
The former Velvet Underground star, who inducted Leonard Cohen into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Monday, lost his patience before a packed Austin Convention Center when he heard the ringtone.
He barked, “What does ‘Turn off your cell phone’ mean in Texas? Do you have to say it differently, like ‘Howdy?’ Shove it in a cow.” AP Photo/Jack Plunkett
Napolean’s invasion of Egypt. Front lines. Very romantic.
Bush’s romantic notions about serving on the front lines.
Remembering What Nixon Learned
by David Sirota
A half-century ago, Richard Nixon spearheaded his party’s national congressional campaign in the face of a recession like the one we face today. Then Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president, he decided that as a way to defeat Democrats the GOP would champion anti-worker laws pioneered in the segregationist South. Specifically, he rolled out “right to work” ballot initiatives to weaken the labor movement. These measures ban contracts that compel employees who benefit from union representation to contribute union dues.
When the 1958 election came, Nixon’s blame-workers-first initiatives bombed, and Republicans lost 48 congressional seats, handing the party “its worst year ever,” as historian Rick Perlstein recounts in his brilliant new book, “Nixonland.”
“Right-to-work wasn’t popular with a general public that understood how a strong labor movement had rocketed millions of voters into the middle class,” Perlstein writes.
Fifty years later, conservatives are ignoring history’s teachings and resurrecting Nixon’s failed strategy in a place that could decide a close presidential election. In Colorado, one of the most contested “swing” states, a group of zealots is hoping a “right to work” ballot initiative will drive up GOP turnout and help John McCain keep nine electoral votes in the Republican column.
The strategy is bold in its desperation. Right-wingers are betting that Colorado citizens will vote to cut their own pay. After all, according to the Economic Policy Institute, employees in right-to-work states make between 4 and 8 percent less per year than those in other states.
Already, a poll shows that 56 percent of Coloradans oppose “right to work” laws. Even one of Colorado’s most influential business groups has said it has “no desire” for such irrational measures. But the right is not in a rational frame of mind.
Colorado conservatives are reeling after Republicans lost both the Legislature and governor’s mansion for the first time in more than four decades. The state Republican Party is so unhinged that it hired a buffoon named Dick Wadhams to save it-the same Dick Wadhams who most recently made headlines running Sen. George “Macaca” Allen’s 2006 re-election campaign into the ground, effectively ending the Virginia lawmaker’s political career. Clearly, these are dire times for the right, and despair tends to deify the Nixons and the Wadhamses by embracing irrational extremism-whether YouTube-amplified racism or worker persecution inherent in right-to-work schemes.
Adding to conservatives’ troubles is Colorado’s emboldened labor movement. Rather than crouching in a defensive posture, unions are preparing two initiatives that could drive up turnout for Democrats and serve as a model for other states across the nation.
One forces the right to defend criminals-literally. The initiative would make a corporate executive personally liable under the law if he or she “engages in, authorizes, solicits, requests, commands or knowingly tolerates the business’s criminal conduct.”
According to union polling, 84 percent of Colorado citizens back the measure. Nonetheless, the Denver Chamber of Commerce is trying to keep the initiative off the ballot, claiming that punishing corporate criminals is “a direct assault on our business climate.” Yes, conservatives say lawbreaking is not an “assault on our business climate”-prosecuting lawbreakers is. Next thing you know, these shills will argue that locking up violent criminals hurts the “business climate” because, when not killing people, murderers contribute to the local economy.
The other labor-backed initiative would require employers to have a “just cause” when laying off an employee. The unions’ poll shows 70 percent of Colorado voters support the concept-not surprising, considering that many voters are probably shocked to discover that most states allow employers to terminate workers for any reason not already outlawed by existing anti-discrimination statutes. Your boss doesn’t like that you root for a particular professional sports team? Unless the ballot initiative passes, you can be fired “at will” for that and more in Colorado-and the initiative’s conservative opponents will be arguing that’s A-OK by them.
Perlstein notes that after Nixon’s anti-labor strategy backfired in 1958, he “hardly said an ill word about the labor movement in public again.” He learned a lesson that today’s conservatives have forgotten-namely, that the public punishes those who overtly denigrate workers. If these initiatives end up on the ballot in a state garnering so much election attention, voters will have the chance to teach the right that crucial lesson once again.
David Sirota is a bestselling author whose newest book, “The Uprising,” will be released in June of 2008. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network-both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.
© 2008 Creators Syndicate Inc.
Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo assures reporters at a Vatican press conference that it is far too late for club soda.
Shroud Of Turin Accidentally Washed With Red Shirt
The Onion / March 10, 2008
VATICAN CITY—The Shroud of Turin, an ancient linen cloth believed to bear the image of Christ and considered by many clerics and devotees to be one of the holiest relics of the Christian faith, was inadvertently dyed a light shade of pink after being washed with a red T-shirt, sources reported Tuesday.
The holy antiquity, thought by some to be the very garment Jesus Christ was buried in, was discovered in 1354. Though it has suffered oxidation and fire damage over the centuries, this is the first time that the shroud has been harmed in a laundry-related mishap.
“Simply because the shroud has been given a slight pinkish tint does not in any way diminish its sanctity,” Vatican spokesman Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo said during a press conference held to address the spiritual repercussions of the shroud’s staining. “It is still very much the icon of the suffering of the innocent of all times.”
The Vatican stressed that nothing out of the ordinary happened to the shroud during the initial preparations for its monthly laundering in Rome. As is custom, on the third Sunday of the month, the priceless relic—which is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, Italy—was taken from its hermetically sealed, bulletproof glass case and stuffed into the Blessed Papal Laundry Sack, and it was then transported by a retinue of Swiss Guards to Vatican City without incident.
According to Lajolo, the damage occurred when Pope Benedict XVI, whose turn it was to do the Vatican laundry, did not notice that a brand-new, bright-red Hanes Beefy-T belonging to Cardinal Angelo Sodano had been placed inside of the consecrated cleansing vessel, the Holy Whirlpool 24934 top-load washer.
The pope then started a load of white vestments, including the shroud, only realizing what had happened when he returned to remove the sacred artifact, which is always line-dried.
“His Holiness was distracted with trying to scrub a tough Blood of Christ stain out of Cardinal Nicora’s miter,” Lajolo said. “Not that this was some sort of mistake on his part. The pope is still infallible. We have to keep in mind that this is all part of God’s greater plan.”
“And who are we to question or reject the ways the Lord works through our laundry?” Lajolo continued.
The papal laundry room where the shroud had been washed thousands of times without incident.“We must not allow ourselves to fall into despair, for, as sinners, we are flawed and must seek forgiveness in the Lord alone,” said Lajolo, who later hinted that the damage to the shroud was possibly God’s response to the sins of the world, and especially homosexuality. “As Christ teaches, let he who has never overly starched, shrunk, or rent his garments cast the first stone.”
Though the discoloring of the Shroud of Turin has come as a shock to many Catholics, it is not the first time that a holy relic has been damaged. In 1983, several pieces of the True Cross were water-stained after being used as coasters during Pope John Paul II’s birthday party, and in 1572, the knucklebone of St. Olaf was accidentally thrown out with a plate of half-eaten chicken wings.
In the wake of the incident involving Christ’s death shroud, the Vatican has been exploring possible ways to restore the raiment back to its original color.
“We do not want to attempt to use caustic cleaning agents for fear of turning the blessed shroud an unholy bright orange,” Lajolo said. “We continue to look to God for divine guidance as to the purity and virtue of using a color-safe bleach.”
The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
By Robert Fisk
14/03/08 “The Independent” — – Khaled looked at me with a broad smile. He was almost laughing. At one point, when I told him that he should abandon all thoughts of being a suicide bomber – that he could influence more people in this world by becoming a journalist – he put his head back and shot me a grin, world-weary for a man in his teens. “You have your mission,” he said. “And I have mine.” His sisters looked at him in awe. He was their hero, their amanuensis and their teacher, their representative and their soon-to-be-martyred brother. Yes, he was handsome, young – just 18 – he was dressed in a black Giorgio Armani T-shirt, a small, carefully trimmed Spanish conquistador’s beard, gelled hair. And he was ready to immolate himself.
A sinister surprise. I had travelled to Khaled’s home to speak to his mother. I had already written about his brother Hassan and wanted to introduce a Canadian journalist colleague, Nelofer Pazira, to the family. When Khaled walked on to the porch of the house, Nelofer and I both realised – at the same moment – that he was next, the next to die, the next “martyr”. It was his smile. I’ve come across these young men before, but never one who so obviously declared his calling.
His family sat around us on the porch of their home above the Lebanese city of Sidon, the sitting room adorned with coloured photographs of Hassan, already gone to the paradise – so they assured me – for which Khaled clearly thought he was destined. Hassan had driven his explosives-laden car into an American military convoy at Tal Afar in north-western Iraq, his body (or what was left of it) buried “in situ” – or so his mother was informed.
It’s easy to find the families of the newly dead in Lebanon. Their names are read from the minarets of Sidon’s mosques (most are Palestinian) and in Tripoli, in northern Lebanon, the Sunni “Tawhid” movement boasts “hundreds” of suiciders among its supporters. Every night, the population of Lebanon watches the brutal war in Iraq on television. “It’s difficult to reach ‘Palestine’ these days,” Khaled’s uncle informed me. “Iraq is easier.”
Too true. No one doubts that the road to Baghdad – or Tal Afar or Fallujah or Mosul – lies through Syria, and that the movement of suicide bombers from the Mediterranean coasts to the deserts of Iraq is a planned if not particularly sophisticated affair. What is astonishing – what is not mentioned by the Americans or the Iraqi “government” or the British authorities or indeed by many journalists – is the sheer scale of the suicide campaign, the vast numbers of young men (only occasionally women), who wilfully destroy themselves amid the American convoys, outside the Iraqi police stations, in markets and around mosques and in shopping streets and on lonely roads beside remote checkpoints across the huge cities and vast deserts of Iraq. Never have the true figures for this astonishing and unprecedented campaign of self-liquidation been calculated.
But a month-long investigation by The Independent, culling four Arabic-language newspapers, official Iraqi statistics, two Beirut news agencies and Western reports, shows that an incredible 1,121 Muslim suicide bombers have blown themselves up in Iraq. This is a very conservative figure and – given the propensity of the authorities (and of journalists) to report only those suicide bombings that kill dozens of people – the true estimate may be double this number. On several days, six – even nine – suicide bombers have exploded themselves in Iraq in a display of almost Wal-Mart availability. If life in Iraq is cheap, death is cheaper.
This is perhaps the most frightening and ghoulish legacy of George Bush’s invasion of Iraq five years ago. Suicide bombers in Iraq have killed at least 13,000 men, women and children – our most conservative estimate gives a total figure of 13,132 – and wounded a minimum of 16,112 people. If we include the dead and wounded in the mass stampede at the Baghdad Tigris river bridge in the summer of 2005 – caused by fear of suicide bombers – the figures rise to 14,132 and 16,612 respectively. Again, it must be emphasised that these statistics are minimums. For 529 of the suicide bombings in Iraq, no figures for wounded are available. Where wounded have been listed in news reports as “several”, we have made no addition to the figures. And the number of critically injured who later died remains unknown. Set against a possible death toll of half a million Iraqis since the March 2003 invasion, the suicide bombers’ victims may appear insignificant; but the killers’ ability to terrorise civilians, militiamen and Western troops and mercenaries is incalculable.
Never before has the Arab world witnessed a phenomenon of suicide-death on this scale. During Israel’s occupation of Lebanon after 1982, one Hizbollah suicide-bombing a month was considered remarkable. During the Palestinian intifadas of the 1980s and 1990s, four per month was regarded as unprecedented. But suicide bombers in Iraq have been attacking at the average rate of two every three days since the 2003 Anglo-American invasion.
Read the rest of it here.
Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan 2008
The horrible, honest reality of the American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan like you haven’t heard it before.
Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan., features testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground. Read more
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FBI Found to Misuse Security Letters: 2003-06 Audit Cites Probes of Citizens
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post Staff Writer
14/03/08 ” Washington Post” — — The FBI has increasingly used administrative orders to obtain the personal records of U.S. citizens rather than foreigners implicated in terrorism or counterintelligence investigations, and at least once it relied on such orders to obtain records that a special intelligence-gathering court had deemed protected by the First Amendment, according to two government audits released yesterday.
The episode was outlined in a Justice Department report that concluded the FBI had abused its intelligence-gathering privileges by issuing inadequately documented “national security letters” from 2003 to 2006, after which changes were put in place that the report called sound.
A report a year ago by the Justice Department’s inspector general disclosed that abuses involving national security letters had occurred from 2003 through 2005 and helped provoke the changes. But the report makes it clear that the abuses persisted in 2006 and disclosed that 60 percent of the nearly 50,000 security letters issued that year by the FBI targeted Americans.
Because U.S. citizens enjoy constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, judicial warrants are ordinarily required for government surveillance. But national security letters are approved only by FBI officials and are not subject to judicial approval; they routinely demand certain types of personal data, such as telephone, e-mail and financial records, while barring the recipient from disclosing that the information was requested or supplied.
According to the findings by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, the FBI tried to work around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees clandestine spying in the United States, after it twice rejected an FBI request in 2006 to obtain certain records. The court had concluded “the ‘facts’ were too thin” and the “request implicated the target’s First Amendment rights,” the report said.
But the FBI went ahead and got the records anyway by using a national security letter. The FBI’s general counsel, Valerie E. Caproni, told investigators it was appropriate to issue the letters in such cases because she disagreed with the court’s conclusions.
In total, Fine said, the FBI issued almost 200,000 national security letters from 2003 through 2006, and they were used in a third of all FBI national security and computer probes during that time. Fine said his investigators have identified hundreds of possible violations of laws or internal guidelines in the use of the letters, including cases in which FBI agents made improper requests, collected more data than they were allowed to, or did not have proper authorization to proceed with the case.
Fine also pointed to the FBI’s “troubling” use of the letters to obtain vast quantities of telephone numbers or other records with a single request. Investigators identified 11 such cases, involving information related to about 4,000 phone numbers, that did not comply with USA Patriot Act requirements or that violated FBI guidelines.
The latest findings reignited long-standing criticism from Democrats and civil liberties groups, who said the FBI’s repeated misuse of its information-gathering powers underscores the need for greater oversight by Congress and the courts.
“The fact that these are being used against U.S. citizens, and being used so aggressively, should call into question the claim that these powers are about terrorists and not just about collecting information on all kinds of people,” said Jameel Jaffer, national security director at the American Civil Liberties Union. “They’re basically using national security letters to evade legal requirements that would be enforced if there were judicial oversight.”
Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement that Fine’s report “should come as no surprise” because the survey ended in 2006, before the FBI introduced procedural changes to better control and keep track of requests for the security letters.
FBI Assistant Director John Miller said a new automated system will keep better tabs on the letters, and they are now reviewed by a lawyer before they are sent to a telephone company, Internet service provider or other target. “We are committed to using them in ways that maximize their national security value while providing the highest level of privacy and protection of the civil liberties of those we are sworn to protect,” Miller said.
Fine said that FBI employees “self-reported” 84 possible violations of laws or guidelines in the use of the letters, in 2006, which “was significantly higher than the number of reported violations in prior years.” But he noted that his office already had begun its initial investigation into the letters by then, which might have contributed to the increase.
About a quarter of the reported incidents were because of mistakes made by telephone or Internet providers, including some in which they provided either the wrong information or disclosed more than the FBI requested. But many of those cases should have been caught by the FBI earlier, Fine said.
© 2008 The Washington Post Company
Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
