The Rag Blog

A few months ago, I posted a Greek menu of white bean salad, lamb, and roasted tomatoes and feta. If you’re inclined to try the menu, this is the Greek bread just made to go with it.

Daktyla – A Traditional Greek Bread (30 October 2003)

This is a hearty country-style bread with these ingredients. It makes very good toast and great bread to accompany stews, soups, or other Winter comfort foods.

3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 package dry yeast
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup coarse cornmeal
1 tablespoon sea salt
Olive oil

Mix the milk, water, honey, and olive oil together, then heat the mixture to about 110° F. (no more than 120° F.) Add the yeast and about 1/4 cup of flour, mixing well, and let the yeast begin to foam for about 20 minutes.

In the meanwhile mix the remaining all-purpose and whole wheat flours, corn meal and salt together in a large bowl, making a well in the center.

When the yeast is well activated, add the liquid to the flours and mix well, finally turning out onto a kneading surface that has been dusted lightly with whole wheat flour. Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes). Clean the original large mixing bowl well, dry it, then add a little olive oil and turn the dough ball in the bowl to coat it. Cover with a clean towel and place into the oven with the light on (NOT the heat). Let it rise until doubled in size, about 1-1/2 to 2 hours.

Punch down the dough and turn out onto a lightly floured surface, kneading for a couple of minutes to make it smooth. Oil a standard bread pan (8.5×4.5×3 inches) very well, form a loaf from the dough, and place it into the pan. Cover it with the towel again, and let rise until doubled in size (about 45 minutes).

Remove loaf from oven, then preheat the oven to 375° F.

A couple of tablespoons milk
1 or 2 tablespoons white sesame seeds
Sweet Hungarian paprika to taste

Mix the sesame seeds and paprika. Using a basting brush, coat the top of the dough with milk, then sprinkle the seed mixture onto it. Place into the oven and bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until loaf is baked a golden brown and sounds hollow when lightly tapped.

Richard Jehn

May we be allowed to predict which oversight group will be the next on the BushCo hit list?

Rampant Fraud At Dept. Of Homeland Security

In a six-month period this year more than 300 Homeland Security employees were arrested and 243 were convicted. They included Transportation Security Administration screeners taking jewelry and cash from luggage, another agent smuggling $80,000 into the country and two federal air marshals accepting bribes to smuggle cocaine through various airports. Also arrested were two Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who sold alcohol and cigarettes to illegal immigrants in their custody.

Read it here.

One Third Of Jailed Journalists Are Bloggers
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, December 7, 2006

As the implementation of biometric technology and its application to security becomes more widely used, we are not far from the day when we have have to thumb scan simply to use the Internet and only with government permission will we be allowed to run a blog.

Read it here.

Commander In Chief Emeritus

It’s just not enough for me that Bush will go down as the Worst President Ever. That’s good, but not enough.

Source

Meese of Arabia and the Baker Group’s Grab for Black Gold
Written by Chris Floyd
Thursday, 07 December 2006

Listen, if you start listening to actual Iraqis, you might as well hang it up right now. Because poll after poll shows that actual Iraqis overwhelmingly favor a single option for the U.S. military forces in their country: cut and run, the sooner the better. That’s what they want; but of course, they’re just like children, aren’t they, the precious little primitive critters. And everybody knows you can’t give children everything they want. It’s not good for them. So we have to hold the Iraqis’ hands until they can toddle on their own — and we have to slap their hands if they don’t do what we know is best for them.

Read the rest, including significant updates and additional reading, here.

Cargo Cults

[snip]

Our modern culture and economy, our current ability to sustain six billion people, is the result of the one time opportunity to burn all the fossil fuel that has ever been created on the earth. It isn’t because we are technologically advanced, clever, or receiving the bounty of God. It’s because we are burning up fossil fuel. It was fossil fuel that put a man on the moon, brought about the ‘Green Revolution’ which increased the world’s food supply six fold in twenty years, brought about the great urban and suburban centers, and made it so a culture and economy could exist with less than a fourth of one percent of its population being farmers. Not only are fossil fuels responsible for all that supposed “progress” but it came about as the result of every increasing rates of use.

Read the rest of it here.

Several days ago, a woman who posts at a pro-cannabis web site I attend, received a call from the military.

She was initially told that her son, the youngest of three children, and a soldier in Iraq, had been ‘shot.’

She spent the next two days in limbo, first being told that he’d be fine, then being told that it was an IED blast and that he was in critical condition and intensive care.

This morning or last night he died.

Corporal Jonathon XXXXX. He and another corporal in his unit both passed away from their injuries suffered in that blast.

Another death putting blood on the hands of GW and the PNAC.

She is on a limited income, prefers to use cannabis as pain-reliever, but can rarely find it or afford it, and can’t afford the pills that the Docs give her instead.

She is a single, working mother, having raised three children.

She is representative of the lower-middle-class core of the extended families of those in uniform right now; under-privledged, lower incomes, and few resources. The military persons who finally spoke with her yesterday evening told her that they could offer counseling, and would pay for half of her son’s burial, though she’s apparently unaware of her son’s basic life insurance policy, issued by Uncle Sam, that might cover some of these expenses.

For what ever reason, the effect of this has been profound.

I haven’t written any quality poetry in some time now, and don’t know if this is suitable. I won’t give it to her yet, as she’s not ready to read this, in my biased opinion.

————————————
Tokin’ Mom of Three 12/06/06
_____________________________
There’s a hole in her heart
That the Doctor can’t fill
She can’t find the weed
And she doesn’t want a pill

There’s a vacuum of memories
Swept away by a blast
She thinks of his voice
From when he called last

She looks at his face
From early school days
The little hand print
And his buddies all at play

The empty room’s bed
Where he used to sit and read
Where she tucked him in at night
And tried to hear his needs

The old baseball glove
and little football cleats
Next to framed prom pictures
And clean satin sheets

Folded on the chest
Where his clothes used to be
Next to the spot
Where he’d kneel on one knee

Saying bed time prayers
As a tiny lil’ guy
Hoping for his family
And pleading with the sky

Books on his night stand
Dr. Seuss and Old Yeller.
He died a young man
But she mourns that little feller.

Dirk Nelson

The last couple of days have indeed been a tipping point in the conceptualization of the Iraq War in the American mind as reflected in the mainstream media. First, new “Defense” Secretary Gates baldly states in his Senate confirmation hearings that the US is losing in Iraq. Then the Baker Commission report openly states that current policy is a failure. Pundits flail about in vain for a viable direction toward something they might be able to call success, all starting from the assumption that the current situation is a disaster growing steadily worse. The Baker Commission report is delivered to Bush like a death warrant on his legacy. But George W., with everything to lose, will almost certainly, given his shortcomings and insecurities, once more futilely exert his ever-shrinking manhood against these harbingers of defeat.

Today, 10 more US soldiers were killed in combat in Iraq. Tonight the cable news commentators exhibit unvarnished contempt for Bush. They question his ability to even comprehend the depths of his dilemma. The ubiquitous assumption is that the policies (and lies) of George Bush that led the US into Iraq have resulted in catastrophe for US power and influence and the process of extrication from this morass will cost much more. This is now conventional wisdom. Look for Bush approval ratings falling into the 20’s. It’s fast heading toward only Laura and his dog, Barney, standing with him and he shouldn’t count on them.

It is the dawn of the Iraq syndrome era, a public backlash against the type of policies that drug the US into this quagmire. One obvious potential characteristic of this era will be a repudiation of American militarism on a historic scale. Iraq is such a fiasco for the US’s ability to dominate the world by military force that mere defeat within Iraq with the attendant humiliating retreat might be the least horrible option for US militarism. Far worse would be a spreading regional war possibly stretching from Afghanistan to the Gaza Strip, which the US has little or no power to seriously influence. Recently, the Saudis, Syrians and Turks (all majority Sunni) have all warned that circumstances might draw them into the fray in Iraq, especially if the US unabashedly allies with the Shiites to slaughter the Sunnis as Bush’s Monday White House guest, Shiite cleric and death squad leader Hakim suggested.

The Vietnam syndrome is credited with exerting a restraining influence on US aggression for at least a few years – until 1980. Iraq syndrome has much more potential to effect future US foreign policy. Vietnam was not a war over seriously strategic territory or resources. Iraq is. Vietnam only spilled over into Cambodia and Laos only due to the US bombing campaigns. Iraq may spill over in every direction regardless of every US effort to stop it. Furthermore, never was the Vietnam War as universally discredited as the Iraq War has already become. There may not be throngs marching down the streets, but the antiwar position never had such good poll numbers as that position has now in the US and virtually everywhere else as well.

Objective conditions clearly indicate that the period between now and the next presidential election will provide the most fertile period ever for an anti-imperialist, anti-militarist critique. The most powerful way this critique could manifest would be as part of a independent presidential campaign by charismatic left leaders who espousing anti-militarist and other popular policies (e.g., universal healthcare, end the drug war) outside the conventions of capitalist party politics. Regardless of the corruption of the electoral process, it is the venue for debate provided and the capitalist parties are very likely to cooperate by nominating candidates with long histories of supporting now discredited policies.

David Hamilton

Military Commissions Act: A Precursor To Tyranny?
By Chuck Baldwin
Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon
December 5, 2006

Ladies and gentlemen, please wake up! Under the leadership of President George W. Bush, rights and freedoms that have been lost to you include your right to an attorney, your right to know the charges being levied against you, the right to a speedy trial, the right to trial by a jury of your peers, the right to not be subjected to torture, the right to not have your home and personal items searched and seized without warrant, the right to not have your personal conversations (including letters and email) intercepted without court order, and the right to not incriminate yourself, just to name a few. And now we learn that our government has authorized and is planning to build “concentration camp facilities.”

Read the rest here.

* Note: TTT = Trash-Talking Thursday

Fine Print in Defense Bill Opens Door to Martial Law
By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

Yet despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the Hill.

Read the rest here.

This post requires some explanation. We used to live in Redmond, Washington, which is famous for a bastion of corporate Amerika named Microsoft. This has nothing to do with Bustopher except for the fact that he would’ve been termed one of the Microsoft rabbits because that’s where he lived before coming to live with us. Prior by some months to when the great rabbit roundup began, Bustopher moved to our neighbourhood, which was just a couple of miles from the main Microsoft campus. So as all of Bustopher’s sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles were being unceremoniously caught and hauled away to Sultan to a rabbit concentration camp, Bustopher lounged contentedly in the Grasslawn Park neighbourhood of Redmond, quietly munching grass and dandelions, and other delicious bulbs and flowering plants that we had generously festooned our yards with, all for his benefit of course.

He lived there happily until the end of his days, which someone said came under the wheels of an environmentally insidious gasoline combustion vehicle. I don’t know about that as I didn’t see it, and I certainly hope it isn’t true. Nevertheless, Bustopher befriended us, probably because I gave him pistachios all the time. And he even occasionally let me ruffle his ears, but he always winced a little. He weighed in around 20 pounds – he was a hearty rabbit. And he brooked no nonsense from the cats in the neighbourhood, charging them gallantly and growling until they backed away and left him to his snoozing. Just the sort of pet I’d always wanted – there to say hi, but never to be pesky. And rabbits are exceptionally appealing and gentle little animals. Richard Jehn