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  Friday   June 11   2004

the scanner is back

The scanner is back! Well, it was actually here all the time. But now the new software is loaded and it's working better than ever. Thanks to those that chipped in. Now I can get back to Gordy and Madelane's Great Pilgrimage. It might have to wait until after I move. I'm supposed to be out of this house on Tuesday. At this point, I'm feeling that desperation when it's becoming obvious that the oncoming deadline is just going to run right over the top of me. Until then, I bring you a little touch of spring...

Blackberry

It was a cool rainy day yesterday. The lot next to mine is overun with blackberry bushes. These are usually a serious pest since they keep growing, and growing, and growing. But, during the hot days of August, they supply everyone with their fruit. Blackberries grow everywhere around here and it's a common sight in August to see people pulled over on the side of the road picking blackberries that are growing on empty lots or just on the side of the road. The ones that get the most sun are the sweetest.

I scanned this at high resolution. The link has some much larger versions. Much larger.
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 08:50 AM - link



ray charles 1930-2004

Ray Charles, Bluesy Essence of Soul, Is Dead at 73


Ray Charles, the piano man with the bluesy voice who reshaped American music for a half-century, bringing the essence of soul to country, jazz, rock, standards and every other style of music he touched, died yesterday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 73.


Mr. Charles, on the balcony of his suite at the Claridge Hotel,
overlooking the Champs Élysée in Paris in the 1960's.

[more]

J-Walk posted this joke.


Logical proof that Ray Charles is God:

1. God is Love.
2. Love is Blind.
3. Ray Charles is Blind.
Therefore: Ray Charles is God.


I can accept that.

 07:28 AM - link



valerie plame affair

I found this at The Agonist. They suggested that it be treated as suspect. Read it and then watch to see if the article turns out to be right. Or not.

Bush, Cheney Indictments in Plame Case Looming


Why did DCI George Tenet suddenly resign on June 3rd, only to be followed a day later by James Pavitt, the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations (DDO)?

The real reasons, contrary to the saturation spin being put out by major news outlets, have nothing to do with Tenet's role as taking the fall for alleged 9/11 and Iraqi intelligence "failures" before the upcoming presidential election.

Both resignations, perhaps soon to be followed by resignations from Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, are about the imminent and extremely messy demise of George W. Bush and his Neocon administration in a coup d'etat being executed by the Central Intelligence Agency. The coup, in the planning for at least two years, has apparently become an urgent priority as a number of deepening crises threaten a global meltdown.

Based upon recent developments, it appears that long-standing plans and preparations leading to indictments and impeachment of Bush, Cheney and even some senior cabinet members have been accelerated, possibly with the intent of removing or replacing the entire Bush regime prior to the Republican National Convention this August.

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 07:12 AM - link



panos

D-Day Panoramas


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 07:04 AM - link



The Zionist Attack on Jewish Values


On November 17, 1917 Sir Arthur James Balfour, acting for the wartime British cabinet of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, issued what has historically become known as the Balfour Declaration. Promising a national home for the Jews in Palestine, the declaration established an alliance between the Zionist movement and the British Empire. For the Zionists the end game was to turn Palestine into a Jewish state. Though the Zionist leadership probably did not initially intend it, an eventual consequence of this ambition was the transformation of institutional Judaism into an adjunct of Zionist state ideology.

Even before the Balfour Declaration was announced the danger to Judaism inherent in the Zionist state orientated ideology was sensed and criticized by insightful Jewish individuals. They would describe their anxiety in varied ways, sometimes using political, or moral, or religious argument. All of them, however, could draw on a tradition of Jewish tolerance and humanitarianism that, in its modern formulations, went back to the work of Moses Mendelssohn and the 18th century Jewish enlightenment. For instance, Ahad Ha-am (the pen name of the famous Jewish moralist Asher Ginzberg), noted as early as1891 that Zionist settlers in Palestine have “an inclination to despotism. They treat the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend them without cause, and even boast of these deeds; and no one among us opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination.” He warned that such behavior stemmed from the political orientation of the Zionist movement which could only end up morally corrupting the Jewish people.

Unlike Chaim Weizmann, who famously desired that the Jews become a nation like all other nations, Ha-am (who was dedicated to Jewish cultural revival in Palestine) believed that the return to Zion was worthwhile only if the Jews did not become like other nations. By 1913 Ha-am knew this was not to be, and he completely rejected the nature of Zionism as it was evolving. “If this be the ‘Messiah,’” he wrote, “I do not wish to see his coming.” In effect, critics like Ha-am were making a distinction between Judaism, with its moral values and cultural richness, and the ethnocentric, tribal Zionism that was now coming into being.

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 12:14 AM - link



photography

Ruth Hallensleben


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  thanks to The Cartoonist

 12:07 AM - link



police state

Craig, at Booknotes, has this disturbing story. I include the entire post.


How fucked up is your government?

Apparently the book arts are now a suspect activity under the Patriot Act.

got the following email from a colleague:

As you know, I make artists books as a member of a group called Critical Art Ensemble. Besides books, we also make videos and do performance art. Lately, the topic of much of our artwork has been to make people aware of genetically modified food. Recently, Hope Kurtz, who wrote most of the text for the books, died suddenly of heart failure. Her husband, Steve, who is also in the group, called 911. The paramedics saw some of the props for our performance art in his house, including petri dishes and a machine that analyzes food for genetically modified ingredients, and called the FBI. The FBI searched Steve's house, office, took his artwork, his wife's body, and even locked up his cat. Steve is a professor of art at SUNY Buffalo. He is going to be indicted before a grand jury on June 15 on charges of possessing materials that can be used for bioterrorism. The rest of the group has been subpoenaed. So far, I have not, but the FBI was in my neighborhood on Saturday, asking the neighbors about me. The whole story can be read at http://caedefensefund.org.

Beverly Schlee


We are living in a police state

[more]


Art becomes the next suspect in America's 9/11 paranoia


On May 10 Steven Kurtz went to bed a married art professor. On May 11 he woke up a widower. By the afternoon he was under federal investigation for bioterrorism.

[more]

 12:02 AM - link



  Thursday   June 10   2004

photography

LARRY SULTAN
The Valley


The Valley is a series of color photographs that were taken on the sets of porn film sets in the San Fernando Valley, California, where Larry Sultan grew up. Throughout the days of filming, there is a sexualized zone in which the gestures, rituals and scenes of suburban domestic life take on a peculiar weight and density.


Woman in Garden, Mission Hills, 2001

[more]

  thanks to Conscientious

 11:53 PM - link



ronnie

The only thing I want to say about Ronald Reagan is that, in 1980, I voted for a third party candidate and got Ronald Reagan. It was the one of the stupidest thing I've ever done.

 11:45 PM - link



  Wednesday   June 9   2004

the temperature at which freedom burns

Fahrenheit 9/11 Opens June 25


As you may have heard by now, we finally have a distributor in America for "Fahrenheit 9/11." Actually, two of them! Lions Gate Films and IFC Films have agreed to aggressively distribute "Fahrenheit 9/11" in theaters all across the country beginning three weeks from today on Friday, June 25th. We are, needless to say, extremely grateful for their courage (trust me, no matter what the potential box office may be, anyone who has considered taking on this distribution job has also met with a lot of pressure NOT to do it in the past month).

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Here is the trailer. You might want to take your valium before watching. Just wait until the movie.

Farenheit 9/11


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The best anti-Bush ad. Ever.


Farenheit 9/11 will one day be the subject of a thousands acedmic papers, especially if Kerry wins the White House. The movie's first trailer is already the most effective anti-Bush commercial ever made.

Of course, that trailer won't be shown on TV. It's a 2-minute piece designed for movie theaters, not television (though it'll bear watching whether theaters show the trailer). The real fireworks will hit, I'm sure, when this movie's ad campaign hits television.

Done right (and I do trust Moore to do it right), those 30-second movie commercials, run nationally, could be some of the most effective political advertising of the season (without being, legally, political advertising). Watch stations try to block the ad, in the face of a concerted GOP effort to supress its showing.

Republicans will rue the day they killed the "equal time" regulations.

[more]

 11:39 AM - link



illustration

Robert Parada


[more]

  thanks to Life In The Present

 11:27 AM - link



impeach the son of a bitch

Talking Points memo


The Wall Street Journal has an extraordinary article in today's edition. The Journal has taken to making an article a day open to the public for bloggers and others to link to. This wasn't the one they chose today; but I hope they'll make an exception and make this one available too.

The article describes a confidential Pentagon report providing legal rationales and interpretations by which US personnel could use torture and methods of near-torture in contravention of various international treaties and US laws. The bulk of the arguments rest on arguments of 'necessity' and the powers of the president as commander-in-chief. They also go into some depth about how people acting at the president's order could avoid prosecution for demonstrably criminal acts.

The article is well worth reading for this alone.

But that whole discussion is different in kind from one passage in the report. I quote from the piece ...

To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

So the right to set aside law is "inherent in the president". That claim alone should stop everyone in their tracks and prompt a serious consideration of the safety of the American republic under this president. It is the very definition of a constitutional monarchy, let alone a constitutional republic, that the law is superior to the executive, not the other way around. This is the essence of what the rule of law means -- a government of laws, not men, and all that.

[more]


Here is the full WSJ article...

Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture


Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

The advice was part of a classified report on interrogation methods prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002 that with conventional methods they weren't getting enough information from prisoners.

The report outlined U.S. laws and international treaties forbidding torture, and why those restrictions might be overcome by national-security considerations or legal technicalities. In a March 6, 2003, draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, passages were deleted as was an attachment listing specific interrogation techniques and whether Mr. Rumsfeld himself or other officials must grant permission before they could be used. The complete draft document was classified "secret" by Mr. Rumsfeld and scheduled for declassification in 2013.

[more]


Legalizing Torture


There is no justification, legal or moral, for the judgments made by Mr. Bush's political appointees at the Justice and Defense departments. Theirs is the logic of criminal regimes, of dictatorships around the world that sanction torture on grounds of "national security." For decades the U.S. government has waged diplomatic campaigns against such outlaw governments -- from the military juntas in Argentina and Chile to the current autocracies in Islamic countries such as Algeria and Uzbekistan -- that claim torture is justified when used to combat terrorism. The news that serving U.S. officials have officially endorsed principles once advanced by Augusto Pinochet brings shame on American democracy -- even if it is true, as the administration maintains, that its theories have not been put into practice. Even on paper, the administration's reasoning will provide a ready excuse for dictators, especially those allied with the Bush administration, to go on torturing and killing detainees.

Perhaps the president's lawyers have no interest in the global impact of their policies -- but they should be concerned about the treatment of American servicemen and civilians in foreign countries. Before the Bush administration took office, the Army's interrogation procedures -- which were unclassified -- established this simple and sensible test: No technique should be used that, if used by an enemy on an American, would be regarded as a violation of U.S. or international law. Now, imagine that a hostile government were to force an American to take drugs or endure severe mental stress that fell just short of producing irreversible damage; or pain a little milder than that of "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." What if the foreign interrogator of an American "knows that severe pain will result from his actions" but proceeds because causing such pain is not his main objective? What if a foreign leader were to decide that the torture of an American was needed to protect his country's security? Would Americans regard that as legal, or morally acceptable? According to the Bush administration, they should.

[more]


Presidential Powers


There are many creepy things about the Journal's description of the report - things that leave me with the distinct impression the drafters could have graduated with honors from the University of Berlin's law school, circa 1942. For example:

Civilian or military personnel accused of torture or other war crimes have several potential defenses, including the "necessity" of using such methods to extract information to head off an attack, or "superior orders," sometimes known as the Nuremberg defense: namely that the accused was acting pursuant to an order and, as the Nuremberg tribunal put it, no moral choice was in fact possible." (emphasis added.)

Now I have to admit: The idea of using the Nuremberg trial as a field guide for committing war crimes and getting away with it has never occurred to me before. But then, I'm not a Bush administration legal appointee. It's probably worth remembering, though, that the Nuremberg Tribunal wasn't particularly impressed by the "I was only following orders" routine: 12 defendents hanged, 3 sentenced to life, 4 given long prison sentences, only 3 acquitted. If I were Donald Rumsfeld, I don't think I'd like those odds.
[...]

Raving paranoia? Go back and read that bit about "authority to set aside the laws is inherent in the president." You just might be hearing more about that, one of these days.

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Praise the Lord and Pass the Thumbscrews
by Billmon



Torturegate, G8, and the Greater Middle East
by Juan Cole


The Wall Street Journal's revelation of White House counsels' memoranda permitting what most people would consider torture-- on the basis of the president's position as commander in chief in wartime-- is among the most chilling things we have seen from a Bush administration not lacking in chills for civil libertarians. It seems clear from the anger expressed by senators like Joe Biden in the hearings addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday that they now suspect Bush himself authorized the Abu Ghuraib torture routines. And, they are helpless to do anything about it.

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 11:23 AM - link



photography

This is a collection of photographs of men and women who had been wrongfully convicted, imprisoned, and subsequently freed from death row.

Taryn Simon


Fredireck Daye
Served 10 years of a life sentence

[more]

  thanks to Expose

 10:55 AM - link



iraq — heart of darkness

UN Resolution Passes Unanimously
Sistani the Big Winner; Kurds Furious
by Juan Cole


The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a new resolution on Iraq granting legitimacy to the caretaker government of Iyad Allawi. The resolution gives the new Iraqi government substantially more sovereignty than had been envisaged by the US in the initial draft, and the Bush administration essentially compromised in order to have an achievement for the election season.

The resolution will make it easier for the Allawi government to gain the Iraq seat at the UN and at organizations like the Arab League. It also constrains the US from undertaking major military actions (think: Fallujah) without extensive consultation with the Iraqi government, and establishes a joint committee of US and Iraqi representatives to carry out those discussions. This military "partnership" was substituted successfully for a stricter French proposal that the Iraqi government have a veto over US military movements in Iraq. Still, the language went far beyond what the US had wanted.

That the US and the UK had to give away so much to get the resolution shows how weak they are in Iraq. The problem is that they have created a failed state in Iraq, and this new piece of paper really changes nothing on the ground (see the next news item, below).

[more]


Bremer Bars Muqtada from Holding Office
by Juan Cole


Bremer's action in excluding the Sadrists from parliament is one final piece of stupidity to cap all the other moronic things he has done in Iraq. The whole beauty of parliamentary governance is that it can hope to draw off the energies of groups like the Sadrists. Look at how parliamentary bargaining moderated the Shiite AMAL party in Lebanon, which had a phase as a terrorist group in the 1980s but gradually outgrew it. AMAL is now a pillar of the Lebanese establishment and a big supporter of a separation of religion and state. The only hope for dealing with the Sadrists nonviolently was to entice them into civil politics, as well. Now that they have been excluded from the political process and made outlaws in the near to medium term, we may expect them to act like outlaws and to be spoilers in the new Iraq.

Mr. Bremer is bequeathing to Iraq a large number of poison pills, which will go on contributing to chaos for years after he retires to a comfortable sinecure in Washington, for all the world like Robert Clive and his bought seat in the British parliament. (Clive was the first British governor of Bengal, from 1765).

[more]


Muqtada Emerges Strengthened; Allawi calls for Dialogue
by Juan Cole


Tom Lasseter of Knight Ridder argues from anecdotal evidence in Iraq that Muqtada al-Sadr has emerged from his battle with the Americans stronger than ever, despite the military defeat inflicted on his Mahdi Army.

[more]


Heart of Darkness


Three weeks isn’t much time in most places. Just a couple weekends of meeting with friends, maybe having a beer or seeing a movie. Three weeks of working at a job that maybe you like, maybe you don’t. In my case, I’ve been in Baghdad Since May 19, so let’s call it three weeks. It’s a nice round number.

In that time, in no particular order I witnessed a car bombing next to my hotel, started work for TIME Magazine, watched an interim government unveiled, interviewed a vice president, been mortared more times than I can count, missed two other car bombs by a few minutes, pined for New York and tentatively fell in love with Baghdad.

She’s a city that has seen better days, frankly. As mentioned, the electricity is bad. The gas lines are long — up to 5 km in some places — and U.S. soldiers still break up black market petrol rings even though that’s often the only way for Iraqis to get petrol.

Baghdad is also an incredibly stressful place to live and work, especially as a westerner, as I’ve mentioned. We’re targets, and when you look very western, like I do, you’re constantly aware of eyes on you and the hostility. At restaurants, the waiters sullenly clear your table, sometimes being none too careful about keeping chai or food from spilling on you. The kindness I encountered last year is absent; a western face brings a sullen welcome, calibrated to the bare minimum.

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The Boondocks


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 10:47 AM - link



photography

aaron huey is a photographer


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Be sure to check out his walk across america.

  thanks to Conscientious

 10:35 AM - link



Questions with no answers


Does UN Secretary General Kofi Annan think that Palestinians have a right to defend themselves against the kinds of violent attacks and destruction Israel is carrying out in Rafah refugee camp? This is a straightforward question, but despite my best efforts, it is impossible to get a straightforward answer.

Annan recently termed Israel's massive lethal campaign of house destruction in Gaza "acts of collective punishment" and "grave violations of international law." Israeli tactics included bulldozing homes with their residents inside or fleeing only moments before. It ought to follow that any person or group of people subjected to an illegal, life-threatening attack have an inherent right to self-defence using force if necessary. Every legal system in the world recognizes this, including international law.

[more]


To Drink from the Sea of Gaza
by Uri Avnery


Perhaps Abe Lincoln was right that you can't fool all the people all the time, but a lot of people can surely be fooled for a long, long time. Just look at Ariel Sharon.

From the start, the "Disengagement Plan" was an exercise in deceit. But the world is eager to be deceived. The world's statesmen take it seriously, it causes violent storms in Israel, the media have a ball. All this for a plan that has neither hands nor feet.

So what is the purpose of all this mayhem? Cynics might say: the mayhem itself. It puts Sharon in center stage where he can continue to play the master of events. Now the commotion has reached a climax.

The main aim of the exercise is to satisfy George Bush. The president demanded a plan which will show him doing something for peace. The more he gets sucked into the Iraqi quagmire, the more he needs to prove that he is achieving something in our country.

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  thanks to Aron's Israel Peace Weblog


‘They are my guests – and this is my House’ –
Priest stands up to the Wall


“No! They are my guests – and this is my house!” This admonition, in accented but clear English, is delivered to Israeli soldiers attempting to stop a group of Palestinian women crossing the grounds of a monastery. The messenger is Father Claudio Ghilardi, a Passionist priest from Italy. Father Claudio’s message is clear: At least as far as the monastery grounds are concerned, he will not permit the harassment of Palestinians by soldiers. The soldiers desist in their activities as long as Father Claudio is present. The Palestinians continue on their way, attempting to cross the monastery and reach Jerusalem on the other side. The continuation of their journey depends on whether soldiers are waiting at the exit but at least they were able to get this far, thanks to Father Claudio’s intervention.

Father Claudio cuts an elegant figure, in his long black robe and matching black beret. The sign of his maverick nature is present, however, in the jogging pants and tennis shoes that can be seen protruding below his robe. He seems weary on this particular day, however. He relates how he had been chasing Israeli border police off the grounds and dealing with soldiers all morning. The source of his weariness can be seen looming in the distance; it is Israel’s “Separation Wall.” It stands about 30 feet (nine meters) tall, an ugly concrete behemoth of a structure, dwarfing the much smaller but also much more aesthetically pleasing stone monastery walls. The Wall stands poised to invade, as the two gaping holes in the monastery wall attest. For now, work has stopped only a few feet from the monastery grounds, thanks in part to the interventions of both the Italian consul and the Vatican Apostolic Nuncio, but much damage has already been done. And Father Claudio does not think that this stay will last for very long. “This is not a barrier,” he exclaims while pounding the Wall, “this is a border. Why don’t they speak the truth?”

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  thanks to Aron's Israel Peace Weblog

 10:30 AM - link



don't forget to vote

I found this at Follow Me Here. It's reproduced in full.


"One sunny day in 2005 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the Marine standing guard and said, 'I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.'

The Marine looked at the man and said, 'Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.'

The old man said, 'Okay' and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, 'I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.' The Marine again told the man, 'Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.'

The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same Marine, saying 'I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.'

The Marine, understandably annoyed at this point, looked at the man and said, 'Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?'

The old man looked at the Marine and said, 'Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it.'

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, 'See you tomorrow.'"

 10:17 AM - link



maps and much, much more

David Rumsey loves maps. David Rumsey has a lot of money and a lot of maps. David Rumsey likes to share. David Rumsey digitized his extensive collection and then used the Insight™ Browser and Java Client to make them available on the web. The beauty of this is that it allows you to zoom in to see the detail. And, in his maps, there is a lot of detail. The Insight™ Browser doesn't work in all browsers, including my Opera, but you can use the stand alone Insight™ Java Client if you don't want to switch browsers.

He later added a collection of Japanese maps from UC Berkeley using the same interface. The Japanese map collection is really amazing. David views these maps as works of art and they really are. But now David has expanded with a number of other collections including cartography, fine arts, architecture, and photography.

David Rumsey Map Collection


City of Seattle, 1890


zoomed in

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Visual Collections


Explore Over 300,000 Images From Over 30 Collections.

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This should keep you occupied for a little bit.

 10:05 AM - link



what's in store for kerry

Diving towards the Crux


This is one of those long times before decision when you rush headlong towards the time which will matter; a long twilight moment, and as in a long dive even though you are rushing with great velocity it seems as if you’re just hanging in air. It’s not the election, which is already won for Kerry, which will be the time of decision. The time I speak of is the first few months of a Kerry administration. It is then that Kerry will decide on a new direction for America and it is then that America’s fate – and that of the world, will be determined.

Melodramatic? Not at all. Kerry will inherit a host of problems that if not dealt with effectively could either destroy or cripple America. The most obvious is what we call terrorism, but which is more than that – a giant game of Empire with oil and nuclear weapons as the prizes. From Afghanistan to Morocco, but centering in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (not in Iraq or Afghanistan) this game will determine who controls the most important resource in the world. Oil. And the US isn’t winning this war, it’s losing it. Saudi Arabia is increasingly unstable; it’s armed forces are unreliable; it’s strongest allies are ideologically wedded to the House of Saud’s greatest enemy and it’s greatest resource (oil) is exposed to strikes whenever it’s opponents choose.
[...]

And then we come to the third of our triumvirate of challenges – the worst problem that Kerry will face, by far. His own countrymen. Great nations rarely fall to outside forces until they have already rotted from within. The US is deep into that rot and is verging on ungovernable. The first two problems are dire – but there are ways each of them can be dealt with, not ways that will be easy but ways that will require great work and fortitude from America and it’s people. They are tasks that the Americans of the Greatest Generation and the Lost would have faced and overcome. It’s not clear that they are tasks the current generations are willing to even face squarely

The US is a country which has 40% of it’s voting population who would vote for Bush no matter what his failures, no matter what his crimes. It is a country where it is considered acceptable to publish screeds calling for the wholesale murder of one group of political opinion – “Liberals”. It is a nation where the professional military votes overwhelmingly for one of two political parties and where that professional military feels estranged and contemptuous of the civilian world. It is a nation where one side considers no tactic too base, too contemptible to use in the service of defeating evil. Evil – meaning it’s political opponents: Liberals, those who stand against all that is good in America, those who plan to destroy the US and the Constitution. Against such evil people, such…Liberals… there can be no quarter and no compromise, only a bitter struggle to the end: the end being the complete destruction of one side or another.

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 08:56 AM - link



on dying

On Terms of Her Choosing, a Woman Ends Her Life


"If you drink this, you will die," George Eighmey told Karen Janoch, showing her a Pyrex measuring cup that held 90 capsules of Seconal dissolved in water.

"Do not feel coerced or pressured to do this," said Mr. Eighmey, the executive director of Compassion in Dying of Oregon. "You can still change your mind."

Ms. Janoch, terminally ill with liver cancer, looked at the beaker and replied, "I want to do this now."

Sitting on her bed, surrounded by 18 friends who had received formal invitations to attend her death, she took several small sips, then finished the bitter solution with one large gulp. Three minutes later she said, "I think I'm going to sleep now," and lapsed into a coma. Less than 15 minutes after that, at 7:55 p.m. on April 7, she was dead, adding her name to the list of those who have taken their own lives under Oregon's Death With Dignity Act.


[more]

  thanks to consumptive.org

Check out the multimedia feature that accompanies this article. It's to the right of the article and titled Voices of the Dying. It's not to be missed. The link to the article should be immune from link rot. The multimedia feature may not. Don't dawdle.

 08:47 AM - link