It’s just been reported that the children of soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are more likely to suffer child abuse. Is this finding not terrible enough for their parents to take heed and refuse to to be ordered there?
 
All soldiers going to Iraq and Afghanistan doom themselves to exposure to Depleted Uranium. Does it give anyone pause that they are dooming themselves and their families to certain ill-health? They’re not making a selfless sacrifice, they’re sacrificing their kids.

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Gordon Brown has met the Bush-Cheney team and it is to be more of the same. Despite some empty rhetoric about world poverty and rethinking British role in Iraq, Brown has deliberately refused to order British withdrawal from Iraq.

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The war crimes courts await several generations of uniformed Americans.

A friend of mine is a restauranteur who by his own admission doesn’t know much about wine. Never the less his wine rep was bringing over a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem for some occasion. I asked my friend if he’d read up on Sauterne vintages, the better to appreciate it. He looked at me quizzically. I persisted, thinking something along the lines of Tom Wolfe’s Painted Word, that you had to know about the theory of abstract art to appreciate what you saw. I didn’t get far because my friend was attuned to the un-abstract measure of his customer’s palate. Did they taste a distinctive quality? That was enough. You don’t need a text to appreciate pre-abstract art. Epicure likewise is not abstract.

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Why on earth do governments charge riders for taking public transit? What a defeatist system! This service needs to be free in every city of the country and paid for by other taxes, like road taxes for example.

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What exactly is commemorated in this moment? Apparently it’s iconic enough to merit a stamp. NYC firefighters raise a flag amid the ruins of the WTC, meaning what exactly?
 
The photographer recounted recognizing this Iwo Jima moment in the making. Does it give you a lump in your throat as well? The Marines at Iwo Jima had just captured the island after suffering some of the heaviest casualties in the Pacific Theater.

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Brent’s going to be taking all of his animated films on tour this fall! Here are the dates- more are being added- but this is the idea. We hope you can get out to one of these shows:
 
August 11- Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum
August 15- LA- The Silent Movie Theatre
August 16- Las Vegas
August 17- Phoenix- Modified Arts

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The spectacular triple-murder-rape invasion of the Petit family home in Cheshire Connecticut drew comparison to the brutality of the supersexed ruffians from A Clockwork Orange. Sam Peckinpaw’s Straw Dogs was released the same year, banned in the UK until only recently, and depicted the similar rapist bogeyman but focused on cultured man’s incapacity to safe-keep his house and blonde.

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I have become my dad. I remember when he thought my interests too extreme, when decorum appeared all but lost on my generation. What were the offensive bits? I don’t remember. Comic books? TV? Mr. Bill?

This is one of a popular series on YouTube, and the dead-pan stupidity is pretty funny. It doesn’t work for me when it’s a sniper talking to himself.

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Bush, Karl Rove and Joe Liebermann were in a National Guard helicopter surveying the disaster scene after Katrina…

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A broad spectrum of national groups have united to mobilize for a massive fall anti-war mobilization called the Days of Action. Sept 15-21 will be a major showdown in Washington DC at the very moment that the Petraeus Report is released and Congress takes up spending over $100 billion to prolong the war. Led by veterans who have returned from Iraq, there will be seven days of actions to send a shockwave through Washington and the nation with the reverberating demand: End the War Now!

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The impact the Antiwar Movement has made on Americans is skin deep so far. While at least 2/3 of Americans now dislike the Bush Administration, much of that rejection is because many feel that the current government has poorly managed a war they fully supported. See poll data

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‘Salud’ is a new film about the Cuban medical system, and since Sicko, the film by Michael Moore, contrasted the US medical system to that of Cuba’s, the film ‘Salud’ should be of interest to many Americans fed up with the rot of the corporate system of US medical lack of care. Kaiser Network has a clip of about 30 minutes of this film that was the topic of a forum by the Rockerfeller Foundation. Just clip forward to 10:45 into the long video of the forum and you can watch the 30 minutes shown of ‘Salud‘.

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James Harris has a great interview on Alternet with Mike Jones, friend and counselor of Ted Haggard. It is about his book, the one rejected by local lizard small shop keeper Poor Richard, and is titled, ‘I had to say something’. Thank good he did say something, too.

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Had you read about the recovery of “specialty chemicals” from the 1992 Bijlmermeer air crash? It’s small wonder that more and more people hate the government. But they do not ask themselves, if not the government, then who?

Local TV news Black Hawks down?
 
Police warn against the dangers of high speed car chases. Need they point out the recklessness of aerial duels in pursuit of sensationalizing crime for the TV audience?

I sat in the church pew absolutely shocked to be reminded how many times the word peace is mentioned at mass. I was struck mainly to think that American church-goers pay lip service to this word every weekend, year by year at war, and yet our military aggression persists without congregations raising their voices to protest. What kind of peace are they praying for? You know it of course, for peace at the barrel of a gun.

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FRIDAY, Aug 10
12noon – 4pm
 
NOON
St Mary’s Cathedral
meal downstairs
 
1:00
Prayer upstairs
 
2:00
Parking lot
gather to car pool.
 
3:00
Peterson AFB
vigil, banners
 
4:00
Return to
St Mary’s

I have an idea for a new drinking game. Go to a Catholic mass, as I did this week for the first time in years, and take a swig of sacrificial wine every time you hear the word “peace.” You’d likely die of alcohol poisoning before the service was over.

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In bygone days of God’s absolute truth, we used to burn heretics at the stake, to keep their heresies from infecting fragile minds with ideas against the prevailing wisdom. Today we recoil in horror at the torturing of scientists who would suggest that the earth revolves around the sun. How medieval! In UN-lightened times, heretics might have advocated for peasant rights or regional autonomy. In modern times, could you recognize a heretic if one bit you in the ego?

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Darfur has undiscovered water! Water you say? In The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Humphrey Bogart discovered that no fortune in gold could buy what he really needed in the desert, water!

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On the issue of Chimpeachment… Lamborn and Allard I can understand, they have to live in the same (american Taliban) party as Bush.

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Methinks he doth protest too much. It seems that my two Harry Potter-loving bottom dwellers have little trouble making short work of this fire-breathing dragon.