Tag Archives: BIA

Extreme TB on its way

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The news has hardly been noticed the mainstream public, but only about 2 months ago, the panic began to hit the world medical community. About 2% of the world’s 9,000,000 TB patients are now thought to have a new strain of it, totally resistant to all antibiotic treatment. The name for this condition is Extreme TB, as opposed to the more prevalent form of multi-drug resistant TB. Tuberculosis has been evolving into a form resistant to all present treatments, and as such, it joins with treatment resistant forms of strep and staph that themselves are newly plaguing patients worldwide. Plus, of course, there is the constant danger of a new rampaging flu epidemic to come sometime soon in the future.

While flu is a virus that mutates (evolves) over time,the microbial evolution of bacteria into forms resistant to antibiotics was not foreseen until just fairly recently. Now, the medical world is in total panic because there have been no technological magic bullets to come along that would help in stopping the spread of infectious disease across the planet once again. What we have now, is a microbial breakdown in the world’s ecologic balance. And like with the other ecological breakdowns, capitalism has been fueling the crisis by enmeshing much of the world in unsanitary poverty.

How serious is this situation? Well ask Bill Gates and George Soros. Both have been pumping millions of their own dollars into African TB prevention programs trying to put their little fingers into the holes in the dikes of our failing world capitalist medical system. Unlike some of the more dull witted super rich, these 2 men realize that drug resistant TB could ultimately kill off even rich folk like themslves, and not just poor Black HIV patients in South Africa. For a recent commentary about the evolution of this new and spreading pandemic, see this Guardian article

Starbucks vs. the birthplace of coffee

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Oldest coffee in the worldWant an afficionado’s tip? The mother of all coffees is Ethiopian Harrar. Literally. The insight is as olfactory as it is scientific. History records that the first coffees were cultivated in Ethiopia/ Abyssinia on the Red Sea. Every current variety of Coffea Arabica is believed to have originated from those plants. Colombian Juan Valdez picks coffee beans introduced to the New World by the Spaniards. Indoneasian javas were planted by the Dutch. Each of those famous varieties were transplanted Arabica. Starbucks wants to transplant the names.

It might be fitting now that Ethiopian farmers are asking for the right to control their unique varietal names. Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe are considered premium coffees and refer to the regions of Ethiopia where they are grown. It is estimated that trademarks could generate an additional $90 million for impoverished Ethiopian growers who currently receive just three cents per cup of coffee. The problem is from whose profit they would have to wrestle the extra money: Starbucks.

Starbucks has been opposing Ethiopia’s trademark applications on the grounds that giving a higher value to the farmers would result in a decreased demand for the premium beans. Do you buy that? Even if Starbucks passed the increased cost unto the customer, would a few cents deter their caffeen addicted connoisseurs from the world’s most potent coffee? Ethiopia’s control over the branding of their product is likely only to increase their coffee’s visibility and prestige.

Bean counters versus the bean growersStarbucks denies having asked the US National Coffee Association to block the Ethiopian trademark bid. But in fact Starbucks has been trying to trademark Sidamo for itself.

I can’t find an etymology record to link the term bean-counter with coffee beans. In any case the expression denotes someone who values quantity over quality. I’d say they have the wrong beans.

Update: Le Monde article translated at Truthout.

Colombia, that other little US war puts on its own Kafkaesque show trial display

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Hey, Folks. Remember that other little war that the US is fighting? Which other war, you might ask? You know. That war that Clinton sunk us into in South America. No not Venezuela. No, not Ecuador where the big US base is located. No, not Peru where our US government friends, Montesinos and Fujimori blew their media appeal so badly. No, I’m talking Colombia, home of the cumbia! Hey, I know that it’s only billions spend down there of our tax money, and not trillions. But still…. They got their own US show trial going on, too. That’s right. We invade Colombia with our troops, but a Colombian gets put on trial for breaking the law. It’s Kafka time again! See Free Ricardo Palmera

So long GOP, hello SOP

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Blue campaign mugThe GOP is dead, long live the SOP.
 
That’s my take. If the Dems don’t immediately show the American people their determination to turn Bush’s machinations around, we’re going to see that Democrats and Republicans are the SOP, the Same Old Party.

I could be wrong, because the new congress is getting no help from the media. Post election headlines proclaim the Democratic landslide, but add that the stench of corruption persists over the Legislative Branch. When last did you hear Congress described so? Was Reagan the president? Was it when Congress was in the hands of Democrats? I bet if you close your eyes, you’re picturing Tip O’Neill.

The GOP is the party of big business and big media. It acts at the behest of corporations, and the corporate owned television networks. Naturally the talking heads on TV have to complain if anyone threatens to redo the undoings of the GOP.

The only liberal bias in the media is a presumed intellectual bias. The media personalities look like they’re smart enough that they must be progressive thinkers. That’s an interesting presumption, don’t you think? It’s based on an obvious truth. Smart, honorable people are humanitarian, compassionate, social reformers. The ugly truth is that media people are actually actors, courtiers, con-men and shills running a confidence scam. They are well paid and in the tax bracket of the usual GOP beneficiaries.

It’s fitting that the press and pundits and poll takers are already berating the new congress. It gives me a little optimism that the Dems may act.

Afghanistan, where cowardly US military is deliberately murdering children

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Every week now, it seems that the US puppet president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, is ‘investigating’ another tragic ‘accidental bombing of civilians. He demands that these ‘accidents’ stop. But these are not accidents, and Karzai knows this well, as every other Afghan must now know it well, too. An accident occurs once or twice, but an intentional strategy of targeting civilians becomes constant, as have become the US bombings of Afghan civilians in the more remote regions of that country.
 
The strategy is ‘to destroy the sea that the guerrilla fighter must swim in’, as it was once explained in the Vietnam War era, years ago. In short, the quickest, easiest way to combat the enemy, is simply to target his wife and family, including the kids. So the cowardly US-led NATO army of occupation in Afghanistan, is systematically doing that instead of engaging the enemy on the ground, where politically dangerous casualties might occur. Bomb the Afghan women and children in their homes from up high, if there is even the remotest military resistance to US forces in their general neighborhood.

This is the same strategy that the US government formerly used in SE Asia, some 35 to 45 years previously. It is the same strategy that the NAZIs used when they pushed into East Europe against the Russians during the Second World War. In their pathway, they razed to the ground villages, towns, and even entire cities. It is even the same strategy that Mafia gangsters use against their opponents. It is the same strategy that the US fed Colombian death squads use, too. They go into villages with chain saws, and cut people up before their own family members. Basically, this is government sponsored terrorism against civilians, and the US is committing internationally recognized war crimes by targeting civilians instead of the armed combatants they face. The strategy, is to target the families of combatants, and not those who might actually be able to inflict return casualties upon the invading and occupying, barbarian armed forces.

see Hamid Karzai orders investigation

We expect this cowardice from the cowardly US military commanders and chiefs, like Dubya and Dick Cheney, Donald and Alberto, who all get great glee out of torturing US-held POWs. And we expect it from the US grunts, too. They mainly just want to get out alive, and don’t much care who gets hurt, as long as it is not themselves. Innocent children bombed as they play, or as they sleep? Well who cares? Not the uniformed soldier cowards, nor their leaders. They are much like the Israeli troops, another cowardly group of soldiers, that distributed hundreds of thousands of cluster bombes in the last 3 days of their Lebanon vacation. Early Christmas for the children? Well the uniformed forces of occupying armies don’t care. They are simply cowards who want to get back home whole, and they will follow cowardly orders, from cowardly leaders.

But what of the press? The press barely even reports Afghanistan these days to US readers. And when they do, they cowardly hide away the nature of what they are reporting on. To the US press, the Afghanistan fighting is a NATO conflict, and they will report whole articles without even once using the letters, ‘US’ or ‘USA’! Let’s keep our jobs, and let’s keep the whole Afghanistan issue away from the American public, who are too cowardly to actually think about what they are doing to that poor country.

And what about the US peaceniks’? They are cowardly, too. 99% of them vote for the Democratic Party, and talking about Afghanistan is too embarrasing to the top party hacks. So, shhhhhh….. Keep quiet. The recent AFSC tour of their ‘Eyes Wide Open’ exhibit was basically a ‘Mouths Tightly Closed’ exhibit of their AFSC political cowardice when it comes to Afghanistan. They should remember and be ashamed of this, when the Quaker leaders are inside the voter booths pushing the levers for the Democratic Party candidates. They could have put boots out for the US soldiers killed in Afghanistan. But they didn’t. They could have placed out shoes of Afghani civilians killed by US and allied troops, but they didn’t.

But the other liberal peaceniks from the other liberal churches are equally as cowardly. When was the last time one saw a sign saying, Get Out of Afghanistan Now? All the talk is of Iraq instead. The liberal megawebsite, commondreams, carries bumperstickers calling for Get out of Iraq, No war with Iran, and even No War with Syria. But Get Out of Afghanistan? Not a chance! More political cowardness. It would push the Democratic Party hacks too hard. Yet our country is now deliberately bombing civilian children in that country, and doing it routinely, too.

It is political cowardice to bomb huts full of empoverished women and children noncombatants, rather than fight on the ground below against the men. But that’s what an imperialist army is full of. They are full of cowards who want to kill people like they are playing some video game back in the suburbs at home. But it, too, is cowardly for the US Peace Movement not to demand that our government get its troops out of Afghanistan with the same force we demand it get out of Iraq. We are betraying the children of that country, who are being slaughtered down like cattle. Yes, we have a cowardly antiwar movement in the US that wants only to concentrate on ‘Iraq’, and getting their cowardly Democratic Party leaders elected to office once again. Let’s hope that liberals can grow some backbone, and start opposing this war, too. Otherwise, the peace crowd is just as bad as ‘our troops’, who mainly want to kill from afar and from up high, with no possilbe repercussions to their cowardly, uniformed selves. Those that don’t mind killing innocent children, just so that they can claim a high ‘enemy’ body count.

Batanga

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Let’s face it. Colorado Springs has some of the crappiest radio stations of any sizable city in the country. I like Spanish language music, but the reception is so bad that 101.9 hardly comes in. And their selection of music isn’t so hot anyway. So you might try checking out this site, especially with high speed access. There are many different styles of Latin music available here for free. Try cumbia, bachata, and baladas for starters. Batanga

US-sponsored death squads continue to rampage in the Philippines and Colombia

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The US military is holding joint military exercises this month with the Philippine military. Yet, the death squads are rampaging there like they did in the Ferdinand Marcos era. Did Americans think that the US military was truly out of that poor country’s life? And in Colombia the death squads also continue to rampage, with funding from the US for its military operations in the last 5 years at over $3 billion dollars. Tens of thousands have lost their lives due to the US intervention in that South American country. A signal card of many Colombian death squad attacks is the use of the chain saw on their victims. Our US government sponsors terrorism around the globe, and these 2 countries have been among the worst victims of our government’s evil interventions. Lest we forget, Iraq is defintely not the only country shredded by US interventionism. And in all cases the US intervenes, to have different groups of the native populations go at each other’s throats, while US troops direct the carnage.

Oaxaca versus Colorado Springs

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In the streetsWe are not supposed to follow these obscure current events in Colorado Springs. Oh sure, our local rag can write editorials advising the Mexican presidential candidate that got robbed of the presidency fraudently in that country to lay down the struggle and do an Al Gore, but….. us US plebians are really not to think about things in far away lands, unless they are more directly pointed out to us. Then of course we can all get up in arms to defend Tibetians, Kosovar Albanians, and all the other what not, while on the way to WalMart to buy Chinese goods.

But still I got to thinking about how all those thousands of Oaxacan rebels marched from the city of Oaxaca, 280 miles away until they arrived yesterday in Mexico City. It seems that they have a Governor who is an assassin and torturer. Kind of like our very own president of the United States. That’s right, thousands of outraged and concerned Mexican citizens marched 280 miles in protest there to show their national capital how they felt.

Here in Colorado Springs, we got our work cut out this week in trying to get tens of people to march 280 inches in reflections upon eyes wide open. No protest signs allowed by order of the Friends it shall be said. What a contrast! Do you think DC will quiver at our power and courage?

An Inconvenient Truth; Al Gore in the Balance

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This last Friday I headed over to see a herd of well-fed liberals that rodeoed themselves into the Unitarian Church for a free showing of the film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. The corral was packed and after we were informed that a pastor was on the way from Denver to moralize to us later, the film began to roll. Another showing of ‘Al Gore, the Intellectual Politican’ was under way. Hey, it kinda of reminded me of the repeated US`showing of ‘Jimmy Carter, Born Again Liberal Christian’, too. Holy Mackeral. Why buy a used car from the other guys, when we got such a sincere team over at Slick’s Used Cars Emporium?

My daughter was one of about 5 church-like kids dragged into the Unitarian Church that evening. And she lasted only 30 minutes, and then I had to go. She had to go that is, since I actually kind of wanted to stay. The film had a ‘Don’t Feed the Bears’ ambience to it, that made me feel like I was watching a Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo Bear rerun from my youth. Plus, it had that feel of those professional ‘Why You Need to Join Your Local Union’ stuff the AFL-CIO occasionally puts out. But my daughter was demanding that I rent her some obscure foreign film from over at Toons Video instead of staying and watching more of the freebee.

So how the Hell can I review a film when I watched only 30 minutes of it? Easily. I have been watching Al Gore for much longer than just the 90 minutes the film lasts. Here is Mr Environmental Guru as I have seen him over the years.

1) Supported Poppy Bush’s so-called Desert Strom that resulted in the deployment of Depleted Uranium radioctivity across the region. It also led to further environmental catastrophe as Hussein retaliated by incinerating the oil refineries of Kuwait.

2) As VP, he later went on to head up an Adminstration that deliberately targeted Yugoslavia’s civilian infrastructure through a US bombing campaign. As a result, the Danube was totally polluted with highly toxic waste. He also supported 8 years more of continued bombing of Iraq during that time, which certainly did not improve the ecology already destroyed by US warmaking he had supported even when a Republican had been directing the effort.

3) He supported the invasion of Afghanistan, which has left entire regions there decimated by so-called ‘bunker busting’ weaponry. Hardly a major ‘green’ effort on the part of Gore.

4) Gore has sat quiet as Israel bombed a civilian installation in Lebanon, which is a country invaded with total Bush support and complicity. Result?… a tidal wave of petro pollution that is the worst spill ever experienced in the Eastern Meidterranean. It will take decades to repair the damage, yet ‘Green’ Al Gore is silent.

5) Al Gore holds large number of shares in Occidental Oil, the company that polluted the Love Canal in New York State. It is also a company heavily invested in Colombia where Gore has helped have tons of isecticide dropped onto rural areas under the guise of waging a Clinton made ‘drug war’. The company sold off its holdings from the area after their drilling in U’wa tribal lands came up negative. Despite U’wa protests against this drilling, the Gore family held its shares in the company. Too bad the U’wa’s note to Gore was not part of the movie.

We could go on, but why should anyone believe Al Gore is doing anything other than image restructuring for himself, and the Democratic Party? If you are depending on him to be pro-environmental, then I got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. If you are depending on the Democratic Party to stop the Pentagon (which is the main danger to global environments), then you should have your head examined.

Irreligious troubles

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Remember the troubles in Ireland? They were religious wars is what we were told. The Catholics against the Protestants. Been going on for centuries. Indeed.

England has occupied Ireland for centuries, that much is true. And the English lackeys who settled the land for the British king and played landlord to the Irish were Protestant indeed. And the native Irish who have been fighting to regain their sovereignty are the religion of St Stephen who drove the pagan snakes from Ireland and converted everyone to Christianity before there was such a thing as Protestantism. The English were Catholic until Henry VIII was refused an annulment from the pope and so created his own Church of England. British subjects had to follow their king into Protestantism, and the enemy freedom fighters in Ireland would, of course, not.

And so the battle between the Irish and their English occupiers waged on, cleverly repackaged by the empire, the British Empire and ours, as religious troubles. Who sympathizes with an opponent’s foreign religion? The plight the dispossessed is another matter.

Likewise in Palestine. Are we to believe that Muslims are fighting Jews over the fate of their religious differences in Palestine? Oh, it’s been going on for thousands of years. Really?

Israel’s pretext for entitlement to the Holy Land dates back two thousand years, that’s true enough, when Jews last ruled Judea. There probably can be no end to land disputes when you argue claims that far back. Courts decided long ago to simplify disputes with statutes of limitation. In war however, every conqueror likes to assert they are reclaiming what lands were theirs by predestiny.

Palestinians are fighting the Israelis for their homeland. Israel occupies Palestine and keeps building settlements unto more of it, displacing and killing the original occupants. Israel’s motives might be religious, but the conflict is not. The fighting is occupation versus resistance, er, insurrection. The internecine strife amongst Palestinians and amongst Lebanese are no more sectarian than it is about who is collaborating with the occupiers.

Sectarian differences in Iraq, as throughout the Middle East, have similarly less to do with religion than the struggle against colonial occupiers. Right now we are demonizing the Shia, the fundamentalist hard ballers out of Iran, who threaten the Sunnis. They do, but hardly for religious reasons. The Sunni are and have been our agents, the administrative class for the West’s domination of the Middle East. When you hear Egypt opine, that’s us. Saudi Ariabia, that’s us. All the feudal sheiks, sultans and monarchs? Ours. In our pocket and we in theirs. They don’t like the Shias because they’re as irreligious as alpha males in a harem. Once more the occupiers have their religious or counter-religious pretext. The oppressed are fighting for their land and their freedom.

Humor

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I once had to break up with a perfectly good boyfriend. He was 6’5″, 240 pounds, Denver Broncos tight end, straight-A student, fast car, cool apartment….blah, blah. We had dated for two years, discussed marriage and children, a serious deal. But I knew that it was time for me to pull the plug. Why, you ask? Here’s the honest truth. He thought the Three Stooges were HILARIOUS.
 
pictureThis may seem a ridiculous reason but, really, when your man is curled up in a fetal position night after night, laughing convulsively at Larry, Curly and Moe, a feeling of separateness, a moat that no drawbridge can span, envelops you and leaves you completely alone, bereft, devoid of vision and hope.

I’ve often said that my sense of humor has saved me as I’ve weathered the storms of life. Don’t laugh. I’m very serious about this. I think the ability to see irony or absurdity, the ability to be self-effacing, has enabled me to cope with all that has come my way. A sense of humor is more therapeutic to me than Prozac or Valium or crack cocaine (it was only that one time, I swear).

This past weekend I stumbled across VH1’s 100 Best Saturday Night Live skits. I think I may be one of the only people on the planet who has watched SNL religiously, season after season, since its inception in 1975. I was in the 8th grade when SNL began. I’m 44 now. In a good year perhaps 30% of the skits could qualify as funny. But those that are change our perspective, change our lives really. Do you remember when the old George Bush overcame the wimp factor to become our 41st president? Do you remember when he drew a line in the sand…daring the Iraqis to mess with the US of A? His approval rating was higher at that time than almost any president in history. Enter Dana Carvey. His affectionate, yet biting, parody of George Bush allowed us all to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Yes, we elected him, we like him….but we have reservations. Na Ga Da…what the hell does that mean?

Now we have president number 43, Dubya. Shit, hell, fuck. Please give us something to laugh about because he’s letting us down big time. This war sucks. At least let us mock his laugh. Hehehehe. My goodness, can’t we make fun of his fraternity boy demeanor….his inability to speak in complete sentences? If not, how about those daughters of his? Texas girls…tequila-swilling, blow-job-giving hose bags. Well…nothing that I wasn’t but who cares? I wasn’t in the public eye so too bad presidential daughters!

And Hillary. You went to Wellesley like all smart lesbians do. You could be our next president if only you didn’t have cankles! Look it up in the dictionary you’ll see a picture of Hillary Clinton’s lower leg. Hahahahahahaha! No credibility with me because no differentiation between your calves and ankles! Universal health care?! SHUT THE HELL UP, FATTO!!!

Thank you, Lorne Michaels, for sticking with SNL. Thank you for being politically incorrect (a phrase that didn’t even exist back then). You’ve given wings to a whole new generation of political satirists…..Dennis Miller, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert. We hunger for someone to interpret our global reality. It sucks. But it’s funny. Yes, there’s terror in the world but there is also laughter, my friends. Tell me that there isn’t something humorous about tall skinny Osama hiding in a cave needing dialysis. Poor Osama. Just the name Osama doubles me over. O-S-A-M-A.

Back to you, my Stooge-loving former sweetie pie, I know you married not too long after we parted. I imagine that your wife is beautiful, your children perfect. I picture their prowess on the field, their superiority in the classroom. But mostly I picture grubby hands, erect across the bridges of freckled noses….avoiding the inevitable double eye poke. It’s a life that I could never be a part of. Nyuk, nyuk! Woo, woo!

Showing fealty

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Demonstrating fealty to the SaudisJon Stewart parodied the Bush-Ahmadinejad face off at the U.N. on Thursday, characterizing George Bush’s address as a Mafia don trying to intimidate his subjects.
 
In this light, the significance of Bush holding hands with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah earlier this year finally hit me. Bush is probably taking out on us what he’s getting from his masters. The public hand-holding was none other than a show of fealty.

At first I thought Bush could have been helping the not-so-elder along a Texas trail. Or maybe hand-holding might be a Saudi custom between friends. I laughed a bit at the gay innuendo, thinking about Jeffrey Gannon/Guckert, the gay prostitute who frequents the White House but nobody knows for whom, keeping in mind Stephen Colbert’s chiding White House Spokesman Scott McClellan for retiring to “spend more time with Andrew Card’s children.”
 
What does it mean to kiss the Don’s ring? Or the Pope’s? Or to touch another’s feet? It isn’t affection, it isn’t submission. It’s the literal origin of what it is to kiss ass. An act which both parties agree to be distasteful and beneath one’s dignity, but necessary to demean oneself to show deference.

It means subjugation, to humiliate yourself, in the original sense of humility, to abase yourself before your superior, before everyone’s eyes, to demonstrate your allegiance.

Holding Prince Abdullah’s hand was not about kissing up to the Saudis to cement an oil deal. It was an offer George W. could not refuse. Who owns a major share of the US treasury bonds? Who could break the US economy at will? To whom does Bush owe his fortune and ascendency? “Hold my hand.”

What could it mean for the President of the United States to be demonstrating his fealty to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia?

Gay marriage

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Lovely coupleWho says gays and lesbians can’t marry? Of course they can marry. They absolutely can. They simply have to marry EACH OTHER! C’mon gay men, admit it, a large athletic woman around the house would come in DAMN HANDY! Lawn mowing, house painting, lightbulb changing…not to mention protection from would-be muggers. And you dykes. Fashion advice? Culinary prowess? Feng Shui? Sounds brilliant to me!

Things in the boudoir won’t be that thrilling you say? Oh, grow UP! Even straight couples get bored after a year or two. Is sexual incompatibility enough reason to deep six an otherwise beautiful union? I think not.

Surely I jest. Take heart! You’ve made some headway here. A majority of the American public supports the idea of legal civil unions for gay and lesbian pairs. Civil unions would give you many of the rights and responsibilities associated with traditional marriage. The sticking point seems to be the idea of full-fledged “marriage.”

Once again, falling back on my handy Catholic upbringing, I’ll shed a bit of light on this. Marriage is considered by many to have spiritual significance in addition to its legal ramifications. To most it is a sacrament which, in Latin, means “something holy.” It is a visible sign, in the form of a religious ceremony, of invisible grace–God’s protection and favor. Christians, most notably Roman Catholics, believe that all seven sacraments were instituted by Jesus in the New Testament.

True or not, this explains why, according to a recent poll, 54% of Americans favor gay civil unions while only 35% support gay marriage. Most Christians, and fully 84% of Americans identify themselves as Christian while 60% identify as “committed Christian” (the scarier ones) are not going to be easily convinced, if they can EVER be convinced, that God is prepared to confer his special favor on a homosexual union. They are okay if the state confers a little of ITS protection and favor…but God Almighty? NO WAY.

So I’m sorry, gays and lesbians, I know that you would love to feel that God approves of your lifestyle…but asking me to give you a legal/spiritual rite of passage is actually asking for MY approval. There are quite a few who, like me, don’t feel comfortable speaking for God. So please don’t ask us what he thinks. Take it up with him privately. If he’s the God that I think he is, you’ve got nothing to worry about.

Now, in the spirit of cooperation, I have something to ask of you too. Would you please STOP TALKING about gay marriage already! Especially in an election year. You are scaring people right into the big flabby bosom of the GOP by allowing them to portray the Democratic party as the gay marriage party! The anti-family values party! You’re taking the focus off of the war in Iraq, off poverty, off education, race relations, welfare reform, healthcare, global warming…the crazy cowboy in the White House. Let me tell you, the Republicans are lovin’ you for it! So please please please take civil unions for the time being and shut the hell up.

The Path to 9 11

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In defense of ABC’s docudrama The Path to 9/11. Near the beginning, when the terrorists were taking responsibility for the 1993 WTC bombing, “Ramzi Youssef – Palestinian Terrorist” explained why they had done it: because of America’s military and economic support of Israel.

The subject of Israel and Palestine never came up again, and never came up at all on Ted Koppel’s counter-ABC-straw-man The Price of Security.

We’ve got our boot on Palestine’s windpipe, they’re flailing their arms hoping to dislodge us, and we declare a war on arm flailing. Our media runs through what options America has to be safe from arm-flailing without looking at our boots to let American citizens consider how we might tread the earth with more humanity.

The US and Israel, it’s hard to say who is the master of whom, are actively killing Palestinians in a genocidal program every bit as calculated as the Holocaust or the extermination of the Native Americans. The US supported the recent slaughter of Lebanese peoples, also considered by the international community as genocide.

The US accuses Syria or Iran of backing Hizb’Allah. Those links are sketchy compared to our sending weapons and aid to Israel and other false authorities in the Middle East. When Israel was stepping up its bombing Lebanon in advance of the nearing ceasefire, we had to speed our resupply of Cluster Bombs lest Israel run out of time to use them. The US arms and defends the self-proclaimed kings and sultans who amass great wealth from the sale of their countries’ oil while at the same time subjecting their peoples to abject poverty. Bin Laden opposed our propping up of the Saudis. Youssef decried our support of Israel in Palestine. Arabs have cause to reject US strong arm policies in Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and of course Iraq. Muslims have very good reasons to reject US policy in Afghanistan, Indoneasia and the Philippines.

The least ABC could do in its mockudrama was to set the scene with the Muslim extremists’ motives, and that was it. Even though the rest of the program was re-edited because of the criticism, there followed closely law enforcement characters endlessly lamenting they needed authority for warrantless searches, domestic eavesdropping and inter-departmental information sharing. Filipino police were depicted heroically for not waiting for warrants, female border agents were lauded for using their intuitive -read racial- profiling, suggestions were made of an FBI coverup, even that Clinton’s people were helping Osama.

The irrationality-mongering was so egregious it would take forever to enumerate. The good news is that the Stephen Bochco style shaky camera, the endlessly tight closeups, the jump cuts unto incongruous details lacking context, and the frenetic action going every direction, serve really like an alarm bell going off next to your ear. It’s not conducive to critical thinking, but it’s also painfully and obviously contrived.

I draw one fundamental conclusion. The 9/11 truth seekers have been right all along. We must diffuse the 9/11 lie because the establishment yahoos, both Republican and Democrats, plan to ride this vile deception as long as they can.

By comparison, Ted Koppel’s sombre contemplative piece was full of verbal obfuscation. Koppel began his report with “by now every adult in America knows what happened on 9/11.” What an innocuous way to brush aside the fact that what happened is known, yes, and disputed! His language got no clearer as the program progressed. Lots of “clearly” this, when of course it very clearly could be unclear.

Koppel asked critical questions of such criminals as the author of the latest definition of torture and the commander of Gitmo who declined to admit that detainees had ever been tortured, but Koppel let Bush cabinet officials off with softballs and setups. Koppel let Tom Ridge appear thoughtful as to hold a mirror to himself asking what America is about, he let effete Senator Hays tell everyone that nuclear bombs can be made from items purchased at Home Depot, and Koppel let an NSA software developer appear pro-civil liberties by rejecting racial-profiling. His solution? Eavesdrop on everybody.

By assuming the role of white knight, Ted Koppel is really an effective mouthpiece for the Time-Warner machine, a major player in upholding corporate dominance. What do you think of his “point well taken” technique? As if his smilingly elusive subjects have just trumped him with something other than a quacking canard!

The good news about Koppel on Discovery is that we got a close look at the Bush operatives. They are in charge, yes, and they benefit from being presented by a charming, deep voiced newsman, but didn’t you recognize Larry, Moe and Curly right down to the haircuts? These guys are dopes! In morals, self-reflection and speech. It makes me giddy to contemplate because it’s not going to take much thinking power to take them down. Call me gullible, call me idealistic. It’ll take effort, determination and sacrifice, but it won’t take nucular-chemical-rocket science.

Israelites go home

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Baja JudeaAdmittedly this is a picture of Tel Aviv residents protesting their nation’s militant actions against Lebanon and gathering to offer a prayer for peace.
 
On another level, is it also a picture of fair-skinned westerners on a Middle Eastern beach who’ve overstayed their welcome?
 
Maybe it’s time to close Club Med Judea.

Americans descend upon Baja Mexico all the time, we don’t try to annex it. Or Costa Rica, or Belize. There’s nothing wrong with vacationing in the tropics, but is it fair to emigrate there, declare it your own, and ask the world to protect you from the anger of the people who you sent packing?

Let American and European Jews have their promised land, as promised vacation land. Visit and sunbathe all you want, then go home. This idea that white man should colonize Arabia is so 19th century. Colonization doesn’t work, and we have no right.

Nowhere was this more obvious than South Africa, where white colonizers held themselves as superior to the natives, imposing apartheid to force the indigenous populations to keep to their own neighborhoods.

Can there ever be peace in the Holy Land? Of course there can. Return Israel to its rightful owners. Let Jew, Muslim and Christian live together in a secular state. Will there always be sectarian violence? Perhaps, we’re seeing it elsewhere between Muslims. Sectarian problems will have to be worked out between neighbors. It’s clear the answer was not to give the whole ball of wax to one religion. Especially not the white one.

Maybe there is no al-Qaeda?

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Try this on for size: the war on terror is being used to justify all forms of restrictive government controls, from surveillance to union-busting to torture. Lacking any terrorist acts of late, how do we know there are even terrorists? Except that our government keeps scooping them up, putting them in Guantanamo, but it won’t let us see them.

Is Guantanamo really about keeping certain Islamic “illegal combatants” from doing harm? As the overwelming number of detainees are released without charges, it’s hard to believe the authorities cared who they had detained. Perhaps Guantanamo has been serving to perpetuate the myth that such terrorists exist at all.

Arbitrary interments function to terrorize a populace (a reason why they’re violations of international law), but perhaps the US has an additional purpose. What if there is no major league AL Qaeda except for the fictional assemblage at Guantanamo? Perhaps we’ve not been allowed a close look at the captives at Guantanamo lest we detect that there is no rhyme or reason to those detained.

There has been most certainly a group of Islamic Fundamentalists who orchestrated the 1990 attack the WTC, the bombing of the USS Cole, the bombing of the US embassy buildings in Nairobi, and other bombing in Southeast Asia. And on 9/11/2001 a group of Saudi Arabians flew two airplanes into the WTC, although likely with assistance.

But that’s probably about it. With a dozen or so hijackers dying on 9/11, another dozen usual suspects rounded up in Pakistan and Indoneasia, and poster boy Osama traipsing about Afghanistan, there might not have been any more.

A “war on terror” requires enemy terrorists. If there are no further acts of terrorism, how are you going to assert that there are still terrorists out there? Why not incarcerate a bunch of guys who dress like terrorists and take credit for intervening with their dastardly plans? Plus you’ll be asserting that if you have some, there must be more.

But the stories coming out of those released from Guantanamo indicate that US security agencies are simply playing a cruel games with individual world citizens. Why have such detainees been denied access to the world? Isn’t it more appropriate to say that the world is being denied access to the detainees? Maybe it’s the outside world that the US is trying to keep out of Guantanamo. Otherwise people of reason could unravel the fiction of Al Qaeda.

A Freudian mixed metaphor for the GOP

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elephant gorillaI’ve read it several times now, the eight-hundred pound gorilla in the room. This would seem to confuse 1) the proverbial 600-900 lb primate (gorillas not named Kong seldom excede 400 lbs) who outclasses everyone else in size and power, for 2) the pachyderm in the room whose relative mass overwhelms our capacity to ignore it, though we try.
 
In this corporate age of Darwinian monopolies, maybe the de facto brutality of alpha-male corporate monopoly has become something the corporate media mouthpieces won’t let us talk about. There’s an elephant in the room, and the three hundred pound gorilla won’t let us talk about it.
 
The gorilla is the elephant is the new metaphor for the GOP.

Unsustainable argument making

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I attended Colorado College’s symposium about the expected effects of climate change upon the Rocky Mountain region. There was less discussion about adapting to the certain change than there was about hoping still to prevent it.

By focusing on trying to undo global warming, the discussion had to quantify the changes and of course explain their causes. This opened up the door to arguing the causal links, leading to the idea that perhaps we need do nothing at all.

I don’t know but I think I expected to see live scientists deny global warming. What scentist is going to deny global warming? Should be a good show! What I learned was how they deny it. It’s boring but instructive.

Our panel consisted of a student researcher who presented a study of current and forecasted climate change, a representative of the ski industry to present their plans and efforts, and two professors to explain the science. The professors were a father son team from UNC and USC respectively. While they might smilingly present themselves as advocates of environmental issues, I’d call them spoilers.

Elder Roger Pielke went into the technical gobbledegook concluding… nothing. Probably the scientific community needs those guys, but don’t put him on a public panel. His part: spirited, unquestionably qualified, perhaps even well meaning, obfuscation.

His son Robert Pielke explained the need for more unbiased research. Too many scientists have spoken out in alarm about global warming, thus they are biased and their research cannot be trusted. We’ll need more unalarmed scientists to weigh in before we can conclude anything. Follow that logic? This was Pielke’s lesson: always question the motive of a researcher.

Great lesson, in reverse! Someone seeking to deny the warming, underwritten usually by big oil, coal, and general industrial interests, that person’s research might be wise to scrutinize. What pray tell might be the ulterior motives of the 70% of scientists who are currently expressing their alarm about global warming?

Junior Pielke’s approach is the same argument we hear from the unIntelligent Design proponents. Question the motives. Scientists are biased against a deity apparently and therefore evolution findings cannot be trusted. It’s good advice to question the motives. What are the creationists’ motives? To further our understanding of the physical world or to bolster increasingly fallable-looking poppycrock?

Don’t we hear that argument everywhere? Never mind Bush’s motives for slaughtering now up to 250, 000 Iraqi civilians, question the protestor’s motives, no doubt they do not support the troops!

The 250, 000 casualty figure comes from the British medical journal The Lancet, previously unquestioned when they presented their estimates of civilian casualties in the Balkans and Africa. Question their motives. The Lancet figure, estimated to be lower than the probable casualty count, came from American, English and Iraqi doctors. No doubt their ulterior motive is to save lives.

Affluenza

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The hills are alive with the sound of music
Are you worried that your children might be suffering from Affluenza, a degenerative virus pervasive among the world’s affluent cultures? Many of America’s youth can easily grow up insulated from an understanding of the human condition. Here are some recommended films for introducing affluent children to the larger world.

All these films are kid friendly. They are about children and are not too traumatic. The only mature subject presented is the world view.

While you endure your daily travails in the security of American suburbia, ninety percent of families on earth live in houses with a single room and no furniture. Meals are prepared and served on the floor, and the floor is of dirt.

Here are three films which can provide a gentle visual introduction to the reality of impoverished humanity: Baraka, Powaqqatsi: Life in Transformation and Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance. Each of these feature photographic images set to music, from Philip Glass to classical. Latcho Drom is another film without dialog. It depicts the traditional Gypsy migration from India to Spain, told entirely in musical performances.

For examples of children showing determination under adversity, with subtitles, Children of Heaven tells of a brother and sister in Iran who must share a pair of shoes. Another warm depiction of everyday muslim life is The White Balloon. A child’s upbringing in India is portrayed in Satyajit Ray’s 1954 masterpiece Pather Panchali.

For children who are ready for a little more adversity there’s A Time For Drunken Horses about boys hired to smuggle goods into Iraqi Kurdistan. For a light hearted glimpse of the challenges faced by Romany beggars there is The Time of the Gypsies and Mondo.

And now for something completely different, in English, here’s a humorous look at the life of the Bushmen of the Kalihari, The Gods Must Be Crazy. Another incredible tale, set on the coast of Ireland, The Secret of Roan Inish offers an appreciation of the mystical possibilities of life.

To see this collection for growing minds at TOONS.

Neverland vs. Disneyland

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Michael Jackson kid collectionOf course Michael Jackson is closing Neverland, his kid-themed estate in Southern California, he doesn’t need it, he’s gone to Disneyland!
 
(Caution: this article may get a little gross.)
 
The California Disneyland where children run around unattended? The Florida Disney world
with its similar kid-sized attractions? No, it’s just an expression. Jocko’s gone to the proverbial ne-plus-ultra destination for those who’ve hit the jackpot. Well you be the judge.

Michael Jackson got off charges of child molestation, statutory rape, contributing to the delinquency of minors, kidnapping, unlawful detainment, all now curiously summarized as “child abuse.” After which he immediately scooted out of the country! Despite the most unbecoming of evidence, Michael Jackson got away without being declared a sex offender. Maybe he knows something we don’t because he decided he didn’t want to stay within reach of U.S. law enforcement, and he obsconded to… Bahrain.

Where’s Bahrain? What’s Bahrain? Michael Jackson says he has friends there who he feels are more simpathetic to his inner whatever he is. His friend is a sheikh in Bahrain with oil to pay for harems.

Bahrain is like the United Arab Emirates, which are small sultanates set up by the British in such a way that the oil wealth would not have to be shared by national populations but rather by simply the occupiers of each particular stretch of desert. The Dutch did the same thing in Brunei, carved out of Indonesia. These are artificial borders meant to exclude the actual indigenous inhabitants who might require the traditional colonial investments in infrastructure and social welfare.

Imagine if instead of launching the California gold rush, Sutter had walled up his Mill, declared it an autonomous Sultanate, and all the gold wealth had gone only to fund vast automobile collections, Manhattan real estate investments, decadent harems and orgies, ad vomitum, leaving the rest of Californians to a tribal existance outside the flow of the gold largess.

What do Middle East sultans do with themselves which Michael Jackson finds so simpatico? It’s probably not to do with subjugating their populations with poverty and repressive religious dogma. Maybe it’s speedboat racing, who knows? More likely it has to do with the secretive harems, collections of captive sex partners lured and trafficked from all parts of the globe, reputedly the “white slave trade” which what do you wanna bet includes children?

To recap, how did the various pedophelia behaviors so graphically documented by Jackson’s prosecutors, from the Jesus Juice to the predatory grooming, come to be summarized as “child abuse?” Mere balcony-baby-dangling by comparison. This mirrors the current media subversion of the word rape, and all the horror it conjures, by using the more ambiguous term “sexual assault.”

War criminals at large

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Serbian war criminal Mladic.Serbian General Ratko Mladic, seen here with NATO commander General Wesley Clark, wearing each other’s caps, is accused of the infamous massacre of 7,500 Muslims at Srebrenica. Separated from the women, all the men and boys from Srebrenica were gathered into a soccer stadium and killed.
 
Mladic is also sought as a war criminal for the bombardment of Sarajevo. Wesley Clark may still face war crimes charges based on the bombardment of the civilian population of Kosovo.

How are their crimes any different from what the U.S. did in Fallujah? We besieged the city, bombed and sniped at its civilian population, then we told the residents of Fallujah to evacuate or meet their maker. From the lines of refugees leaving Fallujah, we turned back all fighting-age men and boys, on the pretext that we didn’t want “insurgents” to escape our dragnet. We forced them back into the city where we then treated everyone as a combatant and we exterminated them.

How to tell the media is lying to you, healthcare

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How do you know you are not hearing the straight scoop from the media? Health care.
 
How many industrialized nations are there? Twenty-five or so? And our nation is among them. We don’t have the highest standard of living, nor the second highest, but we’re up there. We’re talking compared to Europe, Britain, Scandinavia, Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

How many of those nations have virtually free health care for their people? A few? Several? No. We’re talking all of them. Well, all but one. All but the US.

Yet U.S. health care is the most expensive to provide. It costs a greater portion of our GDP, by twice as much, compared to the next most costly.

Many Americans presume that in exchange, our health care is far superior to that of any other nation. This may be true for the ultra-rich who can afford to fly to see specialists whenever they want. Although, recent studies have shown that in several fields our specialists are no longer pre-eminent.

For the rest of us, reliant on HMOs, or medical care audited by insurance companies, health care is not so great. Most of us cannot see a doctor of our choice, nor make a reasonably timely appointment, nor certainly get a house call. This is not even to mention the millions of Americans who are not insured at all.

The World Health Organization has ranked nations in order of the quality and effectiveness of their health care systems. The U. S. ranked 37th.

That’s not even among the developed nations is it? Our system costs twice as much, one third of which goes to insurance costs, and we rank 37th, just below Costa Rica. Fifteen below Colombia by the way.

Why aren’t you hearing about this in the mainstream media? Because the insurance companies are big advertisers on the mainstream media. Insurance companies make 30% off of American health care bills right now. They don’t want to hear any flowery talk of socialized medicine. Insurance companies insist we call that option a “single payer system,” and they demonize the idea as big government. Yes, bigger government, and in exchange, predatory insurance behemoths gone.

Lost in translation

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Stoning the Devil between noon and sunset
Today 345 pilgrims in Saudi Arabia were stampeded to death. Hundreds more were injured. It happened in the frantic scramble of millions of pilgrims trying to edge close enough to three ancient pillars to cast 29 pebbles at them. Or something like that. Before the sun set.

I wish I wasn’t feeling so disheartened by this news. It’s not about the loss of life exactly. Antiwar activists are trying their best to give meaning to the Iraqi deaths we’ve caused in this war while Muslims in Mecca are dying because they’ve trampled each other.

When you take this religious war at face value you can see why many Americans dismiss Islam as a religion for simple people. On one hand you become convinced to take up the responsibility of the white man’s burden, and on the other hand you want to subdue any militancy such a people might entertain toward threatening you.

On a day like today it’s hard not to want to hedge your bets with the Neocon zionists.

A stampede like this has the propensity to happen every year at the ritual of the Ramajat. Sometimes the casualties have been many times more. Each year the government tries to improve the lay of the land to accommodate the increasing millions of pebble-throwing pilgrims. Imagine if everyone descending to the subway was determined to use just the leftmost turnstyle, and they weren’t about to slow down to do it.

Except that these death at Mecca were of their own choosing, and except that to die on the Hajj is an honorable death, this predictable tragedy appears synonymous with the useless muslim deaths by our hand.

I cannot help but feel there’s racism in my sentiments. These pilgrims weren’t killed because they were stupid or simple or primitive. This is tradition meets technology, maximum capacity meets three million persons, this is crowd dynamics.

I do not begrudge the Muslims their holy pursuits, especially as a response to the tragedies we’ve visited upon them. But couldn’t the pilgrims or the Saudi government for that matter take a special war-time care not to appear careless about their own lives?

It’s a hard enough sell over here. Here American newspeople are still asking questions like “civilian casualties -are the lives of our soldiers being jeopardized by too great of a concern for the safety of Iraqi civilians?”

It would be no great leap for a young American soldier to rationalize his callous barbarity. He can believe he’s machine-gunning the “stupid Hadjis” to their eternal paradise.

I am going to be sick

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From a Navy Seal Kodak momentOne of 17 techniques authorized by Rumsfeld. This is non-fatal duress, permitted so long as it does not induce organ failure. Here Navy Seals put a hood over a detainee and strike his head unpredictably from directions unforeseen.

Today an American doctor was forced to reveal through an affidavid that he and the medical staff at Guantanamo have been force-feeding the hunger-striking detainees through nasal tubes.

Remember Guantanamo? When the Abu Ghraib photos emerged, the White House responded indignantly that Rumsfeld had never authorized such interrogation methods for anywhere except Guantanamo.

Guantanamo is where we’ve been sending suspected terrorists. We’ve now already released most of the Gitmo detainees for lack of charges. We hang on to several hundred more but still have not filed any charges.

Over 80 prisoners at Guantanamo are currently protesting their general inhumane treatment and their detainment without charges, some for up to four years. They have been maintaining a hunger strike, now nearing its sixth month.

The hunger strike has been kept largely out of the American press. Thus the doctor’s recent confession would have little context for typical American viewers.

To counter the hunger-strike, the prisoners are bound at up to “six points of restraint” and force-feed through tubes which are inserted through their nose and wind down to their stomachs.

I have experience with that tube.

A couple years ago I had a ruptured appendix. My recovery required the use of a nasogastric tube through my nose. It was the most miserable experience of my life.

Having the tube inserted into your nose, coaxed around the bends of the nasal passage and down the throat meant an interminable sequence of gagging, regurgitating, and frantic reflexive swallows. Afterward the first order of business was to dry both patient and bed of what was thrown up.

Never before had I felt my life so fragile and helpless. I could not help but reflect that I had gone within minutes from being a defiant patient to being utterly subdued. My sense of dominion over my physical self was gone. I hoped only to emerge from that first night with my sanity.

Torture
I myself have no concept of torture, nor even of physical violence. I can read about the torture we have sanctioned and applied against our enemies and it all looks awful, although perhaps most of us can comprehend its awfulness only in the abstract. Is that perhaps why we permit it?

The nearest I have come to identifying with the terror felt by a torture victim was hearing of the Iraqi general who was shoved head first into a sleeping bag and sat upon until he suffocated. Probably we can all recollect in our youth the panic induced by the combination of claustrophobia and being unable to catch our breath.

From my hospital experience I have a very vivid first hand experience to compare to the treatment meted to the Gitmo detainees. And we’re not even talking about interrogation or punishment, we’re talking about medical procedures. My nasogastric tube was for emptying my stomach. It was not the 3 millemeter tube they are using to feed the prisoners. Nor certainly was it the 4.8 millemeter tube the US medical staff was originally using because they wanted to feed the prisoners more quickly and get them back to their cells. Which suggests that they are repeating the insertion process for each feeding.

Torture is illegal. The United States ratified the 1996 Torture Convention. Torture is wrong regardless of whether you are signatory to an agreement. It’s inhumane, it’s abhorrent, it dehumanizes those who commit it, and it may invite our opponents to justify it as well. As if it were even our place any longer to expect their mercy.

Force-feeding a person who is intent on fasting is another sort of crime. It is assault, plain and simple. And committed by a medial practitioner it is against their professional oath.

I don’t know how to be afraid of the depths to which we are sinking. I do know I feel sick to my stomach.