brucejuice

Another Coverup Appears to Thicken

2006-10-03T14:59:00.000-04:00

We're getting an even clearer picture of the efforts by mid-level U.S. Government bureaucrats to warn the Bush administration about the Al-Qaeda threat in the summer of 2001. The story that Rice failed to mention an impromptu briefing by CIA director George Tenet of Al-Qaeda plans to attack U.S. targets has been subsumed by the Foley pagegate scandal. But Jonathan Landay, formerly of the Christian Science Monitor is still on the case.

It appears that the CIA officials on the Al-Qaeda hunt kept beating the Bushes after the unsuccessful Rice briefing. Landay reports that the officials then went on to brief Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then Attorney General John Ashcroft. It also appears that Ashcroft publicly "lamented" never receiving such a heads up about the Al-Qaeda threat. None of these briefings were listed in the September 11 Commission Report detailing Bush and Clinton administration efforts to combat terrorism.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department's disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don't remember the warning.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a "10 on a scale of 1 to 10" that "connected the dots" in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again...

FromRumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY, WARREN P. STROBEL and JOHN WALCOTT
McClatchy Newspapers

NBA Star says Republicans Lost Their Minds

2006-10-02T23:51:00.000-04:00

Thank god Paul Krugman is back from vacation...

In any case, just as the religious right was feeling betrayed by Mr. Bush's focus on the goals of the economic right, the economic right suddenly seemed to become aware of the nature of its political allies. "Where in the hell did this Terri Schiavo thing come from?" asked Dick Armey, the former House majority leader, in an interview with Ryan Sager, the author of "The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians and the Battle to Control the Republican Party." The answer, he said, was "blatant pandering to James Dobson." He went on, "Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies."

Some Republicans are switching parties. James Webb, who may pull off a macaca-fueled upset against Senator George Allen of Virginia, was secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan. Charles Barkley, a former N.B.A. star who used to be mentioned as a possible future Republican candidate, recently declared, "I was a Republican until they lost their minds."

So the right-wing coalition is showing signs of coming apart. It seems that we're not in Kansas anymore. In fact, Kansas itself doesn't seem to be in Kansas anymore. Kathleen Sebelius, the state's Democratic governor, has achieved a sky-high favorability rating by focusing on good governance rather than culture wars, and her party believes it will win big this year.

And nine former Kansas Republicans, including Mark Parkinson, the former state G.O.P. chairman, are now running for state office as Democrats. Why did Mr. Parkinson change parties? Because he "got tired of the theological debate over whether Charles Darwin was right."

from"Things Fall Apart"
The New York Times
October 2, 2006

How we Handled Torture in the Past

2006-09-25T18:24:00.000-04:00

ABC News dug up two past instances in which U.S. servicemen engaged in the technique known as waterboarding. In both cases, the soldiers were disciplined.

Water boarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in Vietnam 40 years ago. A photograph that appeared in The Washington Post of a U.S. soldier involved in water boarding a North Vietnamese prisoner in 1968 led to that soldier's severe punishment.

"The soldier who participated in water torture in January 1968 was court-martialed within one month after the photos appeared in The Washington Post, and he was drummed out of the Army," recounted Darius Rejali, a political science professor at Reed College.

Earlier in 1901, the United States had taken a similar stand against water boarding during the Spanish-American War when an Army major was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor for water boarding an insurgent in the Philippines.

Elsewhere, Tom Malinowski describes the effect that a seemingly more benign technique, sleep deprivation, has on a prisoner.

Finally, the president might review the memoirs of former Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, who describes experiencing sleep deprivation in a Soviet prison in the 1940s: "In the head of the interrogated prisoner a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget. . . . Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it. . . . I came across prisoners who signed what they were ordered to sign, only to get what the interrogator promised them. He did not promise them their liberty. He promised them -- if they signed -- uninterrupted sleep!"

The Soviets understood that these methods were cruel. They were also honest with themselves about the purpose of such cruelty -- to brutalize their enemies and to extract false confessions, rather than truthful intelligence. By denying this, President Bush is not just misleading us. He appears to be deceiving himself.

from "Call Cruelty What It Is"
The Washington Post

Al Gore and the link between jobs, environment and security

2006-09-23T15:20:00.000-04:00

Gore notes that jobs remain the great nexus between environmental and national security issues. Nothing new here. It's just always nice to see it articulated.

From a September 18th speech at NYU.

After all, many Americans are tired of borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the Persian Gulf to make huge amounts of pollution that destroys the planet’s climate. Increasingly, Americans believe that we have to change every part of that pattern.

When I visit port cities like Seattle, New Orleans, or Baltimore, I find massive ships, running low in the water, heavily burdened with foreign cargo or foreign oil arriving by the thousands. These same cargo ships and tankers depart riding high with only ballast water to keep them from rolling over.

One-way trade is destructive to our economic future. We send money, electronically, in the opposite direction. But, we can change this by inventing and manufacturing new solutions to stop global warming right here in America. I still believe in good old-fashioned American ingenuity. We need to fill those ships with new products and technologies that we create to turn down the global thermostat. Working together, we can create jobs and stop global warming...

Shifting to a greater reliance on ethanol, cellulosic ethanol, butanol, and green diesel fuels will not only reduce global warming pollution and enhance our national and economic security, it will also reverse the steady loss of jobs and income in rural America. Several important building blocks for America’s role in solving the climate crisis can be found in new approaches to agriculture. As pointed out by the “25 by 25″ movement (aimed at securing 25% of America’s power and transportation fuels from agricultural sources by the year 2025) we can revitalize the farm economy by shifting its mission from a focus on food, feed and fiber to a focus on food, feed, fiber, fuel, and ecosystem services. We can restore the health of depleted soils by encouraging and rewarding the growing of fuel source crops like switchgrass and saw-grass, using no till cultivation, and scientific crop rotation. We should also reward farmers for planting more trees and sequestering more carbon, and recognize the economic value of their stewardship of resources that are important to the health of our ecosystems.

Remembering Ann Richards

2006-09-17T18:02:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Molly Ivins for this story from her days with the former Texas gov. who pass away earlier this month.

At a long-ago political do at Scholz Garten in Austin, everybody who was anybody was there meetin' and greetin' at a furious pace. A group of us got the tired feet and went to lean our butts against a table at the back wall of the bar. Perched like birds in a row were Bob Bullock, then state comptroller, moi, Charles Miles, the head of Bullock's personnel department, and Ms. Ann Richards. Bullock, 20 years in Texas politics, knew every sorry, no good sumbitch in the entire state. Some old racist judge from East Texas came up to him, "Bob, my boy, how are you?"

Bullock said, "Judge, I'd like you to meet my friends: This is Molly Ivins with the Texas Observer."

The judge peered up at me and said, "How yew, little lady?"

Bullock, "And this is Charles Miles, the head of my personnel department." Miles, who is black, stuck out his hand, and the judge got an expression on his face as though he had just stepped into a fresh cowpie. He reached out and touched Charlie's palm with one finger, while turning eagerly to the pretty, blonde, blue-eyed Ann Richards. "And who is this lovely lady?"

Ann beamed and replied, "I am Mrs. Miles."

The Disinformation Society

2005-04-17T15:53:00.000-04:00

Check out Robert F. Kennedy Junior's excellent article in the May issue of Vanity Fair. While the pundits are scrambling around trying to find a Democratic candidate who can out-god the Republicans and win an election, Kennedy makes a point echoed by some of the less jittery observers of recent events. The majority of voters actually agreed with Kerry on the important issues of the day. They just didn't realize that President Bush's policies were so out of line with their views.

Here's the crux:

To explain the president's victory, political pundits posited a vast "values gap" between red states and blue states. They attributed the president's success in the polls, despite his tragic job failures, to the rise of religious fundamentalism. Heartland Americans, they suggested, are the soldiers in a new American Taliban, willing to vote against their own economic interests to promote "morality" issues that they see as the critical high ground in a life-or-death culture war.

I believe, however, that the Democrats lost the presidential contest not because of a philosophical chasm between red and blue states but due to an information deficit caused by a breakdown in our national media. Traditional broadcast networks have abandoned their former obligation to advance democracy and promote the public interest by informing the public about both sides of issues relevant to those goals. To attract viewers and advertising revenues, they entertain rather than inform. This threat to the flow of information, vital to democracry's survival, has been compounded in recent years by the growing power of the right wing media that twist the news and deliberately decieve the public to advance their radical agenda.

According to an October 2004 survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA):

72% of Bush supporters believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or a major program for developing them), versus 26 percent of Kerry voters. A seven-month search by 1,500 investigators led by David Kay, working for the C.I.A., found no such weapons.
75% of Bush supporters believed that Iraq was providing substantial support to al-Qaeda, a view held by 30 percent of Kerry supporters. The 9/11 Commission Report concluded that there was no terrorist alliance between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
82% of Bush supporters erroneously believed either that the rest of the world felt better about the U.S. thanks to its invasion of Iraq or that views were evenly divided. Eighty-six percent of Kerry supporters accurately understood that a majority of the world felt worse about our country.
Most Bush supporters believed that Iraq war had strong support in the Islamic world. Kerry's supporters accurately estimated the low level of support in Islamic countries. Even Turkey, the most Westernized Islamic country, was 87 percent against the invasion.
Most significant, the majority of Bush voters agreed with Kerry supporters that if Iraq did not have WMD and was not providing assistance to al-Qaeda the U.S. should not have gone to war. Furthermore, most Bush supporters, according to PIPA, favored the Kyoto Protocol to fight global warming, the treaty to ban land mines, and strong labor and environmental standards in trade agreements, and wrongly believed that their candidate favored these things. In other words, the values and principals were the same. Bush voters made their choice based on bad information.

It's no mystery where the false beliefs are coming from. Both Bush and Kerry supporters overwhelmingly believe that the Bush administration at the time of the 2004 election was telling the American people that Iraq had W.M.D. and that Saddam Hussein had strong links to al-Qaeda. The White House's false message was carried by right-wing media in bed with the administration.

...

Alas, while the righ-wing media are deliberately misleading the American people, the traditional corporately owned media - CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN - are doing little to remedy those wrong impressions.

Kennedy goes on to track the development of the right wing media, their success in coining the term "liberal bias", and their efforts to pepper the airwaves and the mainstream media with a coordinated message

More on the Kennedy article to come.

God isn't partisan

2005-04-16T13:55:00.000-04:00

I'm not religious but I do believe that understanding the role of religion in our society and knowning the underlying doctrine fueling much of the values debate currently raging in this country is essential. Thanks to the Swing State Project for these excellent remarks by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

From Senator Reid:

I am disappointed that in an attempt to hide what the debate is really about, Senator Frist would exploit religion like this. Religion to me is a very personal thing. I have been a religious man all my adult life. My wife and I have lived our lives and raised our children according to the morals and values taught by the faith to which we prescribe. No one has the right to judge mine or anyone else’s personal commitment to faith and religion.

God isn’t partisan.

As His children, he does ask us to do our very best and treat each other with kindness. Republicans have crossed a line today. America is better than this and Republicans need to remember that. This is a democracy, not a theocracy. We are people of faith, and in many ways are doing God’s work. But we represent all Americans, regardless of religion. Our founding fathers had the superior vision to separate Church and State in our democracy. It is a fundamental principle that has allowed our great, diverse nation to grow and flourish peacefully. Blurring the line between Church and State erodes our Constitution, and our democracy. It is a blatant abuse of power. Participating in something designed to incite divisiveness and encourage contention is unacceptable. I would hope that Sen. Frist will rise above something so beyond the pale.

Reality...take three

2005-04-15T19:33:00.000-04:00

O.K.

They have finally flipped their collective lid. I thought the Terry Schiavo fiasco was bad enough but now it appears that if you are for maintaining the time-honored rules of the Senate you hate...HATE, Christians. Democrats, we are told, hate Christians. The judiciary hates Christians and the faith-based people of this once God fearing country need to band together and ban the fillibuster to save the few remnants of Christianity from the secular hordes.

They're taking their case to the airwaves with a syndicated telethon style program later this month to make the case against the fillisbuster and Senate Republican leader Bill Frist has agreed to speak at this electronic tent revival.

According to the New York Times:

"As the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated in almost every recent election, the courts have become the last great bastion for liberalism," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and organizer of the telecast, wrote in a message on the group's Web site. "For years activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the A.C.L.U., have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms."
Frist Set to Use Religious Stage on Judicial Issue

The main stream blogs are going to go nuts on this so I will leave it to them.

I just want to offer one or two thoughts. After the initial shock, my most overriding reaction is...praise Jesus! This is a highly-organized, zealous minority with disproportionate political power and they are beginning to spook mainstream America with their brownshirt tactics. How do I know? Because they are spooking the more rationale elements of their own party. Old school moderate Republicans are beginning to recoil in disgust at the zealots successful hikacking of their party.

First, former Republican Senator John Danforth lamented that his party has allowed its "shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives". Now Rhode Island Republican Lincoln Chafee has distanced himself from Frist and the fillibuster tent revival, expressing discomfort with the close association between the Republican party and a particular religious sect and stressing the importance of separation of church and state.

Another thought for the Democratic party. Keep passing that rope to the Republicans because they are hanging themselves.

Here's a couple of snippets from the better blogs.

From Talking Points Memo

A flier advertising the event refers to "the filibuster against people of faith" and says: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

So Frist wants to cast this, literally, as a war between the believers and the unbelievers. I guess this is part of toning down the rhetoric.

(How much do we have to endure so that this guy can run for president?)

Also on hand for the event will be arch-wingnut and SpongeBob persecutor James Dobson, a man with hands about as clean as Torquemada's, Chuck Colson and various others.

I don't know which is more amusing -- the wingnut jihad against a federal judiciary that is already predominantly Republican or the fact that the intellectual and often literal descendents of the upholders of Jim Crow now seek to enlist the dark legacy of segregation as some sort of arrow in their rhetorical quiver.

And there's this from NewDonkey

he current effort by Christian Right activists and the Grand Old Party to suggest that conservative evangelical Protestant Christians have a religious obligation to oppose the use of Senate filibusters against judicial nominations goes so far beyond any conceivable scripture-based approach to public life as to be actively hilarious.

...

The patent absurdity of pretending that evangelicals have to go so far in the tank for the GOP as to support their parliamentary tactics probably explains why the proponents of this campaign have adopted so paranoid a message. This is not just a matter of obedience to scripture or to God's Will, they say: it's an act of self-defense against a judiciary that hates Christians and is determined to stamp out religious freedom. Never mind that a majority of federal judges were appointed by Republican presidents; this is a life-or-death matter for faith itself.

I think these fanatics are egregiously over-reaching on this subject, and are also offering Democrats a big opening for outreach to people they normally don't talk to. It's a great opportunity for Democrats to simply say to conservative evangelical Christians: we don't hate you, we don't support judicial actions that abridge your rights, and by the way, you might want to take a long look at the leaders who would subordinate your faith to partisan politics.

Let the GOP try to explain to people of faith why the filibuster is the worst threat to Christian religious freedom since Julian the Apostate. And don't give them the illegitimate ammunition of buying into the idea that Phil A. Buster's fate is a struggle between religious and non-religious points of view.

Who's Better Off?

2005-04-15T08:29:00.000-04:00

Statement by Representative Ron Paul (D-TX)
April 6, 2005

   The information Congress was given prior to the war was false. There were no weapons of mass destruction; the Iraqis did not participate in the 9/11 attacks; Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were enemies and did not conspire against the United States; our security was not threatened; we were not welcomed by cheering Iraqi crowds as we were told; and Iraqi oil has not paid any of the bills. Congress failed to declare war, but instead passed a wishy-washy resolution citing UN resolutions as justification for our invasion. After the fact we're now told the real reason for the Iraq invasion was to spread democracy, and that the Iraqis are better off. Anyone who questions the war risks being accused of supporting Saddam Hussein, disapproving of democracy, or "supporting terrorists." It's implied that lack of enthusiasm for the war means one is not patriotic and doesn't support the troops. In other words, one must march lock-step with the consensus or be ostracized.

    However, conceding that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein is a far cry from endorsing the foreign policy of our own government that led to the regime change. In time it will become clear to everyone that support for the policies of pre-emptive war and interventionist nation-building will have much greater significance than the removal of Saddam Hussein itself. The interventionist policy should be scrutinized more carefully than the purported benefits of Saddam Hussein's removal from power. The real question ought to be: "Are we better off with a foreign policy that promotes regime change while justifying war with false information?" Shifting the stated goals as events unravel should not satisfy those who believe war must be a last resort used only when our national security is threatened.

    How much better off are the Iraqi people? Hundreds of thousands of former inhabitants of Fallajah are not better off with their city flattened and their homes destroyed. Hundreds of thousands are not better off living with foreign soldiers patrolling their street, curfews, and the loss of basic utilities. One hundred thousand dead Iraqis, as estimated by the Lancet Medical Journal, certainly are not better off. Better to be alive under Saddam Hussein than lying in some cold grave.

...

  We have seen none of the promised oil production that was supposed to provide grateful Iraqis with the means to repay us for the hundreds of billions that American taxpayers have spent on the war. Some have justified our continuous presence in the Persian Gulf since 1990 because of a need to protect "our" oil. Yet now that Saddam Hussein is gone, and the occupation supposedly is a great success, gasoline at the pumps is reaching record highs approaching $3 per gallon.

...

The whole process is corrupt. It just doesn't make sense to most Americans to see their tax dollars used to fight an unnecessary and unjustified war. First they see American bombs destroying a country, and then American taxpayers are required to rebuild it. Today it's easier to get funding to rebuild infrastructure in Iraq than to build a bridge in the United States. Indeed, we cut the Army Corps of Engineers' budget and operate on the cheap with our veterans as the expenditures in Iraq skyrocket.

    One question the war promoters don't want to hear asked, because they don't want to face up to the answer, is this: "Are Christian Iraqis better off today since we decided to build a new Iraq through force of arms?" The answer is plainly no.

    Sure, there are only 800,000 Christians living in Iraq, but under Saddam Hussein they were free to practice their religion. Tariq Aziz, a Christian, served in Saddam Hussein's cabinet as Foreign Minister - something that would never happen in Saudi Arabia, Israel, or any other Middle Eastern country. Today, the Christian churches in Iraq are under attack and Christians are no longer safe. Many Christians have been forced to flee Iraq and migrate to Syria. It's strange that the human rights advocates in the U.S. Congress have expressed no concern for the persecution now going on against Christians in Iraq. Both the Sunni and the Shiite Muslims support the attacks on Christians. In fact, persecuting Christians is one of the few areas in which they agree - the other being the removal of all foreign forces from Iraqi soil.

    Considering the death, destruction, and continual chaos in Iraq, it's difficult to accept the blanket statement that the Iraqis all feel much better off with the U.S. in control rather than Saddam Hussein. Security in the streets and criminal violence are not anywhere near being under control.

    But there's another question that is equally important: "Are the American people better off because of the Iraq war?"

    One thing for sure, the 1,500 plus dead American soldiers aren't better off. The nearly 20,000 severely injured or sickened American troops are not better off. The families, the wives, the husbands, children, parents, and friends of those who lost so much are not better off.

    The families and the 40,000 troops who were forced to re-enlist against their will - a de facto draft - are not feeling better off. They believe they have been deceived by their enlistment agreements.

    The American taxpayers are not better off having spent over 200 billion dollars to pursue this war, with billions yet to be spent. The victims of the inflation that always accompanies a guns-and-butter policy are already getting a dose of what will become much worse.

    Are our relationships with the rest of the world better off? I'd say no. Because of the war, our alliances with the Europeans are weaker than ever. The anti-American hatred among a growing number of Muslims around the world is greater than ever. This makes terrorist attacks more likely than they were before the invasion. Al Qaeda recruiting has accelerated. Iraq is being used as a training ground for al Qaeda terrorists, which it never was under Hussein's rule. So as our military recruitment efforts suffer, Osama bin Laden benefits by attracting more terrorist volunteers.

    Oil was approximately $27 a barrel before the war, now it's more than twice that. I wonder who benefits from this?

    Because of the war, fewer dollars are available for real national security and defense of this country. Military spending is up, but the way the money is spent distracts from true national defense and further undermines our credibility around the world.

    The ongoing war's lack of success has played a key role in diminishing morale in our military services. Recruitment is sharply down, and most branches face shortages of troops. Many young Americans rightly fear a coming draft - which will be required if we do not reassess and change the unrealistic goals of our foreign policy.

    The appropriations for the war are essentially off-budget and obscured, but contribute nonetheless to the runaway deficit and increase in the national debt. If these trends persist, inflation with economic stagnation will be the inevitable consequences of a misdirected policy.

......

This willingness to give up hard-fought personal liberties has been especially noticeable in the atmosphere of the post-September 11th war on terrorism. Security has replaced liberty as our main political goal, damaging the American spirit. Sadly, the whole process is done in the name of patriotism and in a spirit of growing militant nationalism.

    These attitudes and fears surrounding the 9-11 tragedy, and our eagerness to go to war in the Middle East against countries not responsible for the attacks, have allowed a callousness to develop in our national psyche that justifies torture and rejects due process of law for those who are suspects and not convicted criminals.

    We have come to accept pre-emptive war as necessary, constitutional, and morally justifiable. Starting a war without a proper declaration is now of no concern to most Americans or the U.S. Congress. Let's hope and pray the rumors of an attack on Iran in June by U.S. Armed Forces are wrong.

    A large segment of the Christian community and its leadership think nothing of rationalizing war in the name of a religion that prides itself on the teachings of the Prince of Peace, who instructed us that blessed are the peacemakers - not the warmongers.

For the entire statement visit truthout.org

a letter delayed...

2005-04-10T12:35:00.000-04:00

from Major Sullivan Ballou to his wife Sarah...

July 14, 1861
Camp Clark, Washington

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days - perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movements may be of a few days duration and full of pleasure - and it may be one of some conflict and death to me. "Not my will, but thine, O God be done." If it is necessary that I should fall on the battle field for my Country, I am ready.

I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing - perfectly willing - to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.

But my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys, I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows, when after having eaten for long years the bitter fruits of orphanage myself, I must offer it as the only sustenance to my dear little children, is it weak or dishonorable, that while the banner of my forefathers floats calmly and fondly in the breeze, underneath my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children should struggle in fierce, though useless contests with my love of Country.

I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm Summer Sabbath night, when two-thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying perhaps the last sleep before that of death, while I am suspicious that death is creeping around me with his fatal dart, as I sit communing with God, my Country and thee. I have sought most closely and diligently and often in my heart for a wrong motive in thus hazarding the happiness of those I love, and I could find none. A pure love of my Country and of the principles I have so often advocated before the people - another name of Honor that I love more than I fear death, has called upon me and I have obeyed.

Sarah my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and burns me unresistably on with all these chains to the battle field.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood, around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me - perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often times been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortunes of this world to shield you, and your children from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the Spirit-land and hover near you, while you buffet the storm, with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience, till we meet to part no more.

But, O Sarah! if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladest days and in the darkest nights, advised to your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours, always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.

As for my little boys - they will grow up as I have done, and never know a father's love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long - and my blue eyed Edgar will keep my frolicks with him among the dim memories of childhood. Sarah I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care and your development of their characters, and feel that God will bless you in your holy work.

Tell my two Mothers I call God's blessing upon them. O! Sarah I wait for you there; come to me and lead thither my children.

Sullivan

He died several days later from wounds received at the battle of Bull Run.

The Challenge...

2005-04-08T20:59:00.000-04:00

When I started this blog I had no idea I would focus so much interest on job loss in America. Granted, this thing is growing organically but I have quickly come to realize that the issue of manufacturing/high tech jobs is the great nexus in America. It is the place where the economy, the environment, and politics come together. It should be the ticket for the Democrats to regain the initiative but, thus far, they've failed to fully pick up the charge.

In the wake of White House inaction on a forward-looking energy policy a real grassroots coalition is forming. Arch conservatives have begun to promote energy indepedence as a national security issue. For instance, here's Frank Gaffney taking up an argument that mirrors the "no blood for oil" cries of red-baited opponents to the first and second Gulf Wars.

"Gaffney, who runs the Center for Security Policy think tank, said he had something of an epiphany on the issue last year after attending a conference on the outlook for Saudi Arabian oil reserves. A longtime advocate of nuclear energy and ballistic missile defense, and a member of the neo-conservative movement that pushed for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Gaffney said he realized it's no longer tenable to send billions of dollars in oil proceeds to the Middle East.

"It's a recipe for disaster," he said. "Most of the places we import from have regimes that are at best unstable and at worst openly hostile to the United States. . . . What are we doing giving all this money to the people who are trying to kill us?"

"I think there are a number of things converging," said Gary L. Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate and former head of the Family Research Council who has signed on to a strange-bedfellows coalition of conservatives and environmentalists called Set America Free. "I just think reasonable people are more inclined right now to start thinking about ways our country's future isn't dependent on . . . oil from a region where there are a lot of very bad actors."

An Unlikely Meeting Of the Minds

For Very Different Reasons, Groups Agree on Gas Alternatives

- The Washington Post

Progressives have long approached energy independence from an environmental standpoint based on the belief that the only way to really reduce the import of foreign oil is to aggressively pursue alternative fuels while promoting greater efficiency. This is nothing new and the fact that many on the right refuse to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the idea of human-induced climate change has meant that the two sides have had little to talk about.

The environmental advocates have remained somewhat margainalized because they have yet to make a consistent and convincing argument that the key to job creation is the pursuit of forward-thinking environmental technologies. When they have included the job creation argument it has been as an afterthought, a lesser tiered supporting argument.

Now a new grassroots movement is forming and the movement is putting jobs and security first. As an example, the new North Dakota biodiesel factory was pitched as something that will support farmers, create jobs, improve our national security by lessening our reliance on imported fuels, and create a fuel cycle with less negative environmental impact.

Automobiles make up a significant percentage of U.S. energy consumption but there's a bigger picture and a new organization has stepped forward with an across-the-board, sweeping view of America's energy and economic future. More important, the project is an initiative of major labor unions in league with businesses and environmental groups. Here's the mission statement from the group calling for a new Apollo Project.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy inspired Americans to pursue a goal that seemed beyond our reach: to land a man on the moon within the decade. Eight years later, Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface - proof we can succeed when we apply our expertise, innovation and can-do spirit to a single national endeavor.

Now America has an Apollo Project for the 21st century. Our challenge is to achieve energy independence in one generation. This new Apollo Project, a ten-point plan for energy independence, will bring our country together to rethink and reshape our energy future, to create a stronger economy, a safer world and cleaner environment. The plan calls for diversifying our energy sources, making America less dependent on imported oil and making energy less polluting. It will invest in new technology and expand markets for American durable goods. And, it will increase construction of high performance energy efficient buildings and drive new spending on transportation and public infrastructure.

The new Apollo Project will pay huge dividends: Over 3 million high value added jobs, lower utility bills, increased productivity and competitiveness, cleaner air and water, and improved public health. It will produce substantial energy savings across the economy, and cut our current Persian Gulf oil imports nearly in half.

A new Apollo plan will stimulate the economy and create conditions for sustained long term growth. Just as investments in the space program required the creation of new industries and new products - to smoke detectors, to satellites and cell phones - investing in energy independence will revitalize domestic production and benefit working families.

The Apollo Alliance

Reality...take two

2005-04-04T08:35:00.000-04:00

"Furthermore, I don’t understand the worlds fascination with reality shows. Survivor, The Bachelor, Murder in Small Town X, Faking It, The Contender… it’s endless. Is life so boring that people need to watch the conjured up lives of others?

I have a suggestion of my own for a reality show. Take 15 Bush supporters and throw them in a house in the suburbs of, say, Falloojeh for at least 14 days. We could watch them cope with the water problems, the lack of electricity, the check points, the raids, the Iraqi National Guard, the bombings, and- oh yeah- the ‘insurgents’. We could watch their house bombed to the ground and their few belongings crushed under the weight of cement and brick or simply burned or riddled with bullets. We could see them try to rebuild their life with their bare hands (and the equivalent of $150)…

I’d not only watch *that* reality show, I’d tape every episode."
- from Bagdhad Burning

That's a thought from a woman in Bagdhad after getting a glimpse of American TV for a few months. I rarely watch television myself and rely on NPR and a number of newspapers for my information. That can mean that, while abrest of events, I sometimes miss the full impact of the spectacle that has become American public life. But, as any avid baseball fan will tell you, sometimes radio has a way of delivering an immediacy that television or the photographs cannot. It's not called "theatre of the mind" for nothing.

I'm thinking in particular about an experience during the Schiavo fiasco when I had to put down my book and wonder, "who is this blathering idiot?" The radio was covering the protestors outside the Florida hospice and this man was reduced to an almost incomprehensible sobbing babble as he lamented the fact that federal intervention was not on its way to re-insert the woman's feeding tube. Among the various thoughts running through my mind, the one that kept coming to the fore was that, "surely other Americans must be quietly horrified at these displays."

I suspect that we're witnessing the high watermark of religious conservatism in this country. That doesn't mean that they won't continue to have an impact as their influence slowly begins to ebb. But it does mean that their influence will begin to ebb. In other words, even though the flood waters are receeding they'll still do a great deal of damage.

What do I base my optimism on? Well, first off there's the knowledge that politics in America as elsewhere is a sort of pendulum that swings from left to right and right to left and back again. There's the knowledge that Al Gore received more of the popular vote than George Bush and the reality that as an incumbant, wartime president he barely squeeked by a dull challenger and poor campaigner to win re-election. There are cracks in the Republican strongholds of the heartland as evidenced by Colorado's new Democratic senator and Montana's Democratic governor. And there's the fact that, given enough rope, the religious right wing of the Republican party finally did hang themselves in Florida during the past two weeks.

Here's former Republican Senator John Danforth on the state of his party...

But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.

    The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots.
  In the Name of Politics

    By John C. Danforth
    The New York Times

I usually don't take solace in the Nation but I am hoping that Katha Pollit has it right...

Maybe, just maybe, the religious right and its Republican friends have finally gone too far with the Terri Schiavo case. Americans may tell pollsters the earth was created in six days flat and dinosaurs shared the planet with Adam and Eve, but I don't believe they want Tom DeLay to be their personal physician. I don't think they want fanatics moaning and praying outside the hospital while they're making hard decisions. I don't think they want people getting arrested trying to "feed" their comatose relatives, or issuing death threats against judges and spouses in the name of "life." I don't think John Q. Public wants Jeb Bush to adopt his wife or Newt Gingrich to call her by her first name or Senator Frist to diagnose her by video, or Jesse Jackson to pop in at the last minute for a prayer and a photo-op.

The Terri Schiavo freak show is so deeply crazy, so unhinged, such a brew of religiosity and hypocrisy and tabloid sensationalism, just maybe it is clueing people in to where the right's moral triumphalism is leading us. Before Congress jumped into the act, Republicans may have seen a great opportunity to paint the Democrats as the "party of death." No thanks to the Dems, who mostly cowered, the stratagem backfired: The weekend after Schiavo's feeding tube was withdrawn, 75 percent of Americans told CBS pollsters they wanted government to stay out of end-of-life issues, and 82 percent thought Congress and the President should have kept away.

Backward Christian Soldiers

I disagree with her on one point. The Democrats played this one smart. They saw involvement in the Schiavo case as a trap in which the Republicans would get to paint them as out of touch with this nation of faith. Far better to stand back and watch the religious right self-immolate.

William Grieder puts it this way, also, unfortunately, in the Nation

Here is what I believe: The country has just witnessed an interlude of religious hysteria, encouraged and exploited by political quackery. The political cynicism of Republicans shocked the nation. But even more alarming is the enthusiasm of self-described "pro-life" forces for using the power of the state to impose their obtuse moral distinctions on the rest of us.
Pro-Death Politics

It was one thing when they were focused on gay marriage. Even though many had misgivings about intolerant undertones there was, perhaps, an even greater discomfort over the notion of re-defining marriage. Plus there was the widely held notion that there were more important things to deal with. Stories about judges wearing "the Ten Commandments" emblazoned on their robes struck many as oddities but far removed, (Alabama), from their daily lives. But, for those of us who haven't struggled directly with decisions regarding the end of life and appropriate care for the terminally ill, we can at least easily imagine those scenarios unfolding within our immediate family, and that's what made the Schiavo case jarring for many Americans.

Writing this I was reminded of the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

Canola is King

2005-03-29T17:27:00.000-05:00

How do you grow the economy, generate jobs, decrease our dependence on foreign oil and protect the environment? North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad has found one answer. The Democrat announced last week that the independent company, North Dakota Biodiesel Inc will begin constructing North America's largest biodiesel plant in Minot. Once completed, the $50 million dollar plant will begin transforming North Dakota grown canola into biodiesel.

The immediate potential customers for the plant's product are the growing number of municiple governments who have chosen to fuel their fleet vehicles at least partly on biodiesel. Cities ranging from Berkeley and Seattle to Denver, Fort Collins, and Cambridge, Massachussettes all have some form of biodiesel programs underway.

According to the National Biodiesel Board, Biodiesel is made through a chemical process called transesterification whereby glycerin is separated from fat or vegetable oil. The process leaves behind two products -- methyl esters (the chemical name for biodiesel) and glycerin (a valuable byproduct usually sold to be used in soaps and other products). The resulting fuel can be used in compression-ignition (diesel) engines with little or no modifications or it can blended with petroleum-based diesel fuel.

Biodiesel is bio-degradable and produces less carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and hydrocarbons than petroleum diesel. Advocates also claim that, gallon for gallon, biodiesel emits less global warming gases than its petroleum-based counterpart.

Beyond the immediate construction jobs Senator Conrad estimates that the Minot biodiesel plant will add an additional 100 "manufacturing jobs" to the local economy and bolster the state's farmers.

At the purely grassroots level, crunchy environmentalists have known about the benefits of biodiesel for years. There's an energetic subset of environmentalists and rugged individualists who routinely visit their local restaurants for used vegatable oil which they convert directly into fuel for their diesel powered vehicles.

"Peter Arnold, who works for the Chewonki Foundation, a nonprofit environmental education institution in Wiscasset, Maine, makes regular rounds to five restaurants to collect drums of used cooking oil. In an old pole barn, Arnold and his team combine the oil with special measures of methanol and powdered lye under a strict 120° temperature, stir it for one hour, and let it settle for about 8 hours. The resulting liquid separates into heavy glycerin, which settles to the bottom and is found in things like soap and pharmaceuticals, and a lighter, more plentiful biodiesel, which is instantly ready to burn in any furnace or diesel engine.
Clean Air, Cool Planet

But the point here is not merely to sing the praises of a cleaner fuel source. The point is to demonstrate one of many examples where environmental innovation can lead to the expansion of infrastructure and the creation of home grown jobs. Democratic pundits constantly commenting on the need for their party to create a "narrative" should take a look at red state Democrat Kent Conrad who's bringing home some pork while weaving together a tale of innovation, job creation, energy independence and environmental protection.

Heads in the Sand, part 2

2005-03-27T16:57:00.000-05:00

Fallout from the Republicans' round one win in their bid to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling is beginning to trickle in. A few commentators are chosing to focus on the bigger philosophical picture involved, the Bush administration's refusal to acknowledge global climate change.

Derrick Z. Jackson reports in the Boston Globe that

"Earlier in the month, the former chief scientific adviser to the British government, Lord May of Oxford, bluntly compared Bush to a modern-day Nero. Last fall, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, ''If what the science tells about climate change is correct, then unabated it will result in catastrophic consequences for our world. The science almost certainly is correct."

At the recent London conference, Brown said, ''Environmental issues including climate change have traditionally been placed in a category separate from the economy and from economic policy. But this is no longer tenable. Across a range of environmental issues, from soil erosion to the depletion of marine stocks, from water scarcity to air pollution, it is clear now not just that economic activity is their cause, but that these problems in themselves threaten future economic activity and growth."

Nero and his fiddlers would hear none of that. Asked last month what the science was on global warming, (James Connaughton, White House director of environmental quality) said on CNBC, ''There are many different views."

The science ceased to have many views years ago. The very first sentence in the executive summary of the 2001 National Academies of Science report on climate change begins with, ''Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities . . . " The report further said, ''Global warming could well have serious adverse societal and ecological impacts by the end of this century." The science continues to choke under the White House effect.

Hot air and global warming

The Boston Globe

Thomas Friedman is also focused on the missed opportunities passing by the United States as the Bush administration continues to pursue a fossil fuel driven energy policy. Friedman sites this Wired article on hybrid cars to properly sound the alarm.

"Right now, there are about 800 million cars in active use. By 2050, as cars become ubiquitous in China and India, it'll be 3.25 billion. That increase represents ... an almost unimaginable threat to our environment. Quadruple the cars means quadruple the carbon dioxide emissions - unless cleaner, less gas-hungry vehicles become the norm."
Geo-Greening by Example
The New York Times

Friedman, like many others, fails to connect the last dot. By failing to embrace alternatives to fossile fuels the Bush administration is failing to embrace a new generation of labor intensive technologies that could led to a revitalized manufacturing sector in the United States. A forward thinking US economic team would seek to link up the nascent hybrid industry in the United States with Chinese transportation officials. That's the approach Japanese automakers, in league with their government, are taking.

"Toyota to make Prius hybrid cars in China

Japan's largest automaker Toyota Motor Corp. said Wednesday it has reached an agreement with China FAW Group Corp. to jointly produce Toyota's Prius hybrid-engine cars in China by the end of 2005.

The move marks the first overseas production of the popular hybrid vehicle, which runs on electricity and gasoline.

Since the technology to make hybrid cars is highly sophisticated and difficult to transfer to China in the short term, Toyota will adopt the knockdown method of locally assembling auto parts imported from Japan, while offering technical aid to FAW.

Toyota, which is lagging behind its US and European rivals in the Chinese market, aims to expand its market share by promoting eco-friendly vehicles under China's new auto policy featuring reduction of fuel consumption, the company said.

Under the agreement, the two companies will also consider the future possibility of an FAW-brand vehicle featuring a hybrid system based on Toyota technology, it said.

Toyota plans to raise its annual sales of the Prius to 300,000 units worldwide in 2005. The sales target is equivalent to about seven times the 43,000 Prius cars sold worldwide last year.

Source: Xinhua

What's particularly appealing about this approach is that the Japanese automaker, by manufacturing the components of the cars at its existing plants, is keeping the technology base in Japan while exporting its product abroad. General Motors has also considered striking a deal to produce hybrid cars in China but it appears that Toyota has gotten the jump.

Automobiles are not the only area where investment in greener alternatives can generate jobs. Photovoltaic installation can also become a relatively well paying and labor intensive segment of the economy.

War Games Target Iran

2005-03-26T18:40:00.000-05:00

Two stories on the U.S. and Iran are going under-reported but they underscore the steady march toward a military confrontation between Tel Aviv/Washington and Tehran.

Several wire services note that the joint U.S./Israeli military exercises beginning this month and running into mid-April are focused on destroying incoming Iranian missiles. The aim to is to test, and further refine, the combatibility of the U.S. Patriot anti-missile system with it's Israeli counterpart, Arrow. Arrow targets missiles at atmospheric altitudes while Patriot focuses on lower altitudes.

"Israeli and U.S. officials described the drill, last held in 2001 on the eve of the Iraq war, as routine.

"There is absolutely no connection with this exercise and any event in the region," U.S. Army spokeswoman Connie Summers told the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

But Israeli security sources said Juniper Cobra would treat Iran's most advanced Shahab-3 missiles, which are thought capable of reaching Israel, as the main "threat".

"These war games always take a real enemy into consideration," said a source. "Last time, it was Iraq's Scud missiles. This time around, it's the Iranian Shahabs."
Reuters

For it's part, Iran has been steadily and legally beefing up it's conventional military muscle by acquiring additional small arms.

"The smaller weapons and related material Iran is amassing are of U.S. concern because of their origin — through U.N.-funded programs or technically advanced Western countries — and because they could harm U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan or ultimately Iran, which President Bush has not ruled out as a military target.

Iran says it needs the satellite network, high-tech small arms, night-vision goggles, body armor and advanced communications gear to fight drug smugglers pouring in from Afghanistan.

— The Associated Press

On getting bombed...

2005-03-23T17:17:00.000-05:00

I continue to be impressed with Bagdhad Burning...

Here's the latest entry commemorating the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq...

The sky was lit with flashes of red and white and the ground rocked with explosions on March 21, 2003. The bombing had actually begun on the dawn of the 20th of March, but it got really heavy on the 21st. I remember being caught upstairs when the heavier bombing first began. I was struggling to drag down a heavy cotton mattress from my room for an aunt who was spending a couple of weeks with us and I suddenly heard a faraway ‘whiiiiiiiiiiiiiz’ that sounded like it might be getting closer.

I began to rush then- pulling and pushing at the heavy mattress; trying to half throw, half haul it down stairs. I got stuck halfway down the staircase and, at that point, the whizzing sound had grown so loud, it felt like it was coming out of my head. I shoved again at the mattress and called E.’s name to help lug the thing downstairs but E. was outside with my cousin, trying to see where the missiles were going. I repositioned and began to kick the heavy mattress, not caring how it got downstairs, just wanting to be on the ground floor when the missile hit.

The mattress finally budged and began to slip and slide down the remaining 10 steps, finally landing in a big pile at the end of the staircase. I followed it in a hurry, taking two steps at a time, expecting to feel a big “BOOM” at any moment. I tripped on the last step in the mad dash for the ground floor and ended up in a heap on the cotton mass on the ground. The explosion came the same moment- followed by a series of larger explosions that didn’t sound like the ordinary missiles we had been experiencing the last 40 hours or so.

The house was chaotic that moment. The parents were running, dad trying to locate his battery-powered radio and mother making sure the stove was turned off. She was also yelling orders over her shoulder, commanding us to go into the “safe room” we had specially decorated with duct tape and soft cushions, or ‘bomb-proofed’ as my cousin liked to say. The aunt that was staying with us was running around, shrilly trying to find her two granddaughters (who were already in the safe room with their mother). The cousin was rushing around turning off kerosene heaters and opening windows so that they wouldn’t shatter with the impact. E. hurried in from outside, trying to keep his expression casual under the paleness of his face.

Through all of this, the bombing was getting louder and more frequent- the earth rumbling and shuddering with every explosion. E. was saying something about the sky but the whooshing sound coming from above was so loud, we couldn’t hear what he was saying. “The sky is full of red and white lights…” He yelled, helping me rise shakily from the mattress. “You want to go outside and see?” I looked at him like he was crazy and made him help me drag the mattress into the living room. We rushed back into the safe room and the bombs were still falling loud and fast, one after the other. Sometimes they felt like they were falling right next door, and other times, it felt like they were falling a few blocks away. We knew they were further than that.

The faces in the safe room were white with tension. My cousin’s wife sat in the corner, a daughter on either side, her arms around their shoulders, murmuring prayers softly. My cousin was pacing in front of the safe room door, looking grim and my father was trying to find a decent radio station on the small AM/FM radio he carried around wherever he went. My aunt was hyperventilating at this point and my mother sat next to her, trying to distract her with the voice of the guy on the radio talking about the rain of bombs on Baghdad.

A seemingly endless 40 minutes later, there was a slight lull in the bombing- it seemed to have gotten further away. I took advantage of the relative calm and went to find the telephone. The house was cold because the windows were open to keep them from shattering. I reached for the telephone, fully expecting to find it dead but I was amazed to find a dial tone. I began dialing numbers- friends and relatives. We contacted an aunt and an uncle in other parts of Baghdad and the voices on the other end were shaky and wary. “Are you OK? Is everyone OK?” Was all I could ask on the phone. They were ok… but the bombing was heavy all over Baghdad. Shock and awe had begun.

fromBagdhad Burning

read the rest

UFO's over Iran

2005-03-20T23:31:00.000-05:00

"There is no such thing as a quick, clean war. War will always take you in directions different from what you intended."
Thomas Hammes
counter-insurgency expert

As the refractory peace movement commemorates the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq with a stirring and gutsy demonstration at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, I can't help but wonder if these activists haven't fallen into the same trap that used to snare their nemesises in the upper echelons of the military - fighting the last war. Yes, there is a moral imperative to prod a lethargic public and media into facing the continuing carnage that plagues Iraq every day. It is critically important to remind ourselves and to confront our opposition with the mistakes that led us into this quagmire.

But, while we are focused on Iraq, the pieces are being put into place for another war in another theatre - Iran. And it would be a mistake to assume that the lead-up to a U.S.-backed military adventure in Iran will follow exactly the same path as the one which led us into Bagdhad. This becomes even more challenging because in the early going it looks like the United States is following the same playbook. In particular, Bush administration officials are fueling the fire for action against Iran with the same type of trumped up charges based on scanty or non-existent intelligence.

" A presidential commission due to report to President George W. Bush this month will describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate and not complete enough to allow firm judgments about that country's illicit weapons programs, according to people who have been briefed on the panel's work.

The commission's sharp indictment of U.S. judgments on Iran follows a secretive 14-month review by the panel. Bush ordered it last year to assess the quality of overall U.S. intelligence about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.
"Intelligence about Iran for Bush is called weak"
The International Herald Tribune

Looks can be deceiving. Despite thinly veiled threats of military action from the usual suspects in the Bush administration, military planners are downright squemish when they contemplate a full-scale invasion of Iran. First and foremost, the problem would be an all-too-visible buildup of troops and material on the periphery of Iran. Such a buildup would allow the Mullahs the time and opportunity to undermine U.S. plans by sowing chaos on the world's oil markets or more overtly fueling discord and civil war in Iraq.

Instead, they are viewing a range of options that could possibly include air strikes or clandestine commando raids and the Pentagon is laying the groundwork for these options right now.

Seymour Hersh reports that

"The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer. Much of the focus is on the accumulation of intelligence and targeting information on Iranian nuclear, chemical, and missile sites, both declared and suspected. The goal is to identify and isolate three dozen, and perhaps more, such targets that could be destroyed by precision strikes and short-term commando raids."
The Coming Wars
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
What the Pentagon can now do in secret.
The New Yorker
2005-01-24

Hersh's article helps explain the spat of UFO sightings over Iran in recent months.

"In a media frenzy, newspapers reported last year that U.F.O.'s had been seen by people in several parts of the country, mostly in northern and northwestern regions where Iran's nuclear sites are located.

The state television showed pictures of a sparkling white disc in April and said the object was filmed over Tehran. A reporter for the state run news agency IRNA said he observed a similar object for 90 minutes in the northern city of Bilesavar.

Iran Says U.S. Spy Planes Seen Over Nuclear Sites
The New York Times
2.16.05

The Pentagon appears to be doing three things with the unmanned aerial drones. First, they are looking for an elusive smoking gun in the hands of an illicit Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration's need for absolute evidence of real nuclear weapons work in Iran is a reflection of it's damaged credibility in the wake of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Credibility further weakened by revelations that the Bush administration misled Asian nations on direct clandestine shipments of uranium hexaflouride from North Korea to Libya. There were no direct shipments from North Korea to Libya but the North Koreans have been shipping uranium hexaflouride to Pakistan for years and some of this material, which can be enriched in weapons usuable uranium-235, did make its way from Bush ally Pakistan to Libya.

Second, they are reconnitoring and cateloguing the sites for future military activities. Since the Israeli strike on Iraq's Osirik reactor in the mid-1980s, Iran has taken pains to disperse its nuclear activities to various far flung eastern sites. There are now arguably more than 200 potential targets facing a president or Defense secretary interested in a series of air strikes designed to take out Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program.

Finally, the Bush administration may simply be trying to ratchet up the pressure on Iran as it negotiates with European countries on permanently suspending its uranium enrichment programs.

Even limited military strikes against Iran could set off a chain of events in the region impossible to predict. Most analysts believe that the prospect of cooperation and anything short of belligerence from Iran after air strikes would be non-existent. The United States would be left with uncertainties about it's effectiveness in curtailing a suspected nuclear program and the assurance that it was facing an even more hostile regime bent on retribution.

The peace movement, struggling for a strategy to re-invigorate itself and tap the public's latent misgivings about Iraq, should begin mobilizing against military action in Iran now. Beyond the need to head off yet another misadventure in the Middle East and prevent further loss of life, focusing on Iran provides an avenue to re-kindle the movement. Bush administration sabor rattling on Iran should be enough of a wake-up call.

Many of the people who have come to regard Iraq as a mistake have also bought into the so-called "pottery barn" rule - we broke it, we have to pay for it. They are skittish about a further spiral into chaos and full-scale civil war in the wake of a U.S. troop pull-out. These same people, a majority in recent polls, clearly have no stomache for military action against another Middle Eastern country. We need to raise their voices now.

Focusing on Iran doesn't mean abandoning Iraq, quite the opposite. The lessons and problems from Iraq can be used to paint a sobering case against military intervention in Iran. As former Clinton official Kenneth Pollack noted, "Iran has three times the population, four times the land area, and five times the problems," as Iraq.

Weapons inspector David Kay articulates a different path for Iran, based on his experiences assessing the intelligence failures that led us into Iraq. "The goal, and one that is reachable, is to craft a set of tools and transparency measures that so tie Iran's nuclear activities to the larger world of peaceful nuclear activities that any attempt to push ahead on the weapons front would be detectable and very disruptive for Iran. "

Heads in the Sand

2005-03-16T20:37:00.000-05:00

The Republican-controlled Senate used a procedural manuever to deliver a stinging defeat today to conservationalists opposed to oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). By attaching a drilling provision to the annual budget resolution, drilling proponents in the Senate have attempted to skirt the normally applicable Senate rules and subject drilling in ANWR to a straight up or down vote. Drilling opponents failed by two votes to strip the drilling provision from the budget. Seven Republicans -- Lincoln Chafee (RI), Norm Coleman (MN), Susan Collins (ME), Mike DeWine (OH), John McCain (AZ), Gordon Smith (OR), and Olympia Snowe (ME) -- joined the majority of Democrats in a vote to delete the ANWR language.

The vote may have more symbolic resonance than any real impact on either the oil industry or domestic oil supplies. It certainly will do little to reduce the cost of oil which reached record highs on the futures market today. A recent, overlooked article in the New York Times reveals that big oil has essentially lost interest in what they see as a miniscule amount of recoverable oil. According to the Times:

"In 2002 BP withdrew financial support from Arctic Power, a lobbying group financed by the state of Alaska, after an earlier withdrawal by Chevron Texaco. BP, long active in Alaska, later moved its team of executives to Houston from Alaska, a company executive said.

    "We're leaving this to the American public to sort out," said Ronnie Chappell, a BP spokesman, of the refuge. About a year ago, ConocoPhillips also stopped its financial support for Arctic Power, said Kristi A. DesJarlais, a company spokeswoman.

    Ms. DesJarlais said her company had a "conceptual interest" in the refuge but "a more immediate interest in opportunities elsewhere."

    Other companies have taken similar positions. George L. Kirkland, an executive vice president of Chevron Texaco, said a still-banned section in the Gulf of Mexico, where the company has already drilled, was of more immediate interest. ExxonMobil also has shown little public enthusiasm for the refuge. Lee R. Raymond, the chairman and chief executive, said in an television interview last December, "I don't know if there is anything in ANWR or not."
Big Oil Steps Aside in Battle over Arctic
    By Jeff Gerth
    The New York Times

    Monday 21 February 2005

At the low end of the spectrum, the estimated recoverable petroleum in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge would amount to about 200 days worth of oil for the nation. The one company that might have a concrete idea of what does lie under ANWR is Chevron which drilled an exploratory well there in the 1980s.

"Ken Bird, a geological survey official...said the federal geologists did not have access to test data from the only exploratory well drilled on the refuge...An official with one of the companies, speaking anonymously because of the confidentiality of the test, said that if the results had been encouraging the company would be more engaged in the political effort to open the refuge."

Bush, who has long favored opening up ANWR and other federally protected lands to oil and natural gas exploration, told reporters today that, "demand is outracing supply, and supplies are getting tight. And that's why you're seeing the price reflect it. And hopefully there will be more conservation around the world, better conservation around the world,"

But, the Bush administration track record on energy conservation, alternative energy sources, and technological innovation has been abmissally weak. In addition to supporting a polluting source of energy, the continued U.S. reliance on oil (most of it from foreign sources) also depletes American wealth. We're importing oil but we are exporting capital and that capital could be better used fostering technological innovation here at home. That's the real impact of trade deficits and the seemingly obscure matter impacts anyone who would like to believe that they'll have a chance for decent employment in this country in the year's ahead.

Once again, Reaganite Paul Craig Roberts defines the problem...

"The disappearing US economy can also be seen in the exploding trade deficit. As more employment is shifted offshore, goods and services formerly produced domestically become imports. Nothink economists and Bush administration officials claim that America's increasing dependence on imported goods and services is evidence of the strength of the US economy and its role as engine of global growth.

This claim ignores that the US is paying for its outsourced goods and services by transferring its wealth and future income streams to foreigners. Foreigners have acquired $3.6 trillion of US assets since 1990 as a result of US trade deficits."
America's Has-Been Economy

Counterpunch
March 14, 2005

When I started this fledgling blog just a few days ago, I had no sense that I would be devoting so much early space to economic matters, but I also intended it to develop organically, subject to the ever changing whim of my interests. A fascinating article on the positive ways in which government can provide the underpinnings of a vibrant job producing economy appears in the current issue of the the Washington Monthly. It dovetails nicely with the discussions I detailed in American Jobsand in any critique of the Bush Administration's retrograde energy policies.

"But there is perhaps no economic sector that is undergoing a more profound evolution, or in which government investments could make a bigger difference, than energy. As India and China continue their rapid industrialization, and with it their need for oil, analysts predict that the price of oil, already sky-high, will grow even more prohibitive—which means that whichever companies develop the most effective alternative fuels and energy-efficiency technology will revolutionize the industry, and whichever countries can produce those breakthroughs may become rich on it, the Bahrains of the 21st century.

Right now, however, the United States is not poised to be one of those countries. Demand in America for electric-gas hybrid cars already outstrips supply, but Ford is so behind the curve that it's leasing its hybrid technology from Toyota. Europe, meanwhile, is setting the pace on the next promising auto technology; clean diesel-electric hybrids. Companies in Europe and Asia have also made more progress than have their American counterparts in developing the technology for crafting energy-efficient appliances, offices, and factories—a consequence of higher energy taxes and stricter environmental regulations in those countries.

The Bush administration's most vigorous response to all this has been to increase the funding for research into hydrogen-powered cars. Hydrogen technology is promising. But it is also decades away from the market, and even hydrogen buffs believe the administration has gone about its program the wrong way, trying to build fuel cells before figuring out the more daunting challenges of how to extract and transport hydrogen. Moreover, there's a creeping suspicion that hydrogen may end up being far too expensive to compete with other, more feasible, and probably cheaper fuels like biomass ethanol, a technology in which America happens to be a leader. Betting on a single alternative fuel source, hydrogen, at the expense of others is a classic case of “picking winners and losers.” The truth is, no one knows yet which technologies or energy sources will define the future.

A better strategy, says Harvard's John Holdren, would be for the federal government to raise automobile fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards, impose a carbon cap-and-trade system for factories and power-plants, and let the market decide which new energy sources and technologies are the best. These ideas now have broader backing than they did a decade ago. The bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy issued a report in December calling such measures the most critical to ensure America's energy future—and that commission's members includes the CEOs of old-line energy giants such as Exelon and ConocoPhillips. And, Holdren told me, executives at old economy companies from Monsanto to Dow Chemical have signed on. “Five years ago, we didn't have a shot at getting them on board,” said Holdren, “but the situation is getting dire enough that now they're leading the charge.” Still, many sectors, including the automobile and power industries, vehemently oppose higher CAFE standards and carbon emission limits, and the president has repeatedly rejected them.

America's economy is losing its competitive edge and Washington hasn't noticed.
The Washington Monthly

Environmental Impacts

2005-03-16T18:03:00.000-05:00

The adversaries in the battle over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge tend to pick different seasons for their fact finding missions. Drilling proponents usually hit the North Slope in the dead of winter and come back with anecdotes that compare the pristine wilderness to the "dark side of the moon." Opponents, on the other hand, venture to the coastal plain of the refuge in summer and come back with anecdotes painting the area being considered for drilling as an American Serenghetti.

So, just what impact will oil exploration have on the Wildlife Refuge? Interior Secretary Gale Norton said in yesterday's New York Times that, "While we cannot promise that there will be no impact on the wildlife and habitat of the 1002 area, we can promise no significant impact." That statement puts the fomer wise use movement attorney at odds with over 1,000 scientists who oppose drilling in the refuge on ecological grounds.

Here's what they had to say in a February letter to president Bush...

"The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the United States’ only conservation unit that encompasses an intact arctic ecosystem, is invaluable for scientific research. It is also uniquely sensitive to disturbance, making it virtually impossible to mitigate the effects of oil development. Sacrificing this ecosystem for an insignificant supply of our nation’s energy that will not reach the market for a decade does not represent balanced resource management. Instead, we urge you to support permanent protection of the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain.

Five decades of biological study and scientific research have confirmed that the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge forms a vital component of the biological diversity of the refuge and the arctic region generally. In contrast to the broad coastal plain to the west of the Arctic Refuge, the coastal plain within the refuge is much narrower. This unique compression of habitats concentrates the occurrence of a wide variety of wildlife and fish species...In fact, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Arctic Refuge coastal plain contains the greatest wildlife diversity of any protected area above the Arctic Circle.

the National Academies of Science, the U.S. Geological Survey, the
international Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Secretariat, and others have issued additional findings about the impacts of oil
development in Arctic ecosystems, providing further evidence that if oil development proceeds, much of the wildlife, water, and
cultural resources for which the Arctic Refuge was established would be severely diminished or lost. In addition, recent studies
reveal that the potential oil reserves of the refuge are distributed throughout the coastal plain, requiring development to spread
across most of the coastal plain, which would compound the impacts of oil development."

You can find the full text of the letter and other arguments against opening up ANWR at the Defenders of Wildlife.

Bankrupt

2005-03-14T22:01:00.000-05:00

Kudo's to Paul Krugman for putting last week's vote on the bankrupt bill into larger perspective.

"But the underlying economic trends have been reinforced by an ideologically driven effort to strip away the protections the government used to provide. For example, long-term unemployment has become much more common, but unemployment benefits expire sooner. Health insurance coverage is declining, but new initiatives like health savings accounts (introduced in the 2003 Medicare bill), rather than discouraging that trend, further undermine the incentives of employers to provide coverage.

Above all, of course, at a time when ever-fewer workers can count on pensions from their employers, the current administration wants to phase out Social Security."

I also have to marvel at the transformation of Arianna Huffington. I used to believe that she was a ferocious conservative but here's her take on the bankrupt bill.

"In a normal world, those elected to represent the interests of the people would have fought for bankruptcy legislation that would, well, represent the interests of the people. But not in Beltway Bizarroland. Instead of cracking down on predatory lending practices, closing loopholes that favor the wealthy, and strengthening the safety net for working people, single mothers and elderly Americans struggling to recover from a financial setback, the Senate put together a nasty little bill that reads like a credit industry wish list."

American Jobs

2005-03-14T17:54:00.000-05:00

"The sons of bitches at their desks would jus' chop folks in two to protect their margins of profit."
- Muley Graves,
from the Grapes of Wrath

38 year old Greg Spotts spent the better part of 2003 traveling the country interviewing people who've been outsourced, downsized, or find themselves underemployeed. The resulting documentary, "American Jobs," is a powerful indictment of corporate America's betrayal of American workers in blue states and red States alike.

While good paying American jobs have been disappearing a corresponding jobs bonzanza has taken hold in India. The booming Indian outsourcing industry recently reached the one million job mark. According to Spotts, the Bush administration neither compiles or releases data on job migration, making a direct correlation impossible to calculate. But to Spotts and many other observers it appears obvious that the majority of the software and other high tech jobs in India almost certainly were jobs once held by American workers - a notion backed up by the Wall Street Journal which claims the United States lost almost 900,000 hi-tech jobs from 2000 to 2004.

American Jobs is filled with heartbreaking stories of middle managers forced to take the bitter pill of training their own guest worker replacements. After the training, the guest worker returns to his/her nation of origin at company expense and the American middle manager has made himself obsolete. Learning about this phenomenom on PBS's Now I was suddenly struck by the sinister underpinnings of Bush's Guest Worker initiative. Never one to fail to give big business a break at the expense of the little guy, is Bush pushing this part of his proposed immigration legislation to make it still easier for American corporations to replace indigenous workers with cheaper foreign counterparts?

Former Reaganite Paul Craig Roberts notes that, "the US is bursting at the seams with unemployed computer engineers and well-educated professionals who are displaced by outsourcing and H-1B...(guest worker) visas." President Bush paints the guest worker program as a system which allows foreign workers the opportunity to temporarily fill a job that "no American would be willing to take." This can be true to some extent but consider Cincinnati-based Convergys Corp. The Ohio company has a workforce containing some 10,000 Indian employees. "Why? Because it can hire Indian university graduates for $240 a month, a sum that is a small fraction of the US poverty level income." At those rates it becomes cost effective to transport foreign born employees to the United States for training and then ship them back to their native countries.

""The biggest surprise I found was how remarkably similar the stories of the software programmers were with the textile workers," he says. "One drove a pickup truck and got his coffee at Dunkin Donuts. The other drove a German car, lived in a beautiful gated community and had a master's degree in programming. But they were cast off in the same way, when their employers figured out there were people who could do their jobs cheaper."
- Greg Spotts

This is not just the question of individual jobs lost and economic hardships visited on certain American families. In the case of software and technology, American businesses are actually buttressing future competitors by transferring know-how and technology out of the country. In other words, U.S. companies are planting the seeds of tomorrow's innovations in Bangalore as opposed to Palo Alto. As Spotts told CNN:

"The scary thing is other countries are finding ways to target jobs up and down the value chain. And the experiences of textile workers who's work has gone to Mexico or China are very similar to the experiences of software programmers whose work has gone to India. And I think we're starting to risk hollowing out the middle class and hollowing out our own earnings power if we just keep driving forward in the same direction."
- Greg Spotts
Roberts agrees:
"Until recent years, US companies employed Americans to produce the goods that Americans consumed. Employment supported sales, and sales supported employment. No more. By their shortsighted policy of moving US jobs abroad, our corporations are destroying their American markets."

Church, State... Culture Wars Part 2

2005-03-13T21:34:00.000-05:00

"We view things not only from different sides, but with different eyes; we have no wish to find them alike."

Pascal

"But never mind all that...Thomas Van Orden admonishes anyone who gets stuck on the fact that he sleeps nightly in a tent in a wooded area; showers and washes his clothes irregularly; hangs out in a law library; and survives on food stamps and the good graces of acquaintances who give him a few bucks from time to time.

What is important, Van Orden says, is "I wrote myself to the Supreme Court."

That he did and with a case that involves an issue that has divided liberals and conservatives as well as lower federal courts for decades: the display of a Ten Commandments monument on government property. "

Supreme Court on a Shoestring
Homeless Man Takes On Texas, Religious Display

The Washington Post

A combination of guts and sheer tenacity make Van Orden one of the more interesting, and problematic, characters in the culture wars. He's challenging a granite rendition of the Ten Commandments on the capitol grounds in Austin, Texas. The monument, Van Orden argues, violates the establishment clause of the Constitution's 1st Amendment, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

In particular, Van Orden argues that, by placing the monument on capitol grounds, "the government is impermissibly discriminating in favor of some religious denominations and sects. The Supreme Court long has held that the government may not favor or prefer one religion over others." In this case, according to Van Orden, "the government is expressing the religious beliefs of some religions. Many prominent religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, reject the Ten Commandments’ view that there is a single God who dictates rules for behavior."

Van Orden presents us with a problem because while he is right on the merits of his case, a successful outcome would present the Left and proponents of tolerance with something of pyrrhic victory - the religious right, already blinded by a paranoid fury, would again claim that Christianity and the very underpinnings of the country are under relentless attack. This case, like Michael Newdow's one man effort to remove the phrase "under god" from the Pledge of Allegiance, reminds me of the necessity to "pick your battles."

Newdow's case is even stronger than Van Orden's. Congress passed a law mandating that words "under God" be inserted into the nation's official Pledge of Allegiance. That would seem clearly at odds with a Constitution that says, "Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion."

Newdow and Van Orden should be commended for the strength of their convictions and the considerable courage in the face of relentless attack dogs. Regardless, do their cases pass what I like to refer to as "the rat's ass test?" Chances are, that's the uncomfortable conclusion that the Supreme Court will reach with their decision on Van Orden. They dodged a bullet on the Newdow case by ruling that the father didn't have standing to bring the case before the court.

The problem is the time and energy invested on fights such as these distract from some of the bigger battles against the bigotry and intolerance exemplified by the referendums prohibiting civil unions and defining marriage as between members of the opposite sex. We're left with little choice but to defend what Jefferson called the Constitution's "wall of separation between church and state" and to fight against efforts by some to impose their particular brand of religion on society at large. In the same defense we are providing the Right with organizing fodder.

God's Politics...Culture Wars Part 1

2005-03-12T23:21:00.000-05:00

It's no secret that we're seeing a religious resurgence in this country unparalled since the Second Great Awaking of the 19th century. And, like the progressives of the late 19th Century, today's evangelical movement has infiltrated politics at all levels. The Christian Coalition has seen it's efforts to influence the ballot box bear fruit with the election of a president who regularly quotes from the Methodist Hymnal.

On the one side, many feel that the Right is imposing their particular brand of religion upon society at large. The Republican Party, bolstered by right wing Evangelicals has been able to define the terms of moral debate in this country and they have set very narrow parameters for the subject appropriate to such a debate - abortion, gay marriage, and as one conservative commentator put it, the fact that "the likes of the ACLU, Americans United, People for the (Anti) American Way, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation are feverishly working to get and keep God, the Pledge of Allegiance, the 10 Commandments and prayer out of our schools, government offices, public buildings, parks and other accommodations." That last line highlights, for me, the great irony. Many on the Christian right, even at the pinnacle of power, still manage to paint themselves as persecuted.

When I worked as a nuclear disarmament activist we would face a technical wall erected by the proponents of nuclear bomb testing. They were the "experts." We had to educate ourselves about the processes in order to combat the technical mumbo jumbo. I would argue the same method is needed in the culture wars. We need to reclaim religion even if we are not particularly devout. We need to return to the source material as a way of undercutting the self-professed moral superiority of the conservative Christians.

Along those lines, Jim Wallis' new book "God's Politics: How the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It" is a must read.

Jim Wallis was raised in a Midwest evangelical family. As a teenager, his questioning of the racial segregation in his church and community led him to the black churches and neighborhoods of inner-city Detroit. He spent his student years involved in the civil rights and antiwar movements. While at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, Jim and several other students started a small magazine and community with a Christian commitment to social justice which has now grown into Sojourners whose combined print and electronic media have a readership of more than 100,000 people.

"My conversion text is the 25th chapter of Matthew, where Jesus said, “As you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done to me.” I don’t hear Bush ever talking about the Sermon on the Mount; I just don’t hear it. I’m hard pressed to think of teachings of Jesus that are being talked about in the White House.

Jesus didn’t speak at all about homosexuality. There are about 12 verses in the Bible that touch on that question. Most of them are very contextual. There are thousands of verses on poverty. I don’t hear a lot of that conversation.

What you really don’t hear [from Bush] is Jesus saying, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Or even more, how many sermons have we heard since Sept. 11 on the text, “Love your enemies?” It hasn’t been a very popular text since Sept. 11. Well, we should at least have a debate about what Jesus meant by blessed are the peacemakers and love your enemies in a world full of terrorism and tyranny.

I remember Bill O’Reilly one night was yelling at me about Iraq. I said, “Bill, what would Jesus do? Can you imagine him climbing into the cockpit of a B-52 and dropping a load of bombs over Baghdad?” And Bill said, “Well, Jesus would surely want to protect the American people.” And I said, “Really? What about the Iraqis?” “Well, well, them, too.” Once you start talking about this in a religious frame, it’s troubling.

The Republicans will not hold [Bush] accountable to the biblical prophets when they think all the issues are about abortion, and the Democrats don’t even know the language. He gets away with it. There’s got to be a progressive religious response to Bush that says, “We don’t quibble with your piety, but we challenge your theology.” There is no American exceptionalism in the Bible. The Gospel is uneasy with empire—except American empire?"

-Jim Wallis
Interviewed in Mother Jones Magazine

Hell's Kitchen remembered...

2005-03-12T19:42:00.000-05:00

There's a lot of things I want to write about in this fledgling blog, but first, a little more on New York.

As a suburban boy, born and bred, something deep in my middle-class soul responded to New York City as nothing more than a very imaginative and entertaining movie.

...at night I could peek out the little circular window in the roof and watch the straight hookers fight with the transvestite hookers ("Hey baby, three holes is better than two!"). The neighborhood (Hell's Kitchen) was nothing like the Yuppie paradise it is today, and for laughs I would hang out at an all-night Greek souvlaki shop in Times Square and see hoodlums steal eclairs. Or I'd take a quick spin around the block to check out the goings-on with the local pushers, bag ladies and soapbox preachers. The cultural life was rich: Lincoln Center, Broadway, porno shops, "snuff" movie houses and the Port Authority bus station.

Eric Bogosian
Drinking in America

Greetings

2005-03-11T23:29:00.000-05:00

Greetings from New York.

A near perpetual state of outrage over the political developments in this country finally prompted me to start blogging. So, here I am. Live from New York, trying to figure what to say in the first entry.

Maybe it's best to set the stage, but what can you say about New York? Well, there's this from James Baldwin. Born both black and homosexual during the early to middle part of the last century, Baldwin had a certain empathy for the downtrodden and the outsider.

New York seemed very strange indeed. It might, almost, for strange barbarity of manner and custom, for the sense of danger and horror barely sleeping beneath the rough, gregarious surface, been some exotic city of the East. So superbly was it of the present that it seemed to have nothing to do with the passage of time: time might have dismissed it as thouroughly as time had dismissed Carthage and Pompeii. It seemed to have no sense whatever of the exigencies of human life; it was so familiar and so public that it became, at last, the most dispairingly private of cities. One was continually being jostled yet longed, at the same time, for the sense of others, for a human touch; and if one was never - it was the general complaint - left alone in New York, one had, still, to fight very hard in order not to perish of loneliness. This fight, carried on in so many different ways, created the strange climate of the city.

Or there's Jane Jacob's in her great celebration of the city neighborhood, "the Death and Life of Great American Cities." Here, she is referring to the West Village but she could just as easily be referring to the eastern part of Williamsburg where I reside:

...this is that almost unconsciously enforced, well-balance line showing, the line between the city public world and the world of privacy.

This line can be maintained, without awkwardness to anyone because of the great plenty of opportunities for public contact in the enterprises along the sidewalks, or on the sidewalks themselves as people move to and fro or deliberately loiter when they feel like it, and also because of the presence of many public hosts so to speak, proprietors of meeting places...(bodegas, deli's, bars, coffee shops, laundramats, butchers... where one is free either to hang around or dash in and out, no strings attached.

It is possible in a city street neighborhood to know all types of people without unwelcome entanglements, without boredom, necessity for excuses, explanations, fears of giving offense, embarrassments respecting impositions or comitments and all such paraphernalia which accompany less limited relationships. It is possible to be be on excellent sidewalk terms with people who are very different from oneself, and even, as time passes, on very familiar public terms with them. Such relationships can, and do, endure for many years, for decades; they could never have formed without that line, much less endured. They form precisely because they are by-the-way of peoples' normal public sorties.