Excerpt from a piece I wrote for the online journal Swans.com:
It's long past time that we stopped referring to our wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, and now Israel's war against Lebanon, in dispassionate terms involving differing views of geopolitics, strategic interests, mistaken foreign policy, rights of self defense, etc.
We are talking about crimes against decency, crimes against humanity. We are talking about war crimes.
And we are talking about evil.
People are being slaughtered -- civilians, children. They are not combatants, not soldiers. They are not, in that most obscene phrase so readily accepted by the corporate media, "collateral damage." They are innocents being blown apart, blinded, burned, paralyzed, hideously deformed, living and dying in agony.
We are talking about evil.
The rest of my piece can be found at:
http://www.swans.com/library/art12/rdeck067.html
I know online polls are notoriously inaccurate, but one takes hope where one can get it.
An MSNBC online poll finds that nearly 90% of people voting think that Bush should be impeached.
Out of 268,892 responses, 87% said that they believed "between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial."
Too bad we have a cowardly Congress.
“When were the media better?” Gore Vidal was asked by an interviewer for The
Progressive magazine.
They were never much good, Vidal said, but were a little better in the past. For example, they even had foreign correspondents.
“There’s nobody abroad now. The New York Times gave up being anything except a kind of shadow of the Wall Street Journal. The Washington Post is a Court circular. What has the Emperor done today? And who will be the undersecretary of the secretary of agriculture? As though these things mattered.”
Gore Vidal has it right again.did it
"If it hadn't been for books we would have been entirely at the mercy of sex. Books steadied us, they gave us gravity."
Anatole Broyard
I haven't read Broyard's memoir Kafka Was the Rage but every writer can surely identify with that observation -- either as observed truth or wishful thinking.
Broyard was writing about life in New York right after WW 2: "1946 was a good time -- perhaps the best time -- in the twentieth century. The war was over and there was a terrific sense of coming back, of repossessing life. Rents were cheap, restaurants were cheap, and it seemed to me that happiness itself might be cheaply had."
Sounds like another book for To Read tower. [Sigh]
Columnist Molly Ivins tells a delightful story about Bill Moyers in a column in which she proposes him for president:
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LBJ called on Moyers to say the blessing at a dinner.
"Speak up, Bill," Lyndon roared. “I can’t hear you.”
Moyers replied, “I wasn’t speaking to you, sir.”
That would be the point of a run by Moyers: He doesn’t change to whom he is speaking just because some president is yelling at him.
---------
He would get my vote.
You can write Moyers at P.O. Box 309, Bernardsville, NJ 07924
Zimbabwe's Parliament is thinking about empowering the secret police to eavesdrop on mail, e-mail, and phones without any court approval.
Isn't it great when other countries begin to emulate us?
The folks on the editorial board at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have to be among the most naïve people in the business. An editorial reflects on how they had been offended by Bill Clinton -- "a liar, an adulterer, a cad, and a failed feminist" -- but that they had expected Bush to bring "honor and dignity back to the White House."
I don't know what alternative universe they have been living in the last five years, but a little reality may finally be seeping in.
"...we were stunned when the president "greeted" the chancellor of Germany in a manner we consider inappropriate."
You know, that sneak attack massage on German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"Inappropriate?" Well, that's one word for it.
"80% of Republicans are just Democrats who don't know what's going on."
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Good line which points up the utter failure of the corporate media to tell the truth.
But unfortunately, Democrats aren't that much better, otherwise they would be demanding honest elections, impeachment, and an end to our murderous rape of Iraq and Israel's murderous rape of Lebanon.
A Mideastern bully with weapons of mass destruction is destroying a defenceless neighboring state, smashing its infrastructure, slaughtering men, women and children.
We must do something!
Oh, wait. It's our friend Israel who is always on the side of the angels, no matter how many innocents they kill.
Never mind.
A friend responds to the last entry: "... skydiving -- you know, where first you fall and then you float, never breaking a sweat."
Never?
I would:
1) just before I jumped out.
2) as I jumped out.
3) as I fell, wondering if I got the defective parachute.
4) as I fell, wondering if I got the defective parachute-opening-thingie.
5) as I fell, wondering if I still remembered how to use parachute-opening-thingie.
6) as I fell, realizing that I had lost count.
7) as the chute opened, from the terror of suddenly ascending when I thought I was dead.
8) as I floated over a lovely but VAST, UNBROKEN expanse of tree canopy.
9) as I floated over a lovely but vast, unbroken expanse of tree canopy, wondering which,if any, part of me would remain unbroken.
10) as I landed.
11) as I sat, alone, in a lovely but vast and oddly silent forest, wondering:
11b) "NOW WHAT?"
11c) "Just *how* high is this branch?"
Sylvia
I've never been interested in organized sports -- or any other sport.
The only one I ever engaged in was skydiving -- you know, where first you fall and then you float, never breaking a sweat.
But this book about baseball sounds fascinating. Available from Powells:
http://www.powells.com/dose/cgi-bin/product?isbn=0393324818
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"Moneyball" by Michael Lewis is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Lewis sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win...how can we not cheer for David?
López Obrador, the man who lost the Mexico presidential election because of some of the same dirty tricks that allowed the Republicans to steal the elections for Bush, told a crowd of more than a million people to commit acts of "peaceful civil resistance" to force a vote-by-vote recount. He is not about to give in without a real fight.
It's a pity that Gore and Kerry didn't have the same guts. We might not have had to put up with the ugly and dangerous Bush for the past several years. Instead the gutless fools rolled over and let the Republicans steal the elections.
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The Green Knight says:
That's the bit I fail to understand, just why particularly Al Gore gave way so quickly when the voting process was so obviously riddled with problems.
It came as a great shock to hear a would-be leader of a country say, in effect 'ok, I'll accept that you don't want to count everybody's votes - you win.'
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Deck replies:
The same thing could happen this year and in 2008 if the Democrats don't start getting some backbone. Both Gore and Kerry could have put millions in the street fighting for honest elections if they had not been such gutless wimps.
The chainsaws are roaring right outside my window, destroying trees that were young when Abraham Lincoln was in the White House. A snarling bulldozer is ripping the soil, uprooting smaller trees near the creek.
It's a sign of "progress."
Three years ago we moved into a home in a forest. We bought an existing house on a double lot in a hilly community filled with homes set among huge trees, small streams, waterfalls, parks and nature trails. Homes were hidden between the cedars, Douglas firs, hemlocks, spruce, beech and maples. Rhododendrons, dogwoods and other flowering trees made spring bright with promise. Summer was a hundred shades of green; fall an impressionist painting. Winters were mild, with snow as an occasional seasoning. ....
Three years later, our community in a forest has become a subdivision with some trees.
Full story:
http://www.swans.com/library/art12/rdeck066.htm
The AP has found away to cover the Katrina aftermath -- quote a celebrity.
It reports that Brad Pitt took a look at New Orleans and said he was shocked at the devastation that remains almost a year after the hurricane.
Nothing is ever quite real to the corporate media unless a figure in authority or a celebrity sees and comments on it.
"this is Bush country, where a rising tide lifts all yachts"
Molly Ivins
Bush Countdown
We will be free of Bush in 923 days
The best quitting smoking story I ever heard was from a colleague at work at the Miami news.
He lived about 45 minutes from work. He started out one morning and quickly discovered that he had only one cigarette with him. He began debating what he should do -- smoke it right away? Wait until he was halfway there? Make a detour and buy a new pack?
As he approached the office, he suddenly realized that the last half-hour of his life had been devoted to only one thought -- when was he going to smoke that cigarette. He got so disgusted with himself, he broke the cigarette in half, and tossed it out the window.
He never smoked again.
My first wife, Z, was a smoker. At her request, I used hypnosis on her to try to get her to stop smoking. Once when I put her under, I told her that she would light the next cigarette at the filter end and take a deep puff -- and from then on every cigarette would taste like burnt filter. Then I told her she wouldn't remember what I had instructed her when she woke up. It worked a charm.
A few minutes after she woke up, she lit a cigarette -- on the filter end -- and began coughing and choking and cursing me out. It didn't stop her, but it took her a week to learn to like the taste of burnt filter.
She never quit and lung cancer killed her in the end. She was only 54.
Super nurse (and soon-to-be lawyer) Mary Kay Collins been telling her patients about the God diet for 15 years – “If God made it, it's good for you. The more man has to do with it, the less you should eat it.”
She was responding to a piece in the New York Times in which Andrew Weil deplores the fact that there are fast-food joints in 4 out of 10 hospitals. The problem, Weil says “is the processed food ... has increasingly displaced whole, natural food in the American diet.
“Modern food technology has transformed slow-digesting grains into snack foods made of pulverized, refined starches that, once eaten, quickly raise blood sugar, promoting insulin resistance and weight gain in genetically susceptible individuals most of us, unfortunately.”
Best stick to Mary Kay’s God diet.
Online media watchdog Cursor.org linked to my latest Swan's piece about the media's partners-in-crime approach to coverage of the Bush administration. Cursor [http://www.cursor.org/] noted that:
"Recent *examples of media spin* are said to suggest that 'little could happen on the *national security front* that the media would view as a loss for Republicans.' "
The second link is to my article, though I don't how to preserve it here. You can find it at:
http://www.swans.com/library/art12/rdeck065.html
"The president is an international fugitive from justice and the Bush's Bitches (formerly known as the U.S. Congress) are talking about trying to circumvent the Supreme Court's ruling. Bush is their Frankenstein monster now, and I think they secretly know it. They all created him. They took the brain of Rove, the black heart of Cheney, the guts of Bernie Kerik, the sexual ambiguity of Coulter/Gannon and swagger of Benny Hill and, voila, FrankenBush."
Alan Bisbort
"the flaming quicksand of an unwinnable war."
Bob Herbert
Bush Countdown
We will be free of Bush in 928 days
******************************************
I hope everyone in America sends this to their
congressmen today, on the Fourth of July.
******************************************
An Open Letter to Congress
by Andrew Bard Schmookler
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0704-23.htm
Each one of you who serve in Congress took an oath....You promised us –you promised God—to defend the Constitution..... has there ever been a moment in American history when the Constitution has needed defending more than now?....
....You are obliged, by that oath, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Even if that risks your losing your present proximity to great political power....
We, the undersigned citizens of the United States, would like to ask you: Which will it be? Are you going to confront this apparent pattern of presidential lawlessness by conducting investigations and following them wherever your oath of office may require you to go? Or are we going to have to find other political leaders to protect our freedom under the rule of law?
[Readers are encouraged to circulate this open letter as a petition to Congress.]
(Swans) The New York Times and a few other papers have finally begun, however timidly, to act like newspapers, and the Bush administration and Republicans have erupted with massive fury. "Those who wrote, published and leaked the story should be tried for treason," Senator Jim Bunning thundered....
.....I have been a longtime critic of the corporate media...Newspapers and TV "news" programs were cheerleaders for the war in Iraq and have sanitized it ever since. They have ignored the stolen elections, barely covered the massive corruption in Congress and corporations like Halliburton, pay virtually no attention to the spiraling national debt. They have, in short, been partners in crime with the Bush administration.
So a critic like me should be happy when the partners in crime have a falling out, right?
Of course...maybe...probably not.
Read my full essay on Swans at:
http://www.swans.com/library/art12/rdeck065.html
“Whether the insanity of the "doctrine" [*] is genuine -- i.e., a pathological panic reaction by gutless, pampered fat-cats scared of the slightest murmur from the dusky tribes out there, beyond the iron gates and razor wire of privilege -- or if, more likely, it is simply the chosen rationalization for a gang of predators tired of the few restraints that constitutional government has placed on their lust for loot and domination, the end result is the same: The most powerful country in the history of the world is being run by moral degenerates in thrall to a lunatic policy.” ... Chris Floyd
[*] As explained in Ron Suskind’s book, "The One Percent Doctrine." Suskind reports that it was Vice President Dick Cheney who enunciated the "doctrine" that governs the Bush administration: If there is even a 1 percent chance that some state or group might do serious harm to the United States, then America must respond as if that threat were a certainty -- with full force, pre-emptively.
Bush Countdown
We will be free of Bush in 932 days
It was 2:30 a.m. on a winter night in the early 60s and I was heading back to Stuart, Fl. on U.S. 1 from my job in West Palm Beach. Development was scant north of Riviera Beach in those days and the road was virtually deserted.
Somewhere north of Jupiter I saw a man trying to thumb a ride. At 60 mph I got only a glimpse of him, but what I saw seemed harmless enough -- average size, average height, maybe in his late 20s, dressed in dark clothes -- but I wasn't about to stop.
As soon as I roared past him, however, my conscience started nagging. A year earlier I had been the one standing on that road trying to hitch a ride. I had been job hunting and my last ride had let me off a couple of miles south of Jupiter at 7 in the evening.
I had started walking north, sticking out my thumb at every single car that passed. By 10 p.m. I was roundly cursing every car that ignored me. By the time I reached home at 4 a.m., my feet were blistered, my legs were trembling and my voice was hoarse from the unkind things I kept yelling at the indifferent cars.
Under the circumstances, the memory was embarrassing. I slowed my ancient Pontiac and made a U-turn. I saw the hitchhiker trudging forlornly north as I passed in the south-bound lane. I made another U-turn, pulled up beside him and threw open the door.
Up close I could see he was a bit older than I had first thought, perhaps 35. He had a three-day growth of beard and his navy-blue cotton work clothes were stained and dirty. There was a faint aroma of whiskey but he wasn't obviously drunk, even if he did stare at me blankly for a moment as if I were a mirage. Then he nodded and climbed in.
I stated up again, basking in the glow of my own charity. He was silent until I was up to speed and then asked casually,
"Are you insured for theft?"
Stunned, I swung my head toward him. He was looking at me with a mildly inquisitive stare, as if he had just asked me for the time. One arm was propped up in the window and the other was lying innocently in his lap. I saw no sign of a weapon.
Despite his calm, the implications of the question couldn't be ignored. Macho strategies tumbled through my mind -- speed up to the point that it would be dangerous for him to try to hurt me or take control of the car, smash him in the throat and shove him out onto the highway. All were ridiculous, of course. I had about as much chance of pulling off something like that as the Pontiac had of sprouting wings.
Well, if heroics were out, guile would have to do.
No, I hastily told him, I wasn't insured for theft; I wasn't even carrying liability insurance (a lie) and if we had an accident he was on his own. I began talking about how broke I was, how poorly paid, what bad shape the Pontiac was in. On these points I was probably convincing because they were the simple truth.
He listened noncommittally. When at last I hesitantly began questioning him, he turned my questions aside.
"Where are you heading?"
"North."
"Looking for work?"
"Maybe."
"What do you do?"
"This and that."
Neither of us made any further mention of his peculiar question as we drove the next half hour in uncomfortable silence, uncomfortable for me at least. As we neared Stuart, I told him that I thought his best bet for another ride would be at the foot of the Roosevelt Bridge at the north end of town. It was quite a ways from where I was heading but I wanted him to be completely satisfied with the arrangement. He nodded in agreement.
When I stopped, my mouth was dry and my heart pounding. If he made any sudden moves for his pocket I was prepared to roll out the door and run like hell.
But all he did was climb out, thank me briefly and plod wearily toward the bridge.
During that unnerving encounter I had been convinced that there was only one possible interpretation of his question. Later I wasn't so sure.
Perhaps he was an insurance salesman by trade and simply making idle conversation. Maybe he was just into mind games and that was his idea of a practical joke. Perhaps exhaustion and booze made his mind wander. Maybe, as a friend later suggested, he was a writer and just wanted to see what my reaction would be to a subtle threat.
Whatever, it was a long time before I picked up another hitch-hiker.