and lemme tell ya they got some big ones:
Pelosi raised the shackles of the White House after her aides announced she would make a groundbreaking visit to Syria, which the United States accuses of harbouring terror organisationsAFP/Yahoo 31.03.07
...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica
Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.
Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors
I may get around to more about whatever this is, but for now the oddness of people reacting so adamantly and sometimes violently to "threats of violence" etc. at the near-cartoon level they're being made in the very marginal venues they're being made in, and though recognizing the immediate concern and potential for fear unchecked in the nature of the threats having been made to people unused to the experience of real, non-theatrical, non-remote, non-mediated violence, still, watching that unfold while at the same time, publicly, and with the full volume and saturation of the nation's vestigial news media broadcasting every mad word of it, the President of the United States George W. Bush - who is right now in the middle of proving beyond any shade of doubt that he is willing and able to kill and maim, or cause or set in motion the machinery for the killing and maiming of, hundreds of thousands of people in another country, real human beings with real human lives, with sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and all the needs and wants and hopes and hungers of human living, and who has willingly sacrificed tens of thousands of people from his own country, life and limb and promise, or proved that he will willingly be the public face of the machinery that causes them to be sacrificed, leaving aside for purposes of brevity the fact of his, or his as representative of the machinery he willingly is the public face of, negation of nearly every principle of liberty and justice in America that America was supposedly about, that Americans have fought for, sacrificed for, championed and preserved and protected as well as they could see to, negating it all except for those laws guaranteeing the freedoms that protect the wealthy and powerful and their sycophants and would-be successors - while this man publicly and repeatedly threatens to do it again, to someone else, to someone new, to someone different, making the same noises as he did last time and striking the same belligerent poses as he did then, only toward Iran this time, with no evident remorse for the deaths he's caused already, that continue to this minute to accumulate in a place and by extension a world that edges nearer hell every day, that those same valiant cries for punishment of photoshopping vandals and misogynistic trolls, the little sadistic ghosts that haunt the cluttered attics of the internet, and those outraged cries for action from the FBI and legal punishment and something must be done, that those same loud voices are stone silent or near enough to it when it comes to the President and the Administration and a complicit and toothless Congress and whatever machinery that mess really represents now, that in regard to that "threat of violence" those same clamoring-for-justice voices are in the main as silent as well-fed sheep out in green pasture on a warm spring day - and it is, you could say, more than a little ironic.
still here 22:55
ineffectual kibitzing:
You need not reduce social ills to personal morality — or let Bush off the hook for his wholly owned war — to acknowledge the complicity attached to mere citizenship in a war-making, imperial nation.James Carroll/ Boston Globe/CommonDreams 26.03.07
"Iraq is not our toilet. It's a country of human beings whose lives that were once oppressed by Saddam are now in Dante's Inferno."Yet, he's been sounding that same three-note chorus over and over, and it's really starting to bother me. Great to get out there in front of everybody and talk hard and valiant, but then whoa, what happened?
"In service of the neoconservative fantasy — and of the Likud government, which was handily re-elected last week — the Bush Administration has been dangerously out of touch in the Middle East."In Time Magazine, God love it.
and
"...because a stronger Israel is very much embedded in the rationale for war with Iraq. It is a part of the argument that dare not speak its name, a fantasy quietly cherished by the neo-conservative faction in the Bush Administration and by many leaders of the American Jewish community."
still here 22:38
and had spoken about breaking the law:
The documents show that the Police Department's Intelligence Division sent undercover detectives around the city, the country and the world to collect information on political activists and others...Dwyer/NYTimes/CommonDreams 26.03.07"The documents were not written for consumption by the general public," wrote Peter Farrell, senior counsel in the city's Law Department. "The documents contain information filtered and distilled for analysis by intelligence officers accustomed to reading intelligence information."
still here 22:20
Giant catfish, one of the world's largest freshwater fish, have not been caught in the Mekong in northern Thailand since 2001.
...big-money water-infrastructure projects with the backing of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other lending institutions, usually with multinational conglomerates from the richer nations as project partners...
...more than 45,000 large dams - those that are more than 60 meters high - are operational in more than 150 countries, while another 1,500 or so are under construction...
We've assumed that water is a limitless resource. It's not anymore
still here 14:22
But it's going to take years for the software to get installed.
If there's a hope for surveillance-as-deterrent, it may lie in places like Chicago. Instead of forcing squads of monitor jockeys to make sense of confusing, overlapping video feeds, the city is installing video understanding algorithms into its spycam network. Come too close to a restricted government building, leave a package on an El platform, or even hang out for too long on a ghetto street corner and - smile! - you're on Criminal Camera.
still here 23:00
Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.Rudolph William Louis "Rudy" Giuliani III, KBE
Protesters were demanding that the Planning Commission (chaired by the Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh) take immediate action to curb the severe water shortages being experienced by communities across India as a result of Coca-Cola and Pepsico's mining of groundwater.Over 40 Detained for Protesting Coca-Cola on World Water Day - ScoopNZ
"We are here on World Water Day to bring attention to one of the world's worst abusers of water, the Coca-Cola company," said Nandlal Master of Lok Samiti and National Alliance of People's Movements, one of the organizers of the march and also detained. "The Coca-Cola company has destroyed the lives of thousands of people in India as a result of its thirst for water."
[...]
Coca-Cola's operations in India have come under intense scrutiny as many communities are experiencing severe water shortages as well as contaminated groundwater and soil, directly as a result of Coca-Cola's bottling operations. The company has also been found to sell products in India with dangerously high levels of pesticides.
AMY GOODMAN: I'm looking at a piece in the Canadian press, headlined "Canadian Boy and Iranian Parents Arrive in Toronto After Release from Texas Jail." And it says that just as they were leaving Houston, they said Iranian security police came onto the plane and escorted them into a room - this is when they were deported back to Iran, where after a while Kevin was released to the care of his grandmother. So, when they were deported from Canada to Iran, both parents were detained - is this right, Andrew? And when they got out, they escaped and then tried to head back to Canada through Turkey?9-Year-Old Canadian Citizen and Iranian Parents Arrive in Toronto After Six Weeks in Texas Immigration Jail - Democracy Now!
ANDREW BROUWER: Yeah, that's right. They were detained on arrival at the airport in Iran. Both parents were detained and tortured - Masomeh for about a month, and Majid for six months - where they were both brutally treated. And that's why they eventually decided they had to try again to get out...
still here 22:12
The End of the Future of Reason:
Everything of value that people get from religion can be had more honestly, without presuming anything on insufficient evidence. The rest is self-deception, set to music.
Out further still, one meets religious moderates and liberals of diverse hues — people who remain supportive of the basic scheme that has balkanized our world into Christians, Muslims and Jews, but who are less willing to profess certainty about any article of faith. Is Jesus really the son of God? Will we all meet our grannies again in heaven? Moderates and liberals are none too sure.Sam Harris/LATimes/CommonDreams 16.Mar.07
Those on this spectrum view the people further toward the center as too rigid, dogmatic and hostile to doubt, and they generally view those outside as corrupted by sin, weak-willed or unchurched.
The problem is that wherever one stands on this continuum, one inadvertently shelters those who are more fanatical than oneself from criticism. Ordinary fundamentalist Christians, by maintaining that the Bible is the perfect word of God, inadvertently support the Dominionists — men and women who, by the millions, are quietly working to turn our country into a totalitarian theocracy reminiscent of John Calvin's Geneva. Christian moderates, by their lingering attachment to the unique divinity of Jesus, protect the faith of fundamentalists from public scorn. Christian liberals — who aren't sure what they believe but just love the experience of going to church occasionally — deny the moderates a proper collision with scientific rationality.
still here 21:14
to transcend this kind of madness:
The conclusion we are meant to draw ... is that our planet's climate system has been altered in harmful ways that we as a community need to address.Joe Brewer/CommonDreams 14.Mar.07
[...]
Each day we fail to take responsibility for the mess we are in compromises our communities.
still here 20:55
reading the news:
Regrets of the Statue Man-
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drop by drop, into a spoon that the children passed round
Nearly three months after Saddam was executed, legal sources said his former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, would be hanged on Tuesday for crimes against humanity.-
still here 15:05
Bible Study, rivers:
Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars,
if thou be able to number them:
and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.
[...]
And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark,
behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces.
In that same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying,
Unto thy seed have I given this land,
from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphra'tes
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Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: that sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled!Isaiah 18
All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye.
And a man shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.Isaiah 32
And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of them that hear shall hearken.
The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly.
The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful.
For the vile person will speak villainy, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the LORD, to make empty the soul of the hungry; and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail.
The instruments also of the churl are evil: he deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even when the needy speaketh right.
But the liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand.
By the rivers of Babylon,Psalm 137
there we sat down, yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;
and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee,
let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;
if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom
in the day of Jerusalem;
who said, Rase it, rase it,
even to the foundation thereof.
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed;
happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth
thy little ones against the stones.
And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.Genesis 41
And, behold, there came up out of the river seven well-favored kine and fat-fleshed; and they fed in a meadow.
And, behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill-favored and lean-fleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river.
And the ill-favored and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well-favored and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.
And he slept and dreamed the second time: and, behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, rank and good.
And, behold, seven thin ears and blasted with the east wind sprung up after them.
And the seven thin ears devoured the seven rank and full ears. And Pharaoh awoke, and, behold, it was a dream.
And it came to pass in the morning that his spirit was troubled; and he sent and called for all the magicians of Egypt, and all the wise men thereof: and Pharaoh told them his dream; but there was none that could interpret them unto Pharaoh.
Then spake the chief butler unto Pharaoh, saying, I do remember my faults this day:
Pharaoh was wroth with his servants, and put me in ward in the captain of the guard's house, both me and the chief baker:
and we dreamed a dream in one night, I and he; we dreamed each man according to the interpretation of his dream.
And there was there with us a young man, a Hebrew, servant to the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream he did interpret.
AMY GOODMAN: This latest story, the Anti-Defamation League calling on Georgia State Rep. Ben Bridges to apologize for a memo distributed under his name that says the teaching of evolution should be banned in public schools, because it is a religious deception stemming from an ancient Jewish sect. The memo calls on lawmakers to introduce legislation that would end the teaching of evolution in public schools, because it's "a deception that is causing incalculable harm to every student and every truth-loving citizen."Democracy Now! 19.Feb.07
CHRIS HEDGES: And there's a bill now in the Texas state legislature that will abolish all mention of evolution in school textbooks and make Bible study mandatory in public schools. And the role of creationism is extremely important in this movement. It's not just wacky pseudoscience. It is really a war against truth. It is not about presenting an alternative. It's about saying facts are interchangeable with opinions, that lies are true, that we can believe whatever we want. And once they successfully elevate creationism, which, of course, is a myth - I mean, teaching creation out of the Book of Genesis is an absurdity. The writers of the Book of Genesis thought the earth was flat with rivers of above and below us. But what it does is destroy the possibility or sanctity of honest, dispassionate, intellectual and scientific inquiry. And when they do that, they have made a huge step towards creating a totalitarian state.
still here 20:27
Que Dios les bendiga:
Schwarzenegger: Yes, it's fantastic. A short while ago, our office became the first in the country to receive the first BMW luxury 7 series hydrogen car. BMW made 100 of them and they gave them to 100 opinion-makers, stars and people with high visibility
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it is what it is
-
a superstar on a hunger strike
-
Colombian prosecutors have ordered Magdalena province Gov. Trino Luna arrested on suspicion he colluded with the illegal militias who once fought a dirty war against the country's four-decade-old rebel insurgency.
The governor joins eight pro-Uribe lawmakers and a former security police chief who have been arrested on charges they cooperated with the illegal paramilitaries whose commanders have now been jailed after a peace deal with the government.
"There is an order for the capture of Magdalena's governor on suspicion of colluding to commit a crime," an Attorney General's office spokesman said.
still here 22:39
destined:
The US president strongly defended a 700-million-dollar a year aid program for Colombia destined to support efforts to combat drug trafficking and a decades-old insurgency.Laurent Lozano/AFP/Yahoo 12.Mar.07
still here 02:43
Bush backs ally Colombia/Reuters backs Bush:
...promising to secure more aid and a trade deal for his close ally President Alvaro Uribe as he fights a rebel insurgency and drug traffickersMatt Spetalnick and Patrick Markey/Reuters 11.Mar.07
[...]
Uribe on Sunday repeatedly defended his U.S.-backed drive, which has reduced violence by weakening Latin America's oldest rebel insurgency and disarming 31,000 illegal paramilitaries who were set up by wealthy landowners to counter the rebels.
But some U.S. Democrats have said they want more guarantees before they approve the White House request for $3.9 billion in new aid and a trade deal signed with Colombia.
still here 02:32
I'm going to put up some more bits from March 2003, and talk about them, but meantime here's
Outsourcing Walter Reed by Philip Mattera in Tom Paine.The first hit off that is, you know, when he says "...converting the once legendary Walter Reed into a symbol of the shameful treatment of people ...", that there were staff involved in the "once legendary" part who were still there as it began to erode and dissolve from the corrupt and amoral pathogenic takeover Mattera documents.
still here 23:12
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Kieran Healey at Crooked Timber:Via Jim Henley I see there's a challenge from Brian Flemming:If you are a blogger who was active in March 2003, link to that month's archive and write an entry called 'What I was wrong about in March 2003.'
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I was wrong thinking that eliding capitalization would be that much easier that it would make up for the awkward reading experience and pretentiousness of it. Other than that, and some residual over-excitedness, the month is mostly links and quotes, as now - there's no attempt at actual forecast, but the main theses here now were there then as well.
12.Mar.03:
I keep seeing the little guys, my side, us, the good guys, nice people, sane people - choose a description that works - responding to nonsense like the above 'Biblical' prophecy, and 'de-frenchifying', as though because it's obviously horseshit, it somehow should go away once it's been called horseshit. but just like real horseshit, it doesn't matter what you call it, until somebody comes along with a shovel, it stays right where the horse left it.
still here 12:13
Separately, U.S. troops raided a mosque in Baghdad and captured three suspected insurgents hiding inside. The detainees included a man believed to be responsible for distributing weapons to build bombs for attacks on American and Iraqi forces, the military said.
U.S. rules of engagement allow troops to enter mosques only in rare cases.
"We do not enter mosques for the sole purposes of disrupting insurgent activities or conducting a show of force. Mosque entries occur only as a last resort," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman.
U.S. soldiers "respect the sanctity and holiness of all places of worship," he said
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U.S. forces extend Baghdad push to militia haven:...stronghold of the Mehdi Army of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-SadrDean Yates and Claudia Parsons/Reuters/Yahoo
-
Several terrorists killed, U.S. says
Al-Sadr condemns joint security plan:[1.] Several al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents who had focused on U.S. helicopters were killed in an air strike north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said ...A second strike killed members of another al Qaeda cell that has orchestrated car bombings.Sudarsan Raghavan/Washington Post/SFGate
[2.] Meanwhile, three U.S. soldiers on patrol in central Baghdad were killed by a roadside bomb, the military said.
[3.] Just days before U.S. and Iraqi troops are expected to establish a permanent presence in Baghdad's Sadr City, anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr stepped up his rhetoric against the plan
-
US forces open push into Sadr City:...stronghold of the Mehdi Army of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-SadrDean Yates and Claudia Parsons/Reuters/Yahoo
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Maliki warns insurgents of wider crackdown/
Iraq's Maliki offers olive branch to insurgents:Speaking at a conference aimed at speeding up reconciliation among Iraq's warring factions, Maliki said political consensus could be achieved only if Iraq was stable.-"We present in our hand a green olive branch, and in the other hand we present the law ...Maliki has been pleased with the early results of the security crackdown
Operation Imposing Law started in Baghdad, it will cover every inch of Iraq," Maliki said.
An operation involving US-led forces is under way
U.S. forces enter Sadr City
Hundreds of U.S. soldiers
Hundreds of U.S. soldiers entered
Hundreds of U.S. soldiers entered the Shiite
Hundreds of US soldiers entered the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City today
Hundreds of American and Iraqi soldiers patrolled
More than 1000 US and Iraqi troops met no resistance on Sunday
An al-Qa'ida-affiliated group said it killed 18 kidnapped Iraqi government security forces yesterday[Saturday] in retaliation for the alleged rape of a Sunni woman by members of the Shia-dominated police, posting an online video of the officers being shot in the back of their heads while kneeling in a field.AP/Shanghai Daily
The authenticity of the three-minute video, posted on a website previously used by the Islamic State of Iraq, could not be immediately verified.
The group also said it had killed 14 policemen, whose bodies were found at the weekend in the northeast province of Diyala, in retaliation for the alleged rape. Some of the victims were decapitated.
The Sunni Muslim atrocity came before hundreds of US troops last night entered the Shia stronghold of Sadr City, in the first major push into the area since an American-led security sweep began last month around Baghdad.
Soldiers conducted house-to-house searches, but met no resistance in a district firmly in the hands of the Madhi Army militia of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
When the security plan launched Feb. 13, Sadr agreed to cooperate by reeling in his militia, and evidence of that was clear Saturday on the streets of Sadr City. Regular traffic police were at intersections and directed lines at gas stations, instead of the fearsome masked Al Mahdi gunmen who used to roam the streets and peer into cars. City workers were even planting some public gardens.Tina Susman and Raheem Salman/LATimes
But on Saturday, Sadr said in his statement, "There are no negotiations with the occupation forces, not before and not later."
His whereabouts remain unclear.
Sadr has not been seen publicly for weeks. His office says he is in Iraq, but U.S. officials have said he went to Iran to avoid the security crackdown.
still here 12:54
a clean image:
Carbon dioxide emissions from ships do not come under the Kyoto agreement or any proposed European legislation and few studies have been made of them
90% of the world’s goods are carried by sea and world trade is increasing all the time.John Vidal/Guardian UK 03.Mar.07
Carbon dioxide emissions from shipping are double those of aviation and increasing at an alarming rate which will have a serious impact on global warming, according to research by the industry and European academics.
Separate studies suggest that maritime carbon dioxide emissions are not only higher than previously thought, but could rise by as much as 75% in the next 15 to 20 years if world trade continues to grow and no action is taken.
[...]
The figures from the oil giant BP, which owns 50 tankers, and researchers at the Institute for Physics and Atmosphere in Wessling, Germany reveal that annual emissions from shipping range between 600 and 800m tonnes of carbon dioxide, or up to 5% of the global total. This is nearly double Britain's total emissions and more than all African countries combined.
still here 01:52
among this wreckage:
Two children from the Guarani Kaiowá tribe have died of starvation, and several dozen are being treated in hospital for severe malnutrition.
Within days of the children's deaths, Valdinez Souza, a Guarani health worker and father of two children, hanged himself. He left a note by his body saying he had killed himself because children in his community are suffering from acute hunger.
Despite this alarming situation, the Mato Grosso do Sul state government has cut food aid to the Guarani.
Survival
The Malaysian government claims that Sarawak is being logged sustainably - but in fact its forests are being destroyed at one of the fastest rates in the world. As the forests are logged, the rivers are silted up, killing the fish. The game is being scared deeper into the few remaining forests.Survival
Since 1987, the Penan have been fighting back by blockading the logging roads - and suffering acute food shortages as a result.
The Jarawa tribe of the Andaman Islands has long captured imaginations around the world, especially among other tribal peoples like my people, the Innu of north-eastern Canada. Since the final years of the twentieth century, when they stopped resisting with lethal arrows any contact with outsiders, the world has watched the Jarawa with fascination.George Rich/Times of India 14.Feb.07
We don't know why they stopped shooting at the settlers and poachers encroaching on their land. Perhaps they felt overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of settlers from the Indian mainland now living on their islands. But for indigenous peoples who have already lost their land, the drama unfolding before our eyes is far too familiar.
We are holding our breaths as we watch the future of this strong, proud people balancing on a knife-edge.
The Mato Grosso do Sul [Brazil] state government has cut food aid to Guarani Indians. This is a severe blow to thousands of Guarani families who rely almost entirely on monthly food rations to survive.Survival
In 2004, at least 21 Guarani children died from severe malnutrition. It was the scandal of these deaths that pushed the government into supplying needy families with food parcels.
This crisis highlights the Brazilian federal government's failure to tackle the underlying cause of hunger among the Guarani - the lack of land. Over the last seven decades, thousands of Guarani have been evicted from their lands by soya planters and cattle ranchers; barely 1% of the Guarani's original forest remains.
Today the Guarani are crammed together onto tiny reservations; as a result, suicide, alcoholism and internal violence are rife.
still here 01:45