reading the news:

Regrets of the Statue Man
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drop by drop, into a spoon that the children passed round

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The American people have lost confidence in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) said House Leader John Boehner (news, bio, voting record) the Democrats "slow-bleed scheme" to choke off troops Bush said January he sending 21,500 more troops to Almost nine in 10 of those surveyed said they feared Iraq, mostly to secure while only 5% said they worried "hardly at all" Baghdad, a number that has since climbed to around But a majority of respondents said that they did not believe 30,000 with the addition of Only 26% of people said they felt safe in their own neighbourhoods support troops His address appealing for more time for his plan to send in nearly 30,000 additional troops, mostly to stabilize Baghdad He acknowledged, however, that "prevailing in Iraq is not going to be easy" came after the deaths of 12 people in a wave of near-simultaneous bomb blasts around the northern city of Kirkuk and A CNN solace from the finding that only 35% believed foreign troops should leave poll showed support for the war had fallen to while more than half said they had sometimes avoided markets or other crowded places 32 percent, with 63 percent opposing Anti-war protests mounted in U.S. cities over the weekend outside the New York 40% surveyed in 450 places in all 18 of the country's 40 protesters were arrested provinces said things were generally their lives Stock Exchange Less than In contrast a similar poll has killed more than 3,200 U.S. military personnel and tens of thousands of Iraqis conducted in late 2005 came up in late 2005 with an equivalent figure in late 2005 of 71% which in late 2005 have been targets for suicide bombers, in late 2005. they or a family member could become the killing of six by a suicide victim of violence, about this bomber at a Baghdad mosque Bush's cautious tone contrasted sharply with the swagger shown when he stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier weeks after the 2003 U.S.-led after the invasion after the Iraq was after the in a state of after the civil war. Only 38% of 2,200 Iraqis polled said the situation was while 50% said it was better than it was worse Mr Bush before the 2003 war to remove Saddam Hussein could also take Iraq now, with a further 63% wanting them to depart after security has improved

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.

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dire consequences
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by the autumn of 2008

March 2003:

In that bright world
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He knew he'd hit rock bottom
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Seven points, average
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After a while it got hectic so we sat down
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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!
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.

Isaiah 18
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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.
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.

Isaiah 32
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By the rivers of Babylon,
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.

Psalm 137
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And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and, behold, he stood by the river.
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.

Genesis 41
also: Genesis 31
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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."

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.

Democracy Now! 19.Feb.07
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"Tomorrow is zero hour"
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I'm still having trouble integrating the rational scientific world-view with my admittedly vestigial but still-functioning moral sensibilities.
Why exactly is fascism wrong? From a scientific p.o.v. I mean. I can see where it would be a problem for individual scientists, it's hard to imagine Einstein or Huxley campaigning for Dick Cheney or his chosen successor, but Joseph Mengele's a fine example of adaptation and mutual benefit to a fascist government by an amoral investigator of life's mysteries.
Also who can forget stunning Sidney Gottlieb, hero of applied behaviorist methodologies, right in there cheek by jowl with the big guns of the American Herrenvolk, making the world better for good people.
Asking science to weigh in on moral questions like totalitarianism v. democracy is like asking a biologist to make a moral distinction between two species competing for the same niche.
This makes it a task of religion, or some humanist analog of religion, to decide and resolve moral questions.
But Hedges says, correctly, that the Christian right is itself the wide fuse through which the black flower of theocratic fascism is being driven. And there doesn't seem to be much possibility of a united humanist anything to oppose it, let alone convincing moral dogma with an enforcement arm capable of withstanding that God-given nightmare of children-of-the-corn style hive-mindedness. Better maybe to tear it down and build something from what's left. Tear it all down, and hope enough gets through to carry the dream.
And that's where we go back to Genesis, and Hedges' all-too-common facile dismissal of what's there. The first thing rational minds trip on is the compare-and-contrast between our perceptual array now and theirs back then, along with their respectively inferior processing capabilities. Bunch of grubby sheep-herders living in tents and making up stories about what little of the world they can see from where they are, without instruments or anything but the most rudimentary records, versus our near-occult grasp of the stellar firmament, and the tiny building blocks of everything nearly under our control, and hundreds of years of detailed research and painstakingly recorded minutiae. Their world-view compounded of ignorance, superstition, wishful thinking, and a smattering of the undeniable, ours the constantly refining evidence from our constantly refining instruments. The parallel would be that both systems are investigating something infinite and eternal, and in that context they're far more equal than not. Plus the writers and credulous believers of Genesis insist it's coming from out of the infinite and eternal.
What I'm trying to say there is the simplicity of the people back then doesn't preclude them having access to dreamtime instruction, input from outside the system, which it is purported they do, though they mask it, dress it up as communication from the one and only deity before which all others must fall, and the inconsistencies of that deity make it look intellectually indefensible - so rational minds discount the entire message.
But it's only irrational, and therefore inferior, in some abstract discourse. On the ground, science tells us, nature favors what works and disregards what doesn't. Rationality's only a generally superior method, not always - just most of the time.
Maybe theocratic fascism works, just not for you. Or maybe humanist fascism, or ethnic fascism, or some new form that coalesces unaffiliated mindless around the need to live as a big functioning kick-ass thing.
Then what? It would help to have a few thousand years of religious dogma telling you you're the chosen people of the one true ruler of everything, but that would be the Jews, not fundamentalist Christians, unless it's a mistake and the message was actually intended for the Christians and was just intercepted by the Jews. But either way you can see how that would help with the problem of foundational premise. Because what's needed is assertion not explanation. Out there past logic and morality, out where it's nothing more or less than the will to be that keeps you here. That's the issue all around, isn't it? People feeling like somebody else wants them gone? Some of that's true.
It could be more a question of replacing one kind of theocracy with another. Get the Christian right-wing to build the theocratic super-state, then step in quietly and take it away from them. Hostile takeover on the q.t.
Maybe that's what we should do, instead of opposing everything and not having much to offer in return. Easier than tearing down the biggest security apparatus the world's ever seen. Much easier than getting an alternative moral system up and running in the little bit of time we have. Replace the Judeo-Christian moral shipwreck with one that defends more than its own desperately collapsing self. One that says nobility is more valuable than anything, even survival, that integrity is worth sacrificing everything for, that those who choose craven acts to ensure their own squalid lives, who choose to sacrifice integrity and nobility for mere survival will always bear the mark of that flaw, numberless as the stars though they may be.

Top U.S. general seeks calm gay sex

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
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a superstar on a hunger strike
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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.

Almost everything frozen on earth is melting

human sprinkler systems

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

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 traffickers
[...]
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.

Matt Spetalnick and Patrick Markey/Reuters 11.Mar.07

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.
Anyone who's ever been around organizational activism knows the burdens that get carried silently and invisibly by the heroes in the trenches, and you can bet there were plenty of lower echelon folks at Walter Reed who were and are still dedicated and committed, who came up against the top-down cannibalism that changed it and left it the way it is now, anonymous regulars who fought that, trying to balance career and commitment, and getting tougher or getting ground up and beat by it.
Libby's gone down behind his minor role in the Plame scandal, itself a side act, though his complicity and especially his utility as symbol for much else is far greater, and most American public don't really understand who he is or what he did beyond lie to a court or two, but they know his name and they know what his wife looks like, and this is so far down the media concern list it didn't even show up until it was spotlighted by concerted efforts on the part of many.
So let's think about those unknown soldiers there, in that invisible battle between capitalist swine and what passes for humanitarian sacrifice among us now - charge nurses beat down for their complaints about supplies and procedures by bottom-line men and women from the world of who cares, middle-weight bureaucrats with consciences who made as much noise as they felt they could and just got pushed further out and away each time they did, orderlies soaking up the vibe as things got less and less cohesive and more and more dismal and unhygienic. As Walter Reed devolved from sterling example to shameful evidence.
I have no documentation on this, but I know it happened, and so do you.

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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.

20 percent over 10 years

Propaganda 101




Big Push:

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-Sadr

Dean Yates and Claudia Parsons/Reuters/Yahoo
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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.
[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

Sudarsan Raghavan/Washington Post/SFGate
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US forces open push into Sadr City:

...stronghold of the Mehdi Army of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr

Dean 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 ...
Operation Imposing Law started in Baghdad, it will cover every inch of Iraq," Maliki said.

Maliki has been pleased with the early results of the security crackdown

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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

Though no shots were fired, emotions still ran high in the neighborhood today.-
Video shows killing of 18 Iraqi officers:

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.
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.

AP/Shanghai Daily
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Sadr disavows a planned U.S.-Iraqi crackdown:

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.
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.

Tina Susman and Raheem Salman/LATimes

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Independent UK

The Emergence of a Global Infrastructure For Mass Registration and Surveillance: 10 Signposts

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NewsTrust

the edge of the wedge

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EFF

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.
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.

John Vidal/Guardian UK 03.Mar.07

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.
Since 1987, the Penan have been fighting back by blockading the logging roads - and suffering acute food shortages as a result.

Survival
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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.

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.

George Rich/Times of India 14.Feb.07
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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.

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.

Survival

on the table

Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honeybee