Rant #3 - The Wall and the Lobby

Unreported in mainstream media that at least two people died in a flash flood in the Palestinian town of Bil'in because of the construction of the "security fence" aka "apartheid wall" or "land and water grab barrier". Also largely unreported, the deaths of dozens (many of whom were women and children) in rocket and helicopter attacks into Gaza and other Palestinian areas by Israeli Defense Forces (a misnomer on the order of the U.S. defense Department, formerly known as the War Department).

The land grab goes on and on while the Christian Right in this country line up behind AIPAC to form mega-lobbies to ensure that there is no peaceful solution in Palestine. They'd rather bring on "the rapture" than give an inch or a (hectacre). While I've said elsewhere that our own southern border is basically arbitrary, there is nothing arbitrary about the method by which the Israelis are redefining "facts on the ground." Wish I had solutions. Wish someone had solutions. The only two that come to mind are moving the wall to the 1967 border, making everyone on the west side an Israeli citizen and everyone on the east side a Palestinian citizen (including those who wish to remain in their settlements) and making al-Quds (Jerusalem) and international zone or country a la the Vatican. Or, remove the wall, dismantle the current governments and establish one large country from the River to the Sea under secular law, one person, one vote, and the freedom to practice one's religion but not impose it on a neighbor.

Of course, I'm dreaming. No one could possible think outside the box to that extent. Rational solutions need not apply.

Rant #2.1 - OUCH

On the non-political front, I think I broke my toe. Running barefoot through the house in a race to the fridge at midnight, dodging a sleeping pug in the hall and a wolf-hybrid doing his ritual evening "happy dance" in the living room, and trailing 50 feet of oxygen tubing behind me with my crazy hair (sha'ir majnoon) flying every which way, I caught my foot on a chair around the bend, not for the first or tenth time. But this time I my have broken something -- my foot is swollen and black. Naturally, I didn't stop to ice it but, mishuginah or majnoona (crazy person) that I am, I decided, then and there, to rearrange the furniture in the kitchen so I'd have something new to bang myself on next time. And I'm not even on steroids (since last September) -- just adrenaline. Can't even remember what I wanted from the fridge!

Anyone out there with a remedy for a broken toe?

Rant #2 - No News not Good News

Very little news coming out of occupied Iraq and occupied Palestine. Mainstream media busy covering pedophiles, Tom DeLay, border issues and Black congresswomen "attacking" heavily armed Capitol police with dangerous cell phones. (Ouch!) At least there are no runaway brides this week.

But seriously, when the mainstream media is quiet about the war, I start to panic. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad is making noises about not wanting Ibrahim Jaafari to hold office. The media alternates between referring to the young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr as a "firebrand", a "radical", a "terrorist" and a "militia leader". The administration and media refuse to accept that Iran just might want to enrich fuel to generate electricity. Just how many Iranian spokespeople can say it, how many ways, before the US accepts that they might just be telling the truth? (And just when is Ambassador John Bolton's term up as a recess appointee to the UN? Not soon enough, I fear.) Nor can anyone in power believe that the last thing Iran wants or needs is an uprising on their long, long border with Iraq.

Unreported, the true locations of the insurgency and the fighting. "Somewhere west of Baghdad", "somewhere north or south of Baghdad". What does that mean? Why don't they just own up to the fact that fighting going on in Tal Afar (the US military success story of the month), in Fallujah (which looks worse than Rafah in the Gaza Strip or Jenin after 2003), in Baghdad (where only the Green Zone is secure) and around Balaad (where the US has built a mega-base complete with fast food joints and cinema -- a hard, permanent base complete with shopping malls and underpaid foreign [non-Iraqi, non-American] workers.)

The leader of the "Free World", with his zeal and fervor to spread "democracy and the rule of law", should probably consider accepting the votes of the majority in Iraq, Palestine, Venezuela, Bolivia, Haiti, Iran. Last time I looked, democracy did not mean meddling in the business of foreign entities and sovereign states, nor did it mean national building or micro-managing the planet and executive power only.

And in the same vein, someone in Washington should look up the meaning of "rule of law". They obviously don't know since they use it to justify all sorts of malfeasance.

"Rule of law" means that "no branch of government is above the law, and that no public official may act arbitrarily or unilaterally outside the law". It also means that "no written law may be enforced by the government unless it conforms with certain unwritten, universal principles of fairness, morality, and justice that transcend human legal systems". It does not mean issuing secret "signing statements" along with the signing of legislation, basically saying that the chief executive does not have to abide by the law just signed (i.e., Patriot Act and anti-torture legislation) and ignoring international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions. In other words, crossing one's fingers behind one's back while putting pen to paper and saying "Na nana na na" just doesn't cut it when we're supposed to enjoy separation of powers.

Rant #1 - Xenophobia

My brain is about to explode because I haven't blogged in quite a while. So I'm hoping to catch up and empty my head, one subject at a time. Please bear with me. I'll start with Immigration.

I was born in East Los Angeles and I'm so proud of the kids in LA who left school and took to the streets to protest draconian immigration reform. (I remember their parents and/or grandparents doing the same in 1968.) And I'm proud of Los Angeles in general for the half million or more who marched last weekend and the hundreds of thousand across the country who also participated. Tonight's local news out of Albuquerque ran a story about a town in Texas which is banning students who marched there from attending their senior prom. Why am I shocked?

If I hear one more newscaster or politician deny being "xenaphobic" I'll start throwing darts at the TV. I think "xenaphobic" means fear of pointy breasts and bad dialogue. It's "xenophobia", guys. And you are xenophobic, all of you who think of the 10 or 12 million undocumented workers in this country as "illegal". There are no illegal people, except perhaps George Bush and Dick Cheney and all the illegitimate love children of Barbara Bush and the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

There has to be a better solution than suddenly declaring workers and their support groups (priests, nurses, teachers, doctors) felons. Aren't are prisons full enough already? And do we really want to break up families, leaving children here under an already stressed foster system as we jail and/or deport their parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles? Didn't we do that in the 30's and the 50's, sweeping up thousands of American citizens in the process and dumping them across the border into Mexico?

My grandmother never did learn English and didn't become a citizen until well into her seventies after she'd lived and worked in this country for more than four decades. But she didn't take anyone's job or money nor did she hurt a soul as she struggled to raise four children on her own. Besides, there was no country for her to return to once the Ottoman Empire collapsed. And many of the folks we are demonizing in the press feel that they have no place to go either.

It's time we began to think outside the box on a host of issues, beginning with our own borders. They are arbitrary as well as porous. They're not carved in stone. There must be a better solution to fixing a broken system, like scratching it and starting over.

Numbers

Numbers. Math. Numbers. It always comes down to the numbers.

Administration poll numbers are down and the number of Americans dead in Iraq are up (2311 earlier today and counting), but no one counts the maimed, the injured or the irreparably damaged on both sides, the number of years it will take to rebuild Iran, the number of hours of electricity that can be counted on each day or the number of children who will be born with defects due to the use of depleted uranium by US forces.

The debt ceiling has been raised to $9 trillion so that we can keep spending money, money that belongs to my granddaughters and their granddaughters.

Three years on and the world is worse than ever -- Iraq, Gaza, America, the real Triangle of Death. Cheney, Rumsfield and Rove -- the real Axis of Evil. Washington, DC and Crawford, TX -- the real Outposts of Tyranny.

Today the talking heads on the morning shows were debating the definition of a civil war and analyzing the success of the latest air war in the so-called Sunni Triangle. Reading River's blog at "Baghdad Burning" and wondering if anyone at CNN, MSNBC, or even the Pentagon, has spoken with a real live Iraqi in the last three years. Not the Iraqi talking heads living in the relative comfort of the Green Zone or the Iraqi exiles who returned after the Mission was Accomplished, but a real Iraqi, living somewhere in Baghdad or Ramadi or Samara. But guess what, folks, it's hard to get the opinion of the man or woman on the Arab Street if the Iraqi is terrified to leave the relative safety of his/her home or apartment and if the one asking the questions never steps foot on the street without a military or paramilitary escort and a team of translators and the experts reporting from Baghdad each evening never leave the roofs of their hotels.

(Three years on and we still don't have an Arabic speaking military. It's not brain surgery, guys. It's a language. Children learn it. Or are they busy studying Farsi in anticipation of the next great experiment in forcing democracy and "civilization" down the throats of yet another people -- more on the looming threat to Iran later ...)

Meanwhile, the third anniversary of the murder of Rachel Corrie by Israeli forces using a Caterpillar bulldozer went largely unmarked in the mainstream media. This was supposed to be "Sunshine Week", the week in which the media would shine some light on what goes on behind the scenes in government. But that's a bit hard to do if the Senate is proposing legislation that could result in the arrest and jailing of journalists who disclose information about government surveillance programs or any other information which could be classified or re-classified at a later date (retroactively making the disclosure of same a crime).

Al-Jazeera is reporting that the UN is warning that starvation is just around the corner for 1.5 million souls in Gaza since for the past two months the border crossings are not allowing wheat flour to enter the Strip (nor allowing greenhouse grown produce to get to market, thereby strangling any hope of an economically independent Palestine). Forty percent of the children in Gaza already suffer from malnutrition. Palestinian funds are frozen and the Israeli ministers are calling the lack of flour and foodstuffs "a diet". I don't see too many Israeli politicians going hungry ...

Secretary of State Rice has testified that there is no greater threat to America and Israel than Iran but no one -- and I truly mean no one -- has offered a shred of proof to back up her statement that Iran (whose clerics have issued fatwas against nuclear weapons) is hundreds of times more dangerous now than ever. Hundreds of times? A hundred times zero is -- well, zero. You do the math.

(A snarky aside that I just can't resist -- Speaking of math, last year CNN's Kyra Phillips did an interview with a spokeswoman from the Texas Eagle Forum who was trying to pass legislation in Texas to prevent homosexuals from fostering and/or adopting children. She claimed to have a study that showed that children raised in gay and/or lesbian households were 11 times more likely to become gay -- not 11%, 11 times! Phillips did not ask the name of the study nor did she question the math. Okay, folks: Social scientists agree that one in ten people (that's 10 percent) of the general population, worldwide, is homosexual. So, following the math presented on CNN if one in 10 children are gay and the other nine are 11 times more likely to become gay if raised in a homosexual environment, then 99% of non-gay children raised in a homosexual home will become gay. Didn't anyone bother to check the facts or the numbers on that one?)

The only number which seems to have any meaning anymore is the number of days left before the next presidential election, which I believe is 963 and counting down ... Feel free to check my math and get back to me.

Tone Deaf? Tone Deaf??

If I hear one more pundit say the Administration and/or Bush is "tone deaf" I may never be able to stop screaming. Bush is to tone deaf as Ray Charles was to near sighted! Where do they come up with these inane phrases? Is there a committee? Or can anyone submit the phrase of the week: We do not do torture. We don't want to play the Blame Game. You're either with us or you're with the enemy. We can't comment on an ongoing investigation. Freedom is on the march. We'll stand down when the Iraqis stand up. No one imagined that the storm would breach the levies. We've turned a corner.

Well, there's a corner I'd like for them to turn (180 degrees) -- tell the American people the truth. Bush is not Jack Nicholson and Americans can handle the truth. Don't compare apples and tennis shoes. There is no comparison. The truth is the truth; there are no mixed realities. Keep it simple.

We've gotten into Iraqi based on lies and greed and hubris. We don't know how to get out. We've wasted billions in funds, buckets of blood, tons of depleted uranium and thousands of lives. All of the reconstruction money has gone into building prisons, hard bases and outsourcing security. And there is no "coalition of the willing" -- only the "coalition of the oops, where did everybody go ..." We can't keep trying to micro-manage the world, the United Nations, South America and the Middle East. It's not what the American people want. (And no one else wants us meddling in their business.) We've done some very, very bad things but we'll own up to them if given the chance. Truth and reconciliation can work.

Instead of threatening the press with sedition for publishing leaks, we should be rewarding whistle blowers. And it's ridiculous and confusing to classify then declassify and then reclassify bits of information at whim. Who the hell can keep track? We should all stick our heads out the window and yell, "What part of 'bend over' are we not understanding?" 'Cause we're all getting screwed by an administration that believes that the only entitlements are their own, that a plant can be called a leak, that poverty is a crime, that plausible deniability is equal to ignorance as an excuse for stupidity or cupidity, that blatant racism can be covered up, that it's okay to practice selective ethics, that hubris is a virtue, that liberal is a four-letter word, that torture and extraordinary rendition and wiretapping are acceptable practices that can be excused because of a fabricated war on an unknown enemy for an endless amount of time, that tapes and transcripts will and can disappear and, that if caught, one can plead that one is tone deaf ...

History and Bumper Stickers

Who said that those who don't read history are condemned to repeat it? Okay, so Bush and the gang don't read. But you'd think they could watch a movie and learn something.

Last week I watched "The Battle of Algiers". This week I rented the late Mustapha Akad's "Lion of the Desert", the story of Omar Mukhtar battling the Italians in Libya in the years between the wars. I first saw it in 1981 but today it's messages are even clearer. People don't like occupation. Colonialism is ugly. Asymmetrical warfare (guerilla warfare) is never pretty. And the occupier eventually loses (except in the case of the Americas and Australia, but that's yet to be proven -- history is long).

I guess if you don't read you take the word of folks like Richard Pearle, Douglas Feith and Daniel Pipes and their interpretations of biased "scholars" like Bernard Lewis and Raphael Patai, canonize them, and wind up with never-ending torture at Guantanamo and Abu Graib, insurgencies in the so-called Sunni Triangle, and some very unhappy Shi'a in and around Basra. And because you don't read and are unable to think for yourself, you stick to your slogans and never say "Ooops".

"When the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" is not a strategy. It is a bumper sticker. My all time favorite is still "Semantics Matter", followed by "If all the world's a stage, I want better lighting", and "Friends don't let friends drive naked". But this week I think I'll design a new one: "Guns don't shoot people, Dicks do".

State of Disunion and Wardrobe Malfunctions

Still recovering from Tuesday's "State of Disunion", even though I decided against watching it. I opted to watch Gilmore Girls and a video instead because throwing socks at the TV screen in the hopes of banging one off Bush's nose is no longer fun -- just stupid. But of course, media junky that I am, I couldn't help myself from catching it all on the back end for the rest of the week from the likes of the CNN talking heads, administration stooges like MS-NBC's Chris Matthews, and even the good folks on PBS who think they're unbiased but who play right into the hands of those in power. Only Jon Stewart grabbed my undivided attention when he pointed out the take-away line about Bush warning us to be vigilant about preventing doctors from doing interspecies cloning. (Now that warrants wall-to-wall prime-time coverage.)

I doubt it's a coincidence that this is the week that the Muslim world is up in arms over culturally insensitive cartoons published first in Denmark and then reprinted in media from every xenophobic country in Europe. You can tell who welcomes dark-skinned folks and who shuns them by the news that filters in on the margins. Basically, all of Europe (and much of the U.S.) is anti-Muslim, anti-black, anti-brown, anti-anyone not "one of us", whoever "us" is defined as.

Before the speech, CAIR urged Bush to avoid loaded terms in his address, terms such as 'Islamo-fascism,' 'militant jihadism,' 'Islamic radicalism,' or 'totalitarian Islamic Empire' I've yet to read the address in its entirety, but I heard all of these terms on the back end from those who carry the water (and drink the kool-aid) for the administration. Just as Rumsfield was so eager at one point to rename "The War on Terror" the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism", semantics do matter. Whether or not these terms were used, anything which confuses 9/11 with Iraq, Usama bin Laden with Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, and Hamas with international terror is not accidental. And as Knight Ridder reported, on Wednesday, one day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic advisor said that the president didn't mean it literally.

It is also no coincidence that this is the week in which we've pushed the Iranians' buttons to the point where they're ready to throw out the inspectors. Or that, surprise of suprises, White House e-mails covering the period around the outing of Valerie Plame have gone missing from the government's computer archives (as in "the dog ate their homework.") Or that, as Juan Cole points out, 120 Bulgarian troops have been stationed at an airforce base in Iraq to guard 4000 members of an Iranian dissident terrorist cult which has been instrumental in manufacturing stories about Iran's desires for nuclear weapons.

Or that (and this part is really frightening) Business Wire has published that the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component has awarded KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton, an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contingency contract to support ICE facilities in the event of an emergency. With a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term, consisting of a one-year base period and four one-year options, the competitively awarded contract will be executed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District. (More jobs for Texas.) KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005. The contract may also provide immigrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. In the event of a natural disaster, the contractor could be tasked with providing housing for ICE personnel performing law enforcement functions in support of relief efforts. (Has no one asked where they were after Hurricane Katrina? It's only paranoia if they're not watching you ... I can't imagine a scenario in which the U.S. would have to house enough illegal immigrants to warrant a $385 million facility. But I can imagine such a facility housing American dissidents...)

Doesn't any of this sound at all familiar? Were we not in this same place three years ago with the infamous 16 words? Or are we all, as a nation, too wrapped up in Superbowl Sunday and the 5-second delay which ABC has put in place so that our poor, innocent children will not be subjected to a horrific repeat of Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction by the Rolling Stones during the half-time show...

Granny Franny's Unified Theory of Everything

Reading Elizabeth de la Vega's January 18th piece at www.TomDispatch.com gives me hope that my own theories are not as crazy as some may think. If Congress, Justice and the Courts can let GWB get away with his "Unitary Executive Theory of the Presidency," I should be able to get away with what my friend T. calls "Granny Franny's Unified Theory of Everything."

Granny Franny's Theory is still a work in progress but basically it involves connecting the dots -- all the dots, everywhere. I began to connect the dots in late-2000 when the Supremes handed GWB the presidency, continued through 9/11 and its aftermath when my phone line would automatically begin dialing in the middle of the night and I would hear my computer or fax machine make the noise that we used to call "shaking hands", when long-distance calls to friends would suddenly be interrupted or begin to echo on only one side of the line, when mail arrived late (or opened by accident), when I had to sign HEPA forms to get my oxygen, my prescriptions, see my doctor or dentist but no one had actually read the forms which were being signed, especially the part about the government being able to access one's medical records in case of (undefined) national emergency (it's only paranoia if no one is actually watching you!!).

More dots evolved as the Mission was Accomplished in Iraq and the war against a few dead-enders escalated to the point where the insurgency was "in its last throes", when "the L word" began to mean Liberal and "the P word" Progressive, when comparing someone to Michael Moore became an insult rather than a compliment, when Terry Schiavo was pronounced medically viable by the Senate and the President, when Cindy Sheehan became "anti-American", when athletes on steroids and gang activity warranted mention in State of the Union addresses, but the Downing Street Memo didn't warrant the same concern, when Abu Ghraib fell off the radar and no one in the media seemed concerned that any one of the many hurricanes heading toward the U.S. were projected to pass right through Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, when free elections in Iran, Palestine, South American and the Caribbean were called into question even as our own 2004 election passed muster (though votes were still uncounted in Ohio, Florida and New Mexico) and "Brownie" was doing a "heck of a job" for FEMA -- well, the dots began to form a pattern. (Whew! That was one heck of a run-on sentence!)

As we enter the sixth year of the Orwellian world of the propaganda and disinformation machine variously called "The Media" or "The Administration", I continue to connect the dots. If I ever get all the dots connected and "Granny Franny's Unified Theory of Everything" is published, it will come with a free yellow bumper sticker which will read "Semantics Matter."

I have a dream

If The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was alive today, could he, would he make a speech beginning with the words: "I have a dream." Or would he revisit his speech of four decades past and say, "I had a dream ... and it is unfulfilled." I still have trouble listening to the speech in its entirety because every year I start sobbing part way through and then have to turn away in shame and embarrassment because we have failed King so terribly, so completely. And each year it is only worse.

I wonder what King would make of Guantanamo, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, talk of crusades and waterboarding, unfettered presidential or executive power, the wretched masses left behind by FEMA in New Orleans, the uninsured and underemployed, the idea of school vouchers and no child left untested, the disenfranchisement of black voters in Ohio and Florida, the redistricting of Texas, the various scandals and inquests and investigations and the notion that high crimes and misdemeanors can be used for sexual misconduct but ignored for graft and corruption and abuse of power and people. (That's one hell of a run-on sentence but this is, after all, a blog.)

If I knew more young people I might be more optimistic. My grandchildren seem upbeat; by children less so. Is this pessimism a byproduct of age or has our age become so bad that one can't help but be pessimistic.

I'm not framing these thoughts as questions because I expect no answers. But, the pacifism of King and Gandhi and Nelson Mandela aside, I sure would like to see heads roll.

Schadenfreude

I'm a horrible person. All my good intentions and resolutions for the new year -- down the drain. Heard the "news" about Jack Abramoff pleading guilty to felony charges in exchange for testimony against his friends on The Hill and my face lit up like a Jack-o-Lantern. (Never mind that the Abramoff story was two and a half years in the making ((www.sourcewatch.org)) and that commentators and Washington insiders claimed to be "shocked, just shocked I tell you.")

Add the Abramoff story to the NSA/FISA scandal, the ongoing CIA leak investigation, the unresolved Downing Street Memo/Impeachment hearings and a dozen other open questions making their way through the halls of Congress and the White House, and I'm experiencing extreme Schadenfreude.

It's not the war in Iraq, Osama bin Laden or our dwindling status on the world stage that will bring down the Bush Administration and the GOP; it'll be domestic issues like bribery, incompetence, cronyism, FEMA, the rigged Medicare drug plan with its nonexistent savings and Washington's infamous revolving door.

My friends may get their Schadenfreude fix by watching sitcoms or reality TV or American Idol; I watch Washington. As I said, I'm a horrible person.

Smoke and Mirrors and -- oh yeah, more Smoke

My mother, of blessed memory, used to say, "You can't pee on my back and make me think it's raining." My new take on this old piece of wisdom is, "Don't blow smoke up my butt and then bill me for a colonoscopy." Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but in this age of "Smoke and Mirrors" it seems more appropriate. This year I've been tempted to call the Whitehouse switchboard and ask, "Just what part of 'bend over' am I not understanding here?" But for all I know, I'm already on more than one of their secret lists. Do I really need to be on another?

Thinking about the Gregorian year ending this weekend and what we, as a nation, have managed to accomplish. We are now spying on Quakers and folks who don't wear fur. We are no closer to the truth on Plame-gate than we were a year ago. We are watching the Apartheid Wall expand across the Occupied Territories of the West Bank while we talk of a new wall separating us from our cousins to the south. We continue to put faith in the "trust me" administration and avoid words like "impeachment" and "unindicted coconspirator" lest we be called un-American. We await election results from the third Iraqi election this year and believe that this time -- for sure -- we will be able to hand sovereignty back to the people from whom we took it nearly three years ago. We are counting our dead but not counting their dead -- admitting to "30,000 more or less" as though we were guessing at how many jellybeans are in the jar. We continue to wave red flags at the Iranians on a weekly basis but are shocked -- just shocked, I tell you -- when they wave a red flag back at us. We are still debating a Patriot Act that has nothing whatsoever to do with patriotism while watching absolute power corrupt absolutely.

Personally, I am thinking of a number between one and 100,000 and two naked emperors -- George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon (which is not an image I want stuck in my head for more than a nanosecond) -- while passively watching the administration and the media add new words and phrases to our collective vocabulary as a nation, such as permanent vegetative state, Qur'an abuse, stress positions, extraordinary rendition, Bridges to Nowhere, Minutemen, Gitmoize, unlawful insurgency (a true oxymoron), punditry, evil doers, cut and run, girly men, nuclear option, public scatology, blame game, talking points, Intelligent Design, wardrobe malfunction, recess appointment, donor fatigue, neo-Caliphate and the truly offensive phrase of the month: Islamofascism -- would anyone dare to say or print Judeofascism? -- I seriously doubt it.

One year and forty-nine weeks ago (1/19/04), Dick Cheney told USA Today in an interview that he was not worried about his image as the administration's Machiavelli, skilled in the quiet arts of persuading his "Prince" to pursue questionable policies, and adding, remarkably, "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole? It's a nice way to operate, actually."

Not much has changed since then. Cheney is operating a bit more out in the open since the 2004 election. And I've noticed that we now have a new alphabet soup on the shelf. Anyone my age will remember when the accepted abbreviations consisted of MD, PhD, CPA, H2O and AT&T and we all knew exactly what each of those letters stood for. Now CPA has a whole new meaning and we have added FISA, FOIA, NSA, CIA, FBI, WMD, FEMA, DHS, ACLU, ADL, ADC, CAIR, AIPAC, RNC, DNC, GOP, ANWR, OPEC, CAFTA, NAFTA, WTO, IMF, WHO, IAEA, AEI, DOD, GAO (which changed its name earlier this year but is still abbreviated as GAO) and, of course, the ubiquitous K Street.

Lurking somewhere amid the smoke, mirrors and alphabet soup there has to be a tipping point. If not, next year at this time we'll still be shoveling shit and hoping for a pony.

Pondering the Season and a Prayer

Christmas is not my holiday, yet it's hard to escape if you live in the U.S. I was thinking back to my first Christmas in New Mexico -- at least the first where I actually lived here. Wrote something that's been on my mind since then -- 1995. Found it yesterday on the Winter Solstice. Even ten years later, it still hold up:

O, how I long for more perfect world, but that exists only on another plane, sometimes called The Next World. As always, I try to be ever-prepared for that World, the Next Reality.

Being on The Path changes perception. Not just my perception of myself and my perception of God, but my perception of Reality in general, of the world. As the world is not just the planet, I am not just my body but a synthesis of forces, ranging from intellect to racial or global memory and consciousness. All together this is my soul, my most precious possession, yet not mine -- on loan to me for a short time, entrusted so to speak. I must care for it, protect it, keep it pure. There can be no pride in ownership of this soul The trust is to return it to the Oneness, back to the conscious primordial soup, as pure as I can, so as not to pollute the soup as a whole.

Are there some souls so black that they pollute the soup permanently? Or some so pure that they can save it? The twelve (or thirty-six) righteous men of Hebrew/Hasidic lore, the Twelve Apostles, the twelve Christians afflicted with stigmata at all times -- does it take only twelve souls to keep the whole planet from collapse?

Maybe it takes only one. That may be the real story of Christmas. The consciousness of one soul played out on a global scale. Mother Mary, Isa or Jesus as the Christ, St. Theresa, Mother Theresa, Muhammad vs. Hitler, Reza Shah Pahlavi, Saddam Hussein, Pinochet, Osama bin Laden. And where does this microcosm leave the rest of us? Striving to be one of the twelve? Or just entrusted, individually, quietly to keep the soul with which we've been entrusted pure. Interesting to ponder.

An Artist's Prayer:

I trust in Allah, the Great Creator, the Oneness within the Universe and the Messengers, Saints and Angels He has sent to guide us. I seek guidance on the straight path and His help in doing the Work. Please send a Presence to guide me towards Purity and Beauty. Let me recognize the Presence, remember my Dreams, and create Beauty in Thy Name. Pour water to make my Path easy and guide me back to the Oneness. Provide abundance as I grow to make Growth possible. Strengthen my faith and give me Hope, Charity and Wisdom. But most of all, give me Beauty and Inspiration to create Inspired Beauty.

I place my soul in Your hands, now and in the Reality to come. Let it be pure. Amen.

Don't, Don't, Don't

I've spent a week trying to figure out what this Administration actually does. And all I can figure out is what they don't do ...

The don't listen to polls, they don't do torture, they don't condone torture, they don't watch the news, they don't read, they don't play the blame game, they don't comment on ongoing investigations, they don't believe in global warming, they don't do metrics, they don't allow photos of flag draped coffins returning from Iraq, they don't attend funerals, they don't forge documents, they don't use chemical weapons such as white phosphorus or depleted uranium, they don't engage in extraordinary renditions, they don't sign or honor international treaties, they don't have secret (black ops) prisons in unnamed countries, they don't deport suspects to unnamed countries who engage in torture, they don't get their hands dirty, they don't do nuance and did I mention that they don't read?

Here's a list of my own personal don'ts: I don't understand how two Downing Street memos can go unnoticed. I don't understand how the mainstream media can be deemed so credible when they so obviously lie for those pouring the Kool-Aid and serving the frosted gingerbread snowflakes (cookies). I don't get why Medicare Part D is supposed to be a good thing when my prescriptions will actually cost me more than they do under the current system. I don't watch situation comedies on television and haven't since 9/11 and can't understand how anyone else can. I don't understand why my cost of living increase does not take into account rising energy and food costs and why no one gets it that the elderly and disabled are getting more and more desperate every year. (What part of "bend over" don't we get?) I don't understand why Americans aren't marching in the streets, torches blazing, and calling for heads to roll.

And I don't understand what would be so wrong about just admitting that we made a terrible blunder by invading Iraq, apologizing profusely, kicking out Halliburton, Bechtel, and all the other American and American off-shore contractors, giving however-many-billions of dollars are left after Bremmer, Allawi, Greed and Graft to the Iraqi people c/o a third party NGO to rebuild an infrastructure that was fragile, but working, prior to our invasion, and just leaving before anyone else dies.

But that's just me ...

You say Padilla, I say Padilla ...

Road trip with my son, J., to and from Santa Fe for Thanksgiving holiday at his home in The City Different. Spoke of many things, mostly political. He asked why the broadcast media was mispronouncing the name of Jose Padilla, "the enemy combatant former known as the dirty bomber" (homage to Prince).

BFO (blinding flash of the obvious) somewhere between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Since his arrest some three years ago, Padilla has been asking that both L's of his name be pronounced; not the Spanish pronunciation of the LL (ya). The media has been inconsistent; no explanation has been given.

BFO -- if P and B are somewhat interchangeable in Semitic languages and only Arabic speakers pronounce the initial "ayn", in Arabic Padilla becomes Badilla becomes 'Abd'Allah (or Badi'u'llah as suggested by Juan Cole). Of course, Jose Padilla (or Youssef 'Abd'Allah) himself has been in solitary confinement since his detention and unavailable to answer questions (or to even ask questions, like: "Why am I here?" i.e., habeas corpus.) So I guess it will be some time before we ever really know...

Give me slavery or give me death!

Congress has gone on vacation (again) and left a mess in its wake. Except for giving themselves a raise, very little has been accomplished in "The People's House".

Oh, there was a late night session and a great video byte of Freshman Congresswomen Jean Schmidt's hysterical attack on Veteran Congressman John Murtha, calling the decorated war hero a coward and turning red and blue and then later, white, when she had to eat her own words. (That was exciting and very colorful! She actually matched her outfit.) Then there were the cuts in food stamps. And the cuts in FEMA funding for the housing of displaced Louisiana residents.

Outside of Congress, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald called for another Grand Jury and there's news of Bob Woodward's possible involvement in the Valerie Plame leak case. VP Dick Cheney is still begging for a CIA exemption from any torture prohibitions while accusing war heroes of being in the "Michael Moore Camp", whatever that means. And there's been confirmation of the US use of chemical weapons in the form of white phosphorus during the siege of Fallujah last fall. But Dar Jamail reported on that a year ago so it's only news to the CNN crowd.

Plus George Bush using all of his Asian photo ops as bully pulpits to spout bumper stickers like "When the Iraqis stand up, We'll stand down", and "We don't do torture", and "I want my mommy" -- oops. I guess he really didn't say the last one, but that's the distinct impression I got while watching him on CNN with the sound off. But then, I don't read lips.

After four plus years, I'm tired of hearing about the "Haters of Freedom" and "The Evil Doers". Who is the Hell hates freedom, anyway? That's like hating water or air or sunshine or evening or little children. "Hey -- I hate freedom; give me slavery or give me death!" As for Evil Doers, that's Sunday school rhetoric. Look in your own backyard, Georgie. Torture is evil. Lying is evil. Killing women and children is evil. Letting children starve and old people drown is evil. The donut hole in the new Medicare drug plan is evil.

I guess if you live long enough, everything old is new again. But it's only been four years and they've dragged out the rhetoric used after 9/11 and are pushing it down our throats once again. Well, I refuse to swallow. I'll continue to watch CNN with the sound off for a while and make up my own dialogue. It's got to make more sense than what the folks in Washington are actually saying.

The Gift That Just Keeps Giving

I fear that the Bush Presidency will go down as "The Gift That Just Keeps Giving", sort of like syphilis or herpes. Because no matter how bad it appears now, it can only get worse. It's really too late for there to be a change big enough, sweeping enough, cataclysmic enough to keep this from being our legacy until the year 2050. My grandchildren will look back on the years between 2000 and 2005 as the beginning of "The Millennium That Couldn't" -- couldn't stop global war, couldn't stop global warming, couldn't stop globalization, period. And, barring Divine Intervention, we've got three more years to go before we can even begin to clean up Bush's nasty mess.

I've been sorting through a week's worth of e-mails, postings and bulletins and getting desperate. Desperately searching for a third party, another choice besides a series of slogans and bumper stickers: "Freedom is on the march"; "We fight them there so we won't have to fight them here"; "We'll stand down when the Iraqis stand up"; "You're either with us or against us"; "These colors don't run"; "We do not torture"; and (my personal favorite), "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie."

Is there anyone out there who can cheer me up?

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Veterans Day. Armistice Day. Watching Ahmed Chalabi spin to AEI, Karl Rove make a rare public appearance, and Cheney lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was bad enough. But the staged press event at which George W. Bush ranted against the Democrats in Congress, the media at large, and anyone else who disagreed with his reasons for this disaster called a war in Iraq as treasonous was like listening to a replay of his 2004 campaign. I couldn't believe cable news devoted so much air time to his speech -- again and again and again.

About the third time around I began to focus on the faces of the servicemen strategically placed as a backdrop behind the president. There was one poor soul (and I won't point out which one -- just watch the tape) who looks like he's either waiting for lightening to strike the president and wondering how in Hell he's going to get out of the way or waiting for Bush's pants to catch fire and hoping that he won't be expected to be part of the bucket brigade to put out the flames. Any serviceman expected to serve as wallpaper for a presidential appearance should receive hazard pay (or sue for exceptionally cruel and unusual punishment.)

Speaking of which, where is the rest of the story behind Cheney's insistence that the CIA be exempt from bans on torture? Will Bush veto legislation that doesn't include this exception? Can Congress really override a Supreme Court decision about fair representation for so-called "enemy combatants"? And when will the people of this country, the ordinary working folks who believe in Mom and apple pie and parades, get fed up enough to stick their collective heads out of the window and shout (a la "Network"), "We're mad as Hell and we're not going to take it any more!!"

As for me, Belen(istan) is so rural that no one would hear my shouts. But I'm still running around the house every morning yelling "Off with their heads!" and freaking out my dogs. Poor dogs ...

Media Withdrawal

The President has been getting a lot of "face time" this week -- late dinner with Prince Charles and Camilla, meetings in Argentina, and the one platform where he actually spoke: a press conference to alarm the American Public on the imminent danger of Bird Flu. (Having Bush speak on a subject like bird flu is like asking a six-year old to wax eloquent on particle theory). But it sure beat his having to answer any tough questions. The "talking points memo" beat goes on. Just how many ways can one say: "We won't comment on an ongoing investigation." Apparently, the answer is akin to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin ...

And while Bush gets his "face time", others in his administration continue to bully Syria, threaten Iran, lie about WMD, and try to tie Hugo Chavez in with the so-called anarchists. (Just who gets to define who is an anarchist, anyway.) And now it is clear that the media is getting and using the administration (read Republican) talking points, as well. Between hours and hours and hours of Wolf Blitzer's irritating voice on CNN and MSNBC's Chris Matthews' foaming at the mouth, I'm beginning to limit my media consumption to the internet, Amy Goodman, Jon Stewart, and Keith Olbermann (the only mainstream media personality I can stomach at the moment.) Even PBS is getting on my nerves. Is it just me? I consider myself the ultimate media junky and even I can't sit there and watch this train wreck another moment.

When is anyone going to do an in-depth report on Cheney's ongoing role in offshore torture? How mentions of FEMA FUBARs can just fly by without comment and why is Michael ("You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie") Brown still on the FEMA payroll? While the Senate Democrats have begun to stretch their legs and stand up (read: find their cojones) with the calling of a closed door session (rule 21) to finally press for answers on pre-war intelligence, just how many times will the media replay the loop of Senator Frist calling this a "slap in the face".

And now the pundits and advisors are talking of reprising Bush's award winning role as "The Compassionate Conservative" on the domestic stage. Is a Tony or an Oscar in the offing? With all this spin, am I the only one who is nauseous?

Eid M'Barak

All Souls Day, Day of the Dead, Dia de las Muertas, all falling about the time of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday feast marking the end of the Ramadan month of fasting.

I'm at a loss as to what to celebrate. I look forward to the end of Ramadan, not for myself (I'm too ill to fast), but for the Iraqis and Palestinians and Afghanis and Pakistanis and Sudanese whose lives have been made ever more miserable over the last month due to occupation and collective punishment and insecurity and lack of water and food (even during nighttime hours).

My Catholic cousin celebrates All Souls Day and I celebrate him for that. You can visit his web site at Archdiocese of the Internet, www.brothermichael.com/departed and add names for prayers.

Personally, I love Dia de las Muertas, even though I'm Muslim. I like the idea of celebrating the end of life as one does the beginning -- with prayer and food and joy. I love the colors -- the reds and yellows and blues. And the sugared skulls and miniature fruit and vegetables, the candles and all the paper flowers. (Anyone who has been in my home and seen my kitchen will know what I mean -- every day is Dia de las Muertas in Belenistan!)

But it's the Day of the Dead that really troubles me. All the American servicemen and women, over 2,000 dead in this senseless war. All the Iraqis, women and children, grandmothers and grandfathers, civilians, killed by the so-called "insurgents", but mostly by U.S. bombs and rockets dropped by airplanes and helicopters, the multitude of the uncounted. And the Palestinians of Gaza, still suffering collective punishment, more so now that the settlements are gone and there are no witnesses.

So I guess I'll say my prayers for everyone, light all the candles and try to remember as many names as I can over the next few days. Insha'Allah, it will be enough.