Poem of the Day

anyone lived in a pretty how town by ee cummings



anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.

Women and men (both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed (but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
with by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

"We're screwed", says noted epidemiologist

Pandemic could create serious and sustained food shortages, expert warns

(CP) - An influenza pandemic would dramatically disrupt the processing and distribution of food supplies across the world, emptying grocery store shelves and creating crippling shortages for months, an expert warned Thursday.

Dr. Michael Osterholm suggested policy makers must start intensive planning to figure out how to ensure food supplies for their populations during a time when international travel may be grounded or severely cut back, when workers are too sick to process or deliver food and when people will be too fearful of disease to gather in restaurants.

Food and other essential goods like drugs and surgical masks will be available at best in limited supplies, Osterholm cautioned in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, which devoted a number of articles to the threat of pandemic influenza.

He saved his most flatly worded warning, however, for a news conference organized by the Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes the respected journal. In an interview from Washington following the briefing, he repeated his blunt message.

"We're pretty much screwed right now," said Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Osterholm said the "just-in-time" delivery model by which modern corporations operate means food distribution networks don't have warehouses brimming with months worth of inventory.

Most grocery store chains have only several days worth of their most popular commodities in warehouses, he explained, with perhaps 30 days worth of stock for less popular items.

He pointed to the short-term shortages that occur when winter storms threaten communities, then suggested people envisage the possibility of those shortages dragging on for somewhere between 18 months and three years as the expected successive waves of pandemic flu buffet the world.

"I think we'll have a very limited food supply," he said in the interview.

"As soon as you shut down both the global travel and trade . . . and (add to it) the very real potential to shut down over-land travel within a country, there are very few areas that will be hit as quickly as will be food, given the perishable nature of it."

Osterholm has been one of the most vocal proponents of the urgent need to prepare for a flu pandemic that could sicken at least a third of the world's population and kill many millions. However, he is not alone in fearing the world may be facing a pandemic, widely viewed as the single most disruptive and deadly infectious disease event known to humankind.

The lingering outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu strain that has decimated poultry stocks in wide swathes of Southeast Asia has influenza experts the world over losing sleep over the possibility the highly virulent virus will mutate or evolve to the point where it can spread to and among humans, starting a pandemic.

According to the official World Health Organization tally, at least 103 people have been infected with H5N1 influenza since December 2003 in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia. That count doesn't include a farm worker in Indonesia who was recently confirmed to have been infected with - and recovered from - H5N1.

It also doesn't include six new cases which came to light this week in media reports from Vietnam. While Vietnamese authorities haven't notified WHO of the cases, the agency said in a statement Thursday the reports "appear to be accurate."

Official and unofficial tallies put the human death toll at 54 since December 2003.

Laurie Garrett, a fellow at the council, noted the unprecedented potential of a pandemic to wreak economic and political havoc.

"Frankly no models of social response to such a pandemic have managed to factor in fully the potential effect on human productivity," Garrett, a Pulitzer-prize winning former journalist and author of The Coming Plague, said in an article in the journal.

"It is therefore impossible to reckon accurately the potential global economic impact."

Osterholm said it is incumbent on governments to start identifying essential basic commodities and figuring out supply and delivery for a time when long-distance truckers may balk at travelling to affected communities and armed forces personnel may be too sick to fill in the gaps.

I'd say Run Away! Run Away!, but there's no place left to run away to, is there?

Looking for a Scapegoat

from whiskey bar:

Before I poked fun yesterday at Tom Friedman's latest attempt to fish his journalistic reputation out of the Iraq War toilet, I probably should have paused to consider the significance of his casual slur about liberals who "deep down" want to see Bush fail.

Why? Because it bore such an uncanny resemblance to this poisonous 2003 comment from National Review contributor Stanley Kurtz:

A house divided against itself cannot stand. A nation where the political opposition stands against our foreign policy, and even secretly (and not so secretly) hopes for its failure, cannot reform a region as recalcitrant as the Middle East. (emphasis added)

As I mentioned at the time, Kurtz's version of the stabbed-in-the-back theory eerily echoed the original, as expounded by the leader of an extreme nationalist party in a certain central European country in the grim years following World War I.

I'd mention their names, but I don't want to sound "shrill."

Such talk from the McCarthyist right is predictable, and probably inevitable. Hell, Kurtz was muttering about treason before we even lost the war. But now we're hearing similar, if more subtle, hints from Mr. Globalony himself – second only to the editorial "we" of The New Republic as the official voice of American neoliberalism.

I don’t know why Friedman is flirting with Ann Coulter’s world view. Maybe he’s just nipping back at his critics – who managed to be right about the war even though they aren’t on a first-name basis with every kleptocrat in the Middle East. Or maybe he understands that the sinking of the U.S.S. Mission Accomplished is going to take a hell of a lot of reputations to the bottom with it, and has decided he needs a bigger life raft.

He may be right: Trashing Donald Rumsfeld for his conduct of the war and sucking up to Colin Powell (“Almost every problem we face in Iraq today . . . flows from not having gone into Iraq with the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force . . .”) may not provide enough protection – not when you’re as sprawled across the public record of the last three years as Tom Friedman. You also never know who’s going to end up writing those postwar why-we-lost-in-Iraq books. Hedging his bets – by blaming both the most powerful presidential administration in recent memory and a tiny, marginalized antiwar movement – could be a smart career move.

But what Friedman’s comment really drove home for me is how perilous the postwar political environment is likely to be for the remnants of American liberalism – and for the anti-imperialist left in particular.

This may seem counterintuitive, since the “national greatness” conservatives and their Friedmanesque collaborators have just taken such a spectacular geostrategic belly flop. But if you look back at America’s post-Vietnam experience, you may see my point. After a brief period of ’70s soul searching – a rare example of American glasnost – the silent majority quickly repressed all doubt and buried the memory of defeat under the jingoism and cheap patriotism of “Rambo” Ron Reagan. The antiwar left had been right about Vietnam, practically as well as morally, (Ben Stein can bite me) and was punished for it. (more)

Billmon is right. The NeoCons will be casting about wildly for a scapegoat. And it will be US. Of course the NeoCons will just light out for their private islands and gated compounds like the no-balls little cowardly worms that they are. And we will once again be left with the task of clearing away their pile of shit.

And Ben Stein can bite me as well. No talented Nixon apologist asshole that he is. I invite everyone else to call on Ben to bite them as well.

DSM Update

via Shakespeare's Sister:

Liveblog of the DSM Hearing here

Unable to attend the hearings in Washington today, Greg Palast submitted his testimony, which you can read here.

AfterDowningStreet’s David Swanson and Jonathan Schwartz in the Baltimore Sun: Damning evidence can’t be ignored.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune editorial: Fig leaf for war.

Newsweek: From Downing Street to Capitol Hill.

LA Times: New Memos Detail Early Plans for Invading Iraq

Raw Story traces how it confirmed the Downing Street Documents.

Poem of the Day

To a President by Walt Whitman

ALL you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,
You have not learn'd of Nature--of the politics of Nature, you have
not learn'd the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality;
You have not seen that only such as they are for These States,
And that what is less than they, must sooner or later lift off from
These States.

Quote of the Day

via Making Light:

Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden asked Deputy Associate Attorney General J. Michael Wiggins whether the Justice Department had “defined when there is the end of conflict.”

“No, sir,” Wiggins responded.

“If there is no definition as to when the conflict ends, that means forever, forever, forever these folks get held at Guantanamo Bay,” Biden said.

“It’s our position that, legally, they can be held in perpetuity,” Wiggins said.

This is being done in our names, people. These bastards think they can lock someone up for life in one of their concentration camps simply by deciding to do so.

We should all be so very, very ashamed.

Losing Our Country

via CommonDreams:

Baby boomers like me grew up in a relatively equal society. In the 1960's America was a place in which very few people were extremely wealthy, many blue-collar workers earned wages that placed them comfortably in the middle class, and working families could expect steadily rising living standards and a reasonable degree of economic security.

But as The Times's series on class in America reminds us, that was another country. The middle-class society I grew up in no longer exists.

Working families have seen little if any progress over the past 30 years. Adjusted for inflation, the income of the median family doubled between 1947 and 1973. But it rose only 22 percent from 1973 to 2003, and much of that gain was the result of wives' entering the paid labor force or working longer hours, not rising wages.

Meanwhile, economic security is a thing of the past: year-to-year fluctuations in the incomes of working families are far larger than they were a generation ago. All it takes is a bit of bad luck in employment or health to plunge a family that seems solidly middle-class into poverty.

But the wealthy have done very well indeed. Since 1973 the average income of the top 1 percent of Americans has doubled, and the income of the top 0.1 percent has tripled.

Why is this happening? I'll have more to say on that another day, but for now let me just point out that middle-class America didn't emerge by accident. It was created by what has been called the Great Compression of incomes that took place during World War II, and sustained for a generation by social norms that favored equality, strong labor unions and progressive taxation. Since the 1970's, all of those sustaining forces have lost their power.

Since 1980 in particular, U.S. government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families - and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless. From tax cuts that favor the rich to bankruptcy 'reform' that punishes the unlucky, almost every domestic policy seems intended to accelerate our march back to the robber baron era.

It's not a pretty picture - which is why right-wing partisans try so hard to discredit anyone who tries to explain to the public what's going on.

These partisans rely in part on obfuscation: shaping, slicing and selectively presenting data in an attempt to mislead. For example, it's a plain fact that the Bush tax cuts heavily favor the rich, especially those who derive most of their income from inherited wealth. Yet this year's Economic Report of the President, in a bravura demonstration of how to lie with statistics, claimed that the cuts 'increased the overall progressivity of the federal tax system.'

The partisans also rely in part on scare tactics, insisting that any attempt to limit inequality would undermine economic incentives and reduce all of us to shared misery. That claim ignores the fact of U.S. economic success after World War II. It also ignores the lesson we should have learned from recent corporate scandals: sometimes the prospect of great wealth for those who succeed provides an incentive not for high performance, but for fraud.

Above all, the partisans engage in name-calling. To suggest that sustaining programs like Social Security, which protects working Americans from economic risk, should have priority over tax cuts for the rich is to practice 'class warfare.' To show concern over the growing inequality is to engage in the 'politics of envy.'

But the real reasons to worry about the explosion of inequality since the 1970's have nothing to do with envy. The fact is that working families aren't sharing in the economy's growth, and face growing economic insecurity. And there's good reason to believe that a society in which most people can reasonably be considered middle class is a better society - and more likely to be a functioning democracy - than one in which there are great extremes of wealth and poverty.

Reversing the rise in inequality and economic insecurity won't be easy: the middle-class society we have lost emerged only after the country was shaken by depression and war. But we can make a start by calling attention to the politicians who systematically make things worse in catering to their contributors. Never mind that straw man, the politics of envy. Let's try to do something about the politics of greed.

Paul Krugman

� Copyright 2005 New York Times"

Global Warming: The US Contribution in Figures

from arse poetica:

The B*sh madministration record on the environment is appalling. Why Tony Blair thought he would get some satisfaction on the Kyoto Treaty question from the hyenas in this madministration soaked in the blood of oil money is beyond me. Tony left disappointed. The G8 summit will proceed with the US the lone, ignorant voice on these questions. Take action.

Global Warming: The US Contribution in Figures.

Global Warming: The US Contribution in Figures

* The United States constitutes 4 per cent of the world population
* It is responsible for a quarter of all carbon dioxide emissions - an average of 40,000 pounds of carbon dioxide is released by each US citizen every year - the highest of any country in the world, and more than China, India and Japan combined
* Americans use 50 million tons of paper annually - consuming more than 850 million trees
* There are more than 200 million cars and light trucks on american roads
* According to the Federal Department of Transportation, they use over 200 million gallons of petrol a day
* Motor vehicles account for 56 per cent of all air pollution in The United States
* A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2002 concluded that people living in the most heavily polluted metropolitan areas have a 12 per cent increased risk of dying of lung cancer than people in the least polluted areas
* 32 of the 50 busiest US airports currently have plans to expand operations
* Every year US industries release at least 2.4 billion pounds of chemicals into the atmosphere
* Despite having just 2 per cent of known oil reserves, the US consumes 25 per cent of the world's oil production
* 16 per cent of world oil production goes into american cars alone.
* Approximately 160 million people living in 32 US states live in regions with smog and soot levels considered dangerous to health
* The new clear air interstate rule aims to cut sulphur dioxide by 73 per cent and nitrogen oxide by 61 per cent in the next 10 years
* Around 50 million new cars roll off US assembly lines each year
* There are already more than 20 million four-wheel-drive vehicles on US roads
* More than 1.5 million gallons of oil were spilled into US waters in 2000 alone
* Only 1 per cent of american travel is on public transport, an eighth of that in the UK and an eighteenth of that in Japan
* As much as 5.99 tons of carbon dioxide is emitted per American per year, compared with 0.31 tons per Indian or 0.05 tons per Bangladeshi.
* The US had 16 major oil spills between 1976 and 1989, whereas France suffered six and the UK five
* The average american produces 864kg of municipal waste per year, almost three times the quantity of rubbish produced annually by an Italian

[Photo credit.]

Did You Get The Memo?

from Agitprop:

I caught this little gem in an article on the new British memos released Sunday which show that U.K. officials believed the U.S. had no adequate post-war planning:

Testimony by then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of Iraq policy, before a House subcommittee on Feb. 28, 2003, just weeks before the invasion, illustrated the optimistic view the administration had of postwar Iraq. He said containment of Hussein the previous 12 years had cost "slightly over $30 billion," adding, "I can't imagine anyone here wanting to spend another $30 billion to be there for another 12 years." As of May, the Congressional Research Service estimated that Congress has approved $208 billion for the war in Iraq since 2003.

Well, Wolfowitz was only off by $178 billion. Hopefully he has brushed up on his numerical calculation skills considering he is now president of the World Bank.

Raw Story has the recently released British documents in html here:

• The Iraq options paper
• Axis of evil, British foreign secretary says Iraq case weak
• Condi committed to regime change In 2002
• The British legal background
• Admission that Iraq WMD program hadn't changed
• The 'need to wrongfoot' Saddam on inspectors

The pressure is building on the Downing Street Memo story (a.k.a. Memogate). John Conyers has achieved almost 500,000 signatures on his letter petition to President Bush which demands answers about pre-war planning.

Join the Big Brass Alliance. Sign Rep. Conyers' petition.

Awaken the Mainstream Media. Demand an answer.

The American Swastika

from the Grand Moff Texan via The News Blog:

This is not the Confederate Flag.



This is the Confederate Flag.

If you google "Confederate Flag," you will not find a single, real Confederate Flag on the first page, and few examples after that.

Not only has"Confederate Flag" changed to mean something it should not, the phony "Confederate Flag" has changed in significance over time, too. It began as a battle flag, a way to tell Confederate from Union forces on the field, since their two flags weren't that different, and units' uniforms and individual banners were anything but standardized. The phony Confederate Flag seems to have borrowed the Cross of St. Andrew, seen on the Scottish flag, or maybe St.Patrick's cross, incorporated into the Union Jack, but that's just me guessing.

For longer than the Confederacy lasted, and for more than a century after the American Civil War, the phony Confederate Flag has stood for the defiance of the South, for America's own, premodern apartheid. It has become, simply, The American Swastika.

The comparison isn't inflammatory, it's deliberate and appropriate. This wouldn't be the first time an old symbol changed meaning due to its abuse by the sick and twisted.



One Bad Apple From Germany Killed Millions. Hitler didn't just leave behind a mnemonic for all students of astronomy in the English language. He took an ancient good luck symbol, a nearly universal one, and turned it into a universally recognized symbol of evil.

It can happen. And it did happen here. Don't give me that bullshit about slavery not being relevant to most of Southern society, or not being a factor in the Civil War, or not being the monopoly of the South. This is a Southerner you're talking to, and I've heard it all before and I know better. I know my region's history, and it is unique within my country. Something different happened here. The South cannibalized their entire culture, even their supposed religion, to justify the racism that justified first slavery and later (and for much longer) the political subjection of African Americans. The truly sad thing is that even those who never owned slaves (and ante-bellum middle class Southerners were more likely to buy a slave and rent him out than they were to buy their own land) were part of this conspiracy of justification. After the American Civil War an even wider portion of Southern society was directly involved in the subjection of African Americans. The Civil War didn't sweep away a civilization based on slavery, it merely displaced its ruling class and began the South's long, slow march away from its top-heavy, agrarian, aristocratic society. American apartheid had been democratized, and with it, the Confederate Flag became its egalitarian symbol against the Civil Rights movement and all other aspects of integration for generations.

The Confederate Flag resonates, as a symbol, throughout Southern culture.

People all over the world know what they're looking at when they see the Confederate Flag. Regardless of what those who display the Confederate Flag may say it means, the Confederate Flag is never far from the Klan and like groups, and the Confederate Flag is never displayed by their historical victims. Showing the Confederate Flag doesn't just leave the displayer with a burden of proof, to show that for them it's something other than what the Confederate Flag has stood for, now, for generations. Rather, the Confederate Flag's history, both long and recent in this country, are such that the Confederate Flag cannot be displayed in good faith. The meaning of the Confederate Flag is utterly unambiguous. At best, venerators of the Confederate Flag can plead ignorance, not innocence.

I grew up with the Confederate Flagand there was never any question what it meant. The South would rise again, that's what the Confederate Flag meant. We flew the Confederate Flag at my high school. The Confederate Flag appeared on bumpers, T-shirts, and other paraphernalia. "Dixie gonna do it again!" and similar slogans accompanied the Confederate Flag.

There was simply no question. The Confederate Flag is not a symbol of heritage. That should have been obvious enough in Mississippi, where more people fought for the Union than the Confederacy, and yet the Confederate Flag's defenders insist it is part of that state's "heritage." No. It's part of the "heritage" of that minority of Mississippians whose "heritage" involved the subjection of the rest. That's their "heritage." Hey, if the pointy hat fits, wear it.

So, if you're going to attack a people, demonize and destroy their language and religion, hold them up as a threat to civilization and "your" womanhood, destroy their families, rape, murder, mutilate, crush them in labor camps and then, when someone justifiably smacks your racist ass, take that whole murderous shame underground, don't be surprised when your precious symbol, the sign of all you hold holy but that all the world recognizes as the sigil of your sickness, becomes, quite simply, your Swastika. That's all the Confederate Flag which is not the real Confederate Flag will ever be, now.

It's The American Swastika.

Pay particular attention to the discussion in the comments on The News Blog. Most interesting.

The arguments placing the cause of the Civil War at the door of so-called 'states' rights' hold no water if you take the time to read the secession documents. The right to own slaves is at the forefront of all of those declarations. 'State's rights' as a justification was first used by the founders of the 'Lost Cause' movement during Reconstruction. And to our great national sorrow, these fools still cling to this shabby cloak today.

Claims that the use of the flag is just meant to preserve 'Southern culture' cut no ice with me. Supposedly heroic death in perpetuation or protection of a way of life founded on the enslavement of other humans is not worthy of fond remembrance. Sorrow, yes. Celebration, no.

I find a display of this intolerable symbol of racism and treason repulsive. In many ways it is more disgusting than the Nazi Swastika because it holds power over so many more minds today than the vile Nazi swill does.

Poem of the Day

When the Light Appears by Allen Ginsberg

You'll bare your bones you'll grow you'll pray you'll only know
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You'll sing & you'll love you'll praise blue heavens above
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You'll whimper & you'll cry you'll get yourself sick and sigh
You'll sleep & you'll dream you'll only know what you mean
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears
You'll come & you'll go, you'll wander to and fro
You'll go home in despair you'll wonder why'd you care
You'll stammer & you'll lie you'll ask everybody why
You'll cough and you'll pout you'll kick your toe with gout
You'll jump you'll shout you'll knock you're friends about
You'll bawl and you'll deny & announce your eyes are dry
You'll roll and you'll rock you'll show your big hard cock
You'll love and you'll grieve & one day you'll come believe
As you whistle & you smile the lord made you worthwhile
You'll preach and you'll glide on the pulpit in your pride
Sneak & slide across the stage like a river in high tide
You'll come fast or come on slow just the same you'll never know
When the light appears, boy, when the light appears

Book Meme

I have been tagged by fellow local poet Mitch over at Blogfonte, a nicely written blog about anime, poetry, civil war history, and everyday life in a small town. Don't worry about his occasional snarls on things political. Mitch is a Burkean classic liberal, not one of those new mind-numbed NeoCons. He actually believes in intellectual discussion. And he gives as good as he gets.

How many books do you own?
Well, that's an interesting question. I have about 7000 books in my apartment, about half of which are science fiction and fantasy. Maybe another 700 or so are poetry, 500 or so are books on Taoism, another batch of similar size are on conspiracy lore. The rest are largely ancient and modern history, scholarly geography, (mostly concerning climate, agriculture and globalization), science and environmental studies. I suspect I am the "mutual friend with a much larger mess" that Mitch alludes to.

I also have about 225,000 books in my used bookshop, Webster's. Whether I own them or not is something you will have to ask the bank.

Last book purchased:

Well, hard to say. These came in the last shipment from B&N, so I guess they are probably the last things I purchased:

• Will in the World, How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt
  

Greenblatt probably knows more about Shakespeare the man than anyone else alive today.

• The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

Stross is the current hot property in the SF world.

• Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi
  

A book combining my two great passions, geography and writing. How could I pass it up?

• A Change of Regime By J.N. Stroyer
  

The sequel to her fabulous contrafactual historical novel, The Children's War. I'm really looking forward to reading this one.

Five (err Six) Books That Mean a Lot To Me:

• Pablo Neruda's The Captain's Verses Wow. So much emotion in so few words This is the essence of poetry for me. I am also much taken with Wislawa Szymborska's poetry for similar reasons. No spare words. Glorious imagery and thought.
• Catch 22 by Joseph Heller The first book that I ever read that made me want to figure out the mechanics of how it was written. Just a wonderful amalgamation of character, plot and description. I reread it every year.
• Beastmaster by Andre Norton This book saved my life as a teenager. It was the first book I ever read where a Native American was the hero. Up until then I really thought that only white folks could be heroes in books. This book and Ms. Norton's other novels with Indian characters gave me hope that a smart half-breed kid could find a place in the world.
• Mental Maps by Peter Gould The book that made me realize that I was a geographer. I read it in high school, then had the great honor of studying with Professor Gould during my undergraduate days. A marvelous book by an incredibly generous and intelligent man.
• Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature An awe inspiring book about Goldsworthy and his ephemeral art made from bits of nature, set in natural settings. Twigs, leaves, rocks, mounds of earth, ice, all become part of his pallet. His work pulls me toward that place in nature where we are at our calmest and at one with the world around us.
• Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu I've read at least 60 translations of the Tao, but the one I love most, for its glorious poetry, is the Stephen Mitchell. It may not be the most faithful to the ancient texts, but it's the one that speaks the strongest to this particular secular Taoist daily struggling in a western world.

And tag, you're it: ae at arse poetica, heretik at The Heretik, and corndog at corndoggeral

Downing Street Document updates

Congressional hearing set for next Thursday,

In shying away from 2002 Downing Street Memo, a timid press shirks its duty - Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times

Democratic leader Pelosi lauds blogs; 'We have to destroy their brand' - The Raw Story

The Iraq Tide Is Out - The Progressive

Bush and 'the memo' - The San Francisco Chronicle

After Downing Street - AlterNet

Deep Throat II - The Battleboro (VT) Reformer

Downing St. Memo is Evidence for Bush Impeachment - Green Party.org

Bernie Sanders Rocks!

Outrage

Bernie Sanders on outrage (via David Sirota) (emphasis added):

One of the difficulties many of us have in dealing with the Bush Administration and the extreme right-wing group that now controls Congress is that the word "outrage" has increasingly lost its meaning...

What does "outrage" mean anymore when we have an Administration that took us into a war under false premises--a war that has cost us over 1,600 dead, 12,000 wounded and $300 billion--in addition to the terrible suffering of the Iraqi people?

...What does "outrage" mean anymore when we have a White House that tells us how much they love our troops but ... brings forth a budget this year which devastates health care for our veterans ...?

...What does "outrage" mean when we have a president who tells us in every speech how much he believes in "freedom," but who proposes legislation like the USA Patriot Act and other bills which are undermining the basic freedoms and constitutional rights of the American people? All this talk about "freedom," and yet he wants to deny the women of this country the freedom to control their own bodies.

...Our challenge now is to determine how we bring people together to end this horrific period of American history, and how we create a government which represents all of our people, and not just the CEO's of large corporations and extreme right-wing fundamentalists.

I will tell you what the major issue will be: and that is the collapse of the middle class, the increase in poverty and the growing and obscene gap between the rich and the poor.

...We must put an end to the disgrace of the United States being the only major country on earth without a national health care program that guarantees health care for every man, woman and child.

...We must put an end to the reality that many of the new jobs that are being created in our country do not pay a living wage or provide decent benefits. That is why we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

...We must put an end to the anti-union national labor board approach which is making it almost impossible for workers to form a union ... The right to form a union is a constitutional right and must be protected so that workers can negotiate fair wages and working conditions.

We must end the absurd national priorities of the Republican leadership which provide hundreds of billions in tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent, and then cut back on health care, education, affordable housing, veterans needs and programs for the poor.

Bush official altered scientific reports on global warming

via Yahoo!:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A White House official with no scientific training edited government climate reports to play down the links between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times, the paper said.

Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, often would subtly alter documents -- for example adding "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties" -- to create an air of doubt about findings few scientists dispute, said the daily Wednesday.

On one document, Cooney added the work "extremely" to the sentence: "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."

The alterations Cooney made on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003 often appeared in the final reports, said the daily.

Cooney, who before working at the White House in 2001 was a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute and led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases, is a lawyer with a bachelor's degree in economics and lacks scientific training, the daily said.

Rick Piltz, who resigned in March as a senior associate in the office that coordinates government climate research, said in a memorandum sent to top US officials last week that editing of scientific reports tainted official efforts to establish the causes of climate change.

"Each administration has a policy position on climate change," Piltz wrote, according to The New York Times. "But I have not seen a situation like the one that has developed under this administration during the past four years, in which politicization by the White House has fed back directly into the science program in such a way as to undermine the credibility and integrity of the program."

Guess that's what they meant about not being part of the reality based community.

Frank Lloyd Wright vs. Zombies

from westerblog via blogfonte:

So on our first day in Wisconsin, we took a field trip out to Taliesin, the estate where Frank Lloyd Wright lived for the last 40-odd years of his life. I’ve been meaning to for the five years I’ve gone to Wiscon. We went with Janine and Doselle Young, another sf power couple, braving the cows and silos to reach this modern masterpiece of design.

photo by Doselle Young

Historically speaking, there is no “true Taliesin” to preserve. The main house was constantly rebuilt by Wright and his acolytes, becoming sort of a sort of living laboratory of architecture. But you can feel his ego everywhere, the low ceilings pushing you to sit down when he wants you to, the views perfectly callibrated when you’re in the right chair, facing the right way. The house lets you know who’s still in charge: the dead architect.

Speaking of death . . . like all great architecture, Taliesin has great stories. The house was leveled twice during Wright’s lifetime, once by lightning and once by arson, his third wife burnt alive–along with kids and houseguests–by an enraged gardener. Whoa.

{SNIP}

So here’s our quick analysis, entitled, “Taliesin in Zombie Apocalypse: Fortress or Deathtrap?”

Advantages
1. Views in all directions to spot approaching zombie hordes, especially from the Romeo and Juliet Windmill Tower located on the estate.
2. Solid sandstone construction, not likely to be torn to pieces by undead hands.
3. Frank Lloyd Wright chairs never let you get “too comfortable.”
4. No major population centers nearby, just farmland. See map.
5. Organic melding of architecture and landscape allows for interlocking fields of fire.
6. Shop in vistors’ center can be looted for tasteful gifts.

Disadvantages
1. Lots of windows to be boarded up.
2. Rough exterior walls can be easily climbed by zombie horde.
3. No last-stand “suicide” basement.
4. Surrounding open spaces allow 28 Days-style “fast” zombies to get a big head of steam up.
5. Bring your own guns a must.

It's good to see the best and the brightest in the SF world continuously working to solve the difficult problems of modern life. Here we see author Scott Westerfeld tackle one of the most worrying conundrums of the age, in his typical brilliant fashion. I call dibs on Petra. I figure the desert will slow down the zombies and those narrow canyon streets ought to be very defensible.

Dolphins use sponges as tools

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A group of dolphins living off the coast of Australia apparently teach their offspring to protect their snouts with sponges while foraging for food in the sea floor.

Researchers say it appears to be a cultural behavior passed on from mother to daughter, a first for animals of this type, although such learning has been seen in other species.

The dolphins, living in Shark Bay, Western Australia, use conically shaped whole sponges that they tear off the bottom, said Michael Kruetzen, lead author of a report on the dolphins in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

"Cultural evolution, including tool use, is not only found in humans and our closest relatives, the primates, but also in animals that are evolutionally quite distant from us. This convergent evolution is what is so fascinating," said Kruetzen.

Researchers suspect the sponges help the foraging dolphins avoid getting stung by stonefish and other critters that hide in the sandy sea bottom, just as a gardener might wear gloves to protect the hands.

Kruetzen and colleagues analyzed 13 "spongers" and 172 "non-spongers" and concluded that the practice seems to be passed along family lines, primarily from mothers to daughters.

"Teaching requires close observation by the pupil," Kruetzen said. "Offspring spend up to four years before they are weaned, so they would have ample time to observe their mum doing it -- if she is a sponger."

"This study provides convincing evidence that the behavior is transmitted via social learning," commented Laela Sayigh of the University of North Carolina Center for Marine Science.

"Such social learning appears to be widespread among the Shark Bay dolphins," said Sayigh, who was not part of Kruetzen's team.

Only one male was observed using a sponge. Kruetzen noted that, as adults, male and female dolphins have very different lifestyles.

Adult males form small groups of two or three individuals that chase females in reproductive condition, he explained. "I would think that they do not have time to engage in such a time-consuming foraging activity as adults, as they are busy herding females."

Currently at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, Kruetzen was at the University of New South Wales, Australia, when the research was conducted. The work was funded by the Australian Research Council, the National Geographic Society, the W.V. Scott Foundation and the Linnaean Society of New South Wales.

Tool using. Language using. Transferable culture. What part of these are intelligent beings are we missing?

Poem Of the Day

Shinto by Jorge Luis Borges


When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us--
touch us and move on.

Mehlman Goes Down on Downing Street

from outside the big tent:

Clearly the Republicans don’t have their talking points together on the Downing Street Memorandum, because Ken Mehlman, when asked about it today by Tim Russert, could only stutter and then tell a bunch of preposterous lies:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the now-famous Downing Street memo. This was a memo, July 23, 2002, from the head of British intelligence to Prime Minister Blair; in effect, notes taken from a briefing that was given to Prime Minister Blair after the head of British intelligence came back from a trip to Washington. It says this: “[The head of British Intelligence] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, though military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

MR. MEHLMAN: Tim, that report has been discredited by everyone else who’s looked at it since then. Whether it’s the 911 Commission, whether it’s the Senate, whoever’s looked at this has said there was no effort to change the intelligence at all.

Whoa, Ken buddy! Slow down there big fella. Nobody has discredited the Downing Street Memorandum. The Senate hasn’t “looked at” the memo. Neither has the 9/11 Commission which was dissolved before the memorandum was even disclosed. Nor did the 9/11 Commission even look at the question as to whether the intelligence was manipulated to justify the war against Iraq. The 9/11 Commission was about, well, 9/11.

The fact that the Downing Memorandum causes Ken to spout a torrent of lies is a good thing. It means the White House doesn’t have squat to say about it. They just want it to go away. But thanks to the Big Brass Alliance that isn’t happening anytime soon.

Bush lied. Lots of times

from the daily kos
Tue Jun 7th, 2005 at 15:19:42 PDT

Damn. What a liar. Think Progress has the goods.

The Downing Street Memo reported that in a July 23, 2002 meeting between Prime Minister Blair and his war cabinet, attendees of the meeting discussed the fact that President Bush had already made up his mind to attack Iraq. According to the minutes of the meeting:

"There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action."

Yet, as the record below proves, President Bush claimed over and over after July 23rd until the war began that he had not made up his mind.

Bush: "Of course, I haven’t made up my mind we’re going to war with Iraq." [10/1/02]

Bush:"Hopefully, we can do this peacefully – don’t get me wrong. And if the world were to collectively come together to do so, and to put pressure on Saddam Hussein and convince him to disarm, there’s a chance he may decide to do that. And war is not my first choice, don’t – it’s my last choice." [11/7/02]

Bush: "This is our attempt to work with the world community to create peace. And the best way for peace is for Mr. Saddam Hussein to disarm. It’s up to him to make his decision." [12/4/02]

Bush: "You said we’re headed to war in Iraq – I don’t know why you say that. I hope we’re not headed to war in Iraq. I’m the person who gets to decide, not you. I hope this can be done peacefully." [12/31/02]

Bush: "First of all, you know, I’m hopeful we won’t have to go war, and let’s leave it at that." [1/2/03]

Bush: "But Saddam Hussein is – he’s treated the demands of the world as a joke up to now, and it was his choice to make. He’s the person who gets to decide war and peace." [2/7/03]

Bush:"I’ve not made up our mind about military action. Hopefully, this can be done peacefully.” [3/6/03]

Bush: "I want to remind you that it’s his choice to make as to whether or not we go to war. It’s Saddam’s choice. He’s the person that can make the choice of war and peace." [3/6/03]

Bush: "We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force." [3/8/03]

Bush: "Should Saddam Hussein choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war, and every measure will be taken to win it." [3/17/03]

Shocking, I know.