The reason for my question yesterday was to 1) make people think 2) try to find the truth.

This started with a rather hysterical conversation amoungst several friends a couple of weeks ago. One side was: "The US has destroyed the country! There's no food, power, medicine...." the other was "The US has done more for Iraq than Saddam ever did! Without us they wouldn't have food, water, medicine, schools..."

I realized, listening to this "debate" that 1) I didn't know what was really going on in Iraq and 2) neither did the people having this debate.

I'm pretty sure anyone reading this knows I loathe this administration. I might joke about them bbq'ing babies and ripping the fur off kittens, but, I'm fairly certain we haven't destroyed Iraq and I was fairly certain we haven't done much to help it either.

So I started looking for personal blogs a few days ago. My point yesterday was to get others to think about these questions and go looking too.

Here's some of what I found:

The Woman I was

My Green Zone

Raed In The Middle

So if there was a question whether this war and occupation was worth the cost paid by Iraqis and U.S. people, I would say: “definitely not”. The right change should have come from the inside, and the right type of democracy should have emerged from a long-term grassroots movement growing within Iraq.

The foreign occupation turned the dream of having an Iraq without Saddam to a darker nightmare, a nightmare where Iraqis lost even the smallest benefits they used to have before the occupation while the political oppression stayed the same if not worse. The biggest irony in this nightmare is when the “liberators” compare themselves to the former dictator to market their “new” Iraq. “Saddam killed 300,000 but we just killed a 100,000 to make you vote”, this is the how the logic of the mainstream pro-war activists and media sounds like. The same people who used Saddam’s crimes to justify the war on Iraq are committing the very same crimes against Iraqis.

A Star From Mosul

Iraqi Letters

Iraqi In America

There aren't many entertainment places in Baghdad, except for the clubs (Al-Alwiya and Al-Sayd), restaurants or the wedding parties. But there was social life and family visits. These have decreased so much now as the safest place is to stay home...

# It's bad. All that we got is 8 hours per day. You know? Sometimes all I wish for is to switch on the light early morning so I can wear my makeup in sufficient light or have hot bread in the oven for breakfast. But these are rare days when I wake up and there is electricity.

People here don't believe that the American who brought all these tanks by airplanes can't bring the necessary machines to fix the electricity back. It's not terrorists or insurgents who slow down the rehabilitation but the will. They just don't care or don't want us to have a normal life. This is what I started to believe lately.

It's not an impossible mission .We have oil and money, and America have the technology so why can't we have what the poorest country in the world have?

I do believe if someone decides to do his job properly, nobody can stop him.

What is Truth

Iraqi Bloggers Central

24 Steps to Liberty

A Citizen of Mosul

I have questions

If you know, and have a source for your information, please post it.

Do the Iraqi people have electricity, 24x7?
Are all hospitals open? Do they have all the medicine and physicians and nurses they need?
Is there rationing? Food, gas, water?
Is there decent drinking water?
Are the schools open for the same amount of time each day as they were before the War?
Is it safe for people to be on the streets during the day? At night?
Is the cost of food greater or less today than it was on January 27, 2003?

Isn't within the realm of possibility that the United States of America is responsible for Hammas winning the election?

Think about it.

Love Her!

Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."

Molly Ivins

Fact or Fiction

Osama bin Laden: Is It Him? Almost Certainly

It is as if both "sides" in this conflict live on illusions. Mssrs Bush and Blair keep telling us things in Iraq are getting better, when we all know that they are getting worse. Anarchy has seized that entire country. American bodies coming home to the United States? Just don't let the press take photographs of the coffins. Bombs in London? Nothing to do with Iraq, Blair haplessly told us last July.

The entire article raises excellent questions. Perhaps these are questions you should be asking your representatives in Washington.

See also: Bin Laden Threatens Attacks, Offers Truce


~ ~ ~


Ominous Sign: The President's Growing Disregard for the Law

Growing? Growing? The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's editor must be Rip Van Winkle.


~ ~ ~

Italy has elections coming up this April. It has the fourth largest troop detail in Iraq right now. So it really isn't any surprise they've announced they will be withdrawing 1,000 of their 2,600 troops from Iraq in June and all Italian troops currently deployed in Iraq will be removed by the end of 2006.

It's an election year here in the United States. The US government has stated it will cut troop deployment in Iraq (they've cut 20,000 since Christmas) even more over the next few weeks.

Do you believe that?

I don't.

I know a few too many guardsmen who have just recently been notified that they are on stand-by. Again.

Synchronicity

I was surprised when I came across the article The Latest Bush Mega-Catastrophe... ~ it's similar to what I've been pondering for several years.

Is Bush the Anti-Christ?

The Latest Bush Mega-Catastrophe Is Now Pharmaceuticals

No matter what you think of George W. Bush, he is staking out his claim as a bona fide Horseman of the Apocalypse.

A First-Rate Country Run by Second-Rate People

Like Bush's America, Howard's Australia is not so much a democracy as a plutocracy, governed for and by the "big end of town," even though, as Mark Twain pointed out, this is "an entire continent peopled by the lower orders." He was not that far out; for my generation, like that of my parents, we were the poor who had got away. There was a sense that we had inherited something other than the British legacy. Long before the rest of the western world, Australians gained a minimum wage, an eight-hour working day, pensions, maternity allowance, child benefits and the vote for women. The secret ballot was invented here and became known as the "Australian ballot." The Australian Labour Party formed governments 25 years before any comparable social democracy in Europe. In the 1960s, with the exception of the Aboriginal people - who are always the exception - Australians could boast the most equitable spread of personal income in the world.

I should find some comfort in knowing the US is not alone. Afterall, misery loves company, right? But I don't. I feel just as bad for them as I do for us.

~ ~ ~

Plutocracy

Democracy

BTW: I love the message Wiki displays on it's Democracy page:

The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see discussion on the talk page.

That made my afternoon.

It is day 1,037

Osama Sighting

After numerous repetitions of "We don't know if Osama is still alive," Osama himself decided to send George Bush a letter in his own handwriting to let him know he was still in the game.

Bush opened the letter and it appeared to contain a single line of coded message:

370HSSV-0773H


Bush was baffled, so he e-mailed it to Condi Rice. Condi and her aides had no clue either, so they sent it to the FBI. No one could solve it at the FBI so it went to the CIA, then to the NSA. With no clue as to its meaning they eventually asked Britain's MI-6 for help. Within a minute MI-6 cabled the White House with this reply:

"Tell the President he's holding the message upside down."

From Today in Iraq. The joke is probably at least as old as the war, but I liked it.

See also: The Forgotten Wounded of Iraq at Truthdig.

Church and State must always be separate

A deeply disturbing article by Silja J.A. Talvi, which first appeared in In These Times, on the Character Training Institute and the International Association of Character Cities and the Christian Reconstructionist movement. This is a must read folks:

Cult of Character

See also:

Christian Reconstructionism

The Chalcedon Foundation

What is Christian Reconstructionism?

Moses' Law for Modern Government: The Intellectual and Sociological Origins of the Christian Reconstructionist Movement:

What would a "reconstructed" America look like, K.L. Gentry suggests the following elements of a theonomic approach to civic order:

1 It obligates government to maintain just monetary policies ... [thus prohibiting] fiat money, fractional reserve banking, and deficit spending.

2 It provides a moral basis for elective government officials. ...

3 It forbids undue, abusive taxation of the rich. ...

4 It calls for the abolishing of the prison system and the establishing a system of just restitution. ...

5 A theonomic approach also forbids the release, pardoning, and paroling of murderers by requiring their execution. ...

6 It forbids industrial pollution that destroys the value of property. ...

7 It punishes malicious, frivolous malpractice suits. ...

8 It forbids abortion rights. ... Abortion is not only a sin, but a crime, and, indeed, a capital crime.

I have nothing further to say about this at this time. Form your own opinions and feel free to comment.

No, not ever

I can't remember where I spotted this, so, to whomever I've gacked it from, thanks!

I'm calling this the No, Not Ever List.

Everybody, Tag! You're it.

Four jobs you've never had in your life:

Mortician
Police Officer
Stripper
Architect

Four movies you don't want to watch even once:

Any horror films
Any slasher/horror/terror, whatever, films
Matrix
Lord of the Rings

Four places you've never lived:

Russia
Israel
China
Australia

Four television shows you've never watched:

That witch show - Charmed?
House
24
Everybody Loves Raymond

Four places you've never been on vacation:

Russia
Israel
China
Australia

Four of your least favorite foods:

Liver
Asperagus
Brussels Sprouts
Fish

Four places you'd rather not be:

Hospice
Hospital
Rollercoaster
Los Angeles

Four albums (cds) you can live without:

Any Rap
Any Country & Western
Any Kids music
Any hard (acid) rock

I knew my sister was wrong!

I am 17% White Trash.

I, my friend, have class. I am so not white trash. . I am more than likely Democrat, and my place is neat, and there is a good chance I may never drink wine from a box.

Take the
White Trash Test
@ FualiDotCom

Reality Check

He's that thing that lurked under your bed when you were a kid. Under Fire, DeLay Steps Down. Hopefully Texas will see the error of their ways and not send this... person... back to Congress.

What Year Is This Anyway?

During the birth of the United States, John Adams - who also proclaimed that Britain's rule under which "The Law, and the Fact, are both to be decided by the same single Judge" was "directly repugnant to the Great Charter [Magna Carta] itself" - wrote of "a government of laws and not of men." During the Watergate crisis (to hop a couple of centuries) and just after he was fired by a President who wanted to shield his criminal acts by citing the doctrine of executive privilege, Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox warned, "Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people." Just 33 years later, the question again begs answer - is this to be a nation of laws or of men? Is this to be a nation that recognizes nearly 800 years of Anglo-American legal precedent in which even the nation's chief executive is subject to the rule of law, or one that allows that leader to assume the unchecked rights of a sovereign during the Middle Ages? Are we willing to accept the Bush administration's latest rollback campaign and reset the calendar to 1214?

A Disastrous Appointment

Rather than fight it out on Capitol Hill, Bush chose to circumvent the confirmation process. Yesterday, with Congress out of session, the president made more than a dozen recess appointments, granting positions to several controversial nominees. Julie L. Myers was made head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau at the Department of Homeland Security, despite criticism by Democrats and Republicans that she lacks experience. Tracy A. Henke became executive director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness; as the Washington Post reported, "She had been accused in her politically appointed post at the Justice Department of demanding that information about racial disparities in police treatment of blacks in traffic cases be deleted from a news release." Sauerbrey was installed at the State Department.

Our Presidential Era: Who Can Check the President?

Excellent article. Perhaps he'd like to explain why it took a year for his paper to publish the wiretapping information?

No court alone can do the job of protecting liberty from the exercise of executive power. For that most important of tasks, the people's elected representatives need to be actively involved. When we let them abdicate this role, the violations start to multiply, and we get the secret surveillance and the classified renditions and the unnamed torture that we all recognize as un-American. Our Constitution has changed enormously over the last two centuries, and it is sure to change much more in the future. Just how it changes, though, is up to us.

The Wiretappers That Couldn't Shoot Straight

Another excellent article, however, I'm still left wondering why it took the Old Grey Lady a year to get the story out.

The front line of defense against terrorism is supposed to be the three-year-old, $40-billion-a-year Homeland Security Department, but news of its ineptitude, cronyism and no-bid contracts has only grown since Katrina. The Washington Post reported that one Transportation Security Administration contract worth up to $463 million had gone to a brand-new company that (coincidentally, we're told) contributed $122,000 to a powerful Republican congressman, Harold Rogers of Kentucky. An independent audit by the department's own inspector general, largely unnoticed during Christmas week, found everything from FEMA to border control in some form of disarray.

Yet even as this damning report was released, the president forced cronies into top jobs in immigration enforcement and state and local preparedness with recess appointments that bypassed Congressional approval. Last week the department had the brilliance to leave Las Vegas off its 2006 list of 35 "high threat" urban areas - no doubt because Mohammed Atta was so well behaved there when plotting the 9/11 attacks.

The warrantless eavesdropping is more of the same incompetence. Like our physical abuse of detainees and our denial of their access to due process, this flouting of the law may yet do as much damage to fighting the war on terrorism as it does to civil liberties. As the First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus wrote in The Huffington Post, every defense lawyer representing a terrorism suspect charged in the four years since Mr. Bush's N.S.A. decree can challenge the legality of the prosecution's evidence. "The entire criminal process will be brought to a standstill," Mr. Garbus explains, as the government refuses to give the courts information on national security grounds, inviting the dismissal of entire cases, and judges "up and down the appellate ladder" issue conflicting rulings.

The media has a lot to answer for. They've been swallowing the Kool Aid for five years. To act surprised, outraged, indignant, is disingenuous. They are as much to blame for the condition this country is in as the Bush administration is. Because they haven't been providing us with the information we need to make informed decisions; because they're too busy bumping up ratings and raking in millions in advertising dollars.

The media is, however slowly, catching on. Turn up the heat. Email them articles you find in the alternative press and ask why they didn't cover it or under-reported it.

And while you're at it, ask the NYT why it took them a year to report the gross violation of the 4th amendment by the President of the United States.

executive-editor@nytimes.com
managing-editor@nytimes.com

Spread the Word

The Impeachment Project.

This is a test

Followed the link on Bobby's site to this test:

For the Frontal Lobe, I scored a 3, closer to non-judging than value-driving.

For the Upper Cerebral Cortex, I scored a 9, closer to the middle, balanced, than logic-driven.

For the Temporal Lobe, I scored a 3, closer to unfeeling (yeah, well, I've been accused of that) than emotion-driven.


Your score for the Frontal Lobe, the section of the brain that monitors social interactions and controls the expression of values, is perfectly normal. If the other two scores are not equal and one of the scores is a 1 or 2, then your scores on the BBT are not balanced. See the interpretation for that very low score. Balanced scores on the BBT indicate the potential for high-quality living.

Your score for the Upper Cerebral Cortex, the section of the brain that controls cognition and objective thinking, is potentially balanced. This is especially true if the scores for the other two major brain sections are also within the mid-range of 3 to 9. Equivalent scores on the Balanced Brain Test indicate the potential for high quality living. If you scored a 3 to 5 in the Upper Cerebral Cortex and were able to add a few more points to this thinking area, more thoughtful solutions to daily problems may make life a little easier. Try to solve your life problems more thoughtfully and less emotionally. You will never be 'perfect' and your life will always be difficult.

Your score for the Temporal Lobe, the section of the brain that controls deep emotions like fight-flight, is perfectly normal. If the other two scores are not equal and one of the scores is a 1 or 2, then your scores on the BBT are not balanced. See the interpretation for that very low score. Balanced scores on the BBT are an indication of potential high- quality living. See the Forward by Dr. Samuel Knapp in Friday's Laws.

Friday's Laws

I'm glad I didn't crow.

Bush could bypass new torture ban

Throw the baby out with the bath water?

A political lobby can be of a huge benefit to get un- or under-noticed issues brought to the forefront. But once they've done their job, they should quit. Get the hell outta Dodge. Instead, they find reasons to continue to exsist and feed off anyone who will provide them funds.

"Words will not ever be able to express my sorrow and my profound regret for all my actions and mistakes," Abramoff said. "I hope I can merit forgiveness from the Almighty and those I've wronged or caused to suffer."

The $4 Billion Industry That Is America's Guilty Secret

Case Bringing New Scrutiny to a System and a Profession

"The whole Abramoff matter is atypical," agreed Ed Rogers of Barbour Griffith & Rogers. "It is not a lesson of how business is done in Washington."

Oh. Please.

What is atypical is that they got caught.

Lobbying Plan Was Central to GOP's Political Strategy

Analysis: Abramoff Plea May Rock GOP Boat

For years, many lawmakers have shrugged off lobbyists' gifts as campaign contributions, harmless wining, dining and socializing. "Now you've got someone admitting exactly what the motivation was and explaining all the avenues they used," said Kent Cooper, a former Federal Election Commission official.

"You're talking about standard operating procedure here in Washington suddenly being turned on its head and a key operator signing a plea agreement that he may have been involved in some kind of public corruption," said Cooper, who tracks lobbying and campaign contributions for the nonpartisan Political Money Line service.

Nothing will change Mr. Cooper. It didn't change in 1994, it didn't change when you worked for the FEC and it won't change this year.

Bush to Give Away Abramoff Donations

McClellan said Bush does not know Abramoff personally, although it's possible that the two met at holiday receptions. Abramoff attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House, the spokesman said.

Uh huh. Well, the President might not know Mr. Abramoff personally, but I'd be willing to bet a whole lotta money he knows him quite well. You raise 100k + you're gonna get noticed.

Jack Abramoff's 'Cesspool of Corruption'

Some of the Wild West feel of this Beltway corruption was captured in Saturday's Washington Post expose, "The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail." It documents in chilling detail how, among other scams, Abramoff funneled a portion of the millions he had been skimming from Indian casino operators with a cool million from two Russian energy moguls through a shell organization called the U.S. Family Network - and from there into the coffers of politicians in a position to help his clients.

Ironically touting its commitment to "moral fitness" for the nation, the front group with the multi-million dollar budget had a single staff member housed in the backroom of a capital townhouse it owned and rented out to other organizations linked to Abramoff and Tom DeLay - the latter's staffers called it, ominously, DeLay's "safe house." This is apparently why DeLay felt the need to tout the U.S. Family Network in a 1999 fundraising letter as "a powerful nationwide organization dedicated to restoring our government to citizen control."