Mustafa's Musings

Lonliness

2010-03-30T11:05:00.002+05:00

I'm in a Roanoke thrift shop,accompanying my lady in her eternal quest for the perfect pair of brown shoes(either Gucci makes them outta crocodile or some dude in the bazaars of Mumbai), and I find something that excites me. "Honey,LOOK! I found an old George Mgrdichain tape!" Then I realize that no one within a hundred miles knows what the fuck I'm talking about.

To this guy its no hoax

2009-12-15T00:41:00.004+05:00

This man is a climate refugee. The island he lived and farmed on is gone. It was in the bay of Bengal in Bangladesh and it and other islands in the Sunderbans are gone due to rising sea levels. Of course the American right doesn't believe that climate change is real. As long as pollution puts money in their wallets it's going to be just a hoax. Besides, this guy is a Muslim, so who cares. Of course Hurricane Katrina was a climate change event too, right here in the good ole US of A, People lost their homes, oh yeah they were black, so who cares. The pasty faced white guys are probably buying up lots of water(gonna be a big shortage when the glaciers go) and all the high ground they can get their greedy pudgy hands on. Already they are disenfranchising poor whites (social parasites, with no ambition to make any money), but then these poor whites are their base. What happens then? Who cares, government and elections are a charade anyway. The fat cats call the shots.

Change you can believe in You Betcha!

2009-12-12T03:31:00.002+05:00

I voted for an supported Barak Obama because I believed he knew what was wrong with America. He appeared a visionary, and if in fact he is, he must be very frustrated. His own party won't give up the squabbles and he won't engage in Bush style rule by decree. In fact the health care bill being debated currently will have no public provision, it will have insurance cap limits(very bad for people with cancer. It has been called a gift to big insurance. Today they passed a bank regulation bill, supposedly to eliminate any chance for another big crash. During the debate a proposal to give bankruptcy judges to lower someones mortgage to prevent foreclosure was voted down.... and not completely on party lines. What the hell is going on?We're getting screwed in every hole. It seems big business gets what it wants from either side. Maybe the whole thing is a big charade. Someone once said America ceased being a democracy, but the people don.t know it yet. All the division, all the noise is just to distract people while the pasty faced white guys rape us.
Even the military industrial complex( Dick Cheney, halliburton, Bush etc) get to keep their money making war. After all killing is good business.
I cry for America

Somethings never change

2009-11-30T04:26:00.002+05:00

In the mid 14th century, the Black Death ravaged Europe taking, perhaps half the population. The hundred years war came to a halt. But it didn't take but a few years for the French and English to start killing each other again. The church grew rich on property seized and the bishops diverted the large monies set aside for the poor to their own needs, as they claimed the poor were now all dead.To finance the continuing 100 years war, France imposed a war tax, as follows: 4% from the rich,5% from the middle classes and 10% from the poor. Perhaps we have not yet left the middle ages.
What amazes me about America is not the greed and hate of the right, or the misplaced idealism and internecine strife of the left, its the stupidity of the American people to believe the lies that thrown at them from both direction. Neither side, neither party is at all interested in the welfare of the common man, they want their 10%, thats all.

Abrahamic religions... the demise of the Mother Goddess

2009-11-28T17:21:00.003+05:00

Although humanity's first deity might have been the bear cult(Neanderthal circa 100,000BC), our immediate forebearers(Cro Magnon man 40,000) are associated with a female Mother. Represented in paleolithic art by the numerous cave venuses found in Europe and Central Asia, it echoes the mystery of birth and creation. Caves become wombs and the creative aspects are foremost. Then we learn to study the skies and find our relationships with the music of the cosmos.( moon and menstrual cycles, snakes shedding skins and rebirth etc.) Our mythology becomes Goddess centered. Along comes Abraham and his elevated storm god(Yahweh) This changes everthing. The story of the end of Goddess worship is in Genesis. Eve consorts with the snake(common symbolic association of mothers and rebirth). She eats of the tree of knowledge and God expells her and Adam before they eat of the second tree(immortality) The snake and therefore nature become corrupt, woman cursed and demoted to second class citizenry and mankind inherits an original sin which Christ must be sacrificed for. Of the three Abrahamic faiths(Judaism,Christianity and Islam) Christianity retains more of the pagan incorporating much pagan symbolism. As nature is now corrupt, we have created evil, dualism. we have removed God to heaven. Enlightenment is the return to non duality.

Britomartis

2009-11-28T06:33:00.001+05:00

Searching around eternity for my 72 Gothic schoolgirl virgins that tempt me on my search for unity I came across this goddess. She's 3500 years old( and still a virgin???WTF), comes from Crete, associated with mother goddess chores. Her name is Britomartis (sweet virgin). Hmm Brett n Brit, fits well. The snakes, wierd hair, sort of plaid skirt and for me the du rigeur exposed breast. Mythworld! You create your own, you populate it and you live it. A world without time and decay, it becomes a metaphor for the "real world". Slowly we see man's greatest error, man forgets god is in himself and of himself and of all,partners, siblings,communion. Man removes god to another place, usually hard to get to, say heaven,valhalla,nirvana etc. Sometimes we split the god into a duality of good and evil, thus seperating what once was one. Perhaps man obtained his powers from is first contact with understanding,say 40,000 yrs ago. Art arrives, full blown, tools,once good for a million years begin to resemble Detroit with brand new model years, a 3500 bc Ford hand axe model b 123. The' secret' is simply that god exists in us and in all in unity of being. One organism. We are cells doing our job, or perhaps we are cancer or some loathsome parasite. Just a minute part. And we forgot, and removed god, put him up in some holy attic to take down Xmas,hannukah, eid al adha ( Eid Mubarak!- it's today) How can we understand unity, humanity being so obsessed with division. Anyway back on the road to nirvana, I encounter Britomartis and Tara...........Sexy mythworld

A letter to K

2009-11-24T21:41:00.003+05:00

While Muslims are preparing for the Hajj which starts on Wednesday, and Christians and Jews begin preparations for Christmas and Hannukah, while catholic bishops ban a Kennedy from communion(abortion issue) and wingnuts right and left decry the Hadron collider's search for even smaller particles of matter, I wonder why religion no longer works. Putting it simply, religion is founded on a view of the cosmos. that view constantly changes. In the 1500's Copernicus and Galileo faced heresy charges for suggesting that the earth revolved around the sun rather than the other way around. Our Judeo-Christian-Islamic cosmic model dates from about 1500 BC when the book we call the bible was being put together. It postulated a Bronze age cosmos, a flat earth, an earth centered universe, to just name a few. Christianity and islam added their own myths. Laws set down in the Mosaic books of the Bible, the New Testament and the Quran reflect that world view of Bronze age 1500BC. Well it served its purpose , although Greek thinkers circa 400 BC, Islamic scholars circa 1000AD and the European renaissance began to point out its flaws. Darwin created panic in 1860 that's still being debated. The fact of the matter our view, our mythology doesn't work anymore. Its 4500 years behind the times. And as fundamentalists Christian, Muslim and Jewish are faced with this, they panic. They panic into fear. The very life of their God is at stake, their souls at risk. Hence all the hullabaloo about literal interpretation of the holy books. The holy books are not wrong, they are outdated. Religion creates dogma and dogma can't change.
Our understanding of the cosmos grows daily, it always will. It will always approach God, but never get to him, because God as i understand him is not understandable. We will never understand the whole of god, because the whole of god is always in motion. It brings to mind a Lakota(Sioux) phrase for god, Skan Taku Skan Skan. Something in motion always in motion. Sceince does not not shatter my faith in god, it only increases the awe I have for this ever expanding, ever changing cosmos we call God. Holy men come and go, religions change, but they never "get it' and probably never will. Even if we invent anew religion, write a new holy book, it will be obsolete before its printed.
I have always been interested in man's evolution. The concept given to me in the 50's is no longer a working model. Discoveries like Lucy(australopithecus afarensis) and Ardi(ardipithecus ramidus) have given new direction to our past. As a child I corresponded with Louis Leakey( the premier paleontologist of the 50's) He was right about a few things and wrong about somethings. I still admire him. He was a seeker.His explanation of human evolution fit the 1950's, based on the knowledge we had. Leakey accepted new discoveries and was comfortable with the progress, even though some of his calls were off. Religion must take the stand of Louis Leakey and be thankful when discoveries are made to increase our knowledge and closeness to god.
Grace Slick said in Go Ask Alice, "Feed your head"
Have a great Thanksgiving with your family and friends, but remember Thanksgiving day should be every day.

The Sarah Palin Phenomenon

2009-11-18T20:22:00.002+05:00

"Going Rogue",Palin's autobiography is out now in print. I'm certainly not going to spend, even the $4.95 that some conservative sites are offering. Actually, I would have prefered the book be entitled "Going Away". But Sarah doesn't seem to be going away. I've read the reviews, most say she whines, complains,lies and takes pot shots at those who've pissed her off. One reviewer, filmaker John Ziegler says," I was simply blown away by Going Rogue on almost every level. For many reasons, this is by far the best book and greatest literary achievement by a political figure in my lifetime." At every level?? It has levels? Will this book stand side by side with JFK's book, with the writing of Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln? Or has Mr. Ziegler got his hands on some new strain of cannabis that truly clouds the mind.
Sarah's not going away yet, that's for sure. Why is she so popular. Well, this is America so it must have something to do with the rich getting richer. She's in the news because she sells soap. Either you love her or loathe her, enough to click on every story CNN.com has out there and thus increasing her exposure. No one wants to read about Uyghur separatists or people starving in Africa. I believe the main reason Palin is so popular is that a lot of white Americans identify with her. White Americans who are under educated, white Americans who have a problem with an African American president, white Americans who can't think for themselves and let Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh do their thinking. Christian conservatives who find, with each new scientific advance, their world crumbles. Its very similar to the fundamentalist Islamic view of an antiquated belief system. Many Americans find this, coupled with fears of terrorism,oil shortages, Hispanic and Asian migration, global pollution,the electronics explosion,in fact the rapidly changing world, scares the crap out of them. Conservatives, using the politics of division and hate, prey on these lost souls. If all you listen to is Fox news and Rush Limbaugh, your'e going to have a very different outlook on world affairs than someone who investigates and takes in all sides to make an educated choice.
These poor souls are terrified that all they have been taught to believe is going to collapse. The great Anglo Saxon race will be diluted by Hispanics, Asians and Blacks. Jesus isn't going to come again to restore the Anglos to their throne of domination. This is a back lash and they usually don't last long. These people are light years behind whats happening on the planet, but they vote. Even though the phenomenon is going to be short lived, look at the mess Hitler created in just 12 years. Be afraid, America, be very afraid

Did I hype it up too much?

2009-11-13T02:54:00.003+05:00

I was a rather vocal and enthusiastic Obama supporter during the campaign. I saw the country become something very ugly in the Bush years, I feared for my income during the crash of 2008,I worried about the planets revenge for what have wrought here and and wondered all about declining oil supplies and agresstion in the Middle East. Obama seemed to understand. He said what I wanted to hear,ie: Change. Maybe back to the government of the people rather a government for sale to highest bidder. Hell, Halliburton sucked us dry, thanks, Dick! Obama has vision, I'll give him that. He knows whats needed. But he can't pull it quite off. His opposition, Republicans and big biz, are throwing massive amounts of dollars to buy their way. Health care is troubled because many legislators have been bought and paid for by the insurance lobby. The opposition continues to use fear and race to gain support of what I call the undereducated classes. So Obama's stymied.
Although he has vision, he may a problem either in choosing competancy or delegating authority. The performance of his cabinet has been lackluster. What's up in the west wing? Maybe nothing. Maybe I heard too much or not enough in the campaign, maybe after I heard what I wanted I stopped listening. Suffice it to say I am a bit disappointed. Is the Rovian fascist propaganda creeping into my brain? Or am I just greedy and want too much?
Granted, the whole national system is rotten,dilapidated,ineffective,bought and greedy. It's like a house that looks OK outside but is ridden with termite damage and ready to collapse. The financial crisis proved that. You'd have to build a completely new house, like Roosevelt. It's not that Obama ain't Roosevelt, it's congress and business that's different. Roosevelt was the closest thing to dictator we have ever had. Obama can't use that tactic as the Rovians have already painted him as a meglomaniacal anti christ.
Its a tough row to hoe, I wish him luck.

The growing kleptocracy

2009-11-10T23:41:00.003+05:00

The more I read about such places as Azerbaijan,Romania,,Saddam's Iraq and various Central Asian Republics, the more I am beginning to understand what a kleptocracy is. Its what's beginning to happen to America. In Azerbaijan, you had to pay off the Aliyev family to do business. Haidar Aliyev auctioned off nation assets to make money. Thats just what the privatization means for our neocon friends. And what they sell off goes to 'family";Ie Halliburton/Cheney kinds of deals. That's why they're so afraid of government controls. They'll lose money. Halliburton et al, is rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure poorly and cheaply while making billions and the American infrastructure is rotting. You make more money on an government no bid contract and even more by using the cheapest materials. More money than you'd make, say, by rebuilding the World Trade Center in NY or New Orleans. They use American tax dollars as a means of making obscene profits rather than using it to help the people that pay the money. Enough money to buy legislators and still make obscene profits.
That,my friends, is a kleptocracy and it is so well developed that even the President of the US can't find a away around it. Congress and the executive branch are owned by lobbies who bribe them with gifts, cash and make campaign contributions. You can't get elected to national office without a lot of money and the lobbies have it.
It will only get worse as will the divide between rich and poor. That's what the American conservative middle class doesn't understand, that they are on the losing side of the divide. If the neocons won't pump money into their own country, if they want to end entitlements like social security,if they won't vote for extending unemployment benefits is a recession, etc, they don't give a damned about America. They're already planning to move to Dubai.

An American apocalypse

2009-11-08T23:32:00.002+05:00

Even with Barak Obama as president and a democratic congress, my local VA hospital does not yet have H1N1 vaccine, yet Walgreen's happily has it for SALE. The capitalist greed wins even during a liberal administration. Health care and environmental issues that will be passed will be so watered down as to be ineffective. The dems will settle for a healthcare bill that cares for no ones health. Insurance companies have spent millions to stop it. The system has broken. It no longer represents the will of the people, it represents, no matter what party, the will of corporate America.
Corporate America has already shown its utter irresponsibility and greed by precipitating what is now being called the "Great Recession" Jobs lost, savings lost,fat cats bailed out. American government in action. Rebuild Iraq(with shoddy materials) and ignore New Orleans. The military shares its bailiwick with Blackwater, Halliburton(or a subsidiary) gets most no bid contracts. Obama can't impliment his vision. Our America is gone. Sold,bought and paid for. Religion has degenerated into hate, salvation forgotten. Jesus' love and peace has morphed into a Neo Aryan creed of supremacy. And those supremacists know if they don,t get total control soon, birthrates will deprive them of a nation.
What's going to happen? Since the fat cats can't control their greed, they'll bleed us dry. Already infrastructures are crumbling and why rebuild them? They'll just use the same shoddy materials their using in Iraq. The working poor will lose more jobs to India or Malaysia and as government reigns in entitlements like social security, they will starve. Who cares, they are disposible, non contributors,parasites. Parasites we create more of everyday. Formerly America's proud and strong working class, they are reduced to discontented haters of everything, thanks to the twists that been added to Christianity in America. Hate is preached from the pulpit. Corporate America is concerned with oil, not this nation. Without oil, they collapse and no one seems to be inventing a new energy too quick.
The image I get of America in 10 or 15 years, is beginning to resemble the sates and satellites of the former Soviet Union in the late 80's and early 90's. Perhaps America's strength will cause it to survive,perhaps the working poor will abandon their slavish pursuit of republican ideals, perhaps a leader will emerge to save America from a third world scrape heap. Of course, he'll have to be a dictator.

A disposable population

2009-10-29T18:29:00.004+05:00

Now i know why I'm not an increase in my social security check this year! Even though there is an economic problem and i am retired senior citizen and Vietnam veteran, my government has a better way to spend my money. Cash awards will be given to Taliban fighters who desert their cause! Now an old Afghani saying goes," You can rent an Afghan, but you can't buy one." Does our stupid government believe these people will change their belief systems for a little of my cash? Oh they'll take the money, buy some more AK-47's or semex for IED's and continue as usual. Perhaps, in order to make ends meet, I should don a turban and carry an AK and head for the nearest federal building to get my cash. Of course, they'll lock me up and throw the key way and invent some heinous plot I was involved it to blow up the local Mickey D's. On top of that insult, the Veterans Administration, suffering from a severe shortage of H1N1 vaccine, has told me i am not a priority patient. i am 64 years old with a heart condition, and am a wounded combat veteran, but appartently the criteria for getting the vaccine seems to be that you have to be young, between 5 and 18. Not that I see a whole lot of 5 year old veterans at my local VA.
I voted for Obama, and any of you who read this blog know I supported his candidacy. Now, i am beginning to think its all talk and no action. Either the military industrail complex owns so much of the American government, that it is impossible to get around their politician buying power, or Obama, while a brilliant man with a vision is, perhaps, unable to choose the right people for the job. So we get a very watered down environmental bill and probably a health care bill that does little besides write heath care on a piece of paper.
Look at New Orleans, still a disaster area. No one wants to spend money on people who aren't rich and influencial. Big corporations want the lower 9th ward for high priced industrial areas. So, insurance opts out of paying them and big corporations steal their land at bargain basement prices. Business as usual, no matter what the party.
I am just a member of a disposable class of people my government doesn't give a shit about anymore. Sad.

Obama's Nobel Prize

2009-10-09T18:50:00.003+05:00

Congratulations to Pres. Obama on his winning of the Nobel Peace Prize! Even if half of America is going to be whining about this, the world shows recognition to a man who may well go down as one of the greats of the 21st century. Of course the American right is going to jump on this, they'll have all manner of reasons of why this man doesn't deserve the prize. Rather than being flushed with pride that this AMERICAN has won, they'll dissolve into the usual racist rhetoric that has been the standard of these "patriots" Patriots , like the ones in Brasil wuld be proud if their nation won an Olympic host, the right celebrated that we did not win it. The cause of the nation has become subservient to the cause of making Obama's presidency a failure. However Obama seems to overcome this criticism well. Perhaps the honor and the humility of this prize will further his desires for peace, especially in the Middle East and Afghanistan. Perhaps world leader will look upon his words with more gravity and action. And perhaps Osama bin Laden and Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck will once again find themselves in agreement.

Prediction: Israel will bomb Iran's nuke sites

2009-09-25T20:22:00.006+05:00

It has been quite a week for rhetoric at both the UN and the G20. Netanyahu was more bombastic than Qaddafi,Ahmadinejad or Chavez. At G20 America, Britain and France united to condemn Iran in the strongest terms. Seems to me that is tacit permission for Netanyahu to unleash his jets. Once again Iran is the axis of evil. Both Qaddafi and Chavez actually made some sense(if you listened) So did Ahmadinejad(a little) The third world is fed up with western imperialism and exploitation. The third world is fed up with letting some nations possess nukes and not others. Holding the nukes guarantees world domination. Why not everyone get rid of them.
Regarding Ahmadinejad's ridiculous denial of the Holocaust, Chavez brought up Western civilizations denial of the Native American holocaust. Good point Hugo, and what of slavery?
Obama clearly sees what needs to change in America, but many Americans don't agree with change. Conservatism spells stagnation, always has, always will. Global warming will happen, oil will run out, capitalism will succumb to greed and like many times in history(1815,1914,1945 come to mind) a new world order will emerge. Somehow I doubt if the new world order will be any different from any of the others.
Only Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama stand above all this rhetoric

A letter to K

2009-09-04T04:49:00.002+05:00

K.Well ya know i was at woodstock back in '69 Honeymoon camping across the country. We never planned to go, just heard about it on the radio and swept down from Ontario. Figured it was gonna be be an Event. And so it was. I was watching the Michael Wadleigh 1970 documentary and was over whelmed. One of the guys i am doing EMT with was there too and we've swapped tales. Is 40 yrs ago and been on mind. What an explosive time, time of awareness, spirituality and love. Great music, some of the best ever where music carried the revolution. There was the war and a country fed up with it, there was civil rights, a war on poverty, anew direction in spirituality, which Amerika lacked. Political,social, spiritual awareness floating on love.
What happened?Today I see hatred, racism, religious demagogery, and above all greed. Theres are war, no one gives a fuck. They don't even want to give people health care, hordes live in the streets and the only music I hear is the cash register.
We captured something in 69...... and lost it. We lost it to greed. Corporate amerika bought hip america and sold it. Back to us. Musicians, pop culturalists,and just plain stoned out heads made lots of money and the ideals went out as the cash came in.
I wanna say, what about your generation??? Where the fuck are you all at??
But is it perspective? Maybe these times are just as exciting for you as for me back in 69. Maybe its not the era but the age. maybe all we did is experience youth. Maybe every generation has its woodstock and vietnam. maybe some artist I don't know addresses injustice in song like Ritchie Havens. maybe it just youth, but whatever it was great!
Namaste

Conservative blueprint for America

2009-09-01T19:13:00.003+05:00

While Obama struggles to get Americans basic health care and do his part to slow down global warming, conservatives spew forth hate that motivates America's under educated pop culture drunk populace. They might wish for the following scenario.
2012.... Rush Limbaugh is elected President, Sean Hannity as VP . Ann Coulter becomes secratary of defense, Pat Robertson enters the new office of secretary of Christian Morality. Legislation is passed to severely limit the congress and supreme court and laws come forth to regulate America.
All restrictions on carbon emissions are suspended as global warming is ruled a hoax.(Pres. Limbaugh now rides around in an armored Hummer) Coal is king and burnt without cleansing. Non Christians are deported to "religious education camps" Blacks are relegated to second class citzens with travel and work restrictions. All Hispanics are deported to the nation of familial origin. Mexico is invaded and subdued and managed to provide slave labor to boost American production. Islam is declared The Enemy and nuclear technology is used to blow Afghanistan and Pakistan off the map. Saudi Arabia is invaded and the oil industry nationized and run by Halliburton, with Dick Cheney acting as energy czar. While Middle America basks in the joys of Christian patriotism and cheap energy, China calls in her debts leading to another nuclear war intended to wipe China(and Russia) off the map.
Of course we know how this senario will end, Rush will commit suicide in the Fuhrer bunker located beneath the White House.
Go ahead, America, believe the conservative lies, you want to anyway return to 1956 but when its over America will rank below Burkina Faso in GNP.

Rub al Khali Saudi Arabia

2009-08-31T07:58:00.002+05:00

A Saudi government functionary was trying to convince a Shaikh of the al Murrah tribe, of the Empty Quarter, to settle his pastoral camel herders in a newly built town. He told the Shaikh that the well was dug deep, electrified and guaranteed to last 100 years! The Shaikh answered,"The wells in the desert have been used by us 1000 years, why would we want only a 100 year well"

Eagles wisdom

2009-08-27T07:22:00.002+05:00

" so often times it happens that we live our life alone,
and we never even knew we had the key..................thats right"

The Eagles

Lennox!

2009-08-27T07:18:00.001+05:00

"I'm a star in my own living room"

Annie Lennox

Mercenaries

2009-08-21T19:27:00.002+05:00

Historically it has always been a sign of the decay and ultimate fall of empires and nations when they start to hire mercenaries to fight their wars. It surely was the Western Roman Empire's downfall. America uses mercenaries more and more these days. Northern Alliance troops in Afghanistan, Sunni militias in Iraq, Montagnards in Vietnam, the list goes on. But those are feodorati, to use the roman term for hiring tribal armies enmass. Now the stakes have been raised and another sign of the decay of America has been seen. read this article fron CNN.com:

urity firm Blackwater USA in 2004 to work on a covert program aimed at targeting and potentially killing top al Qaeda leaders, according to a source familiar with the program.

CIA Director Leon Panetta canceled the covert program this year when he learned of its full scope.

The existence of the program, which began in 2001, came to light earlier this year when CIA Director Leon Panetta canceled the effort, but it is only now that Blackwater's involvement has become known.

That development was first reported Thursday in The New York Times.

The program was part of a broader effort inside the CIA to develop the capacity to conduct training, surveillance and possible covert operations overseas, according to the source. The program was outsourced to contractors to "put some distance" between the effort and the U.S. government.

By mid-2006, Blackwater's involvement in the program had ended, according to a U.S. official. Other contractors were brought in for other parts of the program, another source said.

The total program cost "millions," a U.S. official said. It is not known how much Blackwater was paid. The company -- now known as Xe -- did not return CNN's calls seeking comment.

"The program ebbed and flowed. There were different phases to it. There may have been different folks involved," the source said.

Don't Miss

Congresswoman: U.S. ties with Xe must end

U.S. officials have previously acknowledged that Panetta canceled the entire program this year when he learned of its full scope. At the time of the cancellation, officials said, renewal of the program was being considered. At that point, it had been brought to the new CIA director's attention.

Panetta canceled the effort in part because Congress had not been notified about it, officials said. Also, some in the intelligence community were worried there could be a diplomatic disaster if contractors were caught performing such work in foreign countries.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, who ran the agency from 2006 to 2009, downplayed the program during a speaking engagement in Washington.

"This was not a very prominent thing during my time as director," Hayden said. "What you had were three separate efforts under three different directors to deal with an issue that everyone understood was a problem in a capacity that everyone agreed we should have."

A spokesman for the CIA would not comment on the details of the still-classified program.

"Director Panetta thought this effort should be briefed to Congress, and he did so," spokesman George Little said. "He also knew it hadn't been successful, so he ended it. Neither decision was difficult. This was clear and straightforward.

"Director Panetta did not tell the committees that the agency had misled the Congress or had broken the law. He decided that the time had come to brief Congress on a counterterrorism effort."

Blackwater's extensive involvement in U.S. operations overseas, particularly in Iraq, has been controversial. The Iraqi government says that in a shooting in September 2007, Blackwater security guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians. Blackwater says its employees were returning fire after they were attacked by armed insurgents, but an Iraqi investigation concluded that the guards randomly fired at civilians without provocation.

The incident led to the Iraqi government's refusal to renew the firm's operating license in the country when it expired in May.

Although it lost the Iraq contract, the company, which changed its name to Xe earlier this year, continued to get multimillion-dollar contracts from the U.S. government for work in Afghanistan.

Halliburton(KBR) again

2009-08-08T17:45:00.002+05:00

Back in 2005 the Army agreed to pay Halliburton's subsidiary KBR $2 billion for work that nobody could prove was done. Now KBR has been let off the hook for shoddy construction practices in Iraq that were responsible for the electrocution of a Special Forces staff sergeant. The water pump wasn't grounded, but it was found that KBR was not liable for this. In today's world of uncompromised greed this is not a crime. If we can deny people health care, bail out giant financial firms but ignore retired seniors whose pensions were wiped out, then the death of a mere staff sergeant is in consequential. Now,perhaps if he were an officer and a republican???????

He of the Assembly

2009-08-05T02:04:00.003+05:00

"He salutes all parts of the sky and the earth where it is bright. He thinks the color of the amethysts of Aguelmous will be dark if it has rained in the valley of Zerekten. The eye wants to sleep,he says, but the head is no mattress. When it rained for three days and water covered the flatlands outside the ramparts, he slept by the bamboo fence at the Cafe' of the Two Bridges"

"This night is going to be a jewel in my crown"

Paul Bowles, A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard

The Brits .....again

2009-07-27T03:14:00.002+05:00

It seems everywhere there is trouble, we find the wreckage of British imperial politics. The Arab Israeli conflict is a case of the Brits promising the same piece of land to 2 different groups. It promised the Sharif of Mecca(Hashimites) an independent kingdom of all the Arab nations in order to gain their support against the Turks in WW I. It promised to create a national home for the Jews in order to gain access to Jewish monies to fight their war. They renigged on both parties and left Palestine to battle it out. They created Iraq out of three separate ethnoreligious areas to forge a state destined never to get along. They partitioned India in 1947 between Muslims and Hindus causing permanent unrest in those peoples.
During the 19th century,Britain and Russia engaged in The Great Game, attempting to peddle their influence in Afghanistan. Of course the Afghanis would have none of it and three British Afghan wars were fought over that land. in 1893 the Brits and Russians drew the lines of the Afghani borders. In doing so they cut off a huge chunk of Pathan tribal land and annexed it to India, later to become Pakistan. It is these Pathan territories that make up the northwestern part of Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden and the Taliban are hiding. if Britain had left well enough alone, the Taliban would not have had an area of ethnic support to flee to and hide.
We are still suffering from British mistakes in diplomacy over a hundred years later. Of course, America lets their cousins off the hook and takes on the responsibilty of screwing up the Middle East and South Asia. Doesn't anyone read history?

Dealing with Christians

2009-07-24T20:43:00.002+05:00

The other day I attended a community affair in the little Appalachian mountain town where i have chosen, momentarily to hang my hat. Although this was neither a political or religious event, views came thru in the conversations I had. A local pastor put in a plug for creationism and there was praise for Governor Palin and abuse for President Obama. OK, politically this the white south, so I know this all about race. During the election, I received numerous "funny" e mails about Obama and race. Its not about the recession, health care, or the war on terror, out here its all about race.
I was surprised to see the number of people who agreed with the pastors literal interpertation of the Bible as both history and natural science. Its been almost 100 years since the Scopes trial,over 15 since Darwin, and yet these folks,some college educated,deny the facts of evolution. They are also the same crowd that denies global warming or climate change. They seem to be waiting fro Christ's second coming, as I was told that the signs are in place for this event.
I try to be tolerant of other beliefs, I understand that God is so undefinable and even comprehensible by our limited awareness, that it renders discussion of these thing irrelevant.
But I think of Imperial China and the Ottoman Empire as great societies, who, unable to process modern thought and technology, had their empires crumble and fall. A miror on the wall for America?

The decline and fall

2009-07-23T17:50:00.002+05:00

We have all heard it before, America has reached the end of her period of empire. Looking at histories of previous world leaders, some things become evident. The government envisioned by the founders has declined into something different. There is rise in greed and money becomes the most important political currency.People are fed lies and are governed thru manipulation of their fears and religious beliefs. Economy becomes unstable due mostly to the greed and the lack of law enforcement on the greedy. A decline in the motivation of the military and an effort, by the state, to use that military in an aggressive fashion. Continued defeat by lesser powers in battle. I could go on. You certainly can see America in some,if not all of those things listed. But empires don't fall overnight,unless by a war of total destruction( and they are usually short lived states like those of Napoleon or Hitler) Leaders come, from time to time, to pull an empire or nation out of decline, but once the decline sets in, its like cancer and eventually kills the patient.
America is ill, thats a given. The fact that we cannot pass legislation to improve the qualities of life or the environment, without watering down the vision to appease those that make millions is pathetic. It is a sign of decline. And remember, those appeased money makers will go quickly elsewhere if the nation falters. There is no patriotism in free market capitalism.
Free market capitalism is one end of the spectrum, communism the other. Neither will work effectively. What is needed in the 21st century is some kind of balance.
It makes me think of the Ottoman Empire. once strong, socially stable, tolerant and vibrant, it became in the 19th century "the sick man of Europe". Is this destined to be the fate of America?

Walter Cronkite In Memoriam

2009-07-18T07:08:00.002+05:00

"The nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed," Walter Cronkite

Boy old Walter was right on the money!

Oh no. we're not racists

2009-07-15T14:49:00.002+05:00

The Valley Swim Club in the sururbs of Philadelphia, PA is in hot water. Recently the asked a group of Black and Hispanic children to leave. Thechildren had changed "the complexion" and "atmosphere" of the club, was the comment they made. Racist remarks were heard and there was fear that things might be stolen. The club had taken about $2000 in payment from the organization so the inner city kids could go swimming this year. All of a sudden a bus load of dark skinned kids arrived and they changed their minds,later saying they weren't equipped to deal with kids, citing "safety" issues. Now they are worried about a law suit. They"apologized", but still contended they weren't racist. NO? What then? Afraid some of that melanin might get into the water? This is American learnd racism, pure and simple. A fear, brought on, not by experience or reality, but by word of mouth, passed along generations.
I recently spoke with a former lady friend of mine. She is very dedicated to the arts, especially theater and film. I told her I was watching an Iranian film(by Kiarostami) and she said, " I don't like Iranians, I don't like the way they treat Americans. Now I wasn't watching a film by Mahmoud Ahmedinejad or Ayatullah Khamenei, Hadn't she heard about all the Iranians disputing the election and wanting to express freedom?Probably, but she had been conditioned, by events to dislike Iranians. Just like Sikhs where terrorized in America after 9/11 becuase they wear turbans. Ignorance. Its the same ignorance that stalks Islamic fundamentalists too, ignorance based on listening to the lies of the likes of Ayman Zawahiri

Celebrating Michael Jackson..or Not

2009-07-07T21:58:00.003+05:00

So today is MJ's memorial. Its everywhere, the internet might implode, tears, makeshift shrines, ticket lotteries etc. One Congressman( a Republican) claims too much fuss is being made over MJ and that he was not a nice guy. He brought the child molesting charges,never proved, but probably never doubted either. OK the guy was weird. He was also talented. I was never an MJ fan. He was not of my generation. Neither did I mourn the icons of my generation, John Lennon and Elvis. They passed, thei music lives. Like MJ, elvis and Lennon defined generations. Tupac Shakur evokes similar emotion to an even younger generation. So how do we judge a man? Well frankly, we don't, that's not our job. People are flawed.Jackson was flawed, so was Elvis etc. It shouldn't detract from their gifts. If he liked little boy sleep over parties, that doesn't or shouldn't affect his music. But, i guess somewhee you might have to draw a line. Well there is Hilter, for one. Todays news also brought a report of a Taliban commander who buys little boys and trains them to be suicide bombers. And, probably figures that's OK with God too. Some mullah has issued a fatwa, I'm sure. To paraphrase Jesus,let him who is without sin cast the first stone. I'm throwing no stones today, either at MJ,Sarah Palin or whom ever. Rest in Peace Michael and you too. Robert McNamara.

From CNN Latest from Uyghurstan

2009-07-07T07:05:00.001+05:00

Ethnic unrest in China leads to mass arrests
Story Highlights
NEW: Chinese police detain at least 1,434 suspects
NEW: Police halt would-be rioters who gathered in Kashi City, Aksu City
156 people killed and more than 800 others injured after violence
Ethnic Uyghur residents in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang region, take to streets
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updated 4 minutes ago

URUMQI, China (CNN) -- Chinese police had detained at least 1,434 people by Tuesday morning following weekend demonstrations by ethnic Uyghur residents in Xinjiang province, Xinhua reported, citing government officials, as protests spread to more cities.

A boy stands in front of the burned wreckage of a bus in Urumqi, China, on Monday.

1 of 3

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Streets had reverted to calm and curfews were in force in major districts of Urumqi as the death toll mounted from rioting.
Police halted would-be rioters who had gathered in nearby Yili Kazak Prefecture and Aksu City and dispersed more than 200 people who had tried to gather in nearby Kashgar at the Id Kah Mosque, the largest mosque in China, the news agency said.
Along the road into the city from the airport, many areas were deserted; residents said police had set up blockades in some areas and were rerouting traffic.
The regional public security department put the toll at 156 deaths and more than 800 injuries, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. Watch more on the unrest in Xinjiang »
That was an increase from the 140 deaths reported at noon Monday. "Among the 16 newly reported dead, some died in hospitals and others were recovered from street corners, the police said," according to Xinhua.
With a massive presence of soldiers and anti-riot squads, the government said Tuesday, the unrest in this capital of China's far-west Xinjiang region had been brought under control. See a map of Xinjiang »
In a rare public display of dissatisfaction, thousands of Uyghurs -- many of whom feel they are treated as second-class citizens and complain of being discriminated against by the majority Han Chinese -- took to the streets Sunday chanting and screaming, which prompted a police lockdown of the city. Watch more on the unrest in Xinjiang »
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"Traffic control was partially lifted Monday morning in parts of Urumqi ... but tension still exists in the city," Xinhua said. "Debris has been cleared from the roads and normal traffic has resumed. Workers are still pulling away damaged vehicles from the worst-affected roads in the city."
Most businesses in the area where the violence took place remained closed Monday, Xinhua said. iReport.com: Are you there? Share photos, video, commentary
State-run media reported that protesters attacked passersby, burned public buses and blocked traffic Sunday. The report did not say how many people took part in the protest or what their grievances were.
But a witness in Urumqi told CNN that soon after the protest started about 5 p.m., hundreds of protesters "grew into easily over 1,000 -- men, women and children, all ethnic Uyghurs -- screaming and chanting."
Police arrived quickly and tried to control the swelling crowd by erecting barriers in the street, but "people pushed them over," the witness said. "They were throwing rocks at passing cars and buses." As the violence escalated, hundreds of riot police arrived, the witness said.
"They used tear gas and fire hoses to disperse the crowd. I saw fire trucks, ambulances, armed personnel carriers and what looked like tanks. I heard random gunshots."
Late Sunday, the witness said, Urumqi was in a lockdown, with hundreds of People's Liberation Army soldiers in the streets. He reported seeing riot police chasing protesters into alleys and rounding up many of them.
The witness speculated that the protest, which took place in the predominantly Uyghur-populated Bazaar district, may have been a reaction to racial violence in southern China.
The violence reportedly happened at a toy factory in Guangdong province, where many migrants, including Uyghurs, have moved in search of work. A massive brawl reportedly broke out between workers of Uyghur and Han nationalities. Two Uyghurs reportedly died.
Xinjiang is home to many Uyghurs. China's constitution guarantees ethnic minorities equal rights and limited autonomy. However, ethnic tensions run deep. Minority groups such as the Uyghurs complain that they are subjected to discrimination by the majority Han nationality.
The World Uyghur Congress, a dissident Uyghur group based in Munich, Germany, condemned the crackdown on what it described in a written statement as Sunday's "peaceful protest" by Uyghurs.
"The Chinese authorities should acknowledge that the peaceful protest was sparked by the unlawful mob beating and killing of Uyghur workers at a Guangdong toy factory more than a week ago," it said. "The authorities should also acknowledge that their failure to take any meaningful action to punish the Chinese mob for the brutal murder of Uyghurs is the real cause of this protest."
It accused Chinese authorities of having "used tear gas, automatic rifles and armored vehicles to disperse the Uyghur protesters. During the crackdown, some were shot to death, and some were beaten to death by Chinese police. Some demonstrators were even crushed by armored vehicles near Xinjiang University, according to eyewitnesses."
The government in Xinjiang blamed "foreign forces" for Sunday's rioting.
"The violence is premeditated, organized violent crime," said Nur Bekri, chairman of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, the equivalent of a governor. "It was instigated and directed from abroad and carried out by outlaws in the country."
Bekri accused the World Uyghur Congress of spreading rumors and inciting anger that led to the rioting, in a speech carried by Xinjiang television.
The World Uyghur Congress denied the charge. It is led by Rebuya Kadeer, a businesswoman of Uyghur ethnicity who was detained in 1999 and accused of harming China's national security. She was freed on bail in 2005 and was allowed to leave for the United States for medical care.
Bekri accused Kadeer of instigating the unrest via the Internet and said the fight at the Guangdong toy factory was exploited to incite ethnic strife.
"We should bear in mind that stability is to the greatest interest of all people in China, including the 21 million-plus people from all ethnic groups in Xinjiang," he said.
•

Unrest in Uyghuristan

2009-07-06T22:09:00.003+05:00

Todays news brought sad from Urumuqi, capital of Uyghuristan. Uyghuristan is occupied by China today and called Xinqiang. The Uyghurs, a proud Turkic people who developed a high civilization, are being repressed by the Chinese. A different form of ethinic is taking place, similar to what the Chinese are doing in Tibet. They move in large numbers of Han Chinese to dilute the local population and give it a Chinese majority. There are a few Uyghur groups that try to stand up to this, however they have been labeled terrorists,"with al Qaeda connections" by the Americans. Appaently any movement for national freedom in Muslim country is labeled as terrorist while repressive states(like Israel) can engage in terrorism to their hearts content with American reproach. This is a sad state affairs, considering America,s supposed espousal of "freedom" and her own revolutionary background. Today, unfortunately, its all about money in America and the Uyghur lobby probably aren't very big spenders. Once again America talks the talk but is unable to walk to the walk. Our prayers go out to those Uyghur patriots.

Christian or American Taliban

2009-07-05T21:34:00.003+05:00

Terms are used interchangeably here are the definitions courtesy of the Urban Dictionary.

American Taliban
39 up, 7 down
Vocal, well-financed, extreme fundamentalist Christians attempting to legislate the oppression of homosexuals, women and science at the expense of our national schools, national health and U.S. Constitution. The equation of these politically and financially powerful extreme fundamentalist Christians with the Afgani Taliban --violent extreme fundamentalist Muslims-- emphasizes the false patriotism of these american zealots. See Dan Savage's advice column Savage Love for the Week of May 16th 2006.
Due to the efforts of the American Taliban, another women's health clinic closed its doors today. Careful! Your phone calls are being recorded by the government and monitored by the American Taliban

christian taliban
136 up, 20 down
These are fundamentalist Christians who believe in establishing a theocratic state based on Biblical doctrine. Most of the world's Christian Taliban reside in the mid-western and southern United States of America. A growing ethnic minority in the region, these populations tend to be poorly educated, isolationist, and fun-loving in the great tradition of the late 17th century (they advocate flogging of children, burning of witches, stoning for various and sundry offences, and greeting foreigners with a cheery "You're going to Hell, praise God!"). For some inexplicable reason, they are also fascinated with all matters sexual: homosexuality, human reproduction, "man-on-dog," and so forth. A visitor to the Christian Taliban homeland should note that these topics never fail to "break the ice" and elicit spirited conversation with the locals.
News report, year 2020: "Although much progress has been made in the past year, there are still Christian Taliban reported hiding in the mountainous regions of northern Georgia. Chief among those wanted for human rights violations is Mullah James Dobson, whose Family Research Council issued a statement carried last week by redneck-language television network Fox News promising death to all infidels...this was prefaced by the beheadings of a lesbian couple..."

The American Taliban

2009-07-05T21:12:00.003+05:00

I first used this term a few posts ago. It is not my creation, I heard it first on CNN.com in a commentary and I liked it. I am seeing more and more use of this term and its sibling The Christian Taliban. After reading about Sarah Palin's latest ploy to gain media attention and the noise within the Republican party in reponse to it, I am again reminded about this group of losers,has beens, wannabes and wing nuts that form the American Taliban. Limbaugh is certainly their Mullah Omar and Cheney could fill the shoes of bin Laden with his penchant for undisclosed locations. Fox news worships these idiots and gives them a forum to disseminate thier hatred. They are dangerous, supporters og greed, imperialism and a religious fundamnetalism that rivals the real Taliban. They began the 2012 presidential election campaign the day Obama won. One hopes, with such an early entry into this, that they will fade away before the actual election and in the next 3 1/2 years the much injured republican party will find an image and leade suitable to the party of Abe Lincoln. If they don't go away, they will surely spell the downfall of America

On understanding Iran

2009-06-30T20:40:00.003+05:00

The Islamic republic is a paranoid state, especially when dealing with the west and with Sunni Islam.America's CIA overthrew the Mossadegh government in the 50's and that hasn't been forgotten. America aided the Shah in his repression. Ameica condoned Saddam's war with Iran in the 80's turning a blind eye towards his use of WMD. While America tries to stop an Iranian nuclear program, it tacitly ignores the nuclear arsenal of Israel. To Iran' having nukes is security. The west meddles in Middle eastern politics, Iran dealt with British control of her oil industry, America's aims in dominating the Gulf, Russia' aspirations for a warm water port, to name a few. America is now miltarily active on the east and western borders of Iran and in the Gulf. India, Pakistan and Israel possess nukes, why shouldn't Iran? Iran sees herself from a historical perspective as the natural leader and hegemon in the Middle East. She has a 2,500 year old legacy of dominance in the region. For Iran, nukes are a deterrent and a status symbol of regional power. Iran is not going to surrender her nuclear program just because Obama. Bush or the UN want them to.
They don't trust the west(with good reason) and that is going to make real diplomacy difficult. It matters little whose in power when the smoke of the current crisis clears. Khamenei and Rafsanjani, Ahmedinejad and Moussavi, all are in favor of a nuclear Iran. Perhaps Iran just wants to have the ability to assemble one, if need be. Iran probably won't export nukes to terrorists, as of yet Iran has not given terrorists any of her chemical weapons.
As the revolution changes generations and rhetoric, one hopes Iran will become a willing partner working towards stabilty in the region. Accepting that is the only thing that will probably work for America in the long run. It certainly has its advantages. America needs Iran,s help to stabilize both Iraq and Afghanistan

Be Still

2009-06-29T19:17:00.003+05:00

" Be still and know that I am god."Eckhart Tolle calls it the stillness of the presence of the Now. that "us" who we think we are, is illusion. In the end, there is the stillness and unity of all creation. We humans, endowed with thought, have entered a world where the now is unimportant. Its either about what happened to me, or whats going to happen to me.Content and form. Yet in the Now is god. Baba RamDass entitiled his great spiritual guide "Be here Now" AA said," Yesterday is history, tomorow is a mystery, the now is a gift of god, thats why they call it the present. We weave our individual dramas and we weave our collective dramas(religion, nationhood etc.) We want more, we want completeness, yet we ignore the now and chase the completeness into the future. Look at people who "have made it" They don't think they've made it. The list is long, Michael Jackson, Gov. Sanford, Britney Spears, Bernie Madoff to name a few, who by our social standards made it. But they still weren't complete. Put this into collective form and you get war, chaos, discord, envirnmental degradation as we collectively seek more, never getting to where we want to go.
Eckhart Tolle asks us to look at a flower and after we obseve the beauty, the sensual experiences, we can see the perfect stillness, the spaciousness, the emptiness that it is. There, in that perfect stillness resides god, formless,nameless,unexplainable but eternally still.

From CNN: Pretty much the way it is

2009-06-25T17:11:00.002+05:00

By John DeVore

(The Frisky) -- So, let's talk infidelity. Many ladies want to know why it is men cheat.
Men cheat for variety of reason and biology is one of them, writer says.

And here's what you want to hear, straight from the talk-hole of the testosterone enabled: men cheat because we are faithless, miserable dogs.
We are backstabbing, silver tongued two-faces who stalk any smooth pair of getaway sticks in a short black cocktail dress that happens to saunter into our lusty field of vision.
Men are horny wolves in fluffy sheep's clothing who delight in looking into your eyes and lying. Breaking hearts is our middle name. Why, at any given moment, while you're gabbing to your girlfriends about flowers purchased, omelettes made, sweet words whispered, we're picturing the nearest woman under the age of 25 in a sheer bikini, riding a mechanical bull.
We are just hopelessly addicted to that "new car smell." We love to make you miserable in our pursuit of total hotness, your fickle happiness not our concern.
And that's just part of it. If you want to blame someone for our cheating ways, blame evolution! We are hardwired to hunt, and to share our wicked cool genetic code with a world that demands that we do! The universe conspires to compel us to pursue that which retreats.
See, we cheat because we're cavemen, and our half-gorilla brains demand we spread as much of our seed over as much fertile ground as possible to make sure that our little caveboys have the chance to grow up and do likewise. And we do this quickly, mind you, because you never know when a woolly mammoth will shish kabob us on one of their mighty tusks. It's not our fault. It's biology, genetics, science! How can you question science? Without it, the curling iron would never have been invented!
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Here's another reason men run around behind the backs of their doting, self-sacrificing, noble girlfriends and wives -- you don't adore us enough.
When Spartan warriors returned home from victorious campaigns, do you think their women greeted them with eye-rolls and shrugs? They were venerated supremely, celebrated for days upon days! Love was made to them, olives were pitted and fed to them, their wives could not get enough of their dangerous tales of adventure and carnage! Tales told over and over and over again.
And, at the end of each of these nights, as the mighty victors, now satiated and spent, drifted off to sleep, their ladyfolk would purr into their ears, "OMG, you are totally awesome." The Frisky: Nine signs he's a cheater
If you don't pat us on the back and tell us we're special, we will find someone who will, and that person, who will pat us on the back and tell us we're special will be, nineteen years old.
How could I forget this other important reason why men cheat -- we're addicted to sex!
It's not our fault we drool for hours over porn while you sleep. It's a diagnosable affliction, and while many of us probably don't really need to see a shrink to legitimately diagnose it, or to even go to rehab, you have to understand that it's beyond our control. We can't help ourselves.
Pity the booty junkie. And don't take our word for it -- actual relationship experts on television confirm that some, if not most, men are hooked on sleeping with as many women as they can. This in no way enables us to justify bad behavior and to escape responsibility for our actions. This is just a true fact, that men can become addicted to getting whatever it is they want without consequence.
Surely, as the more emotionally developed and sensitive gender, you can't negatively judge someone wrestling with such a malady. That would be cruel. The Frisky: In 21st Century what's considered cheating?
Get the point?
The truth is that men cheat for the same reason women cheat. And cheat you do.
There isn't a word for a women whose husband cheats on her. But the English language gives us a word for a man whose wife runs around on him. That word is "cuckold," and there are few names as limp and pitiful sounding as "cuckold." Maybe "smoosh."
Women can be faithless, and for centuries, they've done their fair share of tasting forbidden fruit. Literature is full of the sorrow women have caused: Menelaus laid siege to Troy because Helen ran away with another man. Othello smothered his beloved because he believed her to have cheated on him. Even frat boy romantic comedy "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" was all based around that Kristen Bell, from "Veronica Mars," cheating on that funny fat dude. The Frisky: Once a cheater, always a cheater?
Plenty of blame to go around; it would be unfair to savage one gender so the other can enjoy the dismal pleasures of pointless victimization. But there is a reason people, men and women, cheat. The Frisky: Should you out a cheater?
And here's the fable part.
A dog was carrying a bone over a bridge. Looking down at the water under the bridge, the dog saw his reflection, which looked to the dog to be a bigger dog, carrying a bigger bone. Wanting the bigger bone he saw in the water, the dog barked and dropped his bone into the river. Stupid dog loses his bone.
We cheat because we're tempted to risk what we have for the promise of something that isn't, probably never was, and definitely won't last.
So... everyone is capable of cheating. We are our very own villain and that is a true fact. Makes us human, I suppose. The choice.
Ah well. It's a risk we all have to take, trusting the other person even though they could cheat. But without risk, there is no reward.

Republicans.. the moral and religious polestar of nation!

2009-06-25T01:51:00.005+05:00

Need i say more. Of course theres the congressman caught foot tapping for male action in in a public restroom. For religious strength and leadership we have the likes of Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard. Mark Sanford and John Ensign held major power positions in the senate and party. Looks like the party of moral values is crumbling away. I'm not saying that Democrats,Libertarians,Populists(John Edwards) or Communists don't engage in hanky panky. Clinton took it to the Oval Office. But Edwards and Clinton didn't preach moral strength like our republican friends do. Whose next? My bet is Haley Barbour. A man that ugly has to use prostitutes or maybe he'll just hold up McDonalds and steal a couple of hundred Big Macs.

This will upset Rush so much, he'll have to pop a few dozen oxycontins to be able to continue to preach his vile crap.

And..the culprit is...........Great Britain

2009-06-23T00:10:00.003+05:00

Interesting turn of events in Iran,Brits have been "identified" as behind the protests. What does this mean? It means, for the Brits, that they are pulling out families and dependants from their embassy. It also means that America, The Great Satan, is NOT the culprit. Iran needs to blame the west for this unrest, rather than take any responsibility for a fixed election. Apparently there is a need to have things as they are, governmentally, anyway. Yet, with all Ahmedinejad's anti USA and Israel rhetoric, Iran places the blame on the Brits. Great scapegoat. Supporters of America in Iraq and of Israel(some would say they partially responsible for the Arab-Israeli crisis, due to their handling of the post WW I Palestinian mandate). But Israeli jets have Iranian grid coordinates in their computers. America has troops and weapons on either side of Iran and a navy in the gulf. Khamenei and his henchmen are afraid. And, to all you Republicans that think Obama is not standing up for democracy, he has diplomatically managed not to have the American name attached(so far) to this unrest, thus keeping the door open for dialogue. Good move, Barack!

Note: File picture does not represent anything going on in Iran presently, these are Pakistani muslims.

A man to watch

2009-06-22T19:25:00.003+05:00

Ayatullah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. We know Rafsanjani as Ahmedinejad's predecessor as president. He has been portrayed as moderate to liberal, which means different things in Iran than it does in the West. Rafsanjani condemned the 1991 Gulf war and refused to lift the fatwa imposed by Khomeini on Salman Rushdie. He is a mutjahid(Islamic scholar) and holds its highest rank, Ayatullah. So if he gains power, you will not see the appearance of Playboy magazine and liquor stores opening in the bazaars. Rafsanjani's power lies in his chairmanship of an 86 man body called the Assembly of Experts. This group decides who will be the next Supreme Leader of the nation. They also have the power to depose a Supreme Leader, which is where I expect we will see some action. He is also holder of the chairmanship of a body called the Expediency Discemment Council, which resolves disputes between the Majlis(elected legislature) and the Council of Guardians(which deals with constitutional and electoral matters)
As Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei has backed the election of Ahmedinejad and is presently escalating the repression of dissent, many members of the Iranian government feel uncomfortable with that, and look to Rafsanjani to lead them out of this mess. He has already called for a meeting of the Assembly of Experts, but whether he has the votes to oust Khamenei is unknown. Rafsanjani has always had the support of the bazaaris(read yesterdays post). He favors a free market econony and dialogue with America. Watch for this sign: if the bazaaris decide to strike and close the shops, then we are headed towards what might become a revolution of sorts.
Little will really change internationally. Iran has become a regional power in the area and will want to exercise that power. She is active in Iraq and already siphons off quite a bit of Iraqi oil. The Arabs see Iran as wanting to spread the Shia version of Islam, and that frightens them. America needs Iran as a working partner in Iraq and in Afghanistan for American policy to succeed, yet has to be able to temper any Iranian imperialist aspirations to consol the Saudis and other gulf/oil states.
Here are some quotes from Rafsanjani to give you an idea of his political philosophy"

If one day, the Islamic world is also equipped with weapons like those that Israel possesses now, then the imperialists' strategy will reach a standstill because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything. However, it will only harm the Islamic world. It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality. Of course, you can see that the Americans have kept their eyes peeled and they are carefully looking for even the slightest hint that technological advances are being made by an independent Islamic country. If an independent Islamic country is thinking about acquiring other kinds of weaponry, then they will do their utmost to prevent it from acquiring them. Well, that is something that almost the entire world is discussing right now. (December 2001)[26]
If the Americans attack Iran, the world will change. …They will not dare to make such a mistake (2004)[27]
We are not bothering anyone, but we have acquired nuclear expertise and we want to benefit from it to improve our life.
You need diplomacy and not slogans. This is the place for wisdom, the place for seeking windows that will take you to the objective. (2005)[28]
We want all the Palestinians back in their homeland, and then there can be a fair referendum for people to choose the form of state they want. Whoever gets the majority can rule. (2005)[29]
There is no doubt that America is a superpower of the world and we cannot ignore them. I think that Americans should gradually begin to adopt positive behavior rather than doing evil. They should not expect an immediate reaction in return for their positive measures. It will take time.[30]
I believe the main solution [referring to the nuclear issue] is to gain the trust of Europe and America and to remove their concerns over the peaceful nature of our nuclear industry and to assure them that there will never be a diversion to military use.[31]
Europe resolved a great problem – the problem of the Zionist danger. The Zionists, who constituted a strong political party in Europe, caused much disorder there. Since they had a lot of property and controlled an empire of propaganda, they made the European governments helpless. What Hitler and the German Nazis did to the Jews of Europe at that time was partly due to these circumstances with the Jews. They wanted to expel the Zionists from Europe because they always were a pain in the neck for the governments there. This is how this calamity fell upon the Muslims, especially the Palestinians, and you all know this history, more or less.[...]The first goal was to save Europe from the evil of Zionism, and in this, they have been relatively successful. [32]
Look, as long as we can enrich uranium and master the fuel cycle, we don’t need anything else. Our neighbors will be able to draw the proper conclusions.[33]

The quotes were taken from Wikipedia

WHAT DO THE BAZAARIS THINK??

2009-06-21T21:39:00.002+05:00

I have been, like many, following recent events in Iran with interest. Anyone who is following this can be confused by the serpentine channels of power within the Islamic government. In the final analysis, this really isn't about Moussavi and Ahmedinejad, its about a power struggle within the ranks of the Ayatullahs that run Iran. Between Ali Khamenei and Ayatullah Rafsanjani. The students are carrying the torch of this dissent. The military and conservative mullahs are reacting. Ayatullah Khamenei said yesterday in essence, that the election was an expression of divine will. As Iran's Supreme Leader and, according to the dictates set up by Ayatullah Ruhallah Khomeini, he is as infallible as a medieval pope. Apparently the masses reject this. This is a big crack in the theocracy. We have heard from the Mullahs, both sides, as they too are divided. We have heard from the students and intellectuals. The poor and under educated are manipulated by religious dogma and hatred to side with the government( Gee, just like in America!) The military stands ready. But what do the bazaaris think.? Bazaaris in Iranina society are the middle class shop owners from the bazaars and the rich merchants that rose from this class. In 1979 they were frimly behind Khomeini, but that is probably changing. Iran's economy is challenged today. Money is spent on a nuclear weapons program, financing Hamas and Hezbollah and little trickles down to the bazaars. Ahmedinijed promised economic reform but it didn't happen. Average Iranians must fear direct confrontation with Israel, who will nuke their weapons program without a second thought. They also fear war with America. Remember it was just 20 years ago that Iran was engaged with a long and bloody war with Saddam Hussein. Most bazaaris are old enough to remember those days. Where will they throw their power too? Whatever happens, Irans Islamic Revolution is finished, maybe not today, but in the final analysis the theocracy as we see it will fall. Who knows what will replace it?

It's just scary

2009-06-16T00:15:00.002+05:00

Today Leon Panetta said that maybe Dick Cheney is hoping for terrorist attack on America to justify his noise. No doubt! Limbaugh wants Obama to fail and today I listened to conservative talk show host Neal Boortz. Boortz advocated not allowing welfare recipients, seniors not owning their own home(free and clear) be denied the right to vote! Medical treatment for those on Social Security should be limited( so they die and not stress the system) These guys would make Hiltler proud.

Super rich rob the poor..Again!

2009-06-14T18:33:00.002+05:00

OK, so you have to have a digital TV or converter box now to get free TV. Nothing is for free, especially whenthe super wealthy find new ways to steal money from the poor and the government. Most people who watch free TV don,t have satellite or cable, now they have nothing. Maybe the democrats, "champions of the poor", will devise a program whereby the government buys digital for the welfare poor. Even still, the super rich get their money, which is all that matters. And the working poor get zilch. The next thing will be vehicles. We'll develop a car, either very good gas mileage or new technology and stop selling old types. The car will be super expensive. For the poor it will be like living in Cuba, keeping old cars running no matter. You'll have to go deep into hock, thereby assuring you won't cause trouble at work and you can dull your pain watching crap on digital TV and learning new ways to hate people different from you. The super rich have got housing, health care, TV, insurance and credit in their pockets. Cars will be next,maybe then electric power. They can buy congressmen and senators to get their stuff, regardless of political party. Meanwhile the TVless poor will lose their ability to get good news and be forced to listen to talk radio. When is America going to wake to this giant ripoff? Its almost too late.

A message from our sponsor

2009-06-13T20:31:00.002+05:00

A kinsman came to see Nasrudin, bringing a duck as a gift. Delighted, Nasrudin made duck soup and shared it with is guest. Soon one countryman after another began to call, each one a frined of a friend who brought you the duck. No more presents were forthcoming.
At length nasrudin was exasperated. One day yet another stranger appeared, "I am a friend of the friend of the relative who brought you thee duck. He sat down expecting a meal, Nasrudin handed him a bowl of hot water.
"What's this?"
"That is the soup of the soup of the soup of the duck which was brought by my relative"

Expect Prophets!

2009-06-12T16:23:00.003+05:00

Simply put, religion is just a set of symbols, culturally familiar to explain the unexplainable. Religions change and morph thru the appearance of prophets, sages,buddhas, etc. Almost never is the enlightened one totally accepted my the religious tradition that gave him birth. He is usually considered a rebel. This means that should Jesus return, the Jewish Messiah appear, the Islamic Madhi and Maitreya Buddha arrive, they will most certainly not be accepted by the "orthodox" of their faiths. Enlightened beings always walk amongst us, but are rarely heard by the masses, content with their views of ever changing cultural symbolism. Sometimes, the process needs a jump start, and prophets are listened to and followed. In the 1000+ year period, roughly between 500BC and 600AD we had the appearance of prophets, whose followers later based religions upon.
Aristotle and Plato,Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Muhammad, Confucius, and Lao Tse. A lot of prophets for a short period of time and none of major import since. Why is this?
Culture changes, then religion changes. Paleolithic animism and hunting magic gave way gave way to multitudinous dieties and systems of relative complexity after the Neolithic and agricultural revolution. People now lived in towns, cities primarily, had surpluses, invented wealth and kings. They needed kings on high and a holy government of minor gods,angels, saints or spirits to fufil new needs. Paleolithic gods could not answer the new questions and prophets appeared, now only faded myths exist of them. By 500BC, the world order had changed again, city states faded, empires appeared, iron was the new technology, war became a profession..... and prophets appeared. The old religions were useless in new times and the sages tried to explain the mysteries in new symbols. Man had writing, the teaching survived.
Now in the 21st century, with vast advances in the scientific understanding of the universe, new information technologies and mans recent ability to totally destroy himself.Old religion is silent on answers. Old religions now begin to decay as their uselessness becomes evident. Muslim, Christian and Jewish fundamnetalism has turned religions into to creatures their founders would scarcely recognize. Eastern faiths have become repetitive in exercises of ritual. Oh, saints and prophets appear,The Dalai Lama, Mother Theresa to name two. But there influences are rarely felt by masses brainwashed by the confused clerics of the modern world.
Change is happening, expect Prophets!

Straight talk on Iran from CNN

2009-06-12T01:31:00.000+05:00

This commentator has it right"

Commentary: Iran's nuclear work will go on

Story Highlights
Fawaz Gerges: Iranian elite is pleased with success of foreign policy
He says U.S.-led regime change in Iraq, Afghanistan strengthened Iran
Gerges: None of the presidential candidates is likely to change policy
He says nuclear program is likely to continue, whoever wins election

updated 10:17 a.m. EDT, Thu June 11, 2009

Next Article in World »

By Fawaz A. Gerges
Special to CNN

Editor's note: Fawaz A. Gerges holds the Christian A. Johnson Chair in Middle Eastern Studies and International Affairs at Sarah Lawrence College. His most recent book is "The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global." This is the second of two pieces by Gerges on the Iranian election.

Fawaz Gerges says Iran's elite is united on the country's foreign policy, which they view as successful.

(CNN) -- Regardless of who wins the Iranian election, continuity will be the hallmark of Iran's foreign affairs and nuclear program.

A consensus exists among the ruling elite, including reformists and conservatives, that on balance, Iranian foreign policy has been successful in maximizing the country's national interests.

Iranian officials are convinced that the current foreign policy approach has earned the Islamic republic prestige and universal recognition. Taken seriously by friend and foe alike, Iran is a key player in world politics.

Seen from Tehran, the country has achieved most of its foreign policy priorities: After three decades of animosity and active opposition, the United States has finally recognized the legitimacy of the Islamic republic and its role as a pivotal regional power, even though it doesn't formally recognize the regime.

The Obama administration has reversed its predecessor's goal of regime change in Tehran and has sought to re-engage diplomatically with the ruling mullahs. In the past three years, in particular, Iranian leaders have demonstrated their regional weight and clout in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan and Pakistan, a testament to the emergence of Iran as a leading regional player.

None of the presidential candidates challenges the basic tenets of the country's international relations, even though leading reformist and conservative contenders criticize President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's extreme rhetoric, particularly the denial of the Holocaust, which antagonized the West and provoked international condemnation of Iran.

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Both reformist candidates, Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, have said they would pursue a foreign policy of détente with the West and would be willing to meet with President Obama if it would help advance Iran's national interests. However, neither has proposed to deviate from the broad contours set by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the National Security Council.

Bush's global war on terror brought high dividends to the Islamic Republic. By overthrowing the pro-Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan, bitter enemies of Tehran's, and the Sunni-dominated Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, a historic rival of Iran's, the Bush administration swiftly turned Iran into the unrivaled superpower in the Persian Gulf.

The U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq structurally changed the balance of power in Baghdad and empowered a Shiite-led coalition friendly to Tehran. Iran has now replaced the United States as the most influential actor in Iraqi politics by virtue of its co-option of most of the leading social groups there, particularly the Shiites, who represent more than 60 percent of the population, and the Sunni Kurds, at 20 percent.

Iranian political influence has spread far beyond Iraq. Today, Iran holds the torch of "defiance" and "resistance" to the U.S.-Israeli alliance in the Middle East; it has invested considerable capital in aiding "resistance" movements in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine like Jish al-Muhdi (Muqtada al-Sadr's militia), Hezbollah and Hamas.

Shiite-based Iran has appealed to many Sunni Arabs and Muslims over the heads of their rulers, despite a concerted campaign by pro-Western "moderate" Sunni-based Arab states to whip up anti-Shiite (anti-Iranian) sentiment amongst their population.

The United States needs Iran to ensure an orderly withdrawal of its troops from Iraq as well as a smooth political transition afterward. American officials also acknowledge that Iran's assistance would help stabilize a war-torn Afghanistan and reduce hostilities in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

As America's regional position has weakened, Iran has gained the upper hand and has effectively leveraged its influence by raising the ceiling of its demands from the Obama administration.

In my interviews with Iranian officials and their allies in the Middle East, they stress that a settlement with the United States (they hardly list other Western states) must explicitly recognize Iran's pivotal role in the Gulf and end efforts to isolate and undermine the Islamic-based government in Tehran. What they mean is that Iran must be factored in as a key player in any future settlement in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon and Afghanistan.

For all these reasons, the next president will be unlikely to rethink Iranian foreign policy and strategic posture. At most, the international community should expect only minor changes in tactics and style.

After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama said Iran's obtaining a nuclear weapon would not only threaten Israel and the United States, it would be "profoundly destabilizing" to the international community. He said he would not let the proposed talks with the Islamic Republic go on forever, but the June presidential election would reveal whether there is a chance for progress by the end of the year.

If Obama thinks the election of a reformist president will bring about a shift in Iran's nuclear policy, he will be surprised to learn that there is little or no difference in the positions of leading candidates on the nuclear program. In fact, Iranians of all persuasions agree that their country should be allowed to develop nuclear technology and acquire the scientific know-how for further advancement.

Although Iran has made critical strides in its nuclear program during Ahmadinejad's term in office, the country's uranium enrichment program made its greatest advances during his more liberal predecessor's eight years in power.

It is unlikely that the next president will be willing or able to accede to the demands by the Western powers to suspend uranium enrichment. The supreme leader and the National Security Council are determined to advance the nation's nuclear program at all costs while stressing that enriching uranium is for peaceful purposes rather than developing nuclear weapons.

To avoid a confrontation and find an acceptable solution to Iran's nuclear program, Western leaders must take the security dilemma of their Iranian counterparts seriously. At the heart of Iran's drive to develop nuclear activities lies a quest for deterrence against a nuclear Israel and what they view as a menacing America.

Iranian leaders believe that possessing a nuclear deterrent will ensure the survival of their Islamic Republic by dissuading America from overthrowing their regime along the lines of Afghanistan and Iraq. America's invasion and occupation of Iraq was a wake-up call for the mullahs, who understandably felt threatened by the presence of 150,000 U.S. troops in their backyard.

Only by recognizing the legitimate fears and concerns of the Iranian leadership can a solution to the country's nuclear program be found. The challenge is to address Iran's security dilemma and provide its leaders with alternative means and assurances to going nuclear.

But that may be too little, too late because Iran already possesses the scientific know-how and is on the verge of clearing the last technological hurdles to building a nuclear weapon. Iranian scientists are racing against time to reach a nuclear breakthrough and present the world with a fait accompli.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Fawaz Gerges.

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All About Iran • Mahmoud Ahmadinejad • Iraq War • Nuclear Energy

Terrorism at the Holocaust museum

2009-06-11T20:30:00.002+05:00

It was saddening to hear about events yesterday in DC.One brave security guard killed, children subjected to viewing the horror and the desecration of a memorial to tolerance.Hate groups abound in the world. Certainly fundamentalist Islam comes to mind, the KKK and Aryan nations, fringe Christianity too( Evangelicals are more likely to support torture) When it becomes national policy you get Nazis, Apartheid and the Native American holocaust. It is rooted in many different things, tribalism, religion, nationality but it has in common the inability of people to deal with those who are different and with change. America is going thru a big change. From a white Eurpean society to a multinational entity. America has always claimed to be the melting pot, but in reality minorities never rose to the top. Now thats happening and it scares the crap of these supremacists. The sad thing is this crackpot was known to be a sower of hate. Yes, America has a first amendment, and Americans can express themselves freely, but when it turns to this kind of evil it must be reckoned with. Terrorism comes in many forms, shapes and colors, all equally abhorent. I expected to see some of this kind of behavior when Barak Obama was elected president. i thought, perhaps it would lead to assination attempts, but terrorism and hatred hold to no know pattern. And innocents die.

Health Alert, dont eat Slim Jims!!

2009-06-10T01:10:00.002+05:00

This is a story on an ammonia explosion at the Conagra plant in Raleigh,NC where people died. Conagra is also responsible for Orville Redenbacher( you mean the nerdly old dude with a bow tie ain't real'...... like Santa, Jesus, Aunt Jemima and Col. Sanders) Anyway they make Healthy Choice foods and that is really pretty scary. Conagra is like a multinational food production giant, and like all the giants is primarily interested in profit. So if "Healthy" sells, we'll us it. But like ole Orville, its a massive amount of bullshit.If they have enough ammonia at a slim jim plant to make that kind of explosion, you wonder if thats going into your food. The only difference between Slim Jim and healthy Choice is that at healthy Choice factories the ammonia tank is painted green

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/09/north.carolina.collapse/index.html

The American Taliban

2009-06-10T00:27:00.002+05:00

Where is George W. Bush? While his lackeys and cronies continue to rail against a freely elected government, old George remains silent. Perhaps he is deep in the hills of the Afghani-Pakistani border hanging out with Mullah Omar. After all he would find their male chauvinist, racist, religious fundamentalist policies much like those of his Neocon Republican brothers. Wishing for a bygone age when everything was viewed as perfect. While Omar longs for the days of the Prophet Muhammed, where Sharia law is strictly enforced and all things are either halal or haram, Bush and his buddies long for the 1950's, when uppity blacks sat in the back of the bus and women were like June Cleaver, keeping a perfect house. Bush and his Neocon buddies are the closest thing America has to the Taliban.

It is written!:

2009-06-05T23:49:00.003+05:00

" The hats must always match the music"

A comment I made to CNN

2009-06-04T02:48:00.002+05:00

This is in response to an article on Limbaugh now thinking he could support Sonia Sotomayor based on the possibilty she wouldn't support Wade vs Roe.

Rush is such a racist. Like this quote:"she's a Hispanic Catholic, Puerto Rican, they tend to be devout, " Like Blacks tend to have rhythmn, Jews tend to be cheap, American Indians tend to get drunk, Muslims tend to be terrorists. Fat Oxycontin popping liars tend to be "donkey"holes

Osama surfaces again

2009-06-03T23:16:00.002+05:00

There is a new tape from bin Laden. He bashes Obama and blames the US for the Pakistani military action in Swat. He says:"This basically means that Obama and his administration put new seeds of hatred and revenge against America. The number of these seeds is the same as the number of those victims and refugees in Swat and the tribal area in northern and southern Waziristan."

Gee has he been listening to Rush and Dick?

Really??????????

2009-06-02T03:08:00.002+05:00

Now that we find out Saddam had no WMD and none other than Dick Cheney said today he was sure Saddam had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and 9/11, we must come to the conclusion that George and Dick killed more Americans needlessly than Osama and company got in their World Trade Center attack. Osama must be dancing(if thats allowed by the taliban) in his cave with joy. These dumbfucks killed their own people. Shit talk about war criminals

This is good!

2009-06-02T00:38:00.001+05:00

By Julian E. Zelizer
Special to CNN

Editor's note: Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely about current events.

Julian E. Zelizer says Sotomayor's critics are taking risks in focusing on affirmative action.

(CNN) -- It seems as if Republican opponents of President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court are now coalescing around the issue of affirmative action as their main point of attack.

Their focus is her ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano as well as her remark about the benefits that a Latina judge could bring to a court.

Just months after Americans made a historic decision to elect an African-American as president, this approach is a high-stakes strategy that poses huge risks for the GOP regardless of the outcome of this nomination.

Some Republicans, such as former Speaker Newt Gingrich, have called on their colleagues to aggressively oppose Sotomayor in response to arguments about affirmative action and liberalism that have been central to the base of the party. Other Republicans, including several in Congress, have suggested that this strategy would further marginalize the Republican Party among Hispanics, women and moderates.

By focusing an assault on affirmative action, Republicans would add African Americans and other minorities to that list, playing to the accusations of their opponents that the GOP is a white man's party.

The debate about Sotomayor's nomination is in many ways a strategic debate about the future of the Republican Party.

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There are two paths rooted in history that the GOP could follow. The first is the model of Dwight Eisenhower, who served as president from 1953 to 1961. He believed the GOP should aim for as broad an electoral coalition as possible.

Eisenhower urged Republicans to accept that large parts of the New Deal would be permanent features of the political landscape. "Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history," Eisenhower wrote his brother.

At the same time, President Eisenhower was not scared to find issues that would distinguish his party from Democrats. He spent much of the mid-to-late 1950s railing against the Democratic Congress for spending too much on domestic and defense programs, making fiscal conservatism a signature issue.

Eisenhower's re-election effort in 1956 was a massive triumph. He won 35,590,472 votes and 457 electoral votes compared with Adlai Stevenson, who won 26,022,752 and only 73 electoral votes. Eisenhower even won in five Southern states, including Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana and Virginia, where the Republican Party had historically been weak. While Republicans failed to gain control of Congress, Eisenhower ended his presidency enormously popular.

But many Republicans were not impressed. Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, who accused Eisenhower of supporting a "Dime Store New Deal," proposed a different vision for Republicans.

During his 1964 campaign against President Johnson, Goldwater called on his party to stand up for conservative principles. At the Republican convention in San Francisco, Goldwater attacked middle-of-the-road Republicanism. His supporters booed opponent Nelson Rockefeller, a liberal Republican, when he spoke to them. Goldwater told delegates that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice . . . moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

Goldwater lost to Johnson in an electoral landslide. But his campaign set the agenda for the GOP in the coming decades. Conservative activists in the 1970s built on Goldwater's brand of politics and pushed their party to the right.

Ronald Reagan -- whose speech for Goldwater in 1964 propelled him into the national spotlight -- used the same kind of rhetoric and tactics as Goldwater to win the presidency against President Carter in 1980. Reagan formed close ties to the conservative movement. Republicans who were closely allied to the conservative movement took control of Congress in 1994.

President George W. Bush entered office with the ambitions of changing direction and trying to build a broader electoral coalition for the GOP through "compassionate conservatism" based on his experience in Texas. But Bush instead pursued an electoral strategy whereby the GOP played to the base of the party, writing off moderates and independents, and focusing on turning out the vote among loyal voters.

While the strategy worked between 2002 and 2005, when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, the party has paid a heavy price in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Democrats regained control of Congress and then the White House.

Polls show that the public standing of Republicans has fallen dramatically. Sizable constituencies the GOP had hoped to attract -- including Hispanic voters -- have been moving steadily toward the Democratic Party and don't show signs of coming back. Indeed, Obama's selection of Sotomayor threatens to permanently secure that community's support for Democrats.

The threat that many Republicans perceive with an aggressive attack on Sotomayor is that they would simply aggravate these negative trends and lose anyway, given Democratic control of Congress and her credentials.

It is easy to envision the long-term damage that the GOP could incur from an increasingly diverse America watching white Republican senators attack the experienced Latino appointee of the first African American president, first by raising questions about whether this prize-winning student at two Ivy League universities is intelligent enough for the job and then by opening up a debate about affirmative action in America.

Republicans have an important choice to make, and Sotomayor is just the starting point: Do they want to be the party of Eisenhower or the party of Goldwater?

It might be that Republicans continue along the path that they have followed since the 1970s, using the Goldwater playbook and betting everything on the electoral strength of the right wing.

But Republicans might also take a second look at one of the more popular presidents of the post-WWII period, Dwight Eisenhower, who offered a very different vision of what the Republican Party could or should be. Indeed, Eisenhower's legacy might very well offer a building block for reconstructing their party.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Julian Zelizer.

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All About Barack Obama • Sonia Sotomayor • Affirmative Action

A suggestion for the military

2009-06-02T00:14:00.002+05:00

Currently there are four service branches, Army, Navy, Air Force and the Marines. Each has a four star as service chief and sits on the Joint Chiefs. Each service has an area of responsibility. The Army, to fight ground wars, mainly conventional,The Navy takes care of the sea, weapons, troop and supply delivery. The Air Force covers offensive air, defensive air and missles and the Marines are America,s 911 first responders. We need a fifth branch. A Special Force, based on elements of the Special Forces, Seals, etc with a touch of good old CIA tactics. Special Force would address the current state of war, be it guerilla or terrorist and develop tactics to deal with neutralize such enemies. Conventional forces cant do the job as proved in Vietnam and Iraq. We need highly motivated, trained and educated specialists to form groups to deal with different unconventional war strategies. I would have troops in Afghanistan working much like the old mujahadin of the 80's. Mobile, fast, speaking Dari and Pashto and understanding the cultures and religion. I would focus another group on Iran and on North Korea. Another group would deal with terrorist groups in general. I'm not talking about regiment sized groups here, more like multi division sized groups, responible to their own. Special operations people are not always viewed highly in their respective services. They need one of their own.

What's happening to the Republicans?

2009-06-01T21:40:00.002+05:00

How is it that the party of Lincoln, the freer of slaves has now become what, at times, seems to be a white supremacist organization. The far right version of the party seems, these days, to be little different from the KKK, Aryan Nation and The American Nazi party. Sad. Forget the names hung on Obama: Antichrist,Muslim terrorism, Facist, Marxist, weak on security etc. the real name they want to call him is Nigger and now he has appointed a Spic to be a supreme court justice(forgive my usage of politically incorrect epithets, but I am sure these words are echoed by Limbaugh,Gingrich,Cheney and company) As America moves toward a more diversified and homgeneous nation it scares the shit out these"I am destined to rule" old WASPs. Their day is over, their racism is over and hopefully their imperialism is over. And they are scared and that's what makes them dangerous. Now more states are coming to the conclusion that same sex couples deserve the same rights as married people. Listening, the other day, to Neal Boortz, i was surprised to hear him support same sex freedoms based on his view that the constitution guarantees equal rightrs to all. Well Neal is not a Republican, he is a Libertarian. While i don't agree with his assessments of the Obama administration, I respect his devotion to the Constitution. Oh yes, WASPs now ell have Fags to worry about.

Memorial Day Muse

2009-05-25T20:48:00.002+05:00

Yeah, I did Nam two tours and the purple hearts to prove it. A Marine on the DMZ "65-67. Today, I think back on those days and those who died or just got a fucked up life for it all. Granny, Frenchie, Tolley( hot girlfriend pic!), Sgt. Psycho( he was corporal), Ding Dong, the grumpy gunny, officers came and went, no nicknames. Some of those boys are gone now, lives snuffed in their early spring. I think too of Vietnamese like Lt Chao who introduced me to the talents of a very pretty Co Minh, to the VC POW I knew in a small prison compound, who etched tranquil scenes of Vietnames ladies and sampans on the Perfumed River, on metal ammo discs with a rusty nail. He earned his cigarettes. Wonder if anyone saved his art, sorry I didn't. The kid who was sleeping by a truck and had a dud mortar round roll off the hood on his chest. He wandered thru mortar fire holding the round like a baby, while we screamed for him to drop it and get to a hole. He finally tossed it and we pulled him down to safety, then the round went off. Wonder how that guys head is today, hope he can laugh at it, cause it sure was funny. There's a million Nam stories and most of em good. Its our legacy, our history, our pay for those years. It makes us special, a secret club.. WE KNOW. We know Sherman was right when he said war is hell, we know Robt. E.Lee was right when he said he was glad war didn't happen too often, he might get to enjoy it. We've seen shit ya'll can't imagine and the world looks different thru those glasses. To the ones that are gone, I say" Urrah! Semper Fi Muthafuckas ya'll was the SHIT!" I pause to remember those men and brothers today.
Then on the CNN website, I see that Karl Rove has cast his support with Rush Limbaugh in his "debate" with Gen. Colin Powell and it makes me wanna puke. Powell did 2 tours in Nam also. Rove, Limbaugh,Cheney Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld and the rest of the neocon nazis never served a day in war. And I suppose we should include other war criminals like NcNamara and the rest of Nam policy makers in that group. Never fought but gambled with lives of American boys for their own personal gain. Almost 60,000 dead in Nam, 4,000 in Iraq. Countless wounded, physically and mentally. Sacrificed! For what? "National security??" Bullshit. Today, when I read of Rove and Limbaugh, I shed a tear for the parents of those honored dead. Some of them must see how fucked up this whole thing is. That realization is going to be tough on them. Today, they deserve our thoughts,honor and prayers along with their brave sons and daughters.

WHY???????????????

2009-05-23T02:20:00.002+05:00

62% of white evangelical Christians approve of using torture in certain instances! Amazing! Most Vietnam era POW's like John McCain, who have experienced torture, are against the use of it. Jesus, who,according to the bible anyway was tortured and crucified would certainly agree with the POW's. And these fundamentalists call themselves Christians.

Solving the economic crisis and bailout bucks

2009-05-22T02:08:00.001+05:00

America should use Zimbabwe bucks!
And you think you've got problems, this banknote is worth about 25 cents American.

CLOSURE or do the right thing,George

2009-05-20T01:00:00.003+05:00

America is a mess. Two wars, neither finished nor won continue to take her youth. The economy is in a shambles. The environment tortured and the nation divided. Osama is still on the loose, taunting us from his secret undisclosed location( Gee, Dick, you must know where that is). Obama struggles heroically to rebuild, while neocon bullies try to divide the nation further. George W. Bush is silent. He wants Obama to succeed. I think he is glad its over. I think Bush was used, big time by his Neocon mafia of Cheney, Wolfie,Rummy, Condi and Rove. Maybe Bush has figured this out. He claims to be a spiritual person. He is a recovering alcoholic like myself. I know many alcoholics in recovery can get really spiritual. George is writing a book( or dictating it, anyway). Wouldn't it be nice if he came thru with some reality and truth. Gee, did I screw up listening to these idiots. I'm sorry. Please don't listen to this Neocon,Nazi,nation bullying,world destroying gang. They ruined America, they ruined me and they'll mess you up too. Wouldn't that be wonderful. It certainly would change his historical legacy, heal a nation and save lives. He could sleep again. I know i'm dreaming, but it is possible. His silence is a message.

The debate on torture

2009-05-14T00:25:00.002+05:00

It's everywhere, the debate on the morality and expediency of torture. As long as war exists, torture will continue. As long as police arrest suspects, torture will exist. Apparently military and law enforcement officials feel that law,morality and human rights are not guidelines they need to follow in their quest for "justice". I have been in two wars, a little one and a big one, I have been arrested and jailed both in America and the Middle East, so I have some experience, albeit limited on this subject. Torture is part of the madness of war, but law keeps it limited and underground. In Vietnam, I saw torture, amongst many other crimes, but was not the norm. I have experienced police brutality, but again, its a few cops, not the majority. The post 9/11 mindset of the Bush administration opened the door for more abuses and gave the definition of torture( and genocide) to the lawyers, which guarantees no answer for a long time. But they tolerated more it, to obtain answers, than previous American administrations. Like I said,we can't end torture until we end war, and we are long way from that.
In world affairs, America has always taken the high moral ground, standing for freedom,justice,equality,human rights and tolerance. That, at least, is the offical doctrine, beneath it plenty of these fine values are ignored. But as long as America talks the talk, she needs to attempt to walk the walk. America has institutionalized hypocrasy as a form of diplomacy.How can we expect the world to come to her aid in the many fine things done by America, if she so blantantly puts her self above the rules of order she expects others to follow. It has been proven by the FBI and others, that torture doesnt work. Col. Bui Dinh, a Viet Cong leader was tortured for 10 years with no results. Torture is a tool of anger and selfishness rather than a tool of interrogation. America shoild not tolerate torture by her institutions. She has made a mockery of the Geneva convention and turned UN sanctions( OK for those she is against, Iraq,Iran and not valid for Israel) into a joke. Being the world's only superpower, she should rather be a role model than a bully.

Its still a mystery

2009-05-12T01:58:00.002+05:00

For at least 40,000 Homo sapiens has speculated as to the nature of the universe. Aurignacians and their successor cultures gave us cave art and lovingly buried their dead, Grave goods appeared, perhaps signifying a belief in afterlife. Shamans tried to understand by penetrating the human mind and journeying into the spirit world. Later on in Neolithic times we created the god concept, one or many, but omnipotent. Revealed religions, which are basically codified laws and legends appeared to try to explain things to a more sophisticated audience. We are still in that stage of developement now. Peope talk about the end of times, judgement day, the coming of Jesus, the Madhi or the Buddha of the future to set things right. We really haven't progressed from the shaman stage too much, infact there may be more validity in shamanism than the Abrahamic faiths. Today I talked to a man about the Middle East and what might be done to stop Jews and Palestinians from killing each other. There is nothing we can do, he said, it's predicted in the bible.
Mission specialist John Grunefeld, currently in space repairing Hubble said""We discovered in fact that all that stuff we thought we knew about accounts for only 4 percent of the known universe," Grunsfeld said. "Most of the universe is made up of what's called 'dark energy.' Nobody could have anticipated it. It's the largest constituent of the universe. We still have no idea what it is."
Dark energy, huh Very cool and we have no idea or only a 4% idea. of course fundamentalists will probably say the "dark" is Satan and it means the end of times is coming, probably find some quote in a holy book to vaguely back it up.
For me, its Glory be to God in the Highest, Alhamdulillah,....... we don't know shit.

Why are we ignoring Iran

2009-05-09T18:33:00.003+05:00

When Americans think Iran, they think crazy Ahmedinejad, cussing Israel, denying the holocaust, building a nuke. But it all is a finely crafted device to turn our attention away from the fact thatIran is fact winning the Middle Eastern War big time. Gee, didn't even know we were at war with Iran? Iran has been at war with the US since Khomeini came to power in 79. Remember the Iran hostage crisis, Desert 1, Marine barracks in Beirut in 83. Yep Iran was engaging in terrorist war.
Sometime in the 90's Iran made the switch from terrorist state to regional superpower and America never took notice. America deals with Iran as a rogue state, like North Korea, but Iran is player.
Iran is well on its way to winning dominance over the Middle East and oil. We took out her biggest enemy, Saddam and handed her Shia Iraq and its oil on a platter. Why isn't
oil flowing from Iraq? It is , it's flowing to Iran. The Shia dominated Iraqi government has let Iran control oil, the Shia south and the police. Do you think the surge worked? Wrong, Iran just called back her proxy warriors. When Iran wants chaos in Iraq again,it will happen. Iran is interested in keeping the Americans in the 'quagmire". Actually two quagmires, Afghanistan too, where Iran grealyt influences western Afghanistan. Herat is essentially an Iranian city.
While Sunni Arabs, the Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis,Syrians, PLO etc have failed to do anything about Israel with any success, Iran has sponsored both Hizbollah and Hamas, provided cash, weapons and guidance. Hizbollah and Hamas, with Iranian guidance, have made the jump from terrorist to politically viable organizations. Hizbollah defeated Israel, forced them out of Lebanon. The Sunnis havent forced Israel out of anything. For alot of oppressed Muslims, Sunni and Shia don't make much difference anymore, a winner does.
Most of the population of the oil rich Gulf are Shia, including those Saudis in al Hasa, where the oil is located. Iran is supporting those Shia and it may not be long before Bahrain, Qatar and UAE fall under Iranian influence. Iran controls the straits of Hormuz, a 12 mile wide choke point where the oil flows thru in tankers. Their side of the gulf is laden with Silkworm antiship missiles in hardened and underground bunkers. They can shut the Gulf down as easy as turning off a water tap.
Iran has been a power for over 2500 years, a country with Imperial pretensions. She is the strongest, and most stable state in the Middle East and she WILL have a say its future. If America continues on its present course of military startegy, we will lose the Middle East, bankrupt the nation and become a third world country. We need to treat Iran as an equal, simply because she is one.
Someone once said that American Middle Eastern policy is a table supported by four unstable legs. The first is Pakistan, an army not a state, not much different from the Iraq of Saddam.
The second is Saudi Arabia, rich with oil , but with no will to fight or defend its borders with a royal family more interested in spending money rather than being a mover/shaker in regional politics.
The third leg was the Shah of Iran,but that leg collapsed already.
The fourth, of course, is Israel, which has nothing to give America besides the Jewish vote at election time. Israel is no different from many other Middle Eastern nations, it flirts with terrorism. The occupation of Palestine is brutal, and human rights have no meaning for Arab Israelis. Israel is an embarrassment we cant't control, and has NO oil.
Boy, is America set up for a fall.
Iran doesn't need a nuke, she is already winning the Middle East.

Undrstanding Islam 101.1

2009-05-07T07:00:00.002+05:00

Imagine all legal aspects of society, justice,courts,constitutions etc where in the hands of a unified "church" Supreme court justices would be senior Ulema,Muftis, Ayatollahs, federal judges would be Qadis , and circuit and county judges would be Imans and Mullahs. I have used both Sunni and Shia terms for religious legalists.

It isn't all about Osama

2009-05-05T21:11:00.004+05:00

Consider this. Pres. Obama is spending alot of time, energy and money in Afghanistan. As we speak, he meeting with both Karzai of Afghanistan and Zardari of Pakistan to come to an understanding for the region. Obama is too forward looking a visionary to be hung up on revenge for 9/11. There's much more at stake, including Pakistan's nuclear capabilites. Turkmenistan has the 5th largest natural gas deposits in the world. also a sizeable oil production. Turkmenistan's pipeline outlets are controlled by Russia and quite limited. For years, especially before 9/11 a pipeline thru western Afghanistan and western Pakistan to the Indian ocean was debated. The instablity of the area and 9/11 put all that on hold. Obama's administration is interested in alternative energy. Gas certainly isn't the total answer but a good stop gap as the oil runs dry and alternative energy sources slowly come online. It is surprising that Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, Turkmenistan's leader, doesn't see this and offer to play an important role in the process. of course all Central Asia(the Stans) worry about Islamic fundamentalism. The Muslim republics have yet to find a form of government close to democracy and ar4e only slowly emerging on the world scene. I am sure Turkmen gas is an important part of this equation.

What happened?

2009-05-03T20:43:00.003+05:00

I thought she was so hot in the early 70's. saw her in concert once, she was a bitch and wouldn't do an encore. Anyway the gods have not been kind.

Heaven can wait

2009-04-29T20:20:00.007+05:00

I was reading some meditations from the Dalai Lama today and he stated that after death experiences(dissolution of the elements of the body) is accompanied by experiences of light. First there is white light(conforms to research on near death experiences) the red, black and finally clear light. He further states that all these lights can be experienced thru meditation and that thru this practice one can experience the dissolution process. Boy some people are going to be disappointed! Heaven or afterlife concepts exist in many religions. They tend to reflect cultural experiences of that society. Christianty has created a heaven of gold, Islam a heaven of paradise as viewed by a desert dweller, some Buddhist sects create a Pure Land for the soul to experience. Hindus go for reincarnation, a process that can be manipulated in this life by certain acts. It seems everyone wants to bring along the ego. And that, primarily is what dies when the body machine quits working. The soul( or rather that energy that sustains us) continues, but without the baggage of the illusion of ego. People believe strongly in their different heavens. The belief motivates suicide bombers with promise of paradise. Christian heaven seems a well ordered medieval state with god enthroned and various cherubim and seraphim singing his praises endlessly. Yet, if one reads the Tibetan Book of the Dead, death appears to be a journey taken by the soul as the body dies and ego begins to fade(like batteries running low on a flashlight) Tibetan Buddhists stress the need of this road map( the Book of the Dead) for a successful journey. But where do "we" go. "We" don't go anywhere, but energy cannot be destroyed, so some kind of transformation takes place, but it ceratinly ain't heaven.
Being 64, one begins to be concerned with these things. I watched a holy man die once,(long story)his final thoughts were on what he could do(with exceeding limited options, as he was almost comatose) for some one else. His death cleansed me of some guilt i carried and he dedicated part of his death to teach me this. He died well. I reckon thats pretty important.

Swine flu... A view from the backwoods

2009-04-28T20:35:00.002+05:00

All is shit about the swine flu! Everywhere in the news, hand sanitizer sold out,vacation plans scraped, USA and Mexico on Foreign Ministry "danger" lists, pending impact on the bad economy, imminent doom, etc. Obama says no big deal, and ya know I believe him.Not for the same reasons, Obama doesn't want to spook the nation(Remember Tom Ridge's threat colors?), I believe it's mostly hype. The news media has been going thru withdrawal since the election is over and war is played out. They have been reduced to giving valuable time to the likes of Palin/Johnson,Cheney,Limbaugh and American Idol. You know its a slow news day. Now we have DISASTER looming and the media is right there. Interviews with talking heads spell pandemic. It sells news, period. I have begun to believe that modern man (Homo Sapiens Phukdupus) is mostly concerned with making money( at least in the "west", in the "east" religion holds a greater attraction) Lives have been taken, nations destroyed, a planet raped, the future endangered and little people squeezed in the name of the Almighty dollar. Mammon has become the new god.
Of course, my lady, who lost relatives in the 1918 flu and possesses the verbal lore from then, sees it pretty different. She works with the public, I live in the woods. Different take. Don't have no hand sanitizer, no blue masks, no stockpile of tamiflu and I,m not losing sleep. Nuff said.

There's reason,

2009-04-20T19:57:00.002+05:00

Who'd a thought? Just thought they were crazy, Black,Muslim etc. Piracy as "holy war" maybe? Now it seems the Somali's are pissed and for very good reason. Illegal fishing has cleaned their waters and put them out of the fishing business and certain nations and corporations have been using the Somali coast as a toxic and radioactive dump site. In fact Somalia has begged the UN to do something about these things " or we have no way to support ourselves" The world ignored them and the UN ignored them, Black,Muslim, ailed state, no one was going to waste time or money on that. So now we have piracy. Gee, I guess they found a way to support themselves,huh. I don,t condone the actions of the pirates, but I also don't condone of Western attitude which fails to see what the cause of such behavior is, and realizing that eliminating the cause might just end the piracy. No they don't think that way. It's modern Middle Eastern history in a nutshell, a failure of the West to look at Islam as they look at themselves,using labels, generalities hate, and all the tactics of war instead. Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Somalis etc. all have reasons for their behaviors. America will never succeed in the Middle East as Israel's defender. We need to look at the history and recent events in these nations we now call enemy, find the cause of the agony and address it. Peace may come that way.
Here's Google news on Somalia and the UN

UN envoy decries illegal fishing, waste dumping off Somalia

Jul 25, 2008

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — The UN special envoy for Somalia on Friday sounded the alarm about rampant illegal fishing and the dumping of toxic waste off the coast of the lawless African nation.

"Because there is no (effective) government, there is so much irregular fishing from European and Asian countries," Ahmedou Ould Abdallah told reporters.

He said he had asked several international non-governmental organizations, including Global Witness, which works to break the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict, corruption, and human rights abuses worldwide, "to trace this illegal fishing, illegal dumping of waste."

"It is a disaster off the Somali coast, a disaster (for) the Somali environment, the Somali population," he added.

Ould Abdallah said the phenomenon helps fuel the endless civil war in Somalia as the illegal fishermen are paying corrupt Somali ministers or warlords for protection or to secure fake licenses.

East African waters, particularly off Somalia, have huge numbers of commercial fish species, including the prized yellowfin tuna.

Foreign trawlers reportedly use prohibited fishing equipment, including nets with very small mesh sizes and sophisticated underwater lighting systems, to lure fish to their traps.

"I am convinced there is dumping of solid waste, chemicals and probably nuclear (waste).... There is no government (control) and there are few people with high moral ground," Ould Abdallah added.

Allegations of waste dumping off Somalia by European companies have been heard for years, according to Somalia watchers. The problem was highlighted in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami when broken hazardous waste containers washed up on Somali shores.

But world attention has recently focused on piracy off Somalia, which has taken epidemic proportions since the country sank into chaos after warlords ousted the late president Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

Somalia's coastal waters are now considered to be among the most dangerous in the world, with more than 25 ships seized by pirates there last year despite US navy patrols, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

Some Somali pirates have reportedly claimed to be acting as "coastguards" protecting their waters from illegal fishing and dumping of toxic waste.

Ould Abdallah cited the case of a Spanish trawler captured by pirates while illegally fishing for tuna off Somalia in April.

He said payment of a ransom for the release of the crew "was done in a very sophisticated manner" with the pirates arranging by phone "to be paid in Macau."

The Spanish government said in late April that it paid no ransom to secure the release of the crew of the Playa de Bakio after six days of captivity. But Andrew Mwangura of the Kenya chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Program then said a ransom of 1.2 million dollars (768,000 euros) was paid.

On Friday, Estonia urged the European Union to take stronger action against Somali pirates attacking cargo ships bound for Europe, after an Estonian sailor was held hostage for 41 days.

On Sunday pirates seized a 52,000-tonne Japanese vessel and its 21 crew members off the Somali coast.

The heroine of the Republican party

2009-04-19T23:06:00.002+05:00

No, it's not Caribou Barbie. It's Meghan McCain. The more I hear about this girl, the more I like her. OK she likes wearing black, digs punk music, has gays among her social contacts and it battling a weight problem. But she is a visionary. She can see that the future of her political party is in danger if it continues to be hijacked by the far right fringe and fundamentalist bigots. She is willing to fight or it. She is not going to let the Republican party fragment without giving the moderates of that party a chance to express their views. She is young and may well represent a sizable contingent of new republicans. Hopefully her brand of republicanism will spell the death knell for the like of Limbaugh and Coulter. Meghan is Republican I can like.

Republicans split!

2009-04-17T07:27:00.002+05:00

Today the republican party broke.Far right wingers like Limbaugh,Coulter,Palin, Cheney and the secessionist governor of Texas have barricaded themselves behind some positions that are silly and down right unAmerican. Megan McCain(THE rising republican star) is trying to open a dialogue with Republican gays and stand up for thier rights. Other members of McCain's campaign support her. Bobby Jindal told Cheney to shut up, basically. Hooray for the moderates of the Republican party, they have some sense. Now the crazies, well they just got crazier, a black cheif executive and now Gay republicans. Oh boy there world is shrinking. Watch out for these folks, they will become dangerous in coming future. Thats a prediction.

American hubris

2009-04-16T21:26:00.001+05:00

America has been arrogant as a super power. We inherit, from our Anglo-Germanic core, that sense of superiority that spawned British imperialism and the Nazis. We expect other nations to see the perfection of our system and way of life and we are glad to force it upon them. We believe, as the Brits and Nazis did, that we are obliged to create a new world order based on our inate superiority over everyone else. It is also the patriotic pablum fed by hate mongers like Limbaugh and Fox news to America's great white unwashed. Uneducated and very pleased to be a member of a superior race, they still in their trailers, draw disability and curse change. As the system continues or tries to fleece the middle classes of everything in order to enrich the few, it's going to trickle down to "Joe Sixpack" and when it hits wallet he"s gonna turn on his Republican masters and realize he's getting hurt the most. He won't become a democrat, he's new force in American politics, a throwback to the isolationist polices America hid behind for most of her years. Already there are rumors of secession, downright sedition, and organized resistance. Where its masters are fascists or downright racists I woudn't know. But they scare the shit out of me.

Civil War????

2009-04-16T19:18:00.002+05:00

Recently, there have been some interesting trends. Recruitment in far right wing militant organizations( read white supremist) has increased,national media figures like Rush Limbaugh have made statements that border on sedition, conservative politicians have echoed those seditious ideas,Tea parties have sprung up to protest bailouts and today the governor of Texas let slip that secession is certainly an option. Chuck Norris has apparently thrown his hat into the ring for President of Texas! But its not really about taxes, national debt,or bailouts,all a result of the failure of Bush 43. Its about race, pure and simple. We have an African American President and alot of whites don't really like that. He's been portrayed as the Antichrist and a Muslim. People who live on a steady diet of Fox news and Limbaugh have been stoked into a fury. Many of them come from sectors of the population that can best described as poor, uneducated, and white. Rednecks, If you will. Rednecks are no longer an exclusive Southern phenomenon, they cross the Mason Dixon line and embrace rural, poor and working class(whats left of it) white America. They can be swayed by propaganda that heralds a Muslim desire to conquer the world, they still salivate when communist and socialist labels are thrown about. ( Well indoctrinated during the cold war) For those with half a mind, there are plenty of books and movie "documentaries" to inspire more hate. What's next, civil war? Didn't we fight that one already?

Fundamentalism?

2009-04-14T17:50:00.004+05:00

Today there is much talk of fundamentalists, both Islamic and Christian. Certain scholars and theologians have painted them as locked in a final struggle. But are these two branches of Christianity and Islam really fundamental? It seems to me the the fundamentals of Islam can be seen in the Five Pillars of Islam. Declaration of faith, prayer, alms, fasting and the pilgrimage. Some say Jihad makes up a sixth pillar, but certainly Muhammad didn't see it that way. Jihad, to Muhammad, was a struggle and, although it could be war, it was also the inner struggle. Much of Islam's interpertation of law comes from the Sunnah and Hadith, which lay out Islamic law according to how it was recollected that Muhammad lived. So we have second and third hand information here. In these documents we find the laws that Islamic "fundamentalist" revel in.Muhammed, for instance, prefered to wear his gown exposing his ankles, so the Taliban armed religious police with scissors to trim the faithfu's robes. Muhammad's fundamentalism was the Five Pillars, nothing more.
Similarly, Jesus, as quoted in Matthew( more second and third hand information, as Jesus is not the historical personage that Muhammad is.)

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

This is Jesus' fundamentalism. Todays "fundamenatlist" draw their doctrines much more from Paul and the Revelation of St. John than from Jesus. Both Jesus and Muhammad would be shocked to see what fundamentalist clerics put in their mouths. One thinks, of course, of Pope UrbanII"s call to crusade in 1095, which pretty much started this long running "Holy War". Urban's idea was to find a place for his knights to expend thier martial energies, rather than battling each other.

So these "fundamentalists" by no means represent anyhting close to the pure teachings of their founders. Jews, too suffer from similar differences in the interpertation of the Law of Moses.

Perhaps these branches of Abrahamic monotheism would be better served by calling them radical( or as my companion suggested, reactionary). Reactionary would be the better term, I think.

Both these reactionary branches have neglected the major tenet of their faiths, the love of God. They have hijacked Islam and Christianity and set them on a collision course that no one will win.

Colonialism

2009-04-14T00:17:00.004+05:00

"When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them,they had the land and we had the bible."

Jomo Kenyatta

What's the difference? Really

2009-04-07T03:17:00.003+05:00

There is law being debated in Afghanistan to give Shiite law some kind of legality in the nation. Parts of that law address a husbands right to sex whenever he wants it. In other words, if the woman says no, it's rape. So western governments are all going thru the noise thats expected of them. To 21st century America and Europe it is unthinkable.However Afghanistan isn't in the 21st century and won't get there overnight. Yes, we need to be aware of human rights abuses, but how far do you go? One of the problems that a lot of the Dar el Islam(islamic world) has with America is that it tries to change things in their country to suit American values. No marriage rape but porn and liquor are OK. Now imagine a bunch of forward looking nations protesing the fact that we, in America, don't legalize gay marriages. Imagine them persuading us by economic means, like sanctions. We would be upset. Gay marriage goes against most American's view of the sacrament of holy matrimony. Yet it's human rights,isn't it. Why shouldn't gay couples enjoy the same benefits of partnership that hetrosexuals have. Because ours is homophobic society, so it doesn't happen. But is it any of Britain's,France's or Afghanistan's business the way we structure our society. Just another case of hypocracy. Nations of the world,by and large don't want America shoved down their throat.

Republicans??????

2009-04-07T02:12:00.002+05:00

Remember when way back in 2003, when the Dixie Chicks critcized then president Bush. The reaction was intense. Their sales dropped, radios refused to play their music, death threats and much more. Now,why, why doesn't Rush Limbaugh get the same treatment for the same crime. Republicans are such friggin hypocrites!

A definition of poverty

2009-04-06T03:27:00.002+05:00

Poverty is when your chewing tobacco pouch falls in the toilet whilst your whizzing, and you pause and think......Hmm, probably didn't get inside, I can just wipe it off.Thats poor, I reckon

Real news from CNN

2009-04-06T03:02:00.000+05:00

Editor's note: CNN contributor Bob Greene is a best-selling author whose current book is "When We Get to Surf City: A Journey Through America in Pursuit of Rock and Roll, Friendship, and Dreams."

"Tumbling tumbleweeds" have been romanticized in song, but they're no fun in some parts of the U.S.

1 of 2

(CNN) -- "Do we like them?"

Patrick Victor, a game and fish commission employee in San Carlos, Arizona, repeated the question back to me as if I had proved my lunacy by asking it in the first place.

"Do we like tumbleweeds?" he said. "No one likes them. They're not like in the cowboy movies. We consider them garbage -- worse than garbage. There is nothing to treasure or cherish about a tumbleweed."

We were talking about tumbleweeds because of a theory I had been pondering:

In this country, because of the immediacy of news, it seems as if everyone from one coast to the other is worrying obsessively about the same thing at the same time. You name it: the banking meltdown one day, the feared floods in Fargo, North Dakota, the next; the forced ouster of the head of General Motors one morning, followed soon after by the street demonstrations in London during the Group of 20 summit. We all tend to fret together about one crisis at a time; undoubtedly there will be something new for all of us to be nervous about together before sundown tonight.

So the goal here was to come up with something utterly unlikely -- something that, in 2009, you wouldn't think would bother people -- and find out if it does.

Don't Miss

Tumbleweeds. That, just picked at random, was the test case.

"They can be a pretty big problem out here," said Scott McGuire, a code enforcement inspector in Greeley, Colorado. "When the wind is right, they'll pile up right to the roofline of a house. Seriously -- people can't see out of their windows or even easily get out of their homes."

There was something instructive, even (in an off-kilter way) comforting, about learning this: the affirmation that, in this increasingly monolithic country, there are still local vexations that override the breaking news bulletins on the national networks, that people in one pocket of America are routinely dealing with forces that people a few hundred miles away are blissfully unaware of.

Just hearing about it makes life seem somehow more life-size.

"I meant what I said literally," McGuire said, continuing on his pinned-in-the-house-by-tumbleweeds theme. "They are big and prickly -- they can blow for hundreds of miles, sometimes all the way from Wyoming. They go until the wind dies out or they run into something. That's when people can have piles of them pressing against their homes -- when the tumbleweeds stop there."

Tumbleweeds, if you haven't thought about them in years, may seem like a gauzy memory from old Western movies, a nostalgic high-plains symbol of desolation and loneliness. There was that campfire song by Roy Rogers and his group, the Sons of the Pioneers; once you think of the lyrics and melody again, you can't get it out of your head:

"See them tumbling down/Pledging their love to the ground/Lonely but free I'll be found/Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds."

But in the 21st century? In our connected-by-broadband, addicted-to-cell phones, technologically tethered nation?

Tumbleweeds? As something to be concerned about?

"They're ugly and nasty," said Charlene Hardin, the county manager of Roosevelt County, New Mexico. "They can make our roads impassable. You can see 12-foot-high, chain-link fences with tumbleweeds piled all the way up to the top. They're very flammable -- toss a cigarette, and you have a big fire.

"Tumbleweeds are more than a nuisance out here. We'll get complaints from people who can't even get out of their own driveways because the tumbleweeds have them hemmed in."

Tumbleweeds are mainly a plague in the West and Southwest: certainly not dire on the level of, say, a national security issue, but a perpetual pain in the neck. They're a gnarled and unpleasant-looking plant, useless as a crop or nutritionally; they dry up, separate from their roots and blow across the land, spreading seeds. They're thorny, are often painful to the touch and can grow as big as trash bags -- it's not uncommon to see tumbleweeds 4 feet in diameter rolling speedily along.

As Velda Bucklen, who lives west of Kersey, Colorado, and who was concerned about people just heaving errant tumbleweeds off their property and thus onto nearby lawns, wrote in a letter to the editor of her local newspaper: "They are prickly and strong. ... I have been guilty of tossing them into the street and sending them on their way. .... Please don't fight with your neighbors."

The people of the United States, though, are nothing if not resourceful. Just as you may have been unaware that tumbleweeds are a contemporary problem, so you may be heartened to learn that, as always, where some people see bad news, others see opportunity.

"I thought there might be some money in tumbleweeds," said Linda Katz of Garden City, Kansas.

She was right. She runs a company called Prairie Tumbleweed Farm (its motto is "If they don't tumble, we don't sell them!"), and she said she has found a steady mail-order market for tumbleweeds.

"Personally I'm not fond of them, but apparently some people are," she said. "They're just big, rolling weeds. But people order them for wedding decorations. People order them for dances. Servicemen say tumbleweeds remind them of home. I've taken two orders already today."

Finding them is not a challenge: "They just roll by the house." She grabs them, puts them in boxes and mails them off. And, to answer your question before you can ask it: $25 for a large tumbleweed, $15 for a small.

Before we leave this topic so we can all return to more conventional news, a word from Bob Lee, director of weed and pest control in Cheyenne, Wyoming:

"I've seen people here who have gone away for a two-week vacation, and when they come back, there are so many tumbleweeds in front of their house that they have to chop their way to the front door."

So, Mr. Lee, is there one stirring and inspirational parting message you'd like to convey to people?

"Just that tumbleweeds don't have any redeeming features, as far as I'm aware of."

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Bob Greene.

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All About Nature and the Environment • Colorado • Wyoming

Htred relief.

2009-04-05T06:24:00.002+05:00

If you are sick and tired of the hatred spewed from the government,the pulpits, the politicians, the ignorant and from films like "Obsession", See "Where in the world is Osama bin Laden?" This movie, by Morgan Spurlock, tells it like it really is. He talks to real people and gives real answers to the problems of the Middle East. It is refreshing, sometime humorous tour of the Middle east, one man's search for Osama bin Laden. I highly recommend it!

FROM brainquote.con

2009-04-01T03:08:00.003+05:00

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P. J. O'Rourke

Racism in history

2009-03-31T18:08:00.002+05:00

I was reading today of Benedetto Dei. Dei was a Florentine merchant, an agent of the merchant house of Portinari, in the mid 15th century. Benedetto Dei travelled in Africa and was the first white man to visit Timbuktu. Of course Africans had lived there for centuries,Berbers and Arabs( aren't they white?) had been running trans Saharan caravans for years. So what's the significance that accords Dei his spot in history? The first white man(read European). We know Chris Columbus "discovered" America while he was lost in the Atlantic thinking he was off the coast of India. Sir Edmund Hillary conquered Everest, though doubtlessly Tibetan monks, who have a love of high places, had been there before. The examples are endless. The 16th-19th centuries are often called "The Age of Discovery". It's as if these places didn't exist until a European white man showed up to "discover" it. And of course, this arrogance led these Europeans to now claim, that since they "discovered" it, they owned it and began that sad and terrible experiment called colonialism, the end results of which still plague us today. It just doesn't count unless you're white.

Separated at birth??

2009-03-31T01:11:00.003+05:00

Are they stupid or just naive

2009-03-30T21:03:00.002+05:00

Does anyone really think the resignation of Rick Wagoner is going to turn GM around? Wonder what his golden parachute really looks like? Did the death of Al Capone or Lucky Luciano stop the Mafia? Did the passing of Kim Il Sung or Ayatottah Ruhollah Khomeini bring their respective nations back to the folds of civilization? Do any high level auto execs really want to give up all their perks? No we need a better incentive or these guys, like maximum security jail, where they get to spend some quality time as Bubba's new wife.

The 20th century is over boys

2009-03-28T16:09:00.003+05:00

Rush and Benedict, what a pair. Rush wants to go back to the 50's. A time when we had a popular Republican president, women stayed home, everyone had short hair,"coloreds" still went to the back of the bus and Mexicans were only in western movies. God hadn't "died" yet, commies were held at bay,inner cities hadn't decayed(they had actually but white America didn't give a shit), drugs were a prescription medicine( Gee,Rush, Oxycontin hadn't been invented) and "Leave it to Beaver" was America's family.
Benedict(Joe Ratzinger, former head of the Vatican Gestapo) says condoms won't prevent HIV and he said this in Africa, where HIV is rampant. Joe says we need to use abstinence instead. I mean look at how well its worked for the Roman Catholic clergy. It seems to Joe that condoms are a greater sin that pedophilia.
You two dudes are a piece of work.

Right wing hypocrisy

2009-03-27T17:53:00.002+05:00

I remember back in the 60's when to oppose the Vietnam war was almost equal to being a traitor. The phrase uttered in those days was "My country, right or wrong" or "America.. love it or leave it". During the Iraq war, a war based on lies and deceit, right wingers were accusing those who opposed this most unAmerican of wars of being unpatriotic. Why is patriotism the province of only the right wing politicians? Why is it when you oppose THEIR policies, you are unpatriotic? Today right wingers like Rush Limbaugh,Bobby Jindal, and Fred Thompson are hoping Obama will fail in his policies designed to get this nation back on track. But is this unpatriotic? Not according to them. The right wing is now so fearful that their way of life is being threatened that they stoop to what in another age would border on traitorous. A way of life based on racism, white supremacy,creationism,homophobia, religious hatred, aggression, greed and sexism, that in this 21st century is both obsolete and anachronistic. They are like cornered rats. The hate politics of the right wing,spawned by Joe McCarty and Dick Nixon, nutrured thru 45 years of cold war are as old and tired as the people who support these politics. A younger generation has disavowed their vision of America. No longer do phrases like the silent majority or moral majority hold any sway over America. Their are Republicans out there who do not share this vision of America, however the leaders of the RNC, it seems are deseparately trying to make this issue the substance of their party. Moderate Republicans, take heed, if you don't reform your party,one of two things will happen. Some kind of right wing coup to take over government or the extinction of your party. We let Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld run this country into the ground for 8 years. Most of those out in this neck of the woods don't support Obama for one reason, he's Black. Those days are over, my friends

Letter to Wendy

2009-03-26T21:10:00.004+05:00

"Such is life"Wendy2009

And such it is. Its amazing what comes down the fucking pike sometimes, really. I am sure no one can predict the future, a lot of it is karma but a lot of it is just fucking random. Yet there is a beauty to all this. Most of our crap is not the immediate life threatening stuff our Australopithecine ancestors faced. Our is shit, really, a disappointment, a lack of some need, the blues, financial stress, love shit and etc. It births change in us, coping skills learned during adversity are awesome things to have, They make us,identify us, define us. The death of loved one, birth of child, war, heartbreak, deprivation and such become chapter heading in our autobiography. Think how boring life would be without these events. No challenges, no lessons, no confrontations, well I suppose you'd have to look at a lot of TV. This is how some folks view heaven. No thanks, I'll pass. I may piss and moan when the shit hits the fan, but in the end, I'm stronger, reaching into the inner recesses of my brain to pull out the tools I need, then I sit and give thanks, for I have yet again been gifted. Yes there is a beauty about it.

Special thanks to White Tara and Mahakala for participating in the blog.

Om Tare Tutare Ture,Svaha

Muse

2009-03-26T20:38:00.002+05:00

"Well it seems as if some fine things have been laid upon your table, but you always want the things you cannot get"

The Eagles "Desperado"

Of lawyers and war

2009-03-25T22:09:00.003+05:00

Seems that lawyers are getting more involved in war these days. They take their place right up with the generals. Now war is a horrible thing, been in one myself, so I know what I am talking about. Its slaughter,mayhem,and atrocity city. Over history wise men, realizing that they couldn't end war, decided to make war civilized(what an oxymoron, to slaughter people is not civilized) OK we came up with the Geneva convention and on the surface, we adhered to it when it suited us. I am sure Hiroshima and Nagasaki don't fit in with the parameters of the Geneva convention. But the excuse has always been, look how many lives it saved,without asking how many lives it took. My Japanese professor in college was a survivor of Nagasaki, and he didn't paint a pretty picture. In Vietnam we basically ignored a lot of it(what the hell, the enemy didn't sign that treaty, so why should we be bound by it) An example is white phosphorus,WP or willy peter in military talk. WP burns, it doesn't stop burning, you can't extinguish it, it burns thru your body and comes out on the other side, also makes a nice white smoke cloud. The Geneva convention states that WP cannot be used against troops, but it can be used as a marking round. I was an artillery FO in Nam and boy we sure used alot of "marking rounds".( Great stuff to airburst over trenches)
Now it's more sophistcated and this where our friends the lawyers come in. During the Rwanda mess in the late 90's, many concerned people were afraid genocide was taking place. The USA, and other signatories were bound by the UN charter to take action against genocide. Remember "Never Again". Well nobody wanted to get drawn into Rwanda, especially America after she got whupped in Somalia on a peacekeeping mission. So a State dept spokeswoman said,well there have been acts of genocide but we aren't sure the whole thing is genocide. This same excuse is being used in Darfur. We need a bunch of lawyers to sit around for a few years deciding what the legal definition of genocide is. By the time they sat down for their second cup of coffee,800,000 Tutsis had been killed in about 4 months. and we are not sure it's genocide?? DUH!
The second Bush administration ducked the Geneva convention by defining al Qaeda operatives as enemy combatants, and hence not eligible for Geneva convention nicities. We could imprison them without due process, torture them in foreign prisons and deny them basic rights. Oh, right, their terrorists,but I,ll bet if the Japanese captured the crew of the Enola Gay after she laid her egg and loped off their heads with samurai swords, we'd be squaking, Geneva convention. In war the victor gets to make all the definitions. I do not mean to condone terrorism or the actions of groups like al Qaeda, but the average brainwashed suicide bomber kid isn't really much different than a brainwashed soldier or Marine. Easiest thing would be to outlaw war completely and settle difference with a chess match,although I'm not sure that Bush would be able to beat bin Laden. Obama on the other hand, checkmate in 6 moves!

The power of a name

2009-03-21T00:41:00.002+05:00

America has had 44 presidents and among those 44, three family names show up twice,Adams,Roosevelt and Bush. I guess that says something about power.America must have thousands of family names. But consider this, one man's name became not only a household word, a personal name, it became a title itself. Consider Gaius Julius Caesar. Not a "Caesar" himself, but a Roman politician who held various important Roman offices and titles. His final title(before deification) was dictator or life. His clan name was Julius, Caesar was an attribute(fine curly hair) that became sort of a family name within the Julian clan. His successor Octavian was Caesar's adopted son and immediatly after Caesar's death, Octavian insisted on being addressed as Caesar. So powerful, dominant and influencial he was in age that by the time of his death, he was no longer just another member of the Caesar family, but The Caesar. He defined the word so well that his successor insisted upon using it to convey the authority he felt was willed to him. It became one of the names of all Roman rulers afterwards. Both Julius and Octavian(Augustus) gave their names to titles in the late empire, Augustus strangly being the senior and Caesar the junior. But Caesar stuck. It became Kaiser and Tsar. The Ottoman emperor in his array of titles included casar of Rum(Rome). The deinetly left us a legacy.

Piracy in America

2009-03-19T19:07:00.002+05:00

OK, we know there are pirates in Somalia, taking ships and holding them for ransom. Now we find right here in America, corporate piracy. Its called retention bonuses. AIG paid out a bunch, but some left anyway, like rats deserting a sinking ship. Todays news reveals Fannie Mae, another financially stressed outfit and recipient of government monies, is paying of retention bonuses. Corporate AMERICA,in its ever increasing greed has discovered a new way to steal our money. Oh, we need to pay them bonuses to keep the talent. Now that salary caps have been suggested, these pirates have come up with another scheme. It does not matter that our nation is being torn asunder by greed, because if America fails, these guys will go abroad, using their Swiss bank account money. It even seems they have gotten to some officials in the Treasury Dept. Bribes and payoffs, I reckon. This greed, this piracy, is like a cancer attacking our country. Now what did they do in the old days to effectively control piracy. Hmm burning at the stake did the trick and yeah i got the matches.

Where's mine?

2009-03-19T03:58:00.002+05:00

It seems that both presidents(Bush and Obama) gave a whole lot of money out with little or no oversight. How could AIG give massive bonuses with federal monies? Back in October, my retirement account lost nearly half its value, overnight. Years of savings wiped out..just like that. I got no bonus, no bailout, no sympathy from the government or my bank. The money was gone. Disappeared. My quality of life took a nose dive and I began the belt tightening act. The account has lost even more in recent months and no one has made any attempt to bailm out people like us. I don't want a million dollar bonus, just to get back a little of the dignity I had when my account was stable.

Stealing rom the rich,giving to the poor 101

2009-03-17T01:18:00.002+05:00

In an earlier post today, I said stealing from the rich,give to the poor. I am not advocating burglary,mugging,embezzlement or robbery. Its easy to steal from these fat cats, if you just do a little research. You are a consumer, so when you shop, you just buy any old thing, you pick a brand that satisfies you. Now take that one step further, do some research. If your insurance company, bank, brokerage etc is a company that engages in greed(Like AIG for instance) don't do business with them. You have that right! So you take your money out Citibank(lets say) and put it in a local solid bank. So on down the line, divest yourself of these pigs and deal locally. Enuogh people do that, these giants might get the message. Investing locally stimulates your economy, creates jobs in your neighborhood. If you attend a religious service reguarly choose your congregation based on outreach that they do, not the hate and crap that spills from some pulpits. Support a food bank. I you hunt, find a group like hunetrs for the hungry and give them some of your meat harvest. That's giving to the poor. Nothing illegal here just an idea, but imagine if millions of people got pissed off enough to do this!

For the fat cats its business as usual

2009-03-16T23:14:00.002+05:00

Once again the troubled insurance giant, twice bailed out by taxpayer dollars,is in the news. After the first bailout,AIG fat cats went on a big spa junket. Now after receiving 173 billion in taxpayer funds, the execs treat themselves to 165 million in bonuses! Are they clueless? Don't they know we are in a depression? Of course they do, the just don't give a shit. They are better than you, the upper crust, the privledged, the elite, they deserve 165 mill for destroying their company. We have the Bernie Madoffs and now these guys. Its disgusting. The selfisfness and greed are going to destroy this country and they just don't care. Why should they, their millions are locked up in Cayman and Swiss bank accounts. If America implodes they'll just go somewhere else. Perhaps they get their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh, the traitor, spend,take, steal boys, so that Obama fails. Where are Robin Hood and his merry men? There seem to be an awul lot of Sheriffs of Nottingham around these days. Steal rom the rich, give to the poor, let them feel your pain!

Understanding Darfur.... Nomads and farmers

2009-03-14T22:09:00.003+05:00

This has always been an ancient political creature. Nomads providing meat and milk, farmers providing millet and other grains. Raiding is also part of the nomadic economy, always has, everywhere it has flourished. Darfur has numerous ethnic groups, all much intermixed, where the "Arabs" can be as dark as the "Africans". This conflict has always been presented on racial lines. Arabs vs Africans. But that is a poor way of looking at it. The Fur are the dominant African people in Darfur. Once they had a sultanate of their own. These people were farmers and land claims date from the Fur sultanate. Ownership derives from this. The Abbala Rizeigat and Baggara Rizeigat are nomads. They descend from Arab tribes entering the region around 500 years ago. They came from the Jeddah region region of Arabia in Hejaz. The Abbala raise camels, the Baggara raise cattle. They are nomadic. The Baggara do have land which they "tribally own". The Abbala do not. They have always been on the move and on the fringes of government. The great Sahel drought changed many traditions in Africa. People moved, they crossed traditional tribal borders. Conflicts ensued. Nomads claim the farmers were encroaching on traditional pastures, and bullets began to fly.
Omar el Bashir was able to fan this ancient divide into full fledged genocide. He played on differences and caused hatreds to grow. He armed the Abbala and Baggara and created the Janjaweed. The horror began.

But this an old political ploy, is it not. Slobodan Milosevic did in Kosovo,fanning the flames of ancient religious differences that had been forgotten by many. Racism, it appears, doesn't disappear, it just goes underground. During the recent American presidential election it raised its ugly head again. Republicans in general and Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh in particular always played on difference to divide people. Now outright racism is frowned upon these days in America. Civil rights changed all that. Nobody was running around using the N word, at least within media earshot. But I sure received alot of very provacative cartoons and jokes from some of my more conservative acquaintances. These people hunt, fish, cut wood, go to church on Sunday,dip snuff. They don't make these cartoons. But who did? Some "literary" minds at work somewhere, I reckon, sending this crap out. Of course I have acquaintances who claim not to be racists( some of my best friends are colored) but guess who they voted for, even the liberal ones. Not Barack Obama. The old hatred was still there, deep down, ready to be awoken.
Darfur is a worst case scenario of what happens when these old differences are used politically. In the old day, shaykhs of the Fur and Abbala would have sat down and worked it out, as they have for centuries. A tribute of grain would suffice for any land taken by farmers. Blood monies paid to end vendettas. Then comes an Omar el Bashir or Slobodan Milosevic with truckloads of AK 47's for their chosen side. The balance is upset, hatred flares and genocide begins. The Fur, Zahgawa, Abbala, Baggara and others aren't going to go away. People like Omar el Bashir and Ahmed Haroun need to go away... far away and for a very long time.

Darfur,Genocide and Racism

2009-03-14T17:32:00.002+05:00

Sudanese strongman Omar Bashir has expelled a whole bunch of NGO's from Darfur. This was his reaction to being found guilty of genocide and war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Thanks to tireless work of Luis Moreno-Ocampo the ICC has charged numerous Sudanese with crimes, including Ahmed Harun, formerly in charge of the Darfur genocide operations and now Minister of human rights in Sudan(nice touch, Omar). With the departure of NGO's there is going to massive starvation in the refugee camps in Darfur. There will also be mass migrations of starving Darfuri to the Chad border, where NGO's can barely handle the current refugee influx. Those fleeing will be attacked by the Jangaweed(Arab militia armed by Bashir) and raped, tortured and killed.
After the extent of the Holocaust became known the phrase "never again" was uttered. Never again genocide? Or never again genocide for the Jews? We have encountered genocide in Rwanda, where the world did nothing. We have encountered it in Bosnia, where the world reaction was too late, and now here it is in Sudan. Both UN and African Union are underfunded,politically hamstrung and basically ineffectual. Sudan is a failed state. It is engaed in a systematic campaign against the African south, both Muslim(in Darfur) and Christian. But no one lifts a finger. If suddenly some dictator arose in Europe and began a campaign of genocide against Christians or Jews, there would be great outcry and fast movement to end the crisis. But who cares about a bunch of Black AND Muslims out there in the back of beyond in some shithole no one ever heard about. Certainly not America and Europe. These people have the double whammy, Black and Muslim.
Darfur, at one time, was an independent sultanate, and cultural beacon in the Sahel under the Keira dynasty. Now it the boondocks. It seems no one cares. Its seems "Never Again" doesn't apply to the people.

Balkan Wisdom

2009-03-14T02:49:00.002+05:00

"When you are face to ace with a wolf,the only option is to work with it,until it becomes a pet"

Ejup Ganic former president of Bosnia and academician

History repeats

2009-03-11T03:13:00.003+05:00

Its been over 90 years since the end of World War I.When the Ottoman empire fell, Lawrence,Balfour,Sykes,Picot and others made a lot of promises they couldn't keep. They redrew the map of the Middle East to suit their imperialistic appetites. We have suffered chaos there ever since. Now that Bush,Cheney,Rumsfeld,and Wolfowitz have redrawn the lines in the Middle East, we will have another 100 years of chaos. Perhaps reason will prevail in the end, perhaps the Arabs will enter the 21st century and perhaps there will be peace. We can only hope.
America bungled into Iraq with no knowledge of the Iraqi people and no plan for recovery. Now that she is withdrawing, will Iraq be plunged into more sectarian violence, or will some kind o government take root to weld the 3 separate parts of Iraq into a nation? No one in the west wants any kind of Arab unity because it would spell death or Israel and the mother of all energy crises. Islam has to find a way to enter the 21st century that's acceptable to most of ulema(muslim legal experts). As long as the Sharia and the Hadith are going to worry about beard length and whether you have enough ankle exposed(the Prophet liked his dishdasha on the short side), its going to be a tough job. The Sharia and Hadith is sort of like the Jewish Talmud, a body of religious law. No efforts have been made to accomodate these scared tradtions to a post modern world. Religious police(checking beard lengths etc) have been part of the Islamic world for centuries. The fundamentalists come and go, but remember it was Islamic civilization that studied and translated Aristotle,Galen,Plato and Hippocrates, and brought Europe out of a very deep sleep called the dark ages. Will this too happen again?

God and the law

2009-03-08T17:53:00.002+05:00

God and the law seem to have been connected for ages. We see Moses with the tablets as an example of god being associated with the law. About this time is the civilized middle east, codes of law were being promulgated by rulers. Moses trumped Hammurabi by saying "God said so" Since then the two have have been indivisible. Religion became a way to control peoples lives. One only has to look at Jewish law and the Sharia to see how involved this concept has become. God's true law is beyond our understanding, and involves the way creation works. It is ever changing and totally fluid. One can't pin it down. We try but we fail. For example, we have set down "laws'' that govern the classification of species, however they don't fit. There is no firm border between one species and another, it is fluid. Canids are a great example, wolves, dogs and coyotes inter breed successfully beyond specific lines. Get into warblers and it gets really confusing.
One only has to look at the laws of Taliban to see how ridiculous these things can get. Taliban law regulates beard length, the length of your garment,etc, all based on traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. Christianity seemed to escape this kind of thing, at least the Talmudic law thing, thanks to St. Paul. Paul found that to gain conversion to his new faith, he had to put aside certain features of Jewish law, like circumcision and dietary laws. Paul realized no one was going convert to a faith that required penis mutilation. However, Christianity accepted Roman law and made it apart of the religion, especially after Constantine. For instance, one of the titles carried by the pope is Pontifex Maximus, or as it appears in English, Pontiff. The Pontifex Maximus was orginally the title of head priest of the old Roman state religion. Julius Caeser obtained this post early in his career and it became the province of the emperors ever since. Of course Caeser later was promoted to god status himself and this too became Roman tradition. Constantine had to drop this facade, but maintained, instead, to be god,s representive on earth, which later on translated into the divine right of kings.
Holy books are written by men, perhaps some divinely inspired, but men, none the less. The Torah,Bible, Buddhist sutras, and the Koran are examples of this. All written down after their prophet had died. Today the sun rose, the spring flowers are poking thru the snow, a possum decomposes into to food for myriad creatures. That is gods law.

Rush Limbaugh is a big fat TRAITOR!

2009-03-04T04:14:00.003+05:00

Ole Rush, a traitor? Poster child for the republican party,prophet of hate, drug addict and all around hypocrite, a traitor? Say it ain't so, Mustafa. Well here's the deal. Rush wants Obama to fail, not very patriotic seeing as we are in an economic nightmare. Does he want his bailout to fail? Does he want his foreign policy to fail? Does he want more Americans needless killed in the Middle east? Is that enough? Probably not. Rush is demonizing Obama, with racist overtones(remember Barack the Magic Negro) to a large group of people whose main business is hate. One white supremist's website crashed on election night due the number of crazies who wanted to hate. So let's "energize'' all these people. All these gun toting, hate spitting crazies, let's get them riled up. Maybe, just maybe, he'll find some Lee Harvey Oswald or James Earl Ray to do the job he wants to do himself but is too much of a coward to try. Find a patsy, Rush. My faith in this country will greatly increase if Barack Obama makes it thru his 4 years without some asassination attempts,impeachment proceedings, or downright coup. If you are a spiritual person, please pray for the President, the crazies are loose.

Surrender

2009-03-03T19:11:00.003+05:00

Well apparently Michael Steele and the RNC surrendered to Rush Limbaugh today. Steele issued the usual "misunderstanding" type statement after Limbaugh suggested he supported Obama/Pelosi. So the Republicans move one step more to the fringe right. Sad,while our nation falls apart, these idiots continue to sow the seeds of hate, so common in the Bush era. Wow lets all hope Obama fails, and our conomy collapses, unemployment becomes rampant and the rich continue to pad thier Swiss accounts. While we eat beans and possum gravy, we can rest contented that we didn't support "socialism". I'll bet the execs at AIG( bailed out for the second time) are planning another expensive taxpayer funded soiree, and I'm sure possum gravy won't be on the menu. Well gotta go, time to see if there's any fresh road kill out there for the pot.

The end of the Republicans

2009-03-02T23:32:00.003+05:00

Remember the Federalists, the Whigs, The Bull Moose party? Political parties that lost favor with America because they lost sight of what America wants and needs. You would think, after the 2006 losses in Congress and the defeat of McCain/Palin, that the Republicans would reassess their priorities. Apparently not. With the economy in shambles, two wars in progress, they turn to the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to re-energize the party. Wrong moves, guys. Your base, those rural American conservatives are no longer all that concerned with big government, gay rights, abortion and all the other nation dividing things that Karl Rove used to tear us apart. They are concerned with their wallets. Working class America is suffering most here and sooner or later they are going to figure out that your talk of tax cuts doesn't mean tax cuts for America's workers, but for the rich. The rich are sucking America dry, with the support of Republicans. They could fool their base with hate and fundamentalist principles but that dog won't hunt no more.
To empower a drug addicted hypocrite like Limbaugh as a party standard bearer is ridiculous. Where are the moderate Republicans? Where are Republicans who care about America not special interest groups. Wake up, boys, and save your party before it becomes a footnote in history books.