THOLOS OF ATHENA

Wrap-around sunglasses
Ear to ear you wore
In mourning at the sermon;
Addressed me as "sir"
As curtly as you could,

Embraced me once more.

You were still like a willow;
Asked
What was I doing.
"For me it's normal", I said,
"Dividing balance...
What will break, what mend."

I dreamed I was living in
My car, when you
Discovered my embarrassment,
The windows rolled down,
Pulling on socks and shoes.

by Grayson

After the torture scandal broke, I was left in a state of numbed dismay. I didn’t think I could write anything about it. Maybe I still can’t. More words thrown at Bush and his gang of hooligans seems almost like a bad joke. Like throwing gobs of sand at a cement wall fifty feet high by twenty feet thick. Looking around, I see lots of people scribbling, typing away, till their eyes are bloodshot and their hands fall off. I see them lined up behind each other for as far the eye can see, as one after another scoops up yet another pitiful handful of sand and hurls it at this bulwark that—let’s face it—We, the People—created, out of our indifference, our neglect, lack of guts, after years and years caving in to mediocrity in our choices of leaders, settling for second best (or worst), “the lesser of two evils,” till that became the norm, and finally the elections themselves degenerated into mere exercises in sham theatre, in which it was no longer possible to go to the polls to vote for real change, but only to vote for the same, the same, and more of the same, no matter which candidate we picked, no matter what party he represented.

Which, of course, once again, is precisely the predicament we are now in with Candidate Kerry.

And none of it, probably, would have happened if We, the People, hadn’t sat back on our haunches and allowed our government, our democracy, to be systematically taken over from within and flayed alive by all the special interests, the corporations, the greedy rich and powerful, who seemingly can never get their hands on enough dough and who literally end up hijacking their own employees, fleecing them of their life savings, till finally, their companies implode into bankruptcy and oblivion.

Money has undermined the very works of our government, like termites eating away at the joists and sub flooring, till the whole joint seems virtually on the brink of collapsing in on itself. In fact, it has already collapsed. It is no longer upright. It no longer functions. Decisions are made behind closed doors in the middle of the night, out of sight of We, the People, and the press. It is government of, by, and for, the Corporations. And why do I still bother to group “The Press” with “We, the People,” since they hardly represent us anymore, since so much of the press seems to think of its roll as cheerleaders for “Them—the Government.”?

John Kerry, with his billionaire wife, is the logical outgrowth of this wreckage, another sad reminder of our failings as a people; someone who is just as beholden to the corporate interests as any of the fat cats on the other side, to such a degree, that he is barely recognizable as the man he once was—the warrior who had the guts to renounce a needless war; who is now so weak that Bush and his cohorts can dare stand around and tell whoppers about Kerry’s esteemed war record, confident their opponent will not fight back, even though there is irrefutable evidence that Bush never spent one hour in Vietnam, and was, in fact, AWOL from his service in the National Guard. Yes, I understand, and agree with, Kerry’s decision not to get down into mud-slinging with G.W. But on this point, it seems to me that not answering these ludicrous charges that can’t possibly stick with a counter-charge that can, is tantamount to standing there with your arms slack while the other guy bloodies your face.

On the other hand, what a sad commentary it is that the biggest plank in Kerry’s platform is not health care or education or arms control or campaign finance reform, or reining in corporate greed, but it is his war record which he feels obliged to constantly trumpet, and it seems he can hardly go anywhere without his entourage of fellow swift-boat vets to vouch for his manliness. Thus, with Bush campaigning as the “War President,” the whole affair has sunk to nothing more than a contest to determine which candidate has the most machismo: who is the meanest s.o.b. on the block? Both men, I suspect, will wink at each other across the thin divide that separates them as they parry and thrust in mock swordplay to a so-called election in November, and, as usual, society’s ills will go begging.

The war will go on, regardless of who wins. And, as usual, the people will be the losers, both here and in Iraq, where fresh young Americans will go on being killed or maimed needlessly, as well as civilians on the other side—men, women and children. Guantanamo will be in place. I wouldn’t be surprised if torture is still on the menu—somewhere, tucked safely out of the sight of pesky digital cameras; after all, it is commonplace throughout our prison system right here at home, and hardly anyone troubles themselves about that.

And let’s not forget the ever-expanding list of people outraged at our arrogance, determined more than ever to inflict greater horrors on our own shores, perhaps unimaginable. No longer a question of if it will happen, but simply where and when. And once more, the great boondoggle of Missile Defense will be revealed in all its colossal impotency.

And yet, in the face of all this—dare I say it without laughing at my own words?—John Kerry, is still our best hope. Even with his flimsy, murky platform, with his questionable moral stands on the issues of NAFTA and pre-emptive war, he is still a thousand times better than the goons who are in charge.

Again, words fail to convey what has happened here, what has come to pass with our fragile democracy.

It is up to the people to realize it, for it appears that not even Congress has the spine to uphold our laws. Watching John Ashcroft refuse to answer questions and refuse to hand over documents relating to torture to the recent Senate Judiciary Committee, was just one of so many awful moments in recent memory. But let it stand for the rest. Let his smile say it all. Yes, he sat there smiling as he did it. And, yes, the good members, Senators Joseph Biden, Richard Durbin, Patrick Leahy and others, showed, I suppose, the proper level of umbrage, if not quite outrage; they huffed and harrumphed, they fluttered their tail feathers and shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. And when it was all said and done, the Attorney General walked out of there, as he apparently knew he would.

At that moment, I couldn’t help but think back to an earlier Senate Investigating Committee, the one that looked into the Watergate crimes, headed by the great and fearless Senator Sam Ervin. Sam Ervin, whose eyebrows would jump and his jowls tremble instinctively when lies were being told, who liberally quoted Biblical scripture and Shakespeare as he peered out over dark horned-rimmed glasses at his nervous witnesses. Sam Ervin, who said of the Watergate scandal, that its perpetrators showed “the same mentality as the Gestapo.” And I thought, what would Sam do, now? What would be his response to the present level of arrogance put on open display by Bush and his cohorts? What would he have made of Ashcroft’s smile? I wonder if he wouldn’t have ordered him to “Wipe that smirk off your face!” I have no doubt, the documents in question would have been surrendered, or there would have been hell to pay.

Sadly, the days of Ervin are long gone. The halls of our Congress echo like a hollow shell, bereft of giants. The recent Senate Committee answered Ashcroft with bluster and threats. And still he defied. In that moment, it was not the Congress—not We, the People—who had the power.

And that's where we are, now.

What would Sam Ervin say about Ashcroft? We need only look at what he did say about another attorney general, John Mitchell, and a White House aide, John Ehrlichman; referring to their roles in the Watergate scandal, Sam said this: “I don’t think either one of them would have recognized the Bill of Rights if they met it on the street in broad daylight under a cloudless sky.”

Photograph: Cesar / pbase.com / The Protest of Bush's Inaugural, Washington DC, 2001



What if it were possible to interrupt history and rewrite it? This is not farfetched. A nation in the grips of repression is especially susceptible to this kind of re-scripting. And repression is a process which aims for several goals at once. It de-legitimizes the past. It disqualifies selected voters; it diminishes political alternatives by rigging the public agenda; and it depresses or skews citizen participation by manipulating and encouraging a climate of fear.

With the notable exception of Florida's vote-tampering in 2000, this has not been especially conspiratorial. Repression under George W. Bush has been a frontal assault, using the timely instruments of propaganda, divide-and-conquer, economic attrition against the politically vulnerable class, and an especially vulgar manipulation of America's mainstream press.

There has been ineptitude in reporting, particularly television, to match the ineptitude of the Bush Administration. Seasoned and well-informed internet commentators, like Bob Somerby, have challenged the laziness and awkward corruption of some familiar news people.

Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, identifies "trivialization and bias" in TV news;..."but they're related" he adds.

"...everyone knows that Teresa Heinz Kerry told someone to "shove it,", writes Krugman, "though even there, the context was missing. Except for a brief reference on MSNBC, none of the transcripts I've read mention that the target of her ire works for Richard Mellon Scaife, a billionaire who financed smear campaigns against the Clintons - including accusations of murder. (CNN did mention Mr. Scaife on its Web site, but described him only as a donor to "conservative causes.") And viewers learned nothing about Mr. Scaife's long vendetta against Mrs. Heinz Kerry herself." (NYT, 07/30/04)

"A Columbia Journalism Review Web site called campaigndesk.org, says its analysis "reveals a press prone to needlessly introduce Senators Kerry and Edwards and Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, as millionaires or billionaires, without similar labels for President Bush or Vice President Cheney." (ibid)

"Somewhere along the line, TV news stopped reporting on candidates' policies, and turned instead to trivia that supposedly reveal their personalities. We hear about Mr. Kerry's haircuts, not his health care proposals. We hear about George Bush's brush-cutting, not his environmental policies." (ibid)

"In short, the triumph of the trivial is not a trivial matter. The failure of TV news to inform the public about the policy proposals of this year's presidential candidates is, in its own way, as serious a journalistic betrayal as the failure to raise questions about the rush to invade Iraq." (ibid)

A beautiful film tribute to John Kerry's heroism under fire, produced by Steven Spielberg, fades into a blur of pixels over the anchorman's shoulder; while the condescending reporter calls it "formulaic", unworthy of a thinking person's attention. What good does it do to change channels? On Fox, CNN and the other cable slots there is the same information without context, the usual bickering and pointless exchanges, and pervasive cynicism.

The cynicism of journalists is corrosive, as it continues to paint all political participants with the same dingy brush. George Bush, Dick Cheney, John Kerry, John Edwards: we're expected to treat them like characters in a soap opera. We scan them as we would the lines of a gossip column.

An academic, a friend of this writer, has said that repression seeks to unstring history. Contemporary repression validates this insight, as it purges voters from the rolls. And George W. Bush, with his cockeyed version of Republicanism, plays marionettes with a television news media that is either acquiescent and doting, lazy, or intimidated.

The media has news blackouts. A police riot in Miami (against anti-WTO protesters) in November, last year, was covered by Jeremy Scahill of Democracy Now! and by the British press; but on corporate television in the US there was nothing. The mayhem was covered by local, embedded reporters; and the punishment was inflicted by police cadres, dressed out like Robocop, and funded with federal anti-terror money. Freelance reporters with press badges and credentialed legal observers were arrested or treated roughly by the paramilitary force, as police unleashed a barrage of swinging truncheons, tear gas and rubber bullets.

Movie audiences have reacted with astonishment at screenings of Fahrenheit 9/11, watching scenes of mass protest at Bush's Inaugural. Sitting in darkened theatres, the crowd has absorbed a tide of recognition, a recovered history that seems to wash over them.

In these years after 9/11, there has been a profound, historical failure of America's television news media, and to a lesser extent, its mainstream print media. This corruption, deficiency, lack of attention, and cowering in the face of White House pressure is nothing less than a scandal. These journalists did not want this repression; on the contrary, there are signs that they are beginning to react to the inroads it has made. The tragedy is, that it has happened on their watch.

We will be able to breathe easier when Kerry takes office in January, and begins to serve as President. But we will be a long time dealing with the recklessness of this Bush Administration: the legacy of war and disaster, the pernicious ideology, the political divisiveness, the ineptitude. We should reflect on the long shadow cast by its repression; not merely the outbursts of street protest, of police and swinging batons, but the onslaught of repression that really degraded our democracy, and would have unstrung our history. This has been the work of a destructive Republican faction, and their figurehead, George W. Bush.

There are remedies available, to insure that the corruption of political life which we have lived through will never happen again. Serving political diversity and fairness in broadcasting is a crucial step to these reforms. A corporate consolidation of media must be stopped in its tracks and held in check by law. This solution is clearly available to the people. Conservatives, liberals, and libertarians are largely in agreement on this point. A reconstruction of the policies of the FCC is also in order: a return of the "Fairness Doctrine" to provide equal time to candidates of competing parties in Congressional and Presidential elections. Repression can be set in motion by a powerful or ascendant Party, when there is an institutional narrowing of public interests in the media, where some voices are being amplified and others excluded, or where public debate is being defined in a way that reduces political alternatives to a minimum.

Just one of many breaking stories making the rounds in cyberspace. Tholos didn't break this story, but we are not too proud to pass it on.

In a message dated 8/2/2004 9:08:34 PM Central Daylight Time, holisticcpa@juno.com writes:

Washington DC - Congress today announced that the Office of President of the United States will be outsourced to overseas interests as of June 30th, the end of this fiscal year. The move is being made to save $400K a year in salary, a record $521 Billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead. "The cost savings will be quite significant" says Congressman Adam Smith (D-Wash) who, with the aid of the GAO (the General Accounting Office) has studied outsourcing of American jobs extensively. "We simply can no longer afford this level of outlay and remain competitive in the world stage," Congressman Smith said.

Mr. Bush was informed by email this morning of the termination of his position. He will receive health coverage, expenses and salary until his final day of employment. After that, with a two week waiting period, he will then be eligible for $240 dollars a week from unemployment insurance for 13 weeks. Unfortunately he will not be able to receive state Medicaid health insurance coverage as his unemployment benefits are over the required limit. Preparations have been underway for some time for the job move.

Sanji Gurvinder Singh of Indus Teleservices, Mumbai, India will be assuming the Office of President of the United States as of July 1. Mr. Singh was born in the United States while his parents were here on student visas, thus making him eligible for the position. He will receive a salary of $320 (USD) a month but with no health coverage or other benefits. Due to the time difference between the US and India, Mr. Singh will be working primarily at night, when offices of the US Government will be open.

"I am excited to serve in this position," Mr. Singh stated in an exclusive interview. "Working nights will let me keep my day job at the American Express call center. I always knew I could be President someday."

Congress stressed patience when calling Mr. Singh as he may not be fully aware of all the issues involved with his new position. A Congressional Spokesperson noted that Mr. Singh has been given a script tree to follow which will allow him to respond to most topics of concern. The Spokesperson further noted that "additional savings will be realized as these scripting tools have been successfully used by Mr. Bush and will enable Mr. Singh to provide an answer without having to fully understand the issue itself."

Mr. Bush has been offered the use of a Congressional Page to help him write a resume and prepare for his upcoming job transition. According to Manpower, Inc., the placement firm, Mr. Bush may have difficulties in securing a new position as job prospects in the Sports Franchise Ownership arena remain limited. A recently released report from the Pentagon suggests a good prospect for him as a newly unemployed person may be in the Army National Guard. There he would be called up with his unit and stationed in Iraq, a country he has visited briefly before. "I've been there, I know all about Iraq and the conditions there," stated Mr. Bush. He gained invaluable knowledge of the country in his first visit at the Baghdad Airport non-smoking terminal and gift shop.

Meanwhile in Baghdad and Falluja, Iraq, sources report that local Iraqis say Mr. Bush would receive an especially warm reception from them. Such sources stated the Iraqis only request would be to be informed of which convoy he would be riding in order to give him the welcome he deserves. Congress continues to explore other outsourcing possibilities including that of Vice-president and most Cabinet positions.

Photograph: Tom Burka

"During the Reagan era Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were key players in a clandestine program designed to set aside the legal lines of succession and immediately install a new "President" in the event that nuclear attack killed the country's leaders. The program helps explain the behavior of the Bush Administration on and after 9/11."

--James Mann, The Armageddon Plan, The Atlantic Monthly, March 2004

Campaign 2004 is underway in the middle of July; and with slightly more than a week till the Democratic Convention opens, the Bush Regime does a little more than is necessary to increase paranoia. The chief distraction is yet another official monologue about cancelling or postponing the November election, in the event of a terrorist attack on US soil. Is this an example of brinkmanship gone wrong? It seems like an off-balance game of Truth or Dare, but one that brings back the icy, Cold War grimace of Dr. Stangelove. It's a macabre American icon; and with its satiric comedy it is somehow much darker than Psycho, or even Apocalypse Now. Einstein said that "God does not play dice with the Universe"; but the Machiavellis in the White House find it none too daring to play dice with the Republic, or cast lots for the Planet.

"The fools!...the stupid fools!...THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE!"


George W. Bush is always the backstory in this Theatre of Good and Evil. Though not widely reported yet, the President has positioned seven carrier groups in the waters near Taiwan, alarming the Chinese enough to publicly commit themselves to a colossal naval build-up, that will encompass ten years of armament work. (Chalmers Johnson LA Times). No idle hands here. And during this hot and nervous summer, Bush's Homeland Security office is expounding on possible al-Qaida attacks on the assembled Democrats in Boston, later this month.

President Bush has named DeForest Soaries to head an Orwellian US Election Assistance Committee, whose paradoxical task is to oversee a cancelling or rescheduling of the November election, if there is a disruptive al-Qaida attack. CNN links to this Newsweek article by Michael Isikoff:

"Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge"..."and other counterterrorism officials concede they have no intel about any specific plots. But the success of March's Madrid railway bombings in influencing the Spanish elections--as well as intercepted "chatter" among Qaeda operatives--has led analysts to conclude "they must want to interfere with the elections," says one official."..."Ridge's department"..."asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election were an attack to take place."

Secretary Ridge underlines the terrorists' "capacity to succeed" and contrasts that with "the mistaken belief that their attacks will have an impact on America's resolve."

It's hard to imagine a process as diffuse as a national election, being administered individually by the states, across a huge geographic area, from tens of thousands of polling places, being put at any risk whatsoever. Since the administration of a national election and the competant tallying of its result are not seriously threatened; it is necessary, therefore, to look at the real motives for setting up an Election Assistance Committee and spreading all this eerie talk of "securing the election".

"The enemy is seeking to impurify our precious bodily fluids."

New York Times opinion writer, David Brooks, who speaks the Administration line on this issue, gives away a clue that motive is important. Here is the gist of it: Spanish voters could not be trusted to do the right thing, three days after the Madrid Bombing. According to Brooks, "it was crazy to go ahead with an election"..."reversing course in the wake of a terrorist attack is inexcusable."

What Brooks fails to mention, is that the Spanish had other compelling reasons for ousting the Aznar government and installing Zapatero's Socialists; not the least of which was the Aznar government's deception, concerning the real perpetrators of the attack. The government was caught in a lie. The government knew that Islamic militants were responsible; but the people were betrayed and told that it was domestic terror, that Basque separatists had done it. From the Spanish point of view, this was one official arrogance too many. It also focused their attention on the fact that this was the same Aznar government that had taken Spain to war in Iraq against the wishes of the majority. The Spanish voted with political maturity, not cowardice; and it is slander to accuse them of being intimidated by the attack.

By the time National Security Advisor, Condi Rice, officially pooh-poohed the "election securing" talk, last Monday, the seeds of uneasiness had already been sown. But this is the typical "bait and switch" psychological war that is waged by the Bush Administration.

DeForest Soaries, the President's hand-picked Committee Man, had sown the wind alright. Soaries said, "Events in Spain, where a terrorist attack shortly before the March election possibly influenced its outcome, show the need for a process to deal with terrorists threatening or interrupting the Nov. 2 presidential election in America." [my emphasis] (Erica Werner--AP)

The Bush Posse seems to fear the impurifying of America's leadership. They don't want another Spain. Certainly it is more than just the turn of a phrase, when Bush calls himself the War President. War represents the most potent hold the President has on the nation's nerve-endings and anxieties. If, on the other hand, an attack were to expose the Achilles' Heel of this Administration; it would be because they have shortchanged Homeland Security, while placing all bets on the Iraq obsession. In the eyes of a dangerously messianic President, the nation's ambitions/interests are melded with a dogma of ideological and religious purity. In this case, however, Purity Of Essence does not equal Peace On Earth.

George W. Bush and his Neocons have so many Cold War skeletons in their closet, it would be best to step back quickly when opening the door. The Armageddon Plan, as explained by James Mann, is the prime example:

"Rumsfeld [CEO of G. D. Searle & Co] and [Congressman] Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new "President" and his staff."

"The program is of particular interest today because it helps to explain the thinking and behavior of the second Bush Administration in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001."

Cheney and Rumsfeld were prominent in these exercises as "team leaders". "Once the United States was (or believed itself to be) under nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to three different locations around the United States. Each team would be prepared to assume leadership of the country and would include a Cabinet member who was prepared to become President."

" "One of the awkward questions we faced", one participant in the planning explains, "was whether to reconstitute Congress after a nuclear attack. It was decided that no, it would be easier to operate without them." For one thing, it was felt that reconvening Congress, and replacing the members who had been killed, would take too long. Moreover, if Congress did reconvene, it might elect a new speaker of the House [and, as per the Succession Act of 1947] [his] claim to the presidency might have greater legitimacy than that of a Secretary of Agriculture or Commerce who had been set up under Reagan's secret program."..."The Administration, however, chose to establish this process without going to Congress for the legislation that would have given it constitutional legitimacy."

Ronald Reagan established the continuity-of-government program with a secret executive order.

"After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet collapse, the rationale for the exercises changed"..."Finally, during the early Clinton years, it was decided that this scenario was farfetched and outdated"...There things stood until September 11, 2001, when Cheney and Rumsfeld suddenly began to act out parts of a script they had rehearsed years before."

Despite official assurances to the contrary, there is something sinister about backdoor approaches, like the U.S Election Assurance Committee, as well as the Administration's "chatter" about al-Qaida attacks on polling places. This static has its origin in the White House. It's a far cry from the truly Apocalyptic Cold War scenario of Superpower on Superpower, to the real world scenario of asymetric warfare with Islamic extremists.

Similarly, it is hoped that an ELECTION DOOMSDAY MACHINE, if it exists, will not be set off by an effort to untrigger it. The White House announces that it is not being cynical or manipulative by suggesting that al-Qaida would like to attack the assembled Democratic leadership, in Boston. "Just playing it safe", they say. It's the erratic, impulsive nature of this Administration that gives Americans pause. Since 9/11 they have behaved as if they had a mandate, rather than assuming office in a contested election. They act with a haughty, winner-take-all righteousness, and are one of the most politically divisive factions in the history of this country.

How great is the leap of imagination, after all?--from a policy of preventative war against nations which might possibly attack us?--to "securing an election" from voters who are possibly influenced by an attack on this nation's soil?

"[Cheney's and Rumsfeld's] participation in the extra-constitutional continuity-of-government exercises, remarkable in its own right, also demonstrates a broad, underlying truth about these two men. For three decades, from the Ford Administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never far away. They stayed in touch with defense, military, and intelligence officials, who regularly called upon them. They were, in a sense, a part of the permanent hidden national-security apparatus of the United States." (Mann)

"Mein Fuhrer,...I can walk!"



Sources: digby, john emerson, soccerdad, and billmon

Image via indelible inc

Nothing yet presented to the American people succeeds, as Fahrenheit 9/11 does, in showing the sociopathic disconnect between President Bush and his actions and their consequences. The audience reaction to this Michael Moore film reveals a hunger for this information; and people are touched in a way that great theatre, cinema, or poetry can sometimes touch them. Gasping, weeping, laughing, and crying out in amazement, they are swept by a range of emotions, transported from sight-gags and absurdist comedy to tragedy and loss.

Young people in Flint, Michigan compare the televised devastation of Iraq to parts of their economically gutted and ravaged Flint. Well-to-do Congressmen, cornered by Moore on the steps of the Capitol, don't risk receiving their dead from Iraq. George W. Bush, erratic and sometimes ridiculous, flits merrily along, unconcerned about black high school drop-outs in Flint, Michigan, or white kids in Appalachia who have nowhere else to go but the Army. President Bush openly woos "the haves and have-mores" and the Patriot Act sails through the House without so much as being read.

Moore's film stands head and shoulders above any of his previous work, because its power rests on profound recognitions. In this film we see a culture of death, the juxtaposition of destroyed bodies, Iraqi and American. We see the imposture of "the consent of the governed". Election Fraud 2000 and an American coup d'etat are revisited, including the spectacle of black disenfranchisement in Florida projected into the House of Representatives, a sad betrayal of democracy.

Other powerful themes seem to visibly rock the audience. Certainly, for many of the uninitiated, it is the sense that they have been robbed of a chunk of history, that is just now being returned to them. This replacement into consciousness of a crucial piece of history and narrative is cathartic.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, "The persuasiveness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable; it prevails even over a resisting heart". At 2 screenings of Moore's film I've heard people break down and sob. There were incredible gasps from the audience; there was a hush of attention with which people of all ages seemed to attend to Fahrenheit 9/11 and breathe it in.



"This is an impressive crowd - the haves and have mores. Some people call you the elite - I call you my base." --George W. Bush


Image via Michael Moore.

After a stranger
Missing a hand taps on the table
You think of your mother, her tongue,
The rain announcing twilight.
She speaks of Alsace; her vowels careful,
Her teeth as straight as consonants.
Agile child who can outmaneuver
Flattery or bitterness
You listen closely.

Images via Michael Moore

This is an excerpt from "Democracy itself is in danger", a speech
by Al Gore, the former US Vice President, given June 24, 2004, at Georgetown University for the American Constitution Society. The full text is at Salon. (It is necessary to click through an advert)



"James Madison wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, "The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature."

"[The founders} were greatly influenced -- far more than we can imagine -- by a careful reading of the history and human dramas surrounding the democracies of ancient Greece and the Roman republic. They knew, for example, that democracy disappeared in Rome when Caesar crossed the Rubicon in violation of the Senate's long prohibition against a returning general entering the city while still in command of military forces. Though the Senate lingered in form and was humored for decades, when Caesar impoliticly combined his military commander role with his chief executive role, the Senate -- and with it the Republic -- withered away."

"I am convinced that our founders would counsel us today that the greatest challenge facing our republic is not terrorism but how we react to terrorism, and not war, but how we manage our fears and achieve security without losing our freedom. I am also convinced that they would warn us that democracy itself is in grave danger if we allow any president to use his role as commander in chief to rupture the careful balance between the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government. Our current president has gone to war and has come back into "the city" and declared that our nation is now in a permanent state of war, which he says justifies his reinterpretation of the Constitution in ways that increase his personal power at the expense of Congress, the courts, and every individual citizen."

"So now, the president and the vice president are arguing with [the 9/11] commission, and they are insisting that the commission is wrong and they are right, and that there actually was a working cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida."

"The problem for the president is that he doesn't have any credible evidence to support his claim, and yet, in spite of that, he persists in making that claim vigorously"..."And I think it's particularly important because it is closely connected to the questions of constitutional power with which I began this speech."

"...it's so important particularly for President Bush to keep the American people from discovering that what he told them about the linkage between Iraq and al-Qaida isn't true. Among these Americans who still believe there is a linkage, there remains very strong support for the president's decision to invade Iraq. But among those who accept the commission's detailed finding that there is no connection, support for the war in Iraq dries up pretty quickly."

"President Bush and Vice President Cheney have decided to fight to the rhetorical death over whether or not there's a meaningful connection between Iraq and al-Qaida. They think that if they lose that argument and people see the truth, then they'll not only lose support for the controversial decision to go to war, but also lose some of the new power they've picked up from the Congress and the courts, and face harsh political consequences at the hands of the American people."

"As a result, President Bush is now intentionally misleading the American people by continuing to aggressively and brazenly assert a linkage between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein."

"If he is not lying, if they genuinely believe that, that makes them unfit in battle with al-Qaida. If they believe these flimsy scraps, then who would want them in charge? Are they too dishonest or too gullible? Take your pick."

"And at least some honest voices within the president's own party admitted as (m)uch. Sen. Chuck Hagel, a decorated war hero who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, said point blank, "Saddam is not in league with al-Qaida ... I have not seen any intelligence that would lead me to connect Saddam Hussein with al-Qaida."

"But those voices did not stop the deliberate campaign to mislead America. Over the course of a year, the president and vice president used carefully crafted language to scare Americans into believing there was an imminent threat from an Iraq-armed al-Qaida."

"In the fall of 2002, the President told the country "You can't distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam."

"By the Spring, Secretary of State Powell was in front of the United Nations claiming a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist network."

"So when the bipartisan 9/11 commission issued its report finding "no credible evidence" of an Iraq-al-Qaida connection, it should not have caught the White House off guard. Yet instead of the candor Americans need and deserve from their leaders, there have been more denials and more insistence without evidence."

"The President was even more brazen. He dismissed all questions about his statements by saying "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaida, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida." He provided no evidence."

"Friends of the administration tried mightily to rehabilitate their cherished but shattered linkage. John Lehman, one of the Republicans on the commission, offered what sounded like new evidence that a Saddam henchman had attended an al-Qaida meeting. But within hours, the commissions files yielded definitive evidence that it was another man with a similar name -- ironically capturing the near-miss quality of Bush's entire symbolic argument."

"But the damage they have done to our country is not limited to misallocation of military economic political resources. Whenever a chief executive spends prodigious amounts of energy convincing people of lies, he damages the fabric of democracy, and the belief in the fundamental integrity of our self-government."

"That creates a need for control over the flood of bad news, bad policies and bad decisions also explains their striking attempts to control news coverage."

"The administration works closely with a network of "rapid response" digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for "undermining support for our troops." Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist, was one of the first journalists to regularly expose the president's consistent distortions of the facts. Krugman writes, "Let's not overlook the role of intimidation. After 9/11, if you were thinking of saying anything negative of the President ... you had to expect right-wing pundits and publications to do all they could to ruin your reputation."

"The kinds of unnatural, undemocratic activities in which this administration has engaged, in order to aggrandize power, have included censorship of scientific reports, manipulation of budgetary statistics, silencing dissent, and ignoring intelligence. Although there have been other efforts by other presidents to encroach on the legitimate prerogatives of Congress and courts, there has never been this kind of systematic abuse of the truth and institutionalization of dishonesty as a routine part of the policy process."

"Two hundred and twenty years ago, John Adams wrote, in describing one of America's most basic founding principles, "The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them ... to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men."

To find your local cinema click here

Until recently, Lori Haigh had been the owner of Capobianco Gallery, located on San Francisco's Powell Street. Ms. Haigh was faced with two weeks of escalating vandalism outside the gallery, verbal abuse and hate messages in her e-mail. She had been singled out for this hate campaign because of a painting on display: The Abuse, by Guy Colwell, which shows 3 hooded prisoners, hooked up to wires, being tormented by American soldiers.

Ryan Kim, writing for The San Francisco Chronicle, has described the unfolding events:

"Two days after the painting went up, Haigh arrived at her gallery to find broken glass, eggs and trash strewn outside her storefront."

[At another time], "a man walked into the gallery and spat in Haigh's face."

Haigh contemplated giving up the gallery that had been her dream for so long; and on a Tuesday she shut down the place in order to take time to think things over.

"Just two days later, another man knocked on the door of the gallery and punched Haigh in the face, knocking her out, breaking her nose and causing a concussion."

" "I'm disheartened and disappointed," said Haigh, "I don't want to have a gallery if I can't show artists like Guy Colwell"."

Fenimore Cooper's Daily covered the closing of the Capobianco. "A U-haul truck was loaded with the gallery's artwork, including Guy Colwell's, whose painting of American soldiers abusing prisoners is the eye of this hurricane"..."It was heartening to see all the people show up to support the owner Lori Haigh"..."The sidewalk was overflowing with supporters. A gentleman spoke to everyone"..."After the impromptu speech, Ms. Haigh herself came out the front door. Her nose was bandaged; she seemed dazed."

"Ms. Haigh made no speech, merely worked her way through the crowd and was whisked off in a car. Everyone applauded for her courage."

This kind of bitter attack against artists, or those who sponsor art, should raise the antenna of every thoughtful person. Journalist David Neiwert calls this kind of assault proto-fascist thuggery.
.

Simone Weil has written these thoughts on evil:

"Evil is license and that is why it is monotonous: everything is
drawn from ourselves."

"We are obliged to imitate the act of creation, and there are two
possible imitations--the one real and the other apparent--preserving
and destroying.
There is no trace of "I" in the act of preserving. There is in that
of destroying. The "I" leaves its mark on the world as it destroys."

"A hurtful act is the transference to others of the degradation which
we bear in ourselves. That is why we are inclined to commit such acts
as a way of deliverance." (Gravity & Grace, p. 119, 123)

This appeared in J.K. Dineen's article of June 3, 2004, in The San Francisco Examiner:

"In a related development, the owner of another North Beach art gallery--Live Worms Gallery on Grant Avenue--said someone has made a veiled threat against his gallery as well. Owner Kevin Brown said a man walked into his gallery and engaged him in debate about the Capobianco attacks and the Iraq war in general. On his way out, he said, "you're next", according to Brown."


The Abuse by Guy Colwell




Sources via Orcinus

Fewer Americans would be able to sleep well at night, if they suspected the Bush Administration of making preparations to bring back the draft. Conscription for military service was halted in 1973 as America ended its war in Vietnam. But this process is being revived, according to Congress.org:

"$28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service System (SSS) budget to prepare for a military draft that could start as early as June 15, 2005." This source also reports that, "The pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board slots nationwide."

The Guardian has also picked up on this story. John Sutherland writes, "All this has been pushed ahead with an amazing lack of publicity. One can guess why. American newspapers are in a state of meltdown, distracted by war-reporting scandals at USA Today and the New York Times. There is an awareness in the press at large that the "embedding" system was just that-getting into bed with the military and reporting their pillow talk as "news from the frontline."

The armed services committees are responsible for both the Senate bill (S 89) and House version (HR 163), which are in committee and classified as active.

Of course, a fierce public outcry follows any public mention of re-activating the draft. Although 3 out of 4 Americans strongly reject the idea of conscription, the deck seems to be stacked against public opinion. It wouldn't be the first time government turned against the will of the people. But this is, after all, a matter of our flesh and blood.

But what is being cranked up in the background is nothing less than war on the level of nation states; and it must mean more wars and more occupation. Instead of a logical focus on international police activity and some special forces military to co-ordinate against al-Qaida, we have a unilateral agenda, an almost depraved aggregation of power in the hands of US leaders, that can only disturb and destabilize the international community.

Neither Bush, nor Kerry for that matter, seem interested in talking about this. No one wants this issue shaken loose as an "October Surprise". This is something to be hushed up, and later served to the American people as a fait accompli.

Compared to Vietnam era experiences, dodging the draft will be more difficult.

"In December 2001, Canada and the U.S. signed a "smart border declaration" which could be used to keep would-be draft-dodgers in. Signed by Canada's minister of foreign affairs John Manley, and U.S. Homeland Security director, Tom Ridge, the declaration involves a 30-point plan which implements, among other things, a "pre-clearance agreement" of people entering and departing each country. Reforms aimed at making the draft more equitable along gender and class lines also eliminates higher education as a shelter. Underclassmen would only be able to postpone service until the end of the current semester. Seniors would have until the end of the academic year." (Congress.org)

It is reasonable to add that Canada might not honor this "border declaration" with respect to draft resisters, since this is an eventuality that was not contemplated within the arrangement. Canada has been decisive in the past, and has granted shelter to people of conscience.

Thanks to Mitch from the comment area at Whiskey Bar, here is an excerpt from Daniel Ellsberg's Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, pp 141-142.

"On the return flight to Washington a week later, as we got near the end of the journey, McNamara called me to the rear of the plane, where he was standing with Bob Komer, who was still special assistant to the president coordinating Washington efforts on pacification. McNamara said, "Dan, you're the one who can settle this. Komer here is saying that we've made a lot of progress in pacification. I say things are worse than they were a year ago. What do you say?"

I said, "Well, Mr. Secretary, I'm most impressed with how much the same things are as they were a year ago. They were pretty bad then, but I wouldn't say it was worse now, just about the same."

McNamara said triumphantly, "That proves what I'm saying! We've put more than a hundred thousand more troops into the country over the last year, and there's been no improvement. Things aren't any better at all. That means the underlying situation is really worse! Isn't that right?"

I said, "Well, you could say that. It's an interesting way of seeing it."

Just then the plane began to go into a turn and the pilot announced, "Gentlemen, we are approaching Andrews Air Force Base. Please take your seats and fasten your seat belts."

Ten minutes later we were on the ground, and McNamara was descending the ladder with us behind him. It was a foggy morning, and there was an arc of television lights and cameras set up at the spot the plane had taxied to. In the center of the arc, there was a podium covered with microphones. McNamara strode over to the mikes and said to the crowd of reporters, "Gentlemen, I've just come back from Vietnam, and I'm glad to be able to tell you that we're showing great progress in every dimension of our effort. I'm very encouraged by everything I've seen and heard on my trip. . . ."."


Remember history. Remember. Lest we repeat it.

A friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, offers our readers this Berthold Brecht poem as a birthday present for Tholos.

The Fishing Tackle


In my room, on the whitewashed wall
Hangs a short bamboo stick bound with cord
With an iron hook designed
To snag fishing nets from the water. The stick
Came from a second-hand store downtown. My son
Gave it to me for my birthday. It is worn.
In salt water the hook's rust has eaten through the binding.
These traces of use and of work
Lend great dignity to the stick. I
Like to think that this fishing-tackle
Was left behind by those Japanese fishermen
Whom they have now driven from the West Coast into camps
As suspect aliens; that it came into my hands
To keep me in mind of so many
Unsolved but not insoluble
Questions of humanity.




                                          Berthold Brecht

                                         (transl. Lee Baxendall)

One does not ask for new wine,
For sweetness that lacks a bottle,
A balcony, a blackberry
Leaf, premonition
Of storms that winter brings.
The cask and moon are full;
There is no dreamless sleep.

In purple, Cassandra watches
Dark Piraeus. This once
New wine will not recur
Will not replace the words
Or hold a ship at anchor.
The vine is close to the womb;
And after sipping, men laugh.

Seeing Theseus for the first time, Ariadne
Longed for him. But now it hurt to draw breath
On desolate Naxos, the island also called Dia.
Water flowed by, as Artemis killed her there.
And Bromius, who is called Dionysus, protested
And made from the circle of her tiara new stars.
The princess unraveled, undid her heavy sash,
Undid the golden thread, descending to Acheron.

The rumor of the Minotaur could not be avoided:
Forgetfulness as a curse on the one who killed it.
Ariadne and her god-like body still marooned;
Aegeus the King, who threw himself from a cliff
And split the Aegean, salt water, his legacy.
Theseus grew longer, thinner day by day
Elongated almost, as if he were pulled
Like a strand of flax through worried fingers.
Upright like a switch he reasoned best,
It would be lovely, Ariadne holding a thread,
Holding him.

In an article in The Boston Globe, reporter Alfred W. McCoy has discovered that the means of torture, recently exposed at Abu Ghraib prison, can be traced to specialized procedures developed by the CIA.

"From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led secret research into coercion and consciousness that reached a billion dollars at peak"..."The CIA's discovery of psychological torture was a counterintuitive breakthrough"..

"The old physical approach required interrogators to inflict pain, usually by crude beatings that often produced heightened resistance or unreliable information. Under the CIA's new psychological paradigm, however, interrogators used two essential techniques to achieve their goals.

In the first stage, interrogators employ the simple, nonviolent techniques of hooding or sleep deprivation to disorient the subject: some times sexual intimidation is used as well."

Once the subject is disoriented, interrogators move to a second stage with simple, self-inflicted discomfort such as standing for hours with arms extended. In this phase, the idea is to make victims feel responsible for their own pain and thus induce them to alleviate it by capitulating to the interrogator's power."

"Although seemingly less brutal, no-touch torture leaves deep psychological scars. The victims often need long treatment to recover from trauma far more crippling than physical pain. The perpetrators can suffer a dangerous expansion of ego, leading to cruelty and lasting emotional problems."

"Following the CIA's two-part technique, last September General Miller instructed US military police at Abu Ghraib to soften up high priority detainees in the initial phase for later "successful interrogation and exploitation" by CIA and military intelligence. As often happens in no-touch torture sessions, this process soon moved beyond sleep and sensory deprivation to sexual humiliation. The question in the second, still unexamined phase, is whether US Army intelligence and CIA operatives administered the prescribed mix of interrogation and self-inflicted pain. If so, the soldiers now facing courts-martial would have been following standard interrogation procedure." [my emphasis]

"For more than 50 years, the CIA's no-touch methods have become so widely accepted that US interrogators seem unaware that they are, in fact, engaged in systematic torture."

Americans can only feel shame when they comtemplate the torture, and the arrogance and cruelty that set it in motion. But Vietnam and the Contra War came before this. McCoy gives us a sense that these mechanisms have been in place for a while. The lawlessness of the Bush Administration makes it even worse; and this is combined with Bush's lack of clemency, and his obsession with political outcomes, at the expense of democracy.

General Miller is sent from the compact gulag at Guantanamo, to see to it that Iraqi prisoners are properly softened up at Abu Ghraib. But what is going on at Guantanamo Bay? What happens to the dehumanized and invisible who are out reach of the US Constitution and the Geneva Convention? George W. Bush has brought America low in these three-and-a-half years; and he has shamed us by fraudulent, self-serving leadership and sheer callousness. The people themselves, with their legitimate exercise of democracy, can reverse this degradation at home and bring a merciful and just end to the Occupation. Some reparation is owed to the Iraqis. After tribulations like these and all their losses, they deserve their sovereignty. Iraqis may even raze Abu Ghraib prison to the ground; they've earned that right.



The Boston Globe website does not support bookmarking to its archive; but if readers click on the link and type torture cia in the archive box, the May 14, 2004 article, titled TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB FOLLOWED CIA'S MANUAL, by Alfred McCoy, can be retrieved.
Images via indybay.org.

Thanks to Ben Holland for forwarding McCoy's story to the staff here.

by Jack Rafter
No. 8. Desperate Times, Part III.

Previously (see below): After a night in the Mercy Hospital, our homeless hero finally gets to see the doctor. Turns out he didn’t have pneumonia after all, and is released to a bright sunny morning.

Well, I didn’t have pneumonia, but I still wasn’t feeling so hot. I had all the symptoms—runny nose, sneezing, coughing, head feeling like a split melon. I didn’t want to walk three miles to the shelter; they wouldn’t let me in till close to nightfall, anyway. And I sure didn’t have any business spending another night outside. Especially if the weather turned chilly again.

So I stuck around the hospital. I thought maybe I could smuggle myself back in without actually having to see the doctor. I just needed a good night’s sleep, that's all. A decent meal or two—if I could finagle them—wouldn’t do any harm, either.

By noon, the clouds were rolling in again and the temperature starting to drop. I was glad I’d decided to stay near the hospital. Avoiding the walk-in clinic entrance, where I was sure to be recognized, I walked in the far end of the building. First, I had to leave Vincent tied up in the bushes near the door. He whimpered a little and looked up at me with those big sad eyes. I told him not to worry—I was going to smuggle him in, as well. That seemed to have a calming effect on him, so he laid himself down and got ready to wait. I went on in and made my way to the cafeteria, bought a cup of coffee with a bummed half-dollar, found a stray newspaper and settled down for awhile.

Around four, I decided things might be getting busy in the walk-in clinic, so I headed that way. At the double swinging doors, I stopped and peaked through the window. Sure enough, the red-haired day nurse was still on—working the clipboards, handing out forms to newcomers.

In the hallway, there, I could see a dozen or more gurneys parked along the walls. A few were occupied, but most were free. Judging from the night before, I knew the later it got, most, if not all, the gurneys would be taken. I was hoping to snag one while they were still available.

Yeah, I hear you say, “How dare you take a bed someone else might really need.” To that, I say, look—I didn’t make this country that is so indifferent that it doesn’t bother to provide decent health care for its people; a country that preaches “Homeland Security,” while thousands are losing their homes, children are going hungry; and where huge corporations pay little or no income taxes while sending all our jobs overseas. I figured they could spare an extra gurney for the night.

Just then, I was startled by a voice behind me. “Are you lost?” I turned, and there--so help me--stood Nurse Margaret, her own self, the dreaded night nurse! With her big breasts and stern face and lips the color of Heinz 57 Ketchup. Her mouse colored hair was pulled back in a bun so tight it looked like she was trying to give herself a face-lift. I was so taken aback, I almost passed out. My knees were wobbly. Luckily, Vincent seemed to have frozen between my legs; he must have sensed the danger. Meanwhile, nurse Margaret was frowning at me—that severe, disapproving frown I’d seen the night before, as if I were a bug she thought she’d already smushed with her shoe. I was afraid she was on the verge of recognizing me. After all, it was she who had listened to me through her stethoscope the night before and pronounced me sick with pneumonia, a diagnosis which proved incorrect.

Somehow, I resisted the urge to tell her she’d gotten it wrong, which probably would have resulted in her calling security and having me escorted out. Or maybe she would have done it herself. Instead, I said, “Uh, could you tell me where the restroom is?”

At that, she squinched her nose at me, almost as if I’d just presented her a crudely drawn picture of what I intended to do in the restroom, instead of merely asking where it was. Then she said, “Back that way. Up the hall. To the right.”

“Thank you, Miss.”

She nodded, then passed on through the doors.

I watched her go up to the red-haired nurse. They conferred a moment. The red-haired nurse handed her the clipboards, then they moved off toward the office. Now was my chance. I scooted through the doors. Having spent a night there already, I’d gotten the lay of the land. There was a utility closet right there in the hallway. I opened the door to the closet, grabbed the nearest free gurney and rolled it in, closing the door behind me. Then, I switched on the light. On the shelves were stacks of every kind of form you could imagine, in all colors—pink, blue, saffron, green. I tore one off, folded it lengthwise down the middle, found a pen, and printed a sign on it:

“This gurney reserved for Dr. Welby.”

I was thinking of Marcus Welby, the TV show doctor, played by Robert Young, who, in his later years, attempted suicide. Then I stood the sign up like a tent on top of the gurney. I figured anybody that saw the sign would leave the gurney alone, even if they thought it was odd. In my experience, most people—-nurses included-—seldom question anything a doctor does; even other doctors aren’t likely to meddle in each other’s business.

While I was there, I decided to look a little more. You never know what might be useful. Well, there weren't any drugs or anything like that. I guess they keep all that locked up. But I did find something a little more valuable. Five rolls of red tickets—all just like the one Nurse Esther had given me that morning for a free meal in the cafeteria. Each roll had a thousand tickets. The mother lode! I slipped one roll in my coat pocket, switched off the light and scurried back to the cafeteria.

Needless to say, I ate good that night. Roast beef, mashed potatoes, cream corn, broccoli, and, finished off with a nice little tapioca pudding. I kept some back for Vincent and took him out a plate. I also took a big wad of napkins to blow on, since my eyes were weeping and my nose was dripping like a leaky faucet.

By then, it was around seven o’clock, getting dark. Now, I wanted to smuggle my dog in, and maybe you’re wondering how I got that done. Well, I’ll tell you. I have this canvas coat I normally wear, that almost reaches my knees. So, what I do is I take the coat off and tie the sleeves around my waist, so it almost drags the ground, like a skirt. Vincent likes to get under there and walk with me. He thinks it’s a game, you see. All he has to do is see me tie the coat around my waist and he scoots right under there without waiting to be called. So that’s how I’ve managed to smuggle Vincent into a number of places undetected.

And that’s what we did. Soon as he was under the coat, we entered the building and started down the hall. Vincent usually gets right between my legs as we putter along, so walk a little bow-legged to keep from kicking him. But no one seems to notice. We passed nurses, orderlies, doctors, guys in suits, all kinds of people; most of them treated me with indifference. Some of them nodded and said, “Hello.” I nodded back and smiled. All they saw was some poor bum walking along with his coat tied around his waist. No idea there was a dog under there.

When we got to the walk-in clinic, I stopped and peaked through the windows of the double doors. Pure chaos, just like the night before. The red-haired nurse was off duty, now, and there was Nurse Margaret wandering around with her clipboards, the only life raft for miles around. No wonder she was strung so tight, I thought. Meanwhile, I noticed all the gurneys were now occupied with sick or wounded people.

When the coast was clear, I squeezed through the swinging door with Vincent scooting along under my coat flaps, like an appendage. I made for the closet and ducked inside, pulling the door behind me. So far so good.

Then, I smelled something funny, like cigarette smoke. I flipped on the light and looked. There, on the near end of the gurney-—my gurney-—sat a large woman. She looked Hispanic. She had one arm folded under her breasts, the other propped on it, holding a cigarette. She looked at me with stunned surprise, her eyebrows arched up around her hairline.

I noticed her dress was a pale green, a kind of uniform, with a nametag pinned over her breast. The name on it was Merry Ann Alonzo. Clearing my throat, I said, “Uh—excuse me.”

“Who are you?” she said with an accent.

“Um—that’s my gurney you’re sitting on.”

“What? Are you--?” She picked up the little tent sign and looked at it. “You are Dock-tor Welby?”

“That’s me,” I said, sneezing suddenly. “S’cuse me.” I fished a napkin out of my pocket and blew into it.

“You’re kidding, right?” she said.

“Nope, not kidding,” I replied hoarsely.

“’Scuse me, sir. But you don’t resemble no doctor, here.”

“Oh, you’re referring to my clothes. Well, I was just working outside. I do a little gardening on the grounds, hereabouts. When I’m not in surgery. Kind of a hobby. But right now, I’ve got a patient who needs that gurney.”

She jumped up. “Oh, sure thing. Sorry, Mister, uh—Dock-tor Welby. I was just taking a break.” She indicated the cigarette. “You don’t mind, I hope.”

“Not at all. Take your time—uh—Miss Alonzo. I know you work hard.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t mention it.” Then I sneezed again. Once, twice, three times. I took out some more napkins, blew my nose and dabbed my eyes.

“That’s some cold you got there, Dock-tor.”

“Yes, it is,” I muttered.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be working outside with a bad cold like that,” she said.

“Well, you know us doctors,” I smiled. “We’re our own worst patients.”

“Oh, yes, do I know that!” she laughed. “My husband is a veterinarian.”

“You don’t say.”

“Oh, yes, I can never get him to take time off when he’s sick.”

“Well, there you go,” I replied. Then, taking down a folded sheet from the shelf, I said, “I just need to make this thing up.”

“Oh. Okay,” she stepped out of the way.

I spread the sheet over the gurney, letting the sides hang down till they skimmed the floor. At that moment, Vincent shot out from my coat and disappeared under the sheets.

“What was that?” said Merry Ann Alonzo.

“What was what?” I said.

“Something just ran under that sheet. It looked like an an-ee-mal of some kind.”

“Oh, that’s Vincent-—my dog. He makes the rounds with me sometimes.”

“The rounds?”

“You know—-see patients and stuff.”

“Wait a minute. You saying your dog goes around with you—-here, in the hospital? No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

She laughed. “Making the rounds with you! That’s funny!” Then, pausing, she took a drag on her cigarette and looked at me a long moment sideways. “You aren’t really a doctor, are you, mister?”

“No.”

“What are you doing, then?”

“I just need a place to sleep the night. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

She looked at me a moment, smiling, shaking her head a little. “No,” she said, finally. “I don’t tell on you. Go on, whoever you are.”

“My name’s Jack.”

“Okay. Buenos noches, Jack.”

“Buenos noches, Miss—-Senora Alonzo.”

I turned the light out and cracked the door to have a look. Nurse Margaret was now the center of so much calamity I knew she wouldn’t notice a bum pulling a gurney up the hall. Under the sheets, I heard Vincent’s paws clicking on the tile floor as he followed along. I parallel parked the gurney between two others, and hopped on, shed my coat, rolled it up and threw it underneath. Then, I laid down, pulling the sheet over me. Within minutes I was sound asleep.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up coughing—-really miserable. It seemed to go on and on. I was afraid my lungs were going to come up. Then, I felt a hand on the back of my neck. “Sit up,” said a voice. The hand supported my head as I sat up. I was so groggy I could hardly focus on anything. The other hand swung toward me holding a spoon with a red liquid. “Take this,” said the voice. I opened my mouth and took the liquid. Cough syrup-—strong. Codeine, maybe. “Now, lie down.” I laid down, looking up as I did. It was Merry Ann Alonzo. Smiling. “Sleep,” she said. And I dropped off again.

* * * * *

I awoke to Katie Couric’s voice. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. The hall was cheery and bright with spots of sunlight dancing in from the waiting room. I felt like a new dime. Whatever Merry Ann gave me worked like an elixir.

Most of the gurneys were empty. There were a few others with people crashed on them, some of whom looked like they could be dead. I wasn’t sure. There was a guy in the next gurney up from mine, propped up on his elbows, having a look around. He was an old guy with a turkey neck. No teeth, mouth sunken in. Whiskery face. His ears were big and stuck out from his head, like flaps, and hair was growing out of them. I think he had just awakened. The expression on his face seemed to say, “Where the hell am I?” He regarded me with the same look, only then it became, “Who the hell are you?”

His tongue darted out, swabbed his cracked, flaky lips, then disappeared. Suddenly, he called out: “Martha!” And again, louder, “Martha!”

I looked around. I saw the red-haired nurse glance this way, then she started for us. “Oh, shit,” I thought, and pulled the sheet over my head. “Martha!” I heard the old geeze shout again.

The nurse squeaked past me in her rubber soles. “Who are you?” I heard her ask the guy, to which he replied, “Who are you?”

“I’m the day-nurse here. My name is Flynn.” I heard her rifling through some papers. “I think you’re Mr. Mabry. Are you?”

“Am I what?” he said.

“Mr. Mabry. Charles A.? Is that you?”

“My name is Arthur,” he ranted.

I heard her take a deep breath, to give her patience. “Okay, then the A stands for Arthur, is that right?”

“Well, of course!”

“All right, Arthur, you’re going to see the doctor in about the next hour, or so, I hope.”

“For what?”

“We’re going to x-ray your hip. We’re going to replace your hip-joint.”

“My hip is just fine. Nobody’s cuttin’ on me.”

“No, your hip is totally gone, Mr. Mabry. You can’t even walk.”

“I’ll crawl, then. Where’s Martha?”

“Who is that?”

“Martha! My sister!”

“Is she waiting for you out there?”

“Out where?”

“Out in the waiting room.”

“How should I know?”

“What does she look like?”

“Looks like my sister!”

“All right, just wait a minute. I’ll go see if I can find her.”

Nurse Flynn squeaked off to the waiting room. In a moment, I heard her call out, “Is there a Martha Mabry here? Martha Mabry?”

Nobody answered. I pulled my sheet down and looked at the old man. He was sitting there, staring with his mouth open. A little slip of spittle was starting to peter down the crease from the corner of his mouth.

“Maybe Martha went for breakfast,” I offered.

He blinked and looked at me. His tongue slithered out, then went back in again. “I hope she brings me some eggs,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’m plumb starved to death.”

“I’ve got some free meal tickets in my coat pocket. If Martha doesn’t come back soon, I’ll go get you some breakfast.”

“Thanks.” He looked at me. His face seemed to soften for a moment.

About then, I saw where Katie Couric was coming from. There was a TV mounted high up on the wall. So they had one in the waiting room, and one in the hallway, as well, I suppose so they could bother the sick and dying in both places at once.

This morning Katie was interviewing some actress I didn’t recognize. The actress was talking about Jennifer Lopez. Apparently, they had recently worked together on some TV sitcom. She was describing J-Lo’s butt—how mesmerizing it was—how you couldn’t take your eyes off of it, and so on. While they chatted about that, and Katie laughed hysterically, a little line of type slowly inched its way across the bottom of the screen. Our Air Force had just bombed a mosque in Fallujah.

I remember the Today Show of the ‘50s, when I was growing up—-was played on a simple set with big round clocks in the background, so you could keep an eye on the time; the host was Dave Garroway. Arthur Godfrey was on the other channel with his own morning show. They were not very flashy, as I recall, those guys, but they had a lot of humor. They were soft-spoken, folksy. Dave Garroway wore horn-rimmed glasses, a crooked bow tie. The pace of those shows was easy going, even gentle, I suppose you might say, as if somehow they had gotten the idea that people would rather be brought more gently into their day, as opposed to being rudely grabbed by the lapels, jolted, and revved up. I don’t think it would have occurred to either Dave Garroway or Arthur Godfrey to hold forth with one of their guests at an early hour in the morning about some girl’s ass.

Nowadays the Today Show features a posh livingroom and a kitchen straight out of Architectural Digest, fully operational. It’s a set that must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to create, so it looks as if the show originates from inside Donald Trump’s house. This version of the Today Show is very busy. It lurches from one topic to another, from one guest to the next, with hardly a moment to draw a breath or to allow for the possibility of a real thought to take shape. There’s a yakky, frenetic quality to it, as if the hosts and their guests are hopped up on methamphetamines or just mainlining caffeine.

Suddenly, Nurse Flynn appeared out of nowhere. Standing over me, she said, “Who are you?”

“Me? Uh, I’m—“

She frowned. “Weren’t you here yesterday morning?”

“Uh, no, ma’am. I think my brother was in here, though.”

“You have a twin?”

“No, ma’am. We do kind of resemble each other, though.”

She looked skeptical. “Listen, I don’t have time to fool around. You were in here yesterday and you had pneumonia.”

“No, ma’am, I don’t have pneumonia. You can check me yourself.”

“What’s your name?”

“Donnie,” I said. “Donnie Rafter.”

“Wait here. I’ll see if I can find your chart.”

When she was gone, I hopped off the gurney.

“Where you going?” said Arthur.

“Going to get you something to eat. I’ll be right back.”

“What if she comes back?”

“Tell her I left.” I winked at him.

“Right,” he said, and winked back.

I told Vincent to stay put a minute. Then I reached in my coat pocket and tore off a ticket. In the cafeteria, I got a double helping of eggs, some apple sauce, yogurt and cottage cheese. All soft stuff. I figured Arthur Mabry, sans teeth, was gumming it. Then, I went back to the clinic. Nurse Flynn was nowhere around. I handed the plate to Arthur. His eyes got big and he said, “Thanks! Man, this looks good!” He sat up and started right in. Moving to my gurney, I snatched up my coat, tied it around me and gave a soft whistle. Vincent came out and went under again.

“That your dog?” said Arthur between bites.

“Yep.”

For the first time that morning, he actually smiled. “Well, good for you!” he said and shoved a spoonful in his mouth.

“Well, see you around, Arthur,” I said. “If the nurse asks you where you got that food, tell her Dr. Welby brought it.”

“Sure thing,” he grinned.

Vincent and I stopped off at the cafeteria, grabbed some breakfast, then took the plate outside by the far exit. The sun was out, it was nice and warm. I was feeling more my old self after a good sleep. There was a little park across the street. We headed over there, sat down under a tree and had our breakfast.

Then, we laid back and napped awhile. When I woke, the sun was almost straight overhead. I thought about hanging around and using another ticket for lunch. I reckoned I had about nine-hundred ninety-seven free meals left on the roll. But the cafeteria staff was starting to look at me funny and I didn’t want to push my luck. So I headed for the Bizzy Bee Griddle. Maybe Johnny Blair would be back by now. He’d been gone a couple of days due to a death in his family. I was curious to know who died. And I could tell him about my two days in the hospital.

In Arianna Huffington's biography of Picasso, she quotes poet Michel Leiris on the subject of Guernica: "In a rectangle of black and white such as that in which ancient tragedy appeared, Picasso sends us the announcement of our mourning: all that we love is going to die."

The Basque town, Guernica, came under high-explosive and incendiary bombardment on April 26, 1937. The Condor Legion of the German Luftwaffe was on loan to Francisco Franco, to help put down the Spanish Republic during Spain's Civil War. Of some 7,000 souls, about 1,600 were killed; and the town itself burned for 3 days. When the shock wave, that news of the slaughter of civilians reached Paris, thousands of people poured into the streets to protest. Picasso, who had been procrastinating for weeks over a commission, a large mural for the Spanish Gallery, was among those who mingled with the stunned Parisians. He began living out of his studio, as he completed a work of abstract art, that is considered by many to be one of the most compelling anti-war statements ever conceived. It was only after Franco's death in 1975, that it was possible for Guernica to come back to Spain as a national art treasure; only when democracy had been restored.

Not just anyone can pose in front of Picasso's Guernica, with the chilling and sinister effect of John Negroponte. Half-turned to the camera, he offers only the ghost of a little grin; and the gestalt of that abstract bull stares with such intensity from the tapestry. It's not the original Picasso, to be sure; but rather a reproduction that was commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller, a tapestry that has hung at UN Headquarters in New York for many years. And it's a bit curious that this image first surfaced on the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) website that originates in Iraq. As American Ambassador to the UN, Negroponte has been highly visible in the run-up to the invasion, and throughout this year of occupation. Now, his latest nomination has cleared the Senate; and he will become ambassador to the New Iraq, sometime after June 30th.

In February of last year, this particular Guernica made a splash of its own in the news. When Colin Powell was making the US case for war with Iraq in 2003, a controversy was raised over this copy of Picasso's masterpiece. The whole tapestry was covered by a blue curtain, in that UN reception area that normally served for press conferences. It was discreetly masking Guernica, so as not to embarrass Secretary of State Powell. Reporter Maureen Dowd summed up the situation, writing at the time that, "Mr. Powell can't very well seduce the world into bombing Iraq surrounded on camera by shrieking and mutilated women, men, children, bulls and horses."

Clearly, one has to look back to 2001, when Negroponte was facing close scrutiny. He was then proposed as the new US Ambassador to the UN. Mr. Frank Del Olmo, an associate editor for the LA Times, referred to Negroponte as a "warmed-over Contra paymaster"; and in his article, Olmo stresses the importance of a series which appeared in 1995 in the Baltimore Sun. These well researched articles dealt with Ambassador Negroponte's tenure in Honduras in the 1980's.

"Through interviews with former Honduran soldiers and some of the people they kidnapped and tortured, the articles laid out in gruesome detail the activity of a CIA-funded death squad run by the Honduran military during the Contra war."

"Those articles also made a credible case that Negroponte knew about the Honduran death squad, officially known as Battalion 316, and other covert operations taking place under his nose, and he ignored them."

'The Sun documents the fact that embassy staffers knew about human rights violations and duly reported them to their superiors in the embassy" (including Negroponte).

But questions about John Negroponte's past in Honduras fell by the wayside in the hysterical response by Congress after the 9/11 attack. George W. Bush's nominee was waved on through the Senate, pushed by the obsession to install a UN Ambassador quickly. The rationale was to avoid any display of partisan rancor during a time of emergency. In that year, Sister Laeticia Bordes wrote about the personal dealings she once had with Negroponte during his posting to Honduras. She essentially described how she was stonewalled by the Ambassador, when she tried to learn the fate of thirty-two women who fled from El Salvador to Honduras. These same women were subsequently kidnapped, tortured, and thrown to their deaths from helicopters.

Referring to events surrounding Negroponte's confirmation in the Senate in 2001, Sister Laeticia writes, "Since Bush made it known that he intended to nominate John Negroponte, other people have been "disappearing", so to speak. In an article published in the Los Angeles Times on March 25 Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster reported on a sudden deportation of several former Honduran death squad members from the United States. These men could have provided shattering testimony against Negroponte in the forthcoming Senate hearings."

An April 27, 2004 piece, from the Council On Hemispheric Affairs adds:

"Negroponte's objective in Honduras was eerily familiar to the Bush administration's present goal in Iraq. The U.S. government, again, is attempting to implement a democratic format on a country that has not yet chosen to do it on its own, and not necessarily by democratic means."

American mercenaries and CIA operatives were behind the recent torture and humiliation of Iraqi captives; and it is now reported that one captive has died from this abuse. What more can be done to discredit our so-called liberators, than crimes that they commit within Saddam Hussein's infamous Abu Ghraib prison? Another shock during the previous few days came from an article in the UK's Daily Telegraph. A British officer in Iraq, speaking on condition of anonymity, made these comments to Sean Rayment:

"The view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing."

"The problem was that American troops viewed the Iraqis as untermenchen" [my italics]. The British officer explained the word, the historical expression used by the Nazis, which translates as subhuman."

We must stand down from the butchery we have seen in Fallujah. The Bush Administration aims for propaganda victories. They sanitize this carnage with political slogans and ideological props. But some part of the facade is always slipping. What?-American Marines shooting women and children? Civilians burned and mangled by cluster bombs? Artillery and 500 pound bombs leveling city blocks? They mask the truth with euphemisms. Torture goes by another name; it is called softening-up.

The nightmarish quality of this Occupation scenario is only heightened as veteran reporter, Helen Thomas, asks the obsequious Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, if the United States intends to turn besieged Fallujah into another Guernica.

Into this New Iraq comes Ambassador John Negroponte. "In a rectangle of black and white such as that in which ancient tragedy appeared, Picasso sends us the announcement of our mourning: all that we love is going to die."

The body of the Iraqi boy is still. A photographer blinks at him through the lens. The light is resonant in black and white; it is antique. The boy's head is tilted by gravity slightly, as he lies on his side on the gurney. A chaos of small, dark puncture wounds cover his stomach, arms and legs. What breathed in him has sunken. His skin has drawn taut like the head of a drum. It looks like rigor, except for those dark, dark eyes, that pay homage to privacy. Dark eyes, black shreds of cloth at his waist and shoulders, rigid flesh; he was all of 12 years old.

This writer at least wants a statement that is urgent and evocative. It would be something, owing to his taste, that the Greeks have said. Sophocles will do, in the CHORUS of his Antigone. In Robert Fagles translation, the CHORUS sings the marvels of Man, and at the end, it sings its sharp warning:

"Man the master, ingenious past all measure
past all dreams, the skills within his grasp--
     he forges on, now to destruction
now again to greatness. When he weaves in
the laws of the land, and the justice of the gods
that bind his oaths together
         he and his city rise high--
                    but the city casts out
that man who weds himself to inhumanity
thanks to reckless daring. Never share my hearth
never think my thoughts, whoever does such things."

Sources via Billmon
Images via indymedia argentina and Atrios

by Jack Rafter
No. 7 Desperate Times (Part II)

See below for Part I. Previously: Jack shows up at the charity Hospital with a case of walking pneumonia. Sitting in the waiting room all night with nothing else to do, he watches replays from the 9-11 Commission on TV.


Well, it was the dead middle of the night and Colin Powell was droning on about the planes hitting the towers and how he knew right then we had to go after Al Qaeda and bin Ladin; I couldn’t believe the Commission just sat on their hineys and let it go by without asking the obvious question, “Then what the hell are we doing in Iraq?”

So, it looks like they’re all in on the big lie, and the whole thing's a fraud and a sham. What other conclusion is there? I commenced yelling at the TV, “Why don’t you ask him why we’re in Iraq? Go on! Ask him! Ask him the question! Jesus Christ on a crutch!”

That’s when the nurse suddenly appears and says, “You’re going to have to be quiet, sir. People are trying to sleep.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I mumbled, hanging my head.

She stood there a moment, glaring at me with a severe frown, the kind of look I imagine she would give a child that had just dashed to pieces one of her treasured family heirlooms. Then, she turned and stalked off, shaking her head.

* * * *

Yes, and it’s a whole country of people sound asleep, like babies. Now and then they wake up and whine for some soft sweet food or mother’s milk. Then, it’s back to sleep. Colin Powell was followed by the sinister Paul Wolfowitz, and then Rumsfeld. Watching kindly old Donald tell his lies, it’s easy to see why child stealers are so successful.

I left the waiting room, looking for something to eat. Passing through a double door, suddenly the halls were as quiet as a mausoleum. After wandering around awhile, I found a little snack shop. Abandoned. The food machines lined the walls, bright and sterile in the cool florescent room, like Hal, the computer, waiting for someone to engage them.

A lone table stood at one end of the room. There, a whole sandwich sat uneaten on a clean paper plate. Probably some nurse was called to an emergency and had to leave it. I checked the halls for some sign of life, then, returned to the table, snatched up the sandwich and wolfed it down. I was that hungry, despite walking pneumonia.

I found some more scraps in the waste basket, collected them in a piece of paper, and took them outside to Vincent. He was waiting patiently by the door. He just about peed himself he was so glad to see me. And equally glad to get a few bites of food, which he lapped up in an instant. I had to grab the paper away from him or he would have eaten it, as well. I felt so sorry for him making him stay out there in the cold that I decided to try and smuggle him into the waiting room.

The mouse-haired nurse was nowhere around and the white haired one was still bent over her mountain of papers. The whole time I was there, I don’t think the pile got any shorter. I slipped Vincent through the door on his rope and quickly tucked him under my chair. Then, I put a pillow in front of him and you couldn’t tell he was there unless you looked close. Poor fella dropped right off to sleep, adding his snores to the others in the room.

Meanwhile, the 9-11 hearings were still going on. Now it was Little Miss Condoleezza in the hot seat. Now, there’s a piece of work! What is it about her that gives me chilblains? Watching her, I kept looking around for a blanket. I wanted to cover up, like when I was a kid, to keep the bogey man away. For some reason, she just surpasses all the others for sheer creepiness. Maybe it’s that permanent scowl in the middle of her forehead just between the eyes that her smile can never quite erase. Maybe it’s that odd little bobbed hairdo that never changes, even the tiniest fraction. Someday, I suppose we’ll find out she was a robot. Yes, I can picture her being dismantled piece by piece with fine little calibrated screwdrivers and wrenches, all the parts of her head laid out on a stainless steel table. Not a drop of blood anywhere. Her brain just a pile of computer chips. I can see her dead eyes sitting there on the slick steel.

In fact, maybe all of them are robots--Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell. Creations of the mad Karl Rove. But not Bush. No, sadly, he’s the most human of them all.

But the one thing they have in common is they’re all programmed to lie. Condi could give them lessons in the lying arts. She spins her lies like a spider spinning its web, all beautiful intricate lacework. By the time she gets done, you have no idea what she’s said, and it could take days to get it all untangled. I hear some press people have nicknamed her “Mushroom Cloud.”

Now, I suppose lying must be among the worst scourges of our times. Perhaps in its own way as bad as the spread of hunger, homelessness, even AIDS. Certainly as much a scourge as war. Where would war be without the big lie? Without lies, we would have had no Viet Nam War, no Korean War, no Philippine War, no Mexican War. We would not be in Iraq today. All that killing, our wealth wasted on these terrible weapons that could end all life on earth, the endless planning and preparation for war, none of it could progress one inch without the lie. Lies are the fuel for wars. Lies are the fuel for all other scourges.

Yet, we put up with it. Why is that? Why is everyone asleep? Is it because our brains are so fogged by the great Praying Mantis of TV that no one can think clearly anymore? When Bush and those other characters enter a room, the odor must be abysmal. How can anyone stand it? Poor, stinking homeless people don’t give off as bad as that. I suppose the only reason the members of the sham Commission are able to tolerate it at all must be because so many of them are tainted themselves with corporate bribes. Maybe if you allow your integrity to be compromised enough over time, your sense of smell diminishes, dries up. They say if you stay around scum long enough, you get used to it. Humans can adjust to anything, they say.

* * * *

Around five a.m., I must have dozed off. When my eyes popped open again, sunlight filled the room and there was a flurry of renewed activity. Doctors, orderlies, nurses swishing by. Janitors mopping floors, emptying waste baskets. The mouse-haired nurse and her white-haired counterpart had gone home, replaced by a fresh out of college red haired nurse with freckles handing out clipboards and forms; behind the window, a black male nurse with white hair and a white mustache. The sheaf of papers in front of him was as thick as ever. I had the feeling whoever drew that duty was destined to experience premature white hair.

A lot of chairs were vacant in the waiting room. But numerous familiar faces remained—maybe twenty of us, all told, looking stale and frazzled, as if we’d just staggered off a bus we’d been riding all night.

Meanwhile, the somber mood of the 9-11 Commission was now replaced with Katie Couric’s flashy morning makeup face. A chef in starched white chef’s hat was showing her how to make crepe suzettes. He talked a mile a minute, knowing he had maybe that much time or less to show her how it was done. Katie kept inserting little chirpy remarks, like a chipmunk, and everyone was laughing and cutting up. The whole thing was kind of pointless, like all those morning shows that millions of people supposedly watch as they ready themselves for work or wherever they’re going.

Checking under my chair, I found Vincent awake and more or less alert. I gave him some pats on the head and whispered to him to be patient and stay put awhile longer. Food was uppermost in my mind, though I was feeling shot and weak. But I was afraid to leave the waiting room for fear I’d miss my turn with the doctor.

Just as I had that thought, I heard my name called. I looked around. Maybe I just imagined it. Then, I heard it again. A nurse I hadn’t seen before was standing there looking around the waiting room. “That’s me,” I said, raising my hand.

“Come on.” She turned and started off. I leaned over and told Vincent to stay put. Then, I got up and followed her out. She lead me through a doorway and down a narrow hall. She stopped at an examining room. “Come on in here and have a seat.” I had a seat on the—what-do-you-call-it—raised bed kind of thing you sit on when they examine you. She proceeded to take my blood pressure and temperature.

She was pretty. She smiled at me. Her badge said her name was Esther. Unlike the bleary eyed night staff, she looked all bright and morning fresh. There was the faint smell of coffee on her breath as she spoke. “So, you’re down with a bad cold, huh?” she said.

“Well, I think it’s pneumonia, actually.” I said.

“Pneumonia?” She frowned a little.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what the nurse said last night.”

“Who said that?”

“I don’t know her name. She had her hair up in a bun. She carried a lot of clipboards.”

“Oh, that’s Margaret. She’s a bit of an alarmist. I don’t think you have pneumonia.”

“Really?”

“Well, you’re not running a fever. Let’s have a listen.”

She listened to me through her stethoscope, telling me to breathe in and out. She put it on my back and listened there, too. “Well, you’ve got some congestion, but I don’t think you have pneumonia.” She smiled and patted me on the arm. Wait here. The doctor’ll be here in a minute.

Pretty soon, the doc came in. Another young one, fresh out of medical school. Perfect hair and teeth. He looked like Clark Kent. He listened to me and pronounced me sick as a dog, “but you don’t have pneumonia,” he said, grinning. He started to write out a scrip for some meds, then he looked at me a moment. Sizing me up, he rifled through a drawer and gave me a handful of pills and a bottle of Robitussin. "Get some rest," he said, and sent me on my way.

As I was heading back to the waiting room, Esther met me at the door. “Are you hungry?” she smiled.

“Starved.”

She handed me a ticket. “Take this down to the cafeteria and get some breakfast. That’ll do you more good than all that stuff he gave you. And whatever you do, stay warm for a few days.” I nodded.

So I ate a huge breakfast and took some out to Vincent. Outside, the sun was coming on bright and strong and everything was warming up. Steam was wafting off the grass and shrubs, looking almost like thin smoke in the air. I stood there a long moment letting the warmth melt over my face and get into my bones. It’s amazing how much better you feel when you find out you haven’t got pneumonia.

PHOTO: TAMI SILICIO

"What in our lives is burnt
 In the fire of this?
 The heart's dear granary?
 The much we shall miss?
 
 Three lives hath one life--
 Iron, honey, gold.
 The gold, the honey gone--
 Left is the hard and cold.

 Iron are our lives
 Molten right through our youth.
 A burnt space through ripe fields,
 A fair mouth's broken tooth."


 --Isaac Rosenberg, August 1914

"The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
 On the old road where all who passed are dead,
 Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
 This early May morn when there is none to wed."


--Edward Thomas, The Cherry Trees

"In twos and threes they have not far to roam
    Crowds that thread eastward, gay of eyes;
 Those seek no further than their quiet home,
    Wives, walking westward, slow and wise.

 Neither should I go fooling over clouds,
    Following gleams unsafe, untrue,
 And tiring after beauty through star-crowds,
    Dared I go side by side with you;

 Or be you in the gutter where you stand,
    Pale rain-flawed phantom of the place,
 With news of all the nations in your hand,
    And all their sorrows in your face."


--Wilfred Owen, Six o'clock in Princes Street

image via Sisyphus Shrugged and Seattle Times

UPDATE: Read Hal Bernton's article in The Seattle Times, that reports how Tami Silicio and her husband were fired in reprisal for this photograph of flag-draped coffins. Link via Orcinus.

by Jack Rafter
No. 6. Desperate Times, Part I.

Dear Mr. Mowgli,
Well, we had Spring for awhile, then we had a cold snap, and now we're back to Spring again. I'd forgotten how hard this time of year can be on the sinuses, especially if you happen to find yourself living out-of-doors. This is my first Spring since losing my home, by the way. But at least I survived the winter.

Vincent and I spent the last three days in Red Dunkel's tent by the freight yards. I've been recuperating from a spell of sickness. Red has a brother in Tucson he goes to see every Spring without fail. He hopped a freight train three days ago, and left me in charge of the tent. So that was lucky. I don't know when--or if--he'll be back, but I expect the dog and I will have the tent to ourselves for a couple of weeks, if not longer.

Anyway, it's been nothing but rain for two days--that slow, misty, drowsy kind of rain that makes a day seem longer than it is. There's a crop of woods here along the south side of the Southern Pacific tracks and you can just look out through the shinnery and see the box cars, flats and tank cars pushed or pulled along by the big yellow-orange switch engines rattling back and forth all day and all night.

There's the beginnings of a little Hooverville in these woods. Or maybe I should say a Bushville: an assortment of crude shacks made of cardboard boxes, discarded pallets, packing crates, sheet metal scraps and tents. I don't know where Red got his tent. It's a nice one, practically brand new, big enough for three people, and you can stand up in it. Red says he doesn't dare walk off and leave it with all the sticky fingers lurking around. So he breaks it down every day. He showed me where he hides it in a fallen tree about twenty yards from here, hollow at one end, where it was uprooted. So I stash the tent in there when I go off to town on a forage.

* * * *

Back during the first warm spell, Vincent and I were walking by this house one day and saw these funny looking contraptions standing in the yard--five or six of them, different sizes, all for sale, from small to large and in between. It's not the first time I've seen these things. It seems to be a little cottage industry in this part of the world, what I call The Wishing Well Fetish.

A hundred years ago, back in the days when things were actually what they were and not just what they seem to be, you'd see these things close to peoples' homes built over water-wells. That was before the utility companies got hold of the water and everything else we need to live and started robbing us blind for them. Anyway, these well-houses had little roofs on them, and a spindle with a bucket that you could lower down into the well and crank back up, and the bucket would be full of delicious cool water. The ones Vincent and I saw were fakes made out of cedar board. They have no function, other than to stand in somebody's yard and look "cute" to passersby. They might have a sign tacked up on them that says, "Wishing Well," or "The Smiths Live Here," or some other nonsense. But there's no actual well underneath. There's no water there, except what runs under the ground through a pipe up to your sink, or to your toilet. The bucket hanging on the spindle wouldn't hold an ounce of water because it's not a real bucket. And the spindle doesn't turn and the crank doesn't crank anything.

And when I look at what's happening in the country lately, for some reason, I seem to think of those wishing wells.

Then we had the cold snap and the very first night nailed me. By the time I got to the shelter, it was full up. I went out to the Bushville looking for Red Dunkel, but he and his tent were nowhere around. Somebody said he might have moved further down the track, but nobody was certain, and I didn't feel like traipsing around looking for him. So Vincent and I headed back to town.

Well, it was a pretty dismal night. We just couldn't find a warm spot. We walked clear over to the Bizzy Bee Grill, but the place was dark. A sign on the door said:

Sorry.
Death in the family.
Come back in two days.
Johnny Blair.

He had glued black crepe paper around the edges. I hoped Johnny was all right. Later, I learned it was his father that had died.

I ended up huddled in the doorway of a bank, of all places. But it was tucked in the building and sheltered from the sleet that was starting to fall. By morning, I was down with a cold. I had a few coins and caught a city bus to the library, hoping to spend the day there and get myself warmed up for the coming night. But when I got there, it was closed. Then, I remembered it was Sunday, and the library's closed Sundays. I could have kicked myself for wasting the coin, but I was feeling too poorly to do it.

At that point, we weren't far from the bookstore, so Vincent and I slogged up there and hung out in the coffee bar till they closed, around nine p.m. At least I got the chill off, but I was starting to feel pretty weak.

It was too late to go back to the shelter. I knew I couldn't stay out in the cold another night. So I headed over to the Mercy Hospital, a good four or five mile walk from where I was. By the time I got there, it was around eleven and I could hardly stand up. I hate that place, but I had no choice. So I left poor Vincent in the bushes and walked in.

First thing that hit me were the lights--bright fluorescents everywhere. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see the place was jammed. Every form of pitiful humanity lined the walls; every chair taken, people sitting on the floor and even lying down, sicker than dogs. Still others were being wheeled in with stab wounds or gaping gunshot wounds. I stood there dizzy and bleary eyed. Then a nurse with mouse colored hair rolled in a bun shoved a clipboard in my hand. "Fill it out," she barked, and kept walking. I found a place on the floor and sat down with my back to the wall to fill it out. The form was seven pages long, and took about an hour to complete.

When I finished, I took the clipboard to the window and started to hand it to another nurse. This one was bent over a sheaf of papers two inches thick. "Don't give me that," she said without looking up. She was about fifty, white hair rolled in a bun; black framed glasses with wings on the ends. A shiny chain hung from the stems.

"Who do I give it to?" I said.

"Give it to the one who gave it to you," she said.

"I don't know who that was," I said.

She looked up, frowning, stabbed the air with her index finger. I looked in that direction and saw the mouse haired nurse wandering around, handing clipboards to the walking wounded. So I turned and went over to her.

"Wait over there," she said after handing her the clipboard. The waiting room was packed like a sardine can. Some folded chairs were set up down the hall to handle the spillover. I spotted an empty and made for it. A few minutes later, I saw the mouse-haired nurse handing my clipboard to the same white-haired nurse behind the window where I'd just come from.

Well, the whole place was pretty surreal. I noticed a number of gurneys parked up and down the halls like taxis waiting in line at an airport terminal. I thought about lying down on one, but they all had people sprawled on them, either passed out or moaning softly. On one gurney near where I was sitting, a bare arm had fallen out from under the sheet; it hung there, as still as the pendulum on a stopped clock. Nobody seemed to notice or care.

Every so often the mouse-haired nurse would bark orders at people, calling out names, sending them this way or the other. She sounded like the foreman on an assembly line. Now and then, she'd remember she was a nurse and would stop to take the pulse of some poor wretch or do a blood pressure check or shove a thermometer in some germ-ridden gob. She performed these acts almost gratuitously. I had the feeling it wouldn't have made the slightest difference to her if someone just keeled over while she stood there counting their feeble heartbeats. On the other hand, she almost seemed put out with some of the strays that staggered through the doors, even some that to me looked almost frighteningly sick, as if it was all she could do to bring herself to wait on them. And I think she included me in that bunch. So she made a great show of her contempt, to let us know, I suppose, that we were siphoning off precious minutes from the truly sick and wounded and dying.

So the time passed. Somehow amidst the cacophony of moans and coughs and wheezes, the rubber-soled shoes of nurses and doctors and orderlies that squeaked as they walked briskly by, the gurneys bumping against doors and the doors constantly flapping as people shoved in and out, somehow I must have nodded off, I was so beat down and tired. Then, in the middle of a dream, I felt the shock of cold metal against my bare chest, and jerked awake. It was the mouse-haired nurse standing there listening to me through a stethoscope. Up close, I noticed she had very red lips, and her perfume--if that's what it was--gave off the scent of strawberries. Her breasts also looked rather nice and full even under the starched white of her uniform. Still, she was all business. "Good, you're awake," she said. "Give us a deep breath and blow it out."

I gave her one. She frowned. She moved the cold steel an inch or two to the right. "Again," she said. I did it again. Then, with a great, tired sigh, she muttered, "You have pneumonia." And walked away.

I sat there blinking, looking around. I was hungry, but I lacked the motivation to try to ferret anything out. There were a few empty chairs along the walls. It seemed the place had cleared out a little. I got up, kind of wobbly, and staggered to the waiting room. Some seats were open there, too. The remaining refugees all looked like they'd been there a long time, hours or days; some just sat blinking stupidly, others were collapsed over onto each other, passed out. A TV blared, mounted on an arm up on the wall. It was a hockey game in progress, taped earlier in the day, I supposed. It was all charge and counter-charge, the sound of manic, cheering fans rising and falling like the rush of a blast furnace. Nobody was paying it any attention, so I sidled up and changed the channel. Jay Leno popped on, asking Ben Afleck something about his breakup with J-Lo. It was maybe the hundred-thousandth time someone had raised this question over a period of months, on whose answer the fate of the entire world seemed to hang in the balance. Ben made some off-hand remark which roused Jay and the whole audience to hysterical laughter.

I switched it again, and there was the 9-11 Commission. Apparently, they were just playing excerpts from a week of testimony. So, I sat down and watched awhile.

Right now, it was Colin Powell sitting there giving his version of things in his reasonable, measured way. At one point, he said, "The moment those planes hit the towers, right then I knew we had to go after Al Qaeda and Osama bin Ladin. I just knew it."

"Then why are we in Iraq?" I hollered at the screen. Woops. It had popped out before I knew what I was doing. I glanced around. A few people were staring at me. I looked back at the screen. There was silence as Powell droned on. I couldn't believe it. Here was this elephant in the room and no one on the commission was looking at it. No one was asking the obvious question. "Ask him! Go on! Ask him the question--why are we in Iraq! Ask him, ask him, goddamnit!" I'd worked myself up so much now I was hacking and coughing. "Jesus Christ! What's the matter with you people? I don't believe this! Lies! Lies! Ah, to hell with it! You're not looking for the truth! It's all a sham! A side-show!"

Suddenly, the mouse-haired nurse was standing there, hovering over me like a police helicopter. You're going to have to be quiet, she snapped. "Can't you see people are trying to sleep?"

"Sorry," I mumbled.

Mr. Lee R. Raymond
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Exxon Mobil Corporation
5959 Las Colinas Blvd.
Irving, TX 75039-2298

Dear Sir,

I notice in your current Public Relations statement concerning the 1989 Valdez oil spill, you make a claim for a “fully recovered Prince William Sound ecosystem.” Later in that same statement, you claim that the ecosystem of Prince William Sound is “healthy, robust and thriving.”

If those statements are true, how do you explain the severely depressed economy of the region in the years since the 11-million gallon spill covered 1,500 miles of coastline? Why hasn’t there been a herring season in ten years? Why are a third of fishers in the Port of Cordova experiencing clinical depression? Why do sixty percent of Cordova commercial fishers have to take second jobs to make ends meet? Before the spill there were fishers in Cordova whose permits were worth almost a million dollars. Today, those permits have depreciated by 90 percent. Don’t you find that just a little strange, given that the ecosystem of Prince William Sound is, as you say, “healthy, robust and thriving”?

It has been ten years since a federal jury awarded the people of the region $5.2 billion in damages. But your company has hired hundreds of lawyers and fought this ruling every step of the way. And you have hired your own scientists to negate or deny the damage that Exxon did there, just as they deny the science on global climate change.

Furthermore, in some court arguments, Exxon claims that under the Federal Clean Water Act, crude oil is not a pollutant. Crude oil is not a pollutant? Do you really believe that, Mr. Raymond?

I doubt that Prince William Sound is “robust and thriving.” But it seems that lies, corporate greed and corruption, are, indeed, robust and thriving. And what’s sad is that a company as rich as yours somehow believes it has to conduct business this way. Indeed, thinks it’s normal.

Yes, $5.2 billion is “punitive damages,” and you have the right to fight it, I suppose. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if there isn’t still some room in the human heart for what’s right and decent. Do you suppose there still exists a place where people behave ethically toward one another now and then, and not just at the behest of lawyers and judges?

You see, I so want to believe that we’re not all of us lost, Mr. Raymond. I can’t help but think how easy it would be for you to reach out to the people of the Sound whose lives and livelihoods have been shattered.

What do you suppose it would actually cost in the whole scheme of things for you to make that kind of choice? What would it mean in this cynical world of ours, were a company like Exxon to seize the initiative in that way? Imagine your company transforming itself under your leadership—becoming an example for the rest, thereby perhaps signaling a real change in the way business is conducted, and how corporations treat ordinary human beings? I’m no expert, but I should imagine the impact of such an act would reverberate around the world. And what do you suppose that might be worth?

Am I an idealist? Yes. A “bleeding heart”? Probably. But I must tell you, Mr. Raymond: By not doing this thing that I believe is right, but instead turning your back on it—turning your back on these good people—there must be a cost for that. In dollars? No, not in dollars.

What then? What would be the cost? Perhaps only you know the answer.

God bless you, Mr. Raymond. And God bless the people of Cordova.


Sincerely,
Grayson Harper

"We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.

"And so, by these Providences of God--and the phrase is the government's, not mine--we are a World Power."

--Mark Twain, commenting on the Philippine War, 1901.

"I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies."

--Mark Twain, writing in the New York Herald, 1900.

PHOTO:EPA


"In a testy news conference [Easter] Sunday, [Brig General] Kimmitt said that the widespread Iraqi perception that civilians were being killed indiscriminately in Fallujah by U.S. forces was based on irresponsible and inaccurate reporting by the two most popular Arab-language channels, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya."

"To Iraqis who were angered by the American actions, he said: "Change the channel,...The stations that are showing Americans killing women and children are not legitimate news sources"."

--Nicholas Riccardi and Tony Perry, The LA Times (registration required)


Riccardi in Baghdad and Perry in Fallujah reported eyewitness accounts from survivors fleeing besieged Fallujah; and these confirmed earlier reports of civilian deaths at the hands of American soldiers. Marine snipers had been shooting anyone who ventured out into the open. Ambulances were targeted, people waving white flags, burial parties, and people trying to flee the scene. Even after the first lulls in heavy bombardment and strafing, which were characterized as cease-fires, it was clear that American sharpshooters carried on with their work. They continued to shoot civilians, as well as armed men. The latest estimate of Iraqi losses in Fallujah is put at 600 dead and well over a thousand wounded. Iraqi doctors, working at clinics in the city, provided these statistics.

At the scene, Reuters reported, "There were too many dead and wounded for hospital workers in the besieged city to deal with. Outside a hastily erected field hospital, Reuter's television footage shows corpses lying in the street, wrapped in bloodstained white sheets."

"The dead include small children, women and old men, and a new born baby. Beside the corpses there is a pile of body parts which no one has had time to deal with."

As the US military continued to discount the reports from Arabic media, concerning the targeted civilians, there were still a few western sources which could validate the stories, during the week that ended on Easter Sunday. On April 11th, a report from Jo Wilding, a British activist, supplied some pertinent information. Ms. Wilding tells the story of how a journalist alerted her, late at night, about the desperate situation in Fallujah. The journalist convinced her to help bring medical supplies into the embattled city, telling her that it was crucial to have westerners along who spoke English, in order to get the medical supplies through American checkpoints. With courage, Jo Wilding committed herself to this, and began a harrowing journey toward Fallujah, where she also helped bring wounded into the clinics. She writes compellingly about her experience serving with an ambulance crew, which came under sniper fire:

"We stop, turn off the siren, keep the blue light flashing, wait, eyes on the silhouettes of men in US Marine uniforms on the corners of the buildings. Several shots come. We duck, get as low as possible and I can see tiny red lights whipping past the window, past my head. Some, it's hard to tell, are hitting the ambulance. I start singing. What else do you do when someone's shooting at you? A tire bursts with an enormous noise and a jerking of the vehicle."

"I'm outraged. We're trying to get a woman who's giving birth without any medical attention, without electricity, in a city under siege, in a clearly marked ambulance, and you're shooting at us. How dare you?"

But Wilding and the ambulance crew are unable to reach the house where the woman is giving birth. Azzam, the driver, has to wheel around and lurch over the median. They flee for their lives back to the hospital. The next morning they find the ambulance out of commission, and they head for the streets in a pick-up.

"We go again, Dave, Rana and me"...We shout again to the soldiers, hold up the flag with a red crescent sprayed onto it. Two come down from the building, cover this side and Rana mutters, "Allahu akbar. Please nobody take a shot at them.."

"First we go down the street we were sent to. There's a man, face down, in a white dishdasha, a small round red stain on his back. We run to him. Again the flies have got there first. Dave is at his shoulders, I'm by his knees and as we reach to roll him onto the stretcher Dave's hand goes through his chest, through the cavity left by the bullet that entered so neatly through his back and blew his heart out."

"There's no weapon in his hand. Only when we arrive, his sons come out, crying, shouting. He was unarmed, they scream. He just went out to the gate and they shot him. He was ...55 years old."

Jo Wilding got onboard the same bus that brought her to Fallujah, a bus filled with badly wounded who needed to reach Baghdad.

"We stop in Abu Ghraib and swap seats, foreigners in the front, Iraqis less visible, headscarves off so we look more western. The American soldiers are so happy to see westerners they don't mind too much about the Iraqis with us, search the men and the bus, leave the women unsearched because there are no women soldiers to search us. Mohammed keeps asking me if things are going to be OK."

"Al-melaach wiyana, I tell him. The angels are with us. He laughs."

"And then we're in Baghdad, delivering them to the hospitals, Nuha in tears as they take the burnt man off groaning and whimpering."

"And the satellite news says the cease fire is holding and George Bush says to the troops on Easter Sunday that, "I know what we're doing in Iraq is right"."

"Well George, I know too now. I know what it looks like when you brutalize people so much that they've nothing left to lose. I know what it looks like when an operation is being done without anesthetic because the hospitals are destroyed or under sniper fire and the city's under siege and aid isn't getting in properly. I know what it sounds like too. I know what it looks like when tracer bullets are passing your head, even though you're in an ambulance. I know what it looks like when a man's chest is no longer inside him and what it smells like and I know what it looks like when his wife and children pour out of his house."

"It's a crime and it's a disgrace to us all."



Sources via Jeanne d'Arc and Brooke Biggs

The testimony of Condoleeza Rice reminded the nation that it was visited with tragedy in 2001, owing to "structural problems" that preceded the catastrophe in New York. The National Security Advisor appeared poised because the staging and time-constraints worked in her favor, as she sat before the 9/11 Commission. The broken skyline of Ground Zero was still represented by the 9/11 families, who made up a segment of her audience.

Dr. Rice, a self-possessed raconteur, demonstrated that the lie, per se, is not important; it is the packaging of the lie that matters most of all. David Corn, writing for The Nation, reported her repetition of this lie before the Commission:

"She also took the occasion to cheerlead for the war in Iraq, claiming that by striking Iraq the administration attacked the threat of terrorism "at its source"."

The interested public understood that the 9/11 Commission was gathering testimony, and other evidence, in order to reconstruct the events that led up to the September 11th attack. The central question pointed to the lack of effectiveness of President George W. Bush and staff, in evaluating and acting upon the al-Qaida threat. The secondary and unspoken questions were conjured up in the minds of the better informed, like a stairway that leads only to a wall of secrecy. But through a crack in the masonry one must examine, for instance, the political and commercial ties between the Saudis and the Bush Family, or the positioning of corporations to leech away Iraqi resources, or the confederation of appointees set aside to govern Iraq, or the labyrinth into which ordinary Iraqis disappear, as they resist occupation and seek legitimacy and sovereignty.

Rice testified that the Administration had no "actionable" evidence prior to 9/11. And she underlined this by saying "I know that, had we thought there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it." The Aug. 6 memo (Presidential Daily Briefing), which was a subject of prolonged discussion, was described by Dr. Rice as primarily historical in context, and not outlining any precise threat.

In a Salon article by Joe Conason, titled The Artful Dodger, the reporter writes:

"The pertinent question is not whether the president would have tried to stop an attack whose details were thoroughly placed under his nose. The real question is whether the Bush administration paid sufficient attention to the stream of warnings it received about al-Qaida, or whether, due to its preoccupation with Iraq, missile defense and other matters, these officials simply failed to act."

Commissioner Bob Kerry resisted Rice's attempts to charm him, and said this to her: "In the spirit of declassification"..."this is what the Aug 6 memo said to the president: that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking."

And in the conclusion of his article, Conason added, "The true narrative is seeping out, and the hidden facts are leaking out."

A transition from these proceedings to the theatre of Iraq, is not an obscure one, by any means. The ground of desolation moves from South Manhattan to Iraq. This new disaster is unnecessary; and the people of Iraq did nothing to provoke it. People who are still dealing with grief can grasp this solidarity, soldiers killed and broken, civilians dead and wounded, a young Iraqi man weeping in solitude, standing at the bottom of a bomb crater. Whoever we are in this conflict, it is possible to know that desolation surrounds us; and if this keeps up, the bitter tears will even invade our dreams.

Here is a depraved war, a war waged in utter contempt of democracy. And from the point of view of the American system, a corrosive betrayal of democratic process. And here is a corrupt war.

Even dedicated religious adversaries, like the Sunni and Shi'a, are driven into each others arms by the American subjugation of their resources and landscape, their politics and culture. The Bush Administration's denials are finally implausible. The dislodging of Saddam Hussein was not the end; and everyone can see that the proposal for holding elections was rejected in the early stage of the Occupation.

The Iraqi scene is being prepared to accommodate permanent US military bases, without regard to Iraqi opinion. And already the wall of a mosque has been knocked down, to deal with a single insurgent. Reprisals are to be visited on towns and communities, and desolate, broken landscapes will multiply throughout Iraq. This unmitigated monstrosity, this blood-spattered offense to everything we cherish, was an institutional objective of the Bush Administration, preconceived and premeditated. What then will we say, as Americans? What will we say in November, as we vote? What must we do when we have wept and the tears will no longer come?

There should be a consensus among all who mourn.


Sources via Orcinus and Zizka. Image via efflog.

The following is a letter from the April 5th issue of The Nation, Letters, submitted by one of its readers, Marianne Brown, of South Haven, Michigan. Sometimes you run across something, and you realize the truth that it speaks just can't be expressed any better.

One Woman's War

South Haven, Mich.

I am furious. I knew when the neocons stole the Florida election, things would go sour, and, yes, I marched three times against this cabal. But little did my husband and I know then that the election would effectively take his son, my stepson, over to Iraq. I have followed this barbaric slaughter from the beginning. I watch it with new eyes now. I wonder every time an explosion occurs or a soldier is killed, Is that my loved one?

His name is Michael. He's 21. He's an Army reservist. No, he didn't join the reserves to go halfway around the world to be part of the occupation of another country for a bunch of neocons who have been planning this for years. He went into the reserves for training so he could be a police officer someday. (You see, they think like that at 21. They think that's a good idea, no matter what you tell them.) He was a weekend warrior, a kid who lacked worldly experience and hoped for a college education.

A beautiful young man is somewhere in Iraq right now, sent over with scoliosis (the Army conveniently lost his X-rays) for no damn reason except to prop up short-term profits and giveways to US corporations. We don't know if we will ever see him again. What we do know is that he just walked into a civil war that is erupting daily into unadulterated hell on earth. We know he may come home in a box, or maimed for life, or psychologically damaged beyond comprehension.

You cannot imagine the anger we feel as we watch the laughing, tittering talking heads on corporate TV run puff pieces as news and ignore the horrors of wondering where a child is in Iraq: Will he come home? Is he OK? What's it like for him to endure 120-degree heat? Is he afraid? Will someone be with him if he dies or is wounded? Will someone hold his hand and tell him we love him?

That child is ours. He does not belong to the neocons. They don't care who these kids are. They demand warm bodies to send into this black hole they created. I will spend every breath of my life working to get that lowlife fratboy dragged out of the White House in chains. This is too much to bear. --Marianne Brown.


We reprint this letter in honor of Ms. Brown. . . and all mothers of soldiers everywhere.

by Jack Rafter
No. 5: A Small Emergency

Dear Mr. Mowgli,
Well, it's been awhile since I wrote in my diary. In fact, I lost my diary for awhile there. I was sitting in The Bizzy Bee Griddle late one night--back in February, I think. It was sleeting outside so the dog and I were trying to stay warm. Johnny Blair, the griddle man whose body is covered in tattoos, doesn't mind us hanging out there when the weather goes to hell.

Anyway, it was kind of quiet that night, and it's almost never quiet in The Bizzy Bee. Vincent was asleep under the table. Someone had left a newspaper. So I was sitting there reading it as I sipped my coffee, when I ran across an item in the back pages about the high number of people losing their homes in Fort Baird and all over the country. Up in the thousands per month, the article said. Not since the Depression of '29 have there been this many foreclosures. Yet, no one is calling what's happening now a "Depression." I figured it must be because the Stock Market is just tootling right along as if nothing was amiss.

I don't pretend to know anything about running a newspaper, but it seemed odd to me that here, on the front page, was a headline about a winning football team, and another next to that about a rock star arrested for deviant behavior, while buried in the back pages was this story about widespread foreclosures of peoples' homes in the midst of a land of plenty, whose military budget would be enough to feed everyone on earth. I was going to jot down a few thoughts about that, but when I reached for my diary, it was gone.

I suffered what you might call a bit of panic. It's hard to explain, but I consider Mr. Mowgli almost my best friend in the world. A person in my position doesn't have too many friends, especially the kind you can confide in. Moreover, the thought of some strange hands picking him up and leafing through his pages filled me with dread. I'm very choosy about what I let people read in my diary. You can't be too careful these days.

It must have slipped out of my pocket somewhere. I tried to think over where I'd been. The last place I could remember having it was when I made my accidental freight train trip to Jeffords, and ended up having Thanksgiving with the switchman, Spencer Dupree, and his wife, Jewel (Episode 4). They gave me a bunk in the caboose and I rode the train back to Fort Baird the next day.

I spent a night here, a night there. The weather turned cold. Then, I ran into Red Dunkel one day at the library. He went in there not to read books, but to get warm. As a matter of fact, I spotted ten or twelve familiar faces, the ones I usually see haunting the city parks, the homeless shelter, the streets, the train yard, more of them than I've ever seen in there before, all looking tired and haggard, leafing through magazines or picture books, trying to stay awake, because the librarians don't allow any sleeping in there, you know. The temperature had dropped into the twenties, as I recall, so they had a good reason to keep awake. Still, it's not easy. The library is a pretty relaxing place if you haven't slept in a few days, or all you've known is the underbelly of a bridge or a hedgerow for shelter.

There were a few other faces in there that were new to me. The newly homeless. Been seeing more of them lately. Yes, you can spot them, if you know what to look for. Something frayed, the beginnings of wear and tear around the edges. Those faces are fresher, of course. But there's a look in the eyes. The look of someone spooked. And more than that: the look of defeat and dismay. After all, they did everything right, didn't they? They worked hard, they voted for the right candidates, they went to church, they said their prayers, they invested their money. What happened?

That fresh face goes away pretty soon, replaced by something else. The miles quickly add up on your odometer when you're without shelter for awhile. Till you can get your bearings and figure out what's where. Some people never figure it out. The shock of losing everything is too much for them. Next time you're sitting comfortably in your nice warm house, eating a meal you cooked yourself on your own stove in your own kitchen, or just having a cup of tea, say, with the cat purring in your lap-- look around at all the things you have. The little things. The table, the placemats, pictures on the walls; pictures of your mother, your father, aunts, uncles; books on the shelves. All the precious little mementos of your life. Consider how attached you are to these things. Then consider what it might be like to lose them. Not gradually. But perhaps rather quickly. Almost over night.

It does something to you. People with plenty of money, who have never experienced that, and can't even imagine it, only those people could vote to deny assistance for the poor. Yet now, more than ever, it's those very people who are finding themselves in trouble. And, like their parents or their grandparents in '29, most of them don't have a clue what's happening. The difference is that in '29, there were people in positions of power who cared enough to do something about it. Then, the Christians among us paid a little more attention to the Sermon On The Mount, and less to the Book of Revelations.

I found Dunkel in the movie section, reading the synopses of the movies on the backs of their plastic containers. Of course, he doesn't own a TV or VCR, so I guess that's as near as he could come to watching them. We traded a little small talk. I asked him if he knew any good places to pass the night. He told me he had a tent in the woods by the train yards and had room for an extra person if I wanted in. "You can bring your dog, if you want," he said. I thanked him, but I said, "Don't count on me, Red." I don't like the idea of sharing a tent with anyone. Besides I figured it was probably some old discarded thing, full of holes, that would let in the rain and wind.

As I started to leave, Red held up a movie. "You ever seen this one, Jack?" It was called Down And Out In Beverly Hills. I was familiar with it, having seen it in better days. Yes, I once owned a TV and a VCR, and a few other appliances, as well. Down And Out features a broke down bum and his scruffy dog, who are more or less adopted by a spoiled rich family living in Beverly Hills. The bum is superbly played by Nick Nolte, one of my favorite actors. The husband is acted by Richard Dreyfus, and Bette Midler is wonderful as his sexually frustrated wife. Of course, the premise is pretty far-fetched. The chances of a rich family taking in a filthy bedraggled bum off the streets, are about as likely as Ken Lay forking over his ill-gotten gains back to all his ripped-off employees at Enron. But to those of you who still own TVs and VCRs, I strongly recommend the movie. Watch it while you can. It's free at the library.

Red's eyes were excited as we talked about this movie. "Yeah, it's a good one," I said.

"God damn, but I'd sure like to see it," he said. "If I could just get my hands on one of those video machines."

"You need a TV to go with it," I reminded him.

"I do? Oh, yeah, I guess I do, don't I?" He thought about it a moment with a serious frown. I could see his gears were turning a little, though they were a bit rusty. Then, with a clicking sound in his cheek, he said, "Well, let's you and me take this movie somewhere and watch it, what do you say, Jack?"

"You have to check it out of the library first," I said.

Again, the frown. The gears turning in slow motion. Then, finally, a hopeful smile. "That's okay, we can do that."

"You got a library card?"

"Library card. No."

"Well, how you gonna check the movie out without a card?"

"All right, let's get one, then."

"You have to give them an address."

"An address? Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"Hm. Well, all right, I can do that."

"You have a permanent address, Red?"

"Naw. I'll just make one up."

"You'll have to show 'em a driver's license."

"Oh."

"You got a driver's license, Red?"

"No. Yeah."

His eyes brightened. Reaching in his hip pocket, he pulled out a wallet so shiny and beat up, it was about to fall apart. He opened it. There was no money in it, of course. But there were some cards, a few. Sure enough, he nudged out a driver's license. "Here it is," he said, handing it to me. It was yellow and faded. The picture, half fogged over, didn't even resemble him anymore. The license had expired years ago.

"We'll have to get you a new license," I said to him, handing it back. "But hold onto that one, Red, for a keepsake. It's a nice picture of you."

"It is?" he said.

"Yeah."

He looked at it a long moment with that frown on his face. Then, looking up with a half-smile, he said, "Yeah, it is a nice picture, ain't it?"

* * *

That night, after searching around and not having any luck, I decided a raggedy tent was better than nothing. When I got there, I couldn't believe my eyes. Red not only had a nice tent, brand new, with a ground cloth and everything, but hanging from a tree limb was a shiny Coleman lantern that lit up his whole campsite. He also had a nice little fire going in front of the tent and he invited me to join him, so I did, and proceeded to warm my hands. Vincent went straight for it and laid down as close to the hot coals as he could without singing himself.

I asked Red where on earth he got the tent. "Picked it up somewhere," he said, with a wink. The only problem, he said, was he had to take it down every morning and hide it; said it would be gone if he walked off and left it standing. So, it was some trouble. To that I said, "Well, Red, having a house is always trouble."

"Yes, you're right about that, Jack," he admitted.

"But look here," I said. "You don't have to paint it, do you?"

"Nope."

"You don't have to put a new roof on it every ten years, do you?"

"Sure don't."

"And you don't owe no property tax on it, do you?"

"No sirree," he smiled.

"Well, then," I said, "count your lucky stars."

Anyway, long story short, once I remembered camping out at Red's place, then I remembered where I left my diary. I jumped up from my booth in the Bizzy Bee, left my coffee and newspaper sitting there, and ran for the door. Johnny Blair hollered, "Hey, what's your hurry, Jack?"

"I left my diary in Red Dunkel's tent!" I replied. "Be back in an hour!"


* * *

The tall bloke on the left, carrying the sign marked WE, is Tholos writer, Grayson Harper.




image via annatopia.com

Syndicated columnist and renowned tv news anchor, Walter Cronkite, writes of the disaffected retreat of the George W. Bush Administation from a growing scientific consensus, the potentially devastating impact of global warming. Here is an excerpt from his article, Make global warming an issue, posted at philly.com, on March 15, 2004.


"The contempt of the Bush administration for environmentalists and their concerns is well known by now. While evidence of man- made environmental damage mounts, the Bush team resists its implications like a defeated army whose rear guard fights off its pursuers as it retreats. That has been especially true of its handling of the most serious of all environmental issues - global warming.

First, the administration claimed that global warming was the work of liberal hysterics and had been discounted by "more sober scientists." Then, it admitted that it was happening but said there was no proof humans caused it, or could fix it.

Retreat No. 3 was the White House discovery that, yes, indeed, some of the warming was due to human activity, and we should take steps, say, to reduce emissions, but those steps should be voluntary on the part of industry.

There are two scientific theories that have been gaining credence in recent years that challenge the sanity of that kind of resistance to fact - and make no mistake about it, global warming is a fact.

Both theories begin with a phenomenon that is taking place right now. Scientists are beginning to understand climate as a complex interactive system that is affected by everything from the emission of greenhouse gases, to deforestation, to the condition of Arctic and Antarctic glaciers.

It is a system with a feedback mechanism. For example, higher temperatures lead to the melting of sea ice, which exposes more water to the sun. The water absorbs more solar energy, which accelerates global warming, and so on. Scientists fear that such feedbacks might produce a self-sustaining and accelerating warming that is beyond human control.

The second theory goes by the name of Abrupt Climate Change. It suggests that catastrophic results of global warming might not occur gradually, as most have expected, but quite suddenly - within a few years. This theory also starts with the melting of glaciers and sea ice, but involves the dilution of seawater's salinity - or salt content - that results. That salt content is a key element in an ocean current that takes heat from the tropics northward and cold water southward and in the process moderates temperatures in the Eastern United States and much of Europe.

The collapse of this so-called conveyor could, in the worst case, produce a new ice age. The best case would give us severe winters, increasingly violent storms, flooding, drought and high winds around the globe, disrupting food production and energy supplies and raising sea levels high enough to flood coastal cities and make them unlivable.

These are not predictions but real possibilities - far more possible today than scientists had previously believed."

"One thing we have to keep in mind: While these might only be worst-case scenarios, many of the conditions and processes scientists think might trigger them already are present or under way. Global warming is at least as important as gay marriage or the cost of Social Security. And if it is not seriously debated in the general election, it will measure the irresponsibility of the entire political class. This is an issue that cannot, and must not, be ignored any longer."

Today is a good day to celebrate Spanish courage, because it seems that the world cannot afford to do without it.. While still registering the shock and horror from the Madrid attacks, voters in Spain went to the polls in a huge turnout to repudiate the Aznar government. The voters there have handed power to the Socialists, because the PP and its leader could not be trusted to act in the interests of the people. The defeated party led Spain into a war in Iraq on the coattails of the Bush Administration and in direct opposition to the overwhelming majority of Spaniards. Voters had valid reasons to reject Aznar and everything he represented. This so-called leader used the long-standing skirmish with Basque extremists, to inflame the voters, before credible evidence could be assembled regarding the actual perpetrators. This effort to manipulate the dead, and use them as counters in a political game, only produced nausea and anger among Spanish voters.

The most alienated commentary (coming mostly from those outside Spain) has been to the effect that the vote somehow suggests appeasement in the face of terrorism. Oddly, even some left-of-center pundits have peddled this nonsense. The enormous expression of public will by the electorate demonstrates just the opposite. It is clear that the Spanish voter is neither intimidated by the terrorist nor by the fear-mongering government that serves at the pleasure of Bush&Co;, in a cruel war.

In a democracy, a government will not long stand, if it proves untrustworthy. The others, who are now elected in Spain, must serve the will of the people with more fidelity. Aznar and his party were rejected because of a repellent use of Spain's still-mourned dead. These dead were claimed for political advantage, and voters were right to punish the manipulators.

In the aftermath of the election, a BBC article quotes Spanish economist, Rafael Lopez:

"The youth above all has brought us back. They know what is best for them. They have said no to the war and no to terrorism and all Spanish people want peace."


UPDATE: BY ALL MEANS READ JUAN COLE'S ARTICLE ON THIS SUBJECT!