Above All Else....Hope

The last couple of weeks, on this blog, have been kinda depressing to me. We have such a wide range of views...in some cases a giant chasm....on how to proceed in the Middle East. I have to admit that lately I seem to have lost hope--any hope really--in thinking that people in this country of intelligence and good nature will prevail over the ones who think slaughtering people is just dandy. Or we can even find any common ground, for that matter.

So, this week, I decided to do what I always to when I feel down: talk to a young person. By young, I mean in the 16-20 year range. There have been times, of course, when this has made me even more depressed, especially when I meet a young person who can't name a single world leader other than President Bush. And doesn't care either. But most of the time their energy and general positivity rub off on me and I feel better. I felt these things and more when I spent some time talking with a friend of mine named Alice Childress.

Alice is going to be senior at a suburban high school here in Minneapolis. She is bright, charming, and I consider it an honor to have a friendship with her. Last week, I loaned her the movie Breakdown and asked her for her reaction. I asked her four questions and her responses were far more profound and intelligent than I expected them to be. She sees her generation with an extreme width of vision and has a balanced view which I think we will all find refreshing.

M: What is your reaction to this film?
A: I have to admit, I’m not quite as crazy about this film as you are. I do agree with a lot of information presented, particularly the interview with the economic hit man and the facts about the United States’ previous involvement in several third world nations. But some of the suggestions, like the idea that our government is to blame for September 11 or anthrax, just piss me off. There’s no other way to say it. But overall I thought it was a very good and mostly factual film. It does amaze me how both sides of extremists can twist, omit and carefully place words and images to prove their point. For as much as the Bush administration has lied and played with information, the liberal extremists probably haven’t been much more honest. The difference, however, is that Bush’s lies have resulted in a four year war and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

M: How do you see the situation in Iraq?
A: Honestly, I don’t see how we’re helping Iraq. We went in there with the goal of helping the citizens, and like the film said, we ended up attracting terrorism and killing upwards of 150 thousand civilians. Real big help, yeah. The liberals will argue that oil, not helping the Iraqis was our motivation for war. A much less noble cause to be sure, but even that doesn’t appear to have been very successful. As a new driver, my life basically revolves around gas and I feel like I have to sell my soul for a tank.
So remind me again, why are we there? I think the current reason is that we’re setting up a democracy in Iraq so it can be used as a model for the Middle East. What America – and the rest of the western world, the World Bank, and the IMF – doesn’t get is that the Middle East doesn’t want or need democracy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the system in most cases. But the western idea of success in government is very different from the eastern, and until we recognize that giant cultural difference it will be impossible to make progress in the Middle East.

Take a look at China, for example. Americans hate communism; they always have and they always will. But China has the fastest growing economy in the world, a secure government, and its people seem to be a whole lot happier than the Iraqis. Different nation, different values, good result. Yet Americans still believe that democracy is the only savior.

M:How do you see the United States’ place in the world?
A: In regard to this question, I believe that my generation has been fucked…er, screwed…and here’s why: we have no respect for our country. Since first grade, I’ve been indirectly told by young, smiling teachers as part of the revisionist curriculum that I was an ugly white American who killed the Indians, chopped down the rain forest and used to hold slaves. So I didn’t start off being particularly proud of my nation’s history.

I was ten years old when George Bush was inaugurated. I watched CNN in my sixth grade classroom on September 11, 2001, on a television that had been smuggled into the room because the school administration didn’t want to tell us about the attacks. For as long as I have cared, the United States has occupied areas of the Middle East under Bush’s leadership. To people my age, America has been defined by its involvement in the Middle East. That involvement has been personified by Bush. Therefore, America = Bush. It is perceived, at least at my high school, that to love America is to love the Bush administration and to support the troops is to support Bush’s decision to keep them in Iraq.

So, half the young population is convinced that they do not love their own country. This, of course, is incorrect, as we are mistakenly identifying the nation. But we don’t know that because we have been socialized by the media, our left-leaning public schools, and our peers. I believe the result is that there is no such thing as patriotism in people between fourteen and twenty years old.

We are disillusioned, separated, and ungrounded. In thirty years, when we will be the leading politicians, I imagine a very different America will develop as a result of this upbringing. Unless, of course, we all move to Canada because we just can’t take it anymore. I hear the skiing’s pretty good up there, so who knows.

M: Do you have hope?
A: Hope of what, exactly? Getting out of Iraq? Yes, I do. America’s finally starting to get pissed each time another dead body comes home. Not Vietnam-pissed, but if there was a draft I can definitely see it going there. Hope for Iraqis? They need to have their own hope first before mine makes any difference. How about hope for our government? Yes and no. Bush has really messed up and I am certainly looking forward to how history treats him. But there are a lot of leaders before him who have messed up as well. I think the government of this nation will always lie, it will always pursue alternate interests, and it will always be helped along by the media.
That’s just the kind of country we are.

I think if you can accept that and still strive to make it the best government possible, you can have hope. Basically, as a young and mostly innocent person I think I am inclined to be optimistic about the future. And there are several million more American citizens with that exact same natural tendency.

In my opinion, that simple fact seems reason enough for incredible amounts of hope.

She Does It Again

It's been a long time since the token conservative at the Minneapolis Star Tribune pissed me off. I guess she was saving it all up for today. Check out this column. Click here to read it.

For those of you who don't remember, I wrote a column on this very subject last year. Click here to read it.

Normally I don't respond to people like Ms. Kersten because it's like....oh, I dunno...having a conversation with an empty Styrofoam cup but I decided to send her the following email. Think I will get a reply?

Ms Kersten,

Your column today is a shining example of someone who lives in a cocoon of
unreality. If you had actually taken the time to do research on the
Reichstag Fire you would've seen the striking similarities between that
incident and 9-11.

Take off your neocon blinders and see that the people that you support are
criminals who will stop at nothing in their greedy pursuit of wealth and
power. One of things that I have always admired about the conservative
message is its adherence to morality and the law. Apparently, our current
administration is excused from both of these principles and get away with
pretty much whatever they want...thanks to people like you and columns like
you wrote today.

Mark

Part Two

Here is Part Two of my interview with Joanne Tucker, producer and director of the film Breakdown.

M: In the film, you seem to intimate that the US government itself was responsible for the anthrax attacks. What do you think really happened with all of that? We haven't heard much about it and it seems that most people have forgotten.

J: I wasn't directly intimating that our government was responsible for the anthrax attacks of late 2001. What the film shows (in part one, The Message) is Colin Powell making the case for War on Iraq in February 2003 at the UN Security Council, in which our leadership was stating in an unequivocal way that Iraq possessed WMDs.

Powell, always speaking on behalf of his bosses, stressed throughout the key speech that these were not assertions but statements of solid fact. In the film I show one of those statements made by Powell flanked by the Head of the CIA and the US Ambassador to the UN, while holding up a vial of white (probably johnson's baby) powder before the Council and the world's TV cameras:

'This forced several hundred people to undergo emergency medical treatment and killed two postal workers just from an amount, just about THIS quantity that was inside of an envelope. Iraq declared 8500 litres of anthrax..'

The wording is very very clever and very very typical of the government and media persuasion campaign leading to war. I don't put the entire onus on Colin Powell, although he as others allowed himself to be used and I'm sure he as others, is not proud of that chapter.

Notice how Powell is speaking of the anthrax attacks directly after 9/11 that made headlines on every US news show linking it to Iraq or Arabs, and in the very next sentence, he talks of Iraq. But as usual with the Administration's propaganda build-up, it's all about juxtaposition (putting unrelated statements next to each other but leaving it up to the listener, to make the direct links that don't exist.) and omission.

He puts two statements together that are completely unrelated. It would have been much more relevant for example (but not good for a case for War on an oil-rich Islamic heartland state) if Powell had said in statement 2: 'A 52-year-old American belonging to the Aryan Nations, a US-based militant white separatist group, who in 1995 and 1998 was arrested by the FBI for possessing bubonic plague and convicted of threatening to wipe out the city of Las Vegas and the state of Nevada with military grade anthrax to which he had access, has not been determined to be responsible for the so far timely but unaccounted for anthrax attacks of late 2001.'

Powell's other party trick (the omission) is in saying: 'Iraq declared 8500 litres of anthrax..' Yeah. In 1991, before those 8500 litres were destroyed under UN supervision and documented by the UN (again, not mentioned.) No anthrax, biological or chemical weapons were ever found in Iraq. However, our government IS fedexing bubonic plague anthrax vx and other highest-level toxicity germs around the country to send to Lawrence Livermore National Labs in California (and others but primarily Livermore) where in 2004, it began a brand new expanded biological and chemical weapons programme with newly released funds from Congress and taxpayers' billions.

As for accountability? Weird that the Anthrax attacks story disappeared from the network airwaves as quickly as it had massively appeared in 2001, and was never mentioned by officials again. Could that have anything to do with the fact that the weapons grade anthrax spores being sent to TV celebrities was found to originate in an Army bio terrorism facility near Maryland? Newspaper exposures did not remotely receive the same level of TV buzz again or follow up of the investigations in the public interest.

M: I was shocked to see some of the footage of Jimmy Carter you put in the film. He really sounded a lot like our current president in regards to Middle Eastern policy. Do you think US Foreign Policy is better or worse depending upon whether it is a Democrat or a Republican in office? How is Bill Clinton that different than George W. Bush, for example?

J: Carter's very famous statement in his 1980 State of the Union Address: " Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force…" has to be understood in the context of US superpower ambitions and designs on the Persian Gulf region. It's irrelevant that Carter's a Democrat. He has since come clean about a lot of the hypocrisy and double standards.

When it comes to the Persian Gulf and Israel, Democrats and Republican are one and the same party. The solution does not have to be military or exclusively unjust. America can get all the oil it needs and all the friends it needs in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East without backing (Arab or Israeli) dictatorships or ethnocentric regimes in the region, without giving the most foreign assistance in grants weapons and contracts to Israel to the tune of more than $3 trillion dollars since 1973, to continue to fuel an unjust conflict where right and wrong are as clear as day to both Israelis and Palestinians, the vast majority of both of whom want to live in one country in peace. United States policies will not allow peace in the region, period.

Israelis recognize and write about this regularly in their press, as do neighbouring countries particularly Lebanon, especially since the spectacular failure of last Summer's Washington conceived, Israeli-executed War on Lebanon in 2006 which killed more than one thousand civilians and destroyed an entire country's infrastructure.

America can get all the oil and Arab or Israeli friends it needs, both of whom admire US values, striving to save democracy in their own countries so often blocked by US policies, without creating al Qaeda and spreading violence in the world's most sought after region throughout history, without diverting multiple billions of American taxpayer's money (supporters of long term injustice in the ME love to talk about small government and lower taxes but say nothing about Americans' money being flushed down the toilet in the cause of invasions, war and unjust escalations) to create an ever-growing arms race, pouring money and wmds into Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to name a few of our closest allies.

Only when Americans are informed about their country's policies will they correctly influence and lead their politicians' policies and decisions rather than be led by Arms, Israel or Oil lobbyists on the issues.

M: You mention Israel a lot in this answer and that leads me to the one area of the film with which I disagreed. The Israeli-Palestinian segment...It seemed a little one sided. Was that on purpose? What is your view on Hamas?

J: Hamas is a national liberation movement that uses its popularity in the political arena, an armed military wing and terror operations to achieve aims which for Palestinians are enshrined in long-passed but never enforced UN international laws and resolutions.

Which liberation movement in history apart from Gandhi's millions-strong non-violence movement in India, a luxury the Palestinians don't have being denied movement from one town to the next, connections to one another, their homes gardens or farm lands when annexed by the Army and even return to their families and residencies on a regular and arbitrary basis, so which independence or liberation movement in history has not used terror against more destructive sophisticated and widespread state terror, to achieve freedom?

Terror is not a one-way street and it is deeply tragic not only to Israeli families and victims who lose their loved ones but to Palestinians. Palestinians are the minority but Palestinian civilians have been killed in the 50 year+ conflict as a deliberate policy of state terror to force a settlement on Israeli terms (which has never worked) and in far greater numbers. Israeli settlers walk around Palestinian majority residential areas (such as East Jerusalem and Hebron) with M16s that they are free to use, but the more than a third of Palestinians killed by Israel's Military are under 16 according to the UN. The vast majority of Palestinians killed in the double digits daily are unarmed civilians. Israel has become great (the very best) at occupying civilians and capturing detaining or fighting unarmed civilians while at the same time, becoming extremely bad at the Art of War or strategy, because the Occupation is corrupting Israeli society and creating profoundly avoidable tragedies on both sides.

This is the model that the US is now emulating in Iraq and across the so-called New Middle East. Dr Rice called last Summer’s War on Lebanon ‘the birth pangs of a new Middle East.’ If this is the new Middle East, say the vast majority of people including Israelis who live there, give us the old unjust paradigm but where the violence was predictable and contained, any day of the year.

Got a question or comment for Joanne? Click on comments below.

Our Girl Friday

In the 1940 screwball comedy, His Girl Friday, Rosalind Russell plays Hildy Johnson, a star reporter for the Morning Post in Chicago. On her way out the door for a quiet family life, Walter Burns, played by Cary Grant, coaxes her back to the paper for one final story. As the film progresses, the audience realizes that Hildy is born to do one thing and one thing alone: write the truth.

In the end, all of us (and Cary Grant) thank God that she sticks around because she uncovers a city wide corruption ring that was almost responsible for hanging an innocent man.

I guess I feel that way about Joanne Tucker. She is Our Girl Friday and I thank God she has been sticking around the Middle East for the past few years.

After studying languages and politics in England, Joanne started her career at the BBC in the 1990s where she worked her way up assignment production & reporting for seven years. Directly after the 9-11 attacks she went to work for Al Jazeera, working directly under the editor in chief at the network. She ran their temporary web site for the war, in English in 2003, which received a lot of US attention including feature articles in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, LA Times & Chicago Tribune. In 2004, she left Al Jazeera to produce and direct the film I have been talking about for the last two weeks, Breakdown.

I have gotten to know Joanne rather well over the last month and, without a doubt, she, like the character of Hildy Johnson, is a person of great intelligence and integrity who tells the truth about our country, which these days seems to be a bitter pill for many of us to swallow. I thought it would be interesting to inaugurate my first ever interview with someone like Joanne.

This is Part One.

M: You have told me that you made this film because you were surprised at how little Americans know about their own country let alone what is going on in the world. Is that the main reason why you made this film? Are there others?

J: The film from the start and in many ways made itself. I was looking for the behind the superficial headlines facts about US foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond. I was looking at why 'Terrorism' and who that specifically refers to in our 21st century foreign policy had replaced Communism as America's new greatest enemy and those facts emerged from people who deal with, analyze or face them on a daily basis in their lives and work.

When you watch the News, do you really understand what's going on? No. For most Americans, who don't already have a continuous book-informed, first-hand or in depth knowledge about the region policies or events being broad brushed in a 90 second TV report, 30 seconds of which is about making the reporter or anchor look good or impressively knowledgeable when that's rarely the case, the ordinary viewer's knowledge is not advanced and often becomes more skewed and biased based on inaccurate information or politically motivated sound bytes.

Many news channels and particularly when it comes to US global economic interests, in which those networks are direct stakeholders, or matters deemed for or against national security by the political players, have no desire or intention to spread facts. The facts and big picture accuracy are low-priority and expendable, because they are not in the News but the propaganda business.

So commercial, corporate (and inherently politicized) TV News networks are rarely about informing you the viewer -- unless it's an ultra-trivial subject when you'll get unasked for details and analysis coming out of your ears -- but not those topics or subjects where American lives and billions are at stake.

M:The Perkins segment is staggering. He has a new book out called The Secret History of the American Empire. Do you agree completely with what he says? Is the US government that awful in its economic policies in the rest of the world? Why do you suppose that is?

J: What he reveals in the film, as a former NSA-insider is logical and completely in sync with any military and economic superpower's overt and covert actions backed by considerable budgets. In other words, the US is simply behaving as a superpower empire, like so many before it, economically, military, diplomatically and through the use of global military-political proxies.

Two things stand out however and are very noteworthy. The Unites States exists as a nation today out and was born out of the imperative to defend universal human values including equal economic opportunities regardless of religion or race, impose judicial accountability and equality of all before laws, erase political favoritism or constitutional elitism and stamp out imperial arrogance and overreach in world affairs. And two, there has never in all of history been a bigger superpower from every angle including but not limited to, the spread and number of global military bases, pay-rolled proxy regimes worldwide, military lethality and destructive power, corporate economic monopolies of public assets directed by US-led international institutions & the redirection of global wealth and resources into US capital, equity (stock) markets and the dollar currency. So there is a giant and growing gap between rhetoric and reality, cause and result.

M: So if the US "exists as a nation today out and was born out of the imperative to defend universal human values including equal economic opportunities regardless of religion or race, impose judicial accountability and equality of all before laws, erase political favoritism or constitutional elitism and stamp out imperial arrogance and overreach in world affairs" how is it that this definition of the US "soul" if you will is perverted by men like Bush/Cheney etc..?Why is this happening? Is it simple greed? Or something more?

J: Why is it happening? Simple. There is no soul without a mind or heart to work with and guide it. The Founding fathers including Washington and countless independence politicians of stature gave numerous warnings of the end of democracy and beginning of tyranny when the people are not informed or involved in their leaders' decision-making. No democracy can survive for long without an informed public acting as the conscience and constituency of mainly unscrupulous politicians and without a rigorous Legislative or Judicial branch doing its job, doing it with justice and in the public eye for the greater good.

For at least thirty years and I would say after the mid 70s, politicians have learnt the WRONG lessons from those years, what they have learnt is NOT to get caught next time. The media giants work for them not to inform or educate the public, leaders and politicians including in Congress work for unelected unaccountable companies whom they will join once their employment contract in the White House or DoD is over and whose bottom line is maximizing profit at any cost: human cost, including loss of jobs, extreme polarization of wealth, the loss of global democracies, cultural independence and the earth for future generations.

So, why is the soul perverted by people like X & Y? Because the body is sick, the mind is weak and the heart is full of fear and reluctant to get hurt again. It's hard, it's tough but it's do-able. To get healthy, get organized and once again get our priorities as the greatest nation on earth, straight.

Part Two of this interview will be posted on Wednesday July 11, 2007.

Got a question or comment for Joanne? Post in Comments below.

Childish Understanding of the Region

The sad and unbelievable truth as seen through the eyes of people who have actually been there...

BreakDown: The Exploitation of 911

Lots of interesting information in this clip. The woman from the Pentagon was in another one of my favorite films, Why We Fight (2005)

Note From The Cocoon

When I started this blog a few years back, I wanted to try to make some sense out of the 9-11 attacks. My main goal was to try to get the people that read my stuff (around 200 of you now)to start thinking globally. I really felt that people would really start to wake up in this country and realize that there IS a world out there and, as of September 11th, we have been brought to the front lines of it, hence the name Notes From The Front.

For a time, it actually did look like the citizens of this country would take an interest in United States foreign policy and its effect on the countries with which we are involved. It seemed that my childhood dream of our people thinking more internationally and less nationally would finally be realized.

After all, there were people from all over the world that died in the 9-11 attacks. Right? Boy, was I wrong.

We have gone from being the United States of America to the United Simpletons of Abnegation.

The current administration and their lapdogs in the media spun a cozy cocoon around our borders and have proceeded, since that day, to alternatively pummel us with patriotic cotton candy and fear of the unknown. And those of us that escape this brainwashing don't like to talk about politics...gawd, it's like so serious and stuff!

We have gone willingly into our cocoon because we are all bunch of fucking cowards who would rather live in a fantasy land of bullshit than confront the world and the horrors we have created in it. A shining example of how far we have actually sunk is our soldiers in Iraq sending Paris Hilton letters of comfort while she was sleeping off her 8 year drunk in prison, recently related to her on the Larry King Show on CNN.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I realize that they were probably just horny dudes but I think their priorities are way off. And, by the way, aren't they supposed to be worrying about themselves and their unit? And what about the media? Good lord, the coverage alone of Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith is proof enough of my cocoon theory. The other night my wife and I wanted some news...real news...not the nonsense that passes for news on the "big" networks....real news, y'know what's happening in the world, important issues in our country, and intelligent stories that spark the mind with wonder. Instead, as we flipped around, we got:

Paris Hilton discussion on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360.

Dangerous Minds, a true crime story of murder and rape on MSNBC.

Greta Van Sustren discussing a.....true crime story of murder and rape on Fox News.

Great.

Imagine being someone who actually thinks THIS is what is important in the world. Sheesh. Thankfully, though, since I have a satellite dish, I get Link TV. Link TV is Television without borders. It shows newscasts from around the world, including several from the Middle East. It runs documentaries on a variety of subjects in a variety of countries. They are all extremely insightful and highly intelligent. When I watch them I feel enlightened as opposed to fearful, angry, and ignorant like the powers that be want us to feel when we watch what laughably passes for news on the major networks. It was on Link TV that I first saw the film Breakdown. And it was one of those moments...

You know what I am talking about, right? It's like you have your life before you heard Abbey Road by the Beatles and your life after you heard it. You are altered. You are changed in such a way that there is no going back. Your width of vision is expanded and it is impossible to look at things in the same way again. This film caused one of those moments for me and I will never, ever be able to look at our country in the same way again.

Breakdown essentially confirms everything I have said on this blog and goes even further to sharpen and clarify United States foreign policy in the Middle East. It is a film in six parts, each about twenty minutes, that includes:

-The specific lies the Bush Administration told leading up to the Iraq War.

-Details about the relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia AKA The real reason why Al Qaeda attacked us on 9-11.

-Footage of our support of Saddam Hussein's murderous rampages in the 1980s

-The dollar and the Euro AKA why we really attacked Iraq.

-How US Energy Policy, as early as May of 2000, has dictated our foreign policy.

-A stunning interview with John Perkins, a former economic "hit man" for the US government, which details how our government essentially acts like the Mafia when it comes to Third World countries.

-Nauseating testimony from troops, who have been on the ground in Iraq, relating what is actually going on over there as opposed to the lies or non-coverage we hear on a daily basis in the lamestream media.

After watching this film, I went to the gym to work out and try to get my head around what is essentially the main point of the film: The United States government thrives on terror. Terror is good, which is the title of the fourth chapter of the film. It's good business for our whole country. As I was thinking about this, I looked up to one of the TVs above me and saw the following sentence on the Fox Ticker on Fox News:

TERROR THREAT IN LONDON-GOOD FOR GOP.....AND STOCKS!!

They are not even bothering to try to deny it anymore. They don't care. They know that most our country doesn't even vote (for the president that is, plenty more do for American Idol). They know that most of our country is too busy worried about discovering new ways to become fatter and more brain dead. They know that most of you are too biased, too busy, or too lazy to watch a film like Breakdown.

Prove them wrong. Buy this DVD by clicking here. The cost is about 15 bucks and it is well worth it. Use the information in it to pick the right candidate to lead out country in 2008. Start talking to people about what the film says and why it is so vital for us to change the course of this country. If we don't start to make an effort for change, the greedy bastards that have run this country for the last 44 years will run it straight into oblivion.

The daily torture that we inflict upon the peoples of the world coupled with the denial that it is actually happening has already caused many Americans to lose their lives. Do you want more people to die? Are you ready to expand your width of vision?

Let your voice and your mind be heard.


Tuesday: A clip from Breakdown entitled "The Exploitation of 9/11."

BreakDown: Breaking The War on Terror Facade

In the next couple of weeks you are going to be hearing a lot from me about this film. It is called Breakdown and it is, quite simply, stunning.

For those of you (including myself) who think they know what is going on in the Middle East and why we are there...well...you might change your mind after watching this film. It will expand your scope and vision.

This clip from Breakdown has an extremly disturbing image about 35 seconds into it so please don't watch this if scenes of graphic violence disturbs you.

For more information about Breakdown visit:

http://www.breakdownfilm.tv/Breakdown%20Film/Breakdown.html

and stay tuned here for a review of the film, why every American should own a copy, and an exclusive interview with the director herself!!

A Milestone

Well, it was about time we got some good news. Yesterday, my 89 year old grandmother hit me with a big one: She is sick of George Bush. Bear in mind, this is woman who is card carrying member of the Republican party, voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, and is as conservative as they come.

Her reasons, and I am quoting:

"All those young boys...what are they dying for in Iraq? Nothing."

"My brother in law died from Lou Gehrig's disease. I sat by his bedside and watched him die and he didn't have to go, y'know Mark, I read a lot about stem cell research and for the life of me I can't understand what President Bush is thinking. If he had to sit by the bedsides of some of these sick people...well, he'd probably change his mind."

Amen, Mommo. Amen.

A Day In The Life (Warning: Graphic Pictures in this Post)

Last Thursday evening, I heard that a friend of my mom's lost his son. His name was Peter. He was 19 years old and he had a rare form of cancer which attacked his liver very quickly. He died a violent death because his body refused to give up and, more than likely, he was afraid to die. Peter had health issues earlier in his life but it was not readily identified as cancer. In fact, the doctors weren't sure what it was right away, how it came about, or how it progressed so quickly. In short, they were mystified and consoled Peter's father, Bob, with the fact that someday research would help them to understand what happened to his son and possibly prevent it from happening to someone else.

Oh, and in Iraq last Thursday a roadside bomb struck a military vehicle in northeastern Baghdad, killing five U.S. soldiers, three Iraqi civilians and an Iraqi interpreter.

The soldiers were all around Peter's age or a little older. They all have fathers and mothers who I'm sure will mourn them in the same way that Bob is mourning Peter. At least Bob has the comfort that doctors, through research, may learn from Peter's death and be able to help someone. The only comfort the parents of the dead soldiers have is knowing that they will have more shoulders to cry in as they will be joined by other grieving parents this week....and the week after that....and the week after that....because there are still people in this country who hold the incredibly misguided belief that we are actually fighting for our freedom.

Of course, one of the areas of research that will help people like Peter and other folks is embryonic stem cell research. The day before Peter died, President Bush, vetoed the latest stem cell bill that would allow federal funds to be used for research After he vetoed the bill, he said:

"Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical. The United States is a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred."

When I first read this, I pretty much lost it for about a day. I don't mean I "lost it" like a normally do on this blog. I mean I fucking I LOST IT. For those first 24 hours, I was seriously entertaining the notion of calling the richest and most influential people I know (I do know a few) and doing everything in my power to get this moronic, hypocritical shit-for-brains removed from office.

I calmed down enough to realize that I have children to raise and a career to pursue (which will actually help to insure that no one this reckless and inhuman is ever afforded the highest office in the land again) So I really don't have time to take on such a monumental (and ultimately defeating) task. Instead, I thought I would take a step that I have thought about taking for awhile but always refrained out of a sense of wondering....should I go this far?

Sadly, President Bush, his administration and their supporters,with his latest action and statement have left me with no alternative but to show you these pictures.

Take a look at these photos.

Let's read the above quote again.

"Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical. The United States is a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred."

And again.

"Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical. The United States is a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred."


How about one more time for people that seem to have trouble hearing?

"Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical. The United States is a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred."

All of these children were killed by an American bombing raid in Iraq for the sake of "protecting us from terrorism." All of these lives were, in fact, lost by sacrificing them to "save" us. Oh, and all of these dead bodies?

Terrorist's fault. Yep. All their fault. It was our bombs but hey, Dick Cheney says so..it must be true. They brought it on themselves. We are not responsible, even though we are the ones that attacked them. We are not responsible...it's Saddam's fault. He brought it on his own people and would've done this anyway. We are not responsible because it's all for the greater good of freedom.

We are not responsible--

(insert sound of needle scratching across record album)

Hi. My name is Mark. The next time I hear a neocon or Bushie lecture me about "individual responsibility" I am going to show them these pictures and then take the biggest pile of horse manure I can find, throw it directly in their face, and say "You are completely full of shit."

(back to our regular scheduled programming)

Now, I am willing to take my lumps on the fact that the majority of this country is against gay marriage. Fine, I have to live with the reality of how democracy works. But Iraq? Most Americans have realized that this policy has failed. And stem cell research? Overwhelmingly, the majority of Americans favor it and yet.....I still lose.

We lose. Because there are just enough people in this country that need to believe the lie...the lie that this administration is protecting us. The lie that employs fear rather than reasoned logic and fact. The lie that keeps us rooted firmly in the stone age, dragging our knuckles and scratching our uni brow.

The lie that, quite simply, means death.

And all of this is not even the worst of it...do you know what the truly awful part about all of this is?

The thousands of Iraqi civilians and American soldiers that will die in the next year and a half because we have an administration that would rather have people lose their lives needlessly than admit fault. The thousands of people in this country that will die in the next decade because our president and his supporters think that science is "voodoo " and "the devil's handiwork."

Think about all of the people, young and old....people like Peter, whose bodies are going to writhe, shake in agony and die because President Death Boy is too lazy to take the time to learn what an embryo is. And he is so rooted in his belief system that the only people that he is listening to about embryos got their medical degrees from All Non Christians Should Be Burned As Witches University (that's ANSBBAW U btw, a sister school to Fire Bad, Science Evil State University, (FBSESU))

So basically President Bush is saying that an embryo--something that cannot exist outside of the womb--that "life" is worth more than someone like Peter's. Or someone who has Alzheimer's. Or any of the dead Iraqi children we see above. In other words, people that ARE, in fact, existing outside of the womb.

It's funny. Sad funny, not good funny--people accuse me everyday of mocking people's beliefs and being cruel to those who think differently than I do. When those false and narrow minded beliefs carry into actions that result in the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, I think that mocking them actually shows an incredible amount of restraint. The next time a neocon or a Bushie whines (like the shirking, denying, and running away from responsibility asshead cowards they are) that you are "mocking their beliefs," pull out one of these pictures and tell them to shut their hypocritical mouths.

Tell them to say to this grieving father, pictured above, that he "brought it on himself." And that it's all the fault of the terrorists.

Tell them to to say to my mom's friend Bob that his son Peter's life is worth less than a undeveloped human cell.

Ask them how long they have had the delusion that they are human.

I Feel Therefore I Believe

Generally, I have found that people don't like me when the subjects of politics, sex, or religion come up in conversation. Throughout the years I have micro-analyzed why this dislike arises, kicked around some ideas, and quite recently have figured out the answer.

I get them to think.

And thinking, to Americans these days, is just too much darn work. It takes them out of their Cheeto-bliss comfort zone, which makes them extremely uncomfortable. Thinking is like that other bad thing.....reading...and we all know what happens when people read:)

One of the phrases I always hear out of the mouths of conservatives is, "Say 'I think', not 'I feel' or 'I believe'...it shows intelligence." If I had a dime for every time I heard a conservative say this little gem (gee, I wonder if they get all their talking points from the same source...hmm....), I would be fucking chicks with great big round asses on top of a pile of cash. Honestly, though, I think this is a good way to look at things because it is the first step towards examining issues from multiple perspectives.

Too bad, though, I have yet to meet a conservative who actually lives by this phrase.

To illustrate my point about the FACT that conservatives talk a good game about thinking but in reality are wrapped up in a one dimensional, overly emotional 8-year old stubborn-temper tantrum-child like view of the world, we need look no further than Fred Thompson.

In 1994, Fred Thompson took over Al Gore's Senate seat in Tennessee when Gore became Vice President. He was elected again in 1996 in a landslide victory. He decided not to seek re-election in 2002 citing Congress as "boring and slow." The scuttlebutt around DC at the time was that Thompson was basically a lazy Senator who was using his post as a stepping stone to the Presidency. There were also many stories of adultery and philandering. After he left office, occasionally he would grace us with pearls of wisdom like "When people ask what has Saddam done to us, I ask, what had the 9/11 hijackers done to us -- before 9/11."

Gosh, that is so insightful......and...um....completely fucking wrong.

And, in between acting gigs (see Die Hard 2 and Law and Order), he would spend his time making sure that people who have cancer as a result of working for big corporations would not see a dime of Anderson T. Wilson's third vacation home money. Super!

Oh, and ol Fredo might be running for president. Republican nomination, of course. How could they resist someone who plays the part so well? And conservatives are going wild. Can you blame them?

Because you see, dear readers, the current crop of possible nominees for the Republican ticket are "a group of midgets" who aren't "real conservatives" (sidebar: will someone please explain to me what a real conservative is these days?) Thompson, however, is a REAL conservative and you can make book on that, sister! There would be no equal rights for sinful faggots, no more uppity broads who think they know shit about loose nukes and stuff, and...praise the Lord(!), the beginning of the extermination of the Islamic Empire would finally begin. If Thompson is elected president the policies of George W Bush will graciously continue in earnest, save one of course. All of the spics will be deported back to Mexico or killed because that's what it's all about.....people killing people cuz they fucking deserve it, dammit. They're taking away our freedom, after all.

Go out to any conservative blog and read about how all the little Bushies and neocons are dropping their pants, jacking off, and cupping their balls (with a little taint tickle for good measure) at the thought of a Thompson presidency. Read what they have to say and please tell me where the "thinking" part comes in.......

"Big Fred's a coming and he's a gunnin'"

"If Thompson runs, my worries will be over. I will finally feel (what the?) happy.

"Thompson is a kick ass, no bullshitter who knows how to fuck people up. He's a big stud and he can park his shoes on the side of my bed anytime." (Just to be clear, this was a woman, btw, not a man....which, given some of the current preferences that have come to light vis a vis the conservatives....well, I just wanted to be prudent)

"Just wait to ol Fred gets in...he'll show that homo loving, gun hatin Giuliani a thing or two about national defense. God, I love him."

"Thompson's got guts and we need someone who will think with his guts, not his head like those pansy liberals." (Question: How does one think with their guts?)

I could go on and on. Google "Conservative Blog" and "Fred Thompson" and find out for yourself. That's how I got these. It's hilarious.

So, here are my questions: where is this "thinking" that I have heard so much about? Could it be that conservatives actually have feelings and perhaps a set of beliefs that govern how they make decisions? Are they sooooo hypocritical to the point of silliness that Clinton's philandering-bad, Thompson philandering-good? Could it be that this group of people, that stupidly force certainty in an uncertain world, have finally found their man?

Could these beliefs and feelings be so myopic, jingoistic, filled with abnegation and rooted in fantasy that someday it will cause the deaths of thousands of people?

Oh, wait. That's already happened. Time for some more, I guess.

Praise the Bible!

Well, the "let's kill all those fucking faggots" crowd has apparently decided to take over the club where I exercise. It's funny because there have been rumors for years that it was a great place to men to meet, share a steam, and maybe some other things. :)

But now...ah, no. The fun loving shower/whirlpool hook up crowd are now gone and have been replaced by some of my favorite people: bigots. Here are some quotes from some conversations I have overheard at the club in the last couple of weeks. These are word for word as I jotted them down immediately upon hearing them.

"I don't have anything against gay people-I just think they are disgusting. I don't want them anywhere near me."

"Maybe the gays could live in their own town or state."

"I saw a couple of them holding hands last week--in public! It was so gross. I wanted to vomit."

"I wish it was legal to kill them. They are acting against God's will."

"Mark, in Leviticus 18:22 it clearly states 'Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.' So, you can clearly see that God doesn't like gay people. They are sinners."

The last quote was from a conversation with a friend of mine. I have a lot of respect for him so I went home, looked it up and sure enough, he was right. I decided that maybe I should take a look at the rest of Leviticus and the rest of the Bible, for that matter, and make sure that I was on track, not only to live my life, but how to tell others to live their lives. Far be it from me to disobey the will of the Lord and I really don't want to misinterpret anything. Thank goodness I recently came across a letter of questions, originally addressed to Dr. Laura but has since been sent to the likes of Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins and, yes, even George W. Bush, that thoroughly summed up my confusion. I know many Christian Conservatives read my blog so now I am sharing these same questions with you. I need your help, Bushies. I am befuddled. What should I do about the following?

1. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself? Should I call the police? Or the nearest Bush supporter?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

7. Lev 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear glasses and contact lenses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here? Do I need to plunk down the dough for lassic surgery?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die? Perhaps a boiling pit of sewage only with the rest of the homosexuals and fornicators.

9. I know from Lev 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? (Lev 24:10-16) Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

Since you Bushies have the Lord speak directly through you and pass judgement on the rest of us (i.e. what constitutes being a real Christian), please enlighten me. How would you tackle these questions?

Ah, the reluctant warrior

General Colin Powell was on Meet the Press yesterday. As usual, he had many insightful and intelligent things to say. On the subject of Guantanamo Bay, he said that it had become a "major problem" in the way that Americans were perceived around the world.

"If it were up to me, I would close Gitmo-not tomorrow but this afternoon."

Huh. This is what we need more of...someone every American respects speaking the glaringly obvious truth...

For the full transcript and videos of the show, click here.

The Worst in History?

Yeah, well he had to have help.

Hallelujah, I Have Seen The Light!!

As Sam Cooke sang so well, "It's been a long time comin' but a change is gonna come." It's taken me years of heartache, toil, and sweat but I've finally figured it out. I have discovered the grail of grails, the treasure of treasures....I know the secret. What is it?

I finally have figured out why conservatives win and liberals lose.

Actually, before we get to that, I need to amend some of my previous posts. When I wrote that "conservatives" do this or "conservatives" do that, I was way off base. And, really, I was overgeneralizing, falling neatly into Karl Rove's plan of divide and conquer. I know many conservatives and, to be truly fair, it was really not them I was laying into with my literary scythe. To be honest, I feel a great deal of regret at laying into a group of people that I have actually developed quite a bit of respect for over the last few months. Real conservatives stand for good things , many of which I agree with, like states rights, less taxes, or less government. It was unfair of me to lump so many people into a category that is really only suited for a specific type of conservative. The fake conservative.

The Bushie.

Yes, we have all heard much talk of late as to who is a "loyal Bushie" and who is not. In fact, several former US attorneys (all REPUBLICANS) have found out, through the loss of their jobs, that they are not good enough conservatives. Bushies are the best. They are the left hand of God, after all, and can pretty much do no wrong. In fact, I think I have heard them say that, from now on, God has decided to speak directly through them and will tell us what is right and what is wrong....who is good and who is evil. Why do they get to do this? Because they know how to win. How? Because they know that they're opponents are weak little pieces of shit. They know how to beat them every time.

It all comes down to my favorite line in the movie Dogma (1997, d: Kevin Smith). Some of the characters are speaking of Jesus and how what he was really all about was good ideas, not beliefs. One can change an idea but one can't change a belief. Bushies are all about belief. In fact, that's all they have because they certainly don't have anything close to the truth. And they are fucking great at sticking to that belief, no matter how many lives it costs. Someone once wrote on this blog:

It is not at all surprising that Bushies choose to believe what they want, and ignore the facts. This is the basis of their core beliefs: do not believe what your eyes tell you, believe what you are told to believe. If you doubt, you are damned.They choose to portray this as a strength, but it is in reality a weakness. Any person who believes "If I didn't believe in X: 1) My entire world would collapse, 2) Life would not be worth living, 3) I would kill myself" is in serious denial about their own strength of character.

This is a pearl of wisdom wrapped in gold. Y'see folks, liberals will never win against this mountain of titanium. Never. I offer as evidence...oh...any debate between a liberal and a Bushie. They start off fairly normal and as soon as the liberal begins to bring up unpleasant facts, the Bushie will then say something along the lines of "Gee, why are you so angry?" The liberal will then pause and reflect because that is what liberals do: they QUESTION THEMSELVES. There is another word for this. It's called thinking.

The wily Bushie senses this moment of self actualization (perceived as weakness by said Bushie, who has a belief system akin to a third grader, but in reality signifies someone who actually wants to evolve past the uni brow/knuckle dragging phase) and then attacks its prey. The liberal doesn't know what to do. He/She begins to backtrack...wonder if they are being too harsh (a-ha! compassion, something else completely absent from a Bushie's persona)...and then they roll over, stick their asses up in the air, and let ol Bushie fuck away like there's no tomorrow. They are effectively done...in more ways than one.

Don't believe me? Why don't we take a look at what these sorry sacks of shit (pictured at left) did in the last week? Ignoring the reason why they were actually elected in November of 2006, they rolled over for ol Bushie and let him continue his charade in Iraq so they could all go on summer break. They gave him his blood money until September when, after a few dozen more troop deaths and probably hundreds of civilian deaths, they can reconvene better rested. Yipee!



Just to recap and make sure you are still with me, the Democrats decided that the best course of action was to listen to a group of men who have said:

"Mission Accomplished"

"The Insurgency is in it's last throes"

"Anyone who says there will be sectarian violence in Iraq is wrong. And terribly naive."

In other words, we are being told by the people we elected in the midterms that even though the Bushies have been wrong about everything that has come out of their mouths, we're gonna give 'em one last chance. Super! So, my question at this point is, who is the bigger group of fucking morons? More and more these days, I have slowly begun to accept the fact that the reason why President Bush has won all the time is because he has had help from the other side. At first, I thought they were just weak. Then I thought they were stupid. Now I think they sense an opportunity to use Bush's unpopularity to gain power in 2008. In other words, they are doing they same thing that Bush is doing or has done: they are letting people die for political and financial gain. How are they getting away with this?

The population of this country has become conditioned to accept information only in easy to swallow caplets (aka sound bites). They don't have time for questioning. They want a simple answer, one that requires little thought, and surprise surprise...along comes Bushie with that answer. And, hey, let's all point at the weirdo who is a sittin' there thinkin' all the dad gum time...what a loser! Right?

Keep it simple, stupid...isn't that the phrase we hear everyday?

Just Hilarious

I am throwing this up quickly as I am working on my next poltical post. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. This dude's cheese has slipped off his cracker.

Ron Paul Wins Debate Despite Being Defamed by Pundits

Someone put this link in comments and it is great. I thought I would bring it out front.

Remember who watches Fox News? Wow!

Presidential Profiles Redux

God, was I wrong about Ron Paul. After the Fox Debates (which polls on the Fox web site show that he won!) and this interview with Bill Maher, my view of him has launched him to second best...just behind Our Mayor...with the highest possible B.

Someone had to say it. Our dicking around in Middle Eastern affairs, by both Democrat and Republican administrations, was one of the causes of 9-11. Sorry to burst your bubble out there, folks, who believe that the good ol US of A is just this weepy little innocent babe in the woods who couldn't have possibly done anything wrong...please go buy a clue...but it's true.

Now's the part where all of you call me and Ron Paul "America Haters."

Gospel and Verse

It took me awhile to track down this article. Rather than link to it, I am reprinting it here in full. This is from a David Brooks column in the New York Times last April and I think it is an excellent example of just how different Senator Obama is from the rest of the candidates. He really nails the reality of foreign policy in the world of 2007 and does it in a suprisingly non partisan way. I hope this interview turns some conservative heads.

Obama, Gospel and Verse
By DAVID BROOKS

Sometimes you take a shot.

Yesterday evening I was interviewing Barack Obama and we were talking about effective foreign aid programs in Africa. His voice was measured and fatigued, and he was taking those little pauses candidates take when they're afraid of saying something that might hurt them later on.

Out of the blue I asked, ''Have you ever read Reinhold Niebuhr?''

Obama's tone changed. ''I love him. He's one of my favorite philosophers.''

So I asked, What do you take away from him?

''I take away,'' Obama answered in a rush of words, ''the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard, and not swinging from naïve idealism to bitter realism.''

My first impression was that for a guy who's spent the last few months fund-raising, and who was walking off the Senate floor as he spoke, that's a pretty good off-the-cuff summary of Niebuhr's ''The Irony of American History.'' My second impression is that his campaign is an attempt to thread the Niebuhrian needle, and it's really interesting to watch.

On the one hand, Obama hates, as Niebuhr certainly would have, the grand Bushian rhetoric about ridding the world of evil and tyranny and transforming the Middle East. But he also dislikes liberal muddle-headedness on power politics. In ''The Audacity of Hope,'' he says liberal objectives like withdrawing from Iraq, stopping AIDS and working more closely with our allies may be laudable, ''but they hardly constitute a coherent national security policy.''

In Chicago this week, Obama argued against the current tides of Democratic opinion. There's been a sharp rise in isolationism among Democrats, according to a recent Pew survey, so Obama argued for global engagement. Fewer Democrats believe in peace through military strength, so Obama argued for increasing the size of the military.

In other words, when Obama is confronted by what he sees as arrogant unilateral action, he argues for humility. When he is confronted by what he sees as dovish passivity, he argues for the hardheaded promotion of democracy in the spirit of John F. Kennedy.

The question is, aside from rejecting the extremes, has Obama thought through a practical foreign policy doctrine of his own -- a way to apply his Niebuhrian instincts?

That question is hard to answer because he loves to have conversations about conversations. You have to ask him every question twice, the first time to allow him to talk about how he would talk about the subject, and the second time so you can pin him down to the practical issues at hand.

If you ask him about the Middle East peace process, he will wax rhapsodic about the need to get energetically engaged. He'll talk about the shared interests all have in democracy and prosperity. But then when you ask him concretely if the U.S. should sit down and talk with Hamas, he says no. ''There's no point in sitting down so long as Hamas says Israel doesn't have the right to exist.''

When you ask about ways to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, he talks grandly about marshaling a global alliance. But when you ask specifically if an Iranian bomb would be deterrable, he's says yes: ''I think Iran is like North Korea. They see nuclear arms in defensive terms, as a way to prevent regime change.''

In other words, he has a tendency to go big and offer himself up as Bromide Obama, filled with grand but usually evasive eloquence about bringing people together and showing respect. Then, in a blink, he can go small and concrete, and sound more like a community organizer than George F. Kennan.

Finally, more than any other major candidate, he has a tendency to see the world in post-national terms. Whereas President Bush sees the war against radical Islam as the organizing conflict of our time, Obama sees radical extremism as one problem on a checklist of many others: global poverty, nuclear proliferation, global warming. When I asked him to articulate the central doctrine of his foreign policy, he said, ''The single objective of keeping America safe is best served when people in other nations are secure and feel invested.''

That's either profound or vacuous, depending on your point of view.

Barack Obama at 2004 Democratic National Convention Part 2 (of 2)

Better fetch that second hanky.