We're Still There

Bush Declares Victory in Iraq

US President George W Bush has said the US has prevailed in the Battle of Iraq in a speech on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. 
BBC May 2, 2003
 
Obama to Announce That 'American Combat Mission in Iraq Has Ended' 
NYT August 31, 2010

And yet we're still there

Beck and His Rally for Honor

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney deliberately lead us into an unprovoked war for reasons since proven to be deliberately phony - where is the honor in that?
where was Beck then or since?
George Bush took office with a national surplus - he left us billions in debt actually almost a trillion dollars in debt
where was Beck
Bush destroyed our economy leaving us in the worst recession since the 30's ?
Bush and Cheney ordered the illegal wiretapping of thousands of U.S. citizens -- before 9/11 - and Congress granted retroactive immunity to the phone companies that abetted them in these crimes - and where was Beck and his concerns for following the constitution then?
Bush and Cheney ignored the cries for help of primarily poor Afro-American Democrats after Katrina - leaving dead bodies floating amidst cries for help for days - a national disgrace
where was Beck and his honor then?
Bush and Cheney violated the constitution repeatedly with illegal renditions, suspension of Habeaus Corpus, illegal domestic spying, torture, indefinite imprisonment without formal charges
and where was Beck?
Cheney committed treason with his deliberate outing of a covert CIA agent in an act of political revenge during a time of war
where was Beck and his honor then?

There are 365 days in a year - Glen Beck chose the exact day, the exact spot, where Martin Luther King delivered his defining speech - and he hasn't the honor to tells us the real reasons why he did so. The 300,000 who showed up draped themselves in religiosity, the bible, and righteous indignation, while knowingly sending a signal to Afro-Americans that they're taking 'their' country back. With the Glen Becks and Sarah Palins willing to capitalize on the fear and bigotry of white Christians - the word Christian takes on a whole new meaning worldwide - and it has little to do with charity, brotherhood or honor. The last time hate and bigotry were so cleverly draped in honor was Nazi Germany.
And now even Christian has become a dirty word.

Three Letters to Save the World

Standing outside a neonatal nursery gazing in on 20 newborns in their bassinets - which lives are the more important? You don't get to meet their parents or learn their last names or discern their skin color - which babies lives are the more important and which the less? - go ahead choose.
We don't even bother to count numbers of civilian death in Irag and Afghanistan and truth be told most in this country don't care - so who here gets to die in some obscure foreign war that we have instigated with their death not even counting?
Who gets to be poor, under privileged, and uneducated and then ignored and even scorned as inferior by we who have everything?
Who gets to be the immigrant worker - working at subsistence levels so our tomatoes remain cheap and plentiful while they suffer, while we look down at them as inferior and unimportant?
Who in this room is it that their pain, suffering, and death is somehow not as real, not as important, as ours - because they are foreign, poor, uneducated, of a different "race" of a different color, practice a different religion - who is it that we can essentially ignore and mistreat because they are 'inferior' and less than human?
Go ahead - you pick.
If you start with the assumption that all human life is equally as important as all other human life then artificial human constructs - political, economic, social, and cultural - that attempt to place a hierarchy on the importance of human life, that stratify 'equal'- cannot stand. If we simply accept that we are all equal - that all human life is as equally important as all other human life - and it is - fairness, peace and prosperity simply must follow. Duh.

Of politics, power, greed, fear of mortality and pissing on the wall.

I had a friend recently tell me of an interaction he had with a department chief in a major medical academic center. In 15 minutes the chief carefully illustrated his ever expanding sphere of control, influence, and power within the hospital and university - as if they were ends. He then moved on to tell my friend how he wakes every day at 5:30am and how he has biked to work everyday for the last 4 years - apparently badges of honor to exemplify his self discipline, import and superiority within his construct, his world.
So there is the academic medicine construct where it's not who saves the most lives or reduces the most suffering, it's who has the most number of degrees, the most number of publications, the most self discipline, single mindedness, lust for 'power', influence and control.
Then there is the legal construct - again a completely artificial hierarchy of money,lawyers, judges and human suffering.
The Mob construct - money, fancy clothes, big cars, thugs, power, influence and human suffering.
The organized religious construct - priests, bishops, deacons, Popes - power influence prestige - all sins?
The two party political construct
The business executive construct
The terrorist's organization construct
The street gang construct
The seventh grade boys construct - where pissing the highest on the wall buys immortality.
On and on and on and on
At their simplest there are no real differences in these constructs -
pathetically crude human inventions that by their existence quite regularly attract exactly the wrong sort of people and cause the wrong sort of outcomes. Artificial worlds all - us vs them, who's the most important(important will help you avoid death after-all), the most 'powerful' the most in control, the wealthiest, the one with the most cool stuff and on and on - derailing and defocusing us from just experiencing each other as equals, experiencing our world as it really is and robbing us of the inner beauty, prosperity, and peace that can bring.

Do we fight terrorism or do we try to end it - hopefully both.

Obama administration officials point to the benefits of bringing the fight against Al Qaeda and other militants into the shadows. Afghanistan and Iraq, they said, have sobered American politicians and voters about the staggering costs of big wars that topple governments, require years of occupation and can be a catalyst for further radicalization throughout the Muslim world'.Instead of “the hammer,” in the words of John O. Brennan, President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, America will rely on the “scalpel.” In roughly a dozen countries — from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife — the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.The White House has intensified the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone missile campaign in Pakistan, approved raids against Qaeda operatives in Somalia and launched clandestine operations from Kenya. The administration has worked with European allies to dismantle terrorist groups in North Africa, efforts that include a recent French strike in Algeria. And the Pentagon tapped a network of private contractors to gather intelligence about things like militant hide-outs in Pakistan and the location of an American soldier currently in Taliban hands.
SCOTT SHANE, MARK MAZZETTI and ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: August 14, 2010 NYT

Yes, yes, yes. Using the fight against terrorism as an excuse to invade sovereign nations as part of an hegemonic agenda has been 'the war on terror' up until now.It is wrong and self defeating. This is how you fight terrorists.
But the Obabma administration must also begin to address the root causes of terrorism and make attempts to fix them so as to begin to stem the never ending supply of terrorists. Fairness and hope need to replace bad policies and greed and the United States needs to take a major role in inititating and causing such change.

War on Wars

Published in the Oregonian: Thursday, July 15, 2010, 8:00 AM    

Guest Columnist

By Charlie Phillips

I get tired of listening to pundits and politicians talk about the "war on drugs," the "war on terrorism."
How exactly do you wage war on a brick of cocaine?
It's ridiculous, as is large-scale military action to fight terrorism. Terrorism is a methodology, and those who enact it -- terrorists -- are everywhere. It only takes a single person, as we've seen. How can you wage war on that?
Drug abuse is a people problem, not a drug problem, and it will only be fixed when the reasons behind the demand for drugs are resolved. And terrorism and drug abuse are both the result – at least in part – of an isolating, dehumanizing world, made worse by poor policy decisions.
So what do we do?
For one, we stop grandstanding and we start dealing in reality and address the root causes that contribute to these problems. We can then develop strategies to fix those causes. And to pay for it we divert monies we currently spend waging "war" on bricks of cocaine and entire countries and instead spend it on fixing the real problems.
The total defense spending for this year will be between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion. If you count one dollar a second, 24 hours a day, it would take you 32,000 years to just count that much money. The 2009 U.S. military budget was nearly as much as the rest of the world's defense spending combined – nearly as much as the entire rest of the world's defense spending combined – and is over nine times larger than the military budget of China.
If we diverted one-tenth of what we spend on our military to our schools and social programs, we could give our children more opportunity and a fair start in life that would go a long way to curtailing drug abuse. If we did that worldwide, we'd go a long way to solving terrorism. If we spent the money we spend waging unnecessary war and instead spent it on programs designed to stimulate economic growth and opportunity for the average person on the street – worldwide – we'd be perceived as less a target of rage and more the shining light we hold ourselves up to be.
Waste, fraud, power struggles and greed in the military-industrial complex suck billions of dollars away from our youth, our security, our infrastructure, our future. It greatly adds to the suffering and anguish of billions of people worldwide, and it does not make us safer – quite the contrary.
It's time to address our problems from a reality base and not from one of grandstanding and disingenuous nonsense. It's time to seriously scrutinize the military-industrial complex, address its waste, fraud and abuses, assess our true defense needs and then redirect unneeded funds to programs that will truly bring us security and lasting peace.

Responsible Biking - A contradiction in terms?

Ive seen
Cyclists on sidewalks
Cyclists on the wrong side of the road
Cyclists in the road
Cyclists on the side of the road
Cyclists that want you to pass them
Cyclist that don’t
Cyclists that blow through red lights, stop signs and pedestrian crossings
Self righteous, indignant cyclists
Fearful cyclists
Stupid cyclists
Dangerous cyclists

Tell me again why we should be spending millions on cyclists?

Sarah Palin is the Paris Hilton of Politics

No not in the sense that she's skinny, dyes her hair blond and releases self made pornography to the media for the attention - close but not it. No Sarah is like Paris in that her celebrity IS her career. Neither has done anything to deserve their fame or their fortune. Sarah is not a famous politician - shes just famous. And besides looking good - what is it that Paris actually DOES? Sarah proved to the McCain campaign and then to us that she was not about to do her homework, not about to knuckle down and accomplish something - Sarah was just going to stand in the spotlight with her hand out. And since then that greedy little hand has collected over 12 million dollars for herself. At least when Paris puts her hand out - as seen on her 'videos' - it sometimes makes someone ELSE feel good.