HOPE
Mepkin Abbey
"It is not uncommon to find that what we have put our energy into, indeed what we have staked our lives on, is unreliable. What then is our reason for hope? Can we continue in such circumstances? It is precisely when our faith is shaken and our love grows dim that hope really begins; it is in the wonder and weakness of our faith that we find hope’s real meaning. Hope is the willingness not to give up precisely when we draw no consolation from what we have previously found trustworthy and reliable. Hope does not try to determine how God’s ways will be shown, but remains open to new and astonishing manifestations of the divine presence. It allows something to come into life that is not of our own making. Hope is the retrieval of possibilities that come as gift."
Care to do some Monastic Surfing?
Want to know where to find the best Monastic fruitcake and creamed honey?
Once Upon A Time....
From IHT: William Pfaff: A fiction shattered by America's aggression
DO YOU?.....REALLY??
"......what actually has happened during the past nine months is something Americans have yet to grasp, and that others have yet to say out loud:
People outside the United States have stopped believing the American story. They say instead that terrorism is a way people wage war when they don't have F-16's or armored divisions.
They say that Chechens, Moros, Taliban, Colombian insurgents, Palestinian bombers and Iraqi enemies of the U.S. occupation do not really make up a single global phenomenon that the world must mobilize to defeat.
They say that, actually, they had never really believed the American story in the first place.
They had listened to it because Washington said it, and they respected Washington.
Now they don't."
CONTEST!
BUSH IN 30 SECONDS--
A political advertising contest sponsored by MoveOn.org Voter fund
"All eligible submissions will be posted on this web site and rated by visitors. The top rated ads will then be voted on by our panel of esteemed judges, including Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Jack Black, Janeane Garofalo, and Gus Van Sant. The winning ad idea will be broadcast on television during the week of Bush's 2004 State of the Union address, and the winner will receive a recording of the ad as broadcast."
This and that....
World Net Daily says MSNBC is geting peeved at Chris Matthews for getting too critical of Bush these days.
"In a speech to university students, MSNBC host Chris Matthews characterized President Bush as a shallow-thinking, unlearned man.."
(If you ask me, this is no great, overly-critical, or new revelation. Chris is telling it like it is. We can all guess why GE might be concerned.)
The word is out that Chris Matthews is a Howard Dean-man.
"Matthews acknowledged that his personal favorite in the race is Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor who many see as the Democratic front-runner..."
What's up with this Betina Mixon? She had been awake all one night arguing with her husband, was late for an event (which happened to be Bush's speech) and "grew increasingly frustrated as she was turned away from the building at checkpoint after checkpoint. She then "took the matter into her own hands" and crashed through the checkpoint.
I wonder if she realizes this is the kind of thing that gets families killed in Iraq and Palestine nowadays?
Betina was lucky her brains (and those of her children, for Pete's sake) weren't blown out of her skull.
From UPI: Interview with Chief Minister of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province
~~~~~~~~~~
"America wanted to be the sole superpower and the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was the sine qua non of its quest. Then came Taliban in the vacuum that followed the Soviet withdrawal. Taliban are not just students from madrassas. They are the same jihadis (holy warriors) who chased the Russians out. Many came from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries to fight against the Russian invader. But when they tried to go home, they were treated as criminals and terrorists. Some were barred from returning home and others were sentenced to death or life imprisonment. So they returned to the region where they knew they would be welcome."
~~~~~~~~~~
This is a must-read.
See what the people of the PNF Province believe.
You may find yourself saying "I can't believe they see it that way"....
and in the next paragraph (or the next sentence)
you may be surprised to find yourself agreeing.
I'm certain there is a way to disentangle and reconciliate the disinformation which has caused seemingly wild accusations to be thrown our way by this Pakistani minster (and others like him), but it will never happen while we employ the tactics we are currently utilizing in this "war on terror".
I am certain that GW Bush will never be able to accomplish the difficult task of winning hearts and minds in the Arab world.
Just look at him...he miserably fails to win half of America's hearts and minds.
So where are we headed, people?
Bush is leading a divided nation.
Divided by his policies...policies for which he has had no mandate.
In this dangerous world we see angry, often-invisible, and misunderstood "enemies of the West". We are fools if we can't see that these "enemies" have been encouraged to join the hateful fight against us by the ignorant and aggressive actions of the Bush administration. We cannot trust Bush and his team of NeoCon idealists who have gotten us into a hornet's trap. We've been lied to....taken for fools. Our Congress has bought into the lies and facilitated this war with last year's Iraq Resolution. They should have known better.
It's time we start to listen to these people they like to call "terrorists".
It would behoove us to listen.
Either we listen or we fail.
Do you want us to fail?
Because, frankly, I don't want to see us fail in making this world a kinder and more peaceful place.
I'm not just talking about Kumbayah, either.
It's all about using the good sense we possess instead of our base savage instinct.
Sorry, war fans...
Bombing the hell out of this world and occupying the freshly-fried space just doesn't seem to work.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
"....Durrani firmly rejected the accusation that the NWFP's ruling coalition comprises Taliban-like religious zealots. "We are true democrats," he responded, "witness the way we conduct our policies in NWFP, in sharp contrast to the military dictatorship at the center. We also advocate peace with India over Kashmir; again witness the recent journey to New Delhi by one of our three top leaders with an offering of peace. As a result, India has responded with 12 confidence-building measures. The Holy (Koran) book teaches us peace, love and cooperation...."
"....Asked if he was suggesting that Taliban are for the most part foreigners, Durrani said, "in the literal sense (they) were no more than 1,000 at the outset. Later Taliban came to symbolize the entire Afghan nation. You might ask where did Osama Bin Laden come from? Who brought him back to Afghanistan after Sudan asked him to leave? The United States didn't seem too concerned about him in 1996 when he decided to go to Afghanistan. Later America was not interested in a negotiated solution. Imagine what the United States could have done if it had devoted the money it spent on bombing Afghanistan -- about $8 billion according to published reports -- to the reconstruction of the country after two decades of warfare. That would have been statesmanship of the highest order. Instead, you have chosen war and occupation and now you are faced with an increasingly hostile population...."
".....Durrani concluded the interview by saying that a world with one superpower "is very dangerous. There is no counterweight. Things were less dangerous during the Cold War when we had two superpowers. The same applies in a village that only has one elder. He could take unwise decisions with no countervailing force. A village is much safer with two elders. So was the world."
~~~~~~~~
For those of you who may find Durrani's suspicion of any Mossad / 9-11 connection as an insane and preposterous thought, see today's Herald (Glasgow).
While I'm away....
Make yourself at home.
Grab a hot cup (or cold bottle) of your favorite beverage and take a look around.
This October 28 wil mark the 41st anniversary of the end of the Cuban missile crisis.
The world breathed a collective sigh of relief after two superpowers headed off a potential nuclear confrontation.
President John F. Kennedy was praised for his diplomatic skills in averting a nuclear war.
I am very much afraid that our current President has no such diplomatic skill...and this is a far more dangerous time in which we live.
In 1962, the two superpowers found a new appreciation of the danger of nuclear weapons, which led to arms-control accords.
We are now a lone superpower.
We have a President who is not interested in honoring or creating accords.
He seems to have no knowlege or remembrance of the reasons we entered those accords.
We have a President who makes unsophisticated and one-sided demands of his allies as well as his enemies.
If we continue on this path...with this leader unwilling to employ respectful diplomacy...the animosity toward our nation and the people of our nation will be so strong that we will eventually be weakened and/or pulled down to an ugly and unrecognizable version of what was once a great and influential member of an international community.
While I'm away, consider the words of James G. Blight and Philip Brenner one year ago in their article entitled
"Cuban Missile Crisis: The Lessons for Iraq"
Think about all that has occurred this past year...and what we might be saying one year from today.
Take Care,
Jude
"...So one lesson we can learn by looking at Cuba's experience during the 1962 missile crisis is that our approach to weaker powers is fraught with danger and is not likely to achieve the results we seek. The United States tends to expect a weaker power will cower when the superpower roars, but in fact American efforts to intimidate are more likely to produce the opposite effect. Intimidation emboldens the small power, and however irrational the resulting behavior may seem to us, a weaker power may resort to unimaginable acts as a last line of defense. The Central Intelligence Agency recently came to the same conclusion in its assessment that Saddam Hussein would become "much less constrained" if faced with an attack led by the United States.
Ultimately, what Cuba demanded from the United States in 1962 is the same attitude that American allies have been furiously urging the United States to adopt in general and toward Iraq in particular: that the lone superpower act like a "normal" country and accord others the same rights to survival and sovereignty that the United States demands for itself. The allies have implored the United States to engage Iraq diplomatically and to rely on the United Nations and established international legal principles, which recognize that all nations -- great and small powers alike -- should be treated equally.
Is Iraq "another Cuba"? Not exactly. There are many differences between the two cases. But we believe a key similarity between them has received too little attention from those advocating pre-emptive action against Baghdad. It is this: The inability (or unwillingness) of the United States to empathize with those who feel the threat of annihilation -- people who may be willing to fight to the last man, woman, and child and even to use unthinkable weapons -- increases the likelihood that such weapons will be used, with all the horror and uncertainty that would follow.
We now know that the hawks advising Kennedy in October 1962 were dead wrong to recommend attacking Cuba with what they (mistakenly) believed would be an "acceptable" cost and risk. Might those advocating a pre-emptive strike on Iraq also be wrong in their assessment of the likely consequences?
Based on our reading of Cuba's mind-set 40 years ago, we believe it is worth considering that the hawks might also be wrong about Saddam Hussein and Iraq today. It just may be that the events of October 1962 constitute, if not a crisis for all seasons, at least a cautionary tale with disturbing relevance to the season that is upon us."
Take This Test!
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
The social dimension of politics is important. That's the dimension that the mere left-right scale doesn't adequately address. So Political Compass has added one, ranging in positions from extreme authoritarian to extreme libertarian.
My result was here:
Close to this fellow:
NOTE: Don't spoil the results by reading the Analysis section before you take the test.
FLORIDA may "big-foot" the DNC Dems into participating in straw poll
Certain DNC Dems' personal campaigns are worried about the straw polls, I'm sure.
I find it curious that all candidates signed a "snub-letter" to the Florida DNC, yet Howard Dean had recently urged Florida to push on with the straw poll. See Palm Beach Post article here.
My personal opinion?
The mainstream media is about nothing if it's not about beauty contests.
We hear the "media mouthpiece" day in/day out without ever being able to talk back en masse.
Media polls are unreliable pieces of doo-doo because they rely on the usual 1000-1500 people who are dumb enough to answer their phones at dinnertime.
That's politics..and with straw polls, we have democracy in a healthy form.
(As opposed to the one-way media).
I say "bring 'em on".
Let's see what the people are thinking.
Warning to DNC and Dems: REMEMBER CALIFORNIA!
The people are desiring more of a voice in politics..ignore them at your own peril.
Here are some quotes from the article highlighted above:
"...Democratic activists on the state party's central committee are scheduled to vote Nov. 16 on whether to hold a straw poll. Even in the face of threatened boycotts, support for a straw poll appears to be overwhelming..."
"...Gov. Howard Dean and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards have assured *him they will be at the convention no matter what."
*speaking about Jon Ausman, a DNC member from Tallahassee
"I don't think any of the top-tier candidates can afford to ignore Florida and alienate the very people they will need."
Florida Democratic Chairman Scott Maddox
"I am announcing Jean-Claude van Damme as the new governor of Montana!"
-quote from Daily Show host John Stewart at 8th Annual GQ Men-of-the-Year Awards
Bush Heckled by Aussie Senator
"I love free speech." GW Bush 10-22-03
ie: go ahead, ass
".... they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is..." Bush Press Secy Ari Fleischer 9-26-01
ie: shuddap, ass
Wal Mart Employees arrested by U.S. government in 61 different stores across the country
I'm certain Wal Mart was more than cooperative in this Ashcroftian crusade.
So the world's largest retailer who imports goods made from some of the cheapest labor in the world doesn't want to promote the same kind of people here in America...let 'em go back to where they belong and make that nickel a day.
I'm sure you'll be happy to know Wal Mart shares were up 4 cents at $58.28 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Dennis Prager--America's Next Civil War
photo by Iddybud
"......Whatever your politics, you have to be oblivious to reality to deny that America today is torn by ideological divisions as deep as those of the Civil War era. We are, in fact, in the midst of the Second American Civil War..."
"..Added together, the differences suggest people who live in different worlds that are on a collision course...."
Related:
See my blogpost Two Nations Under God??...Indivisible??
In today's news...
"..somebody doesn't like sara lee....."
_ _ _
A Howard Dean Op Ed
The man has a plan.
_ _ _
In today's Washington Post:
1- The Kerry campaign feigns surprise at fellow Dem candidate Dean employing "attack" tactics in early campaign advertising. (Who's actually missing the boat?)
2- Kudos to MoveOn.org in their protest for a more aggressive investigation into the leaking of the name of a CIA operative whose husband had been critical of the Bush administration. (Dare I reprint her name?)
_ _
I'd mention the Rumsfeld admission that Iraq is a total blooming mess, but that really isn't news, is it?
_ _
Columnist Richard Cohen on the current state of Germany-U.S. relations
".....With the collapse of the Soviet Union, German-American relations were bound to change. The common enemy was gone. But whatever differences were going to emerge have been exacerbated by the Bush administration's haughty and abrasive style. Might may make right but, as America will discover when it needs them, it does not make friends..."
Few people know how
to take a walk.
photos by Iddybud
The qualifications are endurance,
plain clothes, old shoes,
an eye for nature, good humor,
vast curiosity, good speech,
good silence,
and nothing too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bush to Sign Partial Birth Abortion Bill
How neat..clean...sterile.
Ooops...this one's a bit too yucky and real.
Like the photos of dead soldiers and civilians.
Get rid of it--quickly!
I support Bush's move on this one.
Trust me, I would fight until I could fight no longer if a woman's right to choose was truly threatened.
Partial birth abortion is murder.
All emotion and partisan politics aside...when you pull out a late-term living human entity and stab it with a steely instrument in order for it to die a painful death, it's murder.
I can't find another name for it.
It's the Achilles' heel of the Democrats. They too often pander to the far-left political groups who tend to forget
what is actually happening when a name for a procedure sweetens over the fact that a bona fide killing is taking place.
NeoCon Controversy
There is one line in this article with which I totally disagree.
It goes:
"Iraq was far more of a threat to the U.S. than a civil war in a far-away province of Yugoslavia. President Bush got the support of Congress for the Iraq war."
It betrays the writer as biased...definitely partisan.
That "far-away" province wasn't so "far-away" on today's global scale.
Make no mistake about this:
An unstable Europe would have allowed for an increase in the strength and activity of Middle Eastern WMD proliferation..right under our eyes.
As the writer himself admits, the Kosovo war, for all the civilians killed, has not stopped murderous desire and hatred amongst the Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
Perhaps Saddam would have actually had WMDs if we were caught up in the middle of an implosion of Eastern Europe.
As in this unjust and ugly Iraq folly, the Kosovo war was just another example of how twisted and result-aberrant the very idea of WAR actually is.
But I will say this:
The rest of this piece deserves a reading.
Any vague reliance upon NeoCons (aka the New Crusaders) will be a danger to America's survival.
Karen Kwiatkowski
Know her?
If not, you should.
Start here.
Abrogate: to treat as nonexistent
Function: verb
Synonyms: abolish, abate, annihilate, annul, invalidate, negate, nullify, quash, undo, vitiate
"When the security of this nation is threatened, Congress and the American people give the president great latitude," We probably have given this president more flexibility, more latitude, more range, unquestioned, than any president since Franklin Roosevelt -- probably too much. The Congress, in my opinion, really abrogated much of its responsibility."
Senator Chuck Hagel R-Nebraska
Oct 20- in a speech at the Gallup Organization World Conference in Omaha.
CENSORED
The Bush administraion worries that its military action in Iraq will lose support once the public sees the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.
Their solution?
Cutting off the public from the images by banning media coverage and photography of non-living soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.
It's legal to censor this type of coverage..so Bush is within his rights...though
our respect for Bush as an enabling leader of a free society is greatly diminished.
Politics and propaganda before honoring the beloved dead..that's what politics is all about.
Censorship of the honorable ceremony for the war-dead is a dirty warmongerer's tactic.
Bush is plainly a born-again Christian leader fighting the Islamic fundamentalist world.
This is a holy war, no matter how they try to label it.
The attacks on 9-11 were facilitated and funded by the weak and terrorist-bribing Saudi Arabian government.
Bush has protected them for reasons we do not understand....no reason could make good sense.
He sends our men and women to face death while lying about the reasons for being there.
He prefers all of us to ignore the maimed and the dead.
He enables corrupt regimes to go on...unscathed.
Some of us may not see it with our eyes...but we do not deny the reality because we know it in our hearts.
Decent and caring Americans like Jeff Horton of Stoughton, Wisconsin understand.
In the most recent Zogby poll, more Americans disapprove than approve of Bush's performance.
I can just imagine how those numbers would tank to the depths of poll-hell if Americans were allowed just a glimpse of what is really happening.
Shame on you, Bush!
Beware of "new story" Being Spread by the mysterious "L", courtesy of Conservative Rumor Mills---it's an old and shady story
Two years ago on Frontline(PBS) there was an interview with Iraqi defector Saba Khodada. He spoke of the terrorist camp at Salman Pak.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He was asked:
[Did you hear that some of those training at the camp were working for Osama bin Laden?]
Khodada: Nobody came and told us, "This is Al Qaeda people," but I know there were some Saudis, there were some Afghanis. There were some other people from other countries getting trained. They didn't tell us they were part of Al Qaeda; there's no such thing. ... In this camp, we know that those are Saudis, or Arabs are getting trained. Nobody will talk about Al Qaeda or any other organization.
[They're just people.]
Khodad: Yes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Salman Pak was no great secret to the U.S....nor was it ever proven that activities at Salman Pak were related whatsoever to 9-11.....that is, until now...when Bush and Cheney desperately need it to LOOK that way.
Enter the oh-so-credible "L" and his oh-so-verifiable(???) and new(???)story coming out...
Yet, for over two years it's been spread across the red meat Conserative rumor mills and it is being re-generated with new fevered embellishment at sites like Front Page and World Net Daily.....(the same reputable news source who told us Arafat was dead a couple weeks ago...oye...now they're calling this a "new, breaking exclusive...dear God get me my barf bag!) Other spots I've seen the story: at the "selective Memri"(biased against Arabs) Middle East Media Research Institute. NewsMax loved Salman Pak, too. (Go read their story..they're all hot and bothered that Bush didn't jump on the Salman Pakwagon months ago).
Oh--and look who else loved talking about Salman Pak.
As an American, I'm so sick of being used for lies, innuendo, and exaggertion being used by these liars to make this unilateral attack upon Iraq look as if it was our only choice.
Bullshit, Front Page.
Bullshit, World Net Daily.
Bulshit, Memri.
Bullshit, Newsmax.
Bullshit, Rush.
Bullshit, INC.
Bullshit, "L".
"L" stands for lie. "L" story-- full of holes?
This is like the WMD lie-patrol starting up all over again.
Chalabi sucked Judith Miller in about the WMD stories and the NY Times fell right in line as suckers and made it front-page news.
It turned out to be total horsenuggets.
Here's Chalabi with one of his American bitches
Now Salman Pak is back...with the new and improved credibility of a dude named "L".
The NY Times had best be careful this time before printing this shit as gospel.
The Times already have at least one story (June 2002) about the training camp.
After Jayson Blair and Judith Miller in one year, they cannot afford to get sucked down the credibility drain in their rush to grab headlines from the usual Conservative total-shit rumor.
Read this for more skepticism about this shady story.
It's time we stop allowing ourselves to be brainwashed, people!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From the FRONTLINE website: "Sabah Khodada was a captain in the Iraqi army from 1982 to 1992. He worked at what he describes as a highly secret terrorist training camp at Salman Pak (see Khodada's hand-drawn map of the camp), an area south of Baghdad. In this translated interview, conducted in association with The New York Times on Oct. 14, 2001, Khodada describes what went on at Salman Pak, including details on training hijackers. He emigrated to the U.S. in May 2001. (Editor's Note: Although U.S. officials acknowledge terrorists were trained at Salman Pak, they say it is unlikely that these activities were related to the Sept. 11 attacks. It should also be noted that the two defectors interviewed for this report have been brought to FRONTLINE's attention by members of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a dissident organization seeking to overthrow Saddam Hussein.)
