Flirting With The Abyss No More: Good Riddance & Good Night...

"Let’s be honest—this new millennium, so far it’s been a huge disappointment. It was preceded by a false alarm (the Y2K rollover), was cursed by hanging chads (the Florida recount), and has been held hostage ever since by the ministry of fear, with Americans meekly removing their shoes for the privilege of flying in airplanes charging fees for pillows and blankets. It’s been seven years since 9/11, no follow-up attack has stabbed our shores, and yet the front pages of so many papers resemble the end is near signs toted by bearded prophets that were once a staple of New Yorker cartoons. The decade has traveled from bin Laden’s cave to the Dark Knight’s Batcave in a jagged thrust of clenched force and unleashed chaos. Even an unforeseen blossom of good news, such as the declining death toll in Iraq, seems almost incidental in the log stream of general lousiness.

Journalism used to perform a higher civic function than it does today, so spanked up is it with gaffes, gotchas, spin-doctoring, celebrity pimping,crisis-mongering, minnow-brained punditry, drama criticism practiced from under the troll bridge (usually at the expense of Democrats—Al Gore’s sighings during the debate with George Bush, Hillary Clinton’s “cackle”), and instant amnesia.

To watch archive footage of TV reporters from the black-and-white era with their measured intonations and ashen visages—before everybody burst into Michael Kors orange—is to crack open the crypt on a more responsible, somber, and, yes, duller era, when journalists still conducted themselves as a priestly caste serving the needs of an informed citizenry, as opposed to catering to cud-chewing dolts. Those days are gone and there’s no point in mourning them, the Walter Lippmanns and similar wise men (and women) having proved worse than useless when the Vietnam War sawed the country into two with its lies and delusions. But the intelligent drone of old-school journalism served to extend a support bridge through national trauma, the term “anchorman” symbolic of the media’s role in securing coverage of the news with weight and authority, a fixed point in a sea of raging foam. Now it’s all raging foam, a steady, indiscriminate diet of excitation to keep us permanently on edge.

To pick up The New York Times each morning and brave the headlines—at conference on the risks to earth, few are optimistic, August 24, 2008—is to understand why generalized anxiety disorder is the world’s No. 1 psychological condition. Even more anxiety-inducing are the paper’s science pages, which make you want to roll out of bed in a fetal ball, especially the medical coverage, the happy hunting grounds for hypochondriacs, with Jane E. Brody digging up the latest rare disease about to hit it big, and bummer case studies such as that of the elderly patient with spontaneous gas gangrene left to deal with her own mortal fright: “She never made it to the operating room, and as far as I know, none of her doctors discussed her imminent death, then simply sat with her.”

I blame Bush. I blame Bush for everything and will continue to blame him (and Vice President Dick Cheney) for everything long after we’re all dead...The two terms of George W. Bush’s presidency have been not simply a psychological bringdown but a steady beatdown. The malaise that President Jimmy Carter supposedly diagnosed as our national condition in 1979—though Carter never used the actual word—is nothing compared with the slough of despond Cheney seems to have dug with his shovel jaw in service of the National Security State and to the detriment of everything else. Even as the Decider eyes the exits, his administration pulls stunts such as attempting to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act and to lift the ban on offshore drilling, as if to get in one last twist of the knife before Bush waves buh-bye as he boards the helicopter into the azure, unless it’s raining. It will be one of the un-nicer ironies of modern American history that a president who prided himself on his crispy optimism should depart office having dyed the electorate a pervasive shade of blue. Not Democratic blue (though maybe that too), but the blue of futility, frustration, and worry, as reflected in the right-track/wrong-track numbers. (In a USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted between August 21 and 23, 81 percent of those participating described themselves as “dissatisfied” with the direction in which the country was lurching. Not only is Bush the Decider—he’s also the Dissatisfier.)

“The centre cannot hold,” to quote the oft quoted line from W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming,” and when the center cannot hold, the chickens run around in circles. everything seemingly is spinning out of control, bemoaned the headline of a June 21 Associated Press article by Alan Fram and Eileen Putman, which proposed that the American can-do spirit was being flattened by chunks of falling sky. “Horatio Alger, twist in your grave,” Fram and Putman wrote. “The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country’s sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.”

Our true grit has succumbed to dry rot and tofu. Once a virile nation capable of building the Panama Canal and landing on the moon, now look at us: pathetic.

The world’s flirting with the abyss isn’t going to produce a picnic for anybody, should such a consummation occur, but I reckon mankind is responsible for its own ruination. Al Gore tried to warn us about the polar ice caps, but the Rush Limbaughs of this world chose to maintain a carbon footprint bigger than King Kong’s. If humanity remains hell-bent on despoiling its mother planet and rendering it unlivable through our insatiable demand for more of everything (israel’s demand for water is draining the sea of galilee —Financial Times, August 23–24, 2008), bringing down the curtain on a civilization that gave us Socrates, Shakespeare, and Shakira’s vibrating hips, so be it. It’s been a good run—shame it had to end so shabbily. Maybe our Martian colony will survive. We must stay stoic in the stark face of our collective demise, even as we’re blubbering.

I find insupportable the prospect that the animal kingdom will precede us into extinction, the innocent victims of our selfish stupidity and vicious folly—an endless parade of drowning polar bears, slaughtered wolves, slain gorillas, vanishing tigers, and diminishing songbirds joining the fate of the last great auk. It is particularly unforgivable given the research showing that monkeys, for example, are capable of charity and empathy, which is more than can be said of Bill O’Reilly between feedings. We will pamper our pets, spending billions on their comfort and welfare, while witnessing a slow, irrevocable die-off of wild animals as their remaining habitat is destroyed through deforestation, poaching, global warming, and one last mad shotgun spree by Dick Cheney in deer-hunter camo before his bionic heart gives (with vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin ready to step into his boots and fell any caribou suspected of treason).

More and more, telecast news reminds me of the constant cycle of pharmaceutical ads on cable TV for prescription drugs to address bladder control, herpes outbreaks, depression, erectile dysfunction, anxiety disorder, allergies, high cholesterol, fibroneuralgia, and Alzheimer’s, planting nervous seeds in your head until you start patting yourself down for symptoms, unable to pee with the usual carefree abandon. Part of the genius of Barack Obama’s campaign logo is that it englobes the sun, blue sky, the flag, and the O of his name (a circle within a circle) into what resembles a happy pill. Pop it in your mouth and feel the radiance expand within, the windows of your mind opening onto a wonderland. Anyone can preach hope, but to pictorialize it in capsule form—that was the coup. His campaign understood what its political rivals didn’t: the antidote to bad news isn’t good news, but a good feeling that turns bad news into background noise.

Forget the 2004 election, a protracted hangover from 2000. This is the first real millennial ballot, the first real chance to put this bad dream behind us, or keep the bad dream going, under new management."

-James Wolcott,("The News Blues," Vanity Fair Magazine, 12.2008. Image: -BrokenStairway, "Enjoying Life", deviantart.com, 3. 3.07).

VIOLETPLANET SAYS: "Here's to a better future beginning in 2009... Earth. Thanks for putting up with all the abuse. Those who perpetrated these crimes await your punishment. No mercy required."

Muntader al-Zaider: Mightier Than The Bomb...If The Shoe Fits, Throw It...

PART I: DELUSIONAL DENIAL

KARL: In hindsight, do you think any of those tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others went too far?

CHENEY: I don't.....On the question of so-called torture, we don't do torture. We never have. It's not something that this administration subscribes to. Again, we proceeded very cautiously. We checked. We had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross.

...The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful -- wouldn't do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong. Did it produce the desired results? I think it did. And I think those who allege that we've been involved in torture, or that somehow we violated the Constitution or laws with the terrorist surveillance program, simply don't know what they're talking about.

KARL: Did you authorize the tactics (dogs, stress positions, sleep deprivation, humiliation) that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?... And on KSM, one of those tactics, of course, widely reported was waterboarding. And that seems to be a tactic we no longer use. Even that you think was appropriate?

CHENEY: I do...

...I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.

KARL: You probably saw Karl Rove last week said that if the intelligence had been correct we probably would not have gone to war.

CHENEY: I disagree with that. I think – as I look at the intelligence with respect to Iraq, what they got wrong was that there weren't any stockpiles. What we found in the after action reports, after the intelligence report was done and then various special groups went and looked at the intelligence and what its validity was. What they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feed stocks. - Jonathan Karl (Excerpt: Transcript: "Cheney Defends Hard Line Tactics In Exclusive Interview With ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney Opens Up About His Hard Line Tactics," 12.16.2008).

PART II: THE TRUTH

"The U.S. should assert its military dominance over the world to shape “the international security order in line with American principles and interests,” push for “regime change” in Iraq and China, among other countries, and “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars….While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” - (“Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century,” The Project for the New American Century [members include Cheney and Rumsfeld], 9.2000).

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
- Vice President Dick Cheney, ( Selling The Iraq Invasion, Speech to VFW National Convention, 8.26.2002).

RUSSERT: What do you think is the most important rationale for going to war with Iraq?

CHENEY: Well, I think I’ve just given it, Tim, in terms of the combination of his development and use of chemical weapons, his development of biological weapons, his pursuit of nuclear weapons.

RUSSERT: And even though the International Atomic Energy Agency said he does not have a nuclear program, we disagree?

CHENEY: I disagree, yes...

We believe [Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. - Vice President Dick Cheney (Excerpts: Selling The Invasion on "NBC's Meet the Press," 3.16.2003)

PART III: YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL A MAN BY HIS SHOES:

"Muntader al-Zaidi who remained in custody Monday, provided a rare moment of unity in a region often at odds with itself. Glee, even if thinly veiled, could be discerned in much of the reporting, especially in places where anti-American sentiment runs deepest.

In Syria, Mr. Zaidi’s picture was shown all day on state television, with Syrians calling in to share their admiration for his gesture and his bravery. In central Damascus, a huge banner hung over a street, reading, “Oh, heroic journalist, thank you so much for what you have done.”

Mr. Zaidi’s hero status continued to grow on Monday. In Damascus, a 34-year-old shop owner, who gave his name only as Muhammad, said he was on his way to celebrate the shoe-throwing incident with friends."

“This is like a holiday. This is just what we needed for revenge.”

-Timothy Williams & Abeer Mohammed (Part III, Excerpt: "In Iraqi’s Shoe-Hurling Protest, Arabs Find a Hero - It’s Not Bush," NY Times, 12.15.2008. Image: - Ivan Anic, Muntader al-Zaider - "Mightier Than The Bomb," IvansArmy.Com , 12.16.2008 ).

Dear Mr. President: "A True Patriot Is A Lover Of His Country Who Rebukes And Does Not Excuse Its Sins..."

Dear Mr. President:

Victory achieved. "Its been a long time coming”…too long. The tears you witnessed on election night were tears of joy, pride and ultimately relief. Finally, after eight years of negativity and darkness, the light called Democracy ignited again. It was an incredible night in this country's history. In a moment, we saw the United States renewed for the sole reason that its citizens came out of their caves and voted for change...for light.

Our request is to ask you to bring Democracy and Justice full-circle. For a Democracy is not that...if those who willingly chose to subvert, distort and ignore it are permitted to enjoy the benefits of freedoms and decency that they denied others for eight long secretive, torturous and needless death-filled years. You know of whom I speak: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Woo, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. For these men to retire to their luxurious mansions and pristine golf courses without repercussions for their lies, their disdain for our Constitution and finally for their crimes against humanity would be a travesty of Democracy, a travesty of Justice and would certainly lessen the significance of the people's victory on November 4.

We respectfully ask that you open a full-investigation into the Bush Administration's past governmental activities. We know they broke the laws many times. It’s been documented, reported and archived. However, these men must be held accountable for their actions. If action is taken in this direction, then our Democracy is working. It means that you cannot break the law and get away with it even if you are the King or a subject in the King's Court. You cannot twist the laws of this country. You are not entitled to make any rules that you desire just because you wear a crown. Following the laws of our Constitution and displaying simple human decency are what separate the United States from the rest of the world. We must restore the Constitution. We must punish the King for being a King in what was designed to be a Federal Constitutional Republic. They have willingly broken the laws of our Founding Fathers. They must atone.

We realize you have more urgent matters to attend to first. The economy being of that upmost importance at this time but we ask you to devote some time to this too. It is a long process. It will cost money we don’t have. However, we guarantee you it will be money well spent. If you proceed, you will have support from the majority of Americans and you will have served your country as the Founding Fathers intended. A million innocent Iraqi civilians and 4191 American soldiers will have not died in vain. Close the circle that you drew for us on Nov. 4. 2008. Close it so this country can begin anew in all the just ways and finally close it for any future Presidents who might try to govern under the same lawless and despicable policies.

"A true patriot is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins."

-Frederick Douglass

-VioletPlanet (Letter to Office of The President-Elect Barack Obama: Change.Gov, 11.7.08. Image: Nazi Party Leaders, Hermann Goring & Rudolph Hess on trial for crimes against humanity. Reaction as the verdicts are read, Nuremberg Trials, National Archives, 10.1.1946).

On Iraq: Big Disguise, Bigger Disinformation, Biggest Denial...

"The US and Britain have triggered an episode more deadly than the Rwandan genocide. On both sides of the Atlantic, a process of spinning science is preventing a serious discussion about the state of affairs in Iraq. For longer than the US has been a nation, Britain has pushed us at our worst of moments to do the right thing. That time has come again with regard to Iraq. It is wrong to be the junior partner in an endeavour rigged to deny the next death induced, and to have spokespeople effectively respond to that death with disinterest and denial." - Dr. Les Roberts (IndependentUK, 2.14.07).

"Dr. Les Roberts risked his life a few years ago to get some numbers that some people fiercely attack as inaccurate, misleading and that many others pay little or no attention to. Dr. Roberts, a physician and prominent public health scientist at Columbia University believes there is solid evidence that close to half a million people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the Iraq war. His statistics are about 10 times higher than the estimates put forth by the Bush administration and the Pentagon.

"But a much bigger problem than the numerical disparity is the simple fact that so few even ask. I think it's important that every American understand the true magnitude of this tragedy," says Roberts.

Unfortunately, few in the media or in government appear to want to draw attention to the deaths that have so severely altered the lives of so many.

In 2004, Roberts and colleagues sneaked into Iraq with dyed beards and dressed in robes to conduct a series of mortality "cluster point" surveys in various communities. His team initially estimated the civilian death toll as at least 100,000 (two to three times the official estimate) but later analysis prompted him to raise the estimate. The findings were reported in the British medical journal, the Lancet in 2006.

"To help people understand this, given the population of Iraq, it would be like New York City having two 9/11 attacks every week over a period of three years," Roberts said.

Another report, issued in January, estimated that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence between March 2003 and June 2006. The estimate was based on projections by the Iraqi government and the World Health Organization.

"General David Petraeus testified earlier this year about the fewer deaths we're seeing in Iraq, but his numbers suggested that life in Baltimore was more violent than in Iraq." Before a Congressional Hearing, Dr. Roberts wrote Senators asking them to challenge the statistics, but nobody uttered a word. News reporters stayed silent as well.

"Everybody wants to believe things are getting better because Republicans want to declare victory and Democrats want an excuse to get out. Meanwhile, the media continue to ignore the issue. My professional life and purpose is based on the belief that most of the time, valid data leads towards truth and that truth... can lead toward justice,"

-Tom Paulson (Excerpt: "Doctor Laments Brush-Off of Iraqi War Dead," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 10.24.08. Image: -American Colony, "Iraqis In The Streets," Library of Congress, Iraq, 1932 ).

Indefensible, Unjustifiable & Immoral...

The Empire is falling. Bush is basically an amalgam of Augustus Caesar and Nero. He, his administration and his party have neutralized our Republic and turned our government into a crony-serving money-machine for the likes of Cheney's KBR. In eight short years the Repugs, with the weak-kneed acquiescence and therefore tacit approval of the Democrats, have dismantled our republic and accelerated into full-fledged imperial overreach.

Nearly thirty years of supply-side, Reaganomics is coming home to roost. The real economy, the one the vast majority of Americans live in, has seen wages stagnate and fail to keep up with productivity since 1973. The parasitic economy, the one you see bubble heads on TV talking about is largely illusory. Full of "naked short sales", "spiders" and other speculative devices designed to steal money from the rest of us.

The unmitigated greed of the lords of this other economy, about 1% of the population, have harnessed the labor of the other 99% while at the same time infiltrating our government and slashing any and all regulation in order to make it even easier to steal. They've created trade deals in opposition to over two-hundred years of trade policy that have decimated our real economy. The economy of factories and steel mills. Our manufacturing base, the strength of our whole country is just gone in the name of Globalization. Just a little understanding of history reveals that this "globalization" isn't new. Something very similar was touted during the height of the British Empire; even down to the same justifications.

The speculative/parasitic economy is run on television for television by vast weapons manufacturers that also happen to own television. Cheap hucksters and just plain lying pricks like the guys from Enron who famously joked:

"Yeah, grandma Millie, man" "Yeah, now she wants her f-----g money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her a-- for f-----g $250 a megawatt hour" (gales of frat-boy laughter).

Voters have a clear choice.

• If you care about the economy you can choose between a guy who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard law school, who eschewed big money jobs on Wall St. to go work with the people on the south side of Chicago. Or you can choose a guy who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the Annapolis Naval Academy who nevertheless was given a much coveted spot for training as a naval pilot, who during the last huge collapse in the financial sector in the late 80's, was a member of the Keating 5.

• If you care about foreign policy, you can choose a guy who voted to allow Bush to unilaterally invade Iraq in 2003. A guy who has voted with Bush nearly every chance he's gotten and who thinks the foreign policy we are currently engaged in is just great. Or they can choose a guy who was interviewed on November 11, 2002 where he said he would not have voted to authorize the Iraq war and who further went on to say that if the headlong rush to war was pressed; the issue would then become how to stabilize the region and how to get back out. Something he's been thinking about since Bush, McCain, et al. invaded in March 2003.

There's more, oh so much more, but we all know the arguments. The bottom line is, a vote for McCain in this election is indefensible, unjustifiable, and immoral.

- Sean Keenan, ("A Clear Choice," The Ojai Post, 9.16.08. Image: Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus
Rome, Bronze, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore MD, Julio-Claudian Period, ca. A.D. 50).

BushCorp: History Repeated...History Deleted...

After watching wholesale lots of the Bush administration’s most important e-mails go mysteriously missing, Congress is trying to legislate against any further damage to history. The secrecy-obsessed White House is, of course, threatening a veto — one more effort to deny Americans their rightful access to the TRUTH about how their leaders govern or misgovern.

The House approved a measure last week that would require the National Archives to issue stronger standards for preserving e-mails and to aggressively inspect whether an administration is in compliance. The Archives needs spine stiffening. Congressional investigators found that its staff backed off from inspections of e-mail storage after the Bush administration took office.

We fear we may never find out all that has gone missing in this administration, although we urge Congressional investigators to keep trying. What we do know is that the Bush gaps of missing e-mails run into hundreds of thousands during some of the most sensitive political moments. Key gaps coincide with the lead-up to the Iraq war — and the White House’s manipulation of intelligence — as well as the destruction of videotapes of C.I.A. interrogations and the outing of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

Missing e-mails include entire blank days at the offices of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Also mysteriously wiped from the record are e-mails from Karl Rove, the president’s political guru, and dozens of other White House workers who improperly conducted government business on Republican Party e-mail accounts. The White House now claims that nothing has been lost, though officials previously acknowledged large-scale purging, claiming they were accidental.

An administration with nothing to fear from the truth would be in the forefront of protecting the historical record. The Senate must stand with the House and ensure that at least future administrations are stopped from doing wholesale damage to history.

New York Times Editorial, ("History Deleted At The Whitehouse,"7.13.2008, Image: Artist Unknown: George Washington, Anti-Censorship Group, myspace.com, 2008).