It Wasn't Friendly Fire
Topic: Iraq
I've always chalked up the occupation of Iraq to the Bush administration's incompetence, selfishness, and short-sightedness because they are after all, ruthless, corporate, profit-driven bastards, but almost anyone who knows anything about occupying countries knows that your are not supposed to train the people your occupying to more effectively kill you.

Iraqi Troops Killed U.S. Soldiers

I can just see it now, Bush standing in the Rose garden saying, "You're doing a heck of job, Rummy!"

Can you hear all the fat, lazy, neocon history revisionists and Bush apologists sitting in their air-conditioned homes with the SUV's parked in the driveway tapping away at the keys on their keyboard, trying to find the words to justify why sacrifice is good when its a poor kid doing it and trying to explain that their value to the cause is much greater working in corporate America, contributing to their 401k.

Doesn't that make you just a little sick to your stomach because the whole stinking thing makes me sick. I bet we can't even imagine what those 2 mothers and fathers are going through.

"Great Quotes!"
Topic: Misc.
"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought." -- Emma Goldman, American anarchist and feminist, 1869-1940

GREAT QUOTES! Read 'em to the end!

Scientific Explanation of Hell
Topic: Hopefully Humorous
The following is a question given on a chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some v ariant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving.

I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different Religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.

With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, t he volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa, (Cheerleader Captain and Class Valedictorian) during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night and again this morning, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.

The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct...leaving only Heaven, and thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God!!!"

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED THE ONLY "A."

Dallas and Becky's First Time, Thanks!

GLOBAL WARMING, LOCAL HOPE
Topic: By Paul Loeb
As the evidence of global warming becomes inescapable, I fear Americans will switch instead to a fatalistic pessimism. Maybe it's real and maybe it's our fault, this sentiment goes, but at this point there's nothing we can do, so we're off the hook.

It's hard to deal with melting arctic glaciers, Katrina refugees who might never return to New Orleans, and floods that recently covered half of Bangladesh. Weather-related catastrophes cost a record $225 billion last year, with the impact of global climate change just beginning. Add in a president deep in denial, and it's tempting to feel powerless. We can't even escape to the Weather Channel without a sense of impending doom.

Yet people are beginning to act, sometimes from unexpected places. By so doing they're opening up new possibilities. The heads of BP Amoco and the world's largest reinsurance companies, Swiss Re and Munich Re, have spoken out. So has the vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, joined by other key evangelical leaders like the country's largest megachurch pastor, Reverend Rick Warren. In Britain, even the Conservatives are demanding the issue be made a top national priority. In spring 2005, in Seattle, where I live, Mayor Greg Nickels recognized that even though the Bush administration was still denying the consequences of global warming, local mayors could still take a stand. Nickels committed Seattle to meet or exceed the Kyoto standards of greenhouse gas reduction and challenged the mayors of other cities to make the same commitment. Now 238 cities have signed the US Mayor's Climate Protection Agreement, from New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago to Omaha, Charlottesville, and Laredo. Together they represent 44 million people and greenhouse gas emissions exceeding those of the combined population of Great Britain, the Netherlands and Scandinavia.

Nickels also created a committee of environmental, business and community leaders to issue a Green Ribbon Report on specific ways Seattle could cut back. They just issued their report after a year of work, and the municipally owned utility, City Light, will now meet all new electrical demand with conservation and renewable resources-they've already been giving rebates for energy-efficient light bulbs and appliances. Seattle will expand infrastructure for public transportation, biking and walking. The city will offer incentives and requirements for city contractors to use more fuel-efficient vehicles or ones using bio-fuels, and work with major employers to increase car-sharing. A Green Building program will support conservation in residential and commercial construction and renovation.

The city also issued a challenge to local businesses to meet or surpass the same reduction levels: Six of the top fifty local employers have so far agreed for their local and in some cases national and international operations, including Starbucks, outdoor equipment coop REI, a major real estate development company, the Port of Seattle, and the international cement and building materials company LaFarge SA.

The University of Washington, the other major local employer to sign on, was already part of a campus-focused environmental network called the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (www.aashe.org), and schools like Yale, Oberlin, Cornell, the University of California system, and the Universities of Iowa, Minnesota, and Oklahoma have similarly pledged to meet or exceed the same standards. Member schools have renovated campus heating, cooling, ventilating and lighting systems, super-insulated buildings, installed solar collectors, switched to renewable electricity energy sources, and strengthened recycling programs. They've bought more efficient cars and trucks or vehicles running on bio-diesel. Tufts even held an energy-saving competition for its dorms called "Do it in the Dark," where they encouraged students to turn off lights and computers when not using them. As with the local city projects, the success of each particular effort encourages others and opens up new possibilities.

It's tempting to dismiss these initiatives as insignificant, given the magnitude of the challenge. Cuts in greenhouse emissions need to be far more drastic than Kyoto's limited reach of reducing emissions to 7% below the 1990 levels by 2012.. But efforts like Seattle's and some of the other cities and businesses offer a path forward, a way to act despite the Bush administration's massive denial. Each city inspires the next. So does each business. The more concrete the solutions, the less credible the arguments that nothing can be done. If a city can buy efficient cars and trucks for its fleets, or weatherize houses, or offer incentives for alternative energy generation, then so can any state or the U.S. federal government. If a company the size of Starbucks can decrease their greenhouse gas emissions, then so can other corporations. If the University of Washington or University of Oklahoma can find ways to lighten their impact, so can other campuses. Each initiative provides a model for others to follow.

I spent this past Earth Day with the Sierra Club canvassing the suburban neighborhoods of Bellevue, Washington State's fifth largest city. Going door to door in a swing Congressional district, we distributed coupons, supplied by the local utility, for discounted compact-fluorescent lightbulbs, handed out postcards urging Bellevue's mayor to sign the national mayor's agreement, and enlisted volunteers for future efforts. Most important, we talked with ordinary citizens about global warming and what they could do. Had Seattle not taken the initial step, our task would have been far harder.

The institutions and individuals taking these actions aren't perfect. I dislike how Starbucks undermines the rich culture of local independent coffee houses. I've disagreed with Seattle Mayor Nickels on a key transportation initiative and what I consider excessive deference to downtown development interests. But on this issue, they're taking risks to do what's right, and we're all the beneficiaries.

As Al Gore pointed out at the press conference announcing Seattle's Green Ribbon report, setting and meeting even initially modest targets opens up new possibilities. This occurred when countries worldwide phased out the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were destroying the stratospheric ozone layer that protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation. At first political leaders and leaders of affected businesses said this was impossible, that alternatives were unavailable or prohibitively costly. But even though the scientific data was still in flux, and CFCs had wide uses in electronics, refrigeration, plastics, telecommunications, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture, 24 nations, including the U.S., committed to the specific reduction standards of the 1987 Montreal Protocol. Businesses responded with major innovation, soon surpassing the standards. Northern Telecom developed and licensed new ways to clean electronic circuit boards. Greenpeace and a former East German company developed CFC-free refrigerators, which were sold throughout Europe and which German and Swiss aid programs promoted in China and India. The US food packaging industry stopped using CFCs in creating Styrofoam packaging, and China replaced their Styrofoam with a biodegradable product made from grass and straw. By a few years later, a series of amendments raised the standards still further and the bulk of the world's nations had signed on. With CFCs no longer accumulating in the atmosphere, the ozone layer is gradually beginning to recover.

These are hopeful signs. But how do we act if we don't hold a position of visible power, if we're not the mayor of a city or a corporate executive? We can take modest, or not so modest, individual steps, improving the insulation of our houses, installing solar water heaters, driving less, and buying energy-efficient cars, lighting and appliances. But voluntary efforts will never be enough, so we also have to compel large political and economic institutions to act. That means getting out from behind our computers and participating in efforts, like the Sierra Club's, to educate and sway voters in swing districts, showing up at community meetings, registering voters, convincing local civic groups to speak out. It means joining efforts like the international environmental boycott of Exxon/Mobil for being the prime financial supporter of the denial of global warming. And pressuring political, economic, and religious leaders to take a stand, both those whose hearts are in the right place but who have so far lacked the courage, and those who are willfully blind or just haven't come to grips with the facts. It means levying enough collective power so that these leaders have no choice but to respond.

One way to bring the issue home would be to create a context where our neighbors and colleagues can really begin telling the local stories. Farmers could talk about how changing patterns are affecting local agriculture, hunters and hikers about shifts in the patterns of wild animals and birds, skiers about melting snowpacks, backyard gardeners about the changing cycles of local plants, physicians about changing disease vectors from insect and rodent migration. If droughts, floods, tornadoes, or forest fires have threatened a local city or town, citizens could talk about that as well, weaving in discussion of the larger global patterns and of the choices we can make to respond. If we coordinated these testimonies well enough, they'd go a long way toward making some of the invisible changes visible.

We need to take action to promote further alternatives, not only as ends in themselves, but also to fight denial, which remains a powerful force. As Al Gore points out in An Inconvenient Truth, Science magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on the subject published between 1993 and 2003. Not one dissented from the international scientific consensus-that human activity is dramatically increasing the earth's temperature, in ways that will bring severe consequences. But because of promotion by corporations like Exxon/Mobil of a handful of global warming deniers, over half the news stories during the same period presented the issue as if there were a serious scientific debate. In the wake of Katrina's devastation of New Orleans and efforts like the local cities initiatives and Gore's powerful film, citizens may finally be ready to acknowledge global warming and its consequences, though the Bush administration is proposing to cut $152 million from federal energy conversation programs. Everywhere I go, people acknowledge how strange their local weather has been in recent years. But they don't always connect it to the larger patterns that threaten the habitability of the earth.

Efforts like the city-by-city campaigns and Gore's powerful film are helping to bring this critical issue to the public square. But they'll only bear fruit with the massive participation of ordinary citizens. However we decide to participate, it's not enough to follow the news, lament the parade of disasters, and long for someone else to solve the problem. If we don't act, the potential of even the wisest and most visionary alternative plans will remain just that: potential. If we demand that our economic and political leaders make them a reality, we have a chance to solve what may be the most profound crisis we've faced while inhabiting this planet. Each time we can convince a major institution to change, this encourages others to follow.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, winner of the 2005 Nautilus Award for the best book on social change. His previous books include Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time. See www.PaulLoeb.org.

The Righteous Hippie
Topic: Hopefully Humorous
A man who called himself a Christian was proselytizing on a street corner critiquing all the sinners he observed when a man who looked like a hippie crossed his path. The man yelled at the hippie, "Why don't you cut your hair, shave your beard and look like a responsible Christian?"

The hippie paused and thought for a second. He responded, "Didn't Jesus have long hair and a beard?"

The man was finally quiet.

The man who called himself a Christian moved on to have the #1 rated Evangelism television network where he regularly espoused his misinterpretations of the bible and skimmed a little off the top from all the charitable and good-hearted, albeit gullible contributors.

The hippie never thought it was important to accept Christ as his lord and savior but he still lived his life in his image. The hippie hasn’t attained worldly riches but his treasure still awaits him.

The man who calls himself a Christian has already received his treasure.

Zarqawi's Dead. So What?
Topic: Iraq
With the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the U.S. and the Iraqis are left with some important questions. What does this mean for peace in Iraq? What does this mean for the U.S. occupation of Iraq? With there be any affect on the level of violence in Iraq? What does the future hold?

The answers to these questions depend upon your perspective.

The first thing that we need to do in order to adequately answer these questions is ask who was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The answer is important so that we not only "know our enemy" but so that we can head off future Zarqawis. Finding an answer to this question is not that easy as there are many contradictory sources but one source that gives good background information is "Who is Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi?". Basically, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was a terrorist whose affect in Iraq has been incredibly exaggerated by the Bush administration and the right-wing, for-profit media. Al-Zarqawi was the leader of a small faction of Islamist extremists who, after the invasion and occupation of Iraq by U.S. forces, was elevated to a position of increased credibility in the previously isolated minority Muslim extremists.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi elevation to the point of ineffectual figure-head was cemented when President George W. Bush gave Islamist extremist the wet dream they've not only prophesized but needed to sustain their cause. In the post-invasion occupation men like Zarqawi moved into Iraq to fight Americans face-to-face. When Bush convinced U.S. citizens that Iraq was involved with the attack on 9/11, that they represented a direct and imminent threat to the U.S., and that Iraq was a part of the ambiguous "war on terror" which is without duration, without a defined goal or enemy and can be used to subjectively justify the attack of a country that did not pose a threat to their direct neighbors, no less the U.S., he opened up a Pandora's box, which if you're a Muslim sitting in an oil-rich Muslim country is reminiscent of the crusades.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi moved into Iraq and made it his new hunting ground with his sole purpose to foment sectarian violence between the Sunnis (Zarqawi was a Sunni) and Shia Muslims so that the occupying U.S. forces would not succeed in their mission of securing Iraqi natural resource assets. The problem with his policy and tactics is that many native Iraqi Sunnis, who were already fighting against U.S. forces prior to Zarqawi's arrival and prominence in Iraq, did not want to fight with other Iraqi Muslims (Shia) but rather seek to work together in violently removing U.S. occupying forces from their sovereign land.

Zarqawi represented such a small minority presence in Iraq of foreign born fighters that without tacit Bush administration and right-wing media support in elevating his prominence he surely would have faded into obscurity brought upon by the overwhelming occurrence of murdered civilians, maimed soldiers and general chaos in which he did not direct or inspire. It should also be said that U.S. ignorance of Iraqi culture has played a huge part in perpetuating Zarqawi's small role in Iraq. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was, from the perspective of the Bush administration's power people who exploited our widespread Iraqi cultural ignorance, the much needed figure-head and more importantly, foreign-born terrorist, to justify the existence of the flawed policy of preemptive action against weak Muslim countries; to give Americans something to soothe their need for vengeance. The problem is that we are imposing American values on an Iraqi problem. Zarqawi was not the head of the Iraqi insurgency which even if he was, doesn't need a head to continue, as it will indefinitely, well after Zarqawi's death.

The irony of the situation is that the Bush administration's explicit reasons for invading Iraq was to fight the "war on terror" to do away with men like Zarqawi who didn't previously exist in Iraq but with the U.S. invasion and the fallaciously created image of his preeminence, his death will certainly inspire more just like him.

Indifferent Decadence
Topic: State Of The Union
For the deaf, dumb and blind amongst us who actually believe that our country is the most benevolent in the world,

"The United States promised $2.5 million
in emergency aid; the European Union
granted $3.8 million"

This in response to a major earthquake in Indonesia that has already killed 4300 people. It absolutely makes me sick that the economically arrogant nation that I live in does so much of all the wrong things and way to little of the right things. Spend $300 billion in blowing up a country, no problem, help poor, suffering farmers who just lost large chunks of their family and we throw them the tiniest of bones.

Just remember that the soldiers that have died for our freedom didn't do so, so that we could live in indifferent decadence.


Quake in Indonesia Kills at Least 4,300


Happy Memorial Day.

Please pick up the slack and make a donation to the RED CROSS.

Preempting Ignorance
Topic: Foreign Policy
As part of a recent academic discussion it was proposed that the articles ("Say No to Tehran's Gambit" and "It's Time to Engage With Iran") represent opposing viewpoints.

What do you think?

The major problem facing U.S. foreign policy is the recurring theme of blatant hypocrisy. The fundamental assumptions of either unilaterally, bilaterally or multilaterally negotiating with the Iranians to further the goal of ceasing Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions is an argument that the U.S. can't win. It's the classic "do as I say, not as I do" argument. The U.S., through programs like "divine strafe," are testing battlefield nuclear weapons with the implicit use to be on sites like underground Iranian Uranium enrichment facilities. It is initiatives like this, coupled with undying support for Israel and U.S. unilateralism and intervention in the past that is part of the impetus for states like Iran seeking nuclear weapons. However, the truth of the matter is that Iran is a minimum of 10 years away from processing enough fuel to have the basics required for nuclear weapon. The point is, THERE IS NO IMMINENT CRISIS.

For the sake of intellectual folly let's argue this question of unilateralism, bilateralism or multilateralism under the assumption that our ignorant political representatives, with the support of a full-frontal assault by the mediocre and ill-informed minds of the press (and often academia,) in this case Krauthammer and Ignatius, will provide us all with a sudden urgency on the matter of Iran, especially now that it looks like the American public is growing weary over the last thing that they were manipulated into believing they should fear.

The real question then becomes what does the U.S. have as a bargaining chip with Iran? The threat of military force? I don't think so.

Here's why:

Limited air strikes that target Iranian infrastructure, nuclear or otherwise, would provoke a response from Iran and an Iranian invasion of Iraq would most likely be the outcome. That would directly imperil the lives of 135,000 U.S. soldiers based in Iraq, not to mention countless civilians. The U.S. military leadership would certainly bring in reinforcements from the surrounding areas like Afghanistan, who can't afford to be stressed further. Ships in the gulf would provide air and missile cover, nations around the world would choose sides and things would get very hairy, very quickly.

The true strength of the U.S. military is not what our political leaders have convinced the population it is. Despite budgets that are basically more the entire world put together, our forces are overstretched and as recent polls show, demoralized, to the point of wanting extraction from the so-called "war on terror" in Iraq. The general public, despite not having to sacrifice anything in the invasion of Iraq has had its will seriously degraded and are solidly against a draft, which would be the only logical solution to a full-scale invasion of Iran. In the long term, Americans would only support a military action against Iran if it meant that they would not have to change any aspect of their lifestyle, including becoming a part of our democracy through direct military sacrifice, having to pay increased taxes for the war machine and the inevitable rise in not only gasoline prices but also consumer goods.

Another problem with using military action to resolve conflicts like this is that it only seems to limitedly work on countries that are weak and powerless; it especially helps when there's less than 25 million people, half the population is under the age of 15 and there has been full scale destruction of armaments in the preceding years, suffocating sanctions and claustrophobic no-fly zones repressing the country in every facet of its existence. The point is Iran ain't Iraq. A military conflict with Iran would be exponentially more difficult then the relatively minor skirmish presently taking place in Iraq.

Even if the U.S. used a force 10 times the size that which invaded Iraq the 2nd time, the military wouldn't just roll over Iranian forces. An occupation would be longer and more drawn out than what is taking place in Iraq and an air war alone would certainly bring Israel into the mix. Israeli involvement would bring other Arab and Muslim states into what could then become a major war. These likely realities tangled with the U.S. military and the public's inability to see that "will" wins wars and not technology and the Iranians would clearly have an advantage. Iranians surely realize that to fight a war like this against U.S. forces conventionally would be suicide and inevitably, if they haven't already, would reach the conclusion that a "terrorist" type insurgency would ensure that a U.S. occupation would not persist. A drawn out occupation would have the not-so-incidental affect of radicalizing the citizenry of other Arab and Muslim states in a more extreme fashion then the occupation of Iraq already has and could provoke at a minimum increased regional instability, a likely full-scale regional insurgency and/or a major world war.

The truth is that while these assumptions could be completely wrong and the U.S. could accomplish its military goals quickly and without provoking regional destabilization it can’t ensure that Iran wouldn’t acquire nuclear weapons. The crux of this entire argument is the flawed assumption that if Iran possessed a weapon they would use it. The only country in the world that has ever had the dubious distinction of being able to use nuclear weapons without equitable retribution was the U.S. in 1945. The likely possible targets of hypothetical Iranian nuclear attack either possess their own nuclear weaponry, like Israel, or have the pledged support of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Any pre-emptive attack by the Iranians would be, if you'll allow the use of an analogous quote from Condoleeza Rice in referring to North Korea and Iraq in JANUARY 2000,

"These regimes are living on borrowed time, so there need be no sense of panic about them. Rather, the first line of defense should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence --if they do acquire WMD, their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring NATIONAL OBLITERATION."

The Iranians know this, we know it and the world knows it. The only logical conclusion we can be left with, barring a radical departure from previous U.S. foreign policy, namely the end of hypocrisy, unilateralism and failed violent intervention, is that our country has to accept the fact that countries like Iran are going to acquire weapons we don't want them to have and the resulting costs from attempting to stop this inevitability would far outweigh any military successes. The U.S. cannot stop war by creating it, can't stop violence by perpetuating it and can't stop violent preemption by being violently preemptive.

Yet again it seems that the only characteristics required to solve this problem is patience and diplomacy but only time will tell if the U.S. will have the foresight and wisdom to possess them.

A Quicke...
Topic: Hopefully Humorous
Dick Cheney and George W. Bush were having breakfast at the White House.

The attractive waitress asks Cheney what he would like, and he replies, "I'd like a bowl of oatmeal and some fruit."

"And what can I get for you, Mr. President?"

George W. replies with his trademark wink and slight grin, "How about a quickie this morning?"

"Why, Mr. President!" the waitress exclaims "How rude! You're starting to act like Mr. Clinton! ''

As the waitress storms away, Cheney leans over to Bush and whispers...

"It's pronounced "quiche."



(Thanks Maura!)

GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!
Topic: Misc.
The scumbags who ran Enron, Kenny "Boy" Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, are finally going to jail!!!

That's all. Carry on.

Not quite.

P.S. The law needs to change so that scum like Lay and Skilling have all their assets seized, sold at fair market value and the proceeds returned to the hard working people who trusted these assholes with their jobs and livelihoods. (There should also be a mandatory prison gangbang law but let's keep it clean.)

It should also be said that it is crimes like these that law enforcement should concentrate on and instead of the white, middle class racists waking up in the middle of the night dreaming about a dark colored thief or some illegal immigrant, they should worry about the incredibly more likely scenario that some white, anglo-saxon, protestant millionaire is going to dissolve or outsource their job, flatten their pension, poison their parents, mutilate their religion and send their children to be maimed and killed in needless wars over oil and economics.

These crimes are the type that truly hurt large numbers of people and they go on in every industry in America, everyday.

P.P.S. I wonder how Bush is going to manipulate 9/11 after his close personal buddy, Kenny Boy, is sentenced to 45 years on September 11th. 9/11 was a horrific day but the fact remains that this type of terrorist act has only occurred once and guys like Lay and Skilling who have hurt much greater numbers of people are a dime-a-dozen in our nation's history.