Nature-deficit disorder plagues kids Parents feel their kids aren't safe outside, with Amber Alerts regularly making the national news and reports of scouts going missing in the woods. "Our culture lives in fear. We feel it intensely," says journalist Richard Louv. It was a very different experience growing up for him. "I spent lots of hours with my collie in those woods. I had a sense of ownership over them." Today, kids' "relationship with nature is scholastic. Mine was in my heart, that's a big difference." Americans, unrooted, blow with the wind, but they feel the truth when it touches them... George Trow, Within the Context of No Context The doom and gloom cloud that seems to follow the work of George W. Bush has completely infected many Americans. They are stuck in two-party oppositional politics and cannot see that the way beyond the dilemma is new parties and a political system that is transformed. Greg Gerritt, Green Party Tempest Confronting trickle-down fear at the local B&N; Despite us grownups there IS hope for the future: Daily Kos, The Progressive, Al Mascitti Belacqua Jones Dear George, Do you know why we're the greatest power on the face of the earth? Because, we disembowel our children's souls. The child's soul, when it leaves the womb, is a dance, a slowly turning carrousel of gaily-colored swirls, twists, turns, squiggles, arcs, undulations, and gurlywhigs. The child dances even as it sleeps. Nature abhors the straight line and symmetry, and the dance of the child reflects this abhorrence. But, function cannot abide the spontaneity of the dance, and if nothing else, we are a functional nation. Only lunatics dance, so we gut their souls and draw it off. Into the empty cavity, we stuff all the flotsam they will need to grow into "functional" adults. First, we brand them, for the quickest way to snuff the soul is to turn its attention to the logo. Then we teach them the line: that linear progression of a temporal world devoid of the cycle that is the ground of the soul. We hound them about punctuality until they internalize the tick of the clock and their world is narrowed to a tense apprehension over the next appointment, the next deadline, the next whatever. Then we indoctrinate them into the iron grid of row and column: the rows and columns of seats neatly lined up in the classroom, the rows and columns of the spreadsheet they come to see as the only reality. We replace meaning with technique, emotion with number, value with concept. We stuff their souls until they are so bloated the spirit suffocates and becomes dead to the movement of the dance, dead to the poem, dead to the song. Value evaporates and only the number is left; the dance dies and only the march remains. God has truly blessed us. Your admirer, Belacqua Jones

Katrina MULTIMEDIA MESSAGE OF THE DAY Progressives need to grasp the simple fact that we didn't invade Iraq to bring peace or stability or democracy to the Iraqi people -- we invaded to advance what are known, I think euphemistically, as "U.S. interests" -- and we're not staying for any other reason. The Primary Point of the Occupation of Iraq is the Occupation Itself posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet at 10:00 AM on November 23, 2007. A major part of the protest against the war springs simply from the fact that we are losing it. Criticism of the war because it isn't being won leaves the door open for the Bush administration to sell the claim that - with enough resolve and better military tactics - the war can be vindicated. It's time to close that door. Would any one of them have suffered from a guilty conscience if they had won? Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil America: No longer the ruler of her own spirit. The Honorable John P. Murtha: War in Iraq A flawed policy wrapped in illusion. Our military has done everything that has been asked of them, the U.S. can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME. "You guys are pathetic! Pathetic!" Analysis in No Quarter  The Bipartisan Invasion of Iraq... The first war based almost entirely on a covert propaganda campaign targeting the media.  [ AP ] ... [ search news ] ... [ search news ] ... [ ICH News Wire ] ... [ BuzzFlash ] ... [ Consortiumnews ] ... [ PR Watch ] ... [ MidEastWire.com's Daily Iraq Monitor ] "Operation Iraqi Liberation -- OIL "...a war that need never have been fought . Overselling Terror By Robert Parry, June 9, 2006 Bush's intent appears to be to use a never-ending hyped-up threat of Islamic terrorism as the organizing principle for a new authoritarian form of government in the United States. By keeping Americans scared, he and his advisers believe they can exert virtually unlimited power inside the United States without significant opposition. But the mother of all distractions came on June 8, 2006: And [al-Zarqawi's] death conveniently distracts the corporate media from reporting that while the Prime Minister of Iraq appointed most of his cabinet last weekend, the position of Vice President Abel Abdul Mahdi, which had been set over a month ago, was the re-appointment of one of the most aggressive supporters of the economic agenda of the Bush administration in Iraq. An agenda which includes the implementation of corporate globalization of Iraq's laws and far, far greater US corporate control of Iraq's oil supply. The coalition of the drilling : World public opinion must switch to red alert. The real, not virtual, future of Iraq will be decided in December. The whole point is a new oil law - which is in fact a debt-for-oil program concocted and imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is the point of the US invasion - a return on investment on the hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayers' money spent. It's not war as politics by other means; it's war as free-market opening by other means - full US access to the epicenter of the energy wars and the perfect geostrategic location for "taming", in the near future, both Russia and China. Very few observers have detailed what's at stake. In US corporate media the silence is stratospheric. About that oil... "The desire to 'dissuade' countries from engaging in 'asymmetrical challenges' to the United States -- matched with plans for how the world's second largest oil reserve might be divided among the world's contractors made for an irresistible combination..." Speaking of asymmetrical challenges "They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own," he said. "I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us." An honest opinion: "The Iraq situation doesn't look good, but my honest opinion is that if we hadn't gone into Iraq, then we would be in worse shape with the oil situation. The Iraqis probably would have gone into Saudi Arabia and certainly gotten into a squabble with Iran or taken them over and have a lock on all of the oil, which they don't have now." Bring 'em on.  (Today in Iraq) Today in Afghanistan It is obvious that middle America is starting to turn against this war and to turn against you...for good reason. The only thing I could see that would arrest this inevitable fall that you deserve, is another 9/11 or another war with say, Iran. There are some very credible indications in the media that we are already in pre-war with Iran. What I'm trying to do is find a stand Americans can take against you, but I think people are willing to say "don't you dare do this to us again." My message to the American people is this, Do you want to go another round with these people? If not, now is the time to say so. But of course, We're not "outta there." Soldiers seek ways to get out of military They were young, poor guys without an education, like us. They were supposed to fight us, and we were supposed to fight them. It didn't make sense. Jan. 02, 2006, THE U.S. AND IRAQ, by MARTHA MENDOZA, The Associated Press Roll Call to Permanent War ...Caught in the crossfire, If It Walks Like Civil War ...Why must we begin to train our elementary school aged children as soldiers, CIA operatives and Department of State propagandists? ... Sounds like a recipe for endless civil war... The match that could ignite an all-out civil war in Iraq was just lit, Jan 13, 2006 Volunteers for Endless War Cindy Sheehan, Thursday 23 March 2006 I don't know what the American public expected when a silver spoon failure was "elected" to be our leader: a sub par student who failed at every business attempt he made and who had to be bailed out of his failures and the Vietnam War by Daddy and his friends over his entire lifetime. Incompetent Design; incompetent by design Here's the deal, in case anyone is wondering: none of this, not one bit of it, can be or should be chalked up to "incompetence" on the part of Bush or anyone else within his administration. This was not a mishandled situation. Bush and the boys have gotten exactly, precisely what they wanted out of Iraq, and are now looking forward to fobbing it off on the next poor dupe who staggers into the Oval Office. They got what they came for, and have quit. One would think this administration would be worried about the violence and chaos in Iraq. They aren't, because the violence has become the justification for "staying the course." Bush will mouth platitudes about bringing democracy to the region, but that is merely the billboard. What he and his friends from the Project for the New American Century wanted in the first place, and what they have now, is a permanent military presence over there. There was never any consideration of a timetable for withdrawal, because there was never any intention to withdraw. The violence today is a self-perpetuating justification, a perfect circle lubricated by blood, oil and currency. POSIWID: The Purpose of a System Is What It Does The CIA Torture Scandal Der Spiegel, December 10, 2005: AMERICA'S SECRET WAR On the Trail of the CIA Cheney Goes to the Dark Side Tortured to Death by the CIA Dark Flights Across Europe No Prosecuting, No Killing Spine-chilling quotes of the day: Al-Qaeda is now al-Qaedaism and has really taken hold in other parts of the world. and America, these officers seem to be saying, can do only so much, and if Iraqis are hellbent on settling matters violently -- at the worst, by civil war -- that, in the end, would be their sovereign choice. and In a 1997 paper, prior to becoming major figures in the Bush foreign policy team, David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be "ripped apart" by sectarianism and other cleavages but called on the United States to "expedite" such a collapse anyway. Is the U.S. Pursuing a Divide and Conquer Strategy in Iraq?, Saturday February 25 2006 The fact is that the U.S. strategy of dividing the Muslim world and playing one part off against the other is a defensible and sophisticated strategy -- even if does not, in the end, turn out to be successful (and who can tell about that?) This is not the strategy the United States started with; the strategy emerged out of the failures in Iraq in 2003. But whatever its origins, it is the strategy that is being used, and it is not a foolish strategy. 2006-02-26 Divide & Rule The Bush administration is insane. (Bush Is Not Going to War With Iraq)   And it's 1, 2, 3, what are we fightin' for? Don't ask me I don't give a dan', Next Stop is Iran The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. "The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years." THE IRAN PLANS, Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker magazine, 2006-04-17 How would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a persuasive answer. The president assures us he will seek a diplomatic solution to the Iranian crisis. And there is a role for threats of force to back up diplomacy and help concentrate the minds of our allies. But the current level of activity in the Pentagon suggests more than just standard contingency planning or tactical saber-rattling. The parallels to the run-up to to war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was "no war plan on my desk" despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion. Congress did not ask the hard questions then. It must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well. April 16, 2006 Bombs That Would Backfire By RICHARD CLARKE and STEVEN SIMON   or Syria ... "It's regime change on the cheap," Oct. 31, 2005 ... (Bombing Syria they could probably get away with...)  or Jordan "This morning I read that military options are now on the table," Gerhard Schroder said. "My answer to that is: dear friends in Europe and America, let us work out a strong negotiating position. But let's take the military option off the table. We have seen it doesn't work." We consider that it would be counter-productive and dangerous to use force, the serious consequences of which would be barely predictable. Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:25:27 -0700, Scott Ritter, Seymour Hersh, in The Nation: There's a lot of talk today in the Democratically controlled judiciary committee about going after the Bush Administration for crimes, for lying to Congress, and etc. And I'm all in favor of that, bring on the indictments, but don't stop at the Bush Administration. If you want to have a truly bipartisan indictment, you indict Madeleine Albright, you indict Sandy Berger, you indict every person on the Clinton Administration that committed the exact same crime that the Bush Administration has committed today. Lying during the course of your official duty: That's a felony, that's a high crime and misdemeanor. That's language in the Constitution that triggers certain events like impeachment. So let's not just simply turn this into a Bush-bashing event. This is about a failure of not only the Bush Administration but of the United States of America, and we have to look in the mirror and recognize that, well, all the Bush Administration did is take advantage of a systemic failure on the part of the United States as a whole, a failure that not only involves the executive, but it involves the legislative branch, Congress. Chuck Hagel can learn, maybe others can too. Thousands of people are quietly switching each month to alternative car fuels, some of which are now selling at less than half the price of petrol and diesel...Germany, Australia and Ireland have tens of thousands of people running cars on vegetable oil... Q: Why Leave? A: "It is the will of the Iraqi people." A recent survey by Iraqi pollster Saadun Al-Dulaimie found that 85 percent of Iraqi people want U.S. troops out of their country as soon as possible. "The U.S. does not provide security for the average Iraqi, and it never has." "The U.S. has not prevented a civil war from taking place. If anything, it has exacerbated it." "It is not morally derelict to pull out; it's morally derelict to stay. Returning real control and sovereignty to Iraqis is the most effective way to prevent the country from breaking apart. U.S. troops complain Iraqis don't want to stand up and fight for themselves, and a big part of the reason is the occupiers' presence." The Banality of Evil Letters to the president from his ardent admirer Belacqua Jones Oct. 29, 2005 --- The hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay Dear George, The greatest evil is not evil, but the acquiescent silence that surrounds it. In the past, evil has needed the power of the sword for its execution. Now, it needs only the silence. Silence is so much more efficient than the sword. Hacking people to bits has a way of pissing them off and there's bound to be a reaction sooner or later. This tends to limit evil. But when evil is supported by the silence of the masses, it has a clear playing field. In silence, there is acceptance; in acceptance, there is complicity. Where there is complicity, there must be denial. Silence, as an adjunct of evil, blossomed with the rise of the managerial technocracy, which emphasizes the supremacy of policy over ethics. The jargon of policy cloaked evil. If policy is supreme, then its execution becomes a priority. How else do we explain the world's willingness to accept an arsenal of nuclear weapons so extensive it could eliminate life on earth? A sane person would demand they be scrapped. But then sanity has no feel for policy. When faced with too great an evil, we deny its influence. Look at the Holocaust. We blame it on a handful of mentally unbalanced Nazis. But the truth is that the Holocaust never would have achieved the market share it did had it not been for the managers who designed the camps, the gas chambers, and the crematoriums, or let the contracts for Zyklon B. Ethics are reduced to a cost-benefit study. How many bars of soap per unit? How many lampshades per unit? Were goals and objectives met? The French writer Albert Camus summed management up when he wrote: Nothing being true or false, good or bad, the measurement will be the most efficient, that is the strongest. The world will no longer be divided between just and unjust, but masters and slaves. Actually, Camus didn't get it entirely right. The new division is between technocrats and everyone else. Technique has advanced since the days of the camps. The police state and its terror apparatus are no longer necessary. As marketing skills squeezed out the politics of discussion and debate, complicity became a commodity sold with the same skill as hand creams or deodorants. The PR firm became more important than the secret police or the Gestapo. Slowly the news media became an adjunct of the marketing arm of the state; where once terror forced obedience, imagery and sound bytes now finesse it. It makes little difference how completely your administration implodes; the system will remain strong and vibrant. It has been gaining strength since the onset of the Cold War, growing and expanding until its pervasiveness has spread to every crack and cranny of society. America is no longer a country; it is a corporation, its citizens reduced to employees waiting for the promulgation of the latest policy directive. It lives, George. It is healthy. Your admirer, Belacqua Jones Gag Reflex, The Moscow Times, Jan. 13, 2006 Scandal of Force-Fed Prisoners The Obsever, Jan. 8, 2006 Kinsley on Torture Andrewsullivan.com, Dec. 17, 2005 Who is Watching the Watchmen? The Daily Cardinal, Dec. 14, 2005 Bush Adviser Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children Information Clearinghouse, Jan. 8, 2006 Alito Once Made Case For Presidential Power The Washington Pos, Jan. 2, 2006 George Bush's Rough Justice The Guardian, Jan. 12, 2006 Rumsfeld Defends Guantanamo Decision Associated Press, Nov. 2, 2005 Amnesty Releases New Gitmo Torture Testimony Amnesty International, Jan. 10, 2006 NSA, FISA and the DNA of Tyranny Empire Burlesque, Jan. 11, 2006 3 GOP Senators Blast Bush Bid to Bypass Torture Ban Boston Globe, Jan. 5, 2006 Wrongful Imprisonment:Anatomy of a CIA Mistake Washington Post, Dec. 3, 2005 CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons Washington Post, Nov. 2, 2005 Seized, held, tortured: six tell same tale The Guardian, Dec. 6, 2005 Empire Burlesque, Dec. 28, 2005 The Hippocratic Oath BBC, Aug. 20, 2003 A Brief History of Habeas Corpus BBC, March 9, 2005 Edge Moor Global Warming: Boycott ExxonMobil 2005 Green Party Annual Meeting Honesty about Iraq: Treasongate, Pre-9/11 Plans, Analysis, The Next War News, Links Updated Frequently Not what we signed up for? What we signed up for. But wait, there's more: Global Warming, LNG, Vote Fraud, Delaware River Oil Spill, War, Peak Oil ... Biodiesel, Economic Sustainability Bullet Points