holiday...celebrate?

From an utterly fascinating book I'm reading right now called Lies My Teacher Told Me...this is part of an account from an Arawak leader who had fled from Haiti to Cuba following Christopher Columbus's slave trade, exploitative and genocidal activities shortly after "discovering" the Americas...

Learning that Spaniards were coming, one day (the leader) gathered all his people together to remind them of the persecutions which the Spanish had inflicted on the people of Hispaniola:

"Do you know why they persecute us?"

They replied: "They do it because they are cruel and bad."

"I will tell you why they do it," the (leader) stated, "and it is this - because they have a lord whom they love very much, and I will show him to you."

He held up a small basket made from palms full of gold, and he said, "Here is their lord, whom they serve and adore...To have this lord, they make us suffer, for him they persecute us, for him they have killed our parents, brothers, all our people...Let us not hide this lord from the Christians in any place, for even if we should hide it in our intestines, they would get it out of us..."

Columbus would have been proud of our modern, predatory form of capitalism, I think. It might be slightly more subtle on U.S. soil, but it's certainly not when conducted upon other lands (Iraq, Afghanistan, Central and South America, Africa and so on)...

here's a shocker...

Amazing how many people can get maimed or killed because of the greed of rich people. It doesn't surprise me at this point, but it still makes me feel sick...

Eager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion

finally...

I've intensely despised Goldman Sachs for years now...going back to when I first learned how ubiquitous (and shady) they were in relation to the growing trend of privatizing roads and highways. And I've been waiting for someone to dig into all their bullshit and incestuous dealings for just as long. Finally, the great Matt Taibbi comes to the rescue. It's a bit long - okay, really long - but definitely worth the read. The first couple paragraphs alone give you a decent idea where he's headed...

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

Oh, and make sure you watch the video interview with Taibbi if you follow the link. He's brilliant at translating intentionally-convoluted processes into a language most of the rest of us in the real world actually speak...

(continued...)

I'm pretty sure all we did was re-elect Bill Clinton...

...which isn't to say that we shouldn't have, given our choices. But, as I've always said, the problems continue because of the choices we're given...which, in turn, is dictated by a very broken and corrupt system. But I digress.

"Dozens Dead" in U.S. Drone Strike

sad, I think...

...that people consider Barack Obama* "inspiring" when people like Mike Gravel (and Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul and Ralph Nader) are also running for president. Yet those folks get no support from their parties because they speak about actual issues and run their candidacies based upon their own principles and a sincere agenda. Pandering is demanded by both parties and, it could be argued, by most of the voting public who seem to respond only to mindless jingoism and empty plans and promises.

I'm supposed to be taking the year off from my political soapboxing, but I couldn't resist posting this message from my man, Mike...

Two days ago I attended an event to address both one of the most disturbing and overlooked consequences of the Iraq War. Attended by both scientists and Iraq veterans, I heard how depleted-uranium weapons and ammunition have turned Iraq into a nation littered with radioactive fallout. We gathered across the street from General Dynamics in Scranton, PA-a war profiteer whose profits have spiked in the wake of the illegal Iraq War. The Nation magazine estimates over 11,000 US soldiers to have been killed from exposure to uranium since the first Iraq War. That does not even address the vast destruction to the Iraqi people and their country. Onset of cancer, permanent respiratory and neurological conditions, deformities in the children of our servicemen-make no mistake: Depleted-Uranium (DU) is the Agent Orange of the Iraq War.

How did we get here, that our industries are poisoning and killing our own troops? The fundamental problem is pervasive and the result of our militarized culture. On Earth Day, it was clearer than ever that we cannot sufficiently tackle the myriad environmental problems we face without bringing the Military-Industrial-Complex to heel. The links between nuclear power (against which I fought and succeeded a generation ago) and our malignant warfare industry is undeniable and inextricable.

Yet it is very possible to shake the military-industrial-complex's grip on our society. It will only come from empowering the people with The National Initiative. Our Congress is controlled by this complex lock, stock and barrel, and we have seen both the Democrats and Republicans dissolve into war parties, neither offering a definitive plan to end the War in Iraq. Nor will they end American Imperialism, which will ultimately bring future wars, havoc and destruction to the innocent. I count our delicate planet and natural world among those innocent victims.

I adamantly believe that, as a nation, we can get off of gasoline in 5 years, and the world can get off of carbon in 10. We have such great ability and capacity, yet we are squandering our treasure and resources on war and killing. I remember how American Industry could produce only one ship per year in 1941. Three years later, heeding the call to WWII, it was one per week. That same spark is possible to heal the environment, if we turn the military-industrial-complex on its head. Our society's massive abilities and capacities have been hijacked by war, but we can reclaim them for limitless sources of innovation. Zero-emissions transportation, revitalized infrastructure and mass transit system to counter congestion and spur real productivity-these possibilities go overlooked when we foolishly wage wars for finite, carbon-spewing fossil fuels. Rather, we must harness the resources before our eyes: the sun, wind, and the people's creativity.

Dwight Eisenhower, who predicted the military-industrial-complex, said that "one day, the people will want peace so badly that they will push the government aside." That reality is before us by unleashing the creativity of the American people with The National Initiative. Today, I believe in that possibility more than ever.

*PS - Not that this has anything to do with the above sentiments from Senator Gravel, but am I the only person who actually agrees with most (not all, but most) of what Obama's "spiritual advisor," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, has had to say...?

land of the greed, and the home of the slave

Robert Greenwald keeps finding new reasons for being my hero...



Please visit War on Greed

This, unfortunately, is the new America. Even more unfortunately, it's just the tip of the iceberg. And once again, not too many of us seem to care...

(By the way, the Ebay suggestion toward the end was my personal favorite.)

just say "know"

For those of you who love the pharmaceutical industry as much as I do, this will make for good readin', I promise...

and he would have known...

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” - Benito Mussolini

So the clip below is very long, but you can leave the audio playing while you do other things (that's what I did). And it is worth hearing...

Bullshit. Offensive bullshit.

This is a corporate blog.

Any claims he (or she) makes to the contrary are baloney. (Actually, I should clarify in that "corporate blog" may not be the best choice of words. What it really is is an infomercial in blog format. Though, that may just be an issue of semantics because it is certainly corporate-driven and is absolutely insidious.)

And it's not that I think blogs are particularly sacred...far from it. I just do not like being fed a bunch of bullshit. And I think blogs like these - and you know damn well Texaco and Wal-Mart and Home Depot have them scattered all over the place as well - ought to be illegal...somehow...if they're not clearly identified for what they are: marketing fronts for corporations trying to either promote or defend their products.

I am so, so thoroughly sick of the dishonesty that predatory capitalism has bred in this country. And as for "John Smith"...I'm glad you don't have to worry about those pesky Chantix dreams anymore. It's got to be plenty hard to go to sleep with yourself every night as it is...

children of the grave

I usually stick something that Chris Floyd has written on this site at least a couple times a month. As much as I love him - what he stands for, what he does and how he does it - his only flaw is that he can, on occasion, throw out a few adjectives here and there that are a bit...strong, over the top, shrill. Every once in a while, one of his statements can get derailed by the fact that it sounds like something Kim Jong Il - or Saddam in his heyday - would release to the press.

But, with that in mind, I invite you all to read the following. And I challenge you all to find something - anything - worthy of dispute...

Post-Mortem America: Bush's Year of Triumph and the Hard Way Ahead

Tomorrow is here. The game is over. The crisis has passed -- and the patient is dead. Whatever dream you had about what America is, it isn't that anymore. It's gone.

So now what...?

two years

nobody does it better...

Well, a few people might on occasion. But it doesn't seem to matter as no one pays any attention, anyway. But here's a great post for those of us of the anti-party persuasion...

Danse Macabre: An Apology to Democrats

God bless Chris Floyd. I don't know how independent journalists and/or bloggers do it anymore. If they have day jobs for the likes of my employers, anyway...

happy Independence Day

I'm sick. Though, not surprised...

Bush Commutes Libby Prison Sentence

Monday 02 July 2007

Bush spares Libby from prison term.

Washington - President Bush commuted the sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case.

Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, according to a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been announced.

Bush's move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case. That decision put the pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby's allies to pardon the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Libby was convicted in March of lying to authorities and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative's identity. He was the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair.

So this adminstration, with its unyielding concern for democracy, hunting down "evildoers," promoting historically American ideals, prosecuting those deemed threats to freedom and the American way of life (when they're not secreting them abroad for torture outside the realm of our own and international laws) has made it clear: treason, when committed by a political ally...no, let me rephrase that - committed by commission of the president's office...is officially a pardonable offense.

Nice. May Dubya's god bless America.

war

Gleaned from the fabulous backpage section of The Sun magazine (March issue) called Sunbeams...

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. - Major General Smedley Butler

I guess every generation is doomed to fight its war...suffer the loss of the same old illusions, and learn the same old lessons on its own. - Philip Caputo

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die. - Mary Roberts Rinehart

Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties. - George W. Bush, prior to the invasion of Iraq

Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball. - King Charles V the Wise

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. - George Orwell

Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on. - Kurt Vonnegut

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more war. - Abbie Hoffman

(acs note: Okay, so that one's a bit nonsensical - and probably not even true anymore considering the lack of conscience among the folks involved these days - but Abbie's a longtime hero of mine...)

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace. - John Lennon

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots. - Barbara Ehrenreich

money changes everything, part two (Bags-o-Glass for everyone...!)

And now, more evidence that the Bush Administration continues its hostile takeovers of as many government regulatory institutions as possible in order to increase corporate profit with no regard for American citizens...

Bush Nominee for Product Safety Agency Was Top Lobbyist for Industry Group That Pressed to Weaken Key Safeguards

WASHINGTON - Michael Baroody, President Bush’s nominee to chair the nation’s consumer safety watchdog agency, was the top lobbyist for the country’s most powerful industry trade association when the group supported weakening guidelines for reporting information about dangerous products.

(acs note: It's kinda like nominating this guy {below} to watch over product safety for the country...)

According to a report released today by Public Citizen, the requirements that the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and its allies sought to weaken had been responsible for more than 80 percent of the fines issued by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) over the past decade. NAM’s members and its coalition partners were responsible for paying more than half of those fines. The report’s findings underscore the inappropriateness of Bush’s choice of Baroody, a career lobbyist for the manufacturing industry, to chair the agency that is charged with protecting consumers from unsafe products.

The CPSC is tasked with protecting the public – and especially children – from serious injury or death and monitors more than 15,000 types of consumer products. Reports about product hazards are mandated by the Consumer Product Safety Act, one of the key laws governing the CPSC’s role in protecting consumer safety. With Baroody serving as its executive director for lobbying efforts, NAM supported a move to weaken agency protocols that dictate when companies – including NAM members – must immediately report information about potentially hazardous product defects. The changes NAM successfully pressed for could affect the agency’s ability to issue timely decisions to recall dangerous products.

“As head of the CPSC, Baroody would be in charge of administering the weakened disclosure guidance his industry association sought, presenting a serious and unavoidable conflict of interest,” said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. “Under his authority, consumer and public safety would be at risk, while the companies he represented for years would save millions in future fines.”

In 2006, despite a long history of manufacturer defiance and cover-ups of reporting violations, the CPSC proposed watering down the Substantial Product Hazard reporting guidelines. Its proposal added additional criteria to the test for determining if a product is both defective and potentially dangerous, and allowed companies new wiggle room in deciding whether to report unsafe products to the CPSC. The new guidelines will likely benefit manufacturers and reduce public notice of safety risks.

Public Citizen’s analysis shows that weakening the rules had enormous financial benefits for NAM and its manufacturer members at the expense of consumer safety. Alleged violations of reporting guidelines were responsible for about $32.9 million of $39.6 million in civil fines collected by the CPSC since 1997. NAM members and affiliates accounted for more than half of those payments, totaling $18 million. Five of those companies alone paid a combined $10 million for allegedly violating reporting guidelines.

Catherine Downs, the former deputy director for recalls in the CPSC’s Office of Compliance, argued that the changes could “only weaken the protection that is offered to the consumer.” Drawing on her experience with the CPSC, she criticized the proposed revisions as “not only unnecessary but potentially dangerous,” and warned the CPSC not to adopt them. Under Baroody, NAM was vocal in its support of the weakened rules. The CPSC approved the changes in July 2006.

“While Baroody was at its helm, NAM had a record of unrelenting hostility to the safety of consumers, including small children,” said Laura MacCleery, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “Baroody should not be confirmed to lead a safety agency that has such a vital role in protecting American families.”

money changes everything

More evidence of this administration’s integrity…

Condi Snoozed While Chevron Paid Off Saddam

…Near the end of (Condoleeza Rice’s) decade on Chevron's board (she joined it in 1991 while a professor at Stanford University), the corporation cooked up the very responsible-sounding "The Chevron Way to a Strong Board." As chairman of the "Public Policy Committee," she should have been tuned in to the open secret of kickbacks being paid to Saddam starting in June 2000…

While she left the board to head the National Security Council seven months later, there was plenty of time to keep Chevron from buying millions of barrels of crude from Iraq and sending around $20 million to Saddam's private accounts and "pet projects" like aiding Russian whacko bigot, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Chevron will pay around $25 million to settle the charges - an amount the company will recoup hundreds of times over if the Iraq oil law goes forward with Production Sharing Agreements in the legislation.

The commentary above is referencing this article right hyah…

Chevron seen settling case on Iraq oil

Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, is preparing to acknowledge that it should have known kickbacks were being paid to Saddam Hussein on oil it bought from Iraq as part of a defunct United Nations program, according to investigators.

The admission is part of a settlement being negotiated with United States prosecutors and includes fines totaling $25 million to $30 million, according to the investigators, who declined to be identified because the settlement was not yet public.

The penalty, which is still being negotiated, would be the largest so far in the United States in connection with investigations of companies involved in the oil-for-food scandal.

The $64 billion program was set up in 1996 by the Security Council to help ease the effects of United Nations sanctions on Iraqi civilians after the first Gulf war. Until the American invasion in 2003, the program allowed Saddam's government to export oil to pay for food, medicine and humanitarian goods.

Using an elaborate system of secret surcharges and extra fees, however, the Iraqi regime received at least $1.8 billion in kickbacks from companies in the program, according to an investigation completed in 2005 by Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve.

A report released in 2004 by an investigator at the Central Intelligence Agency listed five American companies that bought oil through the program: the Coastal Corporation, a subsidiary of El Paso; Chevron; Texaco; BayOil; and Mobil, now part of Exxon Mobil. The companies have denied any wrongdoing and said they were cooperating with the investigations.

As part of the deal under negotiation, Chevron, which now owns Texaco, is not expected to admit to violating the United Nations sanctions. But Chevron is expected to acknowledge that it should have been aware that illegal kickbacks were being paid to Iraq on the oil, the investigators said.

The fine is connected to the payment of about $20 million in surcharges on tens of millions of barrels of Iraqi oil bought by Chevron from 2000 to 2002, investigators said.

These payments were made by small oil traders that sold oil to Chevron. But records found by United Nations, American and Italian officials showed that they were financed by Chevron.

The negotiations, which might take several weeks to conclude, follow an agreement reached in February by El Paso, the largest operator of American natural gas pipelines, to pay the United States government $7.73 million to settle allegations that it was involved in illegal payments under the oil-for-food program.

Thus far, only former United Nations officials, individual traders and relatively small oil companies have come under scrutiny in the United States.

According to the Volcker report, surcharges on Iraqi oil exports were introduced in August 2000 by the Iraqi state oil company, the State Oil Marketing Organization. At the time, Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, was a member of Chevron's board and led its public policy committee, which oversaw areas of potential political concerns for the company.

In sworn statements last year to an Italian prosecutor, an Italian businessman, Fabrizio Loioli, said he sold Iraqi oil to many companies, including Chevron, and all were aware of the Iraqi request for payment of a surcharge. "In fact, each final beneficiary involved used to add this amount to the official price to disguise it as a premium to be paid to the intermediary," Loioli said in his statement. "In reality, they were perfectly aware that only a part of that would go to the intermediary, while the remaining part was to be paid to the Iraqis."

It just shocks me to no end that people in the U.S. actually believe the bullshit fed to them by the Bush Administration. This has nothing to do with Republican versus Democrat…it’s just plain old greed and dishonesty for the sake of greed. Democrats are just as capable (the Kennedys, Gores and Clintons didn’t get where they are based on hard work).

Are conservatives just afraid to call out the folks they elected for their lack of ethics and hypocrisy? Or is it just a case of being steadfastly stubborn about admitting you were wrong about – or fooled by – someone you once supported?

I cannot wrap my head around the allegiances Americans have to the two parties.

killing in the name of...

More news from the “war on terror” that – aside from the international media – only the great Chris Floyd seems willing to report. If there’s any hope of salvaging a free press in this country, it’s people like him, Bill Moyers, and the greatness of TomDispatch.com…

Bush-Backed Liberation of Somalia: "Most of the dead are poor people"

In the new Terror War front opened by the Bush Administration and its proxy armies – the brutal "regime change" invasion of Somalia, led by the American-trained troops of the Ethiopian dictatorship – conditions for innocent civilians are worsening by the day. The BBC reports that the Ethiopians and their Somali warlord allies have essentially sealed off large quadrants of the capital, Mogadishu, and are shelling the residential areas to root out "insurgents" – forces loyal to the Islamic Courts government overthrown by the invasion, tribal groups on the outs with the ascendant warlords, and ordinary Somalis defending their country from foreign attack.

More than 300,000 people have fled the carnage in Mogadishu, some heading for the Kenyan border – where many have been captured with the help of U.S. Special Forces and intelligence agents and "rendered" to Ethiopia's notorious torture-chamber prisons – while many other refugees have been forced to simply camp out in the open, prey to extreme hunger and exposure, and the spread of disease. Some have become so desperate that they have had to return to the rubble of their homes in Mogadishu, and are now trapped in the ring of fire that the American-backed invaders are drawing around the city.

At least 250 people have been killed in Mogadishu in this week alone, almost all of them civilians, say relief workers and UN officials. And the innocent victims are overwhelmingly the most vulnerable people in Somali society; the poor, the sick, the crippled, the old and the very young.

The U.S. corporate media – and indeed, much of the "progressive" media as well – have largely ignored the conflict in Somalia, beyond a few brief mentions in the traditional "oh, those African savages are killing each other again" mode. But the war in Somalia is an American war. As we have reported often here – drawing on the extensive work of other researchers – the Bush Administration has armed, trained and financed the war machine of the Ethiopian dictatorship, with special attention paid to "counterinsurgency" training in preparation for the "regime change" that Washington wanted in Somalia. What's more, American warplanes assisted the invasion, launching airstrikes on fleeing civilians and natives of the border regions, ostensibly in a flailing, ham-handed attempt to kill a few suspected "al Qaeda" leaders supposedly hidden among the refugees. Many innocent people were killed – but no terrorist operatives. In addition, U.S. Special Forces troops have been operating with the invaders, and U.S. intelligence agents have been interrogating refugees and "rendering" some of them into a nightmarish journey through warlord prisons in Somalia on their way to captivity in Ethiopia. Again, all of this is going on with practically no U.S. news coverage – and absolutely no political debate in America.

The proxy conquest of Somalia is being undertaken to serve the Administration's strategic aim of dominating the oil supplies and distribution lines in the Middle East and Africa. The "justification" for this act of aggression is, as always, "terrorism." Bush and his proxies accuse the Islamic Courts government of "having ties to al Qaeda," a charge with the Courts faction has always denied, and of which there is no proof. But the accusation provides a handy excuse for attacking, arresting, rendering or killing anyone remotely associated with the overthrown government – or anyone who opposes the new Bush-imposed regime. "Al Qaeda" has become a magical incantation by which the Bush Administration can transform anyone into a "terrorist" or an "enemy combatant." As with the Islamic Courts government, no proof is necessary; the accusation itself will suffice.

Again, all of this happening – helped by American money, arms, training, planes, bombs, troops and intelligence – without the slightest debate or controversy among the American Establishment, and with no attempt whatsoever by the media to inform the American people of the situation. A whole new front in the never-ending, Constitution-shredding, death-dealing, atrocity-bearing "War on Terror" has been opened – a third "regime change" operation descending into murder and ruin – but no one pays the slightest mind. And as long as the Bush Administration can avoid another "Black Hawk Down" incident, as long as most of the dead are poor people – poor black people, those eternal non-entities in the public consciousness – then the American amnesia about the slaughter in Somalia will go on and on.

I think the thing that pisses me off the most, at least for the moment, is that there is no accountability in this administration…particularly with regard to Pentagon spending. There is no telling what kind of ghastly shit we’re financing all over the world. The media in the U.S. certainly won’t report on it. And I’m sure this is pure naiveté and/or doe-eyed ideology on my part, but shouldn’t Congress or somebody have some say in how and on what our tax dollars are spent? Our government is out of control to an obscene degree and has to answer to no one – at home or abroad. And the agenda of greed and global corporate domination without conscience or even the slightest bit of humanity – that I am paying for and you are paying for – is beyond offensive.

it's the criminals (or evil), stupid...!

This is a really interesting article from last week about the Virginia Tech shootings, and similar episodes from the recent past…

A Volatile Young Man, Humiliation and a Gun

"God I can't wait till I can kill you people." – a message on the Web site of the Columbine killer Eric Harris

In the predawn hours of Monday, Aug. 1, 1966, Charles Whitman, a former marine and Eagle Scout in Austin, Tex., stabbed his wife to death in their bed. The night before he had driven to his mother's apartment in another part of town and killed her.

Later that Monday morning, Whitman gathered together food, water, a supply of ammunition, two rifles, a couple of pistols, a carbine and a shotgun and climbed the landmark 30-story tower on the campus of the University of Texas.

Beneath a blazing sun, with temperatures headed toward the mid-90s, Whitman opened fire. His first target was a pregnant teenager. Over the next 80 or so minutes he killed 14 people and wounded more than 30 others before being shot to death by the police.

More than four decades later we still profess to be baffled at the periodic eruption of murderous violence in places we perceive as safe havens. We look on aghast, as if the devil himself had appeared from out of nowhere. This time it was 32 innocents slaughtered on the campus of Virginia Tech. How could it have happened? We behave as if it was all so inexplicable.

(acs note: Some folks are content on some level to ascribe such behavior to simple “evil.” But then those kinds of people excel at simplistic, religious-based sociology. Not to sound too elitist, but this post – and probably this blog – ain’t for those people.)

But a close look at the patterns of murderous violence in the U.S. reveals some remarkable consistencies, wherever the individual atrocities may have occurred. In case after case, decade after decade, the killers have been shown to be young men riddled with shame and humiliation, often bitterly misogynistic and homophobic, who have decided that the way to assert their faltering sense of manhood and get the respect they have been denied is to go out and shoot somebody.

Dr. James Gilligan, who has spent many years studying violence as a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts, and as a professor at Harvard and now at N.Y.U., believes that some debilitating combination of misogyny and homophobia is a "central component" in much, if not most, of the worst forms of violence in this country.

"What I've concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal," he said, "is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one's manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act."

Violence is commonly resorted to as the antidote to the disturbing emotions raised by the widespread hostility toward women in our society and the pathological fear of so many men that they aren't quite tough enough, masculine enough - in short, that they might have homosexual tendencies.

In a culture that is relentless in equating violence with masculinity, "it is tremendously tempting," said Dr. Gilligan, "to use violence as a means of trying to shore up one's sense of masculine self-esteem."

The Virginia Tech killer, Cho Seung-Hui, was reported to have stalked female classmates and to have leaned under tables to take inappropriate photos of women. A former roommate told CNN that Mr. Cho once claimed to have seen "promiscuity" when he looked into the eyes of a woman on campus.

Charles Whitman was often portrayed as the sunny all-American boy. But he had been court-martialed in the Marines, was struggling as a college student and apparently had been suffering from depression. He told a psychiatrist that he absolutely hated his father, but he started his murderous spree by killing his wife and his mother.

The confluence of feelings of inadequacy, psychosexual turmoil and the easy availability of guns has resulted in a staggering volume of murders in this country.

There are nearly 200 million firearms in private hands in the U.S., and more than 30,000 people - nearly 10 times the total number of Americans who have died in Iraq - are killed by those guns each year. In 1966 Americans were being killed by guns at the rate of 17,000 a year. An article in The Times examining such "rampages" as the Charles Whitman shootings said:

"Whatever the motivation, it seems clear that the way is made easier by the fact that guns of all sorts are readily available to Americans of all shades of morality and mentality."

We've learned very little in 40 years.

without a trace

Here’s a nice little fact sheet / reference thingy from my new favorite political watchdogs…

CREW Issues New Fact Sheet: The Facts Behind The White House Email Scandals

Washington - Following up on the WITHOUT A TRACE report, today Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) issued this fact sheet to clarify the ongoing White House email scandals.

There are two separate email scandals:

- Top White House officials’ use of RNC email accounts and RNC destruction of those emails
- Five million EOP emails missing from White House (EOP) server from period 3/03 to 10/05

RNC Email Scandal:

- Top White House officials, including Karl Rove, used RNC and other outside email accounts to conduct White House business

- Those officials took no steps to ensure that the emails were preserved, as the Presidential Records Act requires

- Emails show that officials were aware that if they used outside email accounts, their email messages would not be preserved

- Even though DOJ sent White House a preservation request for records related to CIA leak investigation in September 2003, RNC continued to purge all emails every 30 days until August 2004

White House Email Scandal:

- In late 2001 or early 2002, Bush administration discontinued automatic email archiving/preservation system put in place by Clinton administration (ARMS)

- Bush administration failed to put another system in place that would appropriately and effectively save email records in a records management system

- Instead, Bush administration extracts email messages from the EOP server and stores them in files on a file server

- There are no effective internal controls on this system to ensure complete set of messages; messages can be modified or deleted

- In October 2005, White House discovered emails were missing from this system, briefing White House Counsel (Harriet Miers) on the problem as well as Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s staff

- EOP’s Office of Administration (OA) did independent analysis to determine extent of missing email problem – found hundreds of days of email missing between March 2003 and October 2005, for a rough total estimate of five million missing emails

- White House Counsel was briefed on this and given plan of action to recover missing emails

- White House never implemented plan to recover missing emails (even in face of preservation order from DOJ)

- White House has still not put effective email archiving system in place, even though it knows current system is not effective and has led to at least five million missing emails

Bush administration is still not telling the truth:

- Dana Perino has said problem with EOP server occurred when White House switched from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook – this is untrue; emails are missing for a 2½ year period starting in March 2003 and ending in October 2005

- Dana Perino has said no intentional loss of any document – but by October 2005, White House knew system wasn’t working and knowingly and willfully refused to implement plan to recover five million emails missing from EOP server, instead leaving in place a system that does not work

- Dana Perino has said system set up to comply with Presidential Records Act by automatically preserving EOP emails – but White House is using system that doesn’t effectively preserve email and that doesn’t comply with archiving standards (see 36 C.F.R. Part 1234 – guidance for preserving email under Federal Records Act) and doesn’t work (e.g. five million missing emails)

not all conservatives are ooky (I have proof!)...

I'm starting to fall behind on my issues of The Sun and National Geographic - which I never do - thanks to assigned readings from my shrink. Nevertheless, here's some additional greatness from the March issue of The Sun...an interview with Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University who has also contributed to the Weekly Standard and the National Review. He's a traditional conservative who, like an increasing (or increasingly vocal) group of Republicans, finds himself none too pleased with the hijacking of the GOP by the neocons - and the neocon ideology of global domination. While I certainly didn't agree with all of his viewpoints, it's striking - and encouraging - to hear from a sincere conservative who can separate his politics from the party that is supposed to represent his politics (and no longer does...much the way I feel about the Democratic Party). Check out the following comments from Bacevich...

...It does seem Orwellian. I am increasingly concerned about the public's habit of deferring to elites, particularly on national-security issues. We citizens don't pay enough attention to such matters, or are kept in the dark on them. Too many of us are willing to persuade ourselves that the generals will do the right thing, or that the civilians in the national-security establishment know better than we do what's good for the country. It's undemocratic. Citizens need to be engaged and informed, and they need to have a voice.

...(George) Washington...advised citizens to be wary of 'those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.'

Washington was a general and did not see military power as an evil. He held soldiers in high esteem and considered the army to be essential to our national safety. He was warning against building a powerful military for its own sake or for the sake of expanding the nation's influence.

Americans hardly needed such a warning in 1796, having so recently won their freedom from the militaristic British Empire. But today, with our illusions about war and military might as means of forcing our values on the rest of the world, we need to heed Washington's words. If we don't, we'll surely follow in the footsteps of other empires that tried to use military power to fulfill their goals. We'll go on endangering not only our own security, but the security of other nations and the values we hold dear.

I wonder how many votes Andrew J. Bacevich would get if he were running for president...not as a Republican but as a conservative...