Along the Time Coast blog

The Kudung of H.H. Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche returns to Bhutan

2012-01-29T20:05:00.000-08:00

"The kudung (body) of His Holiness Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, who passed away on December 27 in the United States, is scheduled to arrive in Paro on February 1, where the purjang (cremation) ceremony will be held.

The final rites will take place on March 3 on a plot of land in Lango facing taktshang monastery in keeping with the last wishes of the Dungse Rinpoche.

The secretary of Rangjung foundation, Phub Dorji Tangbi, said the kudung will be taken to Rangjung monastery, Trashigang, by the domestic air services on February 5 where it will remain for public viewing until February 10.

It will then be taken to Chador Lhakhang in Bartsam for three days and for two days to Ugyen Dongag Chokhorling monastery in Yonphula, before being flown back to Paro on February 15.

“The kudung is being taken to Trashigang to give an opportunity to disciples and devotees there, who cannot afford to come to Paro, to see the kudung,” His Eminence Garab rinpoche said.

A 25 feet tall chorten is being built to house the kudung for the purjang. Until the purjang, the kudung will be kept in a room where devotees and visitors can offer prayers Tsampa Mahakala from Rangjung monastery said.

The purjang ceremony will be conducted by the reincarnation of late Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorji, Tulku Sangye Pema, who is a son of Dudjom rinpoche. Late Dungse Rinpoche was the eldest son of Dudjom rinpoche.

Tsmapa Mahakala said the last wish of His Holiness Dungse Rinpoche was to be cremated at a location where the Takstang monastery can be seen, it was decided the cremation would take place on a plot of land in Lango owned rinpoche which is facing Taktsang.

The government is facilitating preparations like pitching tents, collecting firewood and building a temporary access road. “We are providing labour support as well,” cabinet secretary Dasho Tashi Phuntshog said.

His Holiness Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche was a primary holder of the Dudjom Tersar lineage, a collective name for the large collection of terma teachings revealed by his late father.

He was born in 1931 in Tibet and is widely recognised as an emanation of the great master Longchenpa, one of most deeply revered masters of the Nyingma lineage. He is father of Dzongsar Khyentser rinpoche, Garab rinpoche, trulku Jampal and trulku Ugyen.

Dungse Rinpoche was the chief architect of the Thimphu Memorial chorten, which he built under the guidance of his father. It was built in 1974 to honour the memory of the third King, His Majesty Jigme Dorji Wangchuck (1928-72).

Rinpoche lived in Bhutan since the mid ‘50s. He left Bhutan in the mid ‘70s in deferment to the directives of his father to teach in the West. Since then, Rinpoche has been residing in upstate New York.

His Holiness last visited Bhutan in October 2009, on the invitation of Prime Minister Jigmi Y Thinley.

He passed away in Palm Desert, California, on December 27 last year. He was 81 years. The kudung was later taken to upstate New York."

By Tenzin Namgyel ---- from the Kuensel

Life Has Just begun

2011-11-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

Nice video creation of this Spirit song from the 12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus.

Oh hey, Kiowa
I know your name
Catch me a glancing with one of your eye
So much we are chancing if we said goodbye, ohh

Softly say you'll be my bride and
Our hopes all sun and feel, ahh
Say you'll always be here by my side
With the hopes all constantly, ohh we

Walked in the dream and we knew it was
Married in the dreams
Strange as it seemed that we knew because
Because life has just begun
Life has just begun, life has just begun
Because life has just begun

Hey Kiowa, I know your name
Hey Kiowa, I know your name

Walkin' in that sunny hour
(Hey, Kiowa)
I even know your names Atowa
(I know your name)
No war on the rocky hour
(Kiowa)
I meet some people of desire
(I know your name)

Walked in the dream and we knew it was
Strange as it seemed that we knew because
(Because life has just begun)
(Life has just begun)
Life has just begun
Life has just begun
Life has just begun
Because life has just begun
Because life has just begun
Because life has just begun

H.H. Sakya Trizin at Padmasambhava Peace Institute

2011-10-02T18:24:00.000-07:00

Iniciações do ciclo de Apong Terton no PPI from Windhorse online on Vimeo.

The reason I am posting this video is, it is of an important event around the first week of August of this year, at the Padmasambhava Peace Institute in Northern California. H.H. Sakya Trizin was giving the Red Tara cycle of empowerments to the Nymingma sangha of Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche. Since Red Tara is the heart practice of this lineage and it derives , in this case from the Sakya school, this was an important transmission, and people came from as far as India and Nepal just to attend.
And I wish I had been able to attend.

Put Spirit into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Petition

2011-09-20T19:25:00.000-07:00

Put Spirit into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Petition

Quote from an aging English Major's memories

2011-08-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

“Sickness is not only in body, but in that part used to be call: soul.”
Dr. Vigil in Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano

Il Dopolotta

2011-07-22T18:47:00.000-07:00

Lately this has become my favorite song of the moment. From the soundtrack to the movie The Seduction of Mimi (1972). A simple funky song, but it has a lot of jazzy, bluesy, elements running thru it. By Piero Piccioni, who worked earlier with Ennio Morricone.

Morricone Rocks

2011-01-11T19:44:00.000-08:00

Well have been on sort of a rediscovery of Morricone lately. Came across this video of a song of his from the soundtrack of Garden of Delight from 1967.
Really just an over the top song, that keeps getting more over the top as it goes.
Like all the Italian soundtracks from the late 60s getting mashed up all together.
Unusual to say the least:

Also check out the channel Morricone Rocks.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MorriconeRocks#p/p

Coleman Francis: Cinematic Poet of Parking

2010-09-20T17:22:00.000-07:00

Recently, the company Shout Factory, has re-released the movie Beast of Yucca Flats, with new special features, one of which is called:Coleman Francis: Cinematic Poet of Parking. In it, Tv's Frank does some of the first meta analysis of the cinematic works of Coleman Francis, who is known nowadays for having directed the 3 worst movies of all time per a vote done at the IMDB website. My brother, sent me an email in which he did a more serious look at these films, and out of this evolved this post and the one just under it. I present them here in toto, with the interest, that it may be a basis of an actual serious look at these unusual early 60s movies.Thus:

Against the current ran a series of ideas, some of them direct continuations of Romantic schools of thought. Notable were the agrarian and revivalist movements in plastic arts and poetry (e.g. the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the philosopher John Ruskin). Rationalism also drew responses from the anti-rationalists in philosophy. In particular, Hegel's dialectic view of civilization and history drew responses from Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Kierkegaard, who were major influences on Existentialism. All of these separate reactions together, however, began to be seen as offering a challenge to any comfortable ideas of certainty derived by civilization, history, or pure reason.

(from http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Modernism)

I see Coleman from a different view. Coleman is in summation that "separate reaction" mentioned above. "The vehicle as vehicle". You can make a case that Coleman was merely a pale reflection of Brodrick Crowford's protrayal of the common man in Highway Patrol, but I think it goes much deeper than that. For Coleman the human condition has been lost in the time of machines, the car, the plane, the H-bomb. He in not comfortable with "your" history, much like Sarah Palin, Coleman demands his own history, his own view, his own terrible outcome.

Insanity in individuals is rare - but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

I put it to you that Coleman is that rare individual for whom "insanity" is the canvas upon which the visions and illusions of his cinema are cast in the starkest and most turgid of ways. Parking cars is for Coleman the proper expression of man's role and man's hideous fate on this squalid and threatened planet. Unhappy with the limitation of the car Coleman edged out into the other realm, the sky above us. Planes and Helicopters become the better exponent of death and of dying, the car is rendered somewhat passe' and less an instrument and more a device, a necessity, a tool.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Soren Kierkegaard

Indeed, Coleman forces us forward. He lives in fourth gear, he smokes constantly and wrestles without hesitation with a substantial caffeine addiction. I submit it is not the car being parked, it is in fact our minds being placed in neutral as Coleman spins his tale.

- - -Tatomatic, aka T.P.

The Tautology of Coleman Francis

2010-09-20T17:02:00.000-07:00

(Here is the main part of my brother's analysis of the cinematic work of Coleman Francis. On this blog, it can be considered part 2, as I will post the first part next, so it is above this.) -J.P.

The Tautology of Coleman Francis

Experience and the resultant regret are the essence of Coleman Francis. The force behind a trilogy of stark and despair filled movies The Beast of Yucca Flats, The Skydivers and Red Zone Cuba are transit points and expressions of a rare art form, conservative-based existential nihilism. First among these movies is The Beast of Yucca Flats. Made accessible by the modern treatment by Mystery Science Theatre 3000 the movie is most often overlooked by the discerning public and set aside by those who view the movie as more a parody of movie making than a work of cinematic art; art it most certainly is.

Originally shot in 1959 the movie embraces the anxiety of that time. Another film released that year was Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach. Both films come face to face with the consequences of the terror and power of nuclear weapons, much on the mind of most people living at that time. Francis sets his movies in a place and time seldom treated beyond the occasional need to expose various insects and mammals to nuclear radiation in order to produce a plotline required for a “monster movie.” Movies only suitable for drive-in movies (in first release) and late night television viewing for a generation of Americans addicted to the endless re-runs that later became the substantive context for Coleman Francis’s movies as they are now evaluated and viewed.

“Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” – Harry Lime, The Third Man

Director of The Third Man (1949), Orson Wells, offered us a simple and valuable yardstick to gauge Coleman Francis when he said “A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.” By that simple rule The Beast of Yucca Flats is a good movie inasmuch as the movie dares you to watch it and sit with Coleman Francis as poet immersed in despair.

“Boys from the city. Not yet caught by the whirlwind of
Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.”

It is far too easy to dismiss Francis’s narrative as ill conceived or merely brutish in his application. When viewed in summation, the despair and hopelessness that Francis expresses is stunning and difficult to find elsewhere in the rest of cinema or any of the other arts now held as valued and precious in our collective sight. Few other directors have gone to, and witnessed for the public a more stark and grim reality than Francis. One example that comes to mind is Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957).

Corporal Paris: See that cockroach? Tomorrow morning, we'll be dead and it'll be alive. It'll have more contact with my wife and child than I will. I'll be nothing, and it'll be alive. [Ferol smashes the roach]
Private Ferol: Now you got the edge on him. – Paths of Glory

Francis stands at the edge of the nuclear abyss and as Nietzsche grimly pointed out “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” That is the point from which Francis moves forward with this movie. It is an entrance point difficult for many viewers to walk through without the standard preamble offered by cinema of that period. Francis plunges straight into the problem for he has gazed long enough into the abyss and has been rendered psychologically bludgeoned and devoid of solace. The Beast of Yucca Flats is a work of despair, anxiety, alienation and one man’s view of that place in the darker part of the human soul where pain and sorrow no longer register anything but bitter resignation to which Francis’s own narrative answers back with a bitter indifference.

Francis’s bitterness is a common thread throughout his trilogy. He has examined the situation that Martin Buber termed das Zwischenmenschliche (“the sphere between”) and while Buber insists that no man lives from pure essence and none from pure appearance Francis has moved far in the direction of essence, the essence of bitterness found in the preamble to nuclear war.

“Touch a button. Things happen. A scientist becomes a beast.”

From the moment the main character Joseph Jaworsky (Tor Johnson) enters the story the setting is one of betrayal. Francis pulls no punches with his introduction. The Soviet scientist enters the scene with a briefcase full of secrets (plans for the future attempt to land man upon the moon) and encounters agents of the KGB waiting to kill him and recover the briefcase. Implicit in the situation is the obvious betrayal of Jaworsky by some breech in America’s security, a serious and often touched upon subject at the heart of the Cold War. Here, Francis is voicing not only the anxiety of the McCarthy era, but the dark and closely held fear boiling over inside the CIA contemporaneous with the movie itself. In a similar way Francis anticipates the subsequent race for the Moon at a time when the Soviets had only achieved the first crash landing of a space vehicle on the Moon. The first craft to reach the surface of the Moon was Luna 2 (launched in September 1959). This deed appears to have had an affect upon Francis as he returns to the problems implied by a successful Soviet space effort.

“Flag on the moon. How did it get there?”

Francis is actually pondering out loud the widely held view of those times and poises the question that is directed internally, how did we get here? What process of history or lapse in due diligence led to the apparent domination of the space race and the resultant technical supremacy that was require by either side in the Cold War to prevail?

Whatever else can be said about Coleman Francis and his movies they are both a reflexive reaction to those times and a desire to appeal to the drive-in movie market that was the logical venue for similar movies. The ubiquitous appearance of automobiles in what Francis envisioned as an “action shot” are there because they were cheap to do. In a similar way when Francis needed “something more” he would defer to his trademark use of private airplanes or even helicopters as a means to infuse gunplay into the plodding pace his movies rarely slip out of. One can see clearly why the use of high powered sniper rifles enabled by some sort of aircraft often elbowed their way into a Coleman Francis movie; it was all he had to work with. You can make a case that Francis was merely a pale reflection of Broderick Crowford's portrayal of the common man in Highway Patrol, but I think it goes much deeper than that. For Francis the human condition and the certainty of the divine have been lost in the time of machines, the car, plane and the H-bomb.

Insanity in individuals is rare - but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Francis is that rare individual for whom insanity is the canvas upon which the visions and illusions of his cinema are cast in the starkest and most turgid of ways. The reliance on extended scenes using automobiles may seem simplistic and pointless padding but they were common to the style of that era and I would argue they continue to be used in the so-called “art films” of the present day. Laugh at Francis if you must, but he was doing things in his films that continue to be done outside current crop of Hollywood films and still get nodding approval in a European setting.

For all of the movies often cited limitations I think it is an amazing first movie for Francis as writer/producer/director. He reached back in time, largely by-passing the Italian neo-realist and plants himself firmly into the Depression era despair of French poetic realism, poetic in the treatment and expression of the nuclear beast. That is the clear message Francis was sending, not necessarily an overwrought grasp of Cold War fear and certainly not the self-indulgent paranoiac as some try, and fail to cast him now. Francis clearly wanted the center of this movie to be the resultant beast all of humanity had or could become in the midst of nuclear annihilation. That places The Beast of Yucca Flats in an important and sparsely populated category of modern American cinema. Intended or not Francis honestly looked at the despair and denied the viewer the obligatory sweetener to reassure the audience of those times, a significant and useful departure from the standard formula of that time.

Francis followed his own tortured path from Quartz, Oklahoma back and forth across the Dustbowl as a child returning to Oklahoma City long enough to enlist in the U.S. Army months prior to Pearl Harbor and finally making his own stand in Southern California. His acting career had many turns away from definable progress and he had to often settle with small parts in various forgotten movies. The Beast of Yucca Flats was his first chance to strike out and express something that I think was personally important to him and he achieved something that has remained with us when many of his contemporaries have been forgotten. To simply make light of the movie and giggle at the style of that era misses the point of the movie entirely and consigns Coleman Francis to a disparaged place in cinema he does not really deserve. In the end the only solace offered to Francis was death at his own hands and for the viewer today the illusion of freedom from his trilogy of dark visions.

--- Tatomatic aka T.P.

Santa Fe Sunrise

2010-08-25T22:36:00.000-07:00

The morning of August 12th, I got up just after 6 am, and saw this incredible sunrise happening over Santa Fe.
Some of the best photos I have ever had the privilege to take.
Truly awesome.

Spring visit to IronKnot Ranch

2010-05-02T19:59:00.001-07:00

I returned to IronKnot ranch for a Bardo retreat with Khentrul Rinpoche.
here is mostly a visual record:

Sunset at IronKnot

A small creek shrine

Inside the Shrineroom

Firewood to be used for fire pujas, just below the Guru Rinpoche statue.

Offerings (in front of the Padmasambhva statue).

View towards Apache Box canyon - from the Shrineroom window.

Trailhead Buddha.

I had a really good time and the teachings were profound. I love the chance to do sadhanas with all the IronKnotters.

Old Reggae Favorite

2010-02-03T16:52:00.000-08:00

Well from a high my first year of this blog, the number of my posts has dropped off. One reason is the last 3 months I have been moving. And another reason is, I can't help but think, that with the emergence of Facebook, that many blogs have dropped off. For example I can post to Facebook, and do a post targeted with my friends in mind. SoI am likely spending more online time there.

Well, be that as it may, I had a tape of this reggae song by the Heptones, and it took me years, until the advent of Google and YouTube, until I found the title of it and the group. So, I am posting it on my blog so I won't forget it again, and on the odds on chance that someone may stumble upon it , and enjoy it also. Pretty Looks Isn't All by the Heptones- a classic rocker from the 70s in Jamaica:

Trip to Iron Knot Ranch, SW New Mexico

2009-09-04T18:45:00.000-07:00

Well, the 3rd week of August I was down in the sw corner of New Mexico at Iron Knot Ranch, which is a Nyingma Buddhist retreat center, in the lineage of Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche. The first photo shows the main area in front of the kitchen, where the elite meet , to greet, and eat.

Next photo is of the Prayer Wheel Building; 16 large prayer wheels, billions of mantra.

Next is a Prayer Flag cairn.

This photo came out extremely well, and is looking north towards Apache Box Canyon.

Okay, an actual look at the prayer wheels, each one over 12 feet high.

This shows an adobe bldg. where butterlamps are offered in a traditional Tibetan style. Most days I was there it was roughly 103 degrees outside. One learns to drink a lot of water. Two nights I slept on a rooftop, and was able to contemplate the Milky Way, which is very prominant at night there, as light pollution is very low, mostly coming from Tucson. Very good thing to be able to see the Milky way, and ponder this Earth as traveling along the rim of the Galaxy.

West Texas Travels from Last year

2009-08-10T19:22:00.000-07:00

What follows are a series of photos from my travels to west Texas almost a year ago.Managed to do the circle loop around the Davis Mountains, and then back over to Alpine.
This is a view looking from Davis State Park, to the west in the direction of McDonalds Observatory.

Above is along the highway about 20 miles north of Van Horn, as you begin to see the Guadalupe Mountains.

This is at the western edge of the Davis mountains on state hwy 166.

Came across this by Neruda...

2009-07-22T19:43:00.000-07:00

As part of my job, I consider donations for the library.
I came across a book of poetry by Pablo Neruda, opened it up and came across this passage:

"What can I do if the star chose me
no flash with lightning, and if the thorn
guided me to the pain of so many others.
What can I do if every movement
of my hand brought me closer to the rose?
Should I beg forgiveness for this winter,
the most distant, the most untainable
for that man who used to seek out the chill
without anyone suffering because of his happiness?

And if somewhere on those roads:
- distant France, numerals of fog -
I return to the extent of my life:
a lonely garden, a poor district,
and suddenly this day equal to all others
descends the stairs that do not exist
dressed in irresistible purity,
and there is the odor of sharp solitude,
of humidity, of water, of being born again:
what can I do if I breathe my own air,
why will I feel wounded to death? "

- - -from a collection called Winter Garden.

Taking it to the streets

2009-06-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

Throughout the last few days, many have noted how inadequate the main stream media coverage of the results in Iran has been. Especially cable news.

At the Daily Dish a reader write in and notes:

"My daughter is currently living in Madrid, and as she has Iranian friends from school, she is riveted to her computer following events on the Dish, the Beeb, and a few other online sources.

I've been preaching to her about the corrupt nature of the MSM for quite a while now, and I think this situation is driving home to her just how useless they've become. It's strange to contemplate, but Facebook and Twitter now are more relevant than CBS and the other mainstream media organizations. Edward R. Murrow is spinning in his grave.

What's so astounding about the performance of the MSM in response to Iranian events is that there is nothing preventing the NYTimes or CNN or MSNBC or WaPo from doing what you're doing. NOTHING. What you're doing doesn't require a staff of hundreds or budgets in the millions. No, what it requires are the most fundamental requirements for journalism: an intense curiosity about the outside world, the unquenchable desire to communicate what you learn, and the willingness to work your ass off to make it all happen. You give a shit, and the MSM doesn't. It's that simple."

Supposedly Cable and broadcast news don't have the budget to cover foreign news like thay use to, but I also think its the case that corporate sponsorship means that certain stories if put on too much drives away commerial sponsors, thus causing some stories to be hardly covered at all.

The Byrds from 1965

2009-05-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

Stumbled across this at YouTube. I liked it and thought I would share it.

Comment upon a Commentary

2009-05-13T11:34:00.000-07:00

Matt Taibbi has an excellent blog post on Torture this week at: Being anti-torture doesn’t make you pro-terrorist.

I encourage following the link and reading the post. Then , in the 4th comment about this post , a reader has his own comment which I find relevant to these times:

"Matt - A related argument often made by the right is that you cannot criticize any abuses committed by the U.S. because you have not criticized worse abuses elsewhere. Ironically, this complaint is offened directed at human rights groups (like HRW) that actually do work on documenting the abuses by the worst of the wrost, while the persons making the argument couldn’t care less what is going on in placed like Myanmar, Libya (after Khadaffi gave Bush a PR victory), Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan. But this oft-unfounded allegation of hyprocrisy then becomes another data point for the right in support of their belief that people concerned about torture or the execution of minors (prior to the Supreme Court ban) or other injustices in the U.S. are really pursuing some secret anti-American agenda.

I think what you are seeing are the effects of the right wing true believers being fed a steady diet of Hannity and Limbaugh for more than a decade. They hear this stuff day after day after day, and group think sets in. For anyone living outside the right wing information cocoon, the right appears to be getting crazier and crazier. Yet, they haven’t a clue because they do not hear anyone questioning their growing nuttiness."

As Jimi Hendrix sang : "

I used to live in a room full of mirrors
All I could see was me
Then I take my spirit and I smash my mirrors
And now the whole world is here for me to see
Now Im searching for my love to be"

The thing is if one lives in a room of right wing mirrors, and all one hears is Limbaugh, all one see's is Hannity, and O'Reilly, and perhaps reads the Weekly Standard, and then you see the Red/Blue poster of Obama, and it makes you think he is an American version of Hugo Chavez, well indeed the possibilities of becoming a right wing worm ouroburos just keeps increasing exponentially. Eating your own tail. Must be a hard time.
And I don't see much attempt to break through the Room Full of Mirrors. Unlike Jimi Hendrix, most Rightists, don't exactly have universal Love on their mind

Cheney and Nuremberg

2009-05-06T23:05:00.000-07:00

What the Senate Armed Service committee report shows, is as early as Dec. 2001, Bush/Cheney et. al. were planning on torture. And Cheney was pressuring the CIA to torture to get confessions of a Sadamm-Al-Qaeda link in order to bolster the case for war. We prosecuted Nazis in Nuremberg for inciting war. If this doesn't qualify, what does? See also Frank Rich's NYTs article:

Op-Ed Columnist - The Banality of Bush White House Evil - NYTimes.com

And any number of posts over at the Daily Dish.

a little footnote to History from yesterday....

2009-01-21T20:14:00.000-08:00

-- okay Garrison Keillor over at Salon, notes that after Obama was sworn in, but before the luncheon, when the JumboTron screens showed Bush & Co taking off in a copter from behind the Capitol:

"But the great moment came later, as the mob flowed slowly across the grounds. I heard loud cheers behind me and there on the giant screen was the Former Occupant and Mrs. Bush saying goodbye to the Obamas in the parking lot behind the Capitol, the Marine helicopter behind them.
The crowd stopped and stared, a little stunned at the reality of it.

They saw it on a screen in front of the Capitol and it was actually happening on the other side. The Bushes went up the stairs, turned, waved and disappeared into the cabin, and people started to cheer in earnest. When the blades started turning, the cheering got louder, and when the chopper lifted up above the Capitol and we saw it in the sky heading for the airport, a million jubilant people waved and hollered for all they were worth. It was the most genuine, spontaneous, universal moment of the day. It was like watching the ice go out on the river."

(Garrison Keillor is the author of a new Lake Wobegon novel, "Liberty," published by Viking.)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2009/01/21/inauguration/

Syd Barrett and the Mystery of Time

2009-01-03T00:35:00.000-08:00

The Procession during the retreat

2008-12-24T23:26:00.000-08:00

This is the 3rd of 3 videos released byChagdud Gonpa video project, and this one covers the procession around the temple that concluded the first three days of Padmasambhava´s Pureland Consecration and the aspirations expressed by Chagdud Khadro at the moment the Pure Land was introduced to the authorities and the press on the morning of the 8th of December.

More photos from my Brazil trip

2008-12-21T18:09:00.000-08:00

These are just a few more photos taken at Khadro Ling in Brazil. The above is of the eight stupas there. Just below you get a view of the yard in front of the lhakang, and the Padmasambhava palace is up on the hill.

The picture below gives an idea of what the view is like there, and of the flora in the area:

Fire Puja while at the Consecration

2008-12-15T22:16:00.000-08:00

This video shows scenes from a Fire Puja, a traditional Tibetan Buddhist ceremony, which was performed on the third day of Padmasambhava's Pureland Consecration at Khadro Ling, in Brazil.

Photos from Brazil

2008-12-13T20:35:00.000-08:00

Was in Brazil for the Essence of Siddhi retreat, plus the Consecration of the Padmasambhava Palace from Dec. 3rd through til Dec 11th.
Here are a few photos from this event:

the first one shows a lot of the benchs used inside the tent where practice was conducted.

the third one shows the lhakang (shrineroom) at Khadro Ling{Tres Coroas, Brazil}

- view of the lhakang from atop the Padmasambhava Palace

From my Brazilian adventure:A video take of the event

2008-12-13T20:26:00.000-08:00

This is a video produced by Chagdud Gonpa Videos, and covers and provides atmosphere of the first 3 days of the event I was attending in Brazil. This would be from Dec. 5th, 6th and the 7th.

Thoughts on Time

2008-11-17T19:38:00.000-08:00

This year I have not been able to blog as much,because working a full time job, it was different from say back in 2005 when I was unemployed and had time on my hands.So finding the time to blog is problematic as it were.

And the other thing, so much has happened in recent months, it is all a bit overwhelming. By the title of this blog, it suggests reports from the coast of time. But what if the coast is inundated with events crashing against the shore?

It brings to mind for me what Lama Govinda said about Time in one of his essays. In his analogy Time, is like some giant cosmic maw, constantly gnawing away at the present moment, thereby eating away at the future, and digesting it, and converting it into the Past.

We all live at the edge of Time, maybe without thinking about it too much. One can, for example live in the past, say read novels set in the 1880s, watch movies of the same period, buy articles, antiques from the era, yet, while one could do this, the modernity of the 21st century swirls us along.

Recently, I was reading Thomas Laird's book, The Story of Tibet, and came across a startling passage, I am still trying to digest, and understand.

There are several direct interviews with the Dalai Lama in this book, and in the one in question, Laird is talking with His Holiness, about Tibetan History and Time.

On page 150 they are talking about interdependent factors that shape the course of historical events.

And I am going to quote nearly 4 paragraphs just to get the full effect, and I hope this is not too much to quote, but let me at the same time recommend any readers of this blog buy the book.

In response to the above the Dalai Lama says,

"Yes, thats right - I think that the collective energy of myriad sentient beings who inhabit this world system, their collective energy shapes this whole universe. And one of those factors is the Tibetan people's karma.

He continues," Yes, but not only the Tibetans at that time, but the future Tibetans, including myself. Our karma now, and in the future, also made these things, in the past.

Laird: The future affects the past. My mind was reeling. Physicists speculate that seeing the past, present,and future separately is a delusion. Past, present, and future may be parts of one reality, which our limited senses are so far unable to glimpse. The Dalai Lama reached a similar conclusion through spiritual insight. His words opened many worlds all at once, in every direction. Political motivations are never more than one thread in the infinitely complex web of human affairs. I was shaken, unprepared for the Dalai Lama's lesson to affect me so profoundly. What did I think I knew about any of this? The Dalai Lama watched me and waited in silence.

" When we talk of karma or the future," the Dalai Lama responded, "thousands of different sorts of opportunities are there that could be, since all these emerging possibilities are interdependent. You see the events in Tibet are often related to America, or even lives on other supposed planets. Now, for example, I feel the coming Tibetan generations or future Tibetans. Some of them may come from a great distance. So their activities on that planet, or in that galaxy, in the future, that also makes a difference here and now, and in the past."

Well, okay, the Dalai Lama is getting pretty cosmic here. I'll leave to the reader of this post to ponder this, at this point, and you can check out the book if you care to. Just think though, the future could effect the past.

Adios for now,
J.P.

President Obama

2008-11-04T21:46:00.000-08:00

Well I know he is now President Elect Obama, but already it is time to start getting used to saying President Obama, and wow, it is a very unusual thing.

My congratulations to Senator Obama. It feels like a new day dawning in this country, and I think for many it is just beginning to sink in.

I thought how interesting that the celebrations should take place in Grants Park in Chicago, where 40 years ago Daley's forces went on a rampage knocking over chairs and people and busting heads.

And now we see Democrats united, and experiencing a more positive page in our history.

I was also thinking how interesting it will be to see a American President visit Europe, and not only be greeted by heads of State, but also by cheering crowds. We haven't seen anything like that since Eisenhower really, well John F. Kennedy some.

And also I imagine a President Obama will have a positive effect on Africa. He can shower attention on countries there that embrace democracy, and his snub, to the harsh autocrats there will be felt so keenly, that they may even change there behavior some.

I lived in Saudi Arabia for a while, and I believe it will have a very different effect, when a man of color visits those countries. His election also showcases democracy in a different way. In otherwords we had a peaceful election, with no riots at least, no one murdered for making the wrong vote as under Mugabe.

I myself have been waiting 40 years for this to happen, having voted for McGovern in 1972, and thought RFK was the best in 1968.

Well it is late on election night, and though I have more to say, I have to go to work in the morning.

There is something really stunning about this, I have to keep reminding myself that it has really happened.

The Tide turns.....

2008-11-03T21:15:00.000-08:00

In honor of the occasion of Barack Obama about to become the first African American to become President , here is a YouTube of the group Tomorrow, playing a song from 1967:

The Surge success Mythos in Iraq

2008-10-27T00:31:00.000-07:00

Been surfing as usual, and I can pretty easily find articles that suggest that the so-called successful surge in Iraq is not all that it would seem.

I was looking for the quote about making a desert and calling it victory, and found at TomDispatch, it has already been used at the beginning of an excellent article by Michael Schwartz -Tomgram: Michael Schwartz, Iraq in Hell

It begins:
"The Roman historian Tacitus famously put the following lines in the mouth of a British chieftain opposed to imperial Rome: "They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace."

and then :
" Or, in the case of the Bush administration, post-surge "success." Today, however, success in Iraq seems as elusive as ever for the President. The Iraqi cabinet is now refusing, without further amendment, to pass on to Parliament the status of forces agreement for stationing U.S. troops in the country that it's taken so many months for American and Iraqi negotiators to sort out. Key objections, as Juan Cole points out at his Informed Comment blog, have come from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is [Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki's chief political partner, the support of which he would need to get the draft through parliament." That party, Cole adds tellingly, "is close to Tehran, which objects to the agreement." The Iranian veto? Hmmm…

Among Iraqis, according to the Dreyfuss Report, only the Kurds, whose territories house no significant U.S. forces, remain unequivocally in favor of the agreement as written. Frustrated American officials, including Ambassador Ryan Crocker ("Without legal authority to operate, we do not operate… That means no security operations, no logistics, no training, no support for Iraqis on the borders, no nothing…"), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ("Without a new legal agreement,'we basically stop doing anything' in the country…"), and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen ("We are clearly running out of time…") are huffing and puffing, and threatening -- if the agreement is not passed as is -- to blow the house down.

Without a mandate to remain, American troops won't leave, of course. At year's end, they will, so American officials insist, simply retreat to their bases and assumedly leave Maliki's government to dangle in the expected gale. Clearly, this is a game of chicken. What's less clear is who's willing to go over the cliff, or who exactly is going to put on the brakes. "

Then over at Salon an excellent article by Gary Kamiya- entitled:Remember Iraq?

" With Congress rejecting the $700 billion bailout package, the Dow falling 700 points and the U.S. economy on the edge of a cliff, no one is paying much attention to Iraq. Money talks, and incomprehensible and endless wars walk. From a purely financial perspective, that dismissive attitude makes no sense. The Iraq war has already cost almost $700 billion, and as Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes have argued, its total cost, factoring in huge back-end costs like disability payments, could end up exceeding $3 trillion. As Tom Engelhardt and Chalmers Johnson point out on TomDispatch, the money we've poured and are continuing to pour down the bottomless pit of Iraq, to the tune of $10 billion a month, could have bailed us out many times over.

and ..." McCain's entire position on Iraq boils down to two words: the surge. According to McCain, Gen. Petraeus' counterinsurgency tactic worked to perfection, and after years of failed approaches, victory is now within our grasp. McCain endlessly attacks Obama for not supporting the surge, painting his rival as a craven defeatist who, as McCain's top foreign policy advisor put it, "would rather lose a war that we are winning than lose an election by alienating his base."

The media has largely bought into this rosy view of the surge. Violence has fallen sharply in Iraq and U.S. casualties are down, and the media and the U.S. public have tacitly accepted both that the surge was largely responsible for these laudable outcomes and, to a lesser degree, that the underlying situation in Iraq has fundamentally improved. Unfortunately, neither claim is true.

... it concludes: " McCain's talk of "victory" is not just logically false, it is morally obscene. Our unprovoked invasion destroyed Iraq. Up to a million Iraqis may have died. The infrastructure is dreadful, far worse than in Saddam's time. Most of Iraq's doctors have fled or been killed. Vast numbers of Iraqis have been forced into exile, and few have dared to return. The sectarian war our invasion let loose has ripped the country apart. Iraq remains one of the most dangerous and violence-torn countries in the world. (On Sunday, five bomb attacks in Baghdad killed at least 27 people.) "

And may I also mention again the 4.5 million Iraqi refugees living outside of Iraq at present.

Thus literally Iraq has become a desert in all respects - a state that hobbles along. A far cry from the type of victory that McCain keeps declaiming about.

For further reading I also recommend Patrick Cockburn over at Counter Punch for example see: Pogrom Against Mosul's Christians

Mildly Amusing Onion News Video

2008-10-22T22:10:00.000-07:00

Chuckle of the Day

2008-10-13T21:40:00.000-07:00

"Republicans are showing signs of worry about the state of the presidential race.

Conservative Republican William Kristol wrote in The New York Times that the McCain campaign is "close to being out-and-out dysfunctional."

"If the race continues over the next three weeks to be a conventional one, McCain is doomed," Kristol said. "

Existentialism and the NFL

2008-09-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

This from the Onion Network:

Pre-Game Coin Toss Makes Jacksonville Jaguars Realize Randomness Of Life

McCain and Winning the Vietnam War

2008-08-03T12:05:00.000-07:00

One of the scariest things that John McCain goes around saying, is that "we could have won the Vietnam War". At the very minimum he shows that he hasn't reflected on this question very deeply.

Here is an exact quote of what he has said, on more than one occasion:

" In 1998, he spoke on the 30th anniversary of the Tet Offensive. "Like a lot of Vietnam veterans, I believed and still believe that the war was winnable," he said. "I do not believe that it was winnable at an acceptable cost in the short or probably even the long term using the strategy of attrition which we employed there to such tragic results. I do believe that had we taken the war to the North and made full, consistent use of air power in the North, we ultimately would have prevailed."

And at a speech on Iraq at the Council on Foreign Relations on Nov. 5, 2003 he said," "We lost in Vietnam because we lost the will to fight, because we did not understand the nature of the war we were fighting, and because we limited the tools at our disposal."

It is here that John McCain stands history on its head. As Joe Conason notes at Salon in his own article entiltled, What John McCain didn't learn in Vietnam, :

" Very few military historians agree with McCain's bitter analysis, which suggests that a ground invasion and an even more destructive bombing campaign, with an unimaginable cost in human life, would have achieved an American victory." and " More than 58,000 Americans were killed in action between 1965 and 1973. More than a million and a half Vietnamese died during that same period, including hundreds of thousands killed by American bombs like those dropped by McCain during the mission that led to his capture, imprisonment and torture. Prosecution of the war diminished American prestige, as did our eventual defeat -- and the price paid by our armed forces and the returning veterans is still painful to recall. The economic cost of the war, calculated in current dollars, may have been as high as $1.7 trillion. "

At this point I would add that U.S forces also suffered " 303,635 WIA wounded in action,(including 153,303 who required hospitalization and 150,332 who didn't)".
And that by mid 1968 there was no consensus for pursuing the war further.
At that time Gen. Westmoreland wanted an additional 200,000 troops as an increase to the some 500,000 U.S. armed personnel already in Vietnam.

At the time say, we did try to launch an invasion of North Vietnam, that is suppose Westmoreland got his additional 200,000 troops, and a land & sea invasion of North Vietnam begins. (Taking the war to the North as McCain mentions.)

Even if this was done, in 1968 or 1969, it has to be remembered that Maoist China was supplying aid to North Vietnam. Suppose U.S. forces are able to grab part of North Vietnam, and then Communist China oks say a million 'Volunteer' cadres to cross into North Vietnam and help the NVA.
A lot of the NVA could have retreated further westward into the jungles of northern Laos. So then you would have had a guerilla war of attrition in the North also, with the added burden of fighting Chinese army volunteers, which is what happened in late 1950 in the Korean War.

And by 1972 US air power had already dropped on North Vietnam more tonnage of bombs, than they did on Germany and Japan, during all of World War II. One can only imagine US combat deaths and the cost and stress on American society of an invasion of the North.

In On Strategy: A critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, by Col.Harry Summers, I believe he quotes a North Vietnamese General, (after 1976)who says about the American presense in the South," How long were you willing to stay? 10, twenty, 30 more years? We were prepared and willing to fight another thirty years or more if necessary".

And as Conason notes further,"

What vital American interests required so many deaths and so much suffering? There were none, but presumably, again, McCain thinks that we were forced to push back against communist expansion in Asia. That too was an awful misconception, based on cultural ignorance, since the Vietnamese accepted Russian and Chinese assistance only to expel the American occupation. Within the decade that followed the American defeat in Indochina, our diplomats were opening a new relationship with China while the Soviet Union, along with communism as an ideological threat, was on the verge of disintegration. "

The reality is that the war in Vietnam was not winnable, short of a kind of Goebbels type " Total War", invasion of the North, with all the mobilizatiion, consequences and costs this would have entailed. And further, in the 1971 incursion into Laos the South Vietnamese army, even after 9 years of training and assistance by the US, showed itself incapable of even being an ally in any sort of projected invasion of the North.

Now McCain did sacrifice around 6 years of his life in a NV prison "hotel", to the cause. In doing so he missed out on all the debate, and rendering of the social fabric that went on in this country from 1967 to 1973. As Mark Benjamin notes in another Salon article:

"He set about learning the lessons of the conflict in Southeast Asia soon after he got back to the United States. McCain spent a year at the National War College at Fort McNair in southwest Washington pursuing a "personal tutorial" on Vietnam, according to Robert Timberg's "John McCain: An American Odyssey." He read everything from David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" to the Pentagon Papers. "

But whatever he learned from this he still thinks the Vietnam War was winnable. He perhaps needs to set down his ideas in an article, about how you win the Vietnam War.

As Conason notes at the end of his article," it is easy to understand why a man who thinks that we should have escalated the Vietnam War after 10 futile years would talk about occupying Iraq for a century. And it is hard to imagine why voters would elect a president who still believes that 60,000 American dead and more than 300,000 wounded in Vietnam were not quite enough. "

cf-
What John McCain didn't learn in Vietnam - Salon.com

Street Song

2008-07-09T20:40:00.000-07:00

Well, be away from the blog for a while; here is Street Song in the meantime

"Significant Progress" in Iraq

2008-04-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

Came across an interesting post at the Salon War room on the use of the phrase " significant progress" in Iraq. Also posted by Steve Beren at Crooks and liars.com.

Since it is about two paragraphs and some lines here it is in toto:

About that "significant progress"

This morning, speaking from the White House, the president boasted, "American and Iraqi forces have made significant progress" in Iraq. It got me thinking, haven't we heard that phrase before in relation to the war?
White House press secretary Scott McClellan on Oct. 27, 2003: "In the north and south [of Iraq], we have made significant progress."

President Bush on Nov. 13, 2004: "Fighting together, our forces [in Iraq] have made significant progress in the last several days."
President Bush on June 28, 2005: "In the past year, we have made significant progress [in Iraq]."
Vice President Cheney on Oct. 19, 2006: "We've made significant progress [in Iraq]."
President Bush on Feb. 23, 2007: "I think we have made significant progress in Iraq."

Indeed, it's a phrase the White House has used to describe events in Iraq several hundred times over the past five years. I can't imagine why anyone would be skeptical about the claim now.

And at this point am adding a few more examples drawn from Google:

"McCLELLAN: There are two democratically-elected governments now in Iraq and ..... We have made significant progress in the first four months or so of this ... May 25, 2005

"McClellan: And we're making significant progress on the five-point plan that the President outlined for success in Iraq. You have a sovereign government, you have an interim leader in Prime Minister Allawi who is strong and determined to complete the mission in Iraq. He is coming to the United States to talk about the progress that has been made.- September 20, 2004

"Bush: We're seeing significant progress from our new strategy in Anbar province, as well. - May 2, 2007

"Cheney: We're making significant progress. The Iraqis have put together their government . - June 15, 2006

McClellan: And we are also coming up on some important milestones and events in Iraq. One, on June 28th, that's going to mark the one-year anniversary of the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people. And in that one-year period, there has been significant progress on the political front. - June 16, 2005

It goes on and on like this. If you just use the keywords significant progress Iraq, you get 829 hits.

Interesting because if there had been that much significant progress in Iraq since 2003, why must troop levels remain the same until 2009?

To paraphrase James Thurber," Your World and welcome to it".

Continuing struggle in Tibet

2008-04-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

Well, apparently the demonstrations continue to go on in Tibet. Just found this over at Google News from the Times Online:
"Tibetans wounded as Chinese police fire on pilgrim protest "

"Ten people were wounded when Chinese paramilitary police opened fire on a crowd of Tibetans protesting against limits on a prayer ceremony and demanding the return of the Dalai Lama, witnesses said.
The violence was in a remote town in western Sichuan province on Saturday, where monks at the Lingque temple had been joined by several hundred pilgrims for an annual ceremony, the Torgya, which is meant to exorcise evil elements from society.

One witness said that the police appeared to grow anxious about the size of the crowd in a region of China where there have been demonstrations since protesters stabbed and stoned ethnic Han Chinese in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, on March 14.

At about midday security forces ordered a halt to the ceremony but the demonstrators, including about 400 nomads, refused to leave. The crowd included monks, residents, students and even civil servants, who wore dust masks over their mouths as a rudimentary means to conceal their identity, one witness said" - Tibet: Chinese police wound 10 demonstrators at Lingque temple 3694762 - 4/7/08

Then Time magazine has a very interesting article this week that looks at how continual protests, especially along the Olympic torch route, are going to burn the Chinese leadership, and their totally unflexible response to it:

"China is dealing with visible and invisible opposition in the months before the Beijing Olympics begin. The visible was front-and-center in the world media as the OIympic torch made its way through various countries on a circuitous route to the Games. Everywhere Chinese security is on guard against activists prepared to disrupt the flame's progress to protest China's human rights record in Tibet and in the enormous province of Xinjiang. In London, a protester tried to grab the flame away from its official bearer; at one point, the torch had to make its way through the city within the protective confines of a bus. Earlier, when the flame traveled through Istanbul, Turkish police arrested a man who made a move toward the torchbearer.

But it is the invisible opposition, what Beijing prevents the rest of the world from seeing, that elicits the most concern. Recent reports indicate that sporadic violence in Tibet continues despite a massive Chinese military crackdown that has now lasted almost three weeks. According to Tibetan exiles and activist groups, Chinese police on April 3 fired on monks from the Tongkor monastery in Ganzi, Sichuan Province, killing an unknown number. China's official Xinhua News Agency confirmed that disturbances had taken place but did not report any deaths. Meanwhile, in what is certainly a deeply worrying development for Beijing, the unrest has spread to other ethnic minority areas, the Chinese authorities confirmed, this time in the far western Muslim-dominated province of Xinjiang. As usual, accounts of what happened by overseas activists and the Chinese authorities were poles apart. But there is no doubt that significant unrest over Chinese rule has occurred in Xinjiang involving hundreds and possibly thousands of protesters. There have also been round ups by security forces in which scores have been detained.

The puzzle is what are the Communist Party cadres in Beijing feeling as they watch these events unfold ? Anger certainly. And worry about how the staging of the Olympic Games in August could be affected. But by all accounts, they have also been surprised, shocked at how resentment over Chinese rule has suddenly exploded, threatening to spoil what was supposed to be a positive, peaceful run-up to the Games.

The article concludes:

" The authorities will no doubt make it virtually impossible for journalists to enter Tibet in the months leading up to the Olympics. But it remains unclear exactly how they intend to deal with the estimated 30,000 foreign reporters expected to witness the event, all of them eager to take advantage of Beijing's own regulations specifying that they can interview anyone Chinese who agrees to talk. "They still don't have any idea what is going to hit them or how bad they will look to the outside world," comments one senior Western academic who has close ties to the upper echelons of the Beijing establishment. If its conduct over the past year is anything to go by, Beijing's instinctive reaction to new problems will be to use its heavy hand once more."

for further see: Will the Olympic Torch Burn China?

This is different from 1989

2008-03-20T20:23:00.001-07:00

What is happening in Tibet right now is different from the uprising there in 1989, in that in addition to Lhasa, there are uprisings or protests or incidents happening all over what could be called Historic Tibet.
This map from Tibet.org shows what has been happening up and through to Mar.17, 2008.

Also one of the better articles I have seen about the deeper issues in Tibet is:
In Tibetan Areas, Parallel Worlds Now Collideby Howard W. French, New York Times .

Pictures from Tibet

2008-03-19T21:32:00.000-07:00

With Lhasa being in the news, here are some photos I took while in Tibet in October 1993.
For example here is the Jokhang Temple , at the heart of the Tibetan quarter in Lhasa:

And this is a photo of the Barkhor neighborhood in which the Jokhang is located:

Notice the small vendor stalls; likely some of these were attacked if they were run by Chinese in the recent protest.

Then here is the square in the middle of the Drepung Monastery; the monks there have been under heavy manners since 2006:

The next is a beautiful view looking from Sera Monastery to the back of the Potala Palace. You get some idea of the valley Lhasa is in:

Tibet is beautiful. It is too bad the Chinese only response is to crack down, be severe, and be inhuman.

Protest in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture

2008-03-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

The above photo is of a Friday protest in the city of Xiahe, in the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous region, what the Tibetans would call Amdo. It is just an incredible photo because you see Tibetans waving Tibetan Flags, within China, or what you could call Chinese occupied Amdo.

I haven't seen a follow up story on this, but given the huge protests and rioting in Lhasa recently,my heart, and the hearts of many here, especially in Santa Fe, go out to the Tibetan people at this time.

South Central New Mexico Time Warp

2008-03-05T18:46:00.000-08:00

Recently, well two weeks back, upon going down through south central New Mexico, and upon my return trip along about the Socorro area, I was at the mercy again of whatever FM stations I could bring in, and naturally I tend to gravitate towards whatever irritates me the least. In other words the FM station of my dreams doesn't even exist.

At any rate on both occasions, I encountered an oldies stations, and sure enough on both the coming and going, a week a part, over the dial came Louie, Louie, by the Kingsmen. Catchy little tune that, sort of the primordial rock'n' roll song. And it sort of bends Time around, and since the Time Coaster is naturally fascinated by Time, and also I have been hitting YouTube more now that I have broadband, I am adding a vid of Louie, Louie just to mark this time warpian moment. Here it is:

A Cautionary Aside

2008-02-17T20:16:00.000-08:00

Have been searching the web, for quite a while to find a more realistic take on what is going on in Iraq, and moreover a take on what happens when the "surge" comes to an end. The mainstream press has now downplayed Iraq, and seems to have concluded the surge is triumphant.

But I find a more cautionary note from Joe Conason over at Salon.com.
see under McCain's risky strategy

He starts off by noting of McCain: "His presidential hopes depend on a perception of "victory" in Iraq. If things turn worse by summer with fewer U.S. troops, will he still argue for more of the same?"

In his third paragraph he notes: "
The impulsive gloating of McCain and his fellow hawks is premature but understandable. Reporters and statistical analysts both believe that local violence has diminished markedly in Iraq since last fall, thanks to the additional troops as well as shifts in U.S. strategy against insurgent forces. Although the number of American casualties per week in 2007 was about the same as in 2006 (and worse than 2005) that number declined toward the end of the year, along with the number of civilian casualties, bombings and death squad killings. The result was to soften opposition to the war among independent and Republican voters -- and to revitalize McCain's candidacy."

Then in the latter half of the article he concludes: " According to the present schedule, American forces are supposed to be drawn down by next summer to the same strength they were at in 2006 -- primarily because there are no more troops to deploy -- and there is a strong likelihood that the levels of violence will rise. Little or no progress has been achieved in reducing tensions among Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities, which have been increasingly segregated by the Iraqi version of ethnic cleansing and are increasingly dominated by sectarian militias that do not necessarily answer to the feeble government in Baghdad. Many Iraqis fear that those armed groups simply await the withdrawal of American forces to resume a civil war that only seems to have paused, without resolution."

His next key point is: " By July, the U.S. troop presence will return to the pre-surge strength of approximately 130,000 -- and remain there indefinitely somehow, until either this president or the next one decides how to cope with the damage the war is wreaking on the armed forces, the federal budget and the international prestige of the United States."

And here are the concluding two paragraphs of the article:

"The surge had changed public perceptions of the war enough to bolster McCain and dampen antiwar sentiment, but now the price of that strategy is coming due. We cannot bring more troops home without risking a renewed conflagration because the Iraqi government has done so little with the "breathing space" bought by American lives and treasure.

Has the surge succeeded? That is what McCain says everywhere he goes, but by next summer he may have to explain why the American occupation has returned to the status quo of 2006, as if the surge had never occurred. He will have to tell us why we should not seek a way out of Iraq -- and why, after losing more than 4,000 American lives and spending a trillion dollars, he insists that our best choice is more of the same. "

Thus he says it better than I could, or states it very succinctly, and gets to the heart of the matter. I recommend the article as a correctal, to the way the mainstream media moves away from a story, and buys in to the 'establishment' version of events.

Less Jobs, More Wars- the idée fixe of McCain

2008-01-31T20:43:00.000-08:00

John McCain Channels Dr. Strangelove

"Inspired by Arianna's observation about John McCain channeling George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove, the team at Brave New Films has put together this video (with a hat tip to MSNBC's Joe Scarborough for providing the final voice over -- and the best campaign slogan ever!)"

- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/john-mccain-channels-dr-_b_84368.html

Talk about going thru the looking glass, if McCain keeps up this patter he'll petrify voters in the fall.

Hillary's Inner Tracy Flick -Found over at Slate V

2008-01-26T15:10:00.000-08:00

"Don't you just hate when some upstart comes along and threatens your best-laid plans? We were struck by how well one of Reese Witherspoon's monologues from the film Election fits the narrative of Campaign 2008." from Slate Magazine

Moltar returns to the Time Coast- Moltar vs Space Ghost

2008-01-24T09:30:00.000-08:00

Well, Moltar returns to my Blog courtesy of YouTube. It is a very short clip so should not take that long to get to play even if one doesn't have broadband. Something wry and humorous about it.

Meanwhile we are approaching a New Tibetan New Year. Losar is Feb. 7th, after which the Year of the Earth Rat begins.
Happy Tibetan New Year soon!

You Don't Know - How young you Are

2008-01-23T22:02:00.000-08:00

Yes, well, this is a YouTube of Acid Tomb, - a 13th Floor Elevators tribute band in Austin, Texas at Rupa Maya, shot on Oct. 26th, 2007.

One of my favorite songs, and it is nice to see this song come back around. Song was written by Powell Saint John. I love the use of diminished sevenths in the song to invoke this ancient , archaic feel to the song; it suggests a different time, or like an overlap of something from 400 years ago into the present. Enjoy!

Landing in New Mexico

2007-12-24T18:01:00.000-08:00

Well, haven't posted for a while. In the blog world going forever without posting is a killer thing to do, but what the hey, the Time Coaster experiences Time in a different way. Indeed , there are supposed to be some places in the Universe where Time curves up against itself, so you could theorectically jump to a far future without having to go thru all the present moments leading up to that Future.

Be that as it may what happened was in many ways was, I was still making the transition to New Mexico, and dealing with stuff. Yes, stuff in boxes, and storage units, and traveling to Denver, and thence to Platteville to empty out a storage unit there, and then driving a 14 ft. Uhaul back down to New Mexico. Luckily this was accomplished just before we started getting some real snow fall.

Meanwhile I came across this article over at Huffington Post by Bob Cesca.
He ends up endorsing Barack Obama, but before that he does a brillant summation of seven wasted years for America under the Bush Imperium:

" From the very beginning - - - George W. Bush has been an embarrassment.

We know his disgraceful deeds and policies. But it's his utter lack of quality; his unsubstantial presence; his marble-mouthed oratorical retardation; his inability to inspire greatness; and his empty-suit absence of intellectual curiosity which preordained him to be the worst President of the United States in modern history.

.... after seven years in this Dark Age, I've almost forgotten what it was like to have a real president occupying the White House: a president who, even if I disagreed with his policies and ideology, dignified the office with a stature that symbolized the awesomeness of America.

But President Bush was never a hero in the first place and only grew more ridiculous with each subsequent crime against the Constitution, against human decency and against democracy itself. If there's any justice left in this nation, history will record that President Bush was an entirely inadequate tool; a bungling villain whose early popularity grew out of a traumatic and patriotic need to support the office regardless of who occupied it.

And when the flood waters literally rose up and washed away the disguise, the slack-jawed poseur was revealed -- the "bore" who had always been there, but who had been previously and cynically costumed in cowboy drag. Some of us recognized the charade from the beginning, but it required a second national tragedy, this time in New Orleans, to alert the media and the rest of America to his criminal incompetence.

American history is inextricably tied to the presidency. It's how we mentally assemble the chronology of our past. For going on eight years, we've endured a chief executive who never should have ascended to this post. Consequently, this decade has been an aberration; a time when Americans somehow championed an illegitimate, Orwellian hooplehead and, naturally, we suffered for our lack of vision. This is how most of the first decade of this century will be remembered."

His article continues a little further at this location:
Barack Obama For President

I think it is a pretty effective summation, and is reflected in 'W's approval rating being around 24%.
It does make one wonder what he would have to do to chip away at that hard core 24%. As Count Floyd would say," Really scary stuff kids!"

Okay I am out of here at this point. Will try to post more often, as we head into 2008. As Firesign Theater used to say, "Get Ready for Time Warp Two"!

Best (Live) Spirit release ever

2007-10-21T15:13:00.000-07:00

Just released this month, (well a little earlier in the UK) is a new collection of music by Spirit, which could be one of the best ever retrospective releases of live songs by the band.

As Spin over in the UK notes: " From the same label (Acadia) that brought you 'The Euro-American Years', this is a 3 CD set made up of live and studio material all taken from the archives of Randy California. CDs One and Two are made up of tracks recorded in the Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, Ebbetts Field, Denver, Colorado and the Armadillo World Headquarters, Austin, Texas. CD three is all unreleased studio material."
From looking at the track listing from discs 1 and 2 what you are getting is live versions of most of the songs found on Spirit of 76, only these are from live performances in 1974, with a Spirit line up consisting of mainly Randy California, Ed Cassidy, and Mark Andes.

For Spirit fans, it is as if the temple has finally opened to treasures we didn't even know existed.

Look at the listing for Disc 1:
1 Veruska
2 Storm In The Night
3 Like A Rolling Stone
4 I've Got To Use My Imagination
5 Fresh Garbage
6 Devil
7 Kristee
8 My Road
9 Old Blue
10 Joker On The Run
11 So Little Time To Fly
12 All Along The Watchtower
13 I Can't Get No (Satisfaction)
14 Same Old Thing Urantia

Some of these songs, I don't believe 'live' versions have been available before. Veruska has to be one of the more powerful pure pyschedelic songs ever recorded. I can only imagine what it sounds like live, as performed in 1974.

Highlights for me from Disc 2 are :'Electro Jam/Mr Skin ', On The Road Again ,Happy , Guide Me , It's All The Same , and Hey Joe.

Disc 3 appears to be studio recordings and has a Spirit cover of Dylan's 'Positively Fourth Street', something I had no idea they had ever done.
Other cuts that intrigue me are: Maybe You'll Find , Looking Into Darkness , Circle , It's Time Now , So Happy Now , Miss Lani , and You're So Beautiful . For me personally, I am seeing songs here I have never heard before, and had no idea Spirit had ever done them.

In a way it's a shame such Spirit releases didn't come out earlier, say in the late 70's or early 80's. One can speculate about a live version of Veruska being played on radio, and I believe if this had been released by the mid-80s it would have sparked a lot of interest in Spirit as it was in its Tent of Miracles phase.

I have to add that I haven't received the cd set yet, but am eagerly looking forward to encountering it. For hard core Spirit fans it has to be a must have , and for others who might be interested in how this unique band sounded at live concerts in 1974, this could be a revelation, if not salvation.
JP sez check it out.

Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators, The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound

2007-10-14T15:14:00.001-07:00

A new book just about the 13th Floor Elevators has been released. I can't review it yet, as I just ordered it. It is likely the first full lenght book to come out about the 13th Floor Elevators.

Here is a precis of a review from Amazon.com:

"One of the most exhilarating and important rock 'n' roll stories ever told."Julian Cope The trailblazing 13th Floor Elevators released the first "psychedelic" rock album in America, transforming culture throughout the 1960s and beyond. The Elevators followed their own spiritual cosmic agenda, to change society by finding a new path to enlightenment. Their battles with repressive authorities in Texas and their escape to San Francisco's embryonic counterculture are legendary. When the Elevators returned to Texas, the band became subject to investigation by Austin police. Lead singer Roky Erickson was forced into a real-life enactment of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and was put away in a maximum-security unit for the criminally insane for years. Tommy Hall, their Svengali lyricist, lived in a cave. Guitarist Stacy Sutherland was imprisoned. The drummer was involuntarily subjected to electric shock treatments, and the bassist was drafted into the Vietnam War. This fascinating biography breaks decades of silence of band members and addresses a huge cult following of Elevators fans in the United States and Europe. The group is revered as a formative influence on Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Patti Smith, Primal Scream, R.E.M, and Z.Z. Top. "

Coming in at 454 pages, it looks to provide a lot of information about the Elevators in one spot, that has never been provided in a narrative fashion before.

As Julian Cope notes over at Process press(which is the publisher):
" rammed with arcane facts, interviews, colour plates, discographies, a foreword by Yours Truly, and as scrupulous an oral history of this most essential bunch of Gurdjeffian refusenecks (or should that be redniks?) as only the truly Utopian voyager could have delivered to our doors."

I look forward to getting my hands on this one.

In transition

2007-10-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted for a while, and I gather in the blogosphere world this is a cardinal sin, but I have been in the process of moving from Texas to Santa Fe , New Mexico, so that is the TimeCoaster's excuse.

Actually ended up making three trips in all. Did one long haul traveling across West Texas via Abilene, Post, Lubbock, then thru Clovis to Ft. Sumner, and thence to SF.

Discoveries along the way were that Leal's in Clovis has excellent Mexican Food, for the weary traveler. The tacos were good, and the pinto beans very finely done.

Then I found, having no cd player in the vehicle I was at the mercy of Fm stations. Not being all that enamoured of country, I was hitting the buttons like crazy trying to find something to listen to.
One rule of thumb, I found to be true crossing Texas, is that between 100 and 107.9 on the FM dial, at any one time there is usually at least one station playing a song by the Doors. Led Zepplin just about fits into this rule of thumb too.

Also heard this Christian radio commentator on how Christians are discriminated against in this country, and W, is unpopular because he does the right thing, and the liberal media is committed to tearing him down.

I would demure on this and point out, that if 'W's approval rating is below 30 % it is highly likely that over 70% of the country disapproves of what he is doing. For seven years he has run the country appealing just to his 30 percentile point base. Hardly any American president has ever chosen to ignore the wishes of the rest of the citzenry for so long.
Therefore I predict that this ignoring of the politics and wishes of 70% of the country is at some point going to come back to haunt 'W' and the Republicans.

But as a socio phenomena it is interesting that in the eyes of Christian radio, he -'W', can do no wrong. Altered universe some people are living in.

So listening to FM radio, and even AM in rural Texas, at times gave me insights into different viewpoints I would otherwise not encounter.

So be it. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but some opinions carry more weight than others. And if the GOP chooses to ignore 70 % of the country, they may someday find themselves with only 30% support.
The writing is on the wall.

The Petraeus Show

2007-09-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

Once again Sidney Blumenthal over at Salon.com sums it up better than most with an article entitled : How Bush is trying to save face in Iraq.

Here is his summantion at the end of the article:

If the surge has no connection to political goals in Iraq, it still has strategic political goals, just not in Iraq. The surge is the military means to Bush's political ends at home. "So now I'm an October–November man," Bush told his authorized biographer, Robert Draper, in "Dead Certain." "I'm playing for October–November." The rollout of the Petraeus report is the last major political offensive of the Bush administration. Petraeus' reputation is the token for buying precious time for an unpopular president. The Democratic Congress lacks sufficient majorities to alter Bush's policy. Petraeus' show is staged to keep Republicans, on the edge of sheer panic, from defecting en masse. Through Petraeus, Bush is locking in the congressional leaders and the Republican presidential candidates behind his policy. The general has been wound up as a mechanism for Bush's endgame -- perpetuating the president's Iraq policy until the conclusion of his term and assigning responsibility for "victory" or "defeat" to his successor. In his analogizing to the Vietnam War, Bush has begun to lay the basis for a stab-in-the-back, who-lost-Iraq debate, a poisonous legacy.

Sen. John Warner, the Virginia Republican who announced his retirement last week and who has called for disengaging from Iraq, asked Petraeus a simple and obvious question about Bush's policy, one that Bush likes to answer: "Do you feel that that [strategy] is making America safer?" Unexpectedly, Petraeus paused. "I believe this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq," he finally replied, carefully sidestepping a direct response. So Warner repeated his question: "Does the [Iraq war] make America safer?" Again Petraeus paused before answering, "I don't know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted it out in my own mind."

In the end, Petraeus could not convince even himself. Petraeus has lost his battle. Crocker has revealed the strategy as hollow. But the policy goes on."

Meanwhile over at CounterPunch , Patrick Cockburn, who has been living in Baghdad since 2003, notes what is really going on in Iraq, irrespective of the 'surge':

"The truest indicator of the level of violence in Iraq is the number of people fleeing their homes because they are terrified that they will be murdered. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees the number of refugees has risen from 50,000 to 60,000 a month and none are returning.

Iraqi society is breaking down. It is no longer possible to get medical treatment for many ailments because 75 per cent of doctors, pharmacists have left their jobs in the hospitals, clinics and universities. The majority of these have fled abroad to join the 2.2 million Iraqis outside the country.

The food rationing system on which five million Iraqis rely to stay alive is also breaking down with two million people no longer being fed because food cannot be distributed in dangerous areas. Rice and beans are of poor quality and flour, tea and baby formula are short. Unemployment is 68 per cent of the workforce, so without a state ration and no jobs, more and more Iraqis are living on the edge of starvation.

No wonder then that what Iraqis believe is happening to them and their country is wholly contrary to the myths pumped out by the White House and the Pentagon. The opinion poll commissioned by ABC news, the BBC and Japanese Television NHK and published yesterday shows that 70 per cent of Iraqis say that their security has got worse during the last six months when the US increased the number of its US troops in Baghdad and surrounding provinces. A solid 57 per cent believe that attacks on coalition forces are acceptable. Some 93 per cent of Sunni approve such attacks and 50 per cent of Shia also back them."

See : The Fakery of General Petraeus : What Iraqis Think About the Surge
Counterpunch- Sept. 11, 2007

The VFW Speech or No Equivalent for the dumbing down of Historical Memory

2007-09-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

Time is an asterisk --- David Byrne(Talking Heads)

Well, Time tends to roll on, and memories are but thoughts run through human heads. Still, I lived through the Vietnam War, and there are many still alive that have memories of that era. I was noticing that Tucker Carlson was born in 1969, so there are many now in the 21st century, who have no memories of that era.

However, with Mr. Bush's VFW speech we have really no equivalent for the dumbing down of historical memory. This speech will undoubtedly be studied in future times, as being sort of a crystalization moment, of the patent dishonesty of the Bush Administration. Already many facets of the speech are being studied.

That being said, I will devote the rest of my post to just a little of the critical reception of this speech:

" James Gerstenzang and Maura Reynolds write in the Los Angeles Times: "Historian Robert Dallek, who has written about the comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam, accused Bush of twisting history. 'It just boggles my mind, the distortions I feel are perpetrated here by the president,' he said in a telephone interview.

"'We were in Vietnam for 10 years. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did in all of World War II in every theater. We lost 58,700 American lives, the second-greatest loss of lives in a foreign conflict. And we couldn't work our will,' he said.

"'What is Bush suggesting? That we didn't fight hard enough, stay long enough? That's nonsense. It's a distortion,' he continued. 'We've been in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. It's a disaster, and this is a political attempt to lay the blame for the disaster on his opponents. But the disaster is the consequence of going in, not getting out.'"

As Dan Fromkin at the Washington Post notes further:

As Stockman and Bender write in the Globe, political analysts and historians are agog.
"'I couldn't believe it,' said Allan Lichtman, an American University historian, adding that far more Vietnamese died during the war than in the aftermath of the US withdrawal. Lichtman said the rise of the Khmer Rouge, a brutal pro-communist regime, could as easily be attributed to American interference in that country.
"The president's portrayal of the conflict 'is not revisionist history. It is fantasy history,' Lichtman said.

"Melvin Laird, secretary of defense under President Nixon from 1969 to 1973, said Bush is drawing the wrong lessons from history.
"'I don't think what happened in Cambodia after the war has anything to do with Iraq,' Laird said. 'Is he saying we should have invaded Cambodia? That's what we would have had to do, and we would have never done that. I don't see how he draws the parallel.'

"Other historians said Bush bypassed the fact that, after the painful US withdrawal was completed in April 1975, Vietnam stabilized and developed into an economically thriving country that is now a friend of the United States."

Michael Tackett writes in the Chicago Tribune that Bush's remarks "invited stinging criticism from historians and military analysts who said the analogies evidenced scant understanding of those conflicts' true lessons. . . .
"'This was history written by speechwriters without regard to history,' said military analyst Anthony Cordesman. 'And I think most military historians will find it painful. . . . because in basic historical terms the president misstated what happened in Vietnam.' . . .

"Cordesman noted that human tragedies similar to those that occurred in the aftermath of U.S. involvement in Vietnam already have taken place in Iraq.
"'We are already talking about a country where the impact of our invasion has driven 2 million people out of the country, will likely drive out 2 million more, has reduced 8 million people to dire poverty, has killed 100,000 people and wounded 100,000 more,' he said. 'One sits sort of in awe at the lack of historical comparability.'

"It also struck some historians as odd that the president would try to use a divisive issue like Vietnam to rally the nation behind his policy in Iraq. 'If we get into a Vietnam argument, the country is divided, but if you are going to try sell this concept that the blood is on the American people's hands because we left and were weak-kneed in Asia, that is a very tenuous and inane historical argument,' said historian Douglas Brinkley."

And then this from the Associated Press:

"The speech was an act of desperation to scare the American people into staying the course in Iraq. He's distorted the facts, painting all of the people in Iraq as being on the same side which is simply not the case. Iraq is a religious civil war." -- Lawrence Korb, assistant defense secretary under President Reagan and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington.

"Bush is cherry-picking history to support his case for staying the course. What I learned in Vietnam is that U.S. forces could not conduct a counterinsurgency operation. The longer we stay there, the worse it's going to get." -- Ret. Army Brig. Gen. John Johns, a counterinsurgency expert who served in Vietnam.

"The president emphasized the violence in the wake of American withdrawal from Vietnam. But this happened because the United States left too late, not too early. It was the expansion of the war that opened the door to Pol Pot and the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. The longer you stay the worse it gets." -- Steven Simon, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Here's Democratic strategist Paul Begala on CNN: "He's saying, essentially, that 58,000 dead in Vietnam weren't quite enough, that maybe we should have twice as big a tragic memorial on the Mall.

"And who's saying it? A man who chose not to serve, took steps, used family friends to get out of serving in Vietnam, didn't even show up for his own Guard duty, so that better, braver men could fight that war. He stood before those better, braver men today a coward in the company of heroes."

3 points to consider from Robert Drapers Dead Certain

2007-09-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

The special comment by Keith Olbermann on MSNBC last night, was the best thing I've seen on tv in years. For those with broadband you can watch it again here at this location: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20593445/

Three important points have already come out from the discussion of Draper's Dead Certain book in the press:

1)Bush says "I'm playing for October-November, to get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence." Thus the reason becomes to stay in Iraq, so that it will become a fait accompli, so it forces his successor to keep us in Iraq too. [Playing with lives, so that any Republican candidates will have to swallow his policy.] How cynical is that?

2)Jim Rutenberg wrote a piece on the biography for this Sunday's NY Times. How disconnected from the gravity of Iraq does our president have to be for this exchange described below (emphasis added) to have taken place?

Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”
But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.

I read that several times, trying to convince myself that it meant something other than my first take on it. But it always comes out the same: the President, who was the "decision-maker" behind a war gone horribly wrong claims to simply not know how one of the most crucial decisions was made. And to this day remains so unconcerned about it that (1) he hasn't bothered to find out how the decision was made and by whom, and (2) he can't even remember his reaction to finding out about the decision, even though it purportedly ran contrary to his war policy." - Bush Can't Recall How Iraqi Army Got Disbanded, or His Own ... by Lee Russ.

Letters just released by Paul Bremer show that indeed, Mr. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld were behind the idea.

3) Replenish the coffers- After 2009, Bush in his own words,( who has a net worth estimated at $21 million) plans on: "I'll give some speeches, just to replenish the ol' coffers." Bush added, "I don't know what my dad gets — it's more than 50-75" thousand dollars a speech, and "Clinton's making a lot of money."

So Bush will go on the speech circuit at 50 thousand a pop, maybe they'll call it the ' Architect of Failure' tour, meanwhile many of the wounded coming back from Iraq will face lengthy rehabs, and not likely being able to give $50K speeches to pay for it. And Iraqi civilians will likely still be dying.

This guy is ghastly, ghastly.

First this, before I do another post-

2007-08-23T12:43:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted for a while. Call it summer lassitude, or as Andrew Bacevich points out in an article, Army of One - the Overhyping of David Petraeus in the most recent New Republic, the debate in this country itself, about Iraq, has devolved into a quagmire.

But Bush's recent speech to the VFW, invoking bloodbath, if we withdraw from Iraq, and displaying a profoundly ignorant understanding of the Vietnam War, would awaken anyone, with a conscious or knowledge about that war.

Before I do my own commentary in a post, let me just post a commentary fromBush’s Iraq-Vietnam Parallel at the New York Times Blog site:

"
The true similarities between the American experience in Vietnam and Iraq are the official deception to support the decision to go to war in the first place,the magnitude of the blunder going in, the destabilization of a country and region we never really understood, and the tremendously sad and wasteful loss of life-both of our own troops and the people of Vietnam and Iraq. It is way past time to reverse course and get out before more harm is done to our troops,the Iraqi people,the region and our real national interests. The lesson of Vietnam must be that we not wait this time for 58,209 dead American soldiers, sailors, airmen/women and marines before we bring our presence in Iraq to an end. "

— Posted by Stephen Somerstein

Bad News That Even Bush Can't Spin

2007-07-19T10:48:00.001-07:00

clipped from http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_carlson&sid=alIrC8kDjpf0

You wonder how Bush can sleep at night knowing that American soldiers will be fighting -- and dying -- in Iraq while the parliament has decided to take August off.

White House spokesman Tony Snow sent critics of the recess to the Weather Channel, explaining that it gets up to 130 degrees in that part of the world.

Here is another following paragraph from this column by Margaret Carlson:

"Who could stand that? Certainly not Maliki government officials in their few minutes between leaving the climate- controlled Green Zone for their climate-controlled SUVs. They should try wrapping themselves in 75 pounds of armor and equipment while kicking in doors trying to carry out a foolish gambit to rid the place of weapons that don't exist to install a democracy that never will. "

Basically , " The latest National Intelligence Estimate concludes that al-Qaeda and its leader have only grown stronger since the inception of Bush's war.

While the president diverted the military to Iraq, the real terrorist threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan intensified. If he reads the estimate, he will weep for the more than 3,000 lives lost and billions of dollars spent in a war that's only heightened the hatred of Americans in the Islamic world and increased their desire to kill us -- here. "

This line of thought is also amplified by an article by Fred Kaplan found over at the Slate this previous Tuesday, the 17th of July entitled:

Read It and Weep:
Even Bush's intelligence report says the war in Iraq is making us less safe at home. It starts off:

"The National Intelligence Estimate that was released today—titled "The Terrorist Threat to the Homeland"—amounts to a devastating critique of the Bush administration's policies on Iraq, Iran, and the terrorist threat itself.

Its main point is that the threat—after having greatly receded over the past five years—is back in full force. Al-Qaida has "protected or regenerated key elements" of its ability to attack the United States. It has a "safe haven" in Pakistan. Its "top leadership" and "operational lieutenants" are intact. It is cooperating more with "regional terrorist groups."

Furthermore, he points out:

"Many times, President Bush has said that we're fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here. It is an absurd argument in many ways. But the NIE reveals that the opposite is the case—that because we're fighting them in Iraq, we are more likely to face them here."

I recommend both articles.

Tipping Point?

2007-07-13T13:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, in a paragraph that can be seen as a point at which the scales began to tip, against our involvement in Iraq, the senior Republican Senator from Virginia, had this to say:

"I am disappointed that, after great sacrifice by U.S. and Iraqi troops since the announcement of the surge in January, the Iraqi government has not met critical political benchmarks in that period," said Sen. John W. Warner (Va.), the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee and a bellwether of GOP opinion. "That government is simply not providing leadership worthy of the considerable sacrifice of our forces, and this has to change immediately."

Meanwhile Patrick Cockburn, a British reporter for the Independent in Iraq, who has been living in Iraq since 2003, has this to say in an article entitled, "The Decider in Denial" from today, July 13th, 2007. And I quote:

"Overall the "surge" has already failed. It was never necessary to wait for yesterday's report or a further assessment in September. The reason for the failure is the same as that for American failures since 2003. They have very few allies in Iraq outside Kurdistan. The occupation is unpopular and always has been.

Economic and social conditions are becoming more and more desperate. There is in theory 5.6 hours of electricity in Baghdad every 24 hours but many districts get none at all. It is baking hot in the Mesopotamian plain, where temperatures even at night are above 40C. People used to sleep on the roof but this has become dangerous because of mortar bombardments."

He further adds:
"The danger of the false optimism in the report is that it prevents other policies being devised. In January, President Bush decided to in effect ignore the most important recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report, which were to talk to Iran and Syria and to disengage US troops. Instead Mr Bush sent reinforcements to Iraq, denounced Iran and Syria and added to the number of his enemies by threatening to clamp down on the Shia militias." - - - The Decider in Denial

Previously in an article from July 11th, he had this to say:"
The benchmarks the Iraqi government is meant to achieve in exchange for US support were never realistic and have more to do with American than Iraqi politics.

The weak and embattled Iraqi government is supposed to make changes which the US at the height of its power in Iraq failed to make stick. At stake are policies deeply divisive among Iraqis that are to be introduced at the behest of a foreign power, the US, in a way that makes the Iraqi government look as if it is a client of America.

One US benchmark is for the elimination of militias and an end to sectarian violence. But the Shia-Kurdish parties that make up the ruling coalition almost all have their own powerful militias that they have no intention of dissolving. In much of southern Iraq the militias and the local police forces are the same. In almost all cases units of the security forces are unwilling to act against their own community." - The Benchmark Blame Game

The reality of the situation in Iraq, from just watching daytime news programs, rarely gets depicted.

As just one antidote, if one wants to know how the occupation of Iraq is not working, for us or the Iraqis, I recommend reading : The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq by Patrick Cockburn

Here is a small review excerpt from Amazon:

"In March 2003, Patrick Cockburn traveled secretly to Iraq just before the invasion, and has covered the war from Baghdad ever since. In The Occupation, Cockburn describes the fighting on the ground as Saddam's armies collapsed, the looting of Baghdad, the failure of the US occupation, the springs of the resistance and how it turned into a full scale uprising. Explaining how the three main Iraqi communities, the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni, responded to the growing conflict, he gives us a nuanced portrait of daily life in Baghdad, of how Iraqis themselves reacted to the invasion and the long war and occupation that followed."

In my humble opinion, it is one of the best books to read about the Iraq war, that there is.

Summer of Love -40 years on....

2007-06-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

The San Francisco Chronicle is doing an interesting retrospective look at the Summer of LOVE, 40 years afterwards. I found the individual interviews in the sidebar particulary of value.
Here is a small sample, of what Grace Slick had to say:

"I was with Jefferson Airplane, newly. We were in a period -- I think not only me but a whole bunch of people -- of hope. Meaning what we had in mind we actually sort of envisioned happening within a fairly short period of time because we were very young and naïve. We forgot that the human being is a new species, one of the newest on the planet, and that our fear system, which is basically Cro-Magnon, is not in sync with this big brain. We thought enough information could change people's mind. If they sat around and considered it and weighed it, they'd see what was going on was probably not appropriate. And it's the same thing as anybody trying to do that today. Thinking that if you sending more troops into Iraq, the Middle East is going to change. They have been fighting for five thousands years over the same thing and they're going to continue to do that whether we're there or not."

"We don't have a democracy right now. It's a monarchy. There's nothing about it that's a democracy. So we're in worse shape now than we were and the stuff we were trying to change in the '60s. Look at it. Look at it from every standpoint and we're in worse shape now with the possible exception of black people making headway. And God bless 'em, it's about f--king time.

Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert. Those are the guys I look at who are telling me pretty much the truth. And they throw humor into it which makes it much more interesting to listen to."

Then Mountain Girl says this:

"I see remnants of that movement everywhere. It's sort of like the nuts in Ben and Jerry's ice cream; it's so thoroughly mixed in, we sort of expect it. The nice thing is that eccentricity is no longer so foreign. We've embraced diversity in a lot of ways in this country. I do think it's done us a tremendous service. It's also institutionalized a lot of the thinking that was beginning to emerge in the summer of Love; non-violence, peace movement, Buddhist leaning, sort of catch phrase stuff. All of that stuff has just become part of our common, everyday diet. I'm very happy for that. I feel like I get understood better.

I think that a lot of it is about having given ourselves permission to be weird. We gave ourselves permission. We also gave other people permission to be weird. Try to think outside of the box of convention. I think that's been terribly useful. As far as the drug culture is concerned, I think that's been terribly useful as well in promoting inventiveness in the arts. " - - Carolyn Garcia (Mountain Girl)

One can follow the link to get to the whole series of articles. As the Doormouse said," Feed your Head".

Ron Paul on Iran as a threat

2007-06-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

Recently on 'Tucker', Ron Paul had this to say about Iran as a threat to the US:

"CARLSON: You—about Iran, you said last night, no candidate here is willing to remove, as you just said, the preemptive nuclear strike option against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat to our national security, Iran.
But there is evidence actually that Iran funded the bombings of the barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed all those U.S. Marines. And they do fund terrorism. And it‘s not like Iraq circa 2002. We know that Iran has funded terror. They are not a threat at all to us?

PAUL: Not really. I—sure, what I was thinking in my mind there when I said that was they are not a threat to our national security. This idea that they are on the verge of having a weapon and we have to put anti-ballistic missiles up in Europe because the Iranians might attack us, I mean, that‘s a bit of a stretch.

You know, they are not capable of it. They don‘t have an air force. They don‘t have a real military. They have essentially no navy. For them to be a threat—and you say, well, they‘ve said nasty things against Israel. Israel could wipe Iran off the face of the Earth with few nuclear weapons in no time.
And the Iranians are not going to attack. I mean, they talk belligerently, but so did Khrushchev. I mean, they talked about burying us, and yet we stood up to the Soviets. They had 40,000 nuclear weapons.
So this idea that we have to be so bold and so intimidating and looking for another war or to spread the current war—I mean, we have enough problems on our hands and yet here we are threatening to spread the war into Iran. I think it‘s very, very dangerous and doesn‘t make any sense to me. "

Some common sense from Ron Paul. Meanwhile in an article over at CounterPunch, Cheney, Israel and Iran, Gary Leupp looks at how Dick Cheney, is working hard to get us into a war with Iran:

"There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy," writes Washington insider Steven C. Clemons on his Washington Note blog. "On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney's team and acolytes -- who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy." This is "worrisome" because the "person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney."

Clemons cites a Cheney aide as indicating "that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake" by supporting the diplomatic approach to Iran apparently favored by the State Department. So Cheney plans to deploy an "end run strategy" around the president (who's more swayed at present by Condi Rice's "realists" than Cheney's neocons) if his flank doesn't prevail and Bush resists the demand of the neocons and the AIPAC lobby for a bloody showdown.

"The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles This strategy could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf
as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war."

Scary stuff.

What has been Accomplished in Iraq

2007-05-19T17:51:00.001-07:00

Excellent artcile at Counterpunch by Saul Landau.
And I quote a little bit more:
" Bush's war in Iraq has lasted for the United States longer than its commitment in World War II, but with little to show other than death and destruction. Indeed, four years after "Mission Accomplished," Bush increased troop levels "to get a little security in Baghdad." His recent "surge" means close to 150,000 soldiers serve in Iraq, approximately the number present in May 2003 when he first "accomplished" his mission.

Bush has also succeeded in unifying pessimists and optimists. Pessimists see war costs rising to $2 trillion; optimists predict only a slightly lower figure. But neither add costs involved in "refurbishing" the military to make it "ready" for the next wars, higher spending for recruitment, which has become more difficult, and vastly increased sums for treating wounded and insane veterans."

clipped from www.counterpunch.org

The war has cost US taxpayers $500 billion thus far, only ten times more than pre war White House estimates. The Congressional Research Service estimated that Bush's outlays on Iraq could have bought the following: "A college education -- tuition, fees, room and board at a public university -- for about half of the nation's 17 million high-school-age teenagers. Preschool for every 3- and 4-year-old in the country for the next eight years. A year's stay in an assisted-living facility for about half of the 35 million Americans age 65 or older." (quoted in The News & Observer, May 1, 2007)

John T. Pinkston

2007-05-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

I am going to post information about a distant relation of mine. It is from a book called Confederate Military History, published in 1899. Since it is 108 years ago I believe it has worn out as a copyright. At any rate it is just a paragraph, and further I want to get it somewhere on the web, just for other genealogical researchers who may come across it this way.
It is about John T. Pinkston, who was born Oct. 18, 1848.

"John T. Pinkston of Sparta, a boy soldier of the Confederacy, enlisted as a private in Company A of the Sixth Regiment Georgia Infantry, part of the brigade commanded by Ge. Alfred H. Colquitt. His service in the field began with this brigade in the little army, under Gen. Beauregard, which defended Peteresburg and Richmond from the federal forces under General Butler while Lee and Grant were struggling in the Wilderness in May 1864. He participated in the battle of Drewry's Bluff, resulting in the defeat of Butler, and a forenight later fought under General Robert E. Lee at Second Cold Harbor, repelling the assaults of Grant's army. Until December, 1864, he was on duty along the Petersburg and Richmond lines, fighting in the battles of Petersburg, the Crater, Ream's Station, Fort Harrison, Weldon Railroad and other engagements. Near the close of 1864 he accompanied his brigade to Wilmington, N.C., and was in the engagement at Sugar Loaf, and witnessed the great bombardment of Fort Fisher. After the retreat from Wilmington, he participated in the battles of Kinston and Bentonville, and finally surrendered with the army of Ge. J.E. Johnston, at Greensboro, April 26, 1865. Mr. Pinkston is a native of Hancock County, Ga., born Oct. 8,1848, son James M. Pinkston and Ann C. Dickson. After the his return from the war he attended school and began a sucessful career as a farmer. He is one of the leading men of his county and prominent in public affairs. For twelve years he served efficently as deputy sheriff of the county, and eight years as sheriff. Mr. Pinkston was married in 1867 to Mattie P. Knowles, and they have eight children living: William F., John B., Arthur Gorman, Annie L., Lena Lee, Mattie Little, Ethel F. and Julia C."

An occupation which destabilizes

2007-05-13T19:28:00.001-07:00

An excellent article at Working for Change about the Occupation of Iraq and how it has failed. The author is Patrick Cockburn who has been a reporter living in Iraq from 2003 to now. The article will become the forward to the paperback edition of his book: The Occupation - War and Resistance in Iraq.

clipped from www.workingforchange.com

At times, President Bush seemed intent on finding out how much damage could be
done to the U.S. by the conflict in Iraq. He did so by believing a high
proportion of his own propaganda about the resistance to the occupation being
limited in scale and inspired from outside the country. By 2007, the
administration was even claiming that the fervently anti-Iranian Sunni
insurgents were being equipped by Iran.

Tibet Activists Protest Beijing 2008 Olympics on Mt. Everest

2007-04-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

Tenzin Dorjee holding a protest banner at EBC, Tibet.

This just in : a protest at the Mt. Everest base camp within Tibet. Took some courage to do this since detention by the Chinese is no joke:

"Kathmandu – Three Tibetan independence activists, including one Tibetan-American, were detained by Chinese authorities today after demonstrating and unfurling a banner reading "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008" in English, and "Free Tibet" written in Tibetan and Chinese, at Mount Everest.

The protest was held on the eve of the International Olympic Committee's announcement of the final Beijing 2008 Olympic torch relay route and as a Chinese team of climbers prepared a trial ascent of the mountain. If approved, China will take the torch over Mount Everest and through Tibet, a move that Tibetans and their supporters decry as offering international approval to China's brutal occupation of Tibet."

........"the detained activists are Tenzin Dorjee, male, 27, a Tibetan American and three Americans, Kirsten Westby, female, 29, Shannon Service, female, 31 and Laurel Mec Sutherlin, male, 29, all four from USA. They have been detained and interrogated for demonstrating and unfurling a banner reading "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008" in English, and "Free Tibet" written in Tibetan and Chinese, at EBC, Tibet to protest the proposed taking of Beijing Olympic torch over Mount Everest and through Tibet. Is it not yet known whether these activists have been released after interrogation or taken into custody for further interrogation."

see also: Four Tibet activists held at Mt. Everest base camp

Walking the plank for Iraq

2007-04-26T17:40:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting little squib from the latest issue of US News and World Report, which is usually too conservative to my taste, but Washington Whispers, and Inside the White House often have many juicy items:

Staying the Course Toward Shipwreck

"Pollster Stan Greenberg says that President Bush's arguments in favor of his Iraq policy have been effective only with conservatives so far, not with a wider audience of Americans. Only 35 percent of the voters support his "surge" of extra troops into Iraq-mainly conservatives, Greenberg says. "He's lost the country on that," adds the Democratic pollster. "Now it's all about the base." Greenberg believes that because Republicans are "walking the plank" for the president on Iraq, this makes them vulnerable in 2008. But the situation also presents difficult challenges for the Democrats, because Americans understand the dangerous consequences of withdrawal. But, says the pollster, if the United States is still in Iraq on Election Day 2008, "it will be a very big win for the Democrats, a tsunami."

"W" just extended tours of duty to 15 months. At present casualty rates, by this time next year 4293 US soldiers will be dead, and by then likely 30,000 US wounded.( 26,188 US as of 2/07) http://icasualties.org/oif/default.aspx

Meanwhile, the Maliki govt. is making no moves towards even sitting down and talking with the Sunni's. There was some recent talk of a conference in Turkey, but none of the factions wanted to go there.

As I have noted before the Sunnis and Shiites have been living in the same Mesopotamian area for over 900 years, so it is the height of folly to believe the US can resolve their rancor within 5 or ten years by being an occupation force. Basically, at some point its up to them, if they want to indulge in civil war.

It is very sad, very sad, that by summer of 2008, we will have lost over 4000. And Iraqi civilians, something like 31 a day.

The war in Iraq at present has become like Gallipoli, a military blunder where the Allies kept pouring in troops for a year, to no effect.

I am so angered at the Republicans, that if they want to walk the plank, I'll be there clapping my hands. But what a price to pay, likely 4773 dead by November 08. I would rather those troops, not already dead, get to come back alive.

I suppose one small thing we can do is let out representatives know that there should be some conference, say at a neutral site like Cyprus, where Sunni and Shiite representatives actually sit down and just keep talking to reach some sort of solution they can live with. The 'surge' and extended tours of duty, just keeps our troops there indefinitely acting as a shield for the Shiites, using the US troops to die , while hurting Sunnis, as payback for their sufferings under Saddam. Not good, not good. Very disturbing. Anyway, my thoughts on the subject, and btw I recommend reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City as an eye opener, if nothing else. Also Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed in Iraq
by T. Christian Miller.

Okay, my vent. Sorry, if it is a little hard core, but it is one of the things happening in the larger world we live in. I am curious how others feel.

Progress in Iraq -NOT!

2007-04-24T16:24:00.000-07:00

Recently John Stewart on the Daily Show put together a series of clips of President Bush citing progress in Iraq:

" George W. Bush, January 2006: "There's progress. And it's important progress and it's an important part of our strategy to win in Iraq."
Bush, November 2005: "Iraq is making incredible political progress."
Bush, October 2005: "Iraqis are making inspiring progress."
Bush, September 2005: "Iraq has made incredible political progress."
Bush, April 2005: "I believe we're making good progress in Iraq."
Bush, March 2005: "We're making progress."
Bush, September 2004: "We're making steady progress."
Bush, July 2003: "We're making progress. It's slowly but surely making progress."

Actually, y'know what I think the president's problem is? Perhaps his definition of the word "progress." I have the reference book he uses when he doesn’t know what a word means: Mistaken P. Wrongingston's Diktionary of English. Let's see...ah, here we are. "Progress: Chaos caused by one's own incompetence that's portrayed as the result of others' malfeasance." ---The Daily Show "

Meanwhile as Phillip Carter concludes in an article over at Slate- Plan FUBAR:

" To sum up, it's more than a bit disingenuous to cast today's debate as one of Plan A versus Plan B. In fact, we've seen at least five major strategies implemented in Iraq, and all have failed, creating a legacy of bad blood that undermines our continuing efforts. Much of this failure owes to the naive belief that we can impose our will on the Iraqi people through our strategies, or win their support with a combination of security and reconstruction.

Gen. Petraeus and his brain trust have devised the best possible Plan F, given the resources available to the Pentagon and declining patience for the war at home. But the Achilles heel of this latest effort is the Maliki government. It is becoming increasingly clear to all in Baghdad that its interests—seeking power and treasure for its Shiite backers—diverge sharply from those of the U.S.-led coalition. Even if Gen. Petraeus' plan succeeds on the streets of the city, it will fail in the gilded palaces of the Green Zone. Maliki and his supporters desire no rapprochement with the Sunnis and no meaningful power-sharing arrangement with the Sunnis and the Kurds. Indeed, Maliki can barely hold his own governing coalition together, as evidenced by the Sadr bloc's resignation from the government this week and the fighting in Basra over oil and power.
Plan F will fail if (or when) the Maliki government fails, even if it improves security.

At that point, we will have run out of options, having tried every conceivable strategy for Iraq. It will then be time for Plan G: Get out."

Plan FUBAR:

Imperial Life in the Emerald City

2007-04-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. It is well written and an easy read.
Here is a short summary about it from Publishers Weekly via Amazon.com, and I quote:

"As the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, Chandrasekaran has probably spent more time in U.S.-occupied Iraq than any other American journalist, and his intimate perspective permeates this history of the Coalition Provisional Authority headquartered in the Green Zone around Saddam Hussein's former palace. He presents the tenure of presidential viceroy L. Paul Bremer between May 2003 and June 2004 as an all-too-avoidable disaster, in which an occupational administration selected primarily for its loyalty to the Bush administration routinely ignored the reality of local conditions until, as one ex-staffer puts it, "everything blew up in our faces." Chandrasekaran unstintingly depicts the stubborn cluelessness of many Americans in the Green Zone—like the army general who says children terrified by nighttime helicopters should appreciate "the sound of freedom." But he sympathetically portrays others trying their best to cut through the red tape and institute genuine reforms. He also has a sharp eye for details, from casual sex in abandoned offices to stray cats adopted by staffers, which enable both advocates and critics of the occupation to understand the emotional toll of its circuslike atmosphere. Thanks to these personal touches, the account of the CPA's failures never feels heavy-handed"

It adds to growing list of books about the early failures of the Bush Policy in Iraq, and it primarily covers the period from 2003 thru 2005.
It does not focus so much on the war itself, but the Coalition Provisional Authority and life in the Green Zone.

To read it is to become aware of the stupefying level of incompetence, cronyism, corruption, and cultural unawareness, of the personnel under Bremer, and of how Rumsfeld and Cheney, were influencing choices entirely through their own pre-conceived notions, and idealogical rigidities.

I found it to be a book hard to put down, as Rajiv has so many inside stories, it makes intriguing reading. Well worth your time, if you want to know how your tax dollars were wasted and mispent.

Disinformation

2007-04-08T19:53:00.000-07:00

For posterity's sake I am going to go ahead and post a whole article from a foreign newspaper. Found it on Goggle news under the title:

Iraq's alleged prewar ties to al Qaeda discredited

"Saddam Hussein's regime was not directly in cooperation with al Qaeda before the US invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report. Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that, the report said. The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus. It shows that the Iraqi government and al Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information, The Washington Post reported yesterday.

The Pentagon report had been released in summary form in February, the newspaper said. The Pentagon report's release came on the same day that Vice President Dick Cheney, appearing on a radio program, repeated his allegation that al Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.

"This is al Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney said about Zarqawi, who he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing US forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of al Qaeda."

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who requested the report's declassification, said in a written statement that the complete text demonstrates more fully why the inspector general concluded that a key Pentagon office -- run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith -- had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion, alleging connections between al Qaeda and Iraq that the US intelligence consensus disputed.

The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda was "mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.

Instead, the Pentagon report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.

The CIA had separately concluded that reports of Iraqi training on weapons of mass destruction were "episodic, sketchy, or not corroborated in other channels," the inspector general's report said. It quoted an August 2002 CIA report describing the relationship as more closely resembling "two organizations trying to feel out or exploit each other" rather than cooperating operationally.

The CIA was not alone, the defense report emphasized. The Defense Intelligence Agency had concluded that year, that "available reporting is not firm enough to demonstrate an ongoing relationship" between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda, it said.

But the contrary conclusions reached by Feith's office -- and leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine before the war-- were publicly praised by Cheney as the best source of information on the topic, a circumstance the Pentagon report cites in documenting the impact of what it described as "inappropriate" work. "

What we have here is another example of the Cheney disinformation machine at work. He cobbles together just enough facts to suit the results that he wants, and spins it enough times so they in his own blood-thinned brain he likely thinks it is true. Who cares what the CIA, or DIA, or the Pentagon concludes.

Another recent exampe was Valerie Plame's sworn testimony before Congress, where she said that there was no substance to the statement that she was the one who sent her husband, Joe Wilson to Niger.

That had been a Republican talking point all through the early years of the Libby leak case. It was spun from Cheney and his office from the very beginning of the controversy. More Cheney disinformation.

I myself think Cheney is quite delusional, perhaps brought on , by him taking inordinate amounts of blood thinner. I also think it is important to take note of all the disinformation and outright lies he puts out.

Meanwhile in an article at the Pacific Free Press entiled :
Bush, Narcissus, and the Military Parasites I came across this neat little paragraph:

"Behaving as if their country was a banana republic, they put into the office an unread, ill-traveled, inarticulate, crude, callous, mean-spirited, trouble-making, revenge-seeking, Vietnam-evading, incompetent, loud-mouthed, cheap-shot, but consistently-bailed-out narcissist — largely because Bush and his propagandists proclaimed he had found God. "

Hunter S. Thompson's mantle

2007-04-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

Over at Rolling Stone magazine Matt Taibbi has taken up the mantle of Hunter S. Thompson with his Road Rage and Low Post articles:
Here is a few paragraphs from a Road Rage article of 3/22 which is not published online, so I can't link to it. The title of it was : Dick has a tough week.

" Amid all the spineless calculating toadies who road Bush's coattails to tit Cabinet jobs and fat Iraq contracts, Cheney is the one guy who genuinely believes in all of this bullshit. This has been his show all along and who else's could it have been really?

His counterpart, the president , after all is a snivling egomaniac trapped for all eternity in some unseemly infantile phase of personality development-and while W.'s hang ups are sufficiently incurable to keep him safely in denial in the face of abject failure and international outrage, there is no way the tortured vibes emanating from his id were ever purposeful or articulate enough to drive the world's greatest army across the ocean into Mesopotamia.

No, it had to be the indomitable will of a sinister Machiavellian creature like Cheney that made this Iraq disaster happen. Only that kind of personality could be capable of manipulating the intelligence community into signing off on bogus career-wrecking analyses and orchestrating from afar an absurd dog-and-pony show like the Hans Blix/U.N. inspections fiasco. Only a true believer like Cheney could steer this many huge bureaucracies so far off the cliff.

At every step of the way, the most brazen lies about Iraq were always Cheney's. It was Chaney who said unequivocally that Iraq had a nuclear program, Cheney who said the insurgency was in its "last throes," Cheney who said Iraq was the " geographic base" of the terrorists who hit us on 9/11...
And it was Cheney who said, with the assurance of either a sleepwalker or a psychopath or both, " I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11."

I try to check out Taibbi's The Low Post every week. Check at your library for Rolling Stone and past Road Rages.

Gonzales A Go-Go

2007-03-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

Well, the Time Coaster has been rather lazy as of late. Sorry. As Pico and Alvarado of Firesign theater fame would say, " Park and lock it! Not Responsible!

I do note with interest the lastest headline in the fray about the 8 fired attorneys, and Fredo , aka AG Alberto Gonzales.

"WASHINGTON — Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in an hourlong meeting last fall, according to documents released Friday that indicate he was more involved in the dismissals than he has claimed.

Last week, Gonzales said he "was not involved in any discussions about what was going on" in the firings of eight prosecutors that has since led to a political firestorm and calls for his ouster.

A Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Gonzales' aides said late Friday.

There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was drafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. The five-step plan approved by Gonzales involved notifying Republican home-state senators of the impending dismissals, preparing for potential political upheaval, naming replacements and submitting them to the Senate for confirmation."

So the import of this suggests that Mr. Gonzales was lying last week. I guess his defense would be total mental aphasia, .i.e. he has no recall of the Nov. 27th meeting. Apparently we are asked to believe he runs the Dept. of Justice and has no idea Kyle Sampson was working towards firing the 8.

One would gather then, that 'Fredo' thinks he can lie about such things and continue to serve in his office. We shall see.

For a more in depth analysis of this and the Karl Rove angle, read Sidney Blumenthal's What Bush is hiding in yesterday's Salon.

Here are excerpts:

"In the U.S. attorney scandal, Alberto Gonzales gave orders, but he also took them -- from Karl Rove, who plotted to turn the federal criminal justice system into the Republican Holy Office of the Inquisition": Sidney Blumenthal / Salon

And " "The disclosure of the e-mails establishing Rove's centrality suggests not only the political chain of command but also the hierarchy of coverup. Bush protects Gonzales in order to protect those who gave Gonzales his marching orders ~ Rove and Bush himself .... Bush's resistance to having Rove placed under oath or even having a transcript of his testimony appears to be a coverup of a series of obstructions of justice. The e-mails hint at the quickening pulse of communications between the White House and the Justice Department. But only sworn testimony can elicit the truth."

Farther along I came across an excellent article by Robert Scheer, who has a few choice words about Mr. Cheney:

"While he is still as dangerous as any cornered animal, Cheney stands brightly revealed as the main culprit in cherry-picking the evidence to make the case for a stupid, failed war. He has been exposed as a vindictive, inflexible ideologue, who attempts to destroy all who publicly disagree with him, such as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Wilson’s CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame Wilson.

- - - - His extensive ties and loyal political service to energy and defense companies such as Halliburton (which now, in a burst of honesty, is moving its headquarters to Dubai) reveal him to be a man of deep corruption.

As if we needed more evidence, the conviction last week of Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, provided ample evidence of the vice president’s bottomless cynicism. Surely congressional investigators will now ask Cheney, among other awkward questions, what he meant in that note he wrote to himself prior to the conviction, stating, “Not going to ... sacrifice the guy who was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.” Who could have ordered Libby to break the law, other than his boss?

If the occupation had gone well, of course, Cheney wouldn’t be under fire. But as begins its fifth year, the only winners in this war are the aforementioned radical Shiites, Iran, mercenaries, al-Qaida, oil companies and military contractors such as Halliburton, which has scooped up $27 billion in contracts paid with our taxes. Now Halliburton is making its home in an undemocratic oil-garchy so distasteful to Americans that we wouldn’t let a company from there manage our ports.

Perhaps Cheney, in disgrace, can build his retirement cave there. "

from : Cheney is his own worst enemy

Interesting quote on the 4th anniversary of the Invasion

2007-03-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

Richard Engel in his latest post from Iraq uses this quote. I found it to be of interest so I am requoting it here:

"In 1919, the British military’s official “eye-witness” to the World War I campaigns in Mesopotamia, Edmund Chandler, wrote in his war journal, “The Long Road to Baghdad” that Iraq's “thirsty soil has swallowed many empires.”
Chandler offered this warning to great powers like his own government, which he believed rushed to war in Baghdad without sufficient resources or a clear plan:

“Mesopotamia is a sinister, pestilential land. Not only has she devoured her own empires and kingdoms born of the soil, Ur of the Chaldees, the Assyrian Niveneh, three dynasties of Babylon, Ctesiphon of the Chosres; she has laid her blight on the greatest Empires of the West. It was in the malarious swamps of the Euphrates that Alexander caught the fever that cut short his life; it was at Ctesiphon that Julian and his Roman legions lost the Empire in the East.”

- War Zone Diary

Prayer Flag cairn

2007-03-07T11:34:00.000-08:00

Here is one of the rock cairns with prayer flags and mantra stones that can be seen at Iron Knot Ranch. There are several of them at different spots on the land there. It made for a good photo. May all beings benefit.

One more Prayer Wheel photo

2007-03-04T19:55:00.000-08:00

I am adding one more photo of the prayer wheels just to give a different view. This is the central wheel. It has a railing around it so you can manually make it turn. Which is a meritorious thing to do, by the way.

The wheels are packed with mantra on paper and on microfilm.

Prayer Wheel building at Iron Knot

2007-03-04T19:41:00.000-08:00

This is the octagon shaped building which houses the Prayer Wheels at Iron Knot Ranch in New Mexico. The walls are made of rasterblock, which can be stuccoed, just like adobe. I think it is one of the most awesome Dharmic installations in the West. One walks inside, and finds oneself immersed among seventeen spinning, prayer wheels, each loaded with millions of mantra. It really challenges one's ordinary perceptions when you are in there.

Prayer Wheels

2007-03-04T19:12:00.000-08:00

Just recently got back from a Vajrakiliya retreat at Iron Knot Ranch in New Mexico.

Here is info about Vajrakiliya:

The wrathful practice of Vajrakilaya is an extremely powerful means to remove obstacles of any kind, including obstacles to health, longevity, activity, spiritual practice, and, ultimately, to realization of enlightenment. Performed at the close of the lunar year, Vajrakilaya practice averts and dispels negativity from the old year and establishes auspicious conditions in the New Year for ourselves and all beings.

Here is a look at the terrain at Ironknot which is about 14 miles east of Duncan, Arizona, but is actually in New Mexico.

The relatively new installation of Prayer Wheels has seventeen prayer wheels. Some are loaded with microfilm of mantra. They have electric motors so they turn 24 a day, all week, week after week, except sometimes the motors need maintenance. The central one is turnable by hand.

I came back via the Sunset Limited (Amtrak). It was an interesting journey.

Al Davis added to Mt. Rushmore in 2103

2007-02-07T18:07:00.000-08:00

For a while my blogging efforts have been mostly political or , well some heavy posts. Now in a more light-hearted vein, here is a jpg I jizzed up largely for my brother Tom, who among other things is a Raiders fan.

It suggests that by 2103, Al Davis will be added to Mt. Rushmore. Apologies to Mr. Lincoln. The interesting thing is this post headline might get picked up somewhere, and the next thing I know, this blog gets more attention, than from any of my more weighty pronouncements. Oh, well. At least my brother dug it.

Non to 2007?

2007-01-06T18:06:00.000-08:00

Well to start the new year here's a droll story from France,found on the BBC web site:

French marchers say 'non' to 2007 :

Hundreds of protesters in France have rung in the New Year by holding a light-hearted march against it.
Parodying the French readiness to say "non", the demonstrators in the western city of Nantes waved banners reading: "No to 2007" and "Now is better!"

The marchers called on governments and the UN to stop time's "mad race" and declare a moratorium on the future. The protest was held in the rain and organisers joked that even the weather was against the New Year.

The tension mounted as the minutes ticked away towards midnight - but the arrival of 2007 did nothing to dampen their enthusiasm.
The protesters began to chant: "No to 2008!"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6222153.stm

Then I read with interest an op ed by Walter Shapiro over at Salon entitled:
A decisive year for "the decider",

in which he says:" Nearly four years after the statues of Saddam Hussein were toppled in Baghdad, 2006 was the year that reality set in about the Mesopotamian mess. Outside the closed-loop universe of conservative talk radio and Fox News, there no longer is a constituency for vaporous visions of victory. "

And about the election: "Eleven months later, the seismic rumbles are still reverberating, as the Democrats won 29 new House seats, won six Senate seats and took over six additional governorships, including those in New York and Ohio. The most stunning statistic: Not a single Democrat running for reelection was defeated for Congress or governor."

That single statement alone undercuts those who say the democrats didn't win, it was the Republicans who manuvered themselves into a loss.

Meanwhile I find myself inclined to agree with Sen. Joe Biden. Here is a capsule of his statements this week:

" Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof," in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam."

I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost," Biden said. "They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively."

Thus the surge is a stop gap measure to postpone the collapse until 2008, at which W leaves and then blames the mess on the Democrats when a pullout finally happens. Cynical, - - - perhaps.

Yet as Tim Dickison at Rolling Stone notes when commenting on Biden's statement:

"It sounds like Biden’s given up on this war, which I take as a definitive sign of defeat. Say what you will about Biden, he took the costs and responsibilities of this war seriously. Unlike others in his party he really did try to focus on this as an American committment, not the president’s war.

Accordingly, he doggedly attempted to help the administration right the course in Iraq. But it’s now clear to him, and to everyone who saw the Saddam snuff film, that there’s no Iraq to be redeemed.

Vengeful sectarianism has trumped any overriding sense of national unity. And there’s nothing our military can do now to turn that tide. By supporting the Maliki government we’re simply sanctioning the actions of the Shiia Death Squads also known as the Interior Ministry.

There are no good solutions, but Bush’s plan to put more fingers in a dike that’s about to burst will not save his legacy from the harshest judgments of history. "

Okay 2007, here we go. It will soon be the Tibetan year of the Fire Pig. Whoa!

3 Excellent Paragraphs from Salon

2006-12-17T12:32:00.000-08:00

I was reading on the web this morning and checking some of the opinion pieces at Salon, and came across this great article by Gary Kamiya, entitled,"

A bombshell with a long fuse - The Iraq Study Group report may be DOA. But it shows the Washington establishment is finally confronting reality in the Middle East.

Here's a live link A bombshell with a long fuse, though you likely have to get a free site pass by watching an ad first.

And here's the 3 most excellent paragraphs which express what I have been thinking recently also :

"In fact, the greatest single failing of the ISG report was that it did not make its cautious military proposals -- to withdraw U.S. combat forces from Iraq by 2008, to push harder to train Iraqi troops -- contingent on the acceptance of its diplomatic ones. As many analysts have pointed out, the problem with training Iraqi troops is that Iraqi troops are more loyal to their sects than to the in-name-only government, and so training them might simply result in their being able to shoot at us more accurately in the future. For this reason and others, the ISG's plan would still be a Hail Mary pass even if its diplomatic recommendations were followed; if they are not, it has virtually no chance of success. By saying, "If you don't engage in diplomacy, you should withdraw U.S. troops immediately," the Baker group would have greatly increased the pressure on Bush to abandon his failed stay-the-course approach. And such a link would have given Democrats in Congress invaluable bipartisan support to demand a timetable for troop withdrawal -- something they don't feel they have enough political cover to propose now.

Of course, Bush would almost certainly have rejected this proposal anyway. As his entire disastrous presidency has shown, Bush is incapable of admitting he is wrong. With all the certainty of a simpleton whose brain has been taken over by One Big Idea, Bush has been convinced ever since 9/11 that history and God have chosen him to defeat an enemy of near-satanic menace. (Oddly, this Manichaean attitude is echoed by his also highly devout enemies.) In his mind, the current crisis is the Battle of Britain, and he is Winston Churchill, rallying the British people to their finest hour. Unfortunately, Bush has chosen the wrong World War II analogy. Iraq is not the Battle of Britain, it is Stalingrad. And Bush is not heroically standing fast like Churchill; he is stubbornly clinging to a doomed position, like Hitler. (If he insists on playing Churchill, there's a more applicable battle: Dunkirk.)

{or Gallipoli; during WW I, Churchill pushed for the Gallipoli operation, and long after any window of opportunity had passed for making it work, the Allied generals kept pushing more and more troops into the maw, to no useful end}

So for the next two endless years, the American people, the 140,000 American troops in Iraq and the Iraqi people will have to hang on for dear life as Bush, like Ahab chasing the Great White Whale of "Islamofascism," steers his course straight for Davy Jones' Locker -- with the only consolation being that he will take the Republican Party with him. But the Bush era will eventually pass, and America will be forced to deal with Mideast reality. "

As Kamiya concludes his article: "Bush will reject the Baker Commission's report, the neocons are already screaming in rage and panic, and it remains to be seen whether the Democrats will seriously press for any Mideast policy change that will lead to a showdown with Israel. But the facts on the ground are not going away. "

An excerpt from Thomas Rick's Fiasco

2006-12-10T19:13:00.000-08:00

Well, haven't posted for a while, which means I may have lost what readership I had. Sorry. The Thanksgiving holidays intervened with my time, and then you hit December and more time gets sucked away.

Anyway I finshed reading Thomas Ricks Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq . Reading this along with State of Denial will illuminate many things about the war in Iraq. I highly recommend reading Fiasco. Here is a bit from Amazon.com about the book:

"The main points of this hard-hitting indictment of the Iraq war have been made before, but seldom with such compelling specificity. In dovetailing critiques of the civilian and military leadership, Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Ricks (Making the Corps) contends that, under Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith, the Pentagon concocted "the worst war plan in American history," with insufficient troops and no thought for the invasion's aftermath. Thus, an under-manned, unprepared U.S. military stood by as chaos and insurgency took root, then responded with heavy-handed tactics that brutalized and alienated Iraqis. Based on extensive interviews with American soldiers and officers as well as first-hand reportage, Ricks's detailed, unsparing account of the occupation paints a woeful panorama of reckless firepower, mass arrests, humiliating home invasions, hostage-taking and abuse of detainees."

Then on page 408 we find this passage, which considering the occasion took place a few days short of two years ago are a devastating indictment of the 43rd President taking any action on what has turned out to be the truth back in 2004. It is slightly more than 4 paragraphs, but since I am recommending the book and citing it, I hope the powers that be don't get upset. Okay here goes:

"In December 2004, two unvarnished official reports hit the White House. The first was a somber assessment by the CIA station chief in Baghdad, at that point, the agency's largest station. Called an aardwolf in agency jargon, the assessment enjoys special status under CIA regulations. It cannot be edited by the ambassador, and it is delivered directly to the agency's director. Just a few other copies are distributed, and only to people at the top of the government, with recipents including the president, the secretaries of state and defense, and the national security advisor. "We face a vicious insurgency, we are going to have 2,000 dead, the CIA station chief's report stated, according to a senior U.S intelligence official with direct access to the document.

A few days later on December 17, 2004, according to a former senior administration official, President Bush received an extensive briefing on the situation from Army Colonel Derek Harvey, a senior U.S. intelligence expert on Iraq. Unlike most U.S. military intelligence officials involved in the region, Harvey understood Arabic, and also had a Ph.D in Islamic studies. He had a far less rosy few than what the president had been hearing. CIA and NCS officials who already had received the longer four-hour version of his briefing sat in. The insurgency was tougher than the American officials understood, Harvey told president according to three people present at the meeting. "It's robust, it's well led, it's diverse. Absent some sort of reconciliation it's going to go on, and that risks a civil war. They have the means to fight this for a long time, and they have a different sense of time than we do, and are willing to fight. They have better intelligence than we do." The insurgents had managed to mount about twenty-six thousand attacks against U.S. forces and Iraqis during 2004 and the trends weren't good.

The president wanted to know where Harvey was coming from. Who was he? And why should his minority view, so contrary to the official optimism, be believed. Harvey explained that he had spent a good amount of time in Iraq, that he had conversed repeatedly with insurgents, and had developed the belief that the U.S. intelligence effort there was deeply flawed.

The other officials present weren't entirely at ease with Col. Harvey and his perpective. " There was always the view that Harvey was a little bit over the top," especially in his certainty that he was right and everyone else was wrong, said a former senior administration official.

Okay, what about the Syrian role? the president asked.

One ot the CIA officials spoke up to say that his agency didn't see clear financing coming from Syria. The CIA had long thought that Harvey and other military intelligence figures were overemphasizing the role of Syria and foreign fighters in Iraq. No, Harvey bluntly responded with striking specificity, in fact , we do. "We see four different tracks of financing from Damascus. All to Ramadi, to the tune of $1.2 million a month. And it is based in a very Arab way, on relationships and shared experiences. And all the sigint [sinals intercept intelligence] isn't going to tell you that". But don't focus on the foreign fighters, Harvey told the president, breaking a bit with the orthodox view in military intelligence . We've zeroed in on them too much because our intelligence apparatus can intercept their communications. But they aren't at the core of the Iraqi insurgency, which is "the old Sunni oligarchy using religious nationalism as a motivating force. Thats it in a nutshell."

Its fairly easy to see that events in Iraq have unfolded exactly as Col. Harvey was saying they would back in December 2004.

At this point General Abizaid is saying give us 6 more months and perhaps 20,000 more troops, and the situation will get stabilized. More likely by then there will be 3,500 dead US soldiers, an additional 5,000 more wounded, and the civil war will be just as nasty as it is now.

Just another example of this Adminisration ignoring intelligence because it does not fit their idealogical notions, and then compounding their blunders. And also by late in 2007, their incompetence will likely cost us 3 quarters of a trillion dollars. Well, as the old Houston Post motto used to say, "Let facts be submitted to a candid World."

New Popular History of Tibet by Thomas Laird

2006-11-20T18:29:00.000-08:00

The Story of Tibet: conversations with the Dalai Lama - by Thomas Laird.

I was checking out the new book section at the local library, and I found this new popular history of Tibet entitled : The Story of Tibet: conversations with the Dalai Lama - by Thomas Laird.

I started reading it and immediately found it an easy read and engaging. I am not going to do a review here, since I am just beginning on it, but I would recommend it highly as it is well done, and you get a thorough account of Tibets history as viewed by the Dalai Lama himself.

There is a very good passage on page 367, which I will quote several paragraphs of, as it elucidates His Holiness's view of the Tibet/China situation in 2006 and on into the near future.
The interviewer is Thomas Laird the author :

What is your prediction for the future?

DL:"I believe truth has its own strength and we must retain our faith in truth", he answered, returning to the theme he referred to in our first interviews. "Of course guns have their own unique strength. But the strength or force of a gun is short or temporary. Temporarily it is decisive, but in the long run it is weak. The power of truth stands up. Truth always remains unchangeable. Then there is another manifestation of these two. The power of guns is often not compatible with truth and very much depends on untruths or lies. So with guns, there are usually lies and destruction. When governments keep so many state secrets, this is a sign of weakness despite military strength. If a government is compelled to keep secrets from its own people, this is a weakness. Also in China, the government has kept too many secrets from its own people. This is not good. Tibetans do not have guns, but we are very strong.
We have suffered a lot. We have been victimized, but still (tell) the truth. There is no lie, no effort to hide our mistakes. We are open. Anybody is welcome to look at what we are doing. We are trying to be open, and this is a manifestation of the truth and this is a real strength. That is why I feel that , for the future, there is hope and it is positive."

"Some people might not see the situation you face so positively, " I said.

DL:" If you look at the Tibet situation locally," he replied, " then it seems hopeless, desperate, and it seems our time is running out. But in reality the Tibetan problem is not hopeless at all, not like problems from a civil war. Our problem is we had a conflict with a new guest with a gun who came without a proper invitation. But things change. The Tibet issue is very much linked to the situation within China proper. China, no matter how organized, is part of the world, (and) change is part of the world. In the last fifteen to twenty years China has changed dramatically, and this change will continue. The totalitarian system has changed and has lost its ideology, and politicians seem primarily concerned with power. Sometimes I feel I am a more genuine Communist than them.

"The existence of a totalitarian government requires military force.," the Dalai Lama continued firmly. " If it does not have any proper sort of aim or ideology, just power, such a system is unhealthy and is bound to change. Because of different technologies like the Internet, it is impossible for any government to keep so many secrets or secrecy, and this makes change inevitable. Therefore, change is already taking place, and the time for totalitarianism is running out. On the Tibetan side, the spirit is strong, and support from the outside world is increasing. I feel from a wider perspective, there is very much hope".

Pieta

2006-11-01T17:15:00.000-08:00

Pieta -album by Milton Nascimento

Recently I got a hold of a copy of Milton Nascimento's album of 2005 entitled Pieta. Was unaware that it had come out, because 1) I was over in Europe then, and 2) I had lost interest in some of Milton's albums of the late 90s and early aughts. At any rate I can report that this release is delightful, and before I go further let me quote the short review over at Amazon.com:

"Having recorded a series of highly influential releases during the seventies and early eighties -- and captured a worldwide following in the process -- Nascimento seemed to lose his way for a spell. But thankfully, he is back on track, praising the Eternal Feminine as personified by his mother and other strong women who have touched his life. The theme is not new to him -- the concept of a female twin soul/guardian spirit has recurred in his work since the beginning -- but this is the first time he has dedicated an entire album to the age-old anima/animus duality. His trademark baritone-to-tenor, crowned by an ethereal yet searing falsetto, is companioned by a roster of women altos (Simone Guimarães, Marina Machado, and Maria Rita Mariano) whose voices envelop his like darkly iridescent angel wings. Old friends like lyricist Fernando Brant and bassist Lô Borges, who have been with him since his youthful Clube da Esquina days, are on hand, as are icons from Brazil (arranger Eumir Deodato) and the U.S.(Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock). Although Nascimento's one-time naive sophistication has undeniably been superceded by a knowing, jazzy neo-primitive thrust, this is his finest effort in years and thus, an essential must-have. --Christina Roden "

I first was turned onto the music of Milton Nascimento while in the Peace corps in Jamaica. A member of the German Volunteer Corps in Jamaica, Vinnie, lent me a 100 min cassette tape that was all his music. I remember sitting on the RoofTop bar in Papine, just outside of Kingston, and the view to the south was tremendous; you could see the causeway going out to Port Royale and then south of that the Caribbean sea. Looking at that view, I would recall the song Cravo E Canela (Clove and Cinnamon) by Nascimento , and I could almost sense the energy of the South American continent. Btw that’s an incredible song, one can sense the heart of Minas Geraes and Brazil in it. I duped that tape and continued listening to his songs the rest of the time I was there. And when I got back to the States, I ended up spending a lot of time and effort to get all the songs of his that were on the tape, on albums.(This was back when lps still predominated) It ended up taking something like 14 albums to get that mix.

In the end though the reason I went to so much trouble to recollect all those songs, is the music of Milton Nascimento at its best, is so captivating, sometimes otherworldy, and always filled with heart and soul. He sometimes uses too much lush orchestration which veers into 'cocktail' music for me, but on the other hand his music can reveal incredible South American vistas at times. Nascimento exhibits sheer musical genius in many of his songs.

I did move away in my interest in his albums over say the last ten years, but this album is alive and brings his music up to date, without dipping into any trite trends. The first song on Pieta, A Feminina voz do cantor is one of the most moving songs I have heard in a long time. Its like Nascimento taps into some subconscious feeling that most anyone can relate to. Which makes for great art. Another similarly moving song is Beira-Mar Novo, in which Milton has vocal backing by a group of young Brazilian teens- Meninos de Aracuai.

All the songs have a ‘alive’ sparkling quality. I can recommend it highly, especially if one already likes Brazilian jazz, or likes his music to begin with.

The Foreigner's Gift

2006-10-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

The Foreigner's Gift by Fouad Ajami

Sometimes time passes by between one post and the next. For one thing I have been reading. And have just finished reading Fouad Ajami's The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq . Okay more on Iraq. The more I learn about Iraq, the more disquiet I feel about the whole project. Before I go further here is the outline type review found at Amazon.com:

"The fall of Saddam Hussein's brutal regime brought the first glimpse of freedom for Iraq and unleashed elation, resentment, and chaos. On the one hand, there is hope: the Iraqi people have their first chance at independence. On the other hand, there is despair: the country is exploding with violent sectarian and political power struggles. Through it all, Iraq has remained an enigma to much of the world. What is it about this country that makes for such a seemingly intractable situation? How did Iraq's particular history lead to its present circumstances? And what can we fear or hope for in the coming years?

Fouad Ajami, one of the world's foremost authorities on Middle Eastern politics, offers a brilliant, illuminating, and lyrical portrait of the ongoing struggle for Iraq and of the American encounter with that volatile Arab land. Ajami situates the current unrest within the context of Iraq's recent history of dictatorship and its rich, diverse cultural heritage. He applies his incisive political commentary, his broad and deep historical view, his mastery of the Arabic language and Arabic sources, and his lustrous prose to every aspect of his subject, wresting a coherent, fascinating, and textured picture from the media storm of fragmented information.

In the few years after the Iraq war began, Ajami made many trips to that country and met Iraqis of all ethnicities, religions, politics, and regions. Looking beneath the familiar media images of Iraq and the war, Ajami visits with individuals representing the breadth of Iraq's populace, from Sunni leaders and Shia clerics to Kurdish politicians and poets, Iraqi policemen, and ordinary people voting for the first time in their lives. He also hears from American soldiers on the ground, and the result of all his encounters is an astonishing portrayal of a land that has emerged as a crucial battleground between American power and the wider forces of Arab religious and political extremism."

This is a fascinating book. Prof. Ajami has a distinctly different prose style which spirals around a subject; that is starts around the edges of a subject and then circles inward. It is not unlike the spirals on the book cover of Islamic tile art. It takes awhile to get used to, but he illuminates much in his own way.

He actually sees some good thing coming out of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And he brings an unique perspective being a Shia Muslim of Lebanese descent.

The gift supplied by the 'Foreigners' is in this case, the removal of Saddam and the bringing of democracy to Iraq.

The thing is events since I even recently read this book, has already overtaken the somewhat hopeful prognostications of Mr. Ajami.

For example here is what Mortimer Zuckerman in the Oct. 15th issue of US News and World Report says about the undertaking in a opinion piece entiltled, " A Sad Litany of Failures. And I will quote just two paragraphs:

"Nobody was entitled to think the Iraq venture would be roses all the way, given that Saddam Hussein had repressed Iraqis for three decades, depriving the nation of a cadre of local leaders like, say, Hamid Karzai in Kabul. But we had a vision of what might have been achieved. It would not be too much to say it was a noble vision, but it was not one grounded in the hard reality of a fractured, multiethnic society. Saddam held his citizens down by brutality and cunning, not giving religious leaders a key role, as we did, yet subtly balancing religious rivalries one against the other. Shiites account for some 60 percent of Iraq's population, and for them democracy means empowerment. But the Sunnis, who had dominated under Saddam for so long, were never going to accept minority status, and the Kurds were not going to accept anything less than de facto sovereignty, which they obtained after the 1991 Gulf War.

Occupiers. Alas, whatever chances we may have had to overcome these difficulties have been torpedoed by the breathtaking incompetence of the Bush administration in managing postwar Iraq. Senior officials from the president on down ignored warnings that we might win the war and lose the peace. Gen. Tommy Franks won the battle for Baghdad but seemed to feel that planning for the postwar period was someone else's job. But whose? We sent an inept group of operatives to run Iraq, often appointed because of their political leanings. Whatever support we originally enjoyed there we began to lose when we allowed criminals to rampage. Then the Americans, fabled for their can-do efficiency, failed again and again to deliver electricity, water, and, most critically, security. Today, the violence is estimated by one account to have cost more than 600,000 Iraqis their lives. "

What I notice hasn't been mentioned is that this October has not only been the worst month for Americans this year, it has been the worse since November 2004. The situation has worsened. Much of the territory in Iraq is really controlled by either Sunni or Shia militias now. Our troops will be lucky to get out of there, with even some semblence of government and order restored. And there is no guarantee, that even if US forces stayed there until 2016, that the day after all US troops are gone, all hell might break loose again. Indeed, the hell on earth scenario is already happening for this corner of our planet.

Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche

2006-10-18T14:39:00.000-07:00

at IronKnot Ranch, April 2001

I recently substantially added to the biography of Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche over at Wikipedia . And added the photo above which I took I believe April 5th, 2001 at IronKnot Ranch in New Mexico. I am going to go ahead an add to this blog, what I wrote, because I know over time, the bio at Wikipedia will get edited, and I fear 'dumbed' down or keel-hauled. To elaborate I don't like to see valid information subtracted from an article, just because someone doing an edit doesn't like the information presented. Okay . Here goes. It will make a huge post, but hopefully it will be of some benefit:

H.E. Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche (August 12, 1930-Nov. 22, 2002) is a renowned teacher of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. He was renowned in the West for his teachings, and also for his melodic chanting voice, his artistry as a sculptor and painter, his limitless compassion, and his sense of humor . He was the source of treasured Nyingma lineage transmissions for the thousands of people whom he taught in North and South America, Asia, Australia, and Europe.

He was born in the Tromtar region of Kham [Eastern Tibet] in 1930. His father was Sera Kharpo, who was actually a lama in the Gelugpa sect. His mother was Dawa Drolma, who was widely considered to be an emanation of Tara, and had a profound influence on her son's spiritual life.

By the time he was three years old he was recognized as the incarnation of the previous Chagdud Tulku, and soon thereafter traveled to Temp'hel Gonpa, a monastery about two or three days by horseback from Tromtar. As he recounts in his autobiography, The Lord Of The Dance:

“For the next seven years, until I went into three year retreat at the age of eleven, my life would alternate between periods of strict discipline in which my every move would be under the surveillance of my tutors and interludes in which my suppressed energies would explode. Throughout, I had many visions, many clairvoyant experiences, many extraordinary dreams, and within these, I sometimes had glimpses of absolute open awareness.”

After this retreat he received numerous teachings, empowerments, and oral transmissions, from various spiritual masters. One of them, Sechen Rabjam Rinpoche, told him that Tara meditation would be one of his major practices. In 1945 shortly after completing his first three year retreat he went to see His Holiness Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö Rinpoche. From Chökyi Lodrö Rinpoche he received the Rinchen Tangyud empowerments, and caught his first glimpse of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who was attending the empowerments. By 1946 he entered his second three year retreat, this time under the guidance of the Tromge Trungpa Rinpoche. Near the conclusion of this retreat, the death of Tromge Trungpa forced him to leave before its completion. He then returned to Chagdud Gonpa in Nyagrong, and after staying there for awhile, proceeded on a pilgrimage to Lhasa with an entourage of monks.

He then did an extended retreat at Samye, the monastery built by Guru Padmasambhava, and afterwards attended empowerments given by H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche,who would become a main teacher as well as a source of spiritual inspiration for him. After this in 1957 he stayed for a year in Lhasa, Tibet, in the same household as Khenpo Dorje, whom he regarded as his root lama.

During 1958, his last year in Tibet, Chagdud Tulku was advised to marry in order that he would have a companion and helper in the unsettled times to come. He later wed Karma Drolma, the daughter of a wealthy landowner in Kongpo. Later on in exile in India, they would have a son and a daughter, Jigme Tromge Rinpoche and Dawa Lhamo Tromge.

Following Tibet's invasion by China in 1959, Chagdud Tulku escaped along with Khenpo Dorje to India, after enduring hunger, and many close calls, where it looked like they would not make it out. His route took him through Padma Kod region of Tibet, and his party came out from there into the Nagaland area of India.In India Rinpoche lived in a number of Tibetan refugee resettlement camps - Kalimpong, Orissa, Dalhousie, Bir, and Delhi. He practiced Tibetan medicine , and was much in demand as his fellow refugees had trouble coping with the heat, and subtropical diseases found in India.

A year or two after his arrival in India, Rinpoche entered a retreat in Tso Pema, a lake sacred to Guru Rinpoche, located near the city of Mandi in Himachal Pradesh. At this location he met Jangchub Dorje, a primary disciple of Apong Terton and a lineage holder of this great treasure revealer's Red Tara cycle. Jangchub Dorje gave him empowerments for the Red Tara cycle, and then he re-entered into retreat and signs of accomplishment in the practices came very swiftly. Later, when he began teaching in the West, Red Tara sadhana would become the meditation most extensively practiced by his Western students. While he was living in Bir, circumstances there gradually led to an estrangement with Karma Drolma, and eventually they separated.

After giving a teaching in Kulu Manali, the Dalai Lama extended an invitation for Rinpoche to go to the United States and teach, contingent upon him getting a visa. It was at this time that he moved to Delhi, and lived in Majnukatilla, a TibetanCamp on the banks of the Jamuna river. The process of trying to get a visa went on for three years, and was ultimately unsuccessful. During this time period he met his first Western students, but he also caught malaria and nearly died, and was saved by an Indian doctor who finally made the correct diagnosis of what was ailing him.

In the fall of 1977 empowerment cycles were given in Kathmandu, Nepal by H.H. Dudjom Rimpoche in order to propagate the sacred lineages to a new generation. Chagdud Tulku decided to travel there in order to receive all the empowerments of the Dudjom treasures from Dudjom Rimpoche. Hundreds of tulkus, scholars, yogis and lay practitioners gathered at Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's monastery for these empowerments. About his experience he says this in his autobiography:

“ During my stay in Nepal I received empowerments and oral transmissions for all the treasures he had discovered in this life and in his previous life as Dudjom Lingpa. It was a wealth of practices whose splendor is unsurpassed, and deep within me I formed the aspiration to offer this transmission to others through empowerment and teaching.”

While attending them Chagdud Tulku met and older lama from Western Tibet, Lama Ladakh Nono, who was known for doing mirror divinations. He subsequently did a mirror divination for Chagdud and told him he should go to the West and benefit many people there by teaching the Dharma. He also predicted that a Western woman would come into his life and that this would be good.

He continued to stay in Nepal on into 1978 in order to attend a new series of empowerments in the Choling Tesar cycle given by His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rimpoche. It was while attending one of these empowerments, that a Western woman , Jane Dedman, approached Chagdud Rinpoche with the offering of a white scarf and a jar of honey. Afterwards he invited her to lunch, and shortly after this he gave her some teachings. A month or so later he accepted her offer to serve as his attendant in retreat after the empowerments. This retreat lasted for several months, after which Dudjom Rinpoche among other things suggested Chagdud go to America to teach.

After many months of waiting he was finally granted a visa and landed in San Francisco on Oct. 24, 1979. Shortly after this, he married Jane in South Lake Tahoe, Calif. The early years of his teaching in the Americas was spent in Eugene, and Cottage Grove Oregon. In 1983, at the request of his
students, he established Chagdud Gonpa Foundation.He soon ordained his first lama, a Western woman named Inge Sandvoss, as Lama Yeshe Zangmo.

Additionally in the time period of 1980 through 1987 he gave many teachings and invited many other renowned Lamas such as Dudjom Rinpoche, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, and Kyabje Penor Rinpoche to Oregon where they bestowed many empowerments and teachings. He also helped set up Padma Publications which eventually published his two books: The Lord of the Dance, and Gates to Buddhist Practice. Padma Publications also, with the assistance of Richard Baron began the monumental task of translating from Tibetan into English, Longchenpas Seven Treasuries , of which three volumes have been published to date.

In 1987 he returned to Tibet for the first time since 1959. He traveled to Kham, visiting the three monasteries of his youth ,and actually bestowed empowerments to the monastic staff there. His son, Jigme Tromge Rinpoche, traveled with him to Tibet and the next year immigrated to the United States, entering a three-year retreat a few months after his arrival.
Then in 1988 after land was acquired in the Trinity Alps of Northern California, the main seat of Chagdud Gonpa Foundation was created there as Rigzin Ling. It was here that Chagdud Tulku offered the empowerments and oral transmissions of the Dudjom Treasures in 1991, and several years later, of the supreme dzogchen cycle, Nyingt'hig Yabzhi.

In 1992 he received an invitation to teach in Brazil and he would become a pioneer insofar as spreading the Dharma in South America. Throughout the 1990s he maintained an extensive teaching schedule, put many of his senior students into three year retreats, and helping to establish many Chagdud Gonpa centers throughout the Western Hemisphere. These include, more than 38 Dharma centers under Chagdud Tulku's supervision and inspiration, in America, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Switzerland and
Australia. The best known are Rigzin Ling in Junction City, California and Khadro Ling, his main center in Três Coroas, Brazil.

In all his teachings he was known for stressing pure motivation in doing spiritual practice. He once wrote, "In the course of my Buddhist training, I have received teachings on many philosophical topics and meditative methods. Of all teachings, I find none more important than pure motivation. If I had to leave only one legacy to my students, it would be the wisdom of pure motivation. If I were to be known by one title, it would be the 'motivation lama.'"

In this context ‘pure motivation’ means the cultivation of bodhicitta , which is the enlightened intent of doing practice for the benefit of oneself, and all other sentient beings.

In 1995 he moved to Khadro Ling, in Río Grande do Sul, Brazil, and it became the main seat of his Dharmic activities, for the rest of his life. In 1996 the first Brazilian Dzogchen retreat took place at Khadro Ling and a large Guru Rinpoche statue was created there. In the next few years, he traveled in South America, giving teachings in Uruguay, Argentina, and
Chile, in addition to different parts of Brazil. He also continued to travel to his centers in the United States, and made frequent visits to Nepal, a return to Chagdud Gompa in eastern Tibet and a visit to mainland China. During this same time period, in addition to leading Drubchens and month long Dzogchen retreats, he also trained his students in the sacred arts of
sculpture and painting, as well as ritual dance, chanting, and music.

In 1998, construction began on the lha khang (temple) of Khadro Ling. In July 1998, the empowerments of the Taksham Treasures were bestowed by Terton Namkhai Drimed in the still incomplete temple. This temple was followed by an enormous prayer wheel project, perhaps the largest in the Western Hemisphere, then eight magnificent stupas, and a monumental statue of Akshobhya Buddha. In the same period, in Parping, Nepal, Rinpoche built a new retreat center where eight people began training
according to the Kat'hog tradition under Kyabje Getse Tulku.

While Chagdud Rinpoche kept up a tremendous amount of Dharmic actvity, in the last few years of his life he was somewhat slowed down by diabetes, and in 1997, he entered a clinic and was diagnosed with a serious heart condition. In the last year of his life Rinpoche's body began to sabotage his outer activities. He tired more easily, and travel became difficult. In 2002, he cancelled a trip to the United States, which had been scheduled for October, and instead entered strict retreat.

In the last week of his life, he concluded this retreat on Tuesday, November 12th , worked with a student artist to complete a statue of Amitabha, talked with many of his students, and led a training in p'howa (transference of consciousness at the moment of death) for more than two hundred people. He continued teaching with great vigor until about 9 pm on Saturday night
November 16th. Then on Sunday morning of the 17th, at about 4:15 a.m., Brazilian daylight time, he suffered massive heart failure while sitting up in bed.

After this Rinpoche remained in a state of meditation for almost six full days.The ability to remain in meditation after the breath stops is known as (t'hug dam).His son Tulku Jigme Rinpoche described this in a release to the Brazilian press:

“After his last breath, my father remained in a state of meditation foralmost six full days that prevented the usual deterioration of hisbody. The ability to remain in a state of meditation after the breath stops iswell-known among great Tibetan masters, but circumstances have rarelyallowed it to occur in the West. Chagdud Rinpoche remained sitting ina natural, lifelike meditation posture, with little visible change ofcolor or expression. During that time, no one touched his body.

Until the sixth day, Friday, November 22rd, Rinpoche showed no physical signs that his meditation had ended. In the interim we were inconstant consultation with a lawyer and other officials about local customs and regulations. Friday midday, his meditation ended and his mind
separated from his body. Within hours, his appearance changed. He took on the signs typical of those occurring within the first 24 hours of death.”

Afterwards his ku dun (the physical body) was flown to Kathmandu, Nepal, and to the retreat center in Parping. During the forty-nine days that followed, Getse Tulku Rinpoche and Jigme Tromge Rinpoche led ceremonies in Parping,to purify inauspicious circumstances to Rinpoche's rebirth and to generate great merit through offerings and practice.

A year later on the full moon of December 8, 2003, Rinpoche's cremation was held on Jigme Rinpoche's land in Parping, with Kyabje Mogtza Rinpoche, one of the highest lamas of Kat'hog Gonpa, serving as Vajra Master. Hundreds of Rinpoche's students gathered, to mourn the loss of his direct physical presence, and made prayers and offerings for his eventual rebirth.

His wife Chagdud Khadro and his son Jigme Tromge Rinpoche continue to teach and carry on Chagdud's many projects and practices.

something I read

2006-10-09T20:14:00.000-07:00

Well, haven't posted for a while. Actually I have had several posts brewing in my brain, but just haven't got round to putting any together.

Politics right now predominate, but some are being covered so extensively now, I see no need to add to that fray at the moment.

Meanwhile I started reading Mediterranean Winter: The Pleasures of History and Landscape in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia, and Greece by Robert D. Kaplan and came across this passage which I shall quote:

"For those who in Kazantzaki's words, "squander their lives" with the Tigress, (the White Goddess), the great events of life come from the books, rather than the people, one comes across. Some books show us a new world, others vindicate our own experience. Books can lead you astray, they can ruin you, they can deliver you from the strictures of your environment. Because some are so important one remembers perfectly the circumstances in which one found them , and read them.

You don't find the books that change your life by accident. One finds them the way a ragpicker finds something useful in the garbage, or the way a hunter accidentally encounters his prey. The enterprise demands vigilance, says the philospher Walter Benjamin: it takes practice to lose one's way in a city in order to discover something important about it."

I just started reading it, and am already enjoying it. I recommend it.

Here is a initial description from the inside flap cover to give you an idea of what it is about:

"In Mediterranean Winter, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts and Eastward to Tartary, relives an austere, haunting journey he took as a youth through the off-season Mediterranean. The awnings are rolled up and the other tourists are gone, so the damp, cold weather takes him back to the 1950s and earlier - - - a golden, intensely personal age of tourism.

Decades ago, Kaplan voyaged from North Africa to Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece, luxuriating in the radical freedom of youth, unaccountable to time because there was always time to make up for a mistake. He recalls that journey in this Persian miniature of a book, less to look inward into his own past than to look outward in order to dissect the process of learning through travel, in which a succession of new landscapes can lead to books and artwork never before encountered."

Excerpt from an interview of Sidney Blumenthal

2006-09-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed the interview with Sidney Blumenthal over at Welcome to WorkingForChange. I am posting a short bit of it here. For the full interview here is the raw link: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=21368.

Sidney Blumenthal is "both a trenchant, learned journalist and a tested political counsel who served as a former special advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton in the White House, Sidney Blumenthal has been writing commentary on politics regularly for Salon.com and The Guardian since 2003. Blumenthal is a wordsmith with lacerating insight."

Okay here is just a small part of the "Buzzflash" interview:

"BuzzFlash: Much of what you've written so accurately and trenchantly points to the failure of the Bush administration to achieve its own stated goals. Really, Iraq is only the most tragic and at the same time, the most ludicrous example of how they have constantly shifted their goals and even failed every time they've shifted them. It might have been something extremely different if this were a radical government, and actually had succeeded at something beyond making the wealthy wealthier and leading us to the point of bankruptcy. I guess those are their two successes in some weird sort of way.

But you write frequently about their failures -- that, by their own standards, they've failed. Of all the many reasons they've given for going to Iraq, none seems to hold up. What we're left with is that they're stopping terrorism there, when we're really just mediating a civil war at this point between Sunnis and Shiites. Given all this failure, how are they able to continue to rule with the trump card of "you need us to fight against terrorism"? I know you can kind of manufacture "truthiness," as Stephen Colbert says on television, with big bad scary commercials with wolves in them. But the reality is failure, as you've pointed out. How can they get away with this?

Sidney Blumenthal: For every failure, Bush develops a new front where he insists that he is required to save us from a new threat. The Bush universe of threats is a constantly expanding universe as he moves to politically higher ground, escaping from failure after failure. He's not only radical, but the consequences of his radicalism have been catastrophic. These people have been deeply incompetent.
Now, some of the things that they're incompetent about go to the heart of what they believe. Their incompetence is not some inadvertent byproduct. It actually derives from their principles.
For example, consider what happened to New Orleans and the aftermath from Hurricane Katrina -- the destruction of a major American city, an absolute inability of the federal government through FEMA to cope as it should have with this terrible catastrophe. Why was it unable to cope? Well, the Bush Administration doesn't really believe in government. That's one of its dirty little secrets. So they turned FEMA into a dumping ground for political hacks. They demoted it. They cut it apart. They drove out professionals. They turned it into a plaything for lobbyists and no-bid contractors. What's going on throughout the government is a kind of FEMA-ization.

What has happened in Iraq in the occupation is not much different from what happened in New Orleans. Look at the privatization of warfare in the occupation, and how Halliburton and other contractors have profited. They've practically looted the federal treasury. And the result's catastrophic. The privatization of the occupation should not be seen as too different from Bush's proposal to begin privatizing Social Security. Imagine what that would have looked like, had it not been stopped. But their incompetence reflects their philosophy.

BuzzFlash: Do they think they've succeeded?

Sidney Blumenthal: They always think they need to be given another chance, and that, in time, things will work out. I think Bush's strategy is like Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind -- "Tomorrow's another day!" He has no strategy. Listening to his press conferences and speeches is like being stuck on a camp bus when you were a kid, singing, "We're Here Because We're Here." That's his policy on Iraq. It's like endlessly singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall."

Three Angels

2006-09-11T14:05:00.000-07:00

Three angels up above the street,
Each one playing a horn,
Dressed in green robes with wings that stick out,
They've been there since Christmas morn.
The wildest cat from Montana passes by in a flash,
Then a lady in a bright orange dress,
One U-Haul trailer, a truck with no wheels,
The Tenth Avenue bus going west.
The dogs and pigeons fly up and they flutter around,
A man with a badge skips by,
Three fellas crawlin' on their way back to work,
Nobody stops to ask why.
The bakery truck stops outside of that fence
Where the angels stand high on their poles,
The driver peeks out, trying to find one face
In this concrete world full of souls.
The angels play on their horns all day,
The whole earth in progression seems to pass by.
But does anyone hear the music they play,
Does anyone even try?

-- - - B. Dylan, New Morning

I was returning to poetry recently, after not reading much for a long time. And Robert Bly's A Little Book on the Human Shadow led me to The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, also by Robert Bly with James Hillman and Michael Meade.

Before I go further I notice my blog has been getting a few comments. I thank my readers, and moreover thanks for leaving comments. Let me say I don't blog every day, so sometimes some new update to my blog might not happen for a few days. I note my posts have been political for awhile, but I did not start out to do a 'political' blog. The rubric of the 'Time Coast' has always suggested to me that I would comment on what washes up on the shores of 'Time' as I experience it. So if anything it is a subjective blog, and can be upon whatever I am experiencing at that crucial momentary instant that will call the 'Present', the thing itself occuring in the time that in a way we are all going through. But, we all likely experience the Zeitgest of our time differently with different shadings.

Okay that being said, the following passage I found helpful to me recently. I will try to limit it to 4 paragraphs. It is written by the James Hillman, noted for his extensive work in Jungian pyschology. And the reason for me posting Bob Dylan's lyrics to Three Angels at the beginning of the post, is that he refers to it among other poetry also.

This is from a chapter entitled, The Spindrift Gaze Towards Paradise:

"Moments come when we feel outside time, seized by longing, moved by an image, in touch with invisible voices. We realize we do not live in one world alone. As Rilke says "We are grasped by what we cannot grasp". And James Wright says, "The air fills with delicate creatures/From the other world"........Something beyond life lives within life and calls the soul. .......

The ecstatic traditions of Rumi and Kabir insist that transcendent joy and love, are immediately close." Byzantium" is right at hand, if you say yes quickly. (Rumi)" Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail" says Kabir. These schools teach the loss of work and surrender, a sinking that is also a lifting. Emily Dickinson, too, speaks of surrender. Surrender to what? First of all surrender to the yearning itself (which the Greeks call pothos and the German Romantics call Selmsucht) --- and this disciplines desire by not fulfilling it. We learn that this longing cannot be satisfied, is not meant to be satisfied, because the soul gazes beyond towards Paradise. So yearning keeps the soul "in growing orbits",/ which move over the things of this world" (Rilke), searching, asking, risking "even if we do not reach" (Rilke).

At some point, however, we furl the sails and let the questing come to rest. It becomes less a matter of seeking Paradise than of receiving gifts. Perhaps, this too is surrender. Instead of knocking on the door, it swings open on its own hinges. Or maybe you and the door both unhinged. No longer on a journey, you are simply at home waiting for guests. So the great mystical philosopher Plotinus, speaking of his relation with the figures of 'paradise', "said: " It is for them to come to me, not for me to go to them." I think he is saying," You don't will yourself upward and out of this world with ascetic struggle.Rather, keep alert for visitations. Even "this concrete world" is full of souls," sings Bob Dylan.

We would like otherworldly visitations to come as distinct voices with clear instructions, but they may only give small signs in dreams or as sudden hunches and insights that cannot be denied. They feel more as they emerge from inside and steer you from within like an inner guardian angel, who, as Rolf Jacobson says, puts its " mouth against your heart/ though your not aware of it". And most amazing, it has never forgotton you, although you may have spent most of your life ignoring it. Sometimes when you sink into yourself and listen or when you talk with a particularly moving or beautiful figure of your dream an utterly surprising window opens."

Okay, I have probably quoted enough. I hope whoever encounters this blog and this particular post, is helped in some way.

Peace, J.P.

Zawahiri's wish and the March of Ignorance

2006-09-03T16:08:00.000-07:00

Looney Tunes indeed.

Just recently Ayman al Zawahiri came out with a video calling for Americans to convert to Islam.

My initial take: What a profound misunderstanding of what America is all about, and then, what an arrogant disregard of anyone elses religious beliefs. And then I thought, Mr. no. 2 of Al- Queda really needs to watch some of the Bugs Bunny cartoons of the 1940s. They exemplify something about the American character, that these characters just don't get.Seriously.

There appears to be a lot of ignorance going around these days. And I mean in the sense of choosing to ignore information which is readily available, but not paying any attention to it, because it does not fit into your preconceived and hardened world view.

Zawahiri likely developed his ideas about America, from his study of the works of Sayyid Qutb, his mentor. Qutb was a hard core Egyptian fundamentalist who spent some time in American in the late 1940's. He was at what is now the Univ. of Northern Colo., in Greeley.
He apparantly saw some couples dancing and kissing back then, and from then on pronounced American society as decadent. If one reads about the origins of Al-Queda, a lot of roads lead back to Qutb. All these guys are as humorless as hell, have a fear of women's sexuality, and are totally devoted to their own obstruse versions of Islam.

Well, this leads into a very complex area. For those wanting to know more about Qutb, I suggest the Wikipedia article as a starting point.

Meanwhile GWB in a recent speech tossed out this bon mot:
"The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq.

In other words the Bush/Rumsfeld clash of the Titans of all time rhetoric machine is escalating big time.

In this regard I found Fred Kaplan's article over at the Slate helpful:

Bush Goes a Bridge Too Far:
The president's latest dumb speech.

"But one passage in particular reveals that the campaign is getting desperate:

The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq.

Here's the question: Does anybody believe this? If you do, then you must ask the president why he hasn't reactivated the draft, printed war bonds, doubled the military budget, and strenuously rallied allies to the cause.

If, as he said in this speech, the war in Iraq really is the front line in "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century"; if our foes there are the "successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to Communists"; if victory is "as important" as it was in Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal—then those are just some of the steps that a committed president would feel justified in demanding.

Yet the president hasn't done any of those things, nor has anyone in his entourage encouraged him to do so. And that's because, while the war on terror is important and keeping Iraq from disintegrating is important, they're not that important. Osama Bin Laden is not Hitler or Stalin. Baghdad is not Berlin. Al-Qaida and its imitators don't have the economic resources, the military power, or the vast nationalist base that Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union had.

So, the speech sends the head buzzing with cognitive dissonances. There's the massively exaggerated historical analogy (which should have been obvious, if not insulting, to the World War II veterans in the audience). And there's the glaring mismatch between the president's gargantuan depiction of the threat and the relatively paltry resources he's mustered to fight it."

I would just add that Hitler, at one time had over 130 divisions on the Eastern Front alone. Neither Bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri command that many divisions or anything like that manpower in all their operations throughout the world.

And it would seem Al-Zawahiri has been living in a cave so long, he seems to think getting an American Muslim to make a video , will somehow get 290 million Americans to suddenly convert to Islam.

Inflated bombastic rhetoric, and vast misunderstandings over different cultures.

Makes it hard to lighten up. Even with Bugs Bunny cartoons from the 1940s. But, I think Bugs would know how to handle an Al- Zawahiri.

Absolutely wrong in an imperfect World

2006-08-23T19:50:00.000-07:00

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. — Voltaire

Bush said differences over Iraq provide "an interesting debate." "There's a lot of people – good, decent people – saying `withdraw now.' They're absolutely wrong. ... We're not leaving, so long as I'm the president. That would be a huge mistake."

"Leaving before the job is done would be a disaster."

This was from a Presidential press conference of Monday, August 21st.
The thing which struck me immediately was that if the good, decent people saying withdraw now are absolutely wrong, then the converse of this is that George W. Bush is absolutely right. Of course the instant sarcastic thought is: absolutely Right wing.

But to explore this further, obviously W. has moved into the realm of moral absolutes. Being absolutely right about Iraq, he has achieved total certitude.
One could argue by doing so he joins the ranks of our greatest philosphers, saints, and of God himself, to say nothing of the notion of Godhead.

Heres a Wiki squib on certainty:
Certainty is the absence of all doubt. Something is certain if it is so clearly established or assured that skepticism could not exist. Philosophers have struggled for certainty, but have had many difficulties. Meditations on First Philosophy is a famous pursuit of certainty by Descartes. Contemporary views of knowledge do not demand certainty, but rather a "justified true belief".

I'm going to circle around this notion some. Okay, lets say Bushs critics are totally wrong, absolutely wrong. Well, there is not much point in the so-called "interesting debate". Ipso facto, Bush is already totally certain, and absolutely right. Not much point in debate then.

In fact it would appear that "W' has attained absolute Truth, in regards to the future of Iraq.

Lets stop and consider the philosophical notion of the Absolute:

"The Absolute is the totality of things; all that is, whether it has been discovered or not. It is usually conceived of as a unitary of the external cosmos and internal spiritual conscious — at least insofar as it can be acknowledged by the human mind — and as intelligible. In some varieties of philosophy, the Absolute describes an ultimate being. It contrasts with finite things, considered individually, known collectively as the Relative.
Heraclitus concerned himself with the knowable portion of the Absolute with his Logos. Plotinus, a Neo-Platonic philosopher, saw all forms of existence as emanating from 'The One'. The concept of the Absolute was re-introduced into philosophy by Hegel, Schelling, and their followers; it is associated with various forms of philosophical idealism. The Absolute, either under that name, or as the "Ground of Being", the "Uncaused First Cause", or some similar concept, also figures in several of the attempted proofs of the existence of God, particularly the ontological argument and the cosmological argument."(wikipedia)

Okay,okay, I realize I am getting into high-faluting notions, far away from the notions of Connecticut yankee who grew up in Midland, Texas.

But this Texan was saying back in 2004, " We're turning the corner....(in Iraq). He was saying the same thing in 2005, and early 2006. In this regard, to stretch the idea, a bit further, if you're in a city, and you turn the corner to the Right, 4 times in a row, you're right back where you started.

Thus in Iraq in 2004, we had about 140,000 troops, in 2005, in the range 137,000 to 145,000 troops, and now about 137,000 troops.In Oct. 2003 47 US soldiers were killed in Iraq per month, and now in August 2006, we, according to the average, will lose about 47 US soldiers killed this month.

Corners have been turned, and progress supposedly made, and the critics absolutely wrong, but the stay the course plan would appear to ensure more of the same, with some slight variations.

Okay, lets turn the corner and get back to the notion of the word absolutely.
Absolutely - - adverb - free from restriction or limitation; unconditioned; unqualified; perfect; purely. (Websters)This should suffice. I may laboring a point, but I believe nuance is important, and people should be held accountable for what they say; especially when we are talking about a policy that will end up meaning some individuals are going to die.

Therefore, to paraphrase, those calling for withdrawal are unconditionally wrong; they are perfectly wrong. And that would mean George W. is right with no conditions, perfectly right.

From this we surmise:
1) not only is G.W. Bush the Decider, he has attained in this instance perfect certitude.

2) anyone who disagrees is benighted, and absolutely wrong, though they are free to debate under their own delusion that they could ever be Right.

3)perhaps the next step after total certitude, will be the attainment of omniscience, and he will become like the 'star' child at the end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey.

I read that our President is reading about Lincoln. Actually, it might be better if he were to read more about the life of Woodrow Wilson. Those who have read a biography of Wilson will recall that in 1919, Wilson campaigned strenously around the country, trying to convince the public that America should join the League of Nations. Wilson had dreams of spreading Democracy throughout the World. His 14 Points were considered very idealistic for the times.

Wilson was also a bit of a prig though. His involvement in Academia, and his Protestant upbringing made him probably our most intellectual President, but also meant he did not suffer fools lightly, and his 14 points, and the creation of the League of Nations were policies he could not compromise with his critics about. Meeting an upsurge of resistance to what he felt was absolutely necessary to create a lasting peace, after the War to end War, he gave up on his critics in the Senate, and in a trainstop tour, took his case directly to the people. At a stop in Colorado he had a stroke, and was never the same afterwards, and ended his presidency as a reclusive invalid.

One would hope that someone on the White House staff might slip him a book about Wilson in 1919, and what happens when a President gets ahead of the public, and caught up in their own notion of moral certainty, insists upon a course that begins to take on a Captain Ahab glow.

World War III preempted, and now a word from our sponsor

2006-08-19T18:10:00.000-07:00

Well there is a cease fire supposedly between Israel and Hezbollah. And things do seem to be winding down in the summer 2006 War there.

But back in July when it started many on the Right were suddenly pronouncing this as the beginnings of World War III.

As Tom Waldman recounts at Tom Paine.com:

"Newt Gingrich recently said, “We’re in the early stages of what I would describe as the Third World War,” while conservative talking head Bill Bennett said, “I think we’re in World War III now.” Right-wing talk show hosts like Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck have chimed in their agreement that World War III is now in progress, and a few, such as neocon gray eminence Norman Podhoretz and the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Ledeen, have said this is actually World War IV (the Cold War, apparently, was World War III). Sean Hannity even said this is World War V, but it was less than clear what he was talking about."

Meanwhile , it would seem the mainstream television media has given up on the World War III storyline, for total saturation coverage on the alleged killer in the JonBenet Ramsey case.

Tough luck for the Neo-Cons, they and World War III have been preempted by a murder mystery with creepy aspects.

The other point to consider is that World War II by the time it reached its crescendo in 1945, involved a majority of the nations on the planet.

How then, is a short invasion into southern Lebanon the beginning of WW III? Where is the involvement that would truly make this a 'World' War.

Could it be some of these commentators have there own fear and hysteria agenda, that they are pushing for their own political purposes?
Then of course, there is another element of the Right, the Christian fundamentalists, who have been interpreting everything that has happened in the Middle East for the last 40 years as a sign of the End times, or WW III as a precursor, which they positively hunger for.

As Waldman adds:

"Many of our own home-grown Taliban, the fundamentalists who see moral cataclysm in every sex ed class and gay commitment ceremony, are eagerly awaiting the Rapture. They pray desperately that events in the Middle East mean it really is coming this time, with the godless and the apostate cast to their deserved fate in the lake of fire. To the nominally more reasonable conservatives whose voices emanate from airwaves and op-ed pages, the prospect of World War III brings its own kind of rapture, the return of a time when they were free from doubt, when their thirst for the blood of foreigners could be quenched, when anyone who opposed them could be tried for treason. When they knew they were right, and it all made sense."

In this regard it is interesting to speculate what would happen if World War III does start, and during the first few weeks it is discovered what happened to Natalee Holloway?
A real dilemma for the media that would be.

It makes me recall lines from Allen Ginsberg's Capitol Air:

'Truth may be hard to find but Falsehood's easy
Read between the lines our Imperialism is sleazy'

And at least there is this ending of his poem:

"Aware Aware wherever you are No Fear
Trust your heart Don't ride your Paranoia dear
Breathe together with an ordinary mind
Armed with Humor Feed & Help Enlighten Woe Mankind "

Beijing pledges 'a fight to the death' with Dalai Lama.

2006-08-15T15:46:00.000-07:00

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

I got online today and was just checking out Google News, and came across this headline from The Times Online: Beijing pledges 'a fight to the death' with Dalai Lama. Whoa, I thought that is really severe. I mean even for the Chinese. I mean how many divisions does the Dalai Lama have? None. And are any posed on the India -Tibet border. No. Really harsh stuff.

Here are a few of the relevant paragraphs:

" China’s new top official in Tibet has embarked on a fierce campaign to crush loyalty to the exiled Dalai Lama and to extinguish religious beliefs among government officials. Zhang Qingli, was appointed Communist Party secretary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region in May. An ally of Hu Jintao, China’s President, Mr Zhang, 55, has moved swiftly to tighten his grip over this deeply Buddhist region.

In May Mr Zhang told senior party officials in the region that they were engaged in a “fight to the death” against the Dalai Lama. Since then he has implemented several new policies to try to erode the influence of the 71-year-old monk who China’s rulers believe is waging a covert campaign to win independence for his Himalayan homeland.

Ethnic Tibetan civil servants of all ranks, from the lowliest of government employees to senior officials, have been banned from attending any religious ceremony or from entering a temple or monastery. Previously only party members were required to be atheist, but many of them quietly retained their Buddhist beliefs

Ethnic Tibetan officials in Lhasa as well as in surrounding rural counties have been required to write criticisms of the Dalai Lama. Senior civil servants must produce 10,000-word essays while those in junior posts need only write 5,000-character condemnations. Even retired officials are not exempt."

This seems totally over the top to me. Readers who come across this might want to consider writing to the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. and asking them about the harshness of this rhetoric.

And further ask for clarification about who they are fighting to the death?
Is this the Tibetan people? Do the Tibetans have any religious rights anymore? Are there plans for extermination camps in Tibet? Or are there plans to fight a Tibetan army which no longer exists?

Here is an address to write to:

Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong
Chinese Embassy
2300 Connecticut Ave., NW,
Washington D.C. 20007

This rhetoric is unusually shrill and they should be called to account about it.

Fall of Lieberman and the Rise of Lamont

2006-08-10T20:46:00.000-07:00

"It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril."
--- Joe Lieberman, Dec. 2005

I did a post about this statement back in December when it came out. I have since read, that it prompted Ned Lamont to get into the primary race.

My, how the times have changed since then. Check out what Robert L. Borosage says about this at Tom Paine.com:

"Ned Lamont’s stunning upset of incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary race on Tuesday sends shock waves through the dead sea of American politics. Lamont did the impossible—this virtual unknown beat in his own party’s primary an 18-year incumbent with universal name recognition, a $12 million campaign war chest and the support of Washington insiders, the punditry and the corporate lobbies.

His victory represents a growing voter revolt against the failed policies and politics of the Bush administration and its congressional enablers, particularly the debacle in Iraq. Until a few weeks ago, Lieberman prided himself on being the president’s leading Democratic ally in touting the war. After his defeat, Democrats will show more backbone in challenging the current disastrous course and more Republicans will look for ways to distance themselves from the president.

Lamont’s victory was propelled by a rising tide of progressive energy—activists who are tired of losing elections to the right and disgusted with cautious politicians who duck and cover rather than stand and fight. Until a few weeks ago, Lieberman exemplified those Democrats who establish their “independence” by pushing off the causes of their own party and embracing the right’s agenda. His voters didn’t abandon him; he abandoned them long ago. After his defeat, incumbents in both parties may begin to listen more closely to their voters and less avidly to their donors."

Well lets hope so. I don't want to make too much over this upset, still at the same time it has been sending shock waves through the corporate interests, and the 'pat' punditry of the mainstream media.

I liked what Wonkette pointed out about Joe's concession:

"Meanwhile, Lieberman, whom the WaPo described as “exuberant in defeat” and “almost liberated” and (by implication) “gone totally around the bend into a dark place of madness and self-delusion,” started in with the sporting metaphors.

“As I see it, in this campaign, we’ve just finished the first half and the Lamont team is ahead — but in the second half, our team, Team Connecticut, is going to surge forward to victory in November,” Mr. Lieberman told cheering supporters.…“For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot, I will not let this result stand,”
Mr. Lieberman said of the Lamont victory.

You hear that, Connecticut? Joe Lieberman will be your Senator whether you like it or not! It’s for your own good. [ joe lieberman ]

Meanwhile here is what Lowell Weicker a former Senator from Conn., had to say about this:

"I suspect the public is going to see right through" Lieberman's party switch, Weicker said.
It's not the purpose of the U.S. Senate to provide Lieberman with steady employment, he said.
"He wants a job."

In the aftermath this week Lieberman launched this little sally at Lamont,"

“If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England,” Mr. Lieberman said at a campaign event in Waterbury, Conn. “It will strengthen them, and they will strike again.”

Whoa, Lamont wins a primary in Conneticut and suddenly British Muslims will be celebrating a withdrawal from Iraq.

After hearing of this, here is how Ned Lamont responded:

"Mr. Lamont hesitated when he was asked if Mr. Lieberman’s criticisms were beyond the bounds of acceptable political combat.
“To try to score political points on every international issue ——” Mr. Lamont said, before stopping himself. Then he added, “Why do I have to say anything?” NYT 8/11/06.

Well, judging from the papers and postings on the web, and even international interest, this story is going to be around for a while.
I notice many on the Left are pointing out that 60% of Americans are against the war, or in favor of withdrawal. My cautionary reading of this is, that some of these are not against the Iraq war per se, but against the way the Bush adminstration has prosequeted the war. They are wanting that old fashion , quick overwhelming victory, like Pattons push to the Rhine, but instead Bush, Rumsfeld et. al, have given then never enough troops, no discernable win, and just steady casualties month to month. As Thomas Friedman points out,'' we are now baby sitting a civil war", and if you are one of the 100 Iraqi civilians who die each day, it really doesn't matter how you categorize the Sunni- Shia revenge violence.

Be that as it may, as I pointed out before, the Sunnis and the Shiites having been cohabitating in the region of Mesopotamia for some 900 years now, and it is highly unlikely that 137,000 infidel Americans within 3 more years are going to clear up, what has been simmering around for the same 900.

Thus a conventional military victory is less and less likely, so then the question is, what is the exit plan for finally letting the Iraqi people sort out what they want to see happen, and American forces moving out.

At any rate at some point, even those who were still hoping for victory in Iraq will get supremely disillusioned. And at this point, what was once regarded as a Left wing view, will become the mainstream view in the USA.

Arthur Lee - -going through those Forever Changes

2006-08-06T15:02:00.000-07:00

Arthur Lee - -(1945-2006)Musician and frontman of LOVE.

Aug. 3rd - - -Arthur Lee, frontman of 60s psychedelic legends Love, has died at the age of 61. He had been suffering from acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Rangy and invariably slouching, in tiny-frame shades and dandyish, kaleidoscopically colored clothes, Lee called himself "the first black hippie," and his band pushed boundaries. Love was one of the first major interracial bands in rock and one of the first to record a song long enough to fill one side of an album, with the 19-minute "Revelation," from its second release, "Da Capo."

A recent New York benefit concert had seen Robert Plant, Yo La Tengo, Ryan Adams and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah come together to raise money for Lee's medical expenses. However, in an emailed statement, released by Lee's manager, Mark Linn, confirmed that the singer had succumbed to the disease on Thursday afternoon (August 3). The statement read:

"Arthur Lee died peacefully at Methodist Hospital in Memphis, a little after four in the afternoon Aug 3, 2006 with his wife Diane by his side.
"His death comes as a shock to me because Arthur had the uncanny ability to bounce back from everything, and leukemia was no exception. He was confident that he would be back on stage by the fall. "When I visited with him recently, he was visibly moved by the stories and pictures from the NYC benefit concert. "He was truly grateful for the outpouring of love from friends and fans all over the world since news of his illness became public. "Arthur always lived in the moment, and said what he thought when he thought it. I'll miss his phone calls, and his long voice messages, but most of all I'll miss Arthur playing Arthur's music."

I think the first time I really heard the whole Forever Changes album was maybe in 1974. Later on I got a copy of my own. Then sometime in 2003 I came across the release of a Dvd with a live version of Forever Changes performed as a concert with full strings in England in 2003. I found this to be a very moving concert.

Here is a recent take on Forever Changes found at the Washington Post in light of Arthur Lee's passing:"

"Forever Changes" is one of those works of art that are not for everybody but are very much for some people, along the same lines as Malcolm Lowry's novel "Under the Volcano" (which generally bores and annoys those it fails to bowl over) or Alain Resnais's "Last Year at Marienbad" (which is regularly chosen as both one of the best and one of the worst films ever made). It was never a "hit" -- there were dozens of records in 1967 that outsold "Forever Changes" many times over. But it never quite went out of print, either, and, year after year, devotees passed on copies to new listeners with evangelical fervor, with the result that its legion of fans is notably multi-generational. And so my 19-year-old son and his musician friends love "Forever Changes" just as much as I did at their age, and for many of the same reasons, few of which have anything to do with nostalgia.

What does it sound like? Well, imagine taking one of the most tuneful and adventurous pop albums by the Byrds ("Younger Than Yesterday" maybe, or "Notorious Byrd Brothers") and allowing it to marinate for a year or two in the most decadent and exotic spices. Then toss in some of the unhinged paranoia of Syd Barrett and the early Pink Floyd, the reclusive melancholy of post-surf Brian Wilson, the cotton-candy orchestration of '60s arrangers such as Paul Mauriat ("Love Is Blue") or Joshua Rifkin (who fashioned Judy Collins's hit version of "Both Sides Now") and set it all to dark and prophetic lyrics that seem to mean much more than they dare to say. "Forever Changes" combines a seductive surface prettiness with a sense that something is desperately wrong. It is psychedelia at its edgiest." - - - - Tim Page, Wash. Post --- 8/5/06

Its very sad and too bad. I would have loved to have seen Arthur Lee and Baby Lemonade as Love. In 2003, 2004 , they did extensive touring in Europe. At least there is the Dvd that captures a full Forever Changes concert in England. And at least he got a third chance in life. His 2nd was in 1992 to 1996, when he got Love going again, but the procrustian stupidity of Calif. 3 strikes law meant he did 6 years in prison. What a waste of musical talent, just because he fired a pistol in the air, in a dispute with a neighbor.

I would like someday to see Johnny Echols and the Love Band.

Meanwhile Arthur Lee is off into the bardo. He was said to be especially touched in June when Robert Plant and others did a benefit concert for him in New York. So he generated a lot of Love in his life, was hugely popular in England, and leaves a musical legacy . Rolling Stone, the LA Times and The Washington Post have all done good reflective articles on his passing.

As he says in You Set the Scene:

This is the time and life that I am living
And I'll face each day with a smile
For the time that I've been given's such a little while
And the things that I must do consist of more than style
There are places that I am going

This is the only thing that I am sure of
And that's all that lives is gonna die
And there'll always be some people here to wonder why
And for every happy hello, there will be good-bye
There'll be time for you to put yourself on ...

Very Buddhist lyrics to me, and then there was prophecy too:

By the time that I'm through singing
The bells from the schools of wars will be ringing
More confusions, blood transfusions
The news today will be the movies for tomorrow
--- (A House is not a Motel)

I was watching blood transfusions taking place in Haifa,today and then a trailer for Oliver Stone's World Trade Center came on which opens soon.

Life goes on here
Day after day
I don't know if I am living or if I'm
Supposed to be....
Sometimes my life is so eerie,
And if you think I'm happy
Paint me black-(white).....

Arthur's going through those Forever Changes now. We'll miss him, and hope he gets to see Jimi, and Bryan Maclean, and Janis and Syd, and others.

Quagmire or Tar-Baby

2006-08-03T19:14:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON - US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld extended the tours of nearly 4,000 US troops in Iraq for 120 days Thursday to help quell sectarian violence in Baghdad, the Pentagon said.Earlier this year, there were suggestions that the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, would make recommendations to Rumsfeld in the spring that could begin showing a decrease in American troops. But a Tuesday announcement mapping out five more Army and Marine brigades scheduled to go to Iraq later this year signaled that any decrease is highly unlikely. Wash. Post- - - -Friday, July 28, 2006.

Quagmire - - -1. soft miry land that shakes or yields under the foot. 2: a difficult, precarious or entrapping position.- -Websters 9th New Collegiate Dictionary.

Have been reading Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor. As I was doing so, I was remembering that even back in 2003, my friend Greg was predicting Iraq would become a Quagmire. I suggested it would become a Tar-baby, in the sense of something you get stuck to, and then attempts to become unstuck, only cause further stuckness.

Now, it looks like both our predictions have come true.

In a British style govt., Rumsfeld would be long gone by now. Having to send about 5,000 troops back into Baghdad, is admission enough in the failure of the whole neo-con enterprise. 2585 dead American soldiers as of today. 18,777 Americans wounded.
By election day it will be around 3,000 dead. By this time in summer of 2007 it could be around 4,500. The monetary cost by then could be half a trillion dollars. In short, this is madness which will ultimately collapse , because of the overwheening hubris with which this adventure was entered.

Here is a relevant passage of a review of Cobra II by Andrew Bacevich:

"Although US forces made it to Baghdad, and Bush soon thereafter declared an end to 'major combat operations', it was all downhill from there. An incident in Fallujah – troops from the 82nd Airborne Division fired into a crowd of angry demonstrators – kick-started the insurgency. That was on 24 April 2003. Heavy-handed US tactics added fuel to the fire. 'The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I'm about to introduce them to it,' a senior officer in the 4th Infantry Division is quoted as saying. Bush's chosen proconsul, Paul Bremer, compounded the problem by dissolving the remnants of the Iraqi army, thereby providing the insurgents with a pool of potential recruits. As Franks made his escape, command in Iraq devolved on Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, an officer of indifferent ability, poorly prepared for the challenges he faced, and unable to forge an amicable relationship with Bremer.

Cobra II provides only the briefest sketch of all the ugly events that followed. The volume concludes with a summary of the administration's myriad errors: underestimating the enemy, failing to understand the fractious nature of Iraqi society, relying excessively on technology, and failing to anticipate the magnitude of the nation-building task that could not be avoided. But one failure stands out. Rumsfeld's grand plan to transform the US military was at odds with the administration's grand plans to transform the broader Middle East. Imperial projects don't prosper with small armies that leave quickly: they require large armies that stay. Out of this arrogance, incompetence and sheer stupidity came a policy failure that may yet beggar the debacle of Vietnam."

Despite Bush's blathering about total victory, there can be no victory in Iraq. It would take 400,000, maybe 500,000 troops to really get things under control of some sort in Iraq, but this is not going to happen. 'W' may think he is Churchill like, but Churchill was also the chief architect of the Gallipoli disaster in WWI.

We are now about 3 months away from Nov 2006 elections. For the life of me I don't see how the Republicans can win with this policy of stay the course in Iraq. They can try to paint the Democrats all sorts of ways, but Iraq is a Republican idea through and through.(Project for a New American Century) Some Repubs officials were oping that at least the Lebanon war is moving Iraq off the front pages, but this is a bit like whistling in a graveyard.

Anyway these are my sober thoughts and conclusions. Such a huge loss of American lives, Iraqi lives, and treasure.

My prediction: The Republicans lose the House, maybe even the Senate.
One need only read Cobra II, the new book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas Ricks , and/or The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind to be able to understand what is unfolding. Grim thoughts, but there are grim things happening in the world.

Prague streetcar dream

2006-07-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

Prague streetcar dream

About 5 days ago I had a very vivid dream set in Prague, in the Czech Republic. It starts out with me riding on a streetcar going north within Prague.The number on the tram was 81.From the beginning the dream did not feel like a dream. It felt like I was indeed riding on a streetcar in Prague.

All the details unfolded just as in waking life; the sound of acceleration, of the doors opening, moving from stop to stop. I was talking to a friend. I had somehow set aside a coat, a wool cap and a dark file folder containing all sorts of papers, like resumes, and transcripts etc. I got off at a stop, in this conversation with a friend, forgetting to grab these items before getting off.

Somehow I begin running up the route , trying to reboard. and thanks to street lights, and scheduled stops, I finally catch up with it , and reboard the same car. I somehow communicated with an attendant what I was looking for and underneath the seats, at the very back of this two segment tram, I find the folder. Then I walk grabbing bars and over head bars , to the front and find my coat, buried under a pile of coats, with the cap tucked in a pocket.

At this point, having no wish to keep going further north I get off at the first chance I can. Upon disembarking I find I am in a far northern part of Prague, I had never been in before. Across the street I note , there is no discernible stop for an 81 tram going south. I begin walking around to try to get some sense of where I am. I walk east on a broad avenue.For a while the south side of this street has multi story buidings lining it. But then there is a gap through which I see a view.

I see that there is a wide valley between this part of Prague, and further south, with a east-west highway and train track running parallel to the street I am on. Meanwhile, as all this is unfolding it is turning from mid-afternoon to late afternoon. The sun is moving across the sky, and the quality of light in the air changes as it does as time goes by, in any sunny day.

On the north side of the street I notice an Art Museum. I go over to it just to check it out. This street is hilly so the yard has a concrete wall, so that at the high part of the block it comes to street level, but at the low part it is higher than ones head. This means, the property the Museum is on is level of course. There is little grass, growing in some of the cracks on the concrete wall. Little details like this have me experiencing this not as a dream, but as really walking around in Prague.

Next I head back up to where I got off, and then head west. I come to a street that has more residential type housing. There is a what looks like a small school or Art institute. I run into a young Czech woman on the walkway entrance and say Good Day, and also Wie Gehts. She doesn't speak English or German, so this sally gets nowhere, but she points to the building so I go inside and meet a young Czech man named Lada who speaks English. He has a 13 year old son who asks me how long I was on 81 before I got off. "Was it 12 or 15 minutes? After further explanation they drop what they are doing, we go out to a square, and they get on a different street car that takes us all to another square, where they point out a stop for #81 going south.I thank them profusely, and then after a time get on a southbound #81. Finally I arrive in a familar part of Prague. I get off, and somehow I have left my coat on the tram again. Yikes!

At this point I began leaving the dream, and found myself in my bed.

What struck me about this dream was its essential undreamlike nature. Colors and details were as precise and as vivid as moving around in Prague in waking life. When I woke up I felt like I had been in Prague for the last few hours, rather than in a dream.

Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

2006-07-20T13:05:00.000-07:00

Red Chiles at the Thimphu market

I just finished reading - - Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan by Jamie Zeppa. I stumbled across it at our local library, not really expecting them to have much about Bhutan.

Here is a short review from over at Amazon.com:

"As a teacher of English literature, Jamie Zeppa would understand how the story of her journey into Bhutan could be fit into the convenient box of "coming-of-age romance," a romance with a landscape, a people, a religion, and a dark, irresistible student. An innocent, young Catholic woman from a Canadian mining town who had "never been anywhere," Zeppa signed up for a two-year stint teaching in a remote corner of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Despite the initial shock of material privation and such minor inconveniences as giardia, boils, and leeches, Zeppa felt herself growing into the vast spaces of simplicity that opened up beyond the clutter of modern life. Alongside her burgeoning enchantment, a parallel realization that all was not right in Shangri-La arose, especially after her transfer to a college campus charged with the politics of ethnic division. Still she maintained her center by devouring the library's Buddhist tracts and persevering in an increasingly fruitful meditation practice. When the time came for her to leave, she had undergone a personal transformation and found herself caught between two worlds that were incompatible and mutually incomprehensible. Zeppa's candid, witty account is a spiritual memoir, a travel diary, and, more than anything, a romance that retraces the vicissitudes of ineluctable passion."

I really enjoyed her descriptions of the lansdcapes of Bhutan; the mists, and the way clouds obscure and reveal the mountains and hillsides. She sees aspects of Bhutan with a sweet sensitivity. The book is especially good in her descriptions of life in Eastern Bhutan, the Pemagatshel region down near the southern border with India.

The author was working in Bhutan from 1988 thru to late 1992. Back then World University Service of Canada had Canadians teaching English in Bhutan all throughout the different regions of the country for 2 year stints.
Reading of the different accounts of her co-workers life there in really, really out of the way places in rural Bhutan, reminded me of my Peace Corps experiences, and of my short 21 days in Bhutan. Made me very envious for the experience. Punakha monastery still remains probably the most peaceful place I have ever visited on this earth.

I recommend this book highly for those interested in Bhutan. I notice some of the Amazon customer reviewers gave the author a hard time for falling in love with one of her students. However , the student was in his 'twenties' when their affair began, and love works in mysterious ways. They did end up getting married. They , 'the reviewers', just show off their late 90s political correctness to the max, but it seems inhuman and heartless to me.

The book is well written, and the author is quite honest, though it did run out of steam the last few chapters.

Here is a great quote from the book, though it does not list what Buddhist text she found this in:

And if you hit upon the idea that this or
that country is safe, prosperous, or
fortunate, give it up, my friend. . . for you
ought to know that the world is ablaze with
the fires of some faults or others. There is
certain to be some suffering . . . and a
wholly fortunate country does not exist
anywhere. Whether it be excessive cold or
heat, sickness or danger, something always
afflects people everywhere; no safe refuge
can thus be found in the world.

Ceramic Tile painting by Fernando Andriacci

2006-07-15T20:15:00.000-07:00

Magical art from Oaxaca, Mexico

My friend Greg was recently down in Oaxaca, Mexico, and sent me a link to
a whole bunch of photos taken while down there. This photo is of a ceramic tile painting done by Fernando Andriacci. Wild and whimsical stuff.
There is a link for his art at: Oaxaca Mexico Art.

Shine on Syd

2006-07-12T22:19:00.000-07:00

It is obvious
may I say, oh baby, that it is found on another plane?

"The poppy birds way swing twigs coffee brands around.
Brandish her wand with a feathery tongue.
My head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand,
please... Please, please lift the hand
I'm only a person with Eskimo chain
I tattooed my brain all the way...

Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all? - - from Dark Globe by Syd Barrett

I heard yesterday that Syd Barrett, who just turned 60, on July 6th had left his mortal coil. Now he belongs to the ages. I , in a certain way was helped by his music; I remember listening to his double album Barrett , and the Madcap Laughs, a lot in the period 1976 thru 1977, as I tried to adjust to Houston after 4 years in Austin.

I mean, I think anyone who has gone to the edge, or tripped out can appreciate some of Syd's songs, and his lyrics were poetry, of the British eccentric sort. Of course anyone who lived through the 1970s must have heard Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. It is one of the longest selling albums of all time. But, A Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Barrett, and ' The Madcaps laughs' were never all that well known, though they attained 'cult' status.

I have noticed there have been tributes to Syd all over the Web, while television, has fairly ignored his passing. I would imagine the BBC in England probably did better. In todays Zeitgest, it is as if it is impossible to talk about LSD, Barretts life, and career, his descent into incoherence on TV. At any rate doing a Google news search I did find a fairly good tribute by Richard Jinman. here are a few excerpts from:

The second death of a boy genius

"There are, or rather were, two Syd Barretts. The first, the one the fans prefer to remember, was a young, handsome, prodigiously gifted musician from an English university town who formed a group called Pink Floyd in 1965 and quickly became the undisputed leader of Britain's nascent psychedelic rock scene. It was a part he seemed born to play. Wearing the silk and velvet robes of London's hippy aristocracy, a Fender Telecaster slung around his slender shoulders, he wrote the Floyd's two early hit singles, Arnold Layne and See Emily Play.

The other Syd Barrett was a balding, slightly corpulent man who lived in the basement of his mother's Cambridge house, devoting himself to gardening and painting. This was the post-Floyd Barrett, the man who was ousted from the band in 1968 after he fried his brain on LSD and became so erratic his bandmates - the former architecture students who would go on to define 1970s rock with albums such as Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here - believed he had slipped beyond their help. This Barrett managed to record two shambolically brilliant solo albums ( The Madcap Laughs and Barrett) full of off-kilter, whimsical and distinctively English songs with titles such as Effervescing Elephant, Baby Lemonade and Terrapin. After that, silence. Barrett turned his back on music, London and the world."

Here are other small statements which I add to this post at this point: Meanwhile, David Gilmour said: "We are very sad to say that Roger Keith Barrett - Syd - has passed away."Do find time today to play some of Syd's songs and to remember him as the madcap genius who made us all smile with his wonderfully eccentric songs about bikes, gnomes and scarecrows. "His career was painfully short, yet he touched more people than he could ever know."

And Roger Waters said," He leaves behind a body of work that is both very touching and very deep. It will shine on forever."
Elsewhere, David Bowie commented: "I can't tell you how sad I feel. The few times I saw him perform in London at UFO and the Marquee clubs during the '60s will forever be etched in my mind. "He was so charismatic and such a startlingly original songwriter. Also, along with Anthony Newley, he was the first guy I'd heard to sing pop or rock with a British accent. "His impact on my thinking was enormous. A major regret is that I never got to know him. A diamond indeed."

"A few weeks ago former bandmate Roger Waters dedicated a song to Barrett at the Hyde Park Calling festival in London, 25,000 people from every conceivable background knew every word to the chorus of 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' - a fitting coda to the life of a flawed but much admired genius.

And this: " Barrett's death makes him a mystery to the end. Unlike the other mad geniuses of the psychedelic era - Brian Wilson, Roky Erickson and Love's Arthur Lee - Barrett never came back from the edge."

One of the things I learn from Mr. Barrett and his poetry, is his courage in showing such human vulnerability, in being so authentic, just before he went silent for good. I sometimes wonder if for the rest of his time on earth,from say 1973 until he died, he lived in a time at right angles to the sense of time our Western world moves along in. Those 2 albums of his were so uncommercial, in a way an antithesis of much that was popular then or now.

I always really liked Golden Hair:
GOLDEN HAIR (These lyrics are originally from "Chamber Music" by James Joyce (1907)

Lean out your window, golden hair
I heard you singing in the midnight air
my book is closed, I read no more
watching the fire dance, on the floor
I've left my book, I've left my room
For I heard you singing through the gloom
singing and singing, a merry air
lean out the window, golden hair...

The corporate media will frame his life in a certain slamdunk, I told you so, tale of artist gone to ruin way. But they will never explore his songs very much, because they are too human, plaintitive, but whimsical, edgy, but not catchy enough to ever be able to push some product. And those who appreciate his music will go on listening to it.

May he rest in peace, a tormented soul, but a poetic soul, who pushed the boundaries , and took on the steel rail for a while. The Crazy Diamond is gone. May he shine on in new realms. Though this post is way long I will add some more lyrics:
SHE TOOK A LONG COLD LOOK

She took a long cold look at me and smiled
and gazed all over my arm she loves to see me get down to ground
she hasn't time just to be with me
her face between all she means to be to be extreme, just to be extreme
a broken pier on the wavy sea
she wonders why for all she wants to see...
But I got up and I stomped around and hid the piece
where the trees touch the ground...

The end of truth that lay out the time
spent lazing here on a painting dream
a mile or more in a foreign clime
to see farther inside of me.
And looking high up into the sky
I breathe as the water streams over me...

Godzilla vs. Megalon

2006-07-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

Meeting of Minds

I note with interest that the next Rhino release of Mystery Science Theater 3000, is going to contain - - - Godzilla vs. Megalon.
Here is the announcement at Satellite News:

We now have definitive word about The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: Volume 10! Gonna be a good one! Episodes are:
212- GODZILLA VS. MEGALON
503- SWAMP DIAMONDS (plus short: WHAT TO DO ON A DATE)
514- TEEN-AGE STRANGLER (plus short: IS THIS LOVE?)
810- THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION

Well , Godzilla vs. Megalon, at least , the MYST3K version has long been one of my favorites.
Here is an synopsis, for the uninitiated, or those that have missed seeing this cultural artifact:

"In the film, the undersea civilization Seatopia has been heavily affected by nuclear testing conducted by the surface nations of the world. Naturally upset by this, they unleash their civilization's protector, Megalon, to the surface to destroy those who would — unknowingly or not — destroy them. Agents of Seatopia attempt to steal the newly-constructed super-robot Jet Jaguar, which can apparently be used to guide and direct Megalon. They also capture the robot's inventor, Goro Ibuki, his kid brother Rokuro and their friend Hiroshi Jinkawa. After Jet Jaguar is used by the Seatopians to lure Megalon to Tokyo, Goro manages to regain control, and sends Jet Jaguar to Monster Island to bring Godzilla back to fight Megalon. An extended fight scene then takes place, with Godzilla and Jet Jaguar, the latter newly giant-sized and self-directed, fighting Megalon and Gigan in the hills outside Tokyo. The film ends with Megalon and Gigan defeated, Godzilla returning to Monster Island, and Jet Jaguar returning to his previous, human-sized state."

Okay, okay with this post I may have jumped the shark, or the Gigan so to speak, but I continue to collect Mystery Science Theater 3K episodes, and am a die hard fan. The Godzilla vs. Megalon episode is a total hoot, plus you get tag team wrestling of Godzilla and Jet Jaguar versus Megalon and Gigan.

The scene where Megalon is summoned up from the depths of Hades by the High Priest of Seatopia is priceless, priceless! A moment for the ages.
JP sez, check it out.

Chorten in Bhutan, Oct.1992

2006-06-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

One of my old friends, Bari, who finished up two years in Peace Corps Mongolia, is now talking about going back, and it sounds like getting married there too.

I thought I would send him via e-mail , this photo of the author of this blog, in front of a small chorten on the path up to Chomolhari, taken in October of 1992. Fourteen years ago, and all those days still seem fresh, to me. It just goes to show how pleasant memories, are remembered more readily.

I miss Bhutan at times, and wonder about Sangjay Khandu, our trek guide.
Guess, I'll have to look up Kuensel on the Web sometime.

Genealogy post- Greenberry Pinkston

2006-06-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

GREENBERRY PINKSTON was born 1772 in Union County, SC, and died on July 27, 1852 in Mt. Meigs, AL. He married his first wife : Mary Ann Key Armstrong on December 25, 1796 in Hancock Co., GA.

By 1785 His Father John Pinkston (1744-1803) had moved the family to Wilkes County , Georgia , and by 1793 land records show them as being in Hancock County, Georgia .

I recently found a small amount of information about him in the book-
Recollections of the Early Settlers of Montgomery County and Their Families, by W.G. Robertson,
1892.
Here it is:" Green Pinkston

Green Pinkston , one of the first settlers, was a member of the Baptist church and lived in the vicinity of old
Antioch church, and had his membership there. He was a strong supporter of his church and a man that was
respected by every one who knew him. Mr. Pinkston had a family of four sons and three daughters.

James, one of his sons, married a Miss Mosely. Franklin, a splendid young man, married a Miss Hopper, and
John married a Miss Ray. Ann, the oldest daughter, married John Harper. Dolly, the next, married Frank
Howard, a good citizen and farmer. Evelin, the youngest, married William McClemore. Mr. Pinkston lived to a ripe old age and gently passed from earth."

In 1812, Land Tax Records show him as living still in Hancock Cnty. ,GA.
His eldest daughter, Martha Dolly Pinkston, was born 3 Feb 1813 in Montgomery, County, Alabama, which would indicate in the latter part of 1812, the family moved from Georgia, to Montgomery Cnty., Alabama.
It looks like he spent the remainder of his life in Mt. Meigs, Alabama, living near the Antioch Baptitist Church along the old Line Road.

Greenberry would either be my great, great , great grandfather or great, great, great grand Uncle. It all depends upon who is assigned as being the father of Henry B. Pinkston, (1828 -Jan. 1, 1887) my Great, Great Grandfather.

Which means that I will likely add to, or update this post at some point in the future.

Well, I just added an update to this. I finally found a death date for him in:`Marriage and Death Notices From the "South Western Baptist" Newspaper . Thus: " Died at the residence of his son in Montgomery County, Alabama on the 27th of July last, Deacon Green B. Pinkston, in the eighty first year of his age, having been a member of the Antioch Church thirty years and a deacon twenty eight."

Also I came across this information about him in a book entitled Early Alabama Settlers: " Granted land in Montgomery County, AL. Territory in 1817. He moved to MT. Meigs at that time along with his brother James and Mary Ann's brothers, James W. Armstrong, Mack Armstrong and her sister Miriam A. Vickers".

Two columns that caught my attention

2006-06-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

I was struck by the ending of one of George Wills recent column's entitled:
Iraq's Atomization:

"But it did not take three years of Zarqawi and terrorism and sectarian violence to turn Iraqis into difficult raw material for self-government. For that, give another devil his due: Saddam Hussein's truly atomizing tyranny and terror. On June 20, 2003, just 72 days after the fall of Baghdad, The Post reported this from Fallujah:

"Military engineers recently cleared garbage from a field in Fallujah, resurfaced it with dirt and put up goal posts to create an instant soccer field. A day later, the goal posts were stolen and all the dirt had been scraped from the field. Garbage began to pile up again."

An Army captain asked, "What kind of people loot dirt?" There are many answers to that question. Here is one: a kind of people who are hard to help."

Then week after week Sidney Blumenthal disects everything 'W' does, and clarifies what is really going on. Here's the final part of a column entitled: George Bush Sr. asked retired general to replace Rumsfeld :

(At the beginning of the column he recounted behind the scenes efforts of Bush Sr. to ease out Rumsfeld)

"As Bush's approach has stamped failure on the military, he insists ever more intensely on the inevitability of victory if only he stays the course. Ambiguity and flexibility, essential elements of any strategy for counterinsurgency, are his weak points. Bush may imagine a scene in which the insurgency is conclusively defeated, perhaps even a signing ceremony, as on the USS Missouri, or at least an acknowledgment, a scrap of paper, or perhaps the silence of the dead, all of them. But his infatuation with a purely military solution blinds him to how he thwarts his own intentions. Jeffrey Record, a prominent strategist at a U.S. military war college, told me: "Perhaps worse still, conventional wisdom is dangerously narcissistic. It completely ignores the enemy, assuming that what we do determines success or failure. It assumes that only the United States can defeat the United States, an outlook that set the United States up for failure in Vietnam and for surprise in Iraq.

Bush's abrogation of the Geneva Conventions has set an example that in this unique global war on terror, in order to combat those who do not follow the rules of war, we must also abandon those rules. This week a conflict has broken out in the Pentagon over Rumsfeld's proposed revision of the Army Field Manual for interrogation of prisoners, which would excise Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions that forbids "humiliating and degrading treatment." And, this week, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., proposed a bill that would make the administration provide "a full accounting on any clandestine prison or detention facility currently or formerly operated by the United States Government, regardless of location, where detainees in the global war on terrorism are or were being held," the number of detainees, and a "description of the interrogation procedures used or formerly used on detainees at such prison or facility and a determination, in coordination with other appropriate officials, on whether such procedures are or were in compliance with United States obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture." The administration vigorously opposes the bill.

Above all, the Bush way of war violates the fundamental rule of warfare as defined by military philosopher Carl von Clausewitz: War is politics by other means. In other words, it is not the opposite of politics, or its substitute, but its instrument, and by no means its only one. "Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd," wrote Clausewitz, "for it is policy that creates war. Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa."

Rumsfeld's Pentagon, meanwhile, reinforces Bush's rigidity as essential to "transformational" warfare; by now, however, the veneer has been peeled off to reveal sheer self-justification. Rumsfeld is incapable of telling the president that there is no battle, no campaign, that can win the war. Saving Rumsfeld is Bush's way of staying the course. But it also sends a signal of unaccountability from the top down. The degradation of U.S. forces in Iraq is a direct consequence of the derangement of political leadership in Washington. And not even the elder Bush can persuade the president that his way of war is a debacle."

Really an excellent column. I recommend checking out Salon each week, if for nothing else, at least Sidney Blumenthals columns. There are a lot of other excellent articles there too.

Traveling by Book

2006-06-11T13:19:00.000-07:00

Well when a Sagittarius can't do much traveling due to circumstances, then they tend to do traveling by book. Thus, I picked up Robert D. Kaplan's The Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the Twenty-first Century .
A travel book, but more than that, Kaplan visits places most travelers aren't going to at the moment. Here's the mini review from Amazon.com, which was originally from Publishers Weekly:

" After his recent travels through troubled southeastern Europe, Kaplan (Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History) has taken on an even more ambitious itinerary-some of the most inhospitable regions of the globe, both geographically and politically. Starting in West Africa, where he finds that border regions are so porous as to make the concept of countries "largely meaningless," he braves the Egyptian desert, then advances through Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, sprawling Turkestan, China and Pakistan and on through Southeast Asia. He advises at the outset that his book "folds international studies into a travelogue." Readers looking for an easy ride had better fasten their seat belts, for the author treats us to all sorts of speculation on the condition of humankind as the century is about to turn, along with generous dollops of history. Intermingled with graphic descriptions of exotic locales are highly personal ruminations, one of the most interesting of which is that in some of these lands, "the village came to the city and . . . vanquished it" by overwhelming modern urban middle-class values. A challenging and engrossing read."

I had been reading Constantine the Great, by Michael Grant, and Faust Theater of the World, and Struggle for Europe by Chester Wilmot, but once I got Ends of the Earth, it shot to the top of my reading stack so to speak.

Hard to put down. I have read several of Robert Kaplans books and I find them all engrossing and pleasurable reads. He brings valuable insights from his study of history , literature and art, to every country he visits.

One of the chapters which describes his adventures in Sinkiang, is called "Strategic Hippie Routes"; it would seem that back in 1994, when he was trying to get to Kashgar, the only westerners he ran into in the remote areas of Sinkiang were backpacking neo-hippies.

If I haven't been blogging as much, is I get involved in some good summer reading, or as I say traveling by books.