Fire Puja while at the Consecration

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

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

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

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

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.....

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

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

Chuckle of the Day

"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

This from the Onion Network:


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

McCain and Winning the Vietnam War

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

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

"Significant Progress" in Iraq

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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-

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

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?

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....

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

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.