Photograph: Samuel Aranda/Getty

Democracy in the Middle East....

But only if Israel and America agree with the election outcome.

As much as Israeli officials have protested their intention NOT to re-occupy Gaza, (see below), it's beginning to look suspiciously like an occupation.

...Yossi Alpher, a military analyst and former Israeli intelligence officer, said that the government and military will be trying to avoid becoming entrenched back in Gaza but they will also face political difficulties in extracting the army.

"They are very well aware of the dangers," he said. "But there are catches in trying to leave. The range [of the rockets] can improve further so you have to keep moving south and you move into highly urban areas, and it begins to look like an occupation again."

In addition to the stated goals of recovering kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit and putting a halt to rocket-fire into Israel, the unstated goal of deposing the democratically elected Hamas government is clearly behind the invasion.

But there are indications of a wider agenda to bury the Hamas-led government. Israel has detained eight Hamas cabinet members and 20 of its MPs, and targeted government infrastructure, including missile attacks on the offices of the prime minister and interior ministry.

"There's a school of thought in the Israeli security establishment that said since the Hamas victory this is going to end up in confrontation and the sooner we pre-empt that conflict the better; remove their leadership, destroy their infrastructure," said Mr Alpher. "That is certainly some of the hidden agenda of this operation but it's not a declared goal. But it could become a declared goal."

Complete story here.

(Photo, taken at an earlier confrontation, can be found online here.

Why won't the world do something to stop this...?!

...At least 12 Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were killed in sometimes fierce fighting involving shootouts, artillery fire and airstrikes. Most of the deaths were in northern Gaza, although two Palestinian militants were killed in southern Gaza.

After days of sporadic clashes, Israeli forces pushed further into northern Gaza, moving south from the destroyed former Israeli settlements to the outskirts of Beit Lahiya, in the northwestern corner of Gaza, where Palestinian fighters had been preparing earth barricades, explosive charges and shooting positions.

Complete story here.

For decades, Palestinians have been seeking justice by peaceful and by violent means. September 11, 2001 had a much less violent antecedent nearly 31 years before almost to the day. A simultaneous hijacking of four airliners bound from Europe to New York which, if lessons had been heeded, would surely have prevented 2001’s tragedy.

Planned and executed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) the September 6, 1970 hijackings were executed almost flawlessly. Two jets—TWA Flight 741 of Frankfurt and Swissair Flight 100 of Zurich--were forced down at a former RAF airstrip in Jordan called Dawson's Field. A third, Pan American Flight 93 of Amsterdam, too large for Dawson's, landed in Cairo where passengers and crew were evacuated and the plane blown up.

In an eerie parallel to 31 years later, the PFLP’s fourth hijacking attempt was foiled in flight. Pilots on El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam plunged their jet into a dive, toppling the hijackers. An onboard security guard fatally shot one, Californian Patrick Arguello, 27, while passengers overpowered and arrested the other, Leila Khaled. (Still campaigning for Palestine’s liberation, Khaled, 61, addressed Dubliners at an event sponsored by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign late last year.)

In retaliation, PFLP operatives hijacked a fifth jet on September 9, adding it to the two planes on the ground in Jordan. On September 12, 1970, the three empty airliners were blown up while television crews broadcast the spectacle to the world. Jordan‘s King Hussein responded by declaring martial law, provoking a bloody civil war between Palestinian refugees and the Jordanian army. Some 15,000 people died before Palestinians, under Yassir Arafat, fled Jordan. The bloodbath spawned the infamous Black September Movement responsible for, among other actions, killing 10 Israeli athletes and their coach at the Munich Olympics two years later, again in early September. (The incident recently highlighted by Spielberg in his film, "Munich".)

The PFLP clearly spelled out their motive for the 1970 hijackings to be retribution for American arms-sales to Israel—sales which continue to this day. From its founding in 1948 through 1998, America has given Israel an estimated $83 billion in direct foreign aid—much of which has facilitated arms purchases.

To summarize, in 1970 one person was killed in five hijackings over six days; in 2001, some 3,044 people died in four hijackings in a matter of hours. Only a nation whose citizens are ignorant of history would view the two events as unrelated. Bin Laden and al Qaeda may be many things, but forgetful of history is not one of them.

Indeed, I question if U.S. leaders are so forgetful, including “Why-do-they-hate-us?” President Bush. On September 13, 1970, The New York Times published a letter condemning the PFLP hijackings and signed by Neocon godfather, Irving Podhoretz. In 1997, Podhoretz put his signature to the statement of principles for the Project for the New American Century, along with other Iraqi war proponents Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

Only by obscuring America’s complicity in Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinians could the Bush administration hope to persuade Americans to embark on the unprovoked invasion of Iraq. Only by suppressing the fact that 9/11 was not an isolated act masterminded by a madman but rather the culmination of increasingly desperate and deadly actions over more than 30 years, part of a campaign to convince Americans to deal justly with Palestinians, could Bush pursue his war for oil in the Middle East.

Justice, which we can plainly see, is still sickeningly lacking for Palestinians.

[A version of this, written by me, was published last year in Dublin's Village magazine.]

Hate wins today in court...

In a decision that will undoubtedly rally homophobes nationwide, New York's Court of Appeals ruled today that New York state law prohibits gay marriages.

According to the NY Times, it left open the possibility that the divided state Legislature could decide to allow same-sex marriages, but if so, it will happen only after a long uphill battle.

Two of the six judges dissented, one quite eloquently.

...In her often stirring dissent, Chief Judge Judith Kaye, joined by Judge Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, offered a departure from the dry legal language of the main decision, noting that the plaintiffs represented a cross-section of ordinary New Yorkers, including a police officer, a doctor, a teacher and an artist, who wanted "only to live full lives, raise their children, better their communites and be good neighbors."

Judge Kaye added: "For most of us, leading a full life includes establishing a family," and looking forward to a wedding "as among the most significant events of their lives."

She suggested that it was wrong for the plaintiffs to be denied the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage, "because of who they love," adding that New York had a tradition of equal rights, and "the court today retreats from that proud tradition."

Indeed, it's wrong, as future generations will undoubtedly decide.

Complete story here.

Photo: The Jerusalem Times.

Israeli war crimes...

Israeli troops have occupied three abandoned Jewish settlements and part of a Palestinian town in the northern Gaza strip, to create what they're calling a "temporary buffer zone" against missile attacks into Israel.

As they kill Palestinians and destroy bridges, homes, roads, power-plants and other infrastructure they assure everyone, in the respectful language Israelis often use when referring to Palestinians, that their intention isn't to "reoccupy" Gaza.

...Israeli leaders said their aim is to stop the rocket fire and bring back the captured soldier, and there are no plans to reoccupy Gaza.

"We have no intention of drowning in the Gaza swamp," said Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

To be fair, I guess the defense minister could be speaking metaphorically, rather than descriptively. If so, he should choose his language more carefully.

Better still, he and his troops should respect international law instead of collectively punishing the civilians of Gaza for the uncontrollable actions of a few in direct defiance of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Complete AP story here.

Photo: AP/L.A. Times, Luis Sinco

Bringing democracy to Iraq...

A Marine reservist back from Iraq has been accused of the attempted murder of three teens on the 4th of July. Apparently, the Aurora, Ill, shooting may be gang-related.

So far, there's nothing particularly surprising in that story. Tragically, Americans should brace themselves for a crime wave-to-be upon the return of the Iraq War's emotionally battle-scarred veterans.

The shocker is the final graf of the story:

Graffiti referencing Chicago-area gangs is increasingly being found in Iraq, according to recent reports in the Chicago Sun-Times. The spray-painted gang art has shown up on everything from armored vehicles to concrete barriers and bathroom stalls, and some fear it may indicate an increase in gang activity in the military.

Wow. We’ve exported our gang wars to the Middle East. Is this what Bush meant when he said we have to fight them over there so we don't fight them over here? (Or something to that effect.)

Complete AP wire story here.

Photo from Instapundit here.

Don't worry, America's fourth estate is on top of it...

Why is speculation on President Bush's alleged anxiety over turning 60 a front-page story in America's (undeserving) paper-of-record?!

...Could it be that Mr. Bush, with his enviably low heart rate and penchant for two-hour mountain bike rides that exhaust Secret Service agents half his age, is worried about getting old? Is that why the president, so mindful of proper attire that he demands a coat and tie in the Oval Office even on weekends, wore a decidedly youthful red-and-white Hawaiian shirt to his two-days-early birthday dinner in the East Room of the White House Tuesday night?

Earth-shatteringly important story here if you're desperately bored enough to want to read it.

Composite image from "Painting the Earth."

Happy 4th...!

I like this idea from Oz at EarthFamilyAlpha.

Today is a good day to declare your Independence.

While others are celebrating their dependence on a division.

Join those who would use this day to declare their unity in

Independence.

From the oil oligarchy,

From anachronistic nationalism,

From your worn out operating system...

More here.

Nuclear option off the table...

Thank goodness! Never thought I'd see the day that I'd be thankful to military men who put the brakes on a civilian president.

...In late April, the military leadership, headed by General Pace, achieved a major victory when the White House dropped its insistence that the plan for a bombing campaign include the possible use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran....

Of course, Bush/Cheney and their dogs of war are so unscrupulous, I'm not entirely breathing easy. They may do an end run around Pace and the generals.

According to Seymour Hersh, one of the most principled journalists left in America, Pace resorted to political, economic and strategic arguments to dissuade Bush from nuclear weapons. U.S. military intelligence has come up empty on nuclear weapons sites in Iran. (In other words, Iran may be telling the truth about wanting to develop nuclear power for civilian use only.) If America starts bombing indiscriminately, so the argument goes, Iran could effectively shut down the world's oil supply, resulting in serious economic consequences for America and political costs for Bush.

Sad, isn't it, that economic and political arguments work where the prospect of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians deaths doesn't?

That Bush openly considered using nuclear weapons in what would be the first nuclear strike since Nagasaki, and this against a country with which the U.S. is not at war, and American citizens did not fill the streets in non-violent protest has got to be one of the lowest moments in American history. How utterly shameful that it's the military who stood up to the president on this and not the American people.

Iran and the world are not home free. Bush/Cheney are still going forward with military contingency plans. The same Bush who, Hersh writes, remains "confident in his military decisions." In blind defiance of every shred of evidence.

Even the prospect of Iranian volunteers flooding Iraq in the thousands to attack American soldiers in revenge for an American air war against Iran doesn't dissuade the blood-thirsty Republican hawks, who insanely claim such a development would divide Iraqi Shiites into pro- and anti-Iranian camps and unify Iraqi Kurds and the Sunnis.

Complete story here.

White House photo by David Bohrer

Sneaky and subversive...

This profile of David Addington by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker is a must read for anyone wanting to understand Bush and Cheney's grab for absolute power.

Addington is the brilliant but sinister (and socially inept, although that might go without saying given he's a Republican lawyer) legalistic mind behind it.

Consider this excerpt alone:

...Fein suggested that the only way Congress will be able to reassert its power is by cutting off funds to the executive branch for programs that it thinks are illegal. But this approach has been tried, and here, too, Addington has had the last word. John Murtha, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, put a provision in the Pentagon’s appropriations bills for 2005 and 2006 forbidding the use of federal funds for any intelligence-gathering that violates the Fourth Amendment, which protects the privacy of American citizens. The White House, however, took exception to Congress’s effort to cut off funds. When President Bush signed the appropriations bills into law, he appended “signing statements” asserting that the Commander-in-Chief had the right to collect intelligence in any way he deemed necessary. The signing statement for the 2005 budget, for instance, noted that the executive branch would “construe” the spending limit only “in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief, including for the conduct of intelligence operations.”

According to the Boston Globe, Addington has been the “leading architect” of these signing statements, which have been added to more than seven hundred and fifty laws. He reportedly scrutinizes every bill before President Bush signs it, searching for any language that might impinge on Presidential power...[emphasis mine]

The future of the U.S. as a constitutional republic is in grave danger.

Pride week continued...

So, Friday and Saturday I attended the Future Queer Conference at University College Dublin. I was invited to be on a panel along with British photographer Sara Davidmann, British FTM activist Robert Allfree, and British MTF activist Gill Dalton (who's been living in Dublin for the last year and a half, busily setting up a trans support group and other organisations).

It’s the first time I’ve ever been invited to be on an academic panel and I was excited and nervous. Sara, Robert and Gill were all incredible, articulate, heartfelt, courageous and each utterly remarkable. Not for the first time, I marveled at how lucky I am to be numbered among such company. I wouldn't trade such an honor to have been born male, even to possess a penis.

People said I was great too, though to be honest I departed from my script and was all over the place, so I don't really have a feel for how I did. I talked about how the queer community feels like home to me because queer-identified people embrace ambiguity and complex identities, like mine, and are comfortable with the evolution and elasticity of identity. Many also understand how utterly inadequate traditional definitions are. What I intended to then go on and discuss included the topics of FTM invisibility, transgender inclusion/exclusion, political infighting and the way trannies embody queerness.

If you're curious, I've continued with my text (the one I didn't exactly follow) below the fold.

(To continue) it’s interesting because while my very existence challenges pat definitions, at this point in my life my queerness is anything but obvious. I “pass” so well that under normal circumstances, I appear disappointedly normal. And while this helps me find a job and spares me from the very real and scary transphobia out there, it’s problematic in other ways.

Most importantly: finding a date!! Jeeze, I walk into a queer bar and the women look away while most guys, once they find out my, uh, anatomy, lose interest.

Another matter: my queerness utterly disappears when I’m dating a woman. I end up coming across as a somewhat effeminate, straight guy. I don’t mind the effeminate part, but straight?!

The few times I’ve talked with questioning gender-queer butches who were struggling to sort out their identities and were wondering if they might be happier transitioning, I’ve said that one of the biggest things they’d be giving up if they transition is the ready-made, wonderful women’s community. Sure, it can be difficult at times, with the in-fighting and the passionate sometimes incestuous relationships. But it’s there for you! In every major western city, just inside the door of the local dyke bar!

I really miss that. The way my visible queerness used to make me an integral part of the dyke community. There’s no counterpart for FTMs, even in cities with a critical mass of FTMs, like San Francisco. And community is even scarcer in places like Dublin, where both queer and FTM numbers are small.

It can sometimes feel very lonely as an FTM, even in the midst of the larger LGB population.

In the early days of my transition, I tried to overcome my creeping invisibility by externalising my differentness. I looked a lot more “androgynous” then, which helped. It gave me an edgier look to start off, which I heightened with body piercings; blue, yellow and other coloured hair; and experimental clothing “looks”—some that worked better than others! Like an adolescent, it took me a while to realise that many of the “edgier” looking people I was trying to emulate in truth weren’t radical or subversive. And conversely, that a lot of the people who didn’t visually stand out, were.

So, in the larger picture, where does Lesbian, Gay and Bi end, and queer begin? And how to they all intersect with trans?

In my experience, the larger LGB community often shuns the label of queer—to this day, even after all the years of radicals reclaiming it! And their discomfort extends to the tranny community, which they would prefer to disavow. The discomfort is evident in the arguments, both here and abroad, that greet proposed trans inclusion in LGB organisations and legislation. It’s one way we trannies are reminded of our outsider status, even within the LGB community, and it’s a sort of discrimination non-tranny queers are privileged not to face.

This LGB disavowal, which intensifies in proportion to how conservative and committed to assimilation the lesbian, gay or bi person or organisation is, is often couched in terms of political expediency. A prominent example is the long fight in the US over trans inclusion in ENDA (the Employment Nondiscrimination Act). Which still hasn’t passed, right?! The rationale is that you fight first for LGB advancement, and then come back for us trannies. A rationale I reject as not only disingenuous, but a piss-poor political strategy.

What may surprise some on the LGB side of the debate is to find out that the discomfort is not only one way. Trannies, too, can be found who are uncomfortable with being lumped in with the LGBs. To my dismay, I’ve come across a fair number who express their unwillingness to attend support group meetings in openly gay venues--haven’t come across them here in Ireland yet, but I wager they exist. Even worse, I know FTMs who, after transition, go on to live closeted homophobic existences in which they repudiate all former connections with queer or LGB communities. And this after leading formerly VERY queer lives!

This discord brings up an interesting question, one I didn’t originate but which I rarely if ever hear discussed, namely, just who is excluding whom in this counterproductive argument? Reliable statistics are nonexistent, but were we talking numbers, it seems possible, maybe even likely, that LGB is a subset of T, rather than the other way around. That is, if we consider all the straight-identified and largely closeted male cross-dressers out there, and compare the sum total to people who identify as lesbian, gay or bi—or even the folks who don’t identify, but “practice” gay sex—trannies might outnumber the LGBs.

Furthermore, one could argue that the discrimination faced by LGB folk is predicated on behaviour perceived by the larger society to be transgendered. That is, homphobes believe males should love and mate with females and vice-versa, hence, a male loving a male contravenes gender roles. This argument is further supported by the distressing fact that, judging from my experience, it’s the most effeminate men and masculine women—straight or queer—who suffer the worst violence and discrimination.

Do you think LGB organisations would approach trans inclusion differently if they conceptualised the issue this way? That, actually, it could be trans folks who should be considering if we want to include LGBs in our organisations…?

In the end, such arguments and infighting only aid our enemies. The American Religious Right doesn’t distinguish in their rhetoric, legislation and hatred. LGB and T of all stripes are the target-of-choice whenever the Bush/Cheney regime seeks to rally its Christinista base. And, in the way of such bigotry, their official actions trickle down to the street level. I speak as someone who has had the dubious distinction of being vibed or out rightly threatened as a dyke, a fag, and a bisexual man.

Which brings me to my next point, which is how trans folks embody the very essence of queerness. To illustrate, as an FTM who eschews lower surgery, I’ve forfeited the luxury of disregarding the shortcomings inherent in simple, binary identity definitions. My existence as a man without a penis, in a world where the penis is THE defining characteristic, gives lie to the validity of the binary categories. I could walk around fully clothed my whole life, closeted, hidden, and thereby not significantly challenging any hegemony. But even if I did, an accident which, say, put me in the hospital unconscious, or an arrest at a political demonstration, or an unfortunate strip-search at a border, could abruptly toss me back into the center of controversy. Where I’d be at risk of ridicule, discrimination, or worse, violence, sexual assault and even death.

Beyond safety, basic, widely-held definitions and language simply breaks down with trannies. For example, am I engaged in “gay” sex when I’m with a gay male? A dyke? A straight female? Another FTM?

Ever?

I remember once, an ex-boyfriend and I were driving in my little jeep Suzuki, its bumper plastered with various political bumper stickers, when we were vibed by a trio of straight boys in an adjoining car. No words were exchanged, and as such encounters go, it was extremely mild, but it was apparent that our obvious queerness along with the lefty bumper stickers, offended them. I remember wondering later, would they have been reassured to know that my ex and I engaged in the same sort of sex they (probably) had with their girlfriends? That, contrary to what they were assuming, we didn’t engage in “homosexual” sex by the strict definition. Unlike the charge often leveled at queers that what we do is “unnatural,” –-far from true according to zoological studies-- and that “the body parts don’t fit,” actually they did fit, even by straight definitions. So would those guys have felt any better had they known that?

Somehow, I doubt it.

Obviously, the reason we irk the Right has nothing to do with biology, and everything to do with ideology. I’d venture to say that at the heart of the matter, it’s the fact that queers believe first and foremost in our right to engage freely in sex for pleasure. To the puritanical Right, who’d like to turn back the clock to a time when birth-control was unavailable, abortion illegal (as it still sadly is here in Ireland) and all sex relegated to the “lawfully married" heterosexual bedroom, the sex we have upsets them! Not just because we do it for pleasure, with procreation optional, but additionally because our sex is between equals.

Well, by my definition anyway. For integral to my definition of queer sex is not that the participants possess like bodies and/or genders, but rather that queer sex leaves everything open to negotiation. There are no assumptions. No givens. No hard and fast rules that this has to happen, or that, in order for it to be “sex” or to be “right.” Ideally, everything must be negotiated beforehand and/or during, subtly or through clear give-and-take. Which means essentially, the act is unfolding between (or among) equals.

To me, this strikes at the very heart of “compulsory heterosexuality,” which not only seeks to equate and restrain sex strictly to procreation, but, in the process, imbues the encounter with the inherent inequality of the larger society. In the extreme version, you have the Religious Right’s non-satirical "God-given" edict that "a wife must submit to her husband’s will,” in the bedroom and elsewhere. UGH!

Thus, as a reflection of the body I have, I ascribe to the broader Wikopedia definition of “queer” that includes heterosexuals whose sexual attitudes and/or preferences not only place them outside the mainstream (such as BDSM practitioners or polyamorists) but who approach sex and gender with the attitude that it’s all up for negotiation among equals. In the same way, I’d be inclined to exclude from the definition those gays and lesbians who approach sex and gender in a traditionalist way that conforms to society’s binary categories.

As an aside, to the charge that transsexuals actually reinforce the binary gender system by resorting to hormones and/or surgery, I strongly disagree! Some trannies are rebels, others are not. Some subvert the binary, heteronormative system, others do everything they can to conform and fit in. As I read recently on one of my favorite blogs, Alas a blog, why are trannies singled out for this criticism? Why are we not afforded the same opportunity as non-trannies to either support or subvert the binary gender system by our conduct, beliefs, actions, etc?

So, in conclusion, as a mother who is a man, a man who feels that being pregnant, giving birth and mothering my daughter was one of the best things I ever did—and who, by the way, doesn’t believe that detracts from my identity as a man—I believe queer-identified trannies have much to offer the non-tranny world. First, many of us, as a result of our having lived on both sides of the great gender divide, can offer valuable observations on the damaging ways men and women interact and misunderstand one another.

Also, we have keen insight into the way gender operates in league with power in our society. Gender is used to enforce and maintain entrenched power relationships throughout the generations. When used in this way, it hurts everyone, straight, queer, bi and tyranny alike, to greater or lesser degrees. Because the system fails people like me so glaringly, we’re forced to assume the roles of “outsiders” from a very early age. And cultural outsiders make great critics. We know from a deep place, the inherent fallacy of those “basic truths” everyone takes for granted.

At a time when reactionary forces are marshaling throughout the world to entrench not only oppressive gender systems but oppressive economic, cultural and political systems, people who can point to the inherent phoniness at the heart of the arguments are valuable.

In the end, when we—trannies and queers—come out and live our lives honestly, our lives themselves becomes revolutionary. Our existences alone, thereby go far toward subverting the heteronormal hegemony, otherwise known as the "dominant paradigm."

Death of a salesman's (expectations)....

This column by commentator extraordinaire, George Monbiot, discusses the demise of social and economic mobility in the US and Britain, accompanied by rising expectations among the young.

…A survey published in April by the economist Tom Hertz showed that the United States has one of the lowest levels of intergenerational mobility in the rich world. A child born into a poor family has a 1% chance of growing up to become one of the richest 5%, while a child born into a wealthy family has a 22% chance. Another study, published by Business Week, found that in 1978 23% of adult men whose fathers were in the bottom quartile made it into the top quartile. In 2004 the figure was 10%. But reality and public perceptions are travelling in opposite directions. A poll for the New York Times published in 2005 showed that 80% of respondents thought it was possible for poor people to become wealthy by working hard. In 1983 the figure was only 60%.

[snip]

Here too, declining mobility is accompanied by rising expectations. In January the Learning and Skills Council found that 16% of the teenagers it interviewed believed they would become famous, probably by appearing on a show like Big Brother. Many of them saw this as a better prospect than obtaining qualifications; 11% of them, it found, were "sitting around 'waiting to be discovered' ". The council claimed that the probability of being chosen by Big Brother and of becoming rich and famous as a result is 30 million to one. But the promise held out to us is that it can happen to anyone. The teenagers seemed to believe it can happen to everyone.

To read the whole thing, go here.

Staff Sergeant Raymond Plouhar, 30, killed by a roadside bomb in Anbar province, Iraq. Photograph: US Marine Corps/AP

Staff Sergeant Raymond Plouhar RIP....

The US Marine recruiter pictured in Fahrenheit 9/11 trying to persuade young men from the economically bleak town of Flint, Michigan, to enlist has been killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, the Pentagon said.

Staff Sergeant Raymond Plouhar, 30, died on Monday of wounds suffered while on duty in Anbar province. He had barely a month left of his tour of duty in Iraq, where he was in charge of detecting and detonating makeshift bombs.

What he was shown doing in F-9/11 was low-down. But his death is still a waste of a young life. And it's probably the last thing he ever thought would happen when he agreed to be in Moore's film.

Complete story here.

Archbishop of Canterbury, the "Most Rev." Rowan Williams. [photo:Chris Radburn/Press Association, via Associated Press]

WWJD...?

In a defining moment in the Anglican Communion's civil war over homosexuality, the Archbishop of Canterbury proposed a plan yesterday that could force the Episcopal Church in the United States either to renounce gay bishops and same-sex unions or to give up full membership in the Communion.

And they call themselves Christians. How utterly sad.

Complete story here.

Oink, oink...!

Barbara Ehrenreich rocks! From her blog:

The Piggery Award

While pondering Congress’s rejection of a minimum wage increase this week, it’s helpful to recall the basic taxonomic distinction between Predators and Pigs. Predators – in this case, those who employ people at unlivable wages – suck the marrow out of their employees, transform eager young women into stress-injured cripples, and virtually orphan the children whose parents are forced to work two or more jobs to support them.

Pigs, on the other hand, sit by wriggling with delight at these cannibalistic proceedings. It’s their job to oink out choruses of praise for the Predators. “Predation is Prosperity!” they proclaim, all the while hoping that some little scraps of flesh will fall their way.

Read the whole piece here.

Michael Laurence Dillon, world's first known FTM.

Pride week in Dublin....

I’m scheduled to give a brief talk on transsexual health issues with an MTF friend on Thursday here. (On my lunch break from my corporate job and unbeknownst to my bosses at he bank!) To be followed by a question-and-answer period.

A lot of people don’t realize that sexual orientation is totally separate from gender identity. Thus, while transgendered folks and issues generally get lumped under the LGB banner, the grouping makes further sense because regardless of a person’s sexual-orientation before transition, afterwards trans folks can end up as straight, gay, queer, or bi.

Kinda like the rest of humanity.

Another little known fact is that the first FTM known to employ hormone therapy and surgery was Irish . Michael Laurence Dillon, born Laura Maud Dillon in 1915 in London, the daughter of Robert Dillon of Lismullen, County Meath. Entered Trinity College Medical School in 1945 and graduated in 1951. He practiced medicine at sea and was eventually outed because Burke’s Peerage refused to change his name and sex in their listing so that he could be identified as next in line to his childless brother to inherit their family's title. A reporter stumbled on the information and published a story about his sex-change. So the story goes, Michael was so mortified that he left Ireland and moved to India, where he joined a monastery, was ordained in Tibetan Buddhism and died in a monastery in 1962, at the young age of 47.

So I'm following in a proud Irish FTM tradition.

Another fact. “Lower” or genital surgery is problematic for FTM’s. It’s prohibitively expensive, carries a high risk of sexual or urinary problems afterwards, and offers poor “cosmetic” results.

Therefore, many—perhaps even most—FTMs at this time chose to skip it. We will undergo a double-mastectomy or cosmetic surgery to reduce breast size and re-sculpt our chest. And we'll inject testosterone to produce secondary sexual characteristics. The testosterone works very well, as you can see by my photo. Which means that FTMs can end up living long lives as men without penises. Which has profound implications for healthcare and our sexual lives.

Among other things it may mean that a person looks like me, but has to seek gynecological care. This, naturally, is something we’d much rather avoid. But avoidance could, in a worst case scenario, cost us our lives, as routine pap-smears can detect cervical cancer early enough to successfully treat it.

In the past, females who cross-lived sometimes died rather than seek out medical care for curable health problems. Being outed, apparently, was considered a fate worse than death. One famous example was jazz musician, Billy Tipton. Born one year before Michael Dillon, in 1914 in the US, he cross-lived his entire adult life. He was married five times, told each of his wives that he had been in a grave car accident that had left him with genital disfigurement and sterility, and so they apparently never saw him naked nor had sexual intercourse. He adopted three boys. Only his parents, brother, and cousins knew he had been born female.

In 1989, Billy suffered from hemorrhaging ulcers and refused to call a doctor. After his death, the coroner told his family the truth of his biological sex. None of his adopted sons, ex-wives, associates or band members have ever admitted to previously knowing he was born female.

In my own case, I always come out to my doctors. I do this as a matter of principle: I feel it’s both good for them to understand that life isn’t necessarily so black and white as they might think, and it’s important for me to get the best healthcare possible. It's sometimes an unnerving experience. A few times, the doctor or nurse has been so visibly flummoxed by my revelation that they’ve been obviously too distracted to give me even the most basic care. Luckily, this has never occurred in the context of a critical emergency—and I sincerely hope it never does.

But imagine if a person like me has a serious accident, one that renders us unconscious. We’ll be there helpless and in need of medical help and the doctor or nurse will be confronted with a person who looks male, but who was clearly born female. This is a scenario that freaks me out and one reason I feel it’s so important to educate medical care providers that we're out there.

The closest I came to this scenario was a bad bicycle accident I had. I was knocked unconscious for about 10 or 15 minutes, but luckily, I’d only started testosterone a week before. So though I looked very gender ambiguous, with short hair and men’s clothing, I’d had no surgery yet and was still without a beard and chest hair. So the nurses found no big surprise under my clothing.

The situation now would be very different.

What have we wrought...?

Based on what many consider to be a low estimate, some 50,000 Iraqis have died violently since the US invasion in March, 2003. To put this in perspective, consider:

... the 50,000 number is daunting, particularly in a country with a population of about 26 million. "Proportionately," the Times says, "it is equivalent to 570,000 Americans being killed nationwide in the last three years." Put another way: It's as if the United States had suffered an attack of the magnitude of 9/11 once every five or six days since March 2003.[emphasis mine]

Salon story (quoting the LA Times) here. (Subscription required.)

A tale of two ledes....

I almost never read the New York Times anymore, although I'll frequently glance at the headlines.

I quit trusting their editorial judgment during the lead up to the Iraq invasion, so obvious was their slant in favor of Bush and the war. The Jayson Blair scandal confirmed my low opinion. Then they started to charge for op-eds. I finally reached my point of no return with Judith Miller's martyred posturing in prison and the paper's passionate defense of her.

Take a look at this headline and lede from today’s edition.

Militants' Raid on Israel Raises Gaza Tension

JERUSALEM, June 25 — In an ominous development, Israel threatened strong military action on Sunday after eight Palestinian militants in Gaza, including members of the governing faction Hamas, emerged from a secret tunnel dug 300 yards into Israel, killed two soldiers, wounded three and kidnapped another.

Compare it to the headline and lede on the same story in today’s (UK) Guardian.

Palestinians hunt for Israeli hostage

Palestinian security forces under the command of the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas were desperately searching today for the Israeli soldier kidnapped by militants the previous day, as the army massing on Gaza's border stood poised to invade.

It's a mild, but noteworthy example of what bothers me about the NYT. The Guardian’s story conveys a strong sense of disorder, desperation and vulnerability on the part of the Palestinians. While the NYT gives the impression of two near equals, Israel and Palestine, poised in a military stand-off.

Which do you think is closest to the truth?

It only confirms my decision not to waste my valuable time on the formerly praiseworthy flagship publication.

The NYT story here and Guardian here.

The credit card blues....

Got into a heated discussion with a friend of mine today. She felt that the reason there's so much consumer debt nowadays is that, due to rampant materialism, people habitually live beyond their means. I felt that the reason there's so much consumer debt nowadays is that most people don't make enough to live, so they use credit cards to make up the difference.

I was arguing from the perspective of someone socialised as a female in the 1950's, who even though I've been living for the past 12 years as a man am still making waaaayyy below what most men my age and with my level of education earn--heck, I'm making significantly less than my ex-girlfriend who's 28 years old and has a bachelor's degree (to my 50+ years old and master's degree).

And I was arguing from the perspective of someone from the working class, first person in my immediate family to not just finish college but earn a master's degree, albeit when I turned 41, and who raised my daughter mostly as a single parent.

My working life began at 16 when my mom brought home piece-work. Then I graduated to part-time library-page while still in high school.

After graduating high school on a college-prep track sixth in my class of more than 350 students, I got a job cleaning motel rooms. I didn't know any better: none of my high school counselors prompted me to apply for university. My mother had commited suicide when I was a junior and I was still reeling. And my dad, having never gone to college, didn't really understand the system. Several years later, when I landed my first office job, I thought I'd positively arrived.

Frustratingly, though I'm much better educated both formally and in the ways of the world, I've barely progressed salary-wise since then.

So, what do you think? Is frivolous, out-of-control middle-class spending mainly to blame for raging consumer debt? Or working people making too low of a wage to reasonably get by?

Hello again y'all...!

I've decided to start publishing my blog again, after a hiatus of two years. During which time, a lot has happened, both in my life and across the globe!

But typical blogger I am, I've shot my wad tonight recovering my blog's previous posts and revamping this site (not done yet!), so I've no energy left to write! So instead, by way of introduction, I'm going to post a column I published in Dublin's Village magazine last year when I had a short-lived writing gig there.

I finally did it. After threatening to leave if Bush did this or Congress did that or Democrats sat idle while Republicans pulled another shenanigan, I left the U.S. Bush's invasion of Iraq was the final impetus, though it took me 15 months to wind up loose ends. I spent a week decompressing in Paris, then a Ryan Air flight set me down for the first time in Dublin. Given a 15kg-baggage-limit and a recent spate of unemployment, I began my life as an American expatriate with little more than the clothes on my back, Irish citizenship through my grandparents and a pocketful of credit cards.

Dublin's gray skies and Georgian architecture were a bit of a shock after opulent Paris. My youth hostel sat surrounded by pubs, and sleepless with jetlag, I wandered wide-eyed at 2 a.m. among inebriated revelers doing their unsteady best not to wander into traffic. Shouts, drunken laughter and the clip-clop of horses bounced off the walls of my room until seagulls took up their unholy din at dawn's early light.

A veritable teetotaler by Irish standards, my disquiet was compounded those first days by the fact I couldn't locate a bookstore, stationery store or fresh bakery anywhere amid the ubiquitous pubs. Dublin's shy demeanor confounded me, super-sized Yank that I am. I walked right past businesses that failed to shout their wares from the rooftops with proper neon, missing altogether their weatherworn hand-lettered signs. Monday morning, metal shutters lifted to reveal clothing shops, employment agencies, a Chinese food emporium. I found half-a-dozen bookstores near Trinity, a stationery store tucked beneath a news-shop and a supermarket in, of all places, a department store basement.

What convinced me to stay, though, wasn't bookstores or, surprise, the weather, but the people. You Irish are renowned worldwide for friendliness (though it helps a visitor, I've discovered, to be white and from America). My introduction to your cordiality occurred riding into town from the airport. A tiny elderly man in a rumpled three-piece suit was trying stiffly to board the bus. Everywhere I've lived, passengers would have trampled him in a rush, but here, everyone hung back respectfully until a young man reached down under the old gent's elbows, picked him up and placed him gently on the bus. At my stop, he tottered toward the exit and the driver enjoined, "Give 'em a 'and, wontcha?" but before I could untangle myself from luggage straps, your man had launched himself over the last step to land, two feet on the sidewalk. Such is the generosity here, gray skies and square buildings simply don't get me down.

Still, before I came my biggest fears about living in a foreign county centered around being a female-to-male transsexual. Would I have to hide my identity out of fear of job discrimination? Would medical personnel treat me as a freak? What if I never made friends?

My initial experiences have been encouraging. Ireland's public health system is short-staffed, under-funded and low-tech, still everyday care is progressive and generally more accessible than in America. First doctor's visit, I walked one block from work, registered with no appointment, waited 20 minutes, then was shown in. Visibly surprised by my disclosure, the doctor remained professional, helpful and polite and the 45 Euro cost was cheap by U.S. standards. Since then, I've seen GPs, an endocrinologist and had a mandatory exam for a permanent job: in every case, the doctors have been open-minded, sensitive and surprisingly astute.

But it's my pharmacist who really amazes me. In America, land of impersonal and frazzled service, I have never been treated with such care and attention to detail. Paul didn't bat an eye when I mentioned Outhouse, in the process identifying myself as transsexual. Not a hint of condescension greeted my request for a drugs discount card. When he saw a newer-generation European drug was to replace my former prescription, he sat me down for a baseline blood-pressure reading. Then special-ordered needles for injecting testosterone and telephoned, once to let me know delivery had been delayed; a second time to say they'd arrived.

Such kindness and consideration illustrate, among other things, Dublin's forward-thinking attitudes toward the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgendered) community at a time when such sentiment is fast going underground in the United States. When Republicans attacked gays in last year's presidential election, not a single Democratic contender had the courage to declare himself in favor of gay marriage. I believe Ireland will legalize it before the United States, and I plan to be here to see it.

A breath of fresh air...

Amid a week nauseating Reagan-worship:

...Calling Reagan an "all-American" insults the millions of Americans whom he deprived of his sunlight. Reagan far too often invited the nation to live down to its lowest common denominators. Reagan tried to make America younger, all right. He tried to return us to the days where we sat before black-and-white televisions, in separate black and white neighborhoods, where white people saw only white people and black people were represented by Buckwheat and the only time you saw lots of people of color were dead Indians in Westerns.

Complete op-ed here.

And more realism here if you have access to Salon.

Reagan spectacle....

...They were the first of thousands of Americans who descended on Washington to say their own goodbyes.

Is that "thousands" as in "I took home $20,000 after taxes last year," or "thousands" as in the estimated half-million protestors who greeted President Bush in Rome last week?

On Tuesday evening in Manhattan, John Hockenberry of NBC (speaking to an audience of some 700-800 people) said the media was expecting a "hundred thousand" mourners to file through the rotunda in honor of Ronald Reagan.

If that was a peace demonstration, such a poor turnout would make it a failure. And it certainly wouldn't attract the media attention the Reagan funeral rites are garnering!

This circus over Reagan's death is like a huge circle-jerk, with each media outlet striving to outdo the other and in the process exciting themselves to an even greater pitch.

Sadly, they don’t seem to realize that everyone outside their circle doesn’t share their enthusiasm.

Excerpt from here.

Who killed Nick Berg...?

This column in the Sydney Morning Herald sums up pretty well the inconsistencies in the Nick Berg video that suggest he may have been killed in a "black ops" action by the C.I.A.

...Possum believes "the available evidence surrounding the case suggests that it was a 'black operation' by US psychological warfare specialists ... to provide the media with a moral relativity argument to counter the adverse publicity over torture at Abu Ghraib". The use of FBI footage in the opening sequence, if confirmed, suggests the involvement of high-level US Government operatives....

Read it here.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it....

...the average worker takes home $517 a week and will receive about $400 in tax breaks from President Bush. At the same time, the average CEO takes home $155,769 a week and this year alone received well over $50,000 in new tax breaks from Bush... [Emphasis mine.]

From MoveOn.org here.

Scary....

This from 27-year veteran CIA analyst, Ray McGovern:

...because I am more frightened now than at any time over the last three and a half years, that this administration will resort to extra-legal methods to do something to ensure that there are four more years for George Bush. And Ashcroft’s statement last week, gratuitous statement, uncoordinated with the department of, CIA, with the Department of Homeland Security, his warning that there is bound to be a terrorist strike before the US elections. That can be viewed and this can be reasonably viewed as the opening salvo in the justification for doing, taking measures to ensure that whatever happens in November comes out so that four more years can be devoted to maybe changing that war crimes act or protecting at least these vulnerable people for four more years....

McGovern's concern stems from legal advice given to President Bush that he and members of his administration might be vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes on the basis of a U.S. law that reinforces the Articles of the Geneva Convention.

Complete story here.

Privatization of war....

Mercenaries in Iraq are making, by some accounts, $1,000 a day, while U.S. soldiers there make around $1,100 a month.

Not only is this morally outrageous, but yet another example of Neocons funneling money from taxpayers' pockets into corporate hands.

Don't they tell us that "marketplace streamlining" will result in things costing less? While in reality, the only thing that ends up "less" is money left in the pocket of the little guy.

No doubt, this immoral war would be costing U.S. taxpayers fewer dollars if it were being fought with conscripts.

There again, would we have invaded Iraq in the first place if we'd had a non-volunteer army?

Thought-provoking animated cartoon here.

War crimes....

Amnesty International's newly-released annual report criticize [sic] Wednesday the deaths of around 200 Israelis, at least 130 of them civilians and including 21 children, who were killed in suicide bombings and other "deliberate attacks" by Palestinian militants.

This "deliberate targeting of civilians by Palestinian armed groups," the report says, "constituted crimes against humanity."

The report also charged that the Israel Defense Forces killed some 600 Palestinians, including more than 100 children, between January and December 2003.

According to the report, most of those who died were killed unlawfully, in "reckless shooting, shelling and bombing in civilian residential areas, in extra-judicial executions and through excessive use of force."

The IDF also comes under criticism for "certain abuses" that constitute war crimes, and gives the examples of unlawful killings, obstruction of medical assistance and targeting of medical personnel, the extensive and wanton destruction of property, torture and the use of "human shields."

I recently asked an Israeli-born friend, whose opinion I respect, how militant supporters of Israel can decry the deaths of Jewish children at Palestinian hands, while ignoring the deaths of Palestinian children killed by the IDF. He answered that he thought they'd charge that Palestinian terrorists deliberately target Jewish children, while the IDF strives to avoid civilian casualties--those that happen are by accident.

I think that is their rationale, but such an opinion rests on denial. First, much evidence--such as that cited above--indicates that members of the Israeli military do, in fact, deliberately target civilians. And while their actions may or may not be officially condoned, there is no doubt that bringing to bear the IDF's heavy firepower in densely-populated areas leads to dreadful civilian casualties. You might use the excuse, "We didn't mean to kill civilians," the first few times. But at this stage, the carnage is predictable, and the excuse deceitful.

Complete story here.

Questions remain....

Will the truth behind Nick Berg's murder ever be known?

American businessman Nicholas Berg's body was found on May 8 near a Baghdad overpass; a video of his supposed decapitation death by knife appeared on an alleged al-Qaeda-linked website (www.al-ansar.biz) on May 11. But according to what both a leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation appears to have been staged.

[...]

While the circumstances surrounding both the video and Nick Berg's last days have been the source of substantive speculation, both Simpson and Nordby perceived it as highly probable that Berg had died some time prior to his decapitation. A factor in this was an apparent lack of the "massive" arterial bleeding such an act initiates.

[...]

And Berg is seen on the beheading videotape in what appears to be US military prison-issue clothing, sitting in what appears to be a US military-type white chair, virtually identical to those photographed as used at Abu Ghraib prison....

The article raises other questions and inconsistincies, too, not the least of which is that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the individual blamed by the Bush administration for beheading Berg, was reportedly killed long before Berg's death.

Complete article here.

It's official: we've been had...

An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday.

Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.

According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions.

[...]

"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday.

Complete story here.

FBI nabs the wrong Muslim (again!)....

Brandon Mayfield just appeared live on CNN. He has been exonerated of any involvement in the Madrid train bombings. The FBI is now admitting that they mistakenly identified a fingerprint as belonging to the Porland, Oregon-resident, attorney, and convert to Islam, who spent two weeks in prison as a result of their error.

Complete story here.

Kerry-Pelosi '04...?

Criticalviewer makes a strong case for nominating Nancy Pelosi to the Kerry ticket.

I'd enthusiastically vote for her! Pelosi has long stood out from among lackluster, apologist Republican-lite Democrats.

Spread the word: Pelosi for V.P.

Remember freedom of speech...?

E.L. Doctorow, one of the most celebrated writers in America, was nearly booed off the stage at Hofstra University Sunday when he gave a commencement address lambasting President George W. Bush and effectively calling him a liar.

Booing that came mainly from the crowd in the stands became so intense that Doctorow stopped speaking at one point, showing no emotion as he stood silently and listened to the jeers. Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz intervened, and called on the audience to allow him to finish. He did, although some booing persisted.

Apparently, it was mostly parents and relatives who objected to criticism of Bush. Said one enlightened man, "If this would have happened in Florida, we would have taken him out."

Ah, such respect for the First Amendment! And who says fascism is dead?

Complete story here.

First casualty of war...

The Pentagon seems to be hoping that if they keep denying that the U.S. military massacred an Iraqi wedding party, Americans will come to believe them. Sadly, they may be right.

"There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday. "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

"Bad people"? In addition to the callousness of his remarks, such simplistic vilification does nothing to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

The general's denials are contradicted by every other piece of independent evidence: reporters on the scene, information from hospitals, accounts of survivors and a wedding video that just turned up. On the video, for example, a stocky man with close-cropped hair can be seen playing an electric organ at a wedding. Then in another tape filmed a day later in Ramadi, the same musician is lying dead--his face clearly visible in a burial shroud, dressed in the same tan shirt as he wore when he performed.

A CNN anchor this morning threw in a line that militants may have been hiding out among the wedding party. Even if this were true, would "neutralizing" several suspected militants justify killing 11 women and 14 children (at last count)?

Initially, the military denied that any women or children were killed. With bodies piling up, however, Kimmitt was forced to admit that a "handful of women" - perhaps four to six - were "caught up in the engagement...They may have died from some of the fire that came from the aircraft."

May have died?

One survivor, Haleema Shihab, 32, hid out the night, wounded and bleeding, in a bomb crater with her stepdaughter. She said that American soldiers showed up and one, laughing, kicked her to see if she were alive. "I pretended I was dead so he wouldn't kill me," she said.

According to the Guardian, American commanders remain unrepentant.

Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, was scathing of those who suggested a wedding party had been hit. "How many people go to the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding 80 miles (130km) from the nearest civilization? These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive."

When reporters asked him about footage on Arabic television of a child's body being lowered into a grave, he replied: "I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men."

Bad things do indeed happen in war. Mattis would do well to remember, howver, that U.S. soldiers are subject to the Geneva Convention and not immune from legal prosecution for war crimes.

Complete stories here and here.

Nick Berg's father calls for Peace...!

...George Bush never looked into my son's eyes. George Bush doesn't know my son, and he is the worse for it. George Bush, though a father himself, cannot feel my pain, or that of my family, or of the world that grieves for Nick, because he is a policymaker, and he doesn't have to bear the consequences of his acts. George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily.

[...]

So what were we to do when we in America were attacked on September 11, that infamous day? I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labelled our enemies and start listening to them. Stop giving preconditions to our peaceful coexistence on this small planet, and start honouring and respecting every human's need to live free and autonomously, to truly respect the sovereignty of every state. To stop making up rules by which others must live and then separate rules for ourselves.

[...]

George Bush's ineffective leadership is a weapon of mass destruction, and it has allowed a chain reaction of events that led to the unlawful detention of my son which immersed him in a world of escalated violence. Were it not for Nick's detention, I would have had him in my arms again. That detention held him in Iraq not only until the atrocities that led to the siege of Fallujah, but also the revelation of the atrocities committed in the jails in Iraq, in retaliation for which my son's wonderful life was put to an end.

My son's work still goes on. Where there was one peacemaker before, I now see and have heard from thousands of peacemakers. Nick was a man who acted on his beliefs. We, the people of this world, now need to act on our beliefs. We need to let the evildoers on both sides of the Atlantic know that we are fed up with war. We are fed up with the killing and bombing and maiming of innocent people. We are fed up with the lies. Yes, we are fed up with the suicide bombers, and with the failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way to stop killing each other. We are fed up with negotiations and peace conferences that are entered into on both sides with preset conditions that preclude the outcome of peace. We want world peace now.

Complete statement here.

Bush budget stalls....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans retreated Thursday and decided to postpone a Senate vote on their $2.4 trillion budget until at least next month, GOP aides said, averting a certain defeat by party moderates demanding curbs on future tax cuts.

The decision, described by aides on condition of anonymity, was an election-year embarrassment for both the Republicans who control Congress and President Bush. [Emphasis mine.]

When asked what might make moderate Republicans change their minds and support the budget, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said, "Some of us could get killed in tragic accidents.''

Whoa. I'd be careful what I said around the bunch in the White House.

Complete story here.

Sad, sad news....

David Reimer, a Canadian man who was raised as a girl in a controversial case that drew international attention to issues of gender and biology, took his own life last Tuesday.

According to press reports, Reimer, 38, had been depressed following a series of personal and professional setbacks, including the loss of his job, separation from his wife and the death of his identical twin brother two years ago.

David's story was the subject of the book, "As Nature Made Him," The Boy Who Was Raised a Girl," by journalist John Colapinto.

As I can vouch, being gender-variant in this narrow-minded world can take a toll on a person. I'm very sad that David reached a point where he felt he couldn't soldier on.

Complete story here.

Horrific....

RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, May 20 — As a throng of Palestinians marched in protest here today, an Israeli tank and helicopter gunship opened fire, leaving at least nine people dead, including children, and dozens wounded, witnesses said.

The incident began when more than a thousand Palestinians responded to a public committee's call to demonstrate this afternoon by walking down a central avenue toward the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood on Rafah's outskirts, where Israeli forces seized control Tuesday in what the Army called a hunt for militants.

As the leading edge of the crowd of men and boys approached an Israeli tank position, two thunderous explosions rang out, interspersed with jackhammer blasts of machine gun fire. Clouds of dust rose in the air as debris and blood sprayed across the road. The Palestinians turned to flee, some carrying bleeding children in their arms.

[Complete story here.]

The Palestinian death toll in the military sweep the Israeli army is nauseatingly dubbing "Operation Rainbow," stands at 33 in two days, and will probably go higher.

I am sickened and feel complicit in that the carnage could not be taking place without U.S. arms sales and tax dollars.

Most Americans feel otherwise, if they care at all. One woman I used to work for who describes herself as a "tax and spend liberal," says she might vote for Bush in November due to his support for Israel and strong "war on terrorism."

Tragically, she is not alone. (See here.)

In a somewhat heated argument, she justified to me her utter lack of sympathy for Palestinians by saying, "But they are killing my children!" speaking in the larger sense of Jewish family.

What confounds me is how this intelligent, caring mother of four can feel no compassion for murdered Palestinian children.

Not only that, but how can she fail to see that our support for "Israel no matter what" puts us at risk of terrorist attack? Incidents like "Operation Rainbow," in which American-made helicopters and missiles mow down Palestinians are precisely why Arab extremists consider the U.S. a legitimate military target.

I support Israel's right to exist, as I do a viable Palestinian state. If Bush truly wanted to protect Americans from terrorism, he would make all aid to Israel contingent on an immediate and just resolution of the Palestinian question.

And more....

Not only did the policy to torture detainees originate at the highest levels of the U.S. government, but Bush and his officials knew damned well that what they were doing was wrong!

May 17 - The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue.

And they should be tried for war crimes, for actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Complete story here.

Abu Ghraib....

If you still believe the torture at Abu Ghraib was a case of privates and sergeants gone amok, rather than policy ordered from above, check this out:

...Top military officials have claimed the abuse seen in the photos at Abu Ghraib was limited to a few MPs, but Provance says the sexual humiliation of prisoners began as a technique ordered by the interrogators from military intelligence.

"One interrogator told me about how commonly the detainees were stripped naked, and in some occasions, wearing women's underwear," Provance said. "If it's your job to strip people naked, yell at them, scream at them, humiliate them, it's not going to be too hard to move from that to another level."

Complete story here.

Stranger and stranger....

...According to Berg, his son was taking a course a few years ago at a remote campus of the University of Oklahoma near an airport. He described how on one particular day, his son met "some terrorist people -- who no one knew were terrorists at the time."

At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son asked if he could use Nick's laptop computer.

"It turned out this guy was a terrorist and that he, you know, used my son's e-mail, amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to," Berg said.

Government sources said Berg gave the man his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.

The sources said the man who used Berg's e-mail knew Moussaoui, now awaiting trial on federal charges that could bring a death sentence. But the sources would not disclose details of how the men were connected.

So, are we to assume that Nick Berg was accessing his email on a moving bus using what, his cell-phone? I know you can do it, but was it really that easy and reliable a "few years ago"?

Complete story here.

Prosthetic leg...?

The mystery of who really killed Nick Berg deepens:

"From Iran Zarqawi traveled to Iraq in May 2002, where his wounded leg was amputated and the limb fitted with a prosthetic device. He spent two months recovering in Baghdad, at which time "nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there." (From here.)

The quote is originally from the National Review Online.

According to people who have seen the video, the person beheading Berg did not seem to have a prosthetic leg.

Michael Berg, Nick's father, blames the Bush administration in no uncertain terms, not for directly wielding the knife, but for delaying his son so long that he could not safely exit Iraq.

"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in an interview with radio station KYW-AM.

Full story here.

Were U.S. forces responsible for Berg’s gruesome death?


I’m blogging again after a long hiatus.

The reason? Despite a schedule that leaves me no time, I just can’t stay silent any longer.

The precipitating factor is the Nicholas Berg tragedy. As usual, mainstream media coverage is infuriatingly inadequate.

Contrary to the official storyline, family and friends insist that Berg was held in detention in Iraq not by the Iraqis but by U.S. forces.

…The Berg family last month filed a habeas corpus petition against Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, saying Berg was being illegally detained by the U.S. military without probable cause. Berg was released a day later, April 6.

According to the petition, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, the family said it understood, based on information provided by the FBI and the State Department, that while Berg had originally been detained by Iraqi police in Mosul, he was later transferred to U.S. military custody.

The petition said the FBI had been involved in "investigating and confirming Nicholas Berg's identity and to ensure that the individual detained was Nicholas Berg based on a concern of possible identity theft."

The Bergs added that the FBI had recommended that their son be released from custody, and that the State Department had told them it no longer had power to intervene or to bring him home because the son "had been turned over by the Iraqi police to the United States military."

[Full story here.]

One day after the family filed the lawsuit on 4/5, Berg was released from custody in Mosul. He told friends when he got back to Baghdad that, due to his Jewish name and an Israeli stamp in his passport, he'd been suspected of being an Israeli agent. He checked out of his Baghdad hotel on 4/10 and vanished, until U.S. forces found his decapitated body on 5/15.

Allegations are flying that Berg was picked up at the behest of U.S. forces due to the mistaken supposition that he was an antiwar activist. Why would someone think that the Bush supporter was actually against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and do such a thing? Because his father, Michael Berg, signed an anti-war petition that ended up on a Rightwing website that called for reprisals against the petition’s signatories.

Furthermore, speculation that Berg’s actual murderers were not al Qaeda operatives was given substance by Wolf Blitzer’s interview on CNN yesterday of Rend Rahim Francke (or Rend al-Rahim), the Iraqi Governing Council’s representative to Washington. Rahim stated categorically that the U.S. translation of the horrific video showing Berg’s murder was inaccurate. The expression translated as “al Qaeda,” she said, actually referred to a similar sounding Arabic expression meaning roughly “those who sit by and do nothing” (think, “apathetic,”), a mistake native Arabic speakers would never make. Moreover, she said the speaker did not have a Jordanian accent, as would be expected if he were actually Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who U.S. authorities and the C.I.A. are blaming for actually cutting off Berg’s head.

I can’t find a live link to the CNN story (I saw the segment as it aired yesterday) and it hasn't been picked up by any other news outlet I've seen.

Other websites and threads are commenting on the light-skins of the hooded men in the video, the military stances they held, their buff physiques and possession of weapons not usually found in the hands of al Qaeda operatives. Ignorant as I am of military habits and paraphernalia and not having viewed the video, I can’t comment on any of this.

What is blatantly obvious is that Berg’s tragic and grisly murder has shifted the attention of American voters away from the torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, the mounting American death toll and escalating financial costs of the war. Once again, “Us against them” war hysteria is running at fever pitch among the suseptible and renewed determination to “stay the course,” is strong in America.

Am I actually suggesting that the Bush administration would cold-bloodedly sacrifice a 26-year-old American citizen’s life purely for political gain?

What do you think?

Just call me pessimistic....

Boy, even if you didn't know it was an election year, the number of empty promises flying out of the White House would tell you something was up.

The latest is about space.

President Bush will make a speech next week outlining a major space initiative, the White House said last night.

Administration officials said they expected that Mr. Bush would propose a research and development program with the aim of establishing a base on the moon, as a prelude to a longer-term goal of sending humans to Mars.

Excuse me if I postpone celebrating until I see the actual funding for such an expensive initiative.

Bush loves to go about pronouncing, then promptly underfunding or ignoring. He promised to fight the global AIDS epidemic, make the U.S. safer from terrorist attacks, support the troops, improve American air and water quality, leave no child behind, capture Osama bin-Laden and make Halliburton pay back what it overcharged U.S. troops in Iraq.

He hasn't followed through on those--and countless other promises--he's made to date. I see no reason to expect follow through on this latest enticement, timed to capitalize on the success of America's Spirit Mars landing.

Complete story here.

Unbelievable....

Oh, yeah, we have the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression, a staggering federal budget deficit that the IMF worries will bring down the global economy if something isn't done, 495 dead American soldiers in Iraq and counting with no "weapons of mass destruction" to be found, global warming threatening the extinction of one-quarter of all plants and animals by 2050, and this is a crucial issue.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, trying to limit the fallout from negative comments he made four years ago, said Friday he ``didn't really understand the Iowa caucuses'' when he said they were dominated by extremist special interests.

Dean is scrambling to "stem fallout from comments" made on a Canadian talk-show four years ago, criticizing the Iowa caucuses. Comments which, from what little I know, are true.

Meanwhile, Bush is given an almost free-ride in the media on his boondoggle of a war in Iraq, presidential culpability for 9/11, the ballooning deficit, soaring unemployment, a host of broken campaign promises ranging from tax relief for working people to cleaner water to “no child left behind.” The outing of an undercover CIA operative Valeria Plame alone would have been enough to prompt Right-Wing pundits to scream for Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

The New York Times should be ashamed they gave this story prominent position on their website.

Carnivorous cows and vegetarian salmon....

Salmon raised in ocean feedlots, the main source of supply for American consumers, contain such high levels of PCBs, dioxins and other probable cancer-causing chemicals that people should not eat it more than once a month, according to a large-scale study to be reported Friday in the journal Science.

Read all the way to the end of this article and you'll see that the industries who brought you "mad-cow disease" by feeding rendered beef to cattle are now searching for ways to turn carnivorous salmon into vegetarians.

While I think it's a worthy goal to lower dangerously high levels of contaminants in food (the result of feeding processed small fish to farmed salmon), I can't help but worry that turning carnivores into vegetarians could create unforeseen problems in the same way that turning cows into cannibals did.

Among other things this article fails to mention is that farmed salmon are also fed pellets made from rendered beef, chicken, lamb, etc.

Complete story here.

Whatever happened to campaign finance reform...?

Will Bush purchase the office he stole last time?

WASHINGTON — President Bush's reelection campaign raised a record $130 million last year, officials said today, a show of financial muscle aimed at unnerving Bush's Democratic rivals.

The figure eclipsed the $100 million that Bush raised for the 2000 election and was more than triple what former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the top fund-raiser among the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, amassed in 2003.

While the Democrats must spend their money now in pursuit of their party's nomination, Bush, who faces no Republican opposition, entered the year with $99 million in the bank. He can save that money for a big spending blitz once his Democratic opponent is determined.

But the president isn't resting. This week, he raised an estimated $2.8 million at a $2,000-a-ticket St.. Louis fundraiser - the largest amount raised at a single event in Missouri history - and is due to attend fund-raisers in Knoxville, Tenn. and Palm Beach, Fla. on Thursday.

And the money keeps rolling in. Bush is expected to raise a whopping $200 million in the end.

Meanwhile, Gephardt, Kerry and Lieberman continue to sling mud at Dean, and to a lesser extent Clark, making Bush's re-election that much surer. Are the Democrats stark raving mad? Or simply selfish, egotistical, immature and short-sighted?

If democracy is to survive in this country in any form, Bush must be defeated in 2004.

Story here.

More on Republican hypocrisy....


This time on Ed Gillespie and the RNC.

Here.

So who's pandering now...?

When former California Governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill granting undocumented immigrants the right to California drivers' licenses, his opponents in the recall race (including current Governor Arnold Schwarznegger) howled that he was pandering to Latino voters.

I supported Davis' bill and I generally support improving the status and conditions of immigrant workers.

What irks me is the hypocrisy of a Republican Party that lambasts a sitting Democratic governor then turns right around and introduces their 2004 version of the Bracero Program.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — President Bush offered a plan today that he said would help millions of illegal immigrants working in the United States while also making the country more secure and prosperous and living up to its finest ideals.

"By tradition and conviction, our country is a welcoming society," Mr. Bush said at a special ceremony in the White House. "We welcome the talent, the character and the patriotism of immigrant families."

While Mr. Bush said again that he opposed amnesty, which he said would only encourage lawbreaking and perpetuate illegal immigration, his proposals would nonetheless effectively grant a measure of amnesty to illegal immigrants with jobs.

Bush has amply demonstrated in his 3 years in office that he could care less about the plight or rights of immigrant workers. The real reason for this too little too late PR ploy is to (1) garner Latino votes in November, and (2) hopefully score Brownie points in his upcoming meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Complete story here.

A problem to dwarf all others...

While President Bush and his coterie drag their feet, maintaining that global warming is a hoax, time is running out for hundreds of plants and animals.

Hundreds of species of land plants and animals around the globe could vanish or be on the road to extinction over the next 50 years if global warming continues, scientists warn.

The researchers concede that there are many uncertainties in both climate forecasts and the computer models they used. But they said their prediction could come to pass if industrial nations do not curtail emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

[...]

They found that more than one-third of the 1,103 native species they studied could disappear or approach extinction by 2050 as climate change turns plains into deserts or alters forests.

Complete story here.

Why aren't the Democrats jumping on this...?

I know this is old news to those of us who haunt alternative news-sites. But why aren't the Dems going after Bush?!

...George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another attack like the ones which took place on September 11. Yet the record to date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through policies they couldn't have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history: Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to such excellent effect.

Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew.

Complete piece here.

Happy 2004....

May it be the year we kick George W. Bush out of the office he so undeservedly occupies!

Sorry about my absence these past days. I've been packing up and getting ready to move to New York.

That's right! I'm leaving the "Left Coast," as one of my New York contacts is wont to call it, to try my hand again in the Big Apple. And, what is more, to rejoin my sweetie. Long-distance relationships suck!

With luck, depending on the gig I pick up, I'll start posting more regularly on K9 once I settle in.

Lord knows, there's plenty to complain about! What with Dean trailing Bush by only 5 points in the latest Harris poll, the Republican party is running scared that the more than $112 million--raised for the primary alone, in which Bush runs unopposed--won't be enough to beat the Democrats. And we all know that a scared Karl Rove is a man who will stop at nothing.

The latest? They've targeted MoveOn.org regarding two ads entered in a recent contest (here, among other places) . Talk about a non-issue! The ads in question were submitted to an open forum, to be voted on by interested MoveOn members. And guess what: the weren't among the 15 final ads chosen.

Even had they been picked and actually aired on TV, they would have fallen under the category of free speech, still protected by the Constitution. Give the Bush camp another 4 years and that may no longer be true.

So stay tuned in '04 and keep on fighting!