Barbaro now

War

Why don't we listen to those who know?

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

-- General Douglas MacArthur

Why it's stupid and reckless to attack Iran

I'm really sick over the likelihood that we're going to attack Iran. Today I found an article entitled "This is like Hitler's Suicide Order from the Bunker" by someone who is as distressed as I am about it all. Here's an excerpt:

Iran, meanwhile, poses no immediate threat to the U.S. But it does have a huge, battle-hardened army, much better equipped than Saddam Hussein’s rag-tag troops, and equipped with some very sophisticated weaponry courtesy of Russia and China. Any U.S. forces that went into Iran could expect to take heavy casualties, and could hardly hope to conquer a nation with a population bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined—a population that, unlike Iraq’s—can be expected to rise as one against a US invasion.

Even if Iran is meddling in Iraq, it hardly seems like attacking that country is likely to put a halt to that kind of thing. Indeed, attacking Iran would be more likely to lead to an escalation of Iranian efforts to hobble U.S. forces in Iraq—something Tehran could easily do through its Iraqi Shia allies.

Nor would attacking Iran put an end to that nation’s nuclear program, which is spread out, carefully hidden, and in many cases located in underground bunkers. Nuclear experts agree that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would only slow down its efforts, not end them, and moreover, would encourage the country to redouble its efforts to get the Bomb and achieve the kind of protection against future attack that countries with the bomb have.

Then there are the economic implications. Oil prices would go through the roof - maybe enough to cause a worldwide depression.

Sometimes, I really think that Bush is not only stupid but quite mad.

Peace prize nomination

Al Gore

Well, take a look at this from CNN:

OSLO, Norway (AP) -- Former Vice President Al Gore has been nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday.

"A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference," Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told The Associated Press.

Brende said he joined political opponent Heidi Soerensen, of the Socialist Left Party, to nominate Gore as well as Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier before the nomination deadline expired Thursday.

"Al Gore, like no other, has put climate change on the agenda. Gore uses his position to get politicians to understand, while Sheila (Watt-Cloutier) works from the ground up," Brende said.

During eight years as Bill Clinton's vice president, Gore pushed for climate measures, including for the Kyoto Treaty, and after leaving office in 2001 has campaigned worldwide, especially with his Oscar-nominated documentary on climate change called "An Inconvenient Truth."

I hope he gets it. We need attention called to this issue more than any other. Our survival as a species depends on it.

The future of humanity

Sobering:

Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Truth and meaning, science and religion; but we still cannot figure out how to get the two of them together in a fashion that both find acceptable... if some sort of reconciliation between science and religion is not forthcoming, the future of humanity is, at best, precarious.

-- Ken Wilber

About habeas corpus

There's an article you really need to read over on Common Dreams. It's called "What is Habeas Corpus?" and it explains just how sinister is the assertion (by Gonzales) that the Constitution does not grant the right of habeas corpus. Take a look:

Under Habeas Corpus, you have the right to say, I want to be brought into the court to determine if I am the right person charged, if there’s an actual law prohibiting what I’m charged with, if the people who are holding me have the jurisdiction to do so, and I want that publicly known and I want the right to dispute all of that and the right to be tried too.

Without Habeas Corpus you can be swept up off the street and never heard from again. Period. Nobody has to know. Nobody – including yourself – has to know why. Nobody gets to determine if there is a law against what you’re charged with. You have no rights at all.

In America, the Constitution forbids taking habeas corpus away from you (except “in case of rebellion or invasion the public safety shall require it.”) It was written that way because the right of habeas corpus was a basic right even under the King of England. It was the most basic check on a king’s tyranny. It was assumed.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales now asserts something he thinks is very tricky and clever. What if you never had such a right? Then not giving you the right of Habeas Corpus would not be taking it away. That would allow his president to order someone snatched up off the street, or from their homes, and then anything could be done to them. Prison for life. Tortured. Killed. Sent to another country. And nobody would even have the right to ask if our government imprisoned that person. Or why. Or if it was the right person.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be arrested and not be told why and not have access to a lawyer and not be able to let your family know? That you have no such rights is now what the Bush administration is asserting.

Iran

I logged on to Common Dreams a few minutes ago and there I found three articles among today's postings about the seeming inevitability of the US attacking Iran. One is called "Iran Clock is Ticking" and another is "Bush 'Spoiling for a Fight' with Iran". The one I want to quote is from the Guardian and is entitled "Europeans Fear US Attack on Iran as Nuclear Row Intensifies":

Senior European policy-makers are increasingly worried that the US administration will resort to air strikes against Iran to try to destroy its suspect nuclear programme.

As transatlantic friction over how to deal with the Iranian impasse intensifies, there are fears in European capitals that the nuclear crisis could come to a head this year because of US frustration with Russian stalling tactics at the UN security council. "The clock is ticking," said one European official. "Military action has come back on to the table more seriously than before. The language in the US has changed."

As the Americans continue their biggest naval build-up in the Gulf since the start of the Iraq war four years ago, a transatlantic rift is opening up on several important aspects of the Iran dispute.
...
The Americans and Europeans have sought to maintain a common front on the nuclear issue for the past 30 months, with the European troika of Britain, France and Germany running failed negotiations with the Iranians and the Americans tacitly supporting them.

But diplomats in Brussels and those dealing with the dispute in Vienna say a fissure has opened up between the US and western Europe on three crucial aspects - the military option; how and how quickly to hit Iran with economic sanctions already decreed by the UN security council; and how to deal with Russian opposition to action against Iran through the security council.

"There's anxiety everywhere you turn," said a diplomat familiar with the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

And here's a very disturbing report:

A US navy battle group of seven vessels was steaming towards the Gulf yesterday from the Red Sea, part of a deployment of 50 US ships, including two aircraft carriers, expected in the area in weeks.

The most worrying part, of course, is the likelihood that Bush will decided to use nuclear weapons against Iran. He has hinted very pointedly that he wants to do so. Heaven help the world if that monster is unleashed once again.

About light bulbs

I've blogged several times before about a painless way for us to reduce our carbon footprint and that is to switch from incandescent to compact florescent light bulbs. Now here's an article about a movement to ban incandescent bulbs. I think it's a good idea. The article is called "California may ban conventional lightbulbs by 2012" and here's part of what it says:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California lawmaker wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs as part of California's groundbreaking initiatives to reduce energy use and greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

The "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act" would ban incandescent lightbulbs by 2012 in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

"Incandescent lightbulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications," California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine said on Tuesday.

"Meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about 5 percent of the energy they receive into light."

Levine is expected to introduce the legislation this week, his office said.

If passed, it would be another pioneering environmental effort in California, the most populous U.S. state. It became the first state to mandate cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, targeting a 25 percent reduction in emissions by 2020.

Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) use about 25 percent of the energy of conventional lightbulbs.

I have changed all the bulbs in my office to CFLs with only one exception (and that is a decorative, multi-colored 40 watt bulb). About half the bulbs now in my home are CFLs. As bulbs burn out, I replace them with compact florescents. I'm very happy with the light quality and I have seen a reduction in my electric bill.

Deceit about global warming

Wow. You've got to look at this CNN headline: "Chairman: Bush officials misled public on global warming". I sincerely hope there is outrage about this. Take a look at part of what the article says:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Democratic chairman of a House panel examining the government's response to climate change said Tuesday there is evidence that senior Bush administration officials sought repeatedly "to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming."

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, said he and the top Republican on his oversight committee, Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, have sought documents from the administration on climate policy, but repeatedly been rebuffed.

"The committee isn't trying to obtain state secrets or documents that could affect our immediate national security," said Waxman, opening the hearing. "We are simply seeking answers to whether the White House's political staff is inappropriately censoring impartial government scientists."

"We know that the White House possesses documents that contain evidence of an attempt by senior administration officials to mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming and minimize the potential danger," Waxman said.
...
Two private advocacy groups, meanwhile, presented to the panel a survey of government climate scientists showing that many of them say they have been
subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the threat of global warming.

The groups presented a survey that shows two in five of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to "global warming" or "climate change" from a report.
...
The groups report described largely anonymous claims by scientists that their findings at times at been misrepresented, that they had been pressured to change findings and had been restricted on what they were allowed to say publicly.

I'm sure there's a special place reserved in hell for those who knowingly and willfully deceive the public in this way about the very survival of our species. Simply unbelievable. And, by now, you know my stock question on this matter: Do the conservatives not think that their children and grandchildren will have to live and die with the consequences of catastrophic climate change too? What are they thinking?

Message to Bush

This is from Saturday's anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. Very clever, don't you think?

(Hat tip to Watertiger at Dependable Renegade.)

The real enemy

From the movie, Crimson Tide:

Hunter: In a nuclear world, the real enemy can't be destroyed.
Ramsey: Attention on deck, Von Clausewitz will now tell us who the real enemy is. Von?
Hunter: In my humble opinion, in the nuclear world, the real enemy is war itself.

Attacking Iran

Here's a disturbing article entitled "America ‘Poised to Strike at Iran’s Nuclear Sites’ from Bases in Bulgaria and Romania" from the Sunday Herald - a Scottish newspaper. Take a look:

President Bush is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of April and the US Air Force's new bases in Bulgaria and Romania would be used as back-up in the onslaught, according to an official report from Sofia.

"American forces could be using their two USAF bases in Bulgaria and one at Romania's Black Sea coast to launch an attack on Iran in April," the Bulgarian news agency Novinite said.

The American build-up along the Black Sea, coupled with the recent positioning of two US aircraft carrier battle groups off the Straits of Hormuz, appears to indicate president Bush has run out of patience with Tehran's nuclear misrepresentation and non-compliance with the UN Security Council's resolution. President Ahmeninejad of Iran has further ratcheted up tension in the region by putting on show his newly purchased state of the art Russian TOR-Ml anti-missile defence system.
...
Sofia's news of advanced war preparations along the Black Sea is backed up by some chilling details. One is the setting up of new refuelling places for US Stealth bombers, which would spearhead an attack on Iran. "The USAF's positioning of vital refuelling facilities for its B-2 bombers in unusual places, including Bulgaria, falls within the perspective of such an attack." Novinite named Colonel Sam Gardiner, "a US secret service officer stationed in Bulgaria", as the source of this revelation.

Just go read the whole article if you want more details. Very disturbing and worrying.

"Only humans should suffer..."

Barbaro

I want to call your attention to an article called "Only Humans Should Suffer: The End-of-Life Double Standard" by Mary Shaw. Shaw tells us of the race horse, Barbaro, who was euthanized after suffering from a leg injury that could not be healed and then makes this point:

With his Kentucky Derby win, Barbaro became no less a Philly sports hero than Eagle Donovan McNabb. But there's one big difference: If a football player (or your uncle Joe) were to suffer a terminal injury that left him dying a slow death in constant excruciating pain that even modern medicine could not control, he would just have to suffer.

As of this writing, Oregon is the only state in the U.S. that allows physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients in pain who want to die with dignity on their own terms. Efforts to pass similar legislation in other states have failed, due in no small part to challenges by those who confuse a "culture of life" with a culture of forced suffering.
...
In addition to Oregon, physician-assisted suicide is currently legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland. Everywhere else, the terminally ill are forced to endure sometimes horrific pain at the end of life, or end their misery with a plastic bag, a noose, or some other undignified means. And those sad, desperate acts will continue as long as so-called "pro-life" factions keep fighting attempts to widen the acceptance of physician-assisted suicide and provide more people with the power to choose a comfortable death over a horrible, lingering, painful one.

What it boils down to is this: While life is precious and should not be thrown away lightly, modern medical science cannot yet provide adequate pain control in all dying patients, even in the best hospices.
...
So why do we treat our dying animals with more mercy than we give our dying people?

Why, indeed? I do not want my animals to suffer at the end of their lives and I will do the right thing by them when their time comes. But who will put me out of my misery when my time comes? A caring, compassionate society will provide for physician assisted suicide. But our society is rigid, judgmental and punitive.

The Bush Diaries

I have just found the most interesting new blog. It's called The Bush Diaries and here is its description:

A daily, somewhat irreverent and highly personal "conversation" with President George W. Bush about national and international news; but also about issues of broad cultural interest.

Here's an excerpt from today's posting:

I only hope you had as profitable a weekend as I did, Bush. Three days (almost) of (almost) total silence. Can you imagine anything more beautiful? This, nestled in among the snow-blanketed hills of New Mexico, just a little south od Santa Fe. It was cold at nght, I promise you. And the meditation sits sometimes seemed long: an hour in the morning, and three consecutive hours in the afternoon interspersed with two half-hour periods of meditative walking. Sometimes, too, the hour seemed unbelievably short. It depends, of course, on what the mind is doing. If it's busy fighting the whole thing, as mine sometimes does, then the hour gets interminable: I sit there wondering what I'm doing there and when it's going to end. When the mind's at rest, observant and attentive and the breath flows smoothly, the hour flies by.

It would have been great to have you there with us, Bush. Our teacher--a Thai Forest monk who normally studiously eschews politics in his teaching--relayed the joke that the voice of God had been revealed to be actually your Cheney on the intercom, and that no one had yet figured out a way to tell you. Had you been with us, though, I believe you would have been much moved by his teachings on goodwill, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity. Such great wisdom in the Buddha's teachings, much of it not at all inconsistent with the teachings of your Jesus but with the added benefit, for me, in not needing to believe in any God--or gods. The notion that happiness is possible for human beings to achieve, if only they manage to let go their cravings, is an attractive one; and the breath meditation is a wonderful way to release those cravings, if only for one moment at a time.

Would Bush really have been moved by a teaching on the Four Divine Abodes? I don't know. Maybe the blog author was being snide in a subtle kind of way.

In an earlier posting, the blog author talks about taking his dog to the vet and the excellence of the medical care his dog received. Then he has this to say:

Coincidentally, though, both Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert chose to write about health care insurance yesterday. For humans, of course. Krugamn was deploring your latest let-them-eat-cake approach to solve the growing problem of the unavailability of health insurance for those most in need ot it: the poor, who can't afford it; and those who are already sick, and excluded from coverage by insurance companies who are in it for the profit and are disinclined to cover those who might actually cost them money. Your proposal for providing tax deductions for those probably too poor to be paying taxes anyway is absurd to the point of cruelty. And your "incentives" do nothing for those who are rejected from the system in advance. Herbert highlights the growing problem of those reduced to using credit card debt to cover essential health care costs.

I'm glad that Hillary Clinton put this out at the top of her agenda, and I hope that it will become a central topic in the coming campaign. "Coming"! It's already in high gear. But no matter how much the political hopefuls talk, there will still be people out there for the next couple of years facing life-and-death medical decisions in a system designed to benefit the insurance companies rather than the sick. I've talked about this national disgrace in the past, Bush. I understand you plan to talk about it tonight. If you say what Paul Krugman suggests you're going to say, your proposal is lamentably lacking in the "compassion" you once touted to convince the American people that you were the right man for that job that you hold onto with increasing futility and desperation.

The insurance situation in the country is deplorable beyond expression. I wonder if we can even hope that anything will be done about it anytime soon.

A real pity

I just discovered an interesting article on the CNN website. It's called "Cats lose visiting privileges at women's prison". Here's part of what it says:

WINDSOR, Vermont (AP) -- At the Southeast State Correctional Facility, inmates are subjected to head counts several times a day. But not Ziggy, Marmalade, Smokey and Shane -- they come and go as they please.

They're prison cats -- but only for now. They are being involuntarily paroled by the new superintendent of Vermont's largest women's prison, to the chagrin of inmates who feed them, pay for their care and cherish them.

"It is not a physical plant that is conducive to a pet program," said Superintendent Anita Carbonell. "I know a lot of the inmates consider them pets, but they aren't really."

Cats have been fixtures at the farm-turned-prison since the 1980s, sleeping in warm garages and nooks and crannies on the 22-building campus and keeping it mouse-free. The number fluctuated as the prison became a dumping ground for unwanted felines and they found their way under fences, into barns and into the hearts of inmates.

Caring for cats "teaches empathy, teaches responsibility, teaches compassion and it's a great educational tool," said Sue Skaskiw, director of Vermont Volunteer Services for Animals Humane Society. "These women have taken on these animals. To take them away is unnecessary and insensitive to their situation."

There is another side to this, of course:

But the cats have caused problems, too.

Inmates have been scratched, and some are allergic to cats, or just don't like them. Recently, an inmate used a cigarette lighter to burn the fur off one of them. That cat has since recovered and is now living with a staff member.

"They see the benefits, they see the therapeutic part of the animals, but they don't ever see the cost or they don't ever see what happens when things go wrong," said Correctional Officer Mark McGuire.

Carbonell said the cats are inconsistent with the mission of the facility, which is to help the women shake their addictions, learn to control their tempers and get educations.

Well, my take on it is that caring for animals will actually improve the effectiveness of that mission although I would never want to see animals at risk for abuse. And how are they going to keep the mouse population down?

New bumper stickers

Sent to me by Charlotte Alexandre:

That's OK, I Wasn't Using My Civil Liberties Anyway

Let's Fix Democracy in This Country First

Of Course It Hurts: You're Getting Screwed by an Elephant

G.W. Bush: Creating the Terrorists Our Kids Will Have to Fight

One Nation, Under Surveillance

Whose God Do You Kill For?

Jail to the Chief

No, Seriously, Why Did We Invade Iraq?

Bush: God's Way of Proving Intelligent Design is Full of Crap

We Need a President Who's Fluent In At Least One Language

We're Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them

Is It Vietnam Yet?

You Elected Him. You Deserve Him.

Impeach Cheney First

Pray For Impeachment

The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century

What Part of "Bush Lied" Don't You Understand?

2004: Embarrassed; 2005: Horrified; 2006: Terrified

At Least Nixon Resigned

Signs at the protest

A commenter on one of the blogs I frequent noticed these signs at yesterday's protest:

“Women tell Bush, Pull Out Now!”

“Draft All Republicans First!”

“Bush; so full of shit it won’t fit on this sign!”

“The Rapture is not an exit strategy”

“You Can’t Pray a Lie”

“Fag Hags For Peace!”

“God Told Me to Impeach Bush!”

Good huh? (I love the last one!)

Yesterday's protest

Here's the latest CNN QuickVote. Sad:

Will Saturday's protest in Washington have any effect on President Bush's Iraq war policy?

Yes - 8%

No - 92%

A "conservative document"

I want to share with you an article from about a week ago (in the section of the Guardian known as The Observer) but I've just now discovered it. It's called "Global warming: the final verdict" and is subtitled "A study by the world's leading experts says global warming will happen faster and be more devastating than previously thought." Here are a couple of excerpts:

Global warming is destined to have a far more destructive and earlier impact than previously estimated, the most authoritative report yet produced on climate change will warn next week.

A draft copy of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by The Observer, shows the frequency of devastating storms - like the ones that battered Britain last week - will increase dramatically. Sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.

The impact will be catastrophic, forcing hundreds of millions of people to flee their devastated homelands, particularly in tropical, low-lying areas, while creating waves of immigrants whose movements will strain the economies of even the most affluent countries.

'The really chilling thing about the IPCC report is that it is the work of several thousand climate experts who have widely differing views about how greenhouse gases will have their effect. Some think they will have a major impact, others a lesser role. Each paragraph of this report was therefore argued over and scrutinised intensely. Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process. This is a very conservative document - that's what makes it so scary,' said one senior UK climate expert.
...
The report reflects climate scientists' growing fears that Earth is nearing the stage when carbon dioxide rises will bring irreversible change to the planet. 'We are seeing vast sections of Antarctic ice disappearing at an alarming rate,' said climate expert Chris Rapley, in a phone call to The Observer from the Antarctic Peninsula last week. 'That means we can expect to see sea levels rise at about a metre a century from now on - and that will have devastating consequences.'

However, there is still hope, said Peter Cox of Exeter University. 'We are like alcoholics who have got as far as admitting there is a problem. It is a start. Now we have got to start drying out - which means reducing our carbon output.'

Yes, we are dealing with a bona fide addiction here. But it's going to take a collective realization that we have a problem. And I don't know if we've reached the critical mass yet.