Scotland: stop the war!

Today, Cindy Sheehan and Scottish mothers who have lost their sons in Iraq held a rally outside the Scottish parliament, spoke at a cross-party meeting of Members of the Scottish Parliament, were welcomed to the City of Glasgow by the Lord Provost, and addressed an anti-war rally in Glasgow.  This, plus the trips up to Scotland from London and back took Cindy and Andrew Burgin and me about 16 hours, so we're a wee bit knackered, but we're learning to speak the lingo – and I'm going to run out for fish and chips after posting this.

Thoughts from the heartland

We all have thoughts, most of us have opinions. These are just two of the ways we are all alike. Most division among people is intentional. If thought is the vehicle of opinion and if we choose what to and what not to think about, how reliable can most opinions be?

If you’re anything like me and I know that you are, one of the things you like the least is being lied to. There is plenty of information available across the entire spectrum of the press and electronic media to indicate that ‘a whole lot of lyen’s going on.’

We hear that Afghanistan is secure and stable with only sporadic violence from isolated pockets of the former Talaban and Al Quita elements. When in truth there is daily violence and Afghani civilians and American troops and internationals are still being killed regularly. We hear the good things the Afghani government is doing, when in reality the current government does not and has never controlled any more than thirty- five per cent of the country of Afghanistan.

In Iraq we hear that the ‘liberal press’ never highlights the progress and positive developments that are occurring. The fact is that on the tally

Lethal Lyrics: The machinery to kill fascists

Dylan to English Dictionary, by A.J. Weberman (Dylanologist).
2005. New York: Yippie Museum Press.
560 pages. ISBN: 1-4196-1338-3.
www.booksurge.com
orders@booksurge.com

'Keep on Trashin': Volume 1 of The Free Press Anthology available online!

The introduction and first volume (1970-71) of GOATS IN PRISON: FROM HIPPIES TO HEADLINERS (Being Book One of the Columbus Free Press Papers) is now available as a free Adobe .PDF download at

http://stevenconliff.com

The teaser includes rarely seen documentation of the 1970 Ohio State University riots, like yearbook photos and the incredibly sophisticated proto-simulation (OK, it's a boardgame) "Keep on Trashin'!" which gives the first volume its distinctive title.

Conliff, official spokesman for project editor Zorba the Freak, stated that a prize will be given to whoever spots the most typographical errors before the spring thaw. When asked to specify, he became surly and unresponsive.

For further information:
http://www.freepress.org/dispatches/2005/display/197

We're melting

One wonders what the Wicked Witch of the West must have been thinking in that terrifying moment in the Wizard of Oz after Dorothy doused her with water, when she realized that she was melting and no amount of evil spells was going to change that? With the recent deluge of melting glaciers and warming seas, it seems we residents of planet Earth may be reaching a very similar moment.

Our glaciers are melting at an ever quickening pace and there seems to be little we can do to stop it. According to recent studies, the Helheim glacier, one of the largest in Greenland, is melting at a rate much faster than expected. If it continues, Greenland will likely become much smaller and SEAS COULD RISE AS MUCH AS THREE FEET DURING THIS CENTURY. The accelerated melting is attributable to Greenland's warming temperatures which have risen five degrees Fahrenheit in the last ten years.

One of the most critical side effects of glacial melting is the threat posed to the Gulf Stream which could be shut down by the rising ocean water levels. The Gulf Stream protects Northern Europe from freezing temperatures. THE LAST TIME THE GULF STREAM FAILED, BRITAIN WAS COVERED IN

Rumsfeld’s handshake deal with Saddam: history out of media bounds

Christmas came 11 days early for Donald Rumsfeld two years ago when the news broke that American forces had pulled Saddam Hussein from a spidery hole. During interviews about the capture, on CBS and ABC, the Pentagon’s top man was upbeat. And he didn’t have to deal with a question that Lesley Stahl or Peter Jennings could have logically chosen to ask: “Secretary Rumsfeld, you met with Saddam almost exactly 20 years ago and shook his hand. What kind of guy was he?”

Now, Saddam Hussein has gone on trial, but such questions remain unasked by mainstream U.S. journalists. Rumsfeld met with Hussein in Baghdad on behalf of the Reagan administration, opening up strong diplomatic and military ties that lasted through six more years of Saddam’s murderous brutality.

As it happens, the initial trial of Saddam and co-defendants is focusing on grisly crimes that occurred the year before Rumsfeld gripped his hand. “The first witness, Ahmad Hassan Muhammad, 38, riveted the courtroom with the scenes of torture he witnessed after his arrest in 1982, including a meat grinder with human hair and blood under it,” the New York Times reported on Dec. 6. And: “At one

War on Christmas

Not even to save our lives

On a Thanksgiving visit home two years ago to his family in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Jim Loney tried to explain to his father why he wanted to go to Iraq with Christian Peacemaker Teams.  He told his Dad about a grade school chum, Rick, sent to Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces, who narrowly escaped death from a roadside bomb. 

“If Rick was being asked to risk his life as a soldier then I, as a pacifist Christian who believes that war is not the way to peace, should be prepared to take the same risks,” he recalled trying to reason with his father.

Jim returned from Iraq safely, but on a return trip this year, his father’s worst fears were realized.  On November 26, Jim was taken hostage in Baghdad, along with three CPT colleagues, Harmeet Sooden, also from Canada, Norman Kember, from England, and Tom Fox, from the U.S. 

Millions of people around the world are learning for the first time about these peace warriors.  But what few people know is that CPT members go to conflict zones like Iraq expressly stating that if they are abducted they do not want to be rescued by the military or any violent means.

All the news that's fit to buy

The Bush era has brought a robust simplicity to the business of news management: Where possible, buy journalists to turn out favorable stories. And, as far as hostiles are concerned, if you think you can get away with it, shoot them or blow them up.

As with much else in the Bush era, the novelty lies in the openness with which these strategies have been conducted. Regarding the strategies themselves, there's nothing fundamentally new, both in terms of paid coverage and murder, as the killing in 1948 of CBS reporter George Polk suggests. Polk, found floating in the bay of Salonika after being shot in the head, had become a serious inconvenience to a prime concern of U.S. covert operations at the time, namely the onslaught on Communists in Greece.

Today we have the comical saga of the Pentagon turning to a Washington, D.C.-based subcontractor, the Lincoln Group, to write and translate for distribution to Iraqi news outlets booster stories about the U.S. military's successes in Iraq.

Ashcroft speaks with Reformation Ohio’s Rod Parsley

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft spoke in Columbus at the World Harvest Church, Center for Moral Clarity.

Ashcroft appeared before 1200 “Ohio Pastors & Christian Leaders,” a third of whom are Black. Telling many jokes throughout his short speech, Ashcroft began by giving a brief history. He graduated from Yale in 1964 but began as “a preacher’s kid – raised in church” in Hartford, Connecticut. “I don’t want government hostile to our churches,” he explained, insisting that he is “opposed to passing laws for spirituality.” “It’s against my religion to impose my religion.” He later characterized those who attacked us on 9/11, without naming them, as “want(ing) to impose their religion” on the world.

“I can’t overemphasize the value of energized and motivated pulpits,” Ashcroft continued. “Thou and thy seed – for generations – make a difference.” Several times he urged congregants to “operate at your highest and best” level and to inspire rather than impose on others.

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