Yvonne Garcia sent this speech Robert Byrd made yesterday on the Senate floor, and it felt to me like a felicitous follow-up to what I posted yesterday — both posts are big-scope cries of outrage at the tragic behavior our government is foisting on the world. Yvonne said Byrd “is getting more and more outspoken.” I don't know about “more and more” — see our home page (in a category called, “In Circulation…Not to Miss!”) for a previous Senate speech Byrd made that swept the Net (as I expect this one will, too): Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences. Byrd is the Senator who helps people like me keep our sanity in the face of almost all his colleagues seeming to have lost theirs. I've given you about the last third of the talk here. Click on the title to read the whole thing. Unprovoked Invasion of A Sovereign Nation — Statement delivered on the floor of the U.S. Senate, 5/21/03 …Democracy and Freedom cannot be force fed at the point of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. one has to stop and ponder. How could we have been so impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country so riven with religious, territorial, and tribal rivalries, so suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the galloping materialism which drives the western-style economies? As so many warned this Administration before it launched its misguided war on Iraq, there is evidence that our crack down in Iraq is likely to convince 1,000 new Bin Ladens to plan other horrors of the type we have seen in the past several days. Instead of damaging the terrorists, we have given them new fuel for their fury. We did not complete our mission in Afghanistan because we were so eager to attack Iraq. Now it appears that Al Queda is back with a vengeance. We have returned to orange alert in the U.S., and we may well have destabilized the Mideast region, a region we have never fully understood. We have alienated friends around the globe with our dissembling and our haughty insistence on punishing former friends who may not see things quite our way. The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the window to be replaced by force, unilateralism, and punishment for transgressions. I read most recently with amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our longtime friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our government is berating the new Turkish government for conducting its affairs in accordance with its own Constitution and its democratic institutions. Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this President. This Congress, in what will go down in history as its most unfortunate act, gave away its power to declare war for the foreseeable future and empowered this President to wage war at will. As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked. How long will we occupy Iraq? We have already heard disputes on the numbers of troops which will be needed to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will the occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight answer. How will we afford this long-term massive commitment, fight terrorism at home, address a serious crisis in domestic healthcare, afford behemoth military spending and give away billions in tax cuts amidst a deficit which has climbed to over $340 billion for this year alone? If the President's tax cut passes it will be $400 billion. We cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate. We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be politically costly. But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The American people unfortunately are used to political shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood – – when it comes to wrecking havoc on civilians, on innocent men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie – – not oil, not revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream of a democratic domino theory. And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we see so often of late by the “powers that be” will only keep the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.
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Matrix Busting — from Arianna and from me
I can't stop being aware of how surreal it is that that the world, outside of war zones, is doing business as usual. Of course, don't let a heightened terror threat interfere with your Memorial Day Weekend, cable news cheerily admonished today — just some heads-up that's in order. What is wrong with this picture? The ever colorful Arianna Huffington ventures beyond all politeness here, in her effort to bust the trance we are in, where we participate in this insanity. After Arianna's eloquence, read my latest stab at breaking the reality bubble. If there is a possible way out of our matrix madness, how crazy are we to ignore it? Then, to appreciate some human artistry, have a look at the very excellent satiric videos that Arianna shows on her book tour for Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are Undermining America. A White House Fluent In Language Of Fanatics , by Arianna Huffington, May 21, 2003 Maybe Karl Rove has moved his office into the “Matrix.” Maybe Laurence Fishburne is auditioning for Ari Fleischer's job. Maybe it's all just a bad dream: “The White House Reloaded.” I've been racking my brain, trying to reconcile the ever-widening chasm between what the White House claims to be true and what is actually true. After all, we know the president and his men are not stupid. And despite the tidal wave of misinformation pouring out of their mouths, I don't believe they are consciously lying. The best explanation I can come up with for the growing gap between their rhetoric and reality is that we are being governed by a gang of out and out fanatics. The defining trait of the fanatic — be it a Marxist, a fascist, or, gulp, a Wolfowitz — is the utter refusal to allow anything as piddling as evidence to get in the way of an unshakable belief. Bush and his fellow fanatics are the political equivalent of those yogis who can hold their breath and go without air for hours. Such is their mental control, they can go without truth for, well, years. Because, in their minds, they're always right. Oopso facto. That pretty much sums up the White House m.o. on everything, from the status of al-Qaeda to the condition of post-war Iraq to the magical job-producing virtues of the latest round of tax cuts. Who else but a fanatic would have made the outrageous claim, as the president did last Friday, just four days after the deadly reemergence of al-Qaeda in Riyadh, that “the United States people are more secure, the world is going to be more peaceful”? More peaceful than what? The West Bank? In the weeks before the attacks in Riyadh, the president had repeatedly maintained that “we are winning the war on terror,” and that al-Qaeda was “on the run…slowly, but surely, being decimated.” So he clearly wasn't going to let a little fact like 34 dead bodies — the result of three closely coordinated suicide bomb attacks — change his mind. He was similarly unperturbed by that troubling new report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an influential and non-partisan British think tank — released a day after the Riyadh bombings and three days before the president proclaimed us “more secure” — which found that al-Qaeda was “just as dangerous” and “even harder to identify and neutralize” than it was prior to 9/11. And just 4 hours after the president strapped on his trusty blinders and delivered his rosy vision of a more peaceful world, the tranquility was shattered by the five simultaneous suicide blasts in Casablanca. Oh well, at least we still have the upcoming Jessica Lynch TV movie to make us feel good about ourselves — give or take a few last minute rewrites by the BBC. The president's evidence-be-damned fanaticism is equally apparent when it comes to the state of post-war Iraq. “Life is returning to normal,” he proclaimed just two weeks after the fall of Baghdad. “Things have settled down inside the country.” Really? Just who is preparing his morning briefing papers? Pollyandy Card? Little Condoleezza Sunshine? Did he bother consulting any Iraqis about “normal life” there? Probably not. one of the keys to being a flourishing fanatic is to surround yourself with those of a shared — and equally deluded — mindset. And according to that mindset, the definition of “settling down” can be expanded to include rampant looting, sporadic water and electrical service, hospitals in disastrous condition, outbreaks of cholera and dysentery, streets filled with uncollected garbage and raw sewage, half a dozen ransacked nuclear facilities, missing barrels of radioactive material, growing anti-American sentiment, and disparate ethnic and religious groups arming themselves. No wonder Don Rumsfeld called the media's reporting of all this “an overstatement.” It's just another “normal” weekend at Camp David. And don't bother trying to make the case that everything isn't hunky-dory in Baghdad to rabid acolytes such as Jay Garner. Like the president, the demoted viceroy doesn't care what the facts indicate — to him even a looted and punctured glass can be half-full. “We ought to be beating our chests every day,” he said, dismissing the notion that any of us should feel bad about the problems besetting Iraq. “We ought to look in a mirror and get proud. We ought to stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say, 'Damn, we're Americans.'” That's sure to win us some more goodwill around the world. Hoo-rah, and pass the Kool-Aid, General Jay! And if you think the president is saving his fanaticism only for the international sector, think again. His dogged devotion to selling his latest round of tax cuts for the wealthy as a “jobs creation plan” — despite an avalanche of evidence that it will do nothing of the sort — proves that he can be just as fervent on the home front. “Jobs are on the line,” said Bush after the Senate passed its version of the tax cut. “I call on Congress to resolve their differences quickly so I can sign a bill that will help create jobs, boost take home pay and spur economic growth.” And for those with “…illionaire” as part of their economic description, it probably will. It obviously makes no difference to the president that 10 Nobel Prize winning economists have condemned his tax cuts as “not the answer” to high unemployment, or that a new Congressional Budget Office study found that the “jobs and growth package” will actually have very little effect on long-term growth. Not interested. Not listening. The 1.4 million jobs the White House repeatedly says the tax cuts will create are more a matter of a fanatic's faith than of dispassionate forecasting. The fact is there are now 2.1 million more unemployed Americans than when Bush took office — the vast majority of them having lost their jobs after the president's initial $1.3 trillion tax cut was passed in 2001. Difficult evidence to ignore — unless “ignore the evidence” is your eleventh commandment. A popular definition of insanity is: doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Well, that seems to be the White House theory on the power of tax cuts to produce new jobs: It didn't work before; let's try it again. Welcome to the D.C. Matrix. Me again. I want out. Here is a way: CROP CIRCLES: A Journey Into the Mystery, by me, 5/21/03 Do me a favor. Get a sense that something intelligent is watching you. It's not human. What does that do to you? You can't get it off your mind, right? Where could it be? What's it like? Something has awareness of itself. It can act intentionally — and make designs. Until now, only humans have been self-aware. And the capacity to design has been pointed to as the unmistakable evidence of human behavior. Now, we have relatives of some sort, who keep affecting our matter. Thank God they are friendly. And classy — the aesthetics they demonstrate are of a high order. In fact, it's so mind-blowing to accept this as true that we are in denial. It being so outside our box that we won't even look, just think of the impact it would make if we did. No more mind as we know it would exist. It would be our next turning point — and an even bigger one — after the twin towers changed the world. We are desperate for that level of change now. It would be put us in something bigger than the aggression we are caught up in that so threatens us. We are blind to the noses on our faces. What if there really is salvation to be had? Why not explore the possibility?
ATTENTION: More to the story of Dr. Huda Ammash
This communication, “On the detention of Dr. Huda S. Ammash,” needs to be seen. All that's been in the media points to Dr. Huda Ammash being involved in biological atrocities, when, according to this email I got, her crime was be critical of the U.S. for using biologically hazardous materials in the Gulf War. The ring of truth to this is enhanced by South End Press, which is signatory to it, being a supra admirable source of publications by progressive authors.
One saving grace of the perpetration of such lies by our government is that they aren't subtle. Everybody can see what's going on. It continues to be amazing to me how much people are swallowing without rebelling. But, tides turn fast when some peak is reached. All of a sudden it is too much. Here's an except of a favorite piece of mine, on how photosynthesis works (in my files — can't give you the reference), with a parallel to how accumulated knowledge works to create sudden shifts:
The controlling process in photosynthesis begins at the atomic level, with the nucleus of the atom and its electron ring. Each orbit around the nucleus of an atom has a variety of potential energy levels at which electrons can move and still remain in orbit. If the electrons exceed the energy limits of their orbits, they are forced to leave — to move into an orbit further from the nucleus and therefore an orbit which requires more energy to complete. This movement is the famous quantum leap which we have been using for years to describe an exponential increase in energy required to move from one plane to another. Knowledge, among other things, seems to operate according to this principle — you can acquire vast amounts of knowledge and still remain on the same plane, but there comes a point where the cumulative knowledge in your head — the cumulative creative energy you're trying to deal with — requires a leap into another plane. once you've made that first leap, you realize that, while knowledge is a cumulative process, it is not a progressive phenomenon. You do not move from plane to plane in a smooth, harmonious progression merely by storing up knowledge. You move from level to level, but always within the same orbit or plane, until you reach a point where you can no longer contain the creative energy you have been accumulating and remain within the same plane. So you make the quantum leap. And find yourself starting all over again, gathering energy on another level, always with successive levels above you, levels which are accessible only through the accumulation of vast amounts of knowledge, until once again the leap is within your ability.
—–Original Message—–
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, May 7th, 2003
CONTACT: Alexander Dwinell [alexander@southendpress.org]
On the detention of Dr. Huda S. Ammash
The U.S. publishers of Dr. Huda S. Ammash assert that there may be political motivations for her detention on Monday, May 5 in Baghdad by the U.S. military on allegations that she oversaw Iraq's purported development of biological weapons. Dr. Ammash, Dean of Baghdad University, is the author of “Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanctions,” a peer reviewed research paper published in _Iraq Under Siege_ (South End Press, 2002) an anthology that examined the effects of the Gulf War and sanctions on Iraq.
United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) spokesperson Hiro Ueki has confirmed to South End Press that based on earlier research “UNMOVIC did not single Dr. Ammash out for interviews because UNMOVIC did not have clear evidence to link Dr. Ammash to BW [biological weapons] programs” when visiting Baghdad University on January 13th, 2003.
“We are outraged at the U.S.'s extra-legal detention of Dr. Ammash and its plans to interrogate her. We demand that Dr. Ammash be released immediately,” said co-publisher Alexander Dwinell. “The U.S. government is trying to silence Dr. Ammash's outspoken criticism of the U.S. role in causing cancers and other illnesses in Iraq through its own use of biologically hazardous weapons such as radioactive deleted uranium.”
Dr. Ammash, an environmental biologist and professor at Baghdad University, received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. She has earned international respect for her publications, particularly her documentation of the rise in cancers among Iraqi children and war veterans since the Gulf War. In _Iraq Under Siege_ she writes: “Iraqi death rates have increased significantly, with cancer representing a significant cause of mortality, especially in the south and among children.”
When visited in Baghdad by a group of NGO representatives and former UN officials in January 2003, Dr. Ammash stated: “People here bear every respect for Western people and Western civilization. We respect your technological accomplishments and your values..Yet hatred is being manufactured by some to engineer a clash of civilizations.”
Dr. Ammash's other publications include: “Impact of Gulf War Pollution in the Spread of Infectious Diseases in Iraq,” (Soli Al-Mondo, Rome, 1999), and “Electromagnetic, Chemical, and Microbial Pollution Resulting from War and Embargo, and Its Impact on the Environment and Health,” (Journal of the[Iraqi] Academy of Science, 1997).
South End Press
7 Brookline Street #1, Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 547-4002 Fax: (617) 547-1333
www.southendpress.org
