Entries from March 2004 ↓
March 29th, 2004 — impolite company
In today’s New York Times, an article entitled G.I.’s Padlock Baghdad Paper Accused of Lies is so easy a target.
American soldiers shut down a popular Baghdad newspaper on Sunday and tightened chains across the doors after the occupation authorities accused it of printing lies that incited violence.
It’s good we’re teaching the Iraqi’s about democracy. When will the GIs be shutting down all the US papers which printed George Bush’s lies which incited the violence in Iraq? Start with the Times itself, which still allows Judith Miller the opportunity to spew her bullshit. Oh — wait — she’s spewing war-mongering Republican-approved bullshit… that’s a different story.
March 24th, 2004 — brain-candy
I’ve spent a couple of days now trying to sum up my thoughts on the Iraq disaster, pulling together dozens of links and quotes as I am wont to do. But the topic is so big and so ugly that I’ve gotten bogged down in the details. Luckily for me, someone else has already written the piece I meant to write — and much better than I would’ve. Over at Lotus – Surviving a Dark Time, Whoviating has a thorough and clear-eyed summary of the Year of War.
He even answers that question — that showstopper question I’m asked nearly every time I voice my opposition to the war: “Would you prefer if Saddam Hussein was still in power?” Each time I’m asked, I fall into that reflexive, politically correct answer which leaves me feeling weak and full of self-disgust: “Of course it’s better that we took him out, but…” Whoviating doesn’t give in, though. He says:
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant that the increased hatred, the increased violence, the increased terrorism, which we have spawned was still unborn.
Yes! I would be happier if Saddam Hussein was still in power if it meant we valued justice over jingoism.
The simple fact is, the war on Iraq was not about our security and safety, it was about our power and privilege. There is a vast chasm, both practical and ethical, between those paired premises – and we as a nation have been on the wrong side. And frankly, yes! I would be happier, I would feel more hopeful for the future of the world and all its peoples – including those of Iraq – if Saddam Hussein still being in power meant that was not true.
Go read the whole thing.
March 24th, 2004 — the web-wide world
From today’s New York Times:
Drug Company With No Products Raises $250 Million. Jazz Pharmaceuticals, a year-old company with no products on the market, said yesterday that it had raised $250 million from private investors, apparently a record amount for a second round of venture capital financing in biotechnology.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company is the main culprit in this one, as they have been in so many previous stampedes: junk bonds & LBOs in the 80s, Silicon Alley in the 90s. Their bubbles may have burst on those ventures, but… this is their first foray into pharmaceuticals and they may have found an industry that — until we see national health care — is wide open.
March 22nd, 2004 — impolite company
From this morning’s Times, an article entitled, “The Issues: Bush Aide Sees $1 Trillion Gap in Kerry’s Plans”
Mr. Mehlman said Republicans would spend this week aggressively seeking to define Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, as economically irresponsible.
Do these guys ever look in a mirror? Do they even own a mirror? A huge surplus turned into deficits as far as the eye can see, deliberate lies about the costs of the Medicare “reform” program, budgets which conveniently assume zero costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and they want to paint Kerry as “economically irresponsible”? Luckily, the presumed nominee isn’t taking Bush’s lies lying down:
“George Bush has been the steward of the worst economy since the Great Depression, and now he is hypocritically criticizing John Kerry for his efforts to put the nation back on track,” Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Kerry’s spokeswoman, said in a statement. “His fiscal recklessness and overspending have wasted $10 trillion dollars, putting the nation into record deficits, forcing states to raise tuition and taxes, and leaving future generations with higher costs and debts for decades to come.”
March 11th, 2004 — brain-candy
My aunt is a forwarder — one of those folks who considers her in-box as just a brief resting place for messages before they are sent out again to everyone she knows. She sends the occasional joke or funny story about kids’ malapropisms on history tests (“Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.”) She passes along every internet-based rumor, even though I’ve sent her the address of Snopes at least a dozen times. But mainly, her messages are Jewish in nature.
It’s not always the kind of Jewish posts I agree with — her unwavering support for Israel is typical for her generation and her disparagement of anyone Arab or Muslim upsets me — but she’s my aunt, and so I find myself compelled to read everything she forwards on.
Today’s forward was pretty interesting. It was a Saturday sermon by Rabbi Alan Lucas of Temple Beth Sholom in Roslyn, New York. Rabbi Lucas was responding to a question voiced by many of his congregation: “Should a Jew Go See ‘The Passion of the Christ’?” Rabbi Lucas’ answer was, “No, I don’t think you should.” He continues:
But any of you who have ever asked a rabbi a question about anything know that you are not going to get off that easy – not with just a one word answer! The answer needs and deserves some elaboration and it raises other questions which demand answers as well.
He relates his trip to the movie with another Rabbi and three priests — an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian and a Greek Orthodox. In an essay that is lacking in the vitriol which this movie has frequently engendered, Rabbi Lucas discusses his impressions of the film and his understanding of the film’s meaning. What he comes away with is this:
As one Christian scholar noted: “If your theology is blood, and you’re washed clean in the blood, than the more blood and suffering the better because the more salvation there is in it. If that is your theology, the more stripes, the more you are healed.” For Mel Gibson, unrelenting violence is redemptive. As a Jew I cannot fathom this belief.
When Christians speak of a God of love – I can relate. When Christians speak of a God of forgiveness – I understand. But this God is not one that I can relate to, not even remotely.
I have no plans to see the movie in the theater. I do not believe that I have become desensitized enough to extreme violence and glorified torture that I could sit and watch such brutality at larger-than-life sizes. I’ll wait for it to come to video. Meanwhile, I can’t help thinking that, even as a non-practicing Jew, the religion I grew up with is written all over my psyche. It’s a different way of looking at things, I guess — not any more right or wrong than any other way. It’s summed up very nicely in a sentence near the end of Rabbi Lucas’ sermon. He says:
In Mel Gibson’s movie, man suffers when God dies; in our passion, God suffers when man dies. For us there is no celebration in death. Ours is a very different passion…
March 10th, 2004 — impolite company
Intervention Magazine has an interview today with an anonymous soldier who is by no means a supporter of this president and his policies. In the middle of the interview comes this exchange:
What did you think about President Bush’s Thanksgiving visit to Iraq?
I was there when President Bush came to the [Baghdad] airport. The day before, you had to fill out a questionnaire and answer questions, that would determine whether they would allow you in the room with the President.
What was on the questionnaire?
“Do you support the president?”
Really!
Yes.
Members of the military were asked whether they support the president politically?
Yes. And if the answer was not a gung-ho, A-1, 100 percent yes, then you were not allowed into the cafeteria. You were not allowed to eat the Thanksgiving meal that day. You had an MRE.
What’s an MRE?
Meals ready to eat. We also call them “meals refused by Ethiopians.”
So, even among his own troops, the Commander-in-Chief has to pre-screen his soldiers to avoid any encounter with political opposition.
This unknown soldier may have missed out on the turkey photo-op, but at least he knows that his MRE wasn’t taking the food off anyone else’s plate. The same can’t be said for those soldiers who passed the political litmus test and got to dine with the surprise guest.
It seems that Event Source, one of Halliburton’s sub-contractors may have to stop serving hot meals to troops in Iraq because they haven’t been paid by Halliburton. Event Source claims
…Halliburton owes it $87 million, including payment for President Bush’s Thanksgiving dinner with the troops.
“When you get stuck out there for $87 million,” explains Event Source Chief Executive Officer Phil Morrell, “it’s a question of economics.”
In an interview with NBC News, Morrell says he’s already laid off employees in the United States and soon will have to feed sandwiches to the troops, instead of hot meals, because his company is running low on money.
