Hardly a day goes by when you don’t hear yet another Republican claiming that the “surge” is working in Iraq. And see here and here.

If the surge is really working, let’s see daily videotape showing Western reporters strolling freely through Baghdad’s neighborhoods, outside of the Green Zone, chatting with Iraqis.   Better yet, let’s celebrate the “surge” by having a parade in downtown Baghdad. Perhaps George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice and John McCain can lead the parade.  Let’s count the number of McDonald’s in Iraq.  Let’s consider the number of Westerners going to Iraq for vacations.  Consider, also, that strong-arming the Iraqi government to build 58 permanent military bases in Iraq. That’s our long term “solution.”  Isn’t that like saying domestic violence is a “solution” in an abusive relationship?

More important, let’s count the number of Iraqis who have been permanently displaced.  If the surge is working, why are so many Iraqis still living in places like Syria?  Consider this report from DemocracyNow:

Refugees International estimates that up to five million Iraqis have been displaced since 2003. That’s one-in-five Iraqis who have had to flee their homes since the US-led invasion of their country. Two-and-a-half million Iraqis have been internally displaced, and an equal number have managed to leave the country to Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, the Gulf States and, most of all, Syria, which hosts 1.5 million Iraqis.

Consider, too, how the “surge” is working. You won’t see this in the American corporate press.  You’ll hear a host of lies, including lies from the mouth of John McCain.

American citizens are now being conned about the “surge” just like they were conned about WMD.  Here’s the truth about the “surge.”  If we dared to freely publish photos from Iraq for only one week, that “war” would be over and the American soldiers would be on their way home.

In 1964, Rudolph Dreikurs wrote a child psychology book that is still considered a classic by child psychologist: Children: the Challenge. Dreikurs argued that using punishments to change behavior is inefficient.

No amount of punishment will bring about lasting submission. Confused and bewildered parents mistakenly hope that punishment will eventually bring results, without realizing that they are actually getting nowhere with their methods or, at best, they gain only temporary results from punishment. When the same punishment has to be repeated again and again, it should be obvious that it does not work. The use of punishment only helps the child to develop greater power of resistance in defiance.

Dreikurs argued that the authoritative idea of using punishment needs to be replaced with a sense of mutual respect and cooperation. Children need real leadership. “A good leader inspires and stimulates his followers into action that suits the situation.” It is important to arrange the learning situation such that a child learns “without a show of power, for power insights rebellion and defeats the purpose of child-raising.”

Dreikurs also cautions parents about using rewards:

The system of rewarding children for good behavior is as detrimental to their outlook as a system of punishment. The same lack of respect is shown. We “reward” our inferiors for favors or for good deeds. In a system of mutual respect among equals, a job is done because it needs doing, and the satisfaction, for the harmony of two people doing a job together…. satisfaction comes from a sense of contribution and participation-a sense actually denied to our children in our present system of rewarding them with material things. And our mistaken efforts to win cooperation through rewards, we are actually denying our children the basic satisfactions of living.

Since neither reward nor punishment is effective, what does Dreikurs suggest? He suggests using an approach he terms “natural consequences.”

Natural consequences” represent the pressure of reality without any specific action by parents and are always effective … What would be the natural consequence of forgetting one’s lunch? One would go hungry…. the idea of letting a child go hungry is horrifying to many parents. Actually, it is unpleasant to be hungry. But one missed lunch now and then is not going to cause bodily harm, and the discomfort may be effective in stimulating [the child] to remember to take his lunch with him…. we do not have the right to assume the responsibilities of her children, nor do we have the right to take the consequences of their acts. These belong to them.

I agree with Dreikurs. As a parent, I have become tuned to the existence of many styles of parenting. I have come to learn that rewards and punishments do not create responsible children. Instead, they create extended co-dependencies.

As I read Dreikurs book, I was reminded that our government constantly tries to regulate behavior through the inefficient methods of rewards and punishments, resulting in the same problems that result in a household that utilizes these approaches.

Our government has also evolved to do something far more insidious: hiding natural consequences from the citizens. Take Iraq, as one example. We don’t see caskets of our soldiers. We don’t see the mayhem still occurring in Iraq. The United States government and the corporate media work hard to protect us from these terrible images. This lack of information means that the citizens are protected from knowing the “natural consequences” of funding military action in Iraq.

We have been protected from knowing hundreds of other important things, as well, including government spying and government doctoring of scientific reports. The government, aided by an over-consolidated corporate media work hard to pump out lots of news and ads that hypnotize us to believe that the best way to be happy is to buy expensive things we don’t need. We are encouraged to over-consume, over-spend and over-trust the government. If you don’t believe me, pick up any episode of your daily “news”-paper or watch any episode of your local “news.” As a result of the lack of good information, we are now facing multiple terrifying economic, energy and environmental crises. We have been protected from the natural consequences and, therefore, we don’t know enough to change our ways. (more…)

The list has grown too long to ignore.  We are a country that exercises almost no foresight.  We wait for disasters to occur and only then (if then) does it occur to us to do something about the problem.

Here’s an especially heinous example: our government hires numerous financial experts, of course.  Alan Greenspan was one of them.  Why couldn’t any of them see the subprime disaster long before it occurred?  Instead, our government’s experts allowed unscrupulous mortgage companies to lend out far too much money to homeowners in the form of “exploding ARMs” such that it was entirely predictable that the borrowers would fall behind on their payments after only a few years, and that many would lose their homes through foreclosure.  Our government stood by while these loans were hyper-securitized to the point where the unscrupulous mortgage companies would go belly up, tranch-laden real estate trusts (who ultimately purchased the loans) would throw their hands and claim that they were innocent and Wall Street would laugh all the way to the bank.  That is, until Wall Street failed and successfully begged the federal government to bail out Bear Stearns.  All of this was entirely foreseeable.  The real disaster is that we failed to use our brains.

For another example, think of the Minnesota Bridge collapse. Let’s see… what might happen if you don’t allocate proper federal funding to fund sufficient bridge inspections?  Of course, it’s only after a huge bridge collapses or a major levee breaks that we start thinking about the resulting disasters here in America.

Do you want another example?  There are hundreds.

Remember when our president manufactured the need to go to war and all of the allegedly patriotic people (including many of your neighbors and friends, I’m sure) imposed group-think upon each other?  Voices trying to raise important concerns and objections were muzzled in the name of “freedom.”  What were we thinking?  That we were better off to parrot the President?  What we got is what we deserved: the low point was when Colin Powell lied to the American people, who patriotically nodded affirmatively, encouraged by their patriotic daily newspapers from coast to coast.  In retrospect, who couldn’t see that this type of “patriotic” group-think behavior would endanger our democracy?

Who couldn’t end see the problem with electing, as President of the United States, a man who lied about his military service and who had failed miserably in almost everything he had ever attempted, repeatedly covered up by his family?  What would you expect if you elected such a person to be president?  Why couldn’t we see all of this coming?

And look how we conduct “debates” to evaluate the next president.  They are largely substanceless and xenophobic, relying on soundbites and concocted personal attacks.  Why is it so hard to see that this is a terrible way to evaluate a President?

And why can’t we see that allowing large corporations to pour their money into the coffers of politicians will cause our politicians to do corporate bidding rather than responding to the needs of citizens?  Why is this so hard to anticipate or understand?  The fact that this legalized bribery goes on should be the front page headline in almost every newspaper almost every day. (more…)

It’s the political season and there are a lot of bad arguments being made these days. There are plenty of non sequiturs, red herrings, ad hominem attacks and ex hominem attacks. It is the season when we vividly see that there is no such thing as pure reason. Instead, cognition is always infused with emotion (as Antonio Demasio described in his excellent work, Descartes’s Error).

This is also the season of unrelenting rhetorical tricks. One of the most common rhetorical tricks is the constant misuse of the word “because.” Simply uttering the word “because” tends to convince people that you are correct and logical even when you have said nothing meaningful at all. The great power of the word “because” has been demonstrated in a classic experiment involving a stooge trying to butt in line at a library copy machine. I discussed that experiment at a post that I entitled “Just Because.” I highly recommend a quick review of that psychology experiment before proceeding.

Considering the persuasive power of the word “because” reminded me of a special day in sixth grade, back in the late 1960s. This is a true story. I went to All Souls Grade School, a Catholic grade school in Overland Missouri. It was a school where boys wore pants and girls wore dresses (Catholic school girl’s uniforms, to be precise). A few times a year, one of the parish priests would drop by to teach religion to the students (we were usually taught by nuns). One of the parish priests at All Souls was an energetic, articulate and likable young man named Father Wilkins.

In order to convey the proper emotion of this story, I need to emphasize that the children in the sixth grade class were all starting to get laced with sex hormones, compliments of our maturing bodies. We were 12 and 13-year-olds. We were all fascinated with sex, but no one talked straight about sex back then (remember, this was back in the 1960s). It was a land of half-truths and outlandish lies. Now, back to the story.

Into the classroom walks Father Wilkins with a big smile. He sat at the teacher’s desk at the front of the classroom, chatted with us a bit and then paused for a couple seconds before starting his lesson:

“Do you know why boys wear pants and girls wear dresses?

I remember feeling shocked to hear this question. And I was also excited because I had wondered about this precise topic and I was eager to learn the answer. But no one raised a hand. I vividly remember the silence and I remember everyone looking down, hoping not to get called on. Undeterred, Father Wilkins asked the question again.

“Come on now. This is a simple question. Why do boys wear pants and girls wear dresses?”

Again, no one raised his or her hand and there was painful silence. Although my knowledge of female anatomy was quite limited back then, I assumed (with some embarrassment) that girls wore dresses for a reason that had to do with their lack of penises. I wasn’t about to raise my hand and volunteer such an answer, however. No one else was willing to volunteer an answer either.

Father Wilkins was starting to look frustrated. He cajoled us a third time.

“Nobody knows? Nobody’s going to answer my question? Well then, I’ll answer it. Why do boys wear pants and why do girls wear dresses?”

Father Wilkins folded his hands on top of his desk and looked straight at us.

“Boys wear pants and girls wear dresses because boys are boys and girls are girls! Now do you see? Now do you understand?”

Father Wilkins uttered his answer in a proud, almost smug way. He thought he was really onto something big. He went on to explain that things are often the way they are because that’s the way they’ve always been. And that’s the way they should be, et cetera. This was a perfect sort of answer for the sort of fellow who believed in the virgin birth and infallibility of the Pope.

To this day, I remember the immense disappointment I felt upon hearing this “answer.” His “answer” was actually no answer at all. I was certain of this, but I was not about to raise my hand to accuse the parish priest of pulling an intellectual con job on a classroom full of sixth graders. I can guarantee you, though, some of the kids in that classroom found his “answer” to be meaningful in the same way that they found his sermons to be meaningful. They believed that they had been provided knowledge when they had been subjected to nothing but a tautology anchored by that magically powerful word “because.”

“Because” is such an incredibly powerful word that a politician who sprinkles into his or her speeches sounds like he or she is a bubbling ferment of precision logic. We needed to attack Iraq because of 9/11. We need to fight them over there because we don’t want to fight them over here. We need to privatize Social Security because we’re trying to save it. We need to torture innocent people because other people are trying to kill us. Or “[Fill in this blank] because America is the worlds greatest country.” Or “because we’re freedom loving people.” or because [whatever].

For many people, it seems, hearing the word “because” turns off all sense of skepticism. It is for this reason that “because” is such a powerful and dangerous word.

Epilogue

I’m wondering whether the real lesson of Father Wilkins was the importance of stare decisis, the importance of doing something a certain way because that is the way it’s always been done.

I now believe that I have a much better answer to the father Wilkins question (and I do believe his question was a good one). I believe that girls wear dresses to display their legs in order to convince potential mates that the girls are biologically fit. In other words, this is a question for which evolutionary psychology offers an interesting perspective. For more on this connection, see my earlier post, “Killer High Heels.”

Do it just because.

Harry Shearer has put together this little “number.” It has a simple theme that everyone should be able to follow.

In 2006, Norman Solomon wrote War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. His book detailed the information tactics the American government uses to launch wars.

War Made Easy has been such an influential book that it has now been made into a movie of the same name. You can view it here or you can order a copy of the DVD here.

I was able to attend a viewing of “War Made Easy” last Saturday night at the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis (NCMR2008). This crisply edited movie was narrated by Sean Penn. Much of what keeps this movie engaging are the dozens of carefully chosen news media clips generated during various American wars for the past 50 years, including large numbers of videos clips from the Vietnam war and the Iraq occupation. The magic of “War Made Easy” is that the directors carefully edited and arranged these clips to show us that nothing much has really changed: If an American president has decided that he wants to go to war, the watchdog American media is likely to become a lapdog and we will inevitably go to war.

Following the screening of “War Made Easy,” I attended a discussion of the movie led by media critic Norman Solomon and the co-director and producer of the movie, Loretta Alper. The following morning, Ms. Alper granted me the opportunity to interview her further regarding the making of “War Made Easy.”

Whenever we Americans go to war, we get there through a well-documented series of stages. As I watched “War Made Easy,” I saw better than ever that these stages are entirely predictable in the context of America’s warmongering ways.

Perhaps this characterization of America sounds too shrill, but just look around. The evidence is everywhere that war is a sport in America just as sports are warlike. Our TV shows and movies overflow with violence as a first-rate method of dealing with conflict. The toys we foist on our boys extol violence as the most obvious way of settling disputes. We challenge each other with statements like “support the troops,” no matter what those troops are doing (and see here ). We are all too ready to invoke the word “war,” because that word triggers a ready-made conceptual frame for freely and guiltlessly expressing ourselves with bullets, bombs and blood. In America, this frame of war is such an incredibly effective filter that we proceed to consider only the “benefits” of war and we ignore the massive damages inflicted on both war-zone civilians and upon millions of Americans (and see here).

For most Americans, it is difficult to see that we are truly a nation of warmongers. After all, we are so absolutely used to being the way we are that even the most obvious things have become difficult to see. As George Orwell once noted, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”

Before seeing “War Made Easy,” I was already familiar with the FAIR study documenting the manner in which our media rolled over rather than risk being accused of being unpatriotic. How much does the media roll over? So much so, that Americans see only an extremely filtered set of images representing the war. We see pictures of happy soldiers shipping out to “do their duty.” Pictures of dismembered civilian children are much too inconvenient for American patriotism, however.

Yes, Americans have become warriors looking for wars. America is a place where the thinnest of excuses will get the whole war machine revved. It is one of the points made by “War Made Easy” that America is gasoline needing only a small spark of an excuse to get us exploding off to war. Almost any excuse will do, it seems, and it doesn’t matter whether that excuse entirely false. In the 1960s, all it would took was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, an incident which never actually happened at all (based upon a recently declassified NSA document and other evidence). Nonetheless, the claim of the Gulf of Tonkin incident opened the floodgates to the American military buildup in Vietnam.

In 1993, all it took was a few well-placed public officials to stir up worries about “weapons of mass destruction” that didn’t exist. At that point, the confirmation bias and the herd instinct take over. How warped has our national perspective become? Whatever any perceived outsider does, we will see in the worst possible light and we will make damned sure that every other American becomes equally xenophobic. When this level of dysfunction occurs in an individual, we call that individual mentally ill. When it occurs nationwide, we call it “patriotism.”

The above observations are necessary prelude to my understanding of “War Made Easy.” I needed to consider these issues because of a question I had trouble getting past: Why isn’t going to war easy for most countries other than the United States? One obvious answer is that most other countries have not invested in a massive military infrastructure. The U.S. is physically able go to war at the push of a button, while most other would first require a long-term military buildup. The next obvious question, though, is why most other countries have not invested in their military might to the same extent as the United States. My unfortunate conclusion is that the U.S. has a warmonger mentality. When the President of the U.S. says we need to go to war, the citizens are already half-primed to agree. This would not be the case with, for example, the Prime Minister of Norway.

“War Made Easy” is an illustration of the predictable steps that will occur as soon as the spark of a false threat hits the gasoline of American militaristic exceptionalism. We see this same pattern over and over. Here are some of the predictable steps that occur when an American president presses for war. All of these are well substantiated by “War Made Easy.”

I. Public dialogue becomes simplistic. Consider Pat Buchanan’s warning that “When the war begins, the debate ends.” The media clips offered by “War Made Easy” substantiate the claim that once war is under way, there is no more media coverage for the rationale for the war, but only for the progress of the war. Once war is under way, it is produced like a TV show. The information from the war zone is tightly controlled by the government. The media does not protest this tight control, because it desperately craves the access and the market share. Therefore, whatever labels the government gives to a battle or a war (e.g., “Shock and Awe”), the media readily embraces it.

II. The President’s case for war is always built upon deception; the official story is false or it omits numerous key facts. Instead, the case is made primarily upon spin.

III. Americans are portrayed as “reluctant fighters.” We’d rather not go to war, but circumstances are allegedly forcing our hand. (more…)

As the mercury rose past 90 on this sunny Sunday, I biked over to see the Pagan Picnic in Tower Grove Park. I attend this event regularly, and it gets a bit bigger each year. There are many booths selling fair foods and drinks, and psychic readings, acupuncture, massage, crystals galore, and anything else out on the loose edge of New Age (”Ancient Wisdom”) Credulity.

It’s fun.

What I like most about the event is its disorganized ability to weird the normals. Does a top hat go with a black leather skirt and army boots? That guy seems to make it work. One post-apocalyptic sort with a blond Mohawk is videotaping the Creative Anachronisms/ Dungeons and Dragons/ Swords and Sorcery crowd beating each other about the limbs with padded swords and staffs. And the damsels. I admit that it is fun to see what young women wear to scandalize their elders. In the flesh, as it were. Well, one man with bones through his earlobes only had on “primitive” jewelry and a loincloth. But his tan seemed up to the job.

Yes, that woman is sitting under the tree spinning her own thread from wool she probably carded herself. Does Dr. Pepper go with a pterodactyl leg? Why not? Well, turkey, actually. But the hawker is convincing. Do glacier spalled obsidian needles make good wind chimes? Ya bet! I bought. And there are many drums. Several booths provide different sorts of handmade drums with wood or skin tops.

Various musical and dance troupes perform in the Bardic Circle, one of the pavilions in the park. Somewhere there is a schedule posted. But this crowd is anarchistic. No one seems to be in charge, but it works.

What is the entry fee? Well, free. But donations to a local food bank are suggested, and bins for collecting cans of food are provided.

Charity, like honor, mercy, and tolerance, are basic pagan family values.

Tonight, I had the privilege to attend a private screening of Phil Donahue’s new movie, “Body of War.” The film was shown to several hundred people attending the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

In his introduction to the film, Donahue indicated that “We have the most sanitized war in our history.” His point was that the American people cannot deal appropriately about this war if they can’t see the images related to the war. He implored, “Show the people the sacrifices the men and women of this country are making.” The American people cannot feel the pain caused by this war, because the full story of the war is not available to them, thanks to the continuing media blackout of all inconvenient images and stories. Instead of learning about what’s really happening in Iraq, the American people keep getting distracted with things like entertainment parading as news or tax cuts.

Donahue stated that the US involvement in Iraq has caused more than 20,000 “grievous injuries,” a fact which he finds “beyond horrible.”

What are the kinds of images that the American people are denied? Everyone knows about the government’s attempt to keep Americans from seeing pictures of coffins of soldiers returning from Iraq. There are equally dramatic pictures available, however. One of those was briefly shown in the film, and it was run only in the Rocky Mountain News. It is a photo of a woman who wanted to sleep next to the coffin of her husband (James Cathey, an Iraq soldier) while military guards stood by. This was to be her last night with him. She slept on a little mattress almost underneath the coffin.

Donahue’s point is straightforward. “Show us the war. We are adults. We can then decide if you want to end this damn war now.”

Donahue learned of the subject of the movie, Thomas Young, while visiting with Ralph Nader. It was Nader who tipped off Donnie that there was a young man, recently returned from Iraq, who might serve as a good subject for the kind of film Donahue was interested in making. Donahue traveled to the military hospital where he met Thomas, though Thomas did not meet Donahue until later because he was then in a coma. When Donahue finally met a conscious Thomas Young (in Kansas City), he noticed antiwar bumper stickers on the family kitchen table. Until then, Donahue had no idea that the subject of his film, Thomas Young, had antiwar feelings. After he saw those bumper stickers, Donahue thought to himself, “Maybe we really have something here.”

It was at the same time that Donahue learned about Thomas Young that he also happened to meet Eddie Vedder of the band Pearl Jam (also through Ralph Nader). Vedder offered to compose music for the film, which he did in five days, free of charge.

I don’t want to ruin the film by discussing too many of the specifics, but I will reveal that it is an emotional journey for the subject of the film as well as the audience. Only five days after traveling to Iraq, Thomas Young was shot in the shoulder, which caused him to become a paraplegic. Much of the movie uses the way Young deals with his injuries as a backdrop for the fact that so many members of Congress were obtuse to the human cost of this Iraqi invasion. The film is made ever more emotionally poignant due to the intense involvement in Thomas’s life by his new wife and his mother. The film also features a two intense moments with Thomas’s stepfather, a ditto head.

Thomas Young turns out to be a hero both in the way he deals with his injuries and in the way he speaks out as an activist following his return home. All is not well for Thomas, however, and these challenges are a emotionally wrenching journey for filmgoers.

Another hero of the film is Senator Robert Byrd, who eloquently did everything in his power to turn back the tide of war-mongering in Congress. As it turns out, Byrd was one of only 23 senators who voted to deny George Bush powers to invade Iraq. The film cleverly intersperses the Congressional debate with the struggles of Thomas Young.

The superb editing of this film is apparent throughout. Donahue commented that he wanted to be very careful to not make the film “preachy,” and he succeeded in this.

“Body of War” is being released soon, though there is no distributor for the film. It will not be a financial success. Nonetheless, it has played to rave reviews. In fact, one of the members of Congress who voted “yes” to the Iraq invasion, privately viewed the film and told Donahue “This film should be shown in every college and every university in the country.”

At the conclusion of the showing at the NCMR2008, it received an extended standing ovation.

Donahue admits that there is no mass market for a film of this type, a fact that is utterly depressing given the need for films like this. As Donahue commented, “If you’re not going to use free speech, stop spilling their blood.”Luckily, the film does have an financial afterlife. It will apparently be picked up by Netflix, and there will be other availability in scattered markets. You’ll need to look closely to see if it’s playing in your town. You could even make some phone calls to try to get the independent theaters in your area to play this film.

Donahue explained that in the big media, “you are rewarded solely by the size of the crowd you can draw.” Therefore, we’ll never hear about stories like that of Thomas Young in the big media. In order to get this story out, we’ll need to build media from the grassroots up.

When the country is beating the drums for war, all movement is seen as progress, and anybody getting in the way of the military action is branded a coward. This is not a new theory. It was made plain many decades ago in a speech by Herman Goring. It is also a point made by another new movie, “War Made Easy,” which will be screened at this same media reform convention tomorrow night. The conclusion of that film is that if the President wants to go to war in this country, it will happen. That’s the nature of our politics, our media and our citizenry. It’s a very sad story, indeed.

After the film and Q&A, Donahue graciously stayed around to meet some of the people who attended the screening and to chat with them.

I shook Donahue’s hand and told him that I write for a blog that draws 4,000 visitors every day. I told him that when I sat down to watch his movie, I doubted that I would learn anything new because I’ve long been a serious student of the Iraq conflict and the political backdrop. I admitted to Donahue that was wrong, however, because this film got “under my radar and it was emotionally stunning.” Donahue looked at my badge and said “Dangerous Intersection . . . it would be good if you could talk about the film on your blog.” I told him that “That’s why I’m here.”

As many people know, Phil Donahue was host to a highly-ranked show on MSNBC in October 2002. In fact, it was a leading show on MSNBC. (more…)

Several soldiers who have returned from combat zones talk with the American News Project about what they say is the widespread practice of using “drop weapons” to cover up the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We all know that the media networks helped beat the drums to invade Iraq. It’s clear from these stats: out of the 343 interviews conducted by network news prior to the Iraq invasion, only three involved an antiwar spokesperson.

Glenn Greenwald has now shown the incredible extent to which the corporate media executives snuffed out stories critical of President George W. Bush or critical of the Iraq invasion. Greenwald’s post is a must-read for anyone who has the stomach to try to understand how bad things got and how bad things still are regarding the corporate media.

Perhaps these should also be heady times for media reformers. We’ve waited a long time for the knowledgeable media insiders to have the guts to speak up, but they have finally started singing. Scott McClellan has dropped his bomb yesterday and other high profile media personalities are now starting to come out of the woodwork. Greenwald focuses on these recent statements by CNN’s Jessica Yellin:

I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.

And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives — and I was not at this network at the time — but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.

Here’s Greenwald’s take on Yellin’s accusations:

Jessica Yellin’s admission is but the latest in a growing mountain of evidence demonstrating that corporate executives forced their news reporters to propagandize in favor of the Bush administration and the war, and censored stories that were critical of the Government.

In my daily scan of Creationism related news, I found this historical analysis of presidential faux pas. Author Wm. C. Shelton explains in detail how Dubya’s lowest presidential approval rating in history is not his reason for rating our present leader the “Worst Ever”:

The measure of a bad presidency, for me, is neither popularity nor lack of accomplishment. It is lasting damage to the Republic and the wellbeing of its citizens. Such a judgment requires assessment of past failed presidencies and their impact on our shared history. By that measure, I judge the younger Bush to be the worst U.S. president ever.

The article proceeds to compare and contrast various “bad” policies and decisions of various presidents in light of their eventual historical significance.

So refresh your knowledge of G.W.B’s less luminary predecessors and read this article to get an idea of how history may regard leadership in our current era.

Have you seen Jon Stewart’s interview of Doug Feith?

It is obvious that Feith appeared on the The Daily Show in an attempt to try to:

A) salvage his own sordid reputation, and
B) convince the audience that the Bush Administration didn’t lead the charge to invade Iraq, drumming up false intelligence in the process.

Feith failed miserably on both accounts because Stewart refused to play the role of a nodding bobblehead. In fact, Stewart showed himself to be a better interviewer than most members of the mainstream news media. It was refreshing to see Stewart challenging Feith at every turn.

For an evidence-based version of how this country came to occupy Iraq, watch “Buying the War,” a Bill Moyers video, showing that the Bush Administration consciously and intentionally pulled all the necessary strings and the mainstream media marched in lockstep.

The United States didn’t end up in Iraq because of a series of accidents and mistakes, as Feith tries to argue. The Downing Street memo and Richard Clarke’s accounts, among much other evidence, shows that the Bush Administration planned to march into Baghdad regardless of the evidence. They got their way, and now they, including Feith, are acting like it’s not their fault. Now we’re seeing an extended media campaign of shameless revisionism.

I was meandering in cyberspace, and stumbled onto this column by Australian Michael Ruse: The struggle between evolution and creation: an American problem. This appeals to me after all the news about Australian Ken Ham and his Creation Museum here in the U.S. The muse of Mr. Ruse is that the U.S. is vocally and publicly debating the science of evolution versus competing Biblical philosophies, and their roles in education and culture

But his main point is that this is just a symptom. Ever since the Scopes trial, the vocal Biblical Literalism Fundamentalist minority has been fighting for its life. Part of their claim is that evolution is not as values-neutral as proponents like to claim. Ruse agrees. Evolution theory was bolstered by Darwin’s books with his additions to the theory. But it might have stayed a quiet and intellectual revelation, had it not been for Darwin’s contemporary, scientific and social activist Thomas Huxley.

Huxley, who was known in the popular press as “Pope” Huxley, preached evolution-as- Christianity-alternative non-stop at working men’s clubs, from the podia in presidential addresses, and in debates with clerics, notably Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. Huxley, who invented for himself the religious label of “agnostic”, even aided the founding of the new cathedrals of evolution, stuffed as they were with displays of dinosaurs newly discovered in the American west. Except that these halls of worship were better known as museums of natural history.

Ruse follows the history forward to show why he considers this to be An American Problem. The rest of the world’s Christians are content to accept science for what it can provide, and leave to the Bible issues outside of what can be examined. But America was settled in part by religious extremists, exiled from England and other countries for their radical beliefs. This culture is diluted, but still present and very vocal. The founding fathers were well aware of this element, and set the nation up to minimize the damage that they can cause, while allowing them to be themselves.

As the orders of magnitude of scientific understanding kept expanding beyond the narrow scale of the Biblical universe, the Biblical Literalists had to draw a line. It was too late to hold at a geocentric universe, and much too late for a flat Earth. Sin and demonic possession as the causes of disease also gave way to germ theory without much of a fight. But spontaneous divine creation of man is now the sticking point. Any evidence or theory that contradicts direct and intentional divine creation is labeled unholy.

In America the battle between secular government and a theocracy is being fought in the guise of Evolution versus Intelligent Design (or whatever name Scientific Creationism is using). From the vantage of Australia, it is an interesting skirmish. Here in the Bible Belt, it scares me.

When “Iranian” weapons in Iraq turn out not to be Iranian, the White House is silent.  That’s what recently happened, based on this post at Crooks and Liars.

I’m tired of hearing Neocons cavalierly talking about “nuking” one or more Middle Eastern countries. These days, Neocons often talk about this “need” to use nuclear weapons to show people in the Middle East that “we” mean business. I have personally heard this sort of talk several times (when you mostly listen instead of talk, you’d be amazed at what Neocons tell you). Former U.S. presidential candidate Tom Tancredo talks like this, for example.  [If you want to get a flavor for the scariest segment of the crowd that takes lightly the idea of using nuclear weapons, Google the phrase "nuke Mecca Medina."]

Here’s what I propose. The next time someone somberly (or cheerfully) suggests that the United States “nuke” a country in the Middle East, tell them to take a look at what it really means to use nuclear weapons on human beings. A site called Atomic Tragedy recently released these graphic photos of Hiroshima that had been donated to the Hoover Archives by a U.S. serviceman in 1998, with the provision that the photos shouldn’t be released until 2008. These horrific photos were taken by an unknown Japanese photographer.

Anyone inclined to use nuclear weapons should first be made to take a close look at what it means to use nuclear weapons by studying these photos and meditating carefully on the phrase “Love your enemy.” Yes, “Love your enemy,” that superb meditation on empathy. I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, but I do think that it’s time for Neocons to stop cherry-picking the Bible and to take their own Holy Book seriously.

The best way to get people to neglect a cause is to dedicate a Special Day to that cause each year. On that one special Day, we will hold thousands festivals where we treat the cause in a trite way and we will ignore that cause the other 364 days. We’re just too busy with our amusements and distractions to give a damn about important things here in America. Earth Day fits the mold perfectly. You would think that at Earth Day festivals, people would take the purpose of Earth Day seriously. You’d think that people would feel the need to make substantial immediate changes in their lives in order to live and procreate in healthy and sustainable ways, leaving the planet in good shape for the following generations of humans and the other animals. What could be done on Earth Day? We could talk big. We could make real plans to take the actions suggested by visionaries like Lester Brown, who proposes that we cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2020. It could really be done. Here’s how Brown describes his plan in his book, Plan B 3.0:

First, dramatically and systematically raise the efficiency of the world energy economy; second, massive investment in renewable sources of energy; and third, increase the earth’s tree cover by planting billions of trees.

Really doing something on a big scale could “inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth’s environment.” But most people aren’t doing anything at all. They are content to live the same wasteful lives people lived 20 years ago.

I discussed Earth Day with several people recently (in stores, not at the Earth Day festival). They rolled their eyes when I suggested the need to actually change the way we live our lives. They think that Earth Day is run by a bunch of hippies and they don’t trust hippies.

Even those who don’t scoff at the idea of Earth Day mostly believe in belief in Earth Day (just like most religious believers, who often believe in belief). Many Earth Day’ers believe it’s sufficient to merely say and think responsible things, even if the way they live their lives are indistinguishable from those who don’t believe in Earth Day. Many of these people celebrating Earth Day drive to Earth Day festivities in SUV’s from their homes way out in the Suburbs. When they’re done shopping at Earth Day (and there are lots of non-essential things to buy at Earth Day), they drive back out to the suburbs. This inaction reminds me of a neighbor who mentioned a topic to which I responded “That really concerns me.” He immediately chastised me: “No it doesn’t. If you were actually concerned, you’d be doing something about it.” (more…)

This site thinks so. 

If you hunt through the categories, you’ll see many ideas better than occupying Iraq while incurring tens of thousands of U.S. troop casualties.

In this Truthout interview (by Geoffry Millard), Phil Donahue exhorts: “Don’t sanitize the war.”  Who are the perpetrators of this effort to sanitize the war?  Politicians and the media, for starters.  That effort to sanitize the bloody U.S. occupation of Iraq is the main message of the newly-released movie that Donahue co-directed: “Body of War.”

The film’s subject is paralyzed Iraq war veteran Tomas Young, who was shot through the spine in Iraq on April 4, 2004. Young’s transformation from war veteran to antiwar hero (as the movie poster boasts) is mixed well with the speech of Senator Byrd (D-West Virginia) against the resolution giving President Bush the power to invade Iraq.

In this interview, Donahue stresses that Senator Byrd was one of only 23 senators who voted no (133 members of the House voted no).  

The purpose of the film:  “We would like to put wind to the back of the anti-war movement.” 

Price Of Oil
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Our Saudi Friends
Keefe, The Denver Post

Tanking Economy
Nate Beeler, The Washington Examiner

Iraq Milestone 4000
Brian Fairrington, Cagle Cartoons

McCain and the Iraq War
Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant