Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

On a new anti-bullshit diet and trying to understand what is going on. During my long commute drives I’ve been going through a reading list of Bush – 9/11 – Iraq books (audio books rented from Simply Audiobooks): House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror by Richard A. Clarke (served seven presidents and worked inside the White House for George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush until he resigned in March 2003), Chain of Command by Seymour Hersh, Sleeping With The Devil and See No Evil by Robert Baer (a top CIA Middle East field officer), The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It, and Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind.

Voting Americans owe it to themselves and their country to become more educated on recent history and current events. Bush delivers an Iraq status report and pep ralley today from Fort Bragg, as the American public has grown weary and skeptical while the war slogs on. Over two years later, one might wonder why we invaded Iraq and entered an expensive war. Usama bin Laden still moving freely, Weapons of Mass Destruction not found, gasoline prices hitting record highs, suicide bombings an everyday occurrence, Saddam and other prisoners muzzled at detainment camps.

For years the U.S. Middle East policy has been guided by two factors: Oil and Israel. Having failed to exploit Iraq’s oil supply the conclusion is that we invaded Iraq because Israel wanted us to, they feared Saddam’s regime. Writers and reporters of these events will no doubt sort this out for us, while President Bush and his cronies will continue to pitch their same old diet of pablum. Wake up babies!

The Donald’s Ground Zero rehash? “Hey Trump, Fugetaboudit, you’re fired!”
Freedom Towers… blah, blah, blah… what’s in a name, more of the same?

My recent excursion to Yosemite National Park was inspiring. Surrounded by strong granite formations and cascading waterfalls, I breathed in a site that is bigger than any band of terrorists.

Here is something lasting and good that Americans can feel proud of. Why should the Prudential Financial company employ the Rock of Gibralter as its corporate symbol, a foreign rock, when we have these beauties here at home? Aircraft hijacking terrorists: go ahead, fly into one of these babies. Bring it on!

Efforts to rebuild at “Ground Zero” are mired in controversy. Glass and metal towers are so 20th Century. We are advanced technologically, let us design a challenging building as strong and great as a Yosemite granite formation. It’s time for a change! Imagine the greatness of a mountain-like structure in lower Manhattan! A truly visionary project would enable creative landscaping and even rock climbing on the structure. Inside it would be a modern office building and commercial park, with all the glory of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude.

This is my challenge to the great architects and real estate developers of New York City. Innovate a strong, enduring and inspiring structure, something undeniably grand and awesome such as Yosemite’s Half Dome.

The American Indians, yes I mean the Native American indigenous human beings, have respect for an almighty creator, a God, or Great Spirit they do not profess to know entirely… they call “The Great Mystery.”

As we live our lives, we see that yes – it is all a big freakin’ mystery. And yet hope springs eternally within the human soul. Our role on this Mother Earth seems to be some kind of dominant, controlling stewardship. We instinctively take care of ourselves, each other, and the planet. That’s right politically correct lock steppers: Instinct. Nature, DNA and heredity has its part to play, despite the academic appeal of behavioral scientific nurture logistics.

1999 saw a Western world fretting over the office manager’s nightmare of a big bad Y2K bug. Poof! January 1st, 2nd and 3rd arrived without major bugs, as though an expected terrorist did not show up. Then the tech boom of the late 90’s took a dive. Wasn’t The Future wonderful?

None of the political mouthpieces or candidates running for President in 2000 made a peep about the real worry on everyone’s minds, “What’s happening to my 401K? My stock investments? It just got cut in half… or more!” Did they not want us to wake up to the frightening new realities too quickly?

And the smoke screens more or less continue. George W is no longer in the baseball business, so keeping your eye on the ball appears to be a bad thing. Diverting attention: good! Trivializing science: good!

A White House official who previously worked for the oil industry’s lobby group has repeatedly edited government climate reports in a way that downplays links between global warming and greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels, The New York Times reported on June 8, 2005. See story.

Much government and private money is spent on scientifically studying and logically estimating the future. Predicting the future is not only for our own defense, it is our pathway to success beyond just simple survival. Here is what is on the horizon for us and future generations:

1. Human Population: A recent United Nations population study (link here) predicts a 40% population increase by 2050. Richer countries’ populations are estimated to stabilize at 1.2 billion, and less developed countries grow from 5.3 billion to 7.8 billion people. This will place an obvious strain on the entire world. In 2000-2005, fertility levels remained above 5 children per woman in 35 of the 148 developing countries, including 30 of the poorest nations. For more information, see The Population Connection.

2. Animal Population: From a January 2005 UNESCO Biodiversity Conference: ” Species are currently being lost globally at a rate that is about 100 times faster than the average natural rate, and tens of thousands of other species are already committed to future extinction because of the recent worldwide loss of their habitats.” See also: UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre, United Nations Environment Programme, Defenders of Wildlife, and the World Wildlife Fund.

3. Plants, Ocean, and Environment: “The present rate of global deforestation is more than 14 million hectares (about 54,000 square miles) per year, roughly equal to the size of Greece. Most of the losses occur in the tropics.” – from May 2005, WWF news release. Glaciers in Alaska, Greenland and Iceland are disappearing at an alarming rate, and documented in the excellent “The Climate of Man” The New Yorker articles by Elizabeth Kolbert. For more information about Global Warming visit these links: The League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defense, Grist Magazine, and Greenpeace.

4. U.S. Economy: No one knows, but large trade deficits, growing national debt and slow job growth do not help. Visit this on line study and survey. The future strength of Social Security benefits has been under question. Most of those now under 55 realize that an easy retirement plan means working hard and saving for a long time, or hitting the jackpot. Investment predictions seem to work out 50% of the time, so you break even. In late 2004 everyone was betting on the strong Euro vs. the weak dollar. In a big surprise, with European disagreements over charters, the dollar has come back. Globalization is a tug of war between rich corporations and poor nations supplying cheap labor and resources. A big question for the future is how this will play out. See the excellent documentary “The Corporation” now on DVD.

5. Fashion: Dance and prance your way to Doomsday at your local shopping mall ecosystem. According to the Diesel ad campaign, The Future is a worn out pop song.

British MP George Galloway’s Senate testimony is truly inspired. You must see this full video of Galloway dressing down Senator Norm Coleman and US Senators today (05/17/05) who have accused him of corruption.

The US Senate committee, US and British administrations will wish that this story was confined to Newsweek, since they were not looking for a sharp perspective of their recent Iraq involvement. Partial transcript from Galloway’s testimony:

“Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq’s wealth.

“Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq’s wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq’s money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

“Have a look at the oil that you didn’t even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

“Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government.”

Now here’s an American Idol wannabe if ever I saw one, Charles Graner Jr., leader of the Jackass League of American whoop assers in Abu Ghraib prison, and quite the camera hog. Word is he proudly sent these photos home to his children! Pass along the love!

A career as prankster corrections officer, Charles A. Graner Jr., got busy spreadin’ freedom in Abu Ghraib, where his photo escapades contain the morbid glee of a happy lyncher.

From a country that elects brash smack down political leaders such as Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who can really be surprised?

Follow-up:  Charles Graner was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Is practicing Christian Reconstructionism, Fundamentalism and Dominionism life’s E-Z Pass to heaven? Let’s say you know you’re going to heaven, but you’re worried your golfing buddies may not qualify. Thanks to RaptureLetters.com you can send your sinner sidekicks e-mail messages after you’ve ascended. That’s assuming their computers, system administrators and power company are all hell bound unbelievers. Hallmark Cards should really look into this market.

TheocracyWatch.com can help you keep track of the movement to run the U.S. government by divine guidance. A conference at New York’s CUNY Graduate Center, “Examining the Real Agenda of the Religious Right,” April 29th and 30th, 2005 addresses these issues.

More on the Religious Right.

Rush Limbaugh’s up periscope must be checking out the Suicide Girls website for his meter on modern youth sexual morality. Finding no space at MySpace: a place for friends or having no Nerve.com or no invites to Friendster must pain the portly pompous pundit.

See a list of 35 of Rush’s Kinky Truths here.

There are serious topics I am contemplating, such as Nationalism, Militarism and Christian Fundamentalism and why so many Americans blindly follow. Others march to Diff’rent Strokes, such as free thinking, independent and good natured Gary Coleman. He’s a tough little guy, challenging Arnold Schwarzenegger by campaigning in the 2003 California race for governor.

I checked Celebrity Blogwatch and was disappointed that Gray has not gotten into blogging the way David Duchovny has. A poll of the web tells me poor Gary suffers from public whipping boy status: celebrities who are fair game in the press, who some folks just love to hate, such as Jane Fonda. Still, it would be interesting to read what is stroking in his different mind.