Swami Uptown Archive: November 2004

Thought for Today

November 30, 2004 | 5:30 p.m.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge--even to ourselves--that we've been so credulous.

--Carl Sagan

Guest Rant: What We Really Learned from This Election

November 30, 2004 | 5:30 p.m.

"We've learned a lot from this election. We've learned that Jerry Springer airs on PBS in Oklahoma. We learned that we should post signs on the side of the highway when you cross the Mason/Dixon line that say, 'Caution: Minds Narrow.'"

I read those opening lines of a blog essay called "The Fundamentalist Right: an oxymoron"--and I was hooked. And I thought: Hmmm...why does the Daily Rant have to be mine? Why can't I drag in some angry guys like this from time to time?

So here's

Mike Dugan

[scroll down], who surely has what, in polite circles, they call a "point of view" on the Followers of Falwell and his ilk:

They don't want teenagers to have condoms, in that "Silence of the Lambskins" campaign they're running. Then they still try to blame teen sex on rock and roll music. Teenagers have sex because they're horny and because of peer pressure. If you're going to peg teen sex on rock and roll, why don't we just blame incest on Country and Western?

Regarding a woman's right to choose, everyone is entitled to their beliefs; this is America. My belief happens to be that life begins when you start minding your own f---g business. I have a theory that the religious right wants to haul all of the coat hangers out of the closet to make room for the gays they want to shove back in.

[...] And, finally, they refuse to believe in evolution. That part I can understand, actually. Because if you subscribe to the theory of evolution, well then, there's a tacit obligation to PARTICIPATE in evolution. For some people that's a little too much pressure. Many of the righteous can't recognize that Faith is a way to avoid responsibility. It's always the people with recessive genes who don't believe in evolution. "I believe in Creationism," they'll say. Really? I believe in critical thought. But then, my reading matter is a little more up-to-date than yours.

Adopt a Soldier: The Follow-Up

November 30, 2004 | 5:30 p.m.

Judging from your e-mail, lots of activity in your homes yesterday--many of you filled boxes for soldiers. Bless you, all.

And I heard from Cornbread: "Please tell everyone helping we said 'Thanks, and we're proud of you!' You're good people."

Also heard from several of you who all had the same question: "Why are we buying socks and blankets--blankets!!!--for soldiers? Doesn't the government do that?"

Well, we do this because our government is consistent--it consistently doesn't give a damn for our troops.

You red-staters thought it was liberal propaganda when I (among many others) pointed out the scarcity of Kevlar vests and armor for Humvees, didn't you?

Well, now the rubber meets the road--and everyone can see that the tires are bald.

Because these are our own soldiers telling us: We need the basics.

Once more, and maybe with a a few more voices singing with the choir: Shame on our wretched warmakers, driving to work in their big cars, wearing fine threads and eating healthy food!

If you signed up to Adopt a Soldier, these are some of the instructions you got in the return e-mail:

First, never put the service member's rank on the packaging, as it could endanger them, and therefore the package will not be shipped. Here are some other listeners' suggestions:

A way to keep your packages from getting stolen is to mark socks, T-shirts, or candy on the package. Mark the pack worth less than $20.00 or no worth to you at all.

Put items inside a popcorn can or cookie tin, the RATS are horrible and are eating more of the stuff than the Soldiers do.

Great, huh? We can't even guarantee secure delivery.

But, okay, there's a (sort of) bright side. As a friend put it:

Why are we sending these things? Because we feel powerless to prevent the slaughter--and because Carl Rove is a satan/genius. He knows our hearts are much bigger than theirs and we will rush in to fill a gap that, if otherwise filled, would cost them way more than $87 billion and counting.

Whack a Mole Warfare: We Shut Down Falluja to Make Baghdad Unsafe

November 30, 2004 | 5:30 p.m.

As if to prove the Iraq situation is as dire as our soldiers' requests suggest, here's a report on the war that couldn't be gloomier. Naturally, this didn't run in an American paper--this is from

The Independent, in London

:

Disintegrating security in Baghdad was underlined in a sombre warning yesterday from the British embassy against using the airport road or taking a plane out of Iraq.

The embassy says a bomb was discovered on a flight inside Iraq on 22 November. It shows that insurgents have been able to penetrate the stringent security at Baghdad airport. The embassy says its own staff have been advised against taking commercial planes.

The warning is in sharp contrast to more optimistic statements from US military commanders after the capture of Fallujah in which they have spoken of "breaking the back of the insurgency."

The embassy says that the road between Baghdad and the international airport, perhaps the most important highway in the country, is now too dangerous to use. The advice says starkly: "With effect from 28 November, the British embassy ceased all movements on the Baghdad International airport road."

Danger levels in the capital are also increasing; some of the resistance fighters who were previously in Fallujah have taken refuge in Baghdad...

The Beauty Part

November 30, 2004 | 5:30 p.m.

A candy bar. Yes, you read that right.

Click here

.

Thought for Today

November 29, 2004 | 5:00 p.m.

Some things to do before the Inaugural:

1. Get that abortion you've always wanted.

2. Drink a nice clean glass of water.

3. Cash your social security check.

4. See a doctor of your own choosing.

5. Spend quality time with your draft age child/grandchild.

6. Visit Syria, or any foreign country for that matter.

7. Get that gas mask you've been putting off buying.

8. Hoard gasoline.

9. Jam in all the Alzheimer's stem cell research you can.

10. Stay out late before the curfews start.

11. Go see a Bruce Springsteen concert before he has his "accident."

12. Go see Mount Rushmore before the Reagan addition.

13. Use the phrase "You can't do that -- this is America."

14. If you're white, marry a black person; if you're black, marry a white person.

15. Take a walk in Yosemite without being hit by a snowmobile or a base-jumper.

16. Enroll your kid in an accelerated art or music class.

17. Start your school day without a prayer.

18. Pass on the secrets of evolution to future generations.

19. Learn French.

20. Visit Massachusetts while it is still a State.

--Letter going around the internet

Won't You Please Adopt a Soldier?

November 29, 2004 | 5:00 p.m.

Just back from a weekend of writing and hibernating. When I looked up, nobody but Mrs. Uptown was talking about the war. Gee, maybe if we all hush up, it will just...vanish?

Then Mrs. U sent me an e-mail, saying that we had signed up for

the Adopt a Soldier gift program

, sponsored by "Cornbread," a DJ on a country station in St. Louis. The idea: shower soldiers stationed in Iraq with gifts they can use.

Adopt a Soldier is a terrific way to do a good thing this season. It's not political. It's just...good. Red state, blue state: We can agree on this.

It couldn't be simpler. Go to the site. Scan the list of soldiers. Pick one who moves you--pick more if the year's been good to you or you just feel the urge. The radio station will send you an e-mail telling you how to send your package to Iraq.

Mrs. Uptown--Our Lady of the Bleeding Heart--chose a chaplain named Mark Thompson because--how like a chaplain--his request was not for himself.

Here's his entry: "Chaplain in Iraq would like to request clothing, socks, shoes and baby blankets for infant to 12 yrs old for injured children in combat hospital. Clothes need to be easy to get off and on due to injuries.TV/DVD purchased by staff so they need kids' movies."

If you're going to do this, please jump in today. Iraq is distant. Time is tight (but the Post Office says it will do everything it can to get your package to Iraq before Christmas). And this is one gift box that will absolutely make a difference.

So Who is Cornbread?

November 29, 2004 | 5:00 p.m.

Swami dropped in on

the WIL website

to learn about Cornbread. Can't tell how much of this is true, but here's some of what he has to say about himself:

I was a case study slacker who took 9 units of junior college, had a bad haircut, and was delivering papers out of my car... good $, no pressure... I could fold, rubber band and throw a newspaper like nobody's business...(as a matter of fact, every now and then I'll slip the neighborhood kid a $20 to let me throw his route).

My only problem was that I had this inner voice.... and I know what you're saying... "Cornbread, get some professional help".... the voice told me to strive for more and dress up as the Indian Chief from the Village People.

About that time I received a call on my answering machine from a guy who ran a radio station.... Ya see, I used to put a crazy message on my machine every day and word got around so much that I'd come home and have 50 messages from people I didn't even know... this man was one such person.... he liked my message so much he told me to come by the station for an audition.

Right. A DJ. With a big mouth. And--it turns out--a big heart. I listened to his show this morning. He talked about hunting. I loathe hunting. But I love this guy. And, now, I love the tie that binds us.

Why is Iraq like Vietnam? (This Is Not a Riddle)

November 29, 2004 | 5:00 p.m.

Answer: because we're using napalm. We're "allowed" to do this because we refuse to sign weapons treaties outlawing napalm--as a result, we're the only nation using napalm. But the Brits have decrees against napalm. Which gives Tony ("The Poodle") Blair a bit of a problem. From

the London Sunday Mirror

:

US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah.

News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world.

And last night Tony Blair was dragged into the row as furious Labour MPs demanded he face the Commons over it. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh.

Outraged critics have also demanded that Mr Blair threatens to withdraw British troops from Iraq unless the US abandons one of the world's most reviled weapons. Halifax Labour MP Alice Mahon said: "I am calling on Mr Blair to make an emergency statement to the Commons to explain why this is happening. It begs the question: 'Did we know about this hideous weapon's use in Iraq?'"

Evangelicals to Bush: You Owe Us

November 29, 2004 | 5:00 p.m.

If you believe the spin, the religious right made "moral values" the key issue of the election, thus guaranteeing Bush's victory.

If you read

Frank Rich

in the New York Times, however, you see that the facts suggest otherwise:

The mainstream press, itself in love with the "moral values" story line and traumatized by the visual exaggerations of the red-blue map, is too cowed to challenge the likes of the American Family Association. So are politicians of both parties. It took a British publication, The Economist, to point out that the percentage of American voters citing moral and ethical values as their prime concern is actually down from 2000 (35 percent) and 1996 (40 percent).

Because the Religious Right isn't up on the facts, they're pounding the table for their reward.

ABC reports

:

Among some conservative Christians, there is a belief that President Bush received a "moral mandate" to win the recent presidential election - and they are calling on him to act on their agenda now.

"I believe Our Lord elected our president and I believe he put him in office and it is my prayer that he will sustain him in office," said one woman at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Another was asked if she believed that God intervened in the election. "Absolutely," she said.

"Values" voters delivered for the president, and the president must now deliver for them - especially in the courts, said Gary Cass, head of a grassroots political organization affiliated with Coral Ridge, called the Center for Reclaiming America.

"It's about the next 40 years and how the courts are going to affect the world in which my children and grandchildren are going to be raised in," he said.

Cass wants a U.S. Supreme Court that will outlaw abortion and gay marriage. "Do you want to take your children to a National League baseball game for instance and have homosexuals showing affection to one another? I don't want my kids to see that," he said.

Why stop there? In the NFL, guys pat each other on the rear all the time. And in baseball, when a team wins a pennant, all the guys jump into a pig pile that looks like a sex photo from Abu Ghraib. And....but at this rate, we'll want the end of all sports, won't we?

Too Broke To Go to Conferences?

November 29, 2004 | 5:00 p.m.

Looks like we're doomed to be champions of landmines. It's not that we love 'em. It's that we can't afford plane fare for a government drone to go to a meeting.

The Denver Post reports

:

The United States will not attend a major review conference this week about a 1997 international treaty on land mines because of the cost of participation and disagreement with crucial elements of the pact.

In making the announcement Friday, the State Department said the decision should not be seen as a sign of U.S. indifference. "We share common cause with all those who seek to protect innocent civilians from indiscriminately used land mines," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.

The conference, starting Monday in Nairobi, Kenya, will review compliance with the Ottawa Convention on anti-personnel mines. Ratified by 143 countries, the pact bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines and stipulates that mined areas be cleared within 10 years.

The United States, China and Russia are among 51 countries that have not ratified the treaty.

Thought for Today

November 24, 2004 | 3:00 p.m.

My coming to faith did not start with a leap but rather a series of staggers from what seemed like one safe place to another. Like lily pads, round and green, these places summoned and then held me up while I grew. When I look back on some of these early resting places, I can see how flimsy and indirect a path they made. Yet each step brought me closer to the verdant pad of faith on which I somehow stay afloat today.

--Anne Lamott, quoted in

The Writer's Faith

, a spirit-filled 2005 calendar created by the noted photographer Jill Krementz. (Ms. Krementz also has a large show--more than a hundred photographs--called "Writers Unbound" at the

Mark Twain House & Museum

in Hartford, Connecticut, running through January 30.)

Thanksgiving Thoughts

November 24, 2004 | 3:00 p.m.

Lucky. That's what I feel today. Lucky-squared, in fact. Lucky-to-the-max, lucky-to-the-google-power.

Yes, it's the war that makes me feel lucky--a war in which we've thrown away all the traditional rules of engagement. If it walks, it's an enemy. If it's dead, bulldoze the building.

But no choppers fly over my house, raining death. No tanks roll through my streets. No depleted uranium pollutes my wounds. My child is fed, my neighborhood hospital is staffed, my computer is powered 24/7. Oh lucky me. Oh charmed Mrs. Uptown. Oh-so-blessed Little Uptown.

Ninety-nine per cent of the world hates this war. And hates us not only for waging it, but for the way we wage it. They know the ugly truth of the post-World War II U.S. Empire--that we'd never do this to white people. Our savagery is reserved for Asiatics and Arabs (we apply a different savagery, more passive, to Africans).

You think our cause is just? Well, could George Bush say, as Abraham Lincoln did in his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863:

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict....

I think not. And I think, as the law of karma decrees, that we will pay for the war we have waged against Iraqi civilians and our own institutions. But John Lennon was wrong: Karma isn't "instant." The wheels of justice grind slow. Astonishingly, we are--for now--"getting away" with this criminal enterprise.

So I pray the prayer of the dissident: that my family, which has opposed this war from the beginning, will be spared the inevitable "payback" and "blowback."

Then I expand the prayer, and hope that those we have wronged will forgive us. And that those who support this war will find a safer way to siphon off their aggression. And that all who are afflicted by our hardhearted policies will be fed and clothed and cared for.

And then my prayers go grand. They become like the Kurt Vonnegut fantasy: that time race backwards. Please, God, let the bombs that kill come together again and fly safely back to the bombers that dropped them; let bullets be wrenched from the dead and wounded and returned to the guns that fired them. And let everyone come home. Safe. Now.

What Would Jesus Do?

November 24, 2004 | 3:00 p.m.

The story of a guy who truly wanted to walk the walk. From

The Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News

:

Matanuska Christian School's principal has been fired and a teacher has quit over a disciplinary incident in which the principal had himself whipped in front of two students.

Principal Steve Unfreid, who said he was inspired in his choice of disciplinary tactics by the actions of Jesus, asked teacher Joe Brost to whip him in front of two male students in the school's basement last month after the boys were caught kissing girls in the locker room for the second time in a week....

Since coming to the school as a teacher several years ago, he said, he pushed for the school to admit a married student, laid on hands in an effort to heal a girl basketball player's injured ankle, and has taken troubled students into his family's home.

"The vision I had is the love of God can change everything," Unfreid said.

When the two seniors, 17 and 18, got caught kissing girls in front of younger students in late October, Unfreid said that while contemplating what discipline to hand out, he woke at 3 a.m. and prayed how to avoid expelling them. He said that was when he remembered years ago he had cured his son of chronic lying by telling his son to hit him with a wooden ladle instead of spanking the youngster.

Later at school, Unfreid walked the boys down to a basement room with Brost. He told them, "'Guys, this has gotta stop,'" he said. "'I've let the atmosphere get too lax. I share in this discipline. This is a one-time deal.'"

Then the principal took off his belt, gave it to Brost, and instructed the teacher to "discipline me like you would discipline your own son," he recalled.

He told the teacher to stop only when the students acknowledged their mistake. The whole thing, starting with the trip downstairs, lasted 5 to 10 minutes, he said.

Is Fallwell Married?

November 24, 2004 | 3:00 p.m.

From Jerry Falwell's November 21 televised service, noted by

Media Matters

:

"And we're going to invite PETA [to 'Wild Game Night'] as our special guest, P-E-T-A -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. We want you to come, we're going to give you a top seat there, so you can sit there and suffer. This is one of my special groups, another one's the ACLU, another is the NOW -- the National Order of Witches [sic]. We've got -- I've got a lot of special groups."

...Calling NOW the "National Order of Witches" was far from Falwell's first expression of his opposition to feminists. Falwell mobilized opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment through his organization The Moral Majority. In 1989, Falwell stated:

"I listen to feminists and all these radical gals ... These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it, and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men; that's their problem."

Is Falwell married? Is there a woman in his life who eagerly awaits his arrival at night? Who lusts after him? Boggles the mind....

The Beauty Part

November 24, 2004 | 3:00 p.m.

He more or less invented World Music--when he was 21 years old, back in distant 1962. No words. Just stringed instruments that take you from culture to culture, one great cut at a time. Who was he?

Sandy Bull

.

Thought for Today

November 23, 2004 | 5:00 p.m.

Right now, our whole country's on life-support from Beijing and Tokyo. But the more money they lend us as the dollar weakens, the more money they're going to lose. At some point, China might decide it's best to cut us off this welfare scheme and start spending the money on their own citizens.

-- Peter Schiff, who heads Euro Pacific Capital in Newport Beach, quoted in

The San Diego Union-Tribune

Hearts and Minds

November 23, 2004 | 5:00 p.m.

And yet there are those who call what we're making in Iraq "progress."

From The Star Tribune

:

Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government. After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition that includes chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.

"These figures clearly indicate the downward trend," said Alexander Malyavin, a child health specialist with the UNICEF mission to Iraq.

Iraq's child malnutrition rate now roughly equals that of Burundi, a central African nation torn by more than a decade of war. It is far worse than rates in Uganda and Haiti.

Voting Fraud?

November 23, 2004 | 5:00 p.m.

Keeping away from the voting fraud story until it really is a story. But it is interesting to note the Christian connection. From the

Washington Monthly

(scroll down to 11/21):

A quartet of companies control [80% of] the U.S. vote count. Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia and SAIC are all hard-wired into the Bush campaign and power structure. Diebold chief Walden O'Dell is a top Bush fund-raiser. According to "online anarchist community" Infoshop.org, "At Diebold, the election division is run by Bob Urosevich. Bob's brother, Todd, is a top executive at 'rival' ES&S. The brothers were originally staked by Howard Ahmanson, a member of the Council For National Policy, a right-wing steering group stacked with Bush true believers. Ahmanson is also one of the bagmen behind the extremist Christian Reconstruction Movement, which advocates the theocratic takeover of American democracy." Sequoia is owned by a partner member of the Carlyle Group, which is believed to have dictated foreign policy in both Bush administrations and has employed former President Bush for quite a while.

Continued on page 2: »