The Fifteenth Sin

Years ago, we had the seven, deadly:

Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth.

This week we get the NEW seven, deadly:

Polluting, Genetic Engineering (embryonic stem cell research), Being Obscenely Rich, Drug Dealing, Abortion, Pedophilia and Causing Social Injustice.

Mind you, these are mortal sins, i.e., unforgiven (and only by a Catholic priest) and you go to hell for eternity when you die (unless you make an act of perfect contrition, but we won't go into that.)

I would like to add a fifteenth:

Not Wearing Green on St. Patrick's Day!

Comment1: This is getting ridiculous! So, clearly Spitizer, formerly known as "The Gov", falls into the Lust category. But, how's he to be forgiven, since he's Jewish? And doesn't invading a country for no cause other than they tried to bump off your old man sort of like Anger? And what about Obscenely Rich. (Bill, Bill Gates.... paging Bill Gates....). And Social Injustice? Just veto another SCHIP bill, Georgie Boy, and buy buy yourself another ticket to ....

Comment2: We can deal with embryonic stem cell research later. I gotta go.

Israel and Nuclear Weapons

We have known for some time that Israel has numerous nuclear weapons; some estimate as many as 200. Therefore, it came a somewhat of a surprise to learn that China, who surely must be considered the prime target of American nuclear weapons (if you exclude Iran) has only 110-160 warheads!

I’ve read Chinese Military Power and I don’t agree that it says China increased the size of its nuclear force by 1/3. When I do the math, I get basically 110-160 warheads — about the same size as last year or a little larger depending on how many DF-21s have a nuclear role.

At the suggestion of The Growlery, I have been reading the three books by Jeanne DuPrau (The City of Ember, The People of Sparks and the prequel, The Prophet of Yornwood). While written for young adolescents, they once more resurrect the spectre of a nuclear holocaust that we thought had been on its way out with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Union formerly known as Soviet. As we used to say when we were kids, "Dream on, sucker." (Yes, I highly recommend these books for adults since they have a strange, uncomplicated story line that harkens back to those days of the Hardy Boys and Jack London. On, you Huskies.)

Other books that visit this scenario are, of course the 1957 book "On the Beach" by Nevil Shute, "Eternity Road" by Jack McDivitt, "Riddley Walker" by Russel Hoban, and a host of other mainstream and sci-fi post-apocalyptic fiction.

Do you not find it strange that we probably spend more intellectual energy in trying to imagine what will happen after a nuclear "exchange" (sounds so benign, doesn't it) than we do to try and prevent one? Don't you also find it strange that a large number of the Christian Right in the United States look forward to the apocalypse when there will be an Armageddon in the mid East and they will be "raptured" up to heaven intact? How can that be when a nuclear War in the mid East will inevitably wind up involving a nuclear weapons everywhere and all those Christians will be vaporized. Can you rapture vaporized humans? Hmmm...

In any case, I digress. The point I wanted to make is that the tiny state of Israel with 7 million people has almost twice the number of nuclear weapons as China, a state of 1,321 million people. Eventually, weapons sitting on the shelf will not protect Israel from attack. At that point they will use those weapons as sure as I am writing this. Then?



(I make no apology for the use of the word holocaust above. If an official of the Israeli government can use it to describe what he is going to do to the Palestinians I think it is no longer a reserved word.)

Friday Crab Blogging

This is a very realistic rendition. It demonstrates the translation of memory into a drawing, all the more remarkable because it has been at least six months since he has seen a crab!

Now this picture is entrancing. Of course we have a crab, but I bet you can't guess what the rest of the drawing represents? Give? It is a beach scene with a lifeguard chair to the right. I assume there are other bathers to the left but I think they are scared out of their gourd by the size of the crab that is approaching. Oh, and the sun got lost.

This is a fish and, I think, an upside down duck, or Canadian goose. Why upside down, I do not know. Maybe Picasso lurks in this child's brain.

Hard for Hannah to compete with the above, but her crab has charm.

Anything to stop the carnage:

Group of Iraqis asks UN to take over

Iraqi Group Appeals to UN to Put Their Nation Under Its Supervision

RYAN LENZ
AP News

Mar 12, 2008 09:37 EST

A group of Iraqi tribal leaders, former politicians and intellectuals appealed Wednesday to the United Nations to take control of Iraq in a move they say would help U.S. troops leave the beleaguered country.

Both the U.S. administration and the Baghdad government are unlikely to endorse the request, which was addressed to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and delivered to the Cairo offices of the organization.

"We believe that the only opportunity left for Iraq to be saved from a dark, but not inevitable future, is to engage the international community represented by the United Nations," the letter said. "Such a step will allow the American troops to leave and the occupation to be brought to its end."

The group's coordinators include Adeeb al-Jadir, Ahmed Al-Haboubi and Nouri Abdel Razak Hussein, politicians overthrown in 1968 when Saddam Hussein's Baath party came to power and long part of the liberal anti-regime opposition prior to the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Opinions

For those who are interested, there are some very pithy comments following a post from below on "This is very sad". It is hard for me to understand how someone who I thought was removed from the actual fray (commenter 1) could harbor such stark feelings about a whole peoples (dubbed the palis for the Palestinians; reminiscent of the North Ireland conflict with its "prods" and "micks.")The fact that he has a son in the IDF, and that his veiws are certainly tempered by this relationship, is disconcerting.

Yes, I must seem shrill at times. And, yes, my sympathies are with the Palestinians because I see that their children are getting the s**t kicked out of them. It is much like Iraq in a way. Palestinians used to be, along with Iraq, one of the best educated Arab populace in the Mideast. Now there is an entire generation of children who have little or no education. But, in any coming world, unless you kill them all as commentator 1 (and others ) advocate, the best hope for peace would be a well educated population. You can't educate children in the wasteland that is Palestine and Iraq.

Furthermore, even if the Palesinians completely capitulated to the Israeli demands, what then? You also can't have a viable country (Israel) in the middle of a humanitarian wasteland that you have helped create. I wonder if commentator 1 would feel any guilt?

Commentator 2, Felix Grant, has an excellent post on this topic here. I mirror his comments in that, while I disagree with some of his points, I find that we still agree on the big ideas.

Friday Crab Blogging

This is very sad

From here:

Hamas claims deadliest attack in Israel in 2 years
By Adam Entous and Joseph Nasr

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Hamas Islamists who control the Gaza Strip claimed responsibility on Friday for the shooting of eight students in a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, the most lethal Palestinian attack in Israel in two years

There is nothing but condemnation for this. Not only have innocent students been killed, it has also set back the chance of a lasting peace enormously. It makes us realize that there is suffering on both sides of the conflict.

However, it in no way should justify unleashing once again the guns, jets, tanks and soldiers against the people of Gaza. Please, let us mourn for the innocent on both sides.

Without Comment

From here:

“Return to Iraq?” asks 35-year-old Ahmed Alwan, an Iraqi engineer now working at a restaurant in Damascus. “There is no Iraq to return to, my friend. Iraq only exists in our dreams and memories.”

The different sides of the fence

Consider the folllowing:

"Arab identity in the past has been locked into the colonial experience. . . . It is a very good example of [how] a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends. . . . The world did feel sorry for their treatment but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger. . . . The Arab identity in the future appears bleak. . . . We have created a culture of violence (Palestianians and the Muslims are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity."

This paragraph could, of course, have been the spouting of any of our media "experts."

The actual paragraph is from here:

"Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the Holocaust experience. . . . It is a very good example of [how] a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends. . . . The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger. . . . The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. . . . We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity."

This, of course, is considered anti Semitism of the worst sort and resulted in the firing of the editor that let the comment (from Arun Ghandi, grandson of the Ghandi) pass. The comment stoked apoplectic outrage in the pro Israel community.

I will leave it to you to decide the validity of the charge.

Is the Surge "working?"

Iraqi civilian deaths on the rise

BAGHDAD: The number of Iraqis killed in February rose by 33 per cent over January, reversing a six-month trend of reduced violence, in a setback to the US military plan to curb the bloodshed ravaging the country.

The combined figures from the interior, defence and health ministries showed that the total number of Iraqis killed in February was 721, including 636 civilians, compared with 541 dead in January.

We continue to converse in an alternative universe here. As if 721 dead (many more wounded) and 541 dead were NOTHING. I just don't understand it. No one around me seems the slightest bit interested in this carnage. It is on another planet. There is no responsibility taken for anything. The absolute magnitude of the humanitarian disaster that we have caused in Irak cannot be comprehended.

What will America do when the blow back really begins?

Israel and Gaza

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has gone on for the last sixty years. In November, in Annapolis, there was once more a furtive effort by the Bush Administration to move the region towards a peaceful settlement. This week, that effort came tumbling down, as has all previous efforts. As the years go one, it is clear that the World, particularly the United States, has become quite jaded to the carnage that periodically results. How can one look at a picture like this:


or this:


and not feel compassion?

And the carnage is always one sided. It is 10 eyes for and eye and 10 teeth for a tooth. And that is a result of this:


and this:



These weapons, along with over 200 nuclear bombs, give Israeli's the power to say:

When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.

Or their Parliament to declare:

During Sunday's cabinet meeting, Vice Premier Haim Ramon asked why the IDF was not directing massive fire at the areas from which Qassams are being launched.

"According to international law, you can do that," he said. "In the Second Lebanon War it was clear that if they shoot from within a village, we can fire on them even if the area is populated."

which leads to more of this:



Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, and John McCain are all steadfast supporters of Israel. They all label Palestinians as terrorists. Any one of them as president will continue to pump money into the bloated Israeli defense establishment against which the Palestinians have little more than:



I admire this boy. He has far more courage than I do.

Friday Crab Blogging (on Sunday)

Bad news for crabbers. Apparently the number of blue crabs in the Bay is so low that they are in danger of becoming basically extinct if they are collected at the same rate as years past. Can one imagine summer without crabs? A little hard.

Flirting?

Saudis arrested for flirting with women
Saudi Arabia Investigates Men Arrested After Allegedly Flirting With Women in Public

Staff; AP News Feb 23, 2008 17:00 EST

Saudi Arabia began interrogating 57 men Saturday who were arrested after allegedly flirting with women in front of a shopping mall in the holy city of Mecca, a local newspaper reported.

I'd call this flirting, but then, what do I know...

Friday Crab Blogging

Sponge Bob Crab (whatever that is)

Occupations

Last week there was a power outage in my town. Everything ground to a halt. For about 3 minutes. We really felt inconvienced. For crying out loud, the computers were down!

But then there is this:

IRAQ: The Lights Have Gone Out, Who Cares
16th February 2008, 09:20 am

BAQUBA, Feb 15 (IPS) - Lack of electricity in Baquba has shattered businesses, and the lives of families. Months of power failures has darkened morale everywhere.

And this:

Half of Baghdad without water
15th February 2008, 09:05 pm

Power failures and maintenance have disrupted running water supplies to almost half of the capital, Baghdad, home to nearly 6 million people.

Clearly "The Surge is Working" depends on what your definition of "working" is.

For the effect on the people of another occuptaion, go to here. If you do read this, swear that a shiver didn't go up your spine.

Friday Crab Blogging (on Saturday)

Hegemony

I have been woefully negligent in replying to pithy comments in the Growlery and from Mr. Putnam.

The first set of posts concerns waning American hegemony:
It starts with Jim Putnam's comments: Thoughts From "Goodbye To Hegemony"

Followed by the Growlery: End of Empires

Based on the primary article which is by Parag Khanna and was published in the New York Times, 27 January, 2008. Its title is “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony”

I am really impressed by the dialog between the Growlery, in England, and Jim Putnam just south of where I live, about this Gotterdammerung of America. It is uncanny to me how America in her spiral towards obscurity seeks to parlay our plight off as that War between the Gods. It is Us against the ‘turrists,’ putting way too high a value on both. (Please remember that the original terrorists probably numbered less than 1,000 and the Twin Towers death toll, as sad as it was, was less than 3,000.)

Apparently the original Gotterdammerung story is from the Norse legend of Ragnarok. Here the gods do battle with one another (it is Odin versus the Giants; wait a minute, wasn’t that just the Super Bowl?) and it is foreordained who will kill who (how does a god get killed?) and who will be covered with honor. It is all sort of Calvinistic, and, of course smacking of that old time Religion that makes Huckabee warriors clutch their pearls. It involves all sorts of things that Bush touts but doesn't have, like bravery and honor. Gosh!

Let me summarize: America is in decline. We are about to go into an awfully deep recession and many of the people I know are living paycheck to paycheck. Much of what Khanna predicts will happen in the next ten years.

Khanna has quite a bit to say about the underpinnings of this descent from power. He certainly makes a cogent argument and I guess as an American I should be anxious to try and alter what he sees as inevitable. Ironically, we still believe we are gods and involved in the gigantic clash of the universe. But this descent into Hel (yes the Norse had a hell, but I don’t think Dante would approve) will probably pass unnoticed by History with a Capitol H. We'll keep descending until such time as the average American can’t buy a tricycle let alone an SUV.

What is interesting is how brief our little Camelot was. When I lived in Ireland and travelled in Europe and beyond (1970-72), most people were pretty tolerant of “Yanks.” I do admit that I would claim to be an Australian in the outback of Anatolia. Even then, or especially then, America was pushing its exceptionalism. That was only 25 years since WWII and I guess there was a certain feeling of gratitude to America, though one can be cynical about that. Be that as it may, I certainly felt proud of being a “Yank” even though I was raised in the South. I can guarantee you I do not feel that way now.

Unfortunately, there is one, tiny, little fly in the ointment. Or flies in the ointment. They are called nuclear weapons, and W is itching to use them. Stay tuned.

Friday Crab Blogging

It takes all kinds.

Exhaustion

I must confess to being totally exhausted with the primary season. It has already gone on for almost a year and we have ten months left. I will admit that I was an Edwards supporter and am sorry to see him end his campaign. I truly hope that Clinton and/or Obama can not shoot themselves in the foot because I think a McCain presidency would quickly doom our country, if it isn't so doomed at this point.

I think I will go back to commenting on some of the things that The Growlery and Jim Putnmam have been discussing, including the last (and first) books by Jack McDevitt. Am also reading Iris Murdoch, Gibson's new one, another Trollope, and whatever.

Short but sweet will be the new format.

Torture

Talking Points Memo Muckraker has links to testimony by both Michael McConnell (Director of National Intelligence) and Gen. Michael Hayden (Director of CIA) which confirms what all of us have known for a long time:

The United States of America has used torture on prisoners.

While most people will say, ho hum, no big deal, I contend that this, coupled with our abetting the murder of over a million civilians in Iraq, will be two issues that will never go away. Two issues that have permanently scarred the Escutcheon of our Nation.

Update 02/06:
Today we have:

White House defends interrogation method
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The White House on Wednesday defended the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding, saying it is legal — not torture as critics argue — and has saved American lives.

President Bush could authorize waterboarding for future terrorism suspects if certain criteria are met, a spokesman said.

Since when does the White House decide what is legal? How about the Supreme Court.