Listening for the Angels

A long while ago, the first article I wrote for the Weekly caused a dust up for being too Pollyanna’ish. We weren’t nearly as exhausted then, we were a little hysterical and a lot angry; some of the readers decided I was delusional, in denial about the value of anger … in fact, I was asking them to move on to the step AFTER anger. Me, I’d already bitten through a vein — you can only be pissed so long without making some next move.

I’d said that you could change a persons energy when you smile at them — you can. Your intent toward another person is read in a gazillion subtleties when you’re face to face … a smile neutralizes a good deal of unspoken energy and psychic signals. That’s why married couples are urged to TOUCH on another when they argue [kindly, gently] — our angers and our fears express emotionally, intellectually … they can be grounded simply enough when we realize that there is actually SOMEONE IN FRONT OF US physically. A human. One of “us.” Perhaps someone we love. I changed one of the most difficult work relationships I’d ever experienced by smiling every time I saw that person. In the end, she thought I was a heckuva gal.

It’s time we rediscovered nuance in the USA, explored our gray area’s — time to peel another layer of onion to get closer to the heart of our problems … we’ve spent seven years running from them and wasting valuable opportunities. It’s time to THINK instead of react … RESPOND instead of knee-jerk with our “known knowns.” It’s time to grow.

Here’s an op/ed on the Imus situation by Harvey Fierstein [thanks, Deb!] The pundits are talking about it … we ALL need to be thinking about it. The complexity of the Imus firing has roots all the way to primitive human bias, thoughtless learned prejudice and fear. The second article, by Conversations with God author Neale Donald Walsch, speaks to those ungrounded fears, and gives us another way to view that “Pollyanna” business I mentioned. The last bit is my post from the Weekly.

Higher Angels — they’re always with us, waiting for us to notice them. It’s time.

Jude

Our Prejudices, Ourselves
HARVEY FIERSTEIN, New York Times Op-Ed Contributor
April 13, 2007

AMERICA is watching Don Imus’s self-immolation in a state of shock and awe. And I’m watching America with wry amusement.

Since I’m a second-class citizen — a gay man — my seats for the ballgame of American discourse are way back in the bleachers. I don’t have to wait long for a shock jock or stand-up comedian to slip up with hateful epithets aimed at me and mine. Hate speak against homosexuals is as commonplace as spam. It’s daily traffic for those who profess themselves to be regular Joes, men of God, public servants who live off my tax dollars, as well as any number of celebrities.

In fact, I get a good chuckle whenever someone refers to “the media” as an agent of “the gay agenda.” There are entire channels, like Spike TV, that couldn’t fill an hour of programming if required to remove their sexist and homophobic content. We’ve got a president and a large part of Congress willing to change the Constitution so they can deprive of us our rights because they feel we are not “normal.”

So I’m used to catching foul balls up here in the cheap seats. What I am really enjoying is watching the rest of you act as if you had no idea that prejudice was alive and well in your hearts and minds.

For the past two decades political correctness has been derided as a surrender to thin-skinned, humorless, uptight oversensitive sissies. Well, you anti-politically correct people have won the battle, and we’re all now feasting on the spoils of your victory. During the last few months alone we’ve had a few comedians spout racism, a basketball coach put forth anti-Semitism and several high-profile spoutings of anti-gay epithets.

What surprises me, I guess, is how choosy the anti-P.C. crowd is about which hate speech it will not tolerate. Sure, there were voices of protest when the TV actor Isaiah Washington called a gay colleague a “faggot.” But corporate America didn’t pull its advertising from “Grey’s Anatomy,” as it did with Mr. Imus, did it? And when Ann Coulter likewise tagged a presidential candidate last month, she paid no real price.

In fact, when Bill Maher discussed Ms. Coulter’s remarks on his HBO show, he repeated the slur no fewer than four times himself; each mention, I must note, solicited a laugh from his audience. No one called for any sort of apology from him. (Well, actually, I did, so the following week he only used it once.)

Face it, if a Pentagon general, his salary paid with my tax dollars, can label homosexual acts as “immoral” without a call for his dismissal, who are the moral high and mighty kidding?

Our nation, historically bursting with generosity toward strangers, remains remarkably unkind toward its own. Just under our gleaming patina of inclusiveness, we harbor corroding guts. America, I tell you that it doesn’t matter how many times you brush your teeth. If your insides are rotting your breath will stink. So, how do you people choose which hate to embrace, which to forgive with a wink and a week in rehab, and which to protest? Where’s my copy of that rule book?

Let me cite a non-volatile example of how prejudice can cohabit unchecked with good intentions. I am a huge fan of David Letterman’s. I watch the opening of his show a couple of times a week and have done so for decades. Without fail, in his opening monologue or skit Mr. Letterman makes a joke about someone being fat. I kid you not. Will that destroy our nation? Should he be fired or lose his sponsors? Obviously not.

But I think that there is something deeper going on at the Letterman studio than coincidence. And, as I’ve said, I cite this example simply to illustrate that all kinds of prejudice exist in the human heart. Some are harmless. Some not so harmless. But we need to understand who we are if we wish to change. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should confess to not only being a gay American, but also a fat one. Yes, I’m a double winner.)

I urge you to look around, or better yet, listen around and become aware of the prejudice in everyday life. We are so surrounded by expressions of intolerance that I am in shock and awe that anyone noticed all these recent high-profile instances. Still, I’m gladdened because our no longer being deaf to them may signal their eventual eradication.

The real point is that you cannot harbor malice toward others and then cry foul when someone displays intolerance against you. Prejudice tolerated is intolerance encouraged. Rise up in righteousness when you witness the words and deeds of hate, but only if you are willing to rise up against them all, including your own. Otherwise suffer the slings and arrows of disrespect silently.

Harvey Fierstein is an actor and playwright.

The Circle of Life
Neale Donald Walsch, ConversationsWithGod

All through my life I have been afraid. Fear has ruled much of my experience. I learned to be afraid as a little child. I was taught to be afraid by my parents and others in my environment.

I learned to be afraid of the things that my parents were afraid of. I learned to be afraid of the things that my family was afraid of. I learned to be afraid of the things that the people around me and in my culture and in my country were afraid of. I became afraid of those things whether I had a direct reason to be afraid of them or not. My reason for being afraid of things was that other people were afraid of things. I assumed that if they were afraid of them that I should be afraid of them too.

As I grew older I began to divorce myself from the feelings of those around me because I could see the impact that they were having on their lives and I did not want to have that same impact on my life. I found myself disowning the experience of others in place of my own experience. This transformation of my personal experience of life took a quantum leap after I had my conversations with God. In those conversations I was told that all of my experience of life proceeds from one of two places: love or fear. I decided to see if this could possibly be true. I undertook to make a great experiment. I decided to see if I could shift my feeling from fear to love arbitrarily.

I chose as my subject a woman of whom I was very much afraid. I wasn’t afraid of her in the physical sense, I was afraid of her psychologically. She held a position of power in the community in which I lived and in the space in which I interacted daily, and it seemed to me that she had great power over my life. She had the ability to control outcomes in my life, or at least to impact them in negative ways. I was afraid of her opinion of me. I was afraid of her thoughts about me. I was afraid of her decisions about me. I was afraid of what she would tell others about me.

I decided to see if I could shift my feeling about this person from fear to love. As a result of my decision to do this I found myself listening much more carefully to what this person was saying in her everyday conversations. I found myself observing much more closely what this person was doing with her everyday actions. I found myself experiencing this person in a new way, looking at her through new eyes.

I realized as I undertook this experiment that I had been cloaking her naked beauty with the garment of my illusions about her. Once I saw her as who she really was rather than what I imagined her to be in my own limited view, she transformed magically right before my eyes. Of course, nothing about her had changed, only the viewpoint that I held about her had shifted. I began to change the way I interacted with her. My own vibe shifted around her. The result was miraculous. She, in turn, shifted her vibe around me. She began to sense that my wariness about her had somehow disappeared. Her wariness around me had, therefore, melted away as well. We began to see each other in a way that we had not seen each other before.

I found this experience to be transformative. We two are now the best of friends. We see ourselves as colleagues and collaborators. We are no longer afraid of each other. There was nothing to be afraid of in the first place, but I had imagined that there was, and by my imagination had placed it there.

This was an astonishing experiment for me because it gave me a direct experience of the power of the truth that all outcomes in my life proceed from a place of love or fear. I thought, what if I shifted my outlook from fear to love with regard to everything in my life? I decided to expand my experiment. But first I had to look at how I could shift from fear to love with regard to any particular person, place or thing.

As I explored this question I realized that the first step in changing my place of being from a space of fear to a space of love was to see that both spaces were one and the same space, simply experienced at different levels of vibration. Let me explain.

Consider hot and cold. If we are not careful we could imagine that hot and cold are two different things. We could speak of them as being opposites. And, in normal relative human terms, one would suppose that that definition is correct. But in truth, cold and hot are simply the same thing experienced at different degrees. We are talking about a condition called temperature. This condition can be experienced in many different ways depending upon its vibration. “Cold” is the condition called temperature at a certain vibe. “Hot” is an experience of temperature at an altogether different vibe. Nothing has changed except the vibration itself. The higher the vibration, the warmer the experience of the thing called temperature.

So, too, is it with the thing called Life. Experienced at a certain level of vibration, Life shows up in fearful ways. Experienced at a higher level of vibration, Life shows up as love. Life itself is one thing. It is not two separate things, but one thing only. Yet we experience this one thing quite differently from moment to moment depending upon the degree at which we express it. Now the wonderful thing about life is that we are in control of the mechanism by which we decide which degree we experience. We can turn the dial “as it were” at our own discretion. We can select an “emotional temperature” quite arbitrarily. We do this through the mechanism of thought, word and deed - the three tools of creation.

When I think in loving ways and say loving things and do that which love would do, I literally shift the vibe around a particular person, place or thing. I alter my perception and therefore alter my experience of that person, place or thing. Hence, it has been said that everyone is lovable. And if everyone loved everyone and did loving things to everyone - that is, if we all simply loved each other - every negative condition on this planet would be healed. No person would murder another. No person would damage, hurt or seek to destroy another. No person would withhold from another. And no person would stand in fear of another, nor do the things that fear sponsors.

All we need do, then, is place ourselves in a different space on the continuum of life. Life is a continuum. It is a circle, not a straight line with a beginning and an end. The circle of life moves from what we call fear to what we call love in one continuous flow. It is not a straight line with fear at one end and love at the other. It is a circular reality that flows from one to the other in a continuous movement and it is all the same thing.

When we see that fear and love are the same thing expressed at different levels of awareness, or vibration, we then understand that good and evil are also the same thing experienced at different levels of awareness, or vibration. This allows us to more deeply understand the statement made in Conversations with God that “Hitler went to heaven.”

When we first hear such a statement, we wonder how such a thing could possibly be true. Only when we see that all of life is a continuum, and that no one thing is separate from any other thing, could we understand this deep statement about Ultimate Reality.

Masters are those who understand such things. Therefore they judge not, and neither condemn. To a Master, the statement “Hitler went to heaven” would be self-evident. Of course Hitler would go to heaven, a Master would say. Where else could Hitler have gone? Where else is there? Yet even heaven can be experienced in a hellish way. It would all depend upon the perception of the individuated essence of life as it moved through the experience. Nowhere is this understanding more clearly explained in simple terms than in the wonderful motion picture What Dreams May Come, produced by Stephen Simon and Barnet Bain and starring Robin Williams. This movie, released a number of years ago, has become a classic. If you have not seen it, make it your intention to do so. It reveals a great truth. That truth is that hell does not exist, except as a function and a creation of our own mind. It is a place from which we may remove ourselves the instant that we shift our perception and alter our point of view.

In other words, when we change our sponsoring thought, hell becomes heaven and heaven becomes all there is. In the human experience there are only two sponsoring thoughts: love and fear. In my own life, this revelation as brought to me in conversations with God, has been transformative. It has changed everything. And I owe to this simple truth the shift that has occurred within me. Only when I fall back into the vibration of fear does my exterior and interior reality become smaller once again, reducing me to a shadow of my true self.

Letting Shift Happen
Judith Gayle
4/13/07

The Mercury-Uranus-North Node conjunction brought me a gift last week. I had unexpected company and that happens very rarely in the Pea Patch. I was presented with a most satisfying connect with an old friend to whom I am spiritual mentor (as she says; a member of what I call my Angelic Family.) She was driving across country from a bedside vigil with her dying father. Her visit was brief — only two days — and exhausting, as much of the emotional download she shared was difficult to process. Meanwhile, I’d managed to stay on top of my various deadlines, working into the wee smalls of the morning to flesh out the Weekly article, due the next day. As I waved her off that morning on the long drive back to the West Coast, I felt confident that I had the bulk of the piece ready for a last tweak and the cyber-trip to proofing. Back to business as usual. And then I discovered it missing — disappeared. I searched with no success. I quickly tried to recreate, but the mood was gone and I could not find the tempo of the original.

Oh dear, oh no! Panic!

Where does that come from, that lump in our throat, that knot in our stomach? What past programming, subconscious demons set us up for such a response? The human psyche likes checklists — we prefer things tidy; we have “rules.” We think in terms of “success” or “failure,” of “good” and “bad.” An even more damaging concept we can’t seem to shake is “punishment” and “praise.” If we don’t produce, there will be hell to pay — if we do, we’ll get a thumbs up and happy faces from those around us. Who we believe ourselves to be as individuals depends on what we accomplish, how we present ourselves to others, and what our lives look like; any deviation from that script is “bad.” Encoded in our cellular memory are nasty things like debtors’ prisons and the misery of poverty, the sting of ridicule, the shame of failure — our lower chakra concerns. Even our concepts of God are based on obedience or punishment. These are old survival tapes we’ve carried with us for eons, and they require of us a stupefying diligence and dedication to keeping our nose to the grindstone. It’s no surprise that we often take on a hive mentality — we’ve become humans doing, not humans being.

Gratefully, as students of astrology, we are intimate with the shift of energies and the influences that either help or hinder the smooth cadence of our daily lives — the new comes flooding in, the old goes flowing out, and there’s that moment in the mix when shift happens. Between the time that essay I’d written was created, and the time it was due, there had been a shift. Evidently, whatever I had to say was no longer relevant to the day. I would simply have to be late, as I wrote something else. I understood my dilemma — but I felt guilt in my gut.

I’d never missed a deadline; this was a “bad” thing. All those good feelings I’d enjoyed went south for a few moments — and then a deep breath and a moment’s pause allowed me to see it differently. In those few days, progress WAS made, just not on my time line. My friend arrived with that breathtaking, butter-yellow Full Moon in Libra and she was as full to bursting as it appeared to be, hanging low in the sky. She brought a weighty burden of dying issues, family tangle and grief with her. She went away feeling stronger, standing taller, with a newly found calm…hopefully better prepared to take the rest of her emotional journey. We could both feel the shift in her personal energy. Progress was made, and healing had taken place — it was a perfect visit. It was a “success.”

But the reality was that I was still behind, and suffering third chakra angst. That’s always the time to take a deep breath and turn off our mind for a moment. Life is coming at us fast and furiously these days. We’re being required to shift gears and reprioritize as the unexpected arises from out of nowhere. If we bounce the need to follow our tightly scheduled day against the necessity to respond authentically to what comes at us, it’s clear that something must give. And what must give is our own mental inflexibility, our need to be in tight control of our circumstance. Just in case you haven’t noticed, you’re not really in control any more; nobody can control all the variables that are shifting around us.

Here’s a different way to think of that — every new event that comes to us carries a gift; if we only see it as a hitch in our giddy-up, as a boulder in our path, we have made it a “problem.” Problems must be “fixed,” and as we quickly set to work to solve them, we miss what else we might find there. My friend preempted my routine, brought me her grief and gave me the gift of her confidence. My schedule went to hell and my deadline went begging, but I was fed a warm infusion of commonality and shared memory, affection and regard. I watched Spirit work, and celebrated the capacity of the heart to heal itself. My visitor was no “problem” to fix — she was a gift to receive.

Work drives us in this country; our European neighbors have a good deal more balance on this issue than do we. We are dogged to the point of overwhelm by our duties and responsibilities, our need to achieve and keep our many balls in the air. But if and when that doesn’t happen, the sky won’t fall. We don’t know how things are to turn out, how the unexpected will intrude on us and change our course, and we don’t have to be psychic to see that happening more often than it used to. We are in a process of transformation and that requires us to let loose on the reins from time to time; if you think that doesn’t really bother you, watch to see how many times you step in to do damage control, how often your gut knots and adrenalin floods, how annoyed you are when things don’t go your way.

Our need to control is increasing as our governmental and social structures dissolve. Your cranky friends and co-workers may be suffering this syndrome, some of them a little desperate with these shifting realities. We have to begin to trust ourselves, to trust life to take us where we need to go, because I can promise you that the coming changes will require both flexibility and trust. And things have a way of working in mysterious ways, no matter what we intend — think of the woman in New York who was delayed on her way to work one morning, and fretfully dashed to get to her job arriving just as the first plane flew into the Tower. She lived to tell her story — her co-workers who got to work on time didn’t. She couldn’t comprehend why she was spared, and we’ll never know why they weren’t. We can see a kind of Divine Order to our circumstance, if we’re willin g to step away from the controls for a bit. Life is forcing us to do it anyhow — might as well lean into it, gather some skills at surrendering to the moment, and see what happens next.

There are gifts out there to find. When we stop seeing things as problems, we are more likely to notice opportunities. The new energies coming in are deliberate — some would say destined; they’re asking us to let go of of tedium and absolutes and explore this “new” thing, to go with the flow into fresh territory. Our challenge is to shift with them. I missed a deadline, but I helped a friend heal. Life is sweet.

I got my gift. Now it’s your turn. If you’re stuck in traffic this evening, or if the woman in front of you in the grocery line has a thousand coupons — if your kid doesn’t do exactly what s/he promised to do or your Significant Other comes home grumpy and sour — if you find out (and you will) that the president is still stonewalling on the war even as a dozen more of our soldiers have died or that the polar bears are drowning and nobody seems to care — or even if you miss a deadline, do yourself a favor. Take a deep breath and let go of your need to micromanage what happens next. Take a moment to think about the ways you can respond, and choose the one that allows the moment to be an opportunity, not a problem.

These amazing times are giving us the chance to heal old fears and ancient scripts, gather new momentum and understanding, break free of patterns we’ve outgrown. We don’t know where they’re taking us, but they are surely asking us to redefine what’s important. The energy is shifting. If it’s in the stars, then it’s in us. And if you lift your nose far enough above your fears and duties and routines, you may find that to be an opportunity you’ve awaited for a lifetime.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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1 comment April 14th, 2007

IB’s, Camp Casey and more

IB’s = interesting bits. The last portion of this post is mostly about Iraq, because the occupation remains the most egregious of the Bu$h misadventures … and the most bloody.

In our Weekend Reads tradition, I’ve included a few other tidbits. First, if you want more on the e-mails, Froomkin’s our go-to guy.

Then, Jerry Ford’s disapproval of BushWarII comes to mind again as another of the conservatives speaks beyond the grave, and this one a genuine NeoCon — why don’t these people have the guts to tell their truth while they’re still breathing???

Next, a Crook’s n’ Liars video of Nancy Pelosi regarding her trip to Syria. Gotta love it. Here’s a quote:

The president is not king, the president is the president of the United States. America is a democracy. We have to make decisions based on our judgment. Thus far, the president’s judgment hasn’t been good, in terms of, say for example, the war on Iraq.

I’m including the weeks ‘toons, here — Ben Sargent has been added to Bob Geiger’s weekly collection, and I love Sargent. He, like Ann Talneas, is a real “ar-teest.” And there’s a REALLY fun Fiori of Dubby and Karl rapping — its a hoot.

The first piece below … an IB … is from a poll done by the military news [from their registered users] on Bush’s increase to fifteen months for his warriors. There is an emergency going on in the ranks, in that the leadership, the West Point’ers, are bailing on this mess — the military is trained to be myopic, moving along on the credibility of its chain of command; when the commanders go south, we’ve got a major disconnect.

Cindy Sheehan and others write moving articles after that — including a new link from Ava Lowrey, the talented teen video producer. I’ve added an article about the recent explosion in the Green Zone — this changes the entire climate of the war, say the insiders. Another nail in the coffin of a misbegotten delusion.

Note: The first piece in the Sheehan collection details the march on Dubby’s Texas digs on Easter, in the snow — let me add that we have snow in the Pea Patch today. Perhaps you have it too. The early budding fruit trees and berry vines have been done in for the year, no fruit crop will be produced. Everywhere we look, we see the global warming results … and the conservatives are still telling us these are the normal natural cycles of devastation that we can do nothing to stall. Don’t you think they’d worry what kind of world their GRANDCHILDREN were going to inherit? I’ll never understand these guys!

Do PLEASE read the last piece, on an upcoming Bill Moyers 90-minute special on PBS … this is one you’ll want to mark on your calendar to watch, if not tape.

Weekend reads and IB’s, below.

Jude

Poll Results from Military.com
Thursday, April 12, 2007

What will 15-month deployments do to Army retention?

Hurt 83%
Help 4%
No Effect 12%

Easter in Crawford, Texas: Hell Freezes Over
Mimi Kennedy, t r u t h o u t
Tuesday 10 April 2007

It’s snowing in Crawford, TX on George Bush’s Easter vacation.

Though snow ruined many a childhood Easter outfit for me in Rochester, NY - which was a lake away from Canada - somehow I don’t think Easter snow is expected in Texas, a state that borders Mexico. It’s the kind of thing that makes people think twice, even people who normally avoid thinking once. We can hope.

I arrived in Texas on Thursday night for the Camp Casey Peace Awards dinner at the Spill Bar in Austin. I was there to intro fellow PDA Board Member Jodie Evans to receive her Peace Award from Cindy Sheehan. Days after Cindy first sat in the Crawford ditch to ruin George Bush’s summer vacation, Jodie showed up to support her. She’s supported Camp Casey ever since, and, with PDA Board Member Medea Benjamin, she founded Code Pink Women for Peace, which emboldens women worldwide to challenge warmongers directly and visibly.

Jodie, Medea, David Swanson and the indefatigable Ann Wright were all there to help Cindy celebrate the second anniversary of Camp Casey. The room was filled with Camp Casey and Gold Star Family members and supporters from far-flung states of the union. Jim Hightower was there, and Camp Casey supporters Willie and Annie Nelson, who received a Peace Award. It was a sight to see Willie’s rapturous face, listening to Caroline Wonderland sing his “What Ever Happened to Peace on Earth?” Emma’s Revolution and several Camp Casey artists entertained.

The street was blocked off to vehicular traffic, and outside, people strolled in still warm weather. Students were enjoying spring break, and the music and bars of Austin.

The troops should be home to enjoy this, too. This is what peace looks like.

The next day - known paradoxically to Christians as Good Friday, the day the Roman Empire killed Jesus of Nazareth for his peace agitation - Camp Casey residents (and those who opted to stay in the nearby motel, including me) drove to the checkpoint at Bush’s Crawford ranch. We sang to the tune of “We Shall Overcome” as we approached the orange plastic barriers: “We are here with Cindy/We’re here to ask/What noble Cause/We are here with Cindy now.” There, Cindy asked if she could meet with the president. The answer was still no.

She then addressed the crowd, telling her history of challenging the president on his vacation grounds and calling for his impeachment for war crimes. An altar was set up across the road where we gathered to read the names of US military dead from this war. Dede Miller beat a drum each time a name was called and we intoned “Dead Forever” as a reminder that, though Jesus rose from the dead and was seen again by the living, the dead of Iraq will not rise on Sunday or any other day on Earth. They are permanently gone. Their loved ones will mourn until their own deaths.

After an hour, we were still reading the names of the first year’s casualties. A full reading, Cindy told us, would be well over six hours.

Back at Camp Casey, we shared a meal and an Impeachment Forum. David Swanson, Anne Wright, Medea, Cindy and I discussed Bush and Cheney’s constitutional violations, from signing statements, to lying the country into war, to ignoring the Geneva Conventions in order to torture, to stealing elections. A rousing impeachment poem was read. This event had been planned for the Camp Casey stage, but we held it around the roaring campfire. The temperature had plummeted! Not much deters Camp Casey campers. Their joy at being there, their determination to stay, committed those who’d pitched tents to spend the night in them. But they wore their sleeping bags as coats during the final night’s ceremony that ended with hugs around the campfire. Most had packed peace t-shirts and jeans; they’re used to Camp Casey being hot.

At the motel, we dyed Easter eggs well into the night, preparing for the next day’s action. The motel owner, Brenda, dropped by with her cousin, who proudly wore her IMPEACH t-shirt around Crawford. Everyone participated in writing messages on the hard-boiled eggs that were beautifully dyed with rich purples, greens, yellows, pinks and - the color of ‘07 - PEACH (Immmm-peach!). A young man read from the motel’s Gideon Bible to help us choose salient quotes as Easter messages to George Bush - the eggs’ intended recipient - reminding him that warmongers aren’t living the Resurrection.

Medea Benjamin, it turns out, knows every song she’s ever happened to hear, at least in part. And I do, too. So in the course of the evening, we led the party in a chorus of soul, rock, camp songs and Broadway musicals - a choir practice that paid off the next day with composition and performance of what will soon be (we feel sure) an instant classic — the Pink Police Song:

(TUNE: “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad”)

We defend the Constitution
We’re the Pink Police
We defend the Constitution
We defend Free Speech
Can’t you hear the people shouting?
It’s become a Roar
Can’t you hear the people shouting?
Time to end this war!
Time to end the war (etc.) I kno-o-ow
Time to end the war (etc.) Right now
Someone’s at the ranch with George
Someone’s at the ranch I know
Someone’s at the ranch with George
Cooking up another war (We’ll stop it!)
Fee fie fiddley eye oh (etc.)
We can stop it now - we know!

On Saturday, Kathy Murphy distributed the Pink Police outfits she’d packed. To digress momentarily, I salute the impressive schlepping done by this peace movement. With generous spirit, people carted unwieldy duffels and suitcases to produce banners and outfits and all manner of helpful demonstration aids! Kathy had long-sleeved, collared shirts dyed bright pink with PINK POLICE printed on the back and security guard patches on the sleeves, along with police hats artfully covered with sewn-and-glued pink covers. Plastic badges completed the outfits.

Medea had warned that donning them would trigger subtle personality changes; as an actress, I knew she was right. A local fast-food place saw a mirthful bunch of Pink Police acting out their inner peace officers. Yes, one of us should have had a phone camera at least. But we didn’t.

We gathered once again at the checkpoint - caravaning in cars and the bio-diesel-fueled peace-bus driven cross-country by a group of activists. You can’t park close to the checkpoint anymore. We walked the rest of the way, Pink Police in the lead, hiding eggs for activists - especially the two children with us, Ella and Julian - to find and put in two baskets that the children and Cindy would attempt to deliver to George Bush.

As Cindy and the children approached, with Pink Police and activists surrounding them, the security detail warned us back. They told us to part for arriving traffic (no George Bush in the opaque-windowed SUVs, it seemed). They told Ella, Julian and Cindy that the eggs could not be taken to Bush. They told us to get back beyond the barriers.

At that point, the Pink Police declared the area a crime scene and set off bullhorn sirens. Violation of the right of free speech - to address the president and be heard - was the immediate crime, but, as yellow crime tape was spread across the road in front of the barriers, Pink Officer Anne Wright read the litany of crimes committed by the ranch resident, and Cindy called for impeachment.

I couldn’t turn around to see the faces of the security detail. But I had seen their faces when Medea Benjamin asked for one of their names. In her police costume she asked, “What’s your name, sir?”

The look on the face of the man in plainclothes - whether he was Secret Service, FBI, local detective, I couldn’t tell - was indescribable. Somewhere between disbelief and anger, he seemed to be thinking: “That’s not a question you get to ask, lady. I ask you that question. You don’t ask me.” In the next moment, maybe because we had been singing about defense of Free Speech, you could almost see him register the unconstitutional, undemocratic nature of his reaction, and to his credit, he gave his name. As officer of the Pink Police, Medea then introduced him, by his name, to Ella and Julian, the children presenting the eggs. She was humanizing the situation; not tapping his phone or starting a file.

We went back to Camp Casey where Rev. Lennox Yearwood had arrived for his “Make Hip-Hop, Not War” bus-tour concert that night. I was able to say hello before going back to LA to prep for PDA’s Barnstorming CA tour, which will see, among other great events, the Hip-Hop Bus arriving on Tuesday, April 10. The temperature had dropped even further as we drove away - Medea, David Swanson and I all booked on Saturday flights for hometown actions. Before we reached the airport, Anne Wright phoned Medea to report that it was blizzarding at Camp Casey. The flakes were thick and white, she said. And they were accumulating on the ground.

A cold day in hell. Can peace be far behind? ++

Mimi Kennedy is the board chair of Progressive Democrats of America, an actor, activist and charter member of Artists United to Win Without War. Perhaps best known for her role on TV’s “Dharma and Greg,” she has appeared widely on TV, the stage and in movies.

Number 3291
Cindy Sheehan
Apr 13 2007

“Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

“And what is this bill?

“This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.”

~ Major General Smedley Butler, from War is a Racket

I met the aunt of number 3291 today. I was sitting in seat 11E and a flight attendant gave me a note from a woman in seat 33C: “My nephew was killed in Iraq yesterday. I would like to meet you.”

Seat belt light or not, I headed back toward the rear of the airplane. We held each other and she said: “What can I do? My brother was in the Army and he initially supported the effort. Yesterday, he made a sign with a picture of his son saying: ‘Murdered by George Bush.’”

I prayed for the Universe to give the families strength yesterday as I do everyday our soldiers are killed, as I pray for the Iraqis and their families who are also murdered unnecessarily. I don’t often get to meet the people I pray for in such a timely manner.

Four of our brave and abused troops were killed in King George’s escalation of the conflict in Iraq. Ten over the Easter weekend while George was hiding out at his ranch in Crawford. George Bush and his bloody gang of war-bandits have caused so much pain and heartache in the world without so much as a blink of the eye. Number 3291’s aunt recounted how she heard her sister ’screaming for her son,” on the other end of the phone. Number 3291’s family is just beginning to realize the true meaning of broken heart and betrayals.

Number 3291 has a name: Brian. The only thing I know for sure about Brian was that he was in the army, he was probably blown up by an IED (which could have been avoided with an IED detector in his vehicle), and he has a loving aunt named Sheryl. His family lives in North Carolina and that’s where his body will be returning to under the cover of darkness to hide the shame of the Bush Regime.

Brian will never be a number to his family or friends. To the few people in this country who still incredibly support this horror and his war, Brian’s sacrifice will be noted as “freedom isn’t free,” or “he volunteered.” To the anti-war movement, Brian will be commemorated in a candlelight vigil when the 4000th troop is killed in Iraq. To the man sitting next to me in seat 11D, Brian is a non-entity because he: has no opinion on the occupation one way or the other because he has no “time to worry about it.” Trust me though, that’s all Brian’s mom did for the entire time he was in Iraq and there are 160,000 moms who lie awake at night worried about their child and Iraqi moms who never know when the last “I love you,” is the last one forever.

To me Brian represents a failure. I have been struggling with all my energy and resources to insure that Brian’s mom never had to fall on the floor screaming in agony or so that Aunt Sheryl would never have to take a sad and lonely trip across the country to be with her family in this terrible occasion for mourning. Every death since Casey’s has hit me with a fresh assault of suffering. How can my wounds heal when so many new ones are being opened up on a daily basis in three countries that are being devastated by the Bush doctrine of inflicting immeasurable damage with his war for profit being masqueraded as a war on terror?

The anti-war movement is failing in many areas. First of all, like the man sitting next to me, there are too many apathetic people in this country. How can anyone still be so indifferent to so much death and destruction? Even the people who are still confused and support the war have an opinion. The anti-war movement is also failing in its lack of influence on the policy makers. When such pro-occupation entities as MoveOn are being hailed as the “anti-war left” and our Congressional leadership are listening to them and using their corrupt polls as tools to hammer theoretically anti-war Reps into voting for a bill that would extend our troop presence in Iraq indefinitely, then the true anti-war movement has not been effective in getting our message out.

Another goal that the anti-war movement should have would be to move the overwhelming majority of Americans who are against the occupation of Iraq off of their couches and into the streets. The leaders of our country are in the obscenely deep pockets of the war machine and are exceedingly comfortable there. Only a massive electoral revolt will be able to pick the pockets of the war profiteers and force our elected officials to represent us and not the wealthy.

Brian’s family, my family, 3293 other families, our military families who are financially and emotionally strapped by the constant deployments and getting ready for deployments are sacrificing too much on the altar of greed. The Iraqi people who did not ask for Bush’s help are sacrificing horribly on this imperial altar. The rest of this nation is not sacrificing the way that so many others have. I am working so you don’t have to.

But if we, as a nation, want to end the farce of false patriotism to justify wars for profit and empire, we will have to sacrifice until it hurts. In this cleansing act will come redemption, because we can be assured that all of the children of the world are safe and sound. If we don’t work to end the absolute stranglehold of violence we are clutched in, then we deserve what we get.

Our movement has to move toward peace.at all costs.

Please go to The Camp Casey Peace Institute for info on things we can do to end this occupation! ++

New Video: Thank You Cindy - Camp Casey Easter 2007
Video [and post] created by Ava Lowery, PeaceTakesCourage
Music by Kevin MacLeod
11 Apr 2007
[open link above]

Camp Casey is an amazing experience no matter what time of the year you attend. My Brother, Uncle, and I attended last August during the middle of a drought during 100 degree weather. We stayed a week and despite the heat, and some frustrations with our tent and being stuck in a tent with each other for a week, we had an absolutely amazing and truly life changing time at the Camp. My Mother and I attended again this past week for Camp Casey Easter. We met so many activists from all over the country who came to support Cindy and the peace movement. Cindy Sheehan has inspired us all to become more involved and I know personally she is one of my own role models in the peace movement. Thank you Cindy for all you have done and continue to do to inspire us. This video is just one small token of my appreciation.

Please stop by Gold Star Families for Peace and consider donating what you can to help Cindy and others continue to spread the word about this immoral war based on the Bush administration’s lies.

BRING THEM HOME! ++

Back To The Bunker: Bush Has Learned Nothing In Six Years
Alan Bisbort
Apr 12 2007

Before leaving last week to vacation at his fake ranch, Bush made his usual generic slam of “the Democrats” for not sending him a military spending bill to sign. And yet, Congress did send him a bill - one that brings the troops home from Iraq sooner rather than later - but it is not the one Bush wants, so in his malignant narcissistic view, they didn’t send him a bill to sign.

It’s all about Bush.

The Bush Regime is out of gas, and because there is now a power vacuum in Washington D.C., Speaker Nancy Pelosi filled the leadership role by going to Syria and engaging our presumed enemies in dialogue. Bush and Cheney, predictably, accused Pelosi of “bad behavior,” presumably because women are not supposed to make Republican men feel inadequate. And, again predictably, the corporate media pundits recycled Bush and Cheney’s talking points about Pelosi.

God, is this tiresome, or what? How much longer can we put up with this charade of leadership in the White House? The American people are hungry for a real leader to take charge and lead us to some other better direction. That is why I believe you will see a dramatic spike upward in Pelosi’s approval ratings this week.

No longer can we hope Bush’ll have a change of heart or suddenly grasp the concept of checks and balances, or even accept the fact that the Democratic Party now holds the majority in Congress and the reign of rubber stamp republicanism is done, perhaps for good.

When his threat of a veto did not get the desired results, Bush ran to his Crawford bunker - where Cindy Sheehan awaited him, as she has since the dog days of 2004. Sheehan set up Camp Casey on the fourth anniversary of her son’s death in Iraq - the 39th anniversary of Dr. King’s murder - and gave Bush daily servings of what Allen Ginsberg called “reality sandwiches.”

Was it really three years ago that Sheehan sat in the Texas heat and did what Congress was too yellow to do: call Bush out? Was it really three years ago when Bush told reporters that he would not meet with Sheehan because “it’s important for me to go on with my life?” Did he really say that? This little man, incapable of even faking humility or compassion, then said, “I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy, and part of my being [healthy?] is to be outside exercising.”

Ah memories.

I think it is now safe to say that no American president has ever been as small a human being as George W. Bush. Historians can chew over his nearly seamless series of failures and poor decisions and right-wing pandering. But psychologists and humanists will simply nod their heads in dismay and wonder how this great nation could have been, for eight years, under the thumb of such a lost soul.

What, then, must life be like in that Crawford bunker? What do his aides and daily associates really feel about this most insulated of human beings? Surely, they have to go back at the end of every day to live in the real world. Surely they have moments of, uh, doubt or humility or even humanity.

Because we are never told the truth about anything involving Bush, we can only imagine. My own gut feelings tells me that Bush’s life might be uncomfortably close to the blinkered madness depicted in the film Downfall. All the differences between that time and that regime and ours are obvious, and I’m not making a one to one comparison. Still, I was, frankly, shocked by the similarity in megalomaniacal drive toward crushing political enemies, waging a pitiless war and not evincing even a scintilla of remorse or humility.

Because when I listen to Bush speak nowadays, I realize that nothing has changed in his world view, despite the devastation that surrounds him on all sides. Rather than the rubble of Berlin, he looks out at the rubble of our economy, the acceleration of global warming, the abysmal mess of health care, in addition to the carnage that he wrought, against even the advice of his own father, in Iraq. ++

Iraq blast rocks the White House
Michael Gawenda, The Age
April 14, 2007

THE suicide bombing in the Iraqi Parliament, in which eight people were killed, has shaken the Bush Administration and made it more likely that Democrats in Congress will not back down in their determination to end the war.

President George Bush, looking stunned and sombre, said the attack showed that the US was battling “the type of person that would walk in that building and kill innocent life and that is the same person that is willing to come and kill innocent Americans”. But that is not the message that Democrats and even congressional Republicans will draw from the attack.

What it shows, they argue, is that no place in Iraq is safe. That no matter how many extra troops are sent to Baghdad, even the Green Zone, where security is overwhelming, can’t be made safe from determined suicide bombers.

Mr Bush said the US would continue to stand by the Iraqis because it was in America’s interest to “help this young democracy be in a position so it can sustain itself and govern itself and defend itself against these extremists and radicals”.

But Americans in the main are no longer listening to this sort of talk. And the Democrats, in control of Congress, are becoming increasingly emboldened in their challenge to Mr Bush, not just over Iraq but on a range of issues, including his defence of Alberto Gonzales, his embattled and hapless Attorney-General.

There is no mood among Democrats for compromise with Mr Bush over Iraq. Both houses of Congress have agreed to give him an extra $US100 billion ($A120 billion) to pay for Iraqi and Afghan operations for the remainder of the year. But the legislation includes clauses mandating that US combat forces start withdrawing from Iraq as early as March next year.

Mr Bush says he will veto any legislation that contains a timetable for withdrawal. But if he does, he will also veto that part of the legislation that pays for the Iraqi surge. Some observers suggest that funds for the 150,000 US troops in Iraq will start to run out in the next few weeks.

What will happen? Well, Congress returns next week after its Easter break and the chairman of the House Democratic caucus, Rahm Emanuel, has circulated a memo to colleagues urging them not to back down.

“The President remains incredibly weak and at odds with public opinion,” he writes. “Despite the attacks from the White House, nearly 70 per cent of the American people continue to support our plan for a new direction in Iraq. We are in a very strong position.”

That is undeniable. The Bush Administration, which once prided itself for its discipline and lack of leaks, seems to be falling apart. Daily leaks illustrate the extent to which factions in the State Department, the Pentagon and even in the White House are warring with each other.

Late this week, Defence Secretary Robert Gates announced that, effective immediately, the tour of duty for US forces in Iraq would be extended from 12 to 15 months. Making the announcement, Mr Gates looked like a man who was wondering why the hell he had agreed to replace the discredited Donald Rumsfeld after he was fired in November.

Pentagon opponents of the Bush surge had leaked this unhappy news to the media at least a week ago. This meant that the troops in Iraq, who were nearing the end of their 12-month tour, found out from reading newspapers or watching television that they were not about to go home. Mr Gates was furious about the leak, but the damage had been done. He did not look like a man who believed the surge was about to deliver good news in the near future.

Then came the news of the suicide bombing in the parliament, the symbol of Mr Bush’s democracy project in Iraq. As it happened, John McCain, once considered the front-runner for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination for 2008, was in the White House briefing Mr Bush about his visit to Baghdad last week when news of the bombing came through.

For Senator McCain, the timing was terrible. Indeed, there has been no good political news for him for months. His political life is filled with terrible timing. He spent the past week arguing that there were signs that the surge was working in Baghdad. His speech to army cadets in Virginia this week was passionate and sincere and earned him good media reviews.

But there he was with Mr Bush when bombers made a mockery of any suggestion that things were on the improve in Baghdad. The al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Army of Iraq posted a claim of responsibility on its website, saying that it had sent a message to all those co-operating with “the occupier and its agents”.

When asked about the attack, Senator McCain said it was a “very tough incident” and made him “sad for those public servants who have been injured or killed”.

“But I don’t think that should change the larger picture, which means that we are achieving some small successes already in the strategy being employed by General David Petraeus.

“So it’s tragic and yet it’s not unexpected that spectacular attacks would continue to try and be orchestrated by al-Qaeda and other elements within Baghdad.”

Even as he spoke, a new Los Angeles Times opinion poll showed that his support has dropped to 12 per cent among Republican primary voters, compared with 29 per cent for Rudy Giuliani. Senator McCain’s presidential bid is sinking. His campaign team also announced that it was cutting staff, confirming rumours of financial difficulties.

Some congressional Republicans are looking with increasing alarm at what is happening to Senator McCain, basically because of his support for the Iraq war and, more specifically, for the Bush surge in Baghdad.

They face congressional elections next year and are under increasing pressure to distance themselves from their President’s strategy. Unless there is significant improvement in security in Baghdad soon, these Republicans will join the Democrats in Congress to take the one step that would end the war - cutting off funding for the troops.

That prospect seemed remote just a month ago. It may still be unlikely right now, but it becomes more likely with every passing day, especially when the news out of Iraq, as was the case this week, is so grim and the Bush Administration continues to look as if it is falling apart. ++

Record of Iraq War Lies to Air April 25 on PBS
David Swanson
Saturday, April 14, 2007 by AfterDowningStreet.org

Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq War to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. I’ve watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the most important thing I can say about it is: Watch PBS from 9 to 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes on this will actually save you time, because you’ll never watch television news again – not even on PBS, which comes in for its share of criticism.

While a great many pundits, not to mention presidents, look remarkably stupid or dishonest in the four-year-old clips included in “Buying the War,” it’s hard to take any spiteful pleasure in holding them to account, and not just because the killing and dying they facilitated is ongoing, but also because of what this video reveals about the mindset of members of the DC media. Moyers interviews media personalities, including Dan Rather, who clearly both understand what the media did wrong and are unable to really see it as having been wrong or avoidable.

It’s great to see an American media outlet tell this story so well, but it leads one to ask: When will Congress tell it? While the Democrats were in the minority, they clamored for hearings and investigations, they pushed Resolutions of Inquiry into the White House Iraq Group and the Downing Street Minutes. Now, in the majority, they’ve gone largely silent. The chief exception is the House Judiciary Committee’s effort to question Condoleezza Rice next week about the forged Niger documents.

But what comes out of watching this show is a powerful realization that no investigation is needed by Congress, just as no hidden information was needed for the media to get the story right in the first place. The claims that the White House made were not honest mistakes. But neither were they deceptions. They were transparent and laughably absurd falsehoods. And they were high crimes and misdemeanors.

The program opens with video of President Bush saying “Iraq is part of a war on terror. It’s a country that trains terrorists, it’s a country that can arm terrorists. Saddam Hussein and his weapons are a direct threat to this country.”

Was that believable or did the media play along? The next shot is of a press conference at which Bush announces that he has a script telling him which reporters to call on in what order. Yet the reporters play along, raising their hands after each comment, pretending that they might be called on despite the script.

Video shows Richard Perle claiming that Saddam Hussein worked with al Qaeda and that Iraqis would greet American occupiers as liberators. Here are the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal, William Safire at the New York Times, Charles Krauthammer and Jim Hoagland at the Washington Post all demanding an overthrow of Iraq’s government. George Will is seen saying that Hussein “has anthrax, he loves biological weapons, he has terrorist training camps, including 747s to practice on.”

But was that even plausible? Bob Simon of “60 Minutes” tells Moyers he wasn’t buying it. He says he saw the idea of a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda as an absurdity: “Saddam, as most tyrants, was a total control freak. He wanted total control of his regime. Total control of the country. And to introduce a wild card like al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn’t believe it for an instant.”

Knight Ridder Bureau Chief John Walcott didn’t buy it either. He assigned Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay to do the reporting, and they found the Bush claims to be quite apparently false. For example, when the Iraqi National Congress (INC) fed the New York Times’ Judith Miller a story through an Iraqi defector claiming that Hussein had chemical and biological weapons labs under his house, Landay noticed that the source was a Kurd, making it very unlikely he would have learned such secrets. But Landay also noticed that it was absurd to imagine someone putting a biological weapons lab under his house.

But absurd announcements were the order of the day. A video clip shows a Fox anchor saying “A former top Iraqi nuclear scientist tells Congress Iraq could build three nuclear bombs by 2005.” And the most fantastic stories of all were fed to David Rose at Vanity Fair Magazine. We see a clip of him saying “The last training exercise was to blow up a full size mock up of a US destroyer in a lake in central Iraq.”

Landay comments: “Or jumping into pits of fouled water and having to kill a dog with your bare teeth. I mean, this was coming from people, who are appearing in all of these stories, and sometimes their rank would change.”

Forged documents from Niger could not have gotten noticed in this stew of lies. Had there been some real documents honestly showing something, that might have stood out and caught more eyes. Walcott describes the way the INC would feed the same info to the Vice President and Secretary of Defense that it fed to a reporter, and the reporter would then get the claims confirmed by calling the White House or the Pentagon. Landay adds: “And let’s not forget how close these people were to this administration, which raises the question, was there coordination? I can’t tell you that there was, but it sure looked like it.”

Simon from 60 Minutes tells Moyers that when the White House claimed a 9-11 hijacker had met with a representative of the Iraqi government in Prague, 60 Minutes was easily able to make a few calls and find out that there was no evidence for the claim. “If we had combed Prague,” he says, “and found out that there was absolutely no evidence for a meeting between Mohammad Atta and the Iraqi intelligence figure. If we knew that, you had to figure the administration knew it. And yet they were selling the connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam.”

Moyers questions a number of people about their awful work, including Dan Rather, Peter Beinart, and then Chairman and CEO of CNN Walter Isaacson. And he questions Simon, who soft-pedaled the story and avoided reporting that there was no evidence.

Landay at Knight Ridder did report the facts when it counted, but not enough people paid attention. He tells Moyers that all he had to do was read the UN weapons inspectors reports online to know the White House was lying to us. When Cheney said that Hussein was close to acquiring nuclear weapons, Landay knew he was lying: “You need tens of thousands of machines called ‘centrifuges’ to produce highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. You’ve got to house those in a fairly big place, and you’ve got to provide a huge amount of power to this facility.”

Moyers also hits Tim Russert with a couple of tough questions. Russert expressed regret for not having included any skeptical voices by saying he wished his phone had rung. So, Moyers begins the next segment by saying “Bob Simon didn’t wait for the phone to ring,” and describing Simon’s reporting. Simon says he knew the claims about aluminum tubes were false because 60 Minutes called up some scientists and researchers and asked them. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post says that skeptical stories did not get placed on the front page because they are not “definitive.”

Moyers shows brief segments of an Oprah show in which she has on only pro-war guests and silences a caller who questions some of the White House claims. Just in time for the eternal election season, Moyers includes clips of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry backing the war on the basis of Bush and Cheney’s lies. But we also see clips of Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy getting it right.

The Washington Post editorialized in favor of the war 27 times, and published in 2002 about 1,000 articles and columns on the war. But the Post gave a huge anti-war march a total of 36 words. “What got even less ink,” Moyers says, “was the release of the National Intelligence Estimate.” Even the misleading partial version that the media received failed to fool a careful eye.

Landay recalls: “It said that the majority of analysts believed that those tubes were for the nuclear weapons program. It turns out, though, that the majority of intelligence analysts had no background in nuclear weapons.” Was Landay the only one capable of noticing this detail?

Colin Powell’s UN presentation comes in for similar quick debunking. We watch a video clip of Powell complaining that Iraq has covered a test stand with a roof. But AP reporter Charles Hanley comments: “What he neglected to mention was that the inspectors were underneath watching what was going on.”

Powell cited a UK paper, but it very quickly came out that the paper had been plagiarized from a college student’s work found online. The British press pointed that out. The US let it slide. But anyone looking for the facts found it quickly.

Moyers’ wonderful movie is marred by a single line, the next to the last sentence, in which he says: “The number of Iraqis killed, over 35,000 last year alone, is hard to pin down.” A far more accurate figure could have been found very easily. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

1 comment April 14th, 2007