TW3 plus

April 17th, 2007

That Was The Week That W as … an assault to the heart. 32 students dead, more possible with at least six still in critical condition; the legal Korean resident who was our “shooter” was very thorough, evidently delivering three blasts each to most of his victims — 16 children blown to pieces at a Iraqi shrine and ten toppled off a bridge — meanwhile, US troop death is up 21% with Dubbys “surge”. An officer speaking on PBS said that for every soldier killed, you can figure 10 injured.

I think we’ll find, much like the Amish incident, that the young man who went on a killing spree was emotionally unbalanced and that the killings were all about him. Crazy without, crazy within — the kind of randomness with which we must live in these times.

The killing spree in Iraq is not random … it is calculated. Below the Harpers, I’ve included an editorial by BuzzFlash on the culture of death that is being exacerbated by the Bushies — there is always a thread of nihilism running through human consciousness, but the NeoCon’s have really stepped up that energy with their “killing supports life” rhetoric. I read an interesting op/ed about why the Fundys are loosing their grip — one of the points made for their downward spiral was hypocrisy. They evidently don’t see it, but their children do and they’re leaving the fold … meanwhile, we have certainly had plenty of practice noticing it politically in our daily headlines for seven years. That is a powerful revelation for a nation, dearhearts — in most instances, hypocrisy is a deal-breaker.

I saw Dubbys largely benign “memorial” statement and had to admire the tenacity of his speech writers — Bush’s pronouncement that an event such as that in Virginia was felt in every classroom across America certainly pinned the tail on terrorism; we must always always Be Afraid.

In comparison to Bush’s short statement, I’ve posted a message from John and Elizabeth Edwards, last … they’re a class act, aren’t they?

Jude

HARPERS WEEKLY REVIEW

At Virginia Tech University, a gunman opened fire in a
dormitory and in classrooms, killing 32 people and then
himself. In Iraq, suicide bombs exploded in the parliament
cafeteria and on a bridge over the Tigris, toppling cars
into the river and killing 10 people. An explosion near a
Shiite shrine in Karbala killed 16 children, and the
U.S. Defense Department extended troops’ tours of duty
from 12 to 15 months. It was reported that a forthcoming
book by the editor of the Washington Post suggests that a
Google search might have prevented the Iraq war. Senator
John McCain assessed the situation in Iraq, saying “I have
no Plan B . . . If I saw that doomsday scenario evolving,
then I would try to come up with one.” Former Deputy
Secretary of Defense and current World Bank President Paul
Wolfowitz apologized to colleagues for arranging a salary
increase and promotion for a Bank associate who was also
his ex-girlfriend and faced booing, catcalls, and demands
for his resignation. It was reported that almost a year
before seven U.S. attorneys were fired, an email from
D. Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General
Alberto R. Gonzales, proposed replacement candidates for
them. Four years’ worth of email from Karl Rove, sought by
Democrats investigating Rove’s role in the firings, was
missing from the Republican National Committee server. A
bird flew into the engine of Vice President Dick Cheney’s
plane while it was en route to Chicago, but the plane made
a safe landing.

Kurt Vonnegut died. Scientists announced the creation of
nascent sperm cells from human bone marrow samples. A
leaked, X-rated DVD sent to parents of elementary school
students in Illinois featured the principal having sex
with a teacher on his desk, next to a pile of standardized
tests. A study found that students who participated in
federally endorsed sexual abstinence programs were as
likely to have sex as those who did not. “This report
confirms that these interventions are not like
vaccines. You can’t expect one . . . small dose to be
protective all throughout the youth’s high school career,”
said the commissioner of the Family and Youth Services
Bureau. In Hong Kong, race horses suffered the worst
outbreak of equine herpes in the region’s history. In
Saudi Arabia, a widely circulated text message claimed
melons entering the kingdom from Israel were infected with
AIDS. A Ukrainian woman was arrested after customs
officials found hashish inside the battery compartment of
her vibrator, the Indian civil service announced (and then
revoked) new rules mandating female employees to provide
details of their menstrual cycles, an Australian study
reported that acting on sadomasochistic fetishes improves
men’s happiness, a Minnesota jail guard was suspended
after thumping an inmate with a Bible, and the Amsterdam
chapter of the Hells Angels biker gang organized a benefit
to raise money for legal costs. Prince William broke up
with his girlfriend via telephone.

Responding to Philadelphia’s high rate of gun violence,
gun control advocates urged state legislation to limit
handgun purchases to one per person per month. Critics of
the proposal called it an infringement on Second Amendment
rights. German national television released a videoclip of
an army instructor in Schleswig-Holstein telling one of
his soldiers during a machine-gun drill, “You are in the
Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three
African Americans are getting out and they are insulting
your mother in the worst ways . . . Act.” A study
surveying African-American women in the Mississippi Delta
found that a majority of respondents believe anyone who
gets AIDS deserves it, especially if he or she is a
homosexual, bisexual, or prostitute, and that the
U.S. government created HIV/AIDS to destroy the black
race. North Carolina’s Attorney General dropped all
charges against the three former Duke lacrosse players
accused of raping an African-American stripper at a party,
calling the athletes innocent victims of an overzealous
attorney. Radio personality Don Imus lost his job after he
called players on the Rutgers women’s basketball team
“nappy-headed hos.” It was announced that President Bush
and his wife paid $186,378 in federal taxes on income of
$642,905, while Vice President Cheney and his wife owe
$413,326 in taxes on income of $1.6 million. The interior
minister of Macedonia was driving a BMW that may have been
stolen from English soccer star David Beckham. A Staten
Island food pantry turned people away after a thief robbed
their storeroom of a month’s worth of provisions, and
researchers at the U.K. Department of Food Science spent
over 1,000 hours testing 700 variations on the traditional
bacon sandwich to find the ideal “crispy and crunchy”
formula. In New York City, delivery workers continued to
picket several Asian restaurants, accusing owners of
making them work 70-hour weeks while paying them only
$1.40 an hour. A lawyer jumped to his death from the 69th
floor of the Empire State Building.

– Gemma Sieff
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/04/WeeklyReview2007-04-17

Bush Embraces the Culture of Death
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
Tue, 04/17/2007

The other day, Bush read one of his pandering anti-choice, anti-stem cell research scripts glorifying the “culture of life.”

How hypocritical for a man who has come to exemplify the culture of death.

From his record-setting pace for executions in Texas to 9/11 to Iraq to Katrina to the worst mass shooting in American history at Virginia Tech, Bush is a man who embraces the culture of death.

That’s not to mention two additional examples, among far too many, of the Bush obsession with choosing public policies that are firmly rooted in his perverse joy in having the power to cause people to die.

Firstly, on stem cell research, in claiming to “save” dead embryos, he is condemning people to death who might otherwise live through the cures that stem cell research might provide.

Secondly, he has no interest in prolonging the lives of poor people, who grow from embryos into America’s economically dispossessed. Bush’s policies are all based on the survival of the fittest, not a reverence for life.

And they are based on a death machine in Iraq for which he is bullying Congress into additional funding, because he and Cheney don’t want to be humiliated with a “loss.” More significantly, Bush and Cheney are like junkies who can’t give up the gravy train of hundreds of billions of dollars that go into the war profiteering machine for GOP donors.

If Bush and Cheney — with hundreds of billions of dollars and the world’s purported strongest military — can’t outwit a bunch of poorly armed “terrorists,” then what are they doing still sitting in the White House? The Iraq War has now lasted longer than World War II. All it has produced is war profits of so many digits we get dizzy and hundreds of thousands of Americans and Iraqi deaths.

The reality is that Bush loves to have the power over death too much.

This also applies to the shooting at Virginia Tech on April 16th. What did Bush have to say in response to the largest mass shooting in American history?

A White House spokesman said Bush was horrified and offered his prayers to the victims and the people of Virginia. “The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed,” spokeswoman Dana Perino said, according to the Associated Press.

The NRA and gun industry have been unstinting supporters of Bush. They are radical ideologues and profiteers off an industry of death.

We don’t need dead “snowflake” embryos exploited for political opportunity by Bush.
We need an American leader who embraces life over the profits and political cynicism of an illegitimate president who boasts about the sanctity of life, but is a promoter of governmental policies that cause so much unnecessary death. ++

From the Edwards Family

We are simply heartbroken by the deaths and injuries suffered at Virginia Tech. We know what an unspeakable, life-changing moment this is for these families and how, in this moment, it is hard to feel anything but overwhelming grief, much less the love and support around you. But the love and support is there. We pray that these families, these students, and the entire Virginia Tech community know that they are being embraced by a nation.

There is a Methodist hymn that gave us solace in such a moment as this, and we repeat its final verse here, in hopes it will help these families, as it helped us:

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;
In our doubt there is believing, in our life, eternity,
In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

Our dearest wish is that this day could start again, with the promise of these young people alive. Knowing that cannot be, our prayer is for God’s grace and whatever measure of peace can be reached on this terrible day.

John and Elizabeth Edwards ++

“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

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Entry Filed under: Political Waves