You can't make this stuff up

Remember yesterday, when Bush said that it wasn't his policy to dissolve the Iraq army in 2003 but somehow it just happened, he can't remember why but he thought he likely objected?
Well, today Paul Bremner says that he wrote Bush about it before it was announced.

Gag me with a spoon

Check out the second update on Glenn Greenwald's post today. Euhhhh!

Burning man

Well, I'm convinced. More and more of the news in the blogs indicates that Bush and Cheney are going to take the US to war against Iran -- see this and this and this -- and there's nothing we can do to stop him and it will be a disaster for the United States and the Middle East and the world. And Bush is now so out of touch with reality that he can't even remember anymore that it was his administration which disbanded the Iraq army.
But, as Tony Soprano would say, what are ya gonna do.
Escapism, anyone? Here are some neat photos from this year's Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert in New Mexico :


Here's an interesting art piece, which is reflecting some of the festival participants as they ride past it. Below, more festival art.




The festival-goers are just as unique. Here is Dave the Troubadour, playing a flaming tuba.


You can see the "man" statue in this photo of the festival site during a sandstorm. The festival ended when they set it on fire on Saturday.

Night of the Living Dead in Iraq

"Success" in Iraq? Well, I had been wondering about the actual figures, and here they are. Juan Cole about the ballyhooed surge in Iraq:

I personally find the controversy about Iraq in Washington to be bizarre. Are they really arguing about whether the situation is improving? I mean, you have the Night of the Living Dead over there. People lack potable water, cholera has broken out even in the good areas, a third of people are hungry, a doubling of the internally displaced to at least 1.1 million, and a million pilgrims dispersed just this week by militia infighting . . . The government has all but collapsed . . . The parliament hasn't actually passed any legislation to speak of and often cannot get a quorum. Corruption is endemic. The weapons we give the Iraqi army are often sold off to the insurgency. Some of our development aid goes to them, too.
The average number of Iraqis killed in 2007 per day exceeds those killed in 2006 . . . Nation-wide attacks in June reached a daily all-time high of 177.5l . . . US troop deaths haven't fallen. They are way up . . .
8-2007 77 8-2006 65
7-2007 79 7-2006 43
6-2007 101 6-2006 61
5-2007 126 5-2006 69
4-2007 104 4-2006 76
3-2007 81 3- 2006 31
2-2007 81 2-2006 55
1-2007 83 1-2006 62
I mean, how brain dead do the Bushies think we are . . . And why does our corporate media keep repeating this Goebbels-like propaganda?

Why? Because it just feels so good to be "winning" for a change.

Sand art

It's amazing what you can find on YouTube

The hockey player and the ballerina

Did ballerina's visit choreograph Team Canada's 1972 comeback?
Well, apparently not.
The story in Moscow is that the visit of Russian ballerina Maya Plisetskaya to the Canadian dressing room inspired Phil Esposito to win the Summit Series in 1972. Except that Esposito can't remember any such visit.
But why spoil a good story with the truth?

The only thing that matters

I seldom blog much about personal stuff, but this midwife tragedy makes me angry.
One of the most dangerous journeys we will ever take is down the birth canal. But in our recent zeal to make every human event into a kinder, gentler, personal growth experience, many now seem to think that women would have a better time giving birth at home with midwives instead of in hospital -- so cold and clinical and "medical" , you know.
What we cannot forget is this: the goal of childbirth is not that the mother should have a good birth experience. The goal is that the baby should be born alive and healthy.
Nothing else matters.
Nothing else.
Yes, its personal for me -- my first pregnancy was absolutely normal in every way, but when I was in labour, on monitors, the doctors could see that my daughter was in trouble. They weren't sure exactly why her heartbeat kept dropping, but they finally recommended an emergency C-section.
Was I disappointed that I couldn't have a "natural" birth experience like all the books and movies promoted? Didn't matter. At that point, my own feelings were irrelevant. We just wanted our baby to born alive and healthy. And so she was.
When I got home, the first thing my neighbour said was how sorry she was that I had had a C-section. I will never forget how stunned I was by her remark. Sorry? SORRY? -- as if my own "childbirth experience" meant anything at all, compared to my baby. I told her I wasn't sorry in the least.
The various news stories about this midwife case indicate that this mother was in labour for 14 hours, the midwives were exhausted, the birth was breech, and when the unborn baby suffocated on meconium, nobody called for help.
The coroner said that midwives should improve their training, but the president of the Quebec Order of Midwives got pretty defensive about it:

"Nothing will change in the sense that we are already doing our very best to assure the safety of mothers, babies and their families."

See what I mean? Its the safety of the babies that must be their first concern, not the mothers and certainly not the families (and why would the midwives association be dragging the families into it at all?)
If this case is an example of how midwives are already doing their "very best", well, it's just not good enough.

One day in the men's room

In a Daily Kos diary, Kharma describes his men's room experience:

Two weeks ago, the kids and I went on a trip to visit friends in San Antonio, Texas. On the way we stopped at a rest area just off the interstate. What happened next made me very uneasy...
I was drinking coffee heavily so that I would stay awake and needed to relieve myself pretty badly. I pulled into a rest area, locked the car doors, left the kids sleeping in the car, and went into the restroom. When I entered I noticed it was unoccupied except for a pair of sneakers visible under the second stall.
As I unzipped at one of the urinals and began to relieve my burning bladder I heard a voice say "Hey, what's up?". I looked around and there was no one else in the restroom. After a moments hesitation, I answered "Not much".
A little time went by and he says, "What ya doing?".
I didn't feel very comfortable talking to someone in a stall but I didn't want to be rude and answered, "Uh...we are heading to San Antonio to visit friends."
"Want to come over?", he says.
At this point I am really uncomfortable and I finish up and scoot over to the sink to wash up. "No I don't think so", I replied. Wow, was this something else. I had never even had someone next to me with a wide stance before and now I've got someone in the stall asking me over!
As I reached for the paper towels to dry my hands I hear, "Hey man, can I call you back? There's some asshole in the bathroom answering every thing I say."

Oh, for pity's sake!

When will Canada stop torturing Steven Truscott?
A judge is deciding on whether Truscott should receive compensation for the ten years he spent in jail -- for a crime he did not commit -- plus the lifetime of suspicion. And now the cheapskate judge is saying that because the Appeal Court had no DNA evidence on which to base a finding of innocence, therefore Truscott might not be entitled to compensation.
This is both stupid and cruel.
In 2000, then-Justice Critic Peter MacKay told the Commons:

. . . the Truscott case, as we know, has been a festering wound on the psyche of this nation and casts a shadow over the entire criminal justice system. The case against Truscott was based on ambiguous, circumstantial and inconsistent testimony from children, impossible medical analysis of the murder victim and Mr. Truscott himself . . .

Now the Appeal Court has finally acquitted him.
He should have been acquitted in 1959. He should have spent the next ten years playing ball and studying algebra and learning to drive and going on dates and goofing around with his buddies. Instead, this is what our justice system did to him:

REQUIEM FOR A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD
By: Pierre Berton

In Goderich town
The Sun abates
December is coming
And everyone waits:
In a small, dark room
On a small, hard bed
Lies a small, pale boy
Who is not quite dead.

The cell is lonely
The cell is cold
October is young
But the boy is old;
Too old to cringe
And too old to cry
Though young --
But never too young to die.

It's true enough
That we cannot brag
Of a national anthem
Or a national flag
And though our Vision
Is still in doubt
At last we've something to boast about:
We've a national law
In the name of the Queen
To hang a child
Who is just fourteen.

The law is clear:
It says we must
And in this country
The law is just
Sing heigh! Sing ho!
For justice blind
Makes no distinction
Of any kind;
Makes no allowances for sex or years,
A judge's feelings, a mother's tears;
Makes no allowances for age or youth
Just eye for eye and tooth for tooth
Tooth for tooth and eye for eye:
A child does murder
A child must die.

Don't fret ... don't worry ...
No need to cry
We'll only pretend he's going to die;
We're going to reprieve him
Bye and bye.

We're going to reprieve him
(We always do),
But it wouldn't be fair
If we told him, too
So we'll keep the secret
As long as we can
And hope that he'll take it
Like a man.

And when we've told him
It's just "pretend"
And he won't be strung
At a noose's end,
We'll send him away
And, like as not
Put him in prison
And let him rot.

The jury said "mercy"
And we agree --
O, merciful jury:
You and me.

Oh death can come
And death can go
Some deaths are sudden
And some are slow;
In a small cold cell
In October mild
Death comes each day
To a frightened child.

So muffle the drums and beat them slow,
Mute the strings and play them low,
Sing a lament and sing it well,
But not for the boy in the cold, dark cell,
Not for the parents, trembling-lipped,
Not for the judge who followed the script;
Save your prayers for the righteous ghouls
In that Higher Court who write the rules
For judge and jury and hangman too:
The Court composed of me and you.

In Goderich town
The trees turn red
The limbs go bare
As their leave are bled
And the days tick by
As the sky turns lead
For the small, scared boy
On the small, stark bed
A fourteen-year-old
Who is not quite dead.

Following the Yellow Brick Road

Check out the White House "fact sheet" about Bush's speech yesterday.
Titled Making America Safer by Defeating Extremists in the Middle East, with the subtitle "President Bush Explains Why Winning The Fight In Iraq Is Key To Countering The Ambitions Of Al Qaeda And Iran", it reads like it was written for a fifth grader. And its about as "factual" as the Wizard of Oz.
Hey, let's imagine it -- we'll have Bush as Dorothy and Condi as Toto. Petraus would be the Scarecrow, McConnell as the Tin Man, and Gates as the Lion. Cheney is, of course, the wizard. and the Iraqis are the Munchkins. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the Wicked Witch of the West.
But there are no good witches in this scenario.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid aren't going to be waving any magic wands to get the Americans home from Iraq, no matter how hard the troops click their heels together.
So let's follow their yellow brick road. Here are some excerpts from the fact sheet -- the bold and underlined lines in the following are from the original:

. . . America is engaged in a great ideological struggle against violent Islamic extremists around the world, and the fight for the future of the Middle East is a key aspect of this struggle.
The Most Important And Immediate Way To Counter The Ambitions Of Al Qaeda, Iran, And Other Forces Of Instability And Terror In The Middle East Is To Win The Fight In Iraq.The challenge in Iraq comes down to this: either the forces of violent extremism succeed and our enemies advance their interests in Iraq, or the forces of freedom succeed and we advance our interests.
If Violent Extremists Were Allowed To Prevail In The Middle East, The Region Would Be Dramatically Transformed In A Way That Could Imperil The World
The Fight In Iraq Has A Direct Impact On The Safety Of Americans Here At Home. We have seen what violent extremists will do when American forces are actively engaged in Iraq, and we can envision what they would do if they were emboldened by American forces in retreat. For all those who ask whether the fight in Iraq is worth it, imagine an Iraq where militia groups backed by Iran control large parts of the country, and al Qaeda has established sanctuaries to safely plot future attacks on targets all over the world, including the U.S. Homeland – and they could use billions of dollars in oil revenues to buy weapons and pursue their deadly ambitions.
The Momentum Is On Now Our Side In Iraq – Our New Strategy Is Seizing The Initiative From Our Enemy, And Giving It To The Iraqi People. . .

On and on and on it goes, winding its way to that Emerald City way off in the distance, with the faint sound of trumpets in the air:

Encouraging Developments At The Local Level . . . Making Gains In Other Important Areas . . . Signs Of Bottom Up Progress . . . Our Strategy Is Also Showing Results At The International Level . . . we will continue to rally the world to this noble and necessary cause...

Sounds great, doesn't it? Wouldn't it be great to live in the world that these people think they're living in?
By contrast, here's what it's actually like in Iraq -- just a few of the headlines from Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on Iraq Today:

The Missing in Iraq
Northern Iraq hit by major cholera outbreak
Aid agencies unable to gain access to violence-afflicted Karbala
More Iraqis Flee As Figure Tops Four Million: UNHCR
Active-Duty US Troops Become Outspoken Critics Of Iraq War
Lower school attendance expected in coming year
Iraqi Insurgents Using Bigger Rockets
US surge sees 600,000 more Iraqis abandon home
Violence hits Salahuddin Province
Depleted uranium threatens thousands of lives in Basra

But neither Bush nor Cheney care about any of this, not really.
Bush and Cheney aren't promoting the Iraq improvement fantasy because they care about Iraq. It's because they want to go on to Tehran. They really do believe that "Anyone can go to Baghdad but real men go to Tehran", but they don't think America will follow unless it believes that either they are "winning" in Iraq, or they WOULD win if only Iran were taken care of.
So if the Iraq part of Bush's speech was ridiculous, the Iran part was frighteningly delusional -- demanding regime change, implying a war against Iran has already begun, playing the nuclear card, fantasizing about the Islamic caliphate following the American army home:

. . . Iran has long been a source of trouble in the region. It is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. . . . Iran is sending arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan, which could be used to attack American and NATO troops. Iran has arrested visiting American scholars who have committed no crimes and pose no threat to their regime. And Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.
Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere.
. . . what would happen if these forces of radicalism and extremism are allowed to drive us out of the Middle East. . . . Iran could conclude that we were weak -- and could not stop them from gaining nuclear weapons. And once Iran had nuclear weapons, it would set off a nuclear arms race in the region.
Extremists would control a key part of the world's energy supply, could blackmail and sabotage the global economy. They could use billions of dollars of oil revenues to buy weapons and pursue their deadly ambitions. Our allies in the region would be under greater siege by the enemies of freedom. Early movements toward democracy in the region would be violently reversed. This scenario would be a disaster for the people of the Middle East, a danger to our friends and allies, and a direct threat to American peace and security. This is what the extremists plan. For the sake of our own security, we'll pursue our enemies, we'll persevere and we will prevail . . .
We seek an Iran whose government is accountable to its people -- instead of to leaders who promote terror and pursue the technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons . . .
Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people. Members of the Qods Force of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are supplying extremist groups with funding and weapons, including sophisticated IEDs. And with the assistance of Hezbollah, they've provided training for these violent forces inside of Iraq. Recently, coalition forces seized 240-millimeter rockets that had been manufactured in Iran this year and that had been provided to Iraqi extremist groups by Iranian agents. The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased in the last few months -- despite pledges by Iran to help stabilize the security situation in Iraq.
Some say Iran's leaders are not aware of what members of their own regime are doing. Others say Iran's leaders are actively seeking to provoke the West. Either way, they cannot escape responsibility for aiding attacks against coalition forces and the murder of innocent Iraqis. The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops. I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities . . .

I'm not so sure America will go along with this program, not just because Bush says so. But Glenn Greenwald asks what is being done to stop it:

As we march step by step with barely a debate towards a confrontation with Iran -- one that neoconservatives have long been proclaiming is inevitable -- are there any meaningful efforts to avert this? We frequently hear the slogan from war critics about Iraq that "hope is not a policy." The same is true with regard to preventing an attack on Iran.

Clicking our heels and wishing we were somewhere else won't work either.

Great line of the day

From The Court about how the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was instrumental in the acquittal of Steven Truscott:

...although Steven Truscott’s case is simply tragic, it does effectively answer those critics who claim that the Charter hasn’t really made a positive difference in Canadian society. Today Steven Truscott joined the ranks of countless innocent Canadians who have benefited profoundly from a constitutional document that is too often, in the public consciousness at least, associated with the guilty.

Emphasis mine. Thanks to Dr. Dawg for the link.

'Porn' ad?

'Porn' ad outrages Saskatchewan opposition

Saskatchewan Party MLA Nancy Heppner said Tuesday the phrase “The Sask Party stood for privatization of the Crowns” dissolves for a split second and morphs into “The Sask Party stood for porn” before the words fade out completely.
“If it was done on purpose I think it’s reprehensible, and if it’s done accidentally it needs to be fixed,” Heppner said. “Either way it needs to be fixed . . .

Its a weird ad all around -- the wolf in the sheep suit actually looks sorta cute, really, not scary at all, and having the words fade out is an odd and distracting gimmick, and the PORN letters do stay on screen a little longer than the other fade-outs do, so maybe there was a clumsy attempt at subliminal advertising here. See what you think:

Burning love

Yes, the stories about various Republicans being caught with their pants down, literally, are laughable in terms of the right-wing hypocrisy thus revealed. Here's today's scandal. Here's another one. And another one. Not to mention Mark Foley, and Bob Allen, and Haggard. Oh, and almost forgot this one.
But basically, isn't it sad when someone is so conflicted about their sexuality that they have to revile gay people publicly while they secretly look for love in public restrooms?

Great photos of the day

From unrepentant old hippie here's the LOL-Cop photo:



It sorta sums up the whole story, doesn't it.
And here's another one from UOH. Remember this?



Well, the Naked Mayor is in the public spotlight once again. UOH flags this story:

Dick Harris MP for Cariboo-Prince George has named Houston Mayor and Conservative candidate Sharon Smith as the person that residents of Skeena-Bulkley Valley can contact when they have concerns or issues with the federal government.

That's right, the Conservatives have unilaterally replaced NDP MP Nathan Cullen (remember him, Stephen? The man actually ELECTED to represent the people of Skeena-Bulkley Valley?) with The Naked Mayor. Other bloggers are covering the constitutional issues of this (here here here here here and here ) but the naked part is much more interesting.
The people of Skeena-Bulkley Valley must be so proud that the mayor is in the news again!

Great line of the day

Matt Yglesias writes about escalating disasters in the Land of Bad Things:

I wasn't super-optimistic that the 2006 midterms were going to cause us to adopt a sound Iraq policy, but I did think it would result in a less unsound one. Instead, we got the "surge" -- our policy actually got worse. I never believed that the infamous September reports were going to make policy more rational, but now it seems to me that they're getting worse . . .
I find it hard to find words to describe what a disaster it may be if the US ends up engineering the return to power of a grossly unpopular ex-Baathist ex-Prime Minister. It's as if people are trying their hardest to come up with policies designed to end with Muqtada al-Sadr marching at the head of a crowd shouting "Death to America" into the rapidly abandoned Green Zone sometime in 2010.

Emphasis mine.