I thought I was going crazy

Over the last few days, I've been reading news articles and seeing TV reports, quoting Bush administration sources and military officers, that US casualties are down from last year and Iraqi civilian deaths are declining. But I follow these numbers diligently on the internet, here and here (and elsewhere) and that's not what I've been seeing, not at all.

Could the administration be fibbing about these numbers to support a continuation of the surge, I wondered? Surely they wouldn't be so bold as to lie about something so obviously, numerically false, I told myself. And surely the media wouldn't let them get away with it, right?

Wrong.

And now for something completely different

You're allowed to feel awe.

At times like these, reflect

Consider:

"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale."

And

"When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for."

Doing God's work?

Or was she doing good work? Does it matter?

Wiki-ing the Wiki

For those of us who routinely use Wikipedia for quick reference (it's often the first-listed source for definitions and information on Google), there's a new site, Wikiscanner, that tracks the identities of the persons and entities who are doing the editing and revision of Wikipedia's entries. For example, the CIA regularly edits its own history. It's like watching Big Brother toss things into the memory hole.

Wisdoms

Here's a site that contains extended videotaped interviews by a learned man, Robert Wright, with various thinkers of today. I highly recommend Wright's interview of Joseph Goldstein, a Buddhist teacher, about vipassana meditation and Theravada Buddhism, which are the bases for the practice I experienced last week in one-day sitting session at Spirit Rock, a retreat outside of San Anselmo, California.

The other interviews, with physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, etc., are illuminating too. Good stuff, long and interesting and penetrating interviews, much better than Charlie Rose's.

From the mouths of babes...

comes a classic line, at the end of a four-page WaPo article detailing the ineffectiveness and frustrations of American troops' efforts to quell the attacks of the various factions who are feuding in Iraq.

"We haven't done anything here. We'll go for 24 hours and we'll see nothing," said Sgt. Josh Claeson, a radio operator, as he waited with nearly 200 soldiers under the glow of an orange moon for helicopters to Khidr. "Our basic mission here is to drive around and get blown up."

That sound you hear

is another shoe dropping. Actually, it's the sound of the dollar dropping.

For those of us who got it (Iraq) right...

here's some fun, fun reading.

In case you missed it at your local theater

watch it here. I mean, of course, What to Do In a Zombie Attack.

Why do they hate us?

For our freedoms.

I don't get it

Given these numbers, where are the bread riots?

Beyond spin

Yesterday, news items trumpeted headlines like, "US casualties lowest since November," and "US death toll in Iraq declines," and so forth.

Well, check out the numbers for July here and you'll see that the 80 dead GI's is one less than the numbers for the months of February and March; and if you add in the number of other "coalition deaths" the total coalition troops killed (89) is higher than those two months.

Talk about media whores. Will the MSM print anything the government wants them to?

What the hell

is "indirect fire"?

Explain this to me

How can the US giving 30 billion dollars to Israel in military aid while selling 20 billion dollars worth of arms to Saudi Arabia contribute to world peace?

Wait a minute...

Two posts ago I drew the line. No way I'd support Hillary Clinton. Now, after reading this NYT article about her college-days letters to a friend, I'm having second thoughts. As dry and studied as is much of the quoted language, there does seem to me to be a tiny spark, a blastula of a human being, revealed by her missives.
Maybe by now, in her fifties or sixties, the spark is gone. But it was there once, I think, and it may reappear.

No doubt about it

CNN is the most trusted name in news.

So far, I've decided this about the Democratic candidates for President.

A - B - C.

Tell me something I don't know

This article lays out the reality, namely, that all this talk about "withdrawing from Iraq" masks the fact that the US military is in Iraq to stay. There may be shifts from ground to air, from urban and suburban patrols to huge-base presence, from day-to-day occupation to omnipresent power but make no mistake: When we hear talk about getting out of Iraq from any of the contenders for the White House (except maybe Richardson and definitely Kucinich) it's not really removal of forces, it's realigning of force.

In case you're wondering

why I haven't been posting as often lately, it's because I've grown war-weary, and weary in general. The killing and dying goes on in Iraq, America's empire grinds on, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the planet decays, the injustices continue. All while we congratulate ourselves about new technologies for staging presidential candidate debates, debates that don't change anything, except maybe some TV ratings.