The Progressive Blog Alliance HQ

"If there were ever an excuse for a Very British Coup to take place to remove the dishonest NeoCon puppets who, like Doctor Who's aliens, have colonised the British Executive then surely it is now. Brigadeer Lethbridge Stewart where are you now in our hour of need. With the sheepish Labour party spellbound by blue eyed PR boy Tony and his witch doctors a military coup might be the only way to rid Britain of corruption.

'Glorifying terror'? Perish the thought."

Did Israel plan and carry out the bombing of the Askari (Al-Askariya) Mosque in the city of Samarra, possibly through local agents in Iraq? The bombing was reminiscent of the destruction wrought in 1984 on Sikhism's holiest shrine, the Golden Temple, in the city of Amritsar by orders from Indira Gandhi (who paid for it with her life less than five months later).

Yes, I know, the appearances are different. Amritsar's Golden Temple was destroyed by regular (foreign/Indian occupation) armed forces, whereas the Askari Mosque has been destroyed by "terrorists." Yet, who are these "terrorists"?

I think a strong circumstantial case can be constructed for Israeli involvement in the bombing of the Askari Mosque.

I would rule out Al Qaeda involvement. Contrary to the White House generated propaganda that has been pounded into people's brains for the last five years, Al Qaeda's targets are not selected at random. Rather, they have included two types of targets, and only two types: (1) American interests, and (2) what I would call "American mercenaries." By "American mercenaries" I mean anyone who works for US interests, whether directly or indirectly. This includes, for instance, all collaborators in Iraq, such as Iraqi police forces and their recruits, Iraqi armed forces and their recruits, and so on, not to speak of members of the Iraqi "government."  (Cont'd)  http://alse.blogspot.com

In all the Old Testament the most convincing evidence for God’s existence and for mankind’s actual encounter with God is the answer given by the burning bush to Moses’ question, “What is your name?” It answered, “I am I am.” Consider the implications of that reply. It implies that there is only one God, because otherwise God would need to have a name to be set apart from other gods. Consider Moses' motivation in asking the question. If he knew there was only one God, he would surely have known He would need no name. Instead he actually assumes that I am I am (Yahweh) is this god’s name as have generations after him. They believe this so sincerely that saying the name Yahweh was forbidden for a very long time because to say the name of a God was to summon Him and could have dire consequences.

UPDATE: Some of these seem to be "trickling back".  Rigorous Intuition is empty as of 10:50 EST.

Alert! "Progressive" and "Radical" Blogs on Blogger seem to be completely unavailable for over 10 hours.I am trying to get responses here, and come to a consensus. Are these being deleted? The following ".blogspot.com" sites are unavailable as of Saturday, Feb. 4, 4PM EST.

• http://gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com

From the thread "Pat Robertson says something stupid, again"

"a man this vile has a platform in the most powerful state on the planet" ~ Marduk

Don't believe the hype mate. The basis for the claim that the US is the most powerful nation on earth has been fallacious for some time. It is based on the seeming potential power of the american economy, however as recent events have proved, even the dollar's value being artificially propped up by the fact that it is the currency OPEC chose as the standard for the sale of oil (thus like a magic chequebook, in that the redeemable value would never be required to be payed by the Federal Reserve), has not prevented a massive Trade Deficit ($650 billion, i believe).

The domestic economy is in such poor shape that the President was forced to levy a %30 import tax on foreign steel imports not long ago, in an illegal (by the standards of the WTO) effort at protectionism, this despite the sheer hypochrisy of that, whilst at the same time championing 'Free Trade'.

The domestic motor industry is so unable to cope that the big 3: Ford, GM & Chrysler successfully negotiated a freeze on the application of law which would require their vehicles to meet minimum standards for fuel efficiency (so called CAFE law) for at least 3 years running, this despite that the required mpg was something like 27 point something for cars and 20-ish for light vans. Can you imagine European customers, never mind environmental lobbyists, standing for anything so piss poor?

Oh yeah, but it's ok because gasoline is so cheap in the US, right? In 2000, foreign imports of oil topped %50 as the source of domestically produced petroleum products, at a bill of a staggering $110 billion/year, at the time 1/4 of the Trade Deficit, as it was.

Spirit and soul are often confused one for the other. They are, in fact, quite different. Spirit is understood as animation, motivation, thrust. Soul is intuited as alone, unique.

Soul has no rational basis unless Plato’s pseudo-metaphysical argument is taken seriously. In that case, our soul is immortal having existed from before our birth and continuing to exist after our death. The fact that it is ours temporarily is inconsequential and our affect on it is minimal if at all. As a person of faith, I do not accept that. I believe a soul is given us at birth by God, that it is our essence so to speak, that it has no form or substance, that it is pure potential much as energy is potential in a boulder on the edge of a cliff, and that we begin to shape our soul as soon as we begin making decisions. I believe that at any moment in our existence our soul has been shaped by the sum of all our decisions up to that point, that this is what God values in us, and that this is what we are held accountable for if we are held accountable at all.

This article first published on Two for Tea

Today in Parliament, The Prime Minister made it clear

“In respect of the allegations of so-called torture facilities or
detention facilities across Europe, I really know nothing about them at
all. I clearly know there aren't any such here."

He also said

"Torture cannot be justified in any set of circumstances at all"

Ok so now we all know where the UK stands on that. So why did he feel it necessary to add

"It is just as well to remember that some of the people we are
talking about are people that we need to detain for reasons of action
against international terrorism.

Some of these people are highly dangerous. Some of them can provide
information that is of absolutely fundamental importance in preventing
terrorism. There should, of course, be proper treatment of anyone
detained."

Could it be that he accepts the USA's definition of torture based on the definition of the word ‘severe’.

The 1984 UN "Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines torture as

"...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or
mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as
obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession,
punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is
suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a
third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind...”

In a memorandum on 1 August 2002, the then Assistant US Attorney
General Jay Bybee said that "the adjective severe conveys that the pain
or suffering must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is
difficult for the subject to endure." He even suggested that "severe
pain" must be severe enough to result in organ failure or death.
This memo was subsequently disowned by the Bush administration.

Recent reports on the American ABC News network, quoting CIA sources, listed six so-called "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques."

1. Grab: the interrogator grabs a suspect's shirt front and shakes him.

2. Slap: an open-handed slap to produce fear and some pain.

3. Belly Slap: a hard slap to the stomach with an open hand. This is
designed to be painful but not to cause injury. A punch is said to have
been ruled out by doctors.

4. Standing: Prisoners stand for 40 hours and more, shackled to the
floor. Said to be effective, it also denies them sleep and is part of a
process known as sensory deprivation (this was a technique used by
British forces in Northern Ireland for a time until it was stopped).

5. Cold Cell: a prisoner is made to stand naked in a cold, though not freezing, cell and doused with water.

6. Water Boarding: the prisoner is bound to a board with feet raised,
and cellophane wrapped round his head. Water is poured onto his face
and is said to produce a fear of drowning which leads to a rapid demand
for the suffering to end.

And this in the week when Sadam’s trial in Iraq started hearing evidence of torture suffered under his regime.

Perhaps Sadam's defense team should think about hiring Bybee to explain
that torture must involve pain severe enough to result in organ failure
or death.

Or if they can not afford to pay for an ex-Assistant US Attorney
General maybe they should use the “Rice Defense” of “It saved someone’s
life somewhere at some point, somehow, so that’s ok then”.

Or the “Blair defense” of “Someone in a uniform told me to do it and who am I to question them?”

Or even the “Bush Defense” of “I did not know what was going on and you can’t prove otherwise”

But instead Sadam yells at the judge and boycotts the hearing.
Apparently the Iraqis have a long way to go yet before they understand
the subtleties of liberal democracy.

Cross-posted at tannishblog.

After a while, politics gets boring. Media is repetitive, uninspired, and still – despite all the Internet accomplishes – our main source of information. Don’t bother to stifle your yawns. Important news is never printed; Bodypolitik does not want us to know.

Most of the political blogs I read struggle to refresh the stale in much the same way as newspapers. As the new news replaces the old news, one becomes the other. Blogging off the newswire is doomed to the same procedural limitations as the MSM, yet more so for being further from the source. The sheer volume of fourth-hand virtual reporters gives way to homogenization of reportage, as surfers only read people with whom they tend to agree. I, for one cannot stomach Michele Malkin, and to peruse Powerline sends bile upward.

There are so many things going on around us constantly that we could not possibly assimilate all at once. We must pick and choose what is necessary for our survival. We choose what we see. We choose what we hear, what we feel, what we smell, what we taste. We select from this chaos around us what we need to know and we ignore the rest until and unless it becomes necessary to our survival. You may respond that there are many things you are aware of that do not contribute to your survival. I would suggest that in reality there is nothing you are aware of that does not contribute to your survival or does not make you feel more secure in your survival.

God had a choice when he created us and our reality. He could create us from His own substance and separate Himself from that substance. We would therefore be perfect and good, but two perfect beings would seem to be a contradiction. I am convinced that God could have done this if He wanted, but it seems unlikely that He would. God already is. There would be no reason to create another. His second choice could have been to create us and our reality as part of himself. We would live out our lives in paradise and we would be part of God and parts of God would be us. Some of us predict such an event on our death. I suspect this is wishful thinking. Since we were not created part of God, there is little reason to suspect we would become part of God when we die. I could be wrong of course. You may be able to suggest other possibilities or you may believe He actually did make one of the above choices.

Could we move beyond the various names for God? To presume to know the name of God is to presume the power and authority to summon Him and to control Him. We realize today that this is not possible. It is, in fact, blasphemous in most main line religions to even suggest that we might be able to control God. Yet we continue to imply that we can by presuming to name the God who has no name, because He needs no name. He is the only God there is. Could we, perhaps, even move beyond minimizing God by insisting He created the world only a few years ago compared to an awesome and almost incomprehensible number of years ago simply because we want to assert our dominion over all other forms of life? I don’t care what any book has to say about it, that is so arrogant it's embarrassing.

The strongest argument against the existence of God is the wanting so much that God exist. It contaminates the good sense God gave me. I am unable to objectively evaluate and realistically extrapolate my observations, and I am continually tempted to stop searching for answers, because my emotional response to questions about how things work is that I am challenging God; I am questioning His judgment by subjecting His creation to my criticism. There is also the naming problem. It was once believed that knowing the real name of something gave one power over what was named, even God. He could be conjured by calling His name. This is more obviously true of what one understands; the better one understands God’s creation, the better understanding one has of how something works, the more able one is to control it. In a sense, God is being challenged. It is, therefore, more pious to accept without question what is. The believer must limit his view of God’s creation to an appreciation of that creation rather than attempt to understand how it works. To see God’s creation through God’s eyes, one must become an atheist.

Today at work, a dozen people were let go (from a department I don't come in contact with and they were people I didn't know except in a few cases to see). The reason - that function was now going to be moved offshore to Southeast Asia. Someone said that "Well [company X] wants to be a leader in the industry and unfortunately they have to do things like sometimes to achive that goal."

So obviously it got me thinking about outsourcing and it's effect on jobs, even ones of the "white-collar" variety. Now don't get me wrong, I undertand business and capitalism - if profit is your bottom line, and there are cheaper costs to be had, you go for cheaper costs, no matter what. Now just take this out of the context of morally right or morally wrong. Many advocates of outsourcing have used this argument - when a company cuts costs by outsourcing a few departments to countries where labor is significantly cheaper, they then spend less on costs, so they save money, which is good for everyone. OK, even ignoring the fact that the person who got laid off obviously doesn't win, that argument assumes that corporate cronyism isn't present in said company.

Today, I recieved a bizarre comment on my blog regarding a (badly written) rant I wrote about CNN. After some investigation, I am almost certain (I don't have absolute proof) that CNN is actively censoring blogs that have low opinions of their station; in addition, they seem to be also engaging in very clumsy attempt at gorrila marketing.

Now, at first, I thought I was being paranoid; after all, the search that appears to have led them to my blog was "CNN blogs; my post was ranked #131. However, upon scanning through all of the google's results, I realized that my post -- at #131 --was in fact the highest ranked blog post that both expressed a negative opinion about CNN and (this is key) allowed comments.

Good morning Boys and Girls,

surrogate here today.

Watched the sun bust up over the lake's horizon line this morning. A ten minute process morphed the eastern sky from soft gray blue with slight pink threads to reds and oranges so varied that counting the shades would have been impossible, until a blaze of hot yellow light popped so bright that I had no choice but to look away signaling the end of the show. Wanted to stand and clap and whistle - and beg for an encore.

Sunrises over water are more spectacular perhaps, because the reflection of the water's surface doubles the brightness. I'm not sure, really, but I'm pretty sure that if my entire life consisted of simply watching sunrises and sunsets in various places around this globe, I think I'd feel I'd had a worthwhile existence. A life so spent might not leave many good deeds in its wake, but it certainly wouldn't leave a trail of tears either.

The ex-weapons inspector whose pre-Iraq war proclamations were all proven true had something new to say in a speech Saturday to Washington members of United for Peace and Justice.

On Iran, Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed
off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its
purported goal is the destruction of Iran's alleged program to develop
nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration
also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events
leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a
possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism.

The former Marine also said that the Jan. 30 elections, which George W.
Bush has called "a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in
the advance of freedom," were not so free after all. Ritter said that
U.S. authorities in Iraq had manipulated the results in order to reduce
the percentage of the vote received by the United Iraqi Alliance from
56% to 48%.

Hat tip to leveymg.

Crossposted from Comments From Left Field.

Dave Roberts at Gristmill has some interesting comments on the potential for recapturing Southern voters by better selling sustainable development. He's responding to another, broader, blog post by Ed Kilgore at New Donkey. I left a comment at Gristmill about the development of tobacco farmers shifting to organic produce as a clear sign that conservative Southern voters can recognize their own economic interests -- we've just got to sell our ideas better.

IRAQIS IN THE SOUTH ARE FIGHTING THE FOREIGN AGGRESSORS, TOO

The South of Iraq carries an extremely important strategic responsibility for winning the war against US imperialism and the other foreign aggressors.

The South's responsibility is to shut down the theft of oil by American thieves.

The Iraqi forces in the North have more or less achieved the shut down of American oil stealing up there.

The basic premise seems to be that US is now paying about $5.8 billion a month to sustain its aggression against the Iraqi people. And the price tag is rising.

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_cost_111804,00.html?ESRC=eb.nl

But the theft of Iraqi oil reduces the amount of this sum that comes out of US pockets substantially.

The article "Oil Find Hints at a Less Dependent Cuba," by Simon Romero, published January 11, 2005, is extremely interesting.

It's a good find.

I wonder why the Miami Herald isn't doing things like this, since Herald purports to be the premier US capitalist source on Cuban news.

Well, whatever.

When we consider Romero's work in conjunction with the piece by Tom Fawthrop, "Cuba New Oil Industry" published Novermber 13, 2004, on the BBC website, we can draw some inferences that belie many distortions about Cuba of the mainstream of the US capitalist press.

"Cuba's fast-improving energy sector - with domestic oil production now at 4.1m tons a year and accounting for 80% of the country's electricity needs - is expected to eventually ease the country's current economic woes." Fawthrop writes.

The Cubans seem to be watching President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela rather closely.

Hugo Chavez demonstrates how revolutionary leaders and their party can prevail over a bourgeois opposition at the polling place, nine times in six years.

Daniel Ortega and his Sandinistas in 1990 were not electorally sophisticated enough to beat the bourgeois parties at the polls because the US National Endowment for Democracy (which now controls the "75" in Cuba), along with other imperialist organizations, came in and trained and financed the Nicaraguan capitalists into a major win.

I wouldn't be in the least surprised if the state in Cuba undergoes certain "modifications" that enhance its democratic form while the same modifications strengthen its proletarian content.