http://rebelreports.com/post/103831597/al-jazeera-strikes-back-at-pentagon-releases-unedited

I have seen consistent reports of this kind of stuff in Iraq and Afghanistan since we first went in there. The hunting people for Jesus stuff is just weird and sick, but the distribution of bibles in the Dari and Pashto languages should be criminal.

I think the entire military chaplaincy needs to be pulled out by the roots and replaced.

I just watched the series finale for Battlestar Galactica today. I had managed to avoid seeing any spoilers and any discussion of the finale so far. Though I don’t intend to disclose any detailed spoilers, you should stop reading now if you want pristine mind going into the thing.

I hated it. My strongest belief about humanity is that learning and creativity define us as a species. From the earliest bone tools onward, learning and creativity result in technology. We can debate whether specific technologies are used for good or ill. I do not endorse fully unrestricted use of any technology that we can come up with. To me, the BSG finale had a maddening luddite streak to it. It managed to be both nihilistic and naive at the same time. For a show that did such a grand job of examining what it means to be human, the finale was disgustingly anti-humanistic. I’d like to just forget it. I can think of few shows that I’ve really loved which have managed to disappoint me so thoroughly with a planned series finale. There have been plenty of times where I wished things had ended differently for specific characters, where their ultimate fate was counter to the tone of the show or the arc of a specific character. I’m still bothered by the way Wes died in the Angel finale. I’m not bothered that he died. I think, given the finale’s premise, that it made sense for Wes to die. The moment of death was a betrayal of the character. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like the end was a betrayal to an entire show.

I think I’ll just try to forget that final episode.

My major prof from grad school and I used to spend a lot of time talking about nationalism and economic development. That was done in several contexts. One of those was the context of elites who served the interests of international capital rather than national interest. You could have entire regions, millions of people who were thrown into or deeper into poverty and debt while a tiny fraction of the elites enriched themselves and their U.S. and European corporate puppet masters via the power of national government–power that they usually hadn’t come by in a truly democratic election.

Today, MSNBC is reporting that Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm has called a segment of southern, conservative senators “unamerican”. That’s a heated term and one that we’re used to seeing right wingers throw around. I think, in a very real sense, she’s right. My major prof and I used to talk about “the Latin Americanization” of the U.S. What we meant by that was the ways in which neo-liberalism was turning the U.S. into a nation with an obscenely wealthy minority who lived on estates in gated communities while the number of poor increases and the middle class shrinks (among other things). These southern senators are doing exactly what the elites of Latin America have done for a hundred years. They’re serving the interests of foreign corporate capital (Nissan, Toyota, BMW, Hyundai) at the expense of the national interest. If they succeed, they’ll reduce the standard of living for hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans.

I was reading a Reuters article today* that asks the question what’s next for conservatives if McCain loses. The nice thing about the article is that you get a slight sense that the conservative activists have already written 2008 off. They’re actively talking amongst themselves about 2010 and 2012. I was heartened to read two things in the article that make me very happy if the conservatives really go down this road. One is that they’re talking about Sarah Palin as the conservative standard bearer for 2012. Given some of the things that have been coming out in the last week about tensions between the McCain and Palin camps, this isn’t a real surprise. But the other is that they’re talking about the culture wars as a path back to victory. Racist, fascist asshole William Donohue who is head of the Catholic League has this to say: “I’ve been on the phone the last couple of days with some of my friends … and we’re getting ready for the biggest culture war battles ever,” Donohue said.

If they think that’s their path to beating Obama in 2012, they’re dead wrong. It’s not the way back to majorities in the house or senate either. I agree with the log cabin Republican guy in the article who says in the long run that’s the path to to being a party that holds onto 160 or so house seats in the south and midwest.

*I lost the original link when my first attempt to post this blew up. I’ve found the same article at the Canada post site.

I’m watching an episode of The Daily Show from earlier this week. Charlize Theron is the guest. She is promoting her movie about the WTO protests in Seattle a few years ago. Disturbing thing #1: they showed a clip from the movie with riot gear wearing cops, tear gas, etc. Stewart jokes that this is what his walk to work looked like every day during the Repubican convention. Then goes on to kind of casually toss out that there were all kinds of protesters and cops in riot gear, but you didn’t see it in the coverage. WTF? Why not. Disturbing thing #2: In discussing the film, Theron says that she didn’t really know anything about the WTO before doing the film, but knows now how it effects every aspect of our lives from what you eat for breakfast in the morning onward. I’ve long thought of Charlize Theron as someone on the smarter end of the so-called Hollywood elite. Hearing that she knew nothing about the WTO until doing the movie was discouraging enough on its own, but I was more upset by the implication of just how few people probably know or understand about about the WTO, GATT, etc. How do you even debate what we’re doing as a nation when most people don’t even understand what it is that we’re doing. Half the people who are somewhat familiar with these things just think they equal “free trade” and are, therefore, good.

Gena at Deadly Stealth Frogs has an interesting post about the repeated cover ups of the rapes and murders of female soldiers. It’s worth a read and worth writing to your elected representatives about.

The International Herald Tribune has an interesting little article on the melting polar ice caps. It looks like we’ve drastically underestimated the rate at which the ice is melting. The polar seas may be navigable in summertime before too long. They may be ice free in the summer by 2050. That stuff is the focus of the article. At the end of it, though, is some info that may explain why the Europeans are so much more serious about cutting back CO2 emissions than the US is. April was the 8th straight month of warmer than usual temperatures in Germany, the 13th in France. April 2006-April 2007 was the warmest 12 months in England in the last 350 years. I’ve seen this even better explained in some temperature maps that I’ve seen online in the last year. The U.S. has certainly had some weird and warm weather at times over the last couple of years, but nothing that’s really out of bounds for us and not nationwide. Based on what Europe has seen over the last couple of years, it’s not unreasonable to think they’re at the beginning of a permanent climate change. While the early phases of that are hot, we have no way of knowing yet how that will play out long term. Climate is so complex and depends on the interplay of so many factors, that it’s hard to predict how things will end up. One theory says that global warming could bring the end or the significant decrease of the Gulf Stream system, ultimately resulting in a colder, dryer UK and western Europe. Whatever the end result, significant climate change in Europe would devastate the region’s agriculture and agribusiness.

What are these awful animated Fox commercials about? I’ve seen three. Two appear to be pointless, mean, stupid, outdated attacks on Rosie O’donnell and Donald Trump. Why now? The other two are horribly racist depictions of some middle eastern person making broken English references to detention and his lawyer. The cartoon character looks just enough like the current president of Iran that I can’t believe it’s not meant to be him. Seriously, WTF?

Today is the anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King. The following is excerpted from a speech that King gave a year before he died. This is not the Dr. King that our media celebrates, but this is the Dr. King that should be taught in our schools.

“In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

*This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations.* These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. *We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.*

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love.” “If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us.” Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.”

Life and my job have consumed most of my time lately. I kept wanting to write something about the Edwards’ announcement, but couldn’t find the time to put anything together. I watched their 60 Minutes interview with Katie Couric. That left me more convinced that this guy should be our next president. I honestly can’t recall being as excited about the candidacy of anyone at any point in my life. After the interview, I signed up to give an automatic monthly donation to the campaign for the duration.

I’m still finding time to read the occasional article here and there, but I’m not finding much time to comment on them. This article on the GOP field almost entirely misses the point until the final paragraph where John Zogby is quoted. Forget national polls. Giuliani needs something other than memories of 9/11 to carry him to the nomination. His social issues positions aren’t going to serve him well in the southern states. McCain will have to run a truly incompetent campaign not to get the nomination.

Here’s an interesting piece on the latest attempt to create a power sharing government in Northern Ireland.