George is off to see the Wizard...

Try this at home...

One could continue to charge to the US Taxpayers account, the sum of nearly $2 billion a week that is necessary to sustain Bush the Lesser's WAR FOR TERROR (or is it WAR FORT ERROR??), arguably history's winner of the worst policy decision ever made by a US President...

$100 billion for the 2006 campaign in Iraq...

Couldn't we save money by bringing home the troops, selling the bases we've built to the Iraqi government, with instead of payment an agreement not to press the USA for reperations? AND, by flying planes across Iraq from north to south, showering the countryside with $10 dollar bills? Think of it...


Wouldn't it be cheaper to bomb them with dollars, than to destroy families and country side? Would the long-range ramifications of dollar-transfers enormously outweigh the situation as is?

Rain on me... rain on me...

ZENmud

Photoz by ZENmud Stresa,IT & Grand-Lancy, CH

The last two weekends have had very good highlights, a day trip to Stresa and l'Isole Bella in Italy, on Lago Maggiore, and a opening or vernissage for some modern scupltures, here near Geneva, Switzerland. The photos are in a reversed order... it's ZENy but true... :-)

ZENmud

A two front Army at $194,841.27 per pair of boots

This is not about over-priced shoes...

An article in the Los Angeles Times last week discussed the US Army's lack of sustainable funding at current levels of expenditure, due to our two-front decade, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is seeking a 41 per cent increase in funding, from $98.2 billion to $138.8 billion for fiscal year 2008. The "Active Duty force" now contains 504,000 men and women in boots, so the above cited number of $194,841.27 is the equivalent value per fighting soldier to maintain the Department of the Army.

The General can be seen, perhaps, as trying to shift back onto the regular Defense budget, some of the off-budget expenditures that have been approved by both Houses of Congress to fund the War FOR Terrorism. Will he (Gen'l Schoomaker) accomplish this?

The Ripoffublicans have no experience in analysing and investigating their own Party or misAdministration... and amazingly they've forgotten what a huge, well-financed Ripoffublican investigation could dredge up, if unleashed and funded to the tune of a hundred million or more dollars... (and no memory, otherwise one wouldn't expect to hear about how 'Clinton did nothing against terrorism', à la Chris Wallace in a twisted FOX interview).

So if the Army can attack Rumsfeld through Congressional approval of an on-budget funding submission, which may have ramifications towards the inordinant amount of wastage and corruption, while the Army's former leaders attack the same misanthropic Secretary through repeated submissions to the press, and the NIE offers evidence that the misAdministration should seek professional psychiatric help prior to nuclear meltdown, the Homeland may survive Bush the Lesser.

ZENmud

Clear cache and live!!!!

Itz worked my little droogies... Clearing the cache was de rigeur. I wrote the below two days ago; it just took me a while (sans tech support!) to figure it out (Cache clear...) it's about a daydream I had while on the Swiss train to Geneva.
(Malcolm McDowell, playing Alex in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange)

New United Nations...

The world fractured in the years 2006 to 2015, producing a realignment of political powers, epicentered to sources of proven energy, petroleum or cleaner...

Wow! Saudi Arabia and Kuwait aligned with Europe and Australia, Russia and Iran united with Uzbekistan, in a relationship with half of Africa, India and the CIS States... Scandinavia stood together, driven by wind-generated and tidal electrical energy...

And the United States? After Bush had Chavez assassinated in 2007...

NO!

A MadMax nightmare on a more profound level; because American over-spending on Defense, combined with its excessively interventionist foreign policy decisions, and over-amplified religious fundamentalism plus media over-hyping, have created an ACCELERANT towards hyper-catastrophe... if not what has been confirmed by publishing of the new NIE report

The distorting tactics of Republican-backing media interests, designed to evolve American values from normal political discourse to agit-prop vitriolic rage, had already begun in the 1990s. As discussed frequently by Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews.com there was ample evidence of the Iran-Contra affair being the first opportunity since Watergate for the media to take a side with or against an administration. From that point on, favorable coverage of the Republican Party stance was virtually a shoe-in.

However, since the 1990s the American Democracy died, legally, after Republicans:

bestowed a presidency on its candidate through a Supreme Court decision, which violated it's own previous precedential rulings, by offering an erroneously reasoned but convenient decision in what technically was always a State law case, brought by parties without standing to the injury...

a negligent Administration that failed to interrupt, failed to react intelligently, and forever after lied about the origins of the worst single domestic act of violence, then compounded its negligence by failing to investigate their own acts...

a President who lied to the American Congress and his fellow citizens about its impending implementation of the war policies it intended for Iraq...

a President that instituted, amplified and extended illegal wire-tapping of citizens, in contravention of the law and specialized Court designed to allow legal, full-scale government intervention against 'terrorists'...

a President that seeks to circumvent the highest and noblest International treaties that man has ever to date agreed, being the Geneva Conventions...

a Congress that to date has spent less money investigating the current misAdministration's devastating policies, than it had spent under the same Party for President Clinton's sex life...

Bush the Lesser only has to remember that 75 per cent of the world's economy exists outside its borders... Citizens of United States are too deeply indebted to this Ripoffublican government that is predisposed to destroy itself, destroy its peoples' reputation, destroy its alliances, and its own future...

ZENmud

Best of ZENmud Vol. 1...

My dusty electrons have been sorted through, and I have now bestowed upon myself the honor of 'Best Unknown PhotoShopper Blog 2006' (a legend in his own mind...)

So ZENmud presents an all-Star retrospective of humor for you, my faithful readers! (really, just saves you time going through the archives...)

CUT n RUN

That held relevance to the upcoming elections and the new Republican mantra... my brother helps me remember these things, when he cries about 'knee-jerk liberals'... makes me laugh, whot...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Where are you George?

I loved doing this one, with the right idea, in the Wrong Year: Maybe it's a leap-year for ocean-humidity...

2006: Year Without a Storm? Must be a DEMOCRAT'S year...

Bartcop published this for me...

This is my world-wide-exposed 'Baghdad Highway Spring 2006', which good old Bart featured on his site... thanks, my man... and it's still a ominous premonition...

Appeasement 101

Bart published someone else's variation... I don't think my 'kidsprint' was harsh enough; someday I'll redo it... :-)

I should have published this one two years ago... No title for a photo I took from a then-recently published Iraqi newspaper, spring of 2004.

(08.09.006)

Translated by a Palestinian friend of mine... more to come...

Re: the disastardly 9/11 film that helped kill a once-fine network: no more need be said... In the same vein... BIAS!

(11.9.006)

Here's proof of right-wing MSM focusing...

Ripoffublicans ...

Just a little thing, more of a good logo for them: they certainly need accurate ones...

And the Grand Mud goes to Certitude Certainty...

(14.9.006)

ZENmud

Accelerants...

Twenty-five years ago today, a drunk employee of a rental-car agency slammed my ass as he ACCELERATED up the old US Highway 6 in East Vail, Colorado. I doubled the world's pole-vault record, broke my leg, fileted my gastrocnemius muscle to 80 or 90 per cent. He drove about 70 mph (115kph)... I did some good damage to the roof of that Trans-Am :-)

Around the world, arsonists use ACCELERANTS: to entertain their pyromanic fantasies, their sickness to destroy in fire, their criminal intents and results.

This misAdministration uses its 'American Foreign Policy' as an accelerant, to entertain their economic fantasies, their sickness to destroy in warfare, their criminal intents and results.

Stunning? Frightening?

Bush the Lesser promotes his War FOR Terror, preaches on the sins of Iran's democratically elected President; warns and threatens, cajols and insinuates... while hard evidence exists that eclipse each tired, tried and dried-out line he repeats sans cesse.

Dontcha wish someone like Hugo Chavez would do a Tanya Harding on George? (Don't I wish I wrote that sentence yesterday morning???)

Que caballero, este hombre!

And Rice will again comment probably (knowing what she already did say) that "no one ever thought that South Americans were so hostile to our President and our values...", or some misguided falderall...

ZENmud

Hope you catch my name...

From the FireWatch-tower, over the horizon, Hugo Chavez looms; what a nouggies job he did yesterday at the 61^st General Assembly of the United Nations...

"Yesterday, the devil came here," Chavez said, referring to Bush's address before the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. "Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of."

What Chavez saw...


ZENmud

RENAISSANCE of Responsibility... part II (of II)

The coming election, the November achievement: this election will produce the end or salvation of America as it is dreamed of; it will produce the end or salvation of the international legal system.

America remembers the claims of President Bush and his misAdministration, when proclaiming that the 'mandate' won in November 2004 granted them authority to advance, into more radical territories.

If America appears to elect “freely and fairly” another Republican Congress in 2006 through Diebold vote manipulation, the greater likelihood is war throughout the Middle East of a scale not seen in our times, with asymmetrical theaters of activity: a fulfillment of what USAMA bin Laden has sought from the beginning. [sidebar: you are aware that Bush CO 'changed the name you just read to OSAMA bin Laden sometime around THE event, right? Here's proof: the FBI TEN MOST WANTED list... or this page]

Democrats could and should find key allies in the Republican Party, the not-George's-base faction, who may be willing to concede an election for the necessary renaissance of responsibility that only can blossom through a complete repudiation of the Bush Doctrine, the Rumsfeld Protocols, the Cheney Imperatives, and the Rice Confusions.

Their aid, votes or assistance would bring a victory to the Democratic Party, which could constitute profound investigations. Moreover, most evidence of malfeasance is already documented, in the series of Senate and House Minority Party reports authored by Representative Henry Waxman and many others.

Republicans have a moral responsibility to repent their fervent and blind following of a media-constructed, media-inflated and media-absolved demagogue, and their willingness to believe misAdministration lies - to the detriment of their country. This atonement would be realized with support of Democratic Congress and Senatorial Committee hearings on the lies of George W Bush, that brought America to:

- forgive the Supreme Court for violating its own precedents, in order to hear and erroneously decide the Bush v Gore case;
- forgive the negligent or willful acts that ignored, allowed or misinterpreted proper prevention or responses to September 11;
- forgive the abusive nature of negligent arming and deploying military forces: first in Afghanistan, secondly in Iraq;
- forgive the environmental lies forced out of the mouth of the EPA, concerning toxic wastes from the sustained combustion of World Trade Center combustibles;
- forgive the lies on Iraq's WMD, which reached apogee at the 2002 State of the Union address, lies that sustained Bush through the 2002 campaigns and election;
- forgive Sec'y of Defense Rumsfeld's ego-inflated under-commissioning of personnel and materials;
- forgive the hubris of the series of Secretaries of State and National Security Advisors, who witnessed great humanity-changing events and undertook distortions in fulfillment of misAdministration policy achievements;
- forgive the deliberate lack of response to hurricane Katrina's ethnic cleaning of New Orleans;
- forgive the misAdministration's fascist collusion with a willing and willful press to distort coverage of its opponents, and of its achievements.

This two-part essay started with evidence of the corruption of the events: buying 'terrorists' puts cash into the very theater in which the terrorists thrive. The 'vicious circle' (or Vicious CiraqLE) of buying non-terrorists to justify building more prisons in which more rights can be denied through heinous torture activities by allies of a misAdministration who pass taxpayer funds to their campaign contributors...

Calls for a RENAISSANCE of Responsibility...

ZENmud

Essay: a VICIOUS CiraqLE... part I (of II)

Abu Bakker Qassim brought his voice and experience(s) into the discussion of policies undertaken by this misAdministration, through an article in yesterday's International Herald Tribune. The following sentence, Hallelujah oh my brothers and sisters, the smoking gun of yesteryear, the stake through a vampiREPUBlican's heart:

“I was never a terrorist or a soldier. I was never even on a battlefield. Pakistani bounty hunters sold me and 17 other Uighurs to the US military like animals for $5,000 a head. The Americans made a terrible mistake.”

Prediction: Mr Qassim doesn't know how far that one published sentence may go.

$85,000?

Reflection: Someone in the United States Army, Marines, or CIA Special Forces, had a huge pocketful of taxpayer dollars. He or she 'bought' 17 'terrorists' like animals to put into jail, for $85,000, eventually for at least one, to voyage to Guantanamo.

Another 17 prisoners, to feed, clothe and house in Afghanistan.
[who paid who to house, guard, feed, and clothe? Hint: Taxpayers pay in; George pays his Pioneers...]

With the $85,000 we paid Pakistani bounty hunters? They surely bought more bullets, a stolen 4x4 or three... and who sold that to them? Their suppliers took their cut and planted more poppies, to produce more heroin.

Another 17 prisoners (Some at least) to transport to Guantanamo, Cuba, and feed, clothe, guard and interrogate.
[who paid who – to fly, guard, feed, house, clothe and prosecute (and deny rights)?]

How did the subcontractors, who feed off of the PMCIC*, vector off at least 30 to 80 per cent of the government funds for which they wallow like the pigs in Animal Farm, prior to subcontracting out the actual work... that may or may not get done?

Of those 17 prisoners, how many could testify against the bottom-feeders on a chain-of-command that destroyed their own lives, and American military legal standards, via a series of unprecedentedly poor, and unprecedentedly hors jeux, memoranda of procedures to follow, profoundly corrupting the complex and fragile international legal system?

* Petroleum-Military-Communications-Industrial-Complex

ZENmud

Steve McQueen and George W Bush...

You know when Steve McQueen died (no connection to previous post: smile), he had an unfinished film concept that he took to his grave. The notebooks (two trunkfuls) contained as their final words, this 'meditation.'

“He was parting the curtains on tomorrow, A commander on the liquid frontier. The inheritors of that emerald planet, That jewel on the finger of the firmament; Ringed by its creator with saphire seas, For the exaltation and the ultimate Dominion of Man.” Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen wrote this before he died 25 years ago.

George Bush said this at his press conference last week:

“This debate is occurring because of the Supreme Court's ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article III of the Geneva Convention. And that Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It's very vague. What does that mean, "outrages upon human dignity"?”

George Bush probably never read Article III, which is called 'Common' Article III due to its identical wording in the four Geneva Conventions.

Think about that for a second: When American and European leadership concluded a successful negotiation of these treaties in 1949, the precision and importance of these Articles created the hope that their application in future conflicts would give controlling guidance to the generations that followed, until George Bush stated (something WalMart Americans surely believe):

“It's very vague. What does that mean...?”

ZENmud thus does what any good legally-trained author-wannabe should do – provide the source. First, to save the reader expense and time, I'll share one brief lesson in LawyerSpeak:

shall = obligation or duty; obligatory action
should = conditional obligation or duty; conditional obligatory action

(Bold, Italics and underlines a gift from ZENmud)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Article 3

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end, the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;

(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgement pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

(2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for. An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.

The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.

The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Somehow I don't believe that Steve McQueen has convinced our Queen (er: President) to rise with human nature to a level that merits 'the Dominion of Men'.

Where Bush the Lesser sees 'vague', there really is very little leeway to a responsible, leading democracy.

Mr President, the only aspect that appears vague to most Americans is the limits to your capacity to pervert the government you twice agreed to uphold and defend.

ZENmud

FIRST crystelZENmud contest!

What is it about our President that makes him so fabulously fun?


It strikes me that he simply must love fashion, Jeff Gannon
and the rest of his boys. (wink)

What do YOU think? Write the winning caption and you may win a bottle of Cota d'Imaz*






ZENmud
* RULE: must be in Geneva, Switzerland, to collect prize

On Gore's speech...

There's something in Al Gore that makes me wish for a nation full of intelligent and creative people, designing the future for itself and the rest of the world, who await the natural economic filtration outward of technology transfer, as has happened since the spread of railroads, telegraphs, light bulbs and the automobile...

That used to be America.

In this time under Bush the Lesser, America's innovative excellence has been suppressed, as the 'innovation' of our times comes from ever greater means of devising 'schemes' to increase the unnatural burden on the majority workforce/consumer. She and he together now must shoulder the economic weight of ever-increasing cronyism, as 'Security specialists' and 'Intelligence specialists' and Military specialists' spin out of government, and into the new phenomena of this decade: the private corporations, often closely-held entities, that do NOT provide the 'service to their country' (recalling the words of JFK) without exhorbitant Halliburtonesque overpricing.

Gore's speech, certainly about the environmental crisis being avoided by politicians worldwide (nearly), addressed that by trying to assure that American ingenuity would find us a path out of petroleum-dependence. But read his own words:

This debate over solutions has been slow to start in earnest not only because some of our leaders still find it more convenient to deny the reality of the crisis, but also because the hard truth for the rest of us is that the maximum that seems politically feasible still falls far short of the minimum that would be effective in solving the crisis. This no-man’s land – or no politician zone –falling between the farthest reaches of political feasibility and the first beginnings of truly effective change is the area that I would like to explore in my speech today.

How could this change?

You ARE the answer: demand tough and honest politicians, and vote out those who lie...

ZENmud

Down the road... ZENmud editorial

If Bush the Lesser gets his way anytime this fall, through Senate/ House legislation (tragically to be passed, if at all, before a Democratic majority could kill the proposal) that would redefine the US observance of the Geneva Conventions, and especially Common Article III, which establishes the limits of treatment of prisoners, it would become the latest accelerant to the hostilities and overstressed tensions that are turning the entire Middle Eastern sphere into an apocalyptic bomb.

By altering the laws by which America has taken high moral ground in past conflicts, often protecting enemy combatants to a greater degree than have our opponents' forces, Bush would implicitly be promoting the greater likelihood that foreign soldiers would become more savage in their desires to elude capture...

That war kills, and kills horribly; that soldiers evolve out of their brutal experiences and forevermore live in a different world than those of us who have never fought in one, is simply a part of the false politics of aggressive resolution to conflicts.

If Bush gets his way, how will America ever again publish any form of Human Rights report, as has been done annually by the State Department for years?

The world does not need American leadership, but has gained from it in past Administrations, but it won't stand by, idle, if this current misAdministration deludes itself into thinking that the effects of its pellmell slide down the slippery slope towards emulating Saddam Hussein's worst years, acts and aberrations, towards emulating the worst of Hitler's Gestapo, the worst of the USSR's gulags.

Bush the Lesser must remind himself, that 75 per cent of the world's economy lies outside the US borders...

ZENmud

Needlessly gone....

I seem to be in 'visual mode' this week... here's another multimediORwrite.com creation...


ZENmud

World Peace Statue - Grandcamp France

If you ever make it to the battlezones of France in Normandy: Caen or St. Lo, Arromanches-les-Bains, the US Cemetery, the museums commemorating D-Day, and the rest, you may just drive-by one of the all-time most beautiful sculptures... by sculpteur Yao Yuan. I didn't realize it at the time, but that sculpture had been on site for less than 4 months, when I took this photo in September 2004, accompanied by my roaming brother. It was constructed in China, by commission of the Department of Normandy's government. It weighs 16 tons, and took the collaboration of over 200 workers!

The kind of statue that makes John Lennon's words come into your head:
"Imagine all the people..."

ZENmud

Certitude is not the test...

There was a time... when Americans held opinions, not swords...

A picture is worth a thousand words... and these seven words have their own impact. In contrast, the perfect subject to whom Justice Holmes might have addressed them is fascist, neocon Vice President Dick Cheney.

ZENmud

Why not read? ...

A couple of great items showed up on the web recently:

TomDispatch posted this:

Tomgram: Crashing the Plane of State into Iraq

Buzzflash posted:

Brent Budowsky:
Battle Cry For Billionaires, Broadcasters, and Bloggers

Take a moment to read them - take 15 minutes to think about them.
Send them to serious Americans... or anyone that cares about the USA.

Spend your dollar-votes wisely, time is running out. Remember:

Atlas shrugged...

ZENmud

Anderson and Olbermann for 2008

If a clear mind is something voters want as the next real President of the United States of America, a man who can speak, can bring to the fore the emotions of we cherished when great public speakers were walking the halls of power in Washington, DC, then these two gentlemen, Rocky Anderson

"Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.

"A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.

"That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant."

and

Keith Olbermann could be the voices we yearn for!

" Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

Stand by, to see what happens...

ZENmud

Jungles of Concrete...

Nixon said in 1970 at the height of the escalation into Cambodia, that if

“the United States of America acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world”

Bush the Lesser, on the fifth anniversary of September 11th, quoted bin Laden:

"Osama bin Laden calls this fight "the third world war" _ and he says that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America's "defeat and disgrace forever.""

But?

Given that substituting the shattered neighborhoods of Fallujah and Baghdad for the jungles of Vietnam, the parallel strengthens. Entering either, behind every fallen block of an apartment house, as behind the trees of Vietnam, may lurk the 'insurgent' (Excuse me: I meant 'Islamofascist') that becomes an American soldier's executioner.

When America pulled its troops and embassy staff out of Vietnam, totalitarianism and anarchy did not conquer the planet. Efforts in Africa and Central America became the new raison d'être for the MPCIC, as continued jousting between Reagan chickenhawks and the USSR took center stage.

When Bush the Lesser ends the Iraq War (or Oil War III), the 'defeat and disgrace forever' will only be attached to his misAdministration, not the American Fighting Forces.

Why?

As they have never been able to state clearly their requirements for 'victory' (imagine if Bush the Lesser simply said “When I have syphoned 600 million barrels through a Halliburton pipeline into Kuwait, THEN I can declare victory.”), continued presence only reduces the already-meager number of Iraqis that support continued Coalition presence.

If American largesse had been offered to the Iraqi people through rational reconstruction efforts, rather than through

war profiteering, this war
would have ended by now.

ZENmud

Cultural FireWatch Tower...

Do you ever feel like you're in your sixth year of service in the world's loneliest Fire Tower, watching as a wall of dark, flaming clouds approaches? A flaming wall of destruction that has engulfed whole mountain ranges in a hellishly white-hot heat?

We are the Fire Watchers, we are the advance line of defense against the overwhelmingly destructive force that has radically changed our planet: what can we do?

Votes: you have one or more political votes a year; you have any number of thousands of dollar-votes flowing from your employers or investments, through your account(s) and off towards your beneficiaries: your family, your consumer-goods providers, the landlord, the taxman.

You sit or move through life with the conscious determination to spend your money where you will, whether at McDonalds or the bio-farmers' markets.

Your dollar-votes are the water that could stop the fire we see in America, an inferno built upon the hot air of this misAdministration, the fanning winds of the Republican MSM outlets.

By spending your dollar-votes wisely, a network like ABC Skews would not have an outlet for its expensive and un-sponsorable ...
(not for the reasons one might infer: this was a conscious decision by ABC to avoid backlash and boycott against its potential collaborators! Non?)

exploitation-docudrama

Example: if 400,000 people tell ABC they won't watch Monday Night Football, and that they are going to convince 10 friends each to go out for a communal ABC Truthwalk during those evening hours... they might listen. If 200,000 people demand of the sponsors of ABC Monday Night Football why they continue to advertise in face of ABC's known bias, what might those companies do?

That fire is powerful, it will take major shockwave-like therapeutic responses...

ZENmud

Sobriety test: the Department of HomeSec...

I guess it's too much to ask the good Americans at Homeland Security to keep their simplest War FOR Terror concepts clearly indicated...

I posted this link to DepHomeSec in y-day's post. That page renders the timeline of official Homeland Security Advisory System announcements: the yellow > Orange > RED (since we've apparently forgotten the -green- and -blue- zones). I got dizzy reading it, and you'll see why here, exclusively at crystelZENmud...

Look closely at the headers on the page; if DHS cannot keep their own threat-assessment values straight, how can any American take them seriously?

Remember!
Green > Blue > Yellow > Orange > RED
AND
RED > Orange > Yellow > Blue > Green

(“Hey, that's EASY, kids!”)

Now, regard the sequence from February 27, 2003 until May 30, 2003 (the headers of which are reproduced here with 100 per cent accuracy: words 'raised' and lowered' in bold by ZENmud)...

March 12, 2002 –
Introduction of Homeland Security Advisory system at Yellow
[.....]
February 27, 2003 (“All clear”)
Lowered from Orange to Yellow

March 17, 2003 (The pre-war warnings)
Raised from Orange to Yellow
(???? Hello? DHS? You don't "raise" to Yellow)

April 16, 2003 (“All clear”)
Lowered from Orange to Yellow

May 20, 2003 (Terr'ism in S.Arabia and Morocco)
Raised from Orange to Yellow (????)

May 30, 2003 – (“All clear”)
Lowered from Orange to Yellow

Should we give them the benefit of the doubt? No.

I can't believe that someone in this Republican misADMINistration is stupid enough (hint: yes, I can...) to leave such a blatant confusing mistake on their page for months, maybe even for now three years' running?
(if you're perplexed, remind yourSelf how one raises AND lowers warnings from same-color to same-color?

It boggles the mind that one could raise and lower from Orange to Yellow repetitively, and that a supervisor approved that... Might it have been a Katrina-associated oversight?

Arrogance in manipulation, should at least be associated with perfection in its application...

ZENmud

ABSkew continued...

It always pays to remember the last episode :-) ...



ZENmud

1826 - 1645

Two numbers...
1826 - 1645

These are not historic dates (in this context)...
they are the total number of days since
September 11, 2001

AND
The total number of days since inauguration of the five-color Homeland Security Threat Advisory system.

NB: never in the 1826 days since the Bush Administration failed to protect its citizens, has there been a 'green' day...

Feel the fear / vote the fear...
ZENmud

[expletive] deleted...

It used to be called journalism.

Now we have J'ISM everywhere...

As a high school student I watched the Senate Watergate Hearings endlessly, sacrificing the greater part of my summer vacation to sit virtually in 'Washington, DC'.

In those days, the immortal question was “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” In those days, lying administrations could be brought to their knees...

But because the Bush administration has effected a change in how 'journalism' is done these days, in liaison with the editors and publishers that sleep in their camp, the MSM has itself evolved out of the objective school into the stenographic school., as was well highlighted by Stephen Colbert in the summer of 2006.

Certainly, to the same degree that the MSM enjoyed discussing what a liar Bill Clinton was, they are, today, adverse to even circumvent the word in regarding the hundreds of deadly or civil-rights oppressing lies offered daily by this misAdministration.

I think the effect on news-gathering and reporting has merited that we rethink the word journalism: I may from time to time refer to these well-paid talking heads as J'ismists, and their profession as J'ism.

Because they tend to spew lies rather than challenge them (as we see in 'Path to 9/11'). And tweak the language of debate...

Truthfully yours,

ZENmud

Boycott ABC Football and the rest...

If you support a network that can't provide the truth regarding a defining national disaster, don't complain here.Hard to believe that the licenses held by ABCCBSNBC are FREE$$ each year, since 1934? Time for a change.

And! ABC offered it without sponsors, so your boycott will have to be against anyone advertising (scroll down for a list) with ABC SKEWS... or reaps the benefit therefrom...

ZENmud

Holiday riding... economic-history class

Was out for a 65km ride yesterday, under thin clouds, and was reflecting on a scene from Stone's film NIXON... in which, it was hypothesized, Nixon met with the Birch-fringe of American radical right on the eve of the Kennedy assassination. The 'Jack Jones' character portrayed by Larry Hagman, supposes that “These are dangerous times for business...”

This triggered a question, an Epiphany, concerning the foundation of America's rabid anti-communism: what was the basis for our angst? Were we afraid of Communism per se? Of the 'slavery of peoples' and its progress towards 'enslaving the world'? Was it as brutally simple as to get Nixon and others of their ilk elected? As Republicans nourish WalMart Americans' fear of Terrorism, by their War FOR Terrorism?

OR...

(Anthony Hopkins as Richard M. Nixon)

Were we affected in our quests for market domination by American business interests? A country that 'went communist' would not be buying Fords, or Pepsi, or McDonald's billions of hamburgers in quantities that would allow our post-war expansion to endlessly progress.

It is clearly an issue, but whether sustainable or not, remains a crystelZENmud question to return to...

ZENmud

ZENmud with Evidentiary proof... Media Bias 101...

Soon ABC will air its totally disreputable documentary, with now an [ob]scene that puts action and words into the Clinton Administration that verifiably didn't occur as will have ABC imagined and presented them... and has offered a biased guide for classrooms!

So let us RIP through an ABC online article and show how their bias lays today (with a JD degree and a bit of Evidence in the background, I offer only insight, not expertise...)...

The article is “Documentary Slams U.S. Companies Working in Iraq” and it discusses the author, his film, not his facts, but then his critics. I hope you'll stay with me on this for about 5 minutes of your life... I'm pasting the article, but will interject [comments] inside square brackets

By DAN HARRIS
Sept. 4, 2006

He's tackled Wal-Mart and Fox News with his scathing documentaries. Now, filmmaker Robert Greenwald is releasing a documentary which argues that private companies helping to fight the war in Iraq don't have the nation's best interests in mind.
['scathing' as an adjective might force a reader to already take Pro or Con sides... ok / the unstated ABC position is that 'As a major corporate sponsor of the Bush administration (FCC programing-related?) we certainly can't investigate overcharges to the Defense Department']

"Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" debuts in limited release this week, and presents an assault on companies that provide the kinds of services in Iraq that the military once handled itself, such as supplying food, water and mail delivery for the reconstruction.
[other than 'an assault'... this is subtle, is not explored, and forms the basis of film's content]

In the film, former KBR/Halliburton water purification specialist Ben Carter is interviewed and says when a motor went out on a truck, they would "buy a new truck … and bill the government."
[Any perusal of a few Congressional Oversight documents would perhaps verify such practices: ABC/Disney chooses to not do so / I guarantee that ABC had stories about the $640 dollar hammers back in the good old Reagan days]

Greenwald also interviewed relatives of four Blackwater Security guards who were mutilated in Fallujah in March, 2004. One mother claimed her son died because the company cut corners, failing to supply armored vehicles or maps.
[Article doesn't broach whether she has email evidence from her son, or his multiple phonecalls to family members, as evidence]

"My son is not walking the earth because people he trusted and worked for did not care about him," said Donna Zovko, whose son Jerry Zovko was among the four Blackwater employees killed by insurgents in 2004.
[Thus she admittedly is horrified/distraught, but still ABC could 'go deeper']

Greenwald requested interviews with the contractors he is criticizing, but they turned him down.

Blackwater told ABC News it couldn't comment on the Fallujah incident because it's the subject of a lawsuit, and Halliburton offered a statement saying the film includes "yet another rehash of inaccurate, recycled information."
[“Yet another rehash... recycled information” doesn't negate the truth contained therein]

Critics of these kinds of documentaries remind viewers not to expect balance from left-leaning documentaries, such as Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and former Vice President Al Gore's global warming film, "An Inconvenient Truth."
[(obvious 'Guuilt by Association'?) Now here we go: in the eighth 'sentence-paragraph! Where is “Supporters of these kinds of documentaries remind viewers not to expect fair reporting on this film?” OR “This film documents evidence and sends a powerful message to this Administration” OR “We independently investigated several of this film's charges and we agree that...”]

"Finally, the left has figured out their answer to talk radio -- and it's documentaries," said Prof. Richard Lichter of George Mason University.
[Nearly overtly admitting that the MSM is 'rightly' biased, and has been for years]

"Iraq for Sale" was produced more like a political campaign than a traditional movie, largely funded by 3,000 small donations made on the Internet.
[Are you getting the idea of 'second level analysis'? Progressive interests have no allies in the MSM and must unite as small-investors to get a necessary project funded!]

It's being released on a small scale this week and will then be screened in thousands of homes, union halls and churches in time for the November elections.
[Hint: most films are 'pre-released' somewhere / “homes, union halls and churches” is phrased to diminish the reader's perception of its force]

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

[Disney/ABC donated 640 thousand to Bush' 2000 campaign]

As an example of bias, tangentially evidential to its release of its own biased and proven-false film “Path to 9/11”, there is hardly none finer... You may certainly object to my analysis, but let's see the film itself, first!

Stay tuned for a sequel...

Subliminally yours...
ZENmud

IRAQI cartoon...

Mentioned last week that I would soon post a cartoon from an Iraqi paper in 2004, as you see below. The fat man is a US-Iraqi composite of the average Chalabi-type, and the skinny man is one of the millions of unemployed workers that the reconstruction funding has not reached. The caption reads:

You need to learn the principles of democracy and globalization before asking for the food that will spoil your beautiful slender physique.



ZENmud

A coming attraction...

I have a surprise coming soon: some two years ago, I met some people here in Switzerland, that had a featured speaker at an event in Berne, the capital city and canton. He was head of an IRAQI trade-workers' Federation, and I am going to post a cartoon that I discovered down in the ZENmud electronic vaults... as soon as I get it translated... so in the meantime... another photo post to break up the heavies... I live near the shores of Lac Léman (Lake Geneva for the far-away...) and each spring now, these two swans return to our boatramp to occupy territory and protect their two to six eggs... I fully support this occupation of foreign territory... you don't see the 'crime scene' tape above the ramp, protecting them during the weeks of incubation...
and boatowners have a second option, so no need for foreign troops to be called in...

ZENmud