28 February 2007

FLASH!!! BUSH HAS LOST TWO WARS...

How does one win a war? A lawful war, based on international law principles?

Superior forces, equipment, strategy, deployment support? Surely a sign of coherence in mission...

Tactical advantages pressed and implemented?
Offering the troops operational safeguards and progressive action...


Stabilization of conquered territories through EFFECTIVE occupation strategies, and working in close concert with indigenous groups and remaining political-power structures, if such is available (or if such is the case?)?
Allowing citizens to remain as such, and not become 'collateral damage'.
With some clear majority of the above concrete ideas, severally and together, an army can vanquish, and a nation may claim victory, and withdraw after occupied, transitional authority is remitted to the citizens.


SO, apparently, in spite of our 'war theater superiority', in spite of the most thoroughly trained troops on the planet (now with a much higher percentage of 'hot' training experience), the military suffers under the six-year stench of 'Republican misAdministration', and chafes at the thought of a 24 hour notice for an Iranian invasion.

Bush the Lesser has lost in Afghanistan, based on the newest, boldest attacks against Dick 'Before he dicks you' Cheney. Hey, Dick(head), I betcha ol' Harry had a laugh, thinking about you pissing in your Depend (TM) undergarments. And how was Bush' humour when you came back into the Oval Office? As Tony 'Candy' Snow says, you were debriefed in a tête-à-tête, my droogie...

Bush the Lesser has lost in Iraq, based on all that which YOU, ZENers, about which we all now know...

Will a two-time loser (Could I be insinuating the election results as well?) actually attempt to start a third war?

Or is it 'Time to go, Iraq, my HOT Date is around the corner...'???

ZENmud

Still on Iran-IRAQ-Saudi???

Hi ZENistas,

Here's another look, from Mother Jones, at the current demographic makeup of the Middle Eastern Warzones, as I recently wrote about at my Feb 23 post Proxy war continues...

Who sees the lack of respect that came about with borders drawn after World War I, based on the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916?

DISCLAIMER: ZENmud provides you, trusted reader, with a great many links to WIKIPEDIA. This is not a blanket endorsement of that resource, but it at least will have decent superficial coverage, and serves as a great starting point for more in-depth research.

So, anyway: Think about the families and cultures that overlap, peacefully for thousands of years, and now unleashed by illegal American and 'Coalition' intervention, aggression, and occupation?

More after lunch...

ADDITIONAL: ...while digesting my panini and wine, I thought about the map, above, and the facts we lived through, recently, in our American Evolution: into 'Red States', and 'Blue States'... what if Sunni and Shiite demographics were interpreted as the same?

Only problem is to decide who gets which color! Are the Iraqi Shiites, the majority in population and in government, who are propped up by Bush the Lesser, while BushL blasts the natural Iranian allies, to be RED?

Greater minds boggle...

ZENmud


23 February 2007

PROXY war continues...

Dear ZENistas?

Can we continue hiding the proxy war that Bush the Lesser, and the American Media, the MSM (Mainstream media) are ignoring?

While the world turns more violent (See yesterday's post below, or through this link), and the UN debates, and the world awaits, for the Iranian government's 'Uranium question' to be resolved (PEACEFULLY? thank you), who's minding what is going on to bolster the Iraqi Sunni factions, and from whom?


Look over there, on the other side of Iraq and Kuwait? Recognize it?

Big, dry, sandy: Saudi Arabia??? Sunni Holy land?

Third largest holder of US Treasury notes? (ZENthought: and thanks for the Map I found at www.atlapedia.com , and modified under the Fair Use Doctrine exceptions on education... :-)

Hello Earth??? What meds are they on?

The MSM media can't stop masticating the juicy morsels that drop from Bush, Rice, or Ahmadinejad's mouths, concerning Iran, who happens, I am not the first to point out, to be seeking to support the very same people we handed a majority democracy to... the SHIITES of Iraq. And, MSM coverage paints a misAdminstration program that is designing to install your next sequence of brainwashing: MUST STOP I**N!, we MUST STOP I**N!...

And so it goes, said Ed Murrow...

Ponder this, as we turn tomorrow into today... weekend for Momma....

ZENmud

22 February 2007

JIHADIS are everywhere...

ZENistas,

We come back to the subject at hand, being 'what to do after Bush the Lesser leaves office?'

An interesting graph from Mother Jones 's article - The Iraqi Effect: War has Increased Terrorism Sevenfold Worldwide (part Four), has been dutifully and respectfully embellished by the ZENartists here at ZENcentral... and credit goes around the whole internet for this derivative satirical work.


It's the living (dying?) truth... Wonder how it compares to the Perpetual War Portfolio?

The reality goes beyond Super-bowl political media coverage, goes beyond investors blind to the source of their corporate dividends, and FAR beyond the moral compass that theoretically points Muslims, Jews and Christians towards their Paradise in another world...

Is it any wonder that Bush, as small and conniving a capitalist, whose only 'get-rich quick' scam involved illegal Supreme Court decisions, irresponsible administration of Defense and FAA warning systems, unconscionable diplomatic and domestic-political methodologies, is now getting ready to retire to Paraguay, perhaps? See the ZENarchive for December, and scroll to 11 December:

FLASH FORWARD: 2008 - Bush and extradition

(Scrolling required)

Stay in the real world, feel the real pain, solve the real problems: as ZENmud said on Day One of Blogging:

"There's only one way to solve the world's problems: don't start one."

ZENmud

21 February 2007

Strength and INDEPENDENCE

ZENistas,

It's going to be a sad month, and I'm not even talking about deranged pResidents or fear and loathing in Teheran... It seems I've reached a dubious point in my life, when a goal attained comes, and is followed by sadder news that washes the accomplishment away.

For ZENmud is 50-and-a-week tomorrow, and it appears that his lovely, beloved mother, is seeking new horizons, as a voyage from our reality, to that we dream of, or pray for, or have imposed on us, the innocent, by those whose sole aspiration is to accomplish as many WAR Crimes as possible, in his six-to-eight years of office.

The woman you see, taught me all the right things of life: her Christianity included daily lessons in 'Turning the other cheek', as she was emotionally battered by an alcoholic, philandering husband; her politics taught me the benefits of helping the less-abled, to balance that man's Republican hatred of non-whites, and poor, and attorneys; her inquiring mind helped me, as when she gave me to read, the 'Tibetan Book of the Dead' (although I cannot say which version, whose translation, etc)... The list of books she found for me is amazing: Brave New World (Huxley), Star of the Unborn (F. Werfel) and many more: she even gave me my 'WHOLE EARTH CATALOGUE', which was a masterpiece of publishing from 1968 to 1972.

I post this in love, and hope that friends will share the turbulence of this week, this coming change in family-structure, and rekindle their love for people close and far:

"Set the controls, for the Heart of the Son..."

(thanks to Pink Floyd)

ZENsad

19 February 2007

Can NO one STOP him?

If rational minds, oh! my ZENistas, can discuss the source of the Kennedy assassination as being perpetrated against a Democrat, by 'People who Hate Democrats', one could think that those instigators would be from a far-off quadrant of the political sphere...?

Am I wrong?


If we narrowed down '
People who Hate Democrats', we would of course eliminate the majority of Democrats, and the minority of Republicans, that are not so hateful in their own souls...

We could narrow further and consider who to include in the 'baseline': rabid anti-Communists, radical anti- Castro reactionaries, radical Right Corporate interests?
Well, ZENers, when it comes to a timeline of ideologies, the elements that fostered enough hatred to kill John F Kennedy, in front of his wife and a crowd of onlookers, ought to marshal their hatred towards one of their own, one who has done more damage, more irreversible actions, from destroying the United States fiscally, physically and influentially: their very own droogie, Bush the LESSER.

How is it that any president can follow this man, whether a woman or black, or another (oh merde!) Republican?


Out of what legacy-of-shit will that individual have to soil him or herself, to rectify the compounded errors of Bush and his 'Dream Foreign Policy Team'? It doesn't pay to waste one's precious life worrying, does it?

We'll all be okay once the next President, perhaps even actually an ELECTED president, is in power?


Are you crazy?

Do you think a simple shuffle of the deck will yield the winning hand?
I wouldn't want the job of President, and would wager that the next office-holder will face the most grave, non-violent decisions that any President has faced since Abraham Lincoln...

ZENmud

16 February 2007

In defense of Floyd Landis...

Or: Fair is fair???

I have spent a good deal of my summer leisure time, since moving to Switzerland, following the several Tours de France, either on TV or by cycling to the closer passages, in the Cols of the Haute Savoie, or les montagnes Jura.

For better or worse, I've regaled in watching Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton, and Floyd Landis, not to mention Ivan Basso, Laurent Jalabert, Alex Zülle and many others...

I have had a streak, not enjoyable, in which riders I would 'discover' personally, based on early-season successes in the Tours of Romandie, or Tours de Suisse, would later be tested positive, and sinking my heart. It became numbingly routine to watch, as the Pantanis, Savoldellis, Frigos and many more, one-by-one, took the fall from ever-more effective and pervasive testing: which I ENDORSE.

But there comes a time, or a case, when... more than 'gut feeling'; when your heart, maybe, doesn't want to accept that which the world is screaming for: Death to Floyd LANDIS: doper.

But a law degree, curiosity and competent knowledge of the situation in the heart of the French fight against doping, combines to render incredulous the situation standing against the winner of the 2006 Tour de France.

Curiously the French have only undertaken this quest since the banishment of French-based, world champion team: FESTINA, outcast during le Tour Noir of 1998, when its trainer was caught with a station-wagon full of EPO and other 'race candies', and witnessed the second-greatest denial of the 1990s, when Richard Virenque denied (with the force of Bill Clinton's assertions) any involvement in le dopage.

In quest of a Tour winner who races 'on clear water' (“à l'eau claire”), in the face of a true epic champion NOT from France, in search of the forensic, medical and scientific recognition as being on the forefront of la lutte antidopage, the French Ministry of Sport worked extensively to promote its National Laboratory, the Châtenay-Malabry Laboratoire Nationale du Dépistage du Dopage, under the direction of Professeur Jacques De Ceaurriz.

How has their quest fared?

In the years of Lance's reign, from 1999 to 2006, the number of days in which French riders have worn the coveted Yellow Jersey (“Maillot Jaune”) have been dominated by two anamolous events, both produced by fluke weather. In 2001, a cold rainy stage to Pontarlier brought victory to Erik Dekker, and the Maillot Jaune to François Simone; in 2004 and similarly, Thomas Voelker won both stage 5 and the Maillot Jaune when circumstances allowed another record-setting breakaway.

What was most curious of these French riders, was the way they each lost: persistently, ploddingly, ... 'heroically', the precious minutes that were separating them from LANCE and his 'Posties' were disappearing, day after day, climb after climb.

The world watched, as the French could not face up to the onslaught of Lance and his Boys...

I took this photo on the Col de la Faucille, and below is a PARODY insinuation of what I thought I heard them saying...

In 2006, the entire cycling world was re-energized. Those who called themselves fans or supporters of Lance Armstrong, finally joined those who had never liked him: for his arrogance, dominance or those whispered and NEVER-proven rumours of substance abuse; in 2006 the entire cycling world awaited the first post-Lance Tour de France.

NB: The Tour de France has never been won by a Grand Champion in the years ending in xxx6!

And was this Tour ripe with talent, as the cycling world balanced the evident strengths, and known or unknown weaknesses of those Ullrichs, Vinokarovs, Bassos, and others, Floyd Landis being considered one of the strongest 'outsiders'.

But 'disaster' struck this Tour.

“L'Affaire Operación Puerto” arose out of allegations produced in Spain, implicating known and 'presumed' clients of Doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, clients whose 'programs' were inscribed, often in code, in a mysterious book whose inferences to EPO and other programs invited insidious reactions.

Without a true whimper, teams like powerhouse Deutsche Telekom, and CSC suspended or fired their best hopes for a new Tour Victory.

Let's skip through the repercussions of Puerto, and the early stages that led across France, through the Pyrennees and around the Alpes. The 'stage' was set for what became perhaps the most epic stage in any race of recent times.

Floyd Landis, who had 'bonked' in Stage 16, began the 17th Stage in heatwave conditions, took a tactical decision to launch himself into an incredible breakaway, crossing five veritable mountain passes in an amazing breakaway, reaching Morzine (NB: the author was 110m from the finish line in Morzine) some seven minutes before his main rivals, especially Oscar Pereiro, nearly perfectly erasing his prior day's total collapse. He ended that day 30 seconds behind.

That day was sooo hot, that I stopped my ride to Morzine to swim au naturel in the cold mountain river, La Dranse, that exits from Morzine, at 09h30!!! How hot was it for the Tour riders who'd only begun their warmup kilometers?

Like the assassination of John F Kennedy, we may never know what really happened that day, if Floyd Landis was as innocent as he has claimed to be.

Because that which we are able to know, is this: the lab in which his samples were tested, had just previously been seriously compromised by two incompatible forces: an amazing series of leaked confidential testing situations; and an overpowering governmental ambition to singlehandedly eliminate doping within the French National symbol which the Tour de France represents.

These situations came into a nexus of disrepute with the publication in L'Equipe, the French national sports newspaper, born in the Forties and major influence for the Tour, of an article in August 2005 casting insinuations towards Lance Armstrong, and his 'EPO use during the 1999 Tour'.

The crisis that followed instigated and produced one of the great investigations of our time, sadly only incomplete due to interference, and unkept promises, by three of the accusing parties: the director of the Châtenay-Malabry laboratoire, his superiors in the French Ministry of Sport (Note that the Ministry's site devoted to clean sport shows documents from 2005!!!), and the collaborating and nearly-illegal coverup performed within WADA. That was instituted by appointment of an independent investigator from the Netherlands, under authority of the Union de Cyclisme International (UCI).

And it goes without saying, that the results of this investigation have not received 1/100th of the attention from the world's sporting press, as much as those findings indict every player that was involved in both the false accusations against Lance Armstrong in 2006, regarding his 1999 Tour, and the anomalous Stage 17 test-results that were blasted across the planet against Floyd Landis, the resulting cacaphony of lynch-mob journalism, and potentially career-ending disciplinary action.

Consider the UCI investigator's summary conclusions, of which:

“The refusal by the LNDD, the French Ministry and WADA to provide documents and information that are necessary for the proper conduct of a complete investigation is extremely troubling and is inconsistent with the principles of the Olympic Movement. The fact that WADA President Dick Pound and the LNDD’s Professor De Ceaurriz were willing to discuss the research project and its results in great detail with the media, while they at the same time were unwilling to cooperate with a proper investigation by the organization with jurisdiction over this matter, raises substantial questions regarding their reasons for doing so and makes one wonder as to what complete cooperation would disclose.”


Let's consider just that last sentence clause again: “makes one wonder as to what complete cooperation would disclose.”

There is no doubt what complete denial of access to documents and evidence requested by LNDD, WADA and the French Ministry of Sport will incur: perpetual belief that emanations from mouths, the likes of Dick Pound, Professeur de Ceaurriz and L'Equipe have credibility.

We will never know, maybe, why the French Ministry didn't cooperate with an investigation into the methodology and results issued by a division of its governmental portfolio.

Never will we know how the report against Lance (and some six other anonymous riders) was leaked to L'Equipe. Nor will we know why WADA called for disciplinary hearings to be undertaken by the UCI, against one multiple-Tour winning racer, without clarifying its own nebulous rôle in the illegal accusations, based on unknown and UNAUTHORIZED 'accelerated' testing methodologies, proffered against Lance Armstrong.

Until we know whether WADA and Dick Pound have convinced LNDD to circumvent appropriate procedures, or otherwise that LNDD and the French Ministry of Sport have hoodwinked WADA and Dick Pound into promoting a supercilious and scurillous campaign against 'les Américains', reason stands aside to character assassination and no racer can hope to survive this new era of non-standard testing hidden within the skirts of a dirty whore: WADA.

ZENmud


14 February 2007

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to ZENmud

Hey y'all, Sorry for my absence: a lot going on in ZENworld! Stay tuned for new aspects coming to the ZENthing...
but I have to post these cartoons, and anyone can vote which they prefer. Thanks go to Warner Brothers,
the Kubrick family, and all associated with A Clockwork Orange!

It took 50 years to get here: it may take 50 years to get out of this mess
:-)

ZENmud 50!

06 February 2007

NUREMBERG updates...

ZENistas everywhere, welcome. Many a time have we all compared the current sociopathic occupant of the White House, whom you know here as Bush the Lesser, with the Evil Incarnate of the Twentieth Century, the former head of State for Germany, and leader of that country's National Socialist Party.

It would behove us all to remember that the Nuremberg Statute of 1945 was achieved to articulate the principles of decency, as an amplification of those previous international accords that evolved out of prior world conflicts: the Geneva Protocols, the Hague Agreements, the UN Charter, and the rest.


I thank the English language publication “Current Concerns” of Zurich, Switzerland for providing an article expressing the following salient Articles of the Nuremberg Statute:

Article 6: [.....] Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.

Article 7: The official position of defendants, whether as Head of State or responsible officials in Governmental Departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility or mitigating punishment.

Article 8: The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility [.....]

Let's focus on Article 6; how expansive can we determine the list of culpable players to be? Hmmmm??

Leaders are a pretty finite group: I would put the Head of State and his puppet-master in this set – Bush the Lesser, and Cheney the Torturer-Assistant. Let us total these two as 'Leaders' for the USA (and let's let a capable British Parliament clean their own house...)

Organizers are a wider sub-set of the above group: we could posit that the Secretaries of State and Defense, the National Security Advisor, the Head of the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces would be included in this group. In this grouping, we could count some dozen or twenty US Governmental Senior staff.

Instigators expand the above set out into the White House assistants, field operational CIA Officers and military commanders in the Iraqi field of battle. We may have to put to trial several hundred members of this subset.

Accomplices becomes the Mother Lode, if one uses the legal terminology of 'aiding and abetting' to this element. Here it would be reasonable to discuss, as ZENmud wishes, the role played by the US Mainstream Media (MSM) in its egregious acts of commission and omission. The MSM failed its role by not upholding the founding principles of a Free Press, by both acting as a trumpet for policy of this Republican misAdministration, and in failing to use any skepticism in examination of the announced policies given to the public by Bush the Lesser and his accomplices. Ergo: anyone at FOX News with a prominent on-screen position, as well as the Bush cousin that runs News programming (why name names? ZEN'ers know...) would fall into this category...

Naming names would not help expand this quest; if the Democratic Congress can simply investigate, and if the MSM reports faithfully those situations as they are divulged, then the American people can judge for themselves, wherein the failures began.


But never forget who in our US society refuses to allow any comparisons of Der Fuhrer with der TortureMonkey... ZENistas know the MSM phenomenon...



ZENmud



Burning down the house...

How does one communicate to those lost souls, lost in a media-muddle of wrong 'rights' and 'right' wrongs? Lost in a country that went from its guiding role to sower-of-fear in one pResidency?

Capturing an analogy is often harder than simple explanations, but I return to the one that best describes the feeling I hold from afar, from the center of Europe, watching the implosion of the American culture. So I thought to provide my ZENfriends with another analogy as to the current USA culture of fear...

If I own a house in the Rocky Mountains, and I see forest fires all around my property, is it logical for me to buy and hoard in my basement, some 3,000 gallons of gasoline?

It IS that simple, dear ZEN'ers...

Consider how you would feel, as wife or husband to someone so neurotic as to stock fuel in the midst of a burning forest? Your own eyes and common sense experience would be in mortified suspense, as you watched this deranged partner racing up and down the stairs, depositing, with each downward leg, two 5-gallon reservoirs full of high-octane fuel...


You'd be screaming, at least inside, if not to his or her face “What ARE YOU doing to us?”...

And in the analogy, Bush the Lesser and his errant era of Ripoffublican Congresses represent the deranged partner, our country replaces your home, and the gallons of gasoline stored in your basement equal both the inordinant amount of monies spent on war, defense procurement and foreign policy mistakes.

ZEN advice?

Get that fuckin' gasoline out of your house, or! RUN for your own life... run !!!

Run far, soon... to a Fire Tower near you...

ZENmud