From tompaine.com:
A hard truth appears to have escaped the notice of the public and received scant attention from the media: Bush is the first president in American history to use deceptive propaganda as his main means of communications in selling his policies. His pattern of deception continues unabated and in direct conflict with the notion of the public’s informed consent that is central to American democracy.
Ok, this should be filed under WHAT FUCKING COUNTRY DO I LIVE IN?
Pentagon’s Futures Market Plan Condemned
Mon Jul 28, 7:46 PM ET
By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon (news – web sites) is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits.
Two Democratic senators demanded Monday the project be stopped before investors begin registering this week. “The idea of a federal betting parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it’s grotesque,” Sen. Ron Wyden (news, bio, voting record), D-Ore., said.
[..]
The market would work this way. Investors would buy and sell futures contracts — essentially a series of predictions about what they believe might happen in the Mideast. Holder of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of investors who put money into the market but predicted wrong.
[..]
“Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in … and bet on the assassination of an American political figure, or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?” [Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan] said.
Today I clicked. I crossed a threshhold. Don’t ask me how, other than perhaps just being completely sick of feeling bad about not accomplishing the stuff I need to accomplish before I head out the door for a week.
I had a moment after I had finally dragged myself away from the computer and into the car to go do the things on the list. I was sitting at a stoplight. It turned, and I gunned it up the hill. Somehow the feeling of accelleration startled me into believing that the funky self-loathing agitation I’ve been feeling for the last few days is actually the juice that will get me through this.
And then the second realization: That when I was done with all the stuff, on time, before leaving, I’d be standing there on my little porch as the sun went down and I’d feel so completely free of it that I’d laugh maniacally out loud, where it might actually startle the neighbors. So I started laughing in the car, going up the hill. A compulsive but full and unconstricted kind of laugh.
It’s so entertaining sometimes to watch yourself do these things.
Now, to get it all done…
U.S. Adopts Aggressive Tactics on Iraqi Fighters
Intensified Offensive Leads To Detentions, Intelligence
[..]
Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: “If you want your family released, turn yourself in.” Such tactics are justified, he said, because, “It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.” They would have been released in due course, he added later.
The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.
Do I really need to spell out my outrage?
I’m tired in a way I haven’t been tired for a really long time. The little anxiety thing yesterday, and then visiting some folks today, and I’m way out of it. This is how I used to feel when I was living with housemates.
I’ve basically been watching TV all night, in zombie mode, and I’m wiped. Just gone. I’m hoping I’ll have it together again by the time I leave for Nashville in a couple of days. I’m going to spend a week at my grandma’s 100th birthday party (and doing other things, too), which will also be a sort of family reunion. I’m looking forward to it and dreading it simultaneously.
I’m thinking more and more about what’s possible and what isn’t. Having this chance to be alone and hermit-like for so long, and then feeling the stifle I put myself through just to spend an afternoon with some friends… I can’t imagine myself sharing a house with anybody.
I’m also seeing in greater relief where the jagged edges and fault lines are between me and normal. Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time and effort trying to delude myself into thinking those differences were non-existant, or that they weren’t really relevant. Denial is really the only strategy available when you have an undiagnosed neurological disorder, don’t you think?
The over-the-head-with-a-2×4 differences have lost much of their wham, since I find myself caring less and less that I’m a freak. But the subtle things are poking up out of the murk, and it’s not so easy to map them out. Lists forthcoming.
I still have to remind myself of a lot of things, though. I have to think about this stuff while I’m in it, and find a way to deal. Often, that just means reminding myself that I obviously come from another planet, so chill out, d00d.
I will never get over the fact that people born in 1980 are 23, and will only get older.
It’s kind of fun to think about, though, in the abstract. The overlapping lives of all people everywhere, the constant birthing and dying, the tremendous friction generated between the generations. And I get to watch my attachments to the idea that no proper childhood can happen unless it’s like mine evaporate like breath on a mirror. Stubborn breath on a mirror.
I try to think about what’s universal to all lifetimes, and the truth is that the human race is a wave function of capacity toward compassion and divinity.
No, there wasn’t LSD in the donuts.
It’s true. The fundamental human truths don’t transcend our lives or our experiences as individuals, or as generations; they can only exist within the context of those experiences. We’re far from even beginning to push the boundaries of those experiences, however, so there’s plenty of room for unexpected truth to wriggle its way out of murky potential.
‘Wriggle.’ Is there a motion-based analog to the term ‘onomatopoeia?’
Reminds me of something I heard once: ‘Onomatopia’ is what you call a place that only sounds good.
I was bad tonight.
There’s a new Krispy Kreme on Aurora highway, and I went and got some of their sugary donut crack.
It really is crack. It’s got all the attendant psychoactive properties. There’s an initial euphoric buzz, a slowly down-ramping sort of elated feeling, and then a crash at the end. Fortunately, my belly is feeling a little extra acidic after eating the thing, so I’m not possessed of any desire to go get more. But if the stomach could do it, I’m sure there would be people who have to keep eating Krispy Kremes or suffer withdrawals.
I had my crash a few hours ago, and it brought with it a sort of free-floating self-loathing, where I can’t stop obsessing about some stuff that’s less than comfortable.
Thanks, Krispy Kreme!
Actually, the donuts aren’t fully to blame. I had a sort of mini anxiety attack at Trader Joe’s earlier today. I was OK with the fact that the place was a little crowded, and I was OK with the long checkout lines, but then they rang a big old BELL that startled me. Why did they have to do THAT?
It unfolded like this, after the bell rang: A sudden realization came over me that there would be no way for me to stand in that line with all those people. Then I realized that the bell had startled me. Then the realization that my heart was racing and I was operating on adrenaline.
I went to put back the stuff I had in my basket. Just two items. I had a 4-pack of ginger beer, and as I was putting it back on the shelf, its packaging ripped and it almost fell to the floor. So I had this image in my head, where I was watching the bottles crash to the floor in slow motion. A veritable Sam Peckinpaw movie. All heads in the aisle turn to look at me. I’m turning around, looking at them, trying to find a clerk to tell, and then, in my imagination, my anxiety moment turns into a full-blown panic, and I’m unable to move or explain to anyone what’s going on. So I quit having that fantasy, put back the soy milk, and head for the door, eyes forward, trying not to run into people.
There’s this Buddhist theory that memory and imagination are sense organs as much as eyes and ears and tongue. And they’re right. If I imagine that I’m having a panic attack, I can start having one outside my head, too.
I think there’s some residual panicky energy in there somewhere, and it hasn’t been expressed or metabolized, and so I’m over here hating myself after a sugar crash.
Grr.
People never cease to amaze me. I mean, for real. That the mind is capable of changing from a few cells in a uterus to a Bible-quoting scholar or a Nobel Laureate physicist or a fear-and-hate addicted psychopath is purely amazing.
‘Amazement’ is a word that denotes being surprised or uncomprehending in some way, as in being lost in a maze and unable to figure a way out. And I’m truly amazed.
There are distinct stages of development of the human mind as it grows within its encompassing matrix, the nervous system. All of these stages point toward self-awareness, of different types and within different contexts. For instance, as an infant we are helpless, but for the most part we’re blissfully unaware of our own helplessness. As we gain abilities in the world, our self-awareness spreads out across those abilities like the fabric stretching across the struts of an unfolding umbrella.
What if one of these struts is broken? Let’s say it doesn’t unfold. No problem; the umbrella is a metaphor. We measure the ‘brokenness’ of the umbrella in relation to other umbrellas, but in terms of the developing individual mind, the fabric forms itself to whatever shape is needed.
I think that, to stick with the umbrella metaphor, everyone has the odd strut or two, and the somewhat non-standard mechanism for unfolding, and maybe even the fabric isn’t stretchy enough in places, or is too stretchy.
And I think that there are normalizing mechanisms in the social mind that create categories into which these various oddities can be slotted. Societies work the same way; they bend and stretch as the capabilities of the underlying culture extend and contract. But it seems to me, right now, at this exact point in time (and maybe not in the future) that the function of society is to sort of ‘average out’ dangerous self awareness.
And what I mean by that is: If someone is, say, hyperactive, then social energies will try to redefine that hyperactivity in a way that either allows the different person more acceptance, or excludes them. Or both; there’s an odd paradox that some social structures have roles for the people who aren’t just a little different, but are way, way different.
And I’m thinking about this stuff because there’s this very angry, fearful young man who keeps hounding me on usenet. I did the unthinkable: I said I wasn’t afraid of Rush Limbaugh. Without going too far into it, simply challenging Rush Limbaugh’s status as Alpha Male in this young man’s life was enough to send him over the edge. Since then he’s been talking trash about me and generally acting like a kook.
And I have to ask myself: What does it say about our social energies (for lack of a better term) that this guy is willing to defend a radio talk show host, who doesn’t even know he exists, to the point of what would be harassment in any other context?
There’s brokenness out there. Big brokenness. I have to work to not see it, same as everybody else. It’s always been there, but it seems more pointed of late. It’s like a lake that is drying up, and all the wrecked ships on the lakebed are poking up out of the surface. You have to navigate around them.
It’s not just this one guy. It’s a hurt nation trying to fix its hurt by hurting other nations. It’s a best-seller called ‘Treason’ that slanderously accuses a narrow band of the political spectrum of being treasonous. It’s when you read quotes from Goebbels and you nod and say, “Who is this, Carl Rove?”
We’re hurt. We’re hurt and we refuse to acknowlege it. Americans don’t get hurt, so the myth goes. I’m so sick of seeing the walking wounded lead this country. This is a non-partisan screed, by the way, since it’s apolitical. People with power are hurt. Everyone’s hurt. Everyone’s nursing a wound that won’t heal, because its existence is denied.
I’ve always had a streak of wild-eyed visionary in me. I say shit like the above and think people will take me seriously. I think that I could be the pebble that starts the avalanche. The hundredth monkey, so to speak.
But that’s how my umbrella is. It has stretched itself over the strange shape of what’s underneath. My hurt is close to the surface, so I’m aware of it. I see the hurt in others, too, even though it’s out of their sight. It’s like seeing a guy with his fly undone. Does one point? Does one discreetly try and send signals? Does one just let it go?
Tired but a good kind of tired.
Pruned some trees. I like pruning trees. I’d like it even more if I could really go to town with it, but I mustn’t piss off the landlord.
I’ve been itching to get a mini-micro photographic road trip happening, off to, say, Leavenworth for a night. I’d want to go to North Cascades, but there’s a bit of a huge gargantuan forest fire filling the air with smoke.
I’ve also been thinking about tracing the Columbia River to its source. I doubt I’ll ever do it, but it would be an interesting sort of thing to write a series of travel essays about. It’d have everything from Pacific coast ecosystems to Lewis and Clark to Hanford Nuclear Site to the ecology of the dams to Kennewick Man to the geology of the big flood to the apple and wine grape orchards to Native American reservations to Canadian border crossing to cultural differences to the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. And other stuff, too. 
No wonder the Bushies were dragging their feet on the 9/11 report.
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030723-064812-9491r
9/11 report: No Iraq link to al-Qaida
By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
Published 7/23/2003 7:48 PM
WASHINGTON, July 23 (UPI) — The report of the joint congressional inquiry into the suicide hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, to be published Thursday, reveals U.S. intelligence had no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks, or that it had supported al-Qaida, United Press International has learned.
“The report shows there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaida,” said a government official who has seen the report.
[..]
