It's been five years since a bunch of kids were ordered to Iraq to kill. Yes, I know, they were not literally ordered to kill, but to "liberate." Hundreds of thousands have been "liberated" since. And we are counting. And counting. And counting. And there doesn't seem to be an end to this count. And this count goes on everywhere. We are counting in Afghanistan, in Tibet, in Chechnya, in Palestine, in Burma, in Congo, and in Darfur. Before that we were counting in Kosovo and the Balkans, and Nicaragua, and Panama, and Vietnam, and Korea and all over the world a couple of times. Millions upon millions of people vanished just in the last century. Untold numbers of people were wounded, maimed, tortured, raped, left homeless and broken. Why?

There seems to be a pattern to this madness.

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On March 19th, 2008 it will be 5 years since the war on Iraq was announced. Many organizations around the country are planning various actions to protest the war on that day. You can find more information at http://www.5yearstoomany.org/ or at http://www.codepinkalert.org/.

Participate in March 19 Iraq War Blogswarm

"This blogswarm will promote blog postings opposing the war in Iraq and calling for a full withdrawal of foreign occupying forces in Iraq. Five years of an illegal and catastrophic war is five years too many. On the March 19 anniversary of the conquest of Iraq by the Bush Administration, there needs to be a loud volume of voices countering the pro-war propaganda from far too many politicians and corporate media outlets."

HT to Delta for letting me know about this.

Soooo... I am back as promised. Yeah, it took a few months and all... :-) But it wasn't planned this way. Perhaps I was too stressed out or maybe I just needed a break from trying to write my thoughts down. I don't know. I am sorry for not being around and not following any blogs for so long. Thank you everyone for your warm comments and for, hopefully, not forgetting me.

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Since July 4th (The US Independence Day) is tomorrow and this is usually one of the holidays when a lot of flag waving and patriotic chanting going on, I want to point you to a piece by Howard Zinn where he writes on this very subject:

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed...

Put away the flags

I am sorry for disappearing on you guys for over a month. I have a lot of very complicated things happening in my personal life and I have a hard time focusing on anything else at the moment. I am okay and will hopefully return to blogging soon.

Thank you very much for checking up on me.

I will be back.

Salman Rushdie recently gave a talk and answered questions at The New York Society for Ethical Culture. He talked about the current state of affairs in politics and culture, Islam, secularism, war, the role of language in open societies and how it is misused by propaganda. Some of his views seem a bit questionable to me and occasionally resembled something you would hear Sam Harris say. Yet I think he has a much wiser and more realistic outlook on things. Whether you agree with his views or not, I think he has some interesting things to say about today's world:

An Evening With Salman Rushdie

Following is a link to an interesting dialog between evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers and linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky. They discuss deception and self-deceit in politics, psychology and biology:

video at SeedMagazine.com

This looks important, in a creepy and sad kind of way:

"[Military Commissions Act of 2006] provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables." (emphasis added)

American Prison Camps Are on the Way

Thanks to Michael from Spontaneous Arising for the link and the info.

As I've mentioned in my previous post I was going to participate in a protest against the policies of the Bush regime organized by The World Can't Wait. I went there. Unfortunately, I left my camera in the car because it looked like it was going to rain again and so there is no photos.

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As you probably already know, The United States Congress passed the legislation that, as reported by DemocracyNow!, "strips detainees of the right to challenge their own detention and gives the President the power to detain them indefinitely. The bill also immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for torturing detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year." Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont joined many dissenting voices and calls this legislation "a total rollback of everything this country has stood for.” It will now become legal in US to indefinitely detain, and possibly torture, a non-citizen without him/her having any legal avenue to challenge their imprisonment. What used to be a "trademark" of totalitarian governments is now a reality in United States of America.

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