CAROLYN CONNECTION

Maybe it was the deluge of deeply nauseating election stories. Maybe it was the horrifying election results.

Maybe it was the staggering news of the tsunami devastation or the continued uptick of the number of U.S. dead in Iraq. Maybe it was Abu Ghraib or the brutal Fallujah carnage or the obvious and bitter stories of the foregone failure of the search for WMD.

Was it continued tales of America's staggering deficit? Our humiliatingly weakened dollar? Our nation's current miserable standing in the international community? Shots of Bush's motorcade cruising down Pennsylvania Avenue, heading for Nightmare Term II, as people booed and threw eggs and turned their backs in disgust?

Or maybe it was merely the standard postcoital tryst following the holiday consumerist orgy wherein you just want to bury your head in a pile of recycled Pottery Barn catalogs and wait for spring. You think?

Whatever the reason, news fatigue is rampant right now. Do you feel it? Have you succumbed? My media colleagues complain of it and regular readers lament it almost every day: people are, apparently and quite understandably, deathly sick of the media and sick of the news.

Sick of depressing headlines and sick of Bush and sick of war and sick, more than anything, of reading about the latest toxic government agenda, given how the overall situation, at least as far as the last four years are concerned, never seems to improve and never seems to lighten and never seems to lose its sheen of bleak and black anxiety. Can you relate?

Much to the GOP's delight, liberals and progressives across the land seem to be off their game right now, not reading as much and not following the media as closely and not really questioning the snide BushCo agenda that aggressively, barely able to tolerate even the slightest glimpse of Bush without a spiritual and physical gag, a karmic acid reflux, a sucker punch in the intellectual gut.

Especially true given how the man has almost single-handedly poisoned the spiritual pie and soiled the progressive pool and pretty much slammed a bloody cleaver down the middle of the nation, making the place livable only in the cities and educated college towns, the urban archipelago, places with funky bookstores and decent universities and food that isn't, by default, deep fried or reconstituted or slathered in liquid cheese.

And it doesn't help matters much that, in a new global poll of 22 nations, including many U.S. allies, the majority of people surveyed think Bush's re-election makes the world a far more dangerous place, and that many view Americans more negatively than ever. Not exactly the proudest time in history to be waving Old Glory, you know?

OSLO, Norway - There appears to be somewhat of a cultural divide between Texans and Norwegians.
Residents of the Scandinavian country were taken aback when they saw the First Family appear to salute Satan during the inaugural parade yesterday.
The president and his family were seen raising their right hands and extending their index and pinky fingers.
Where Bush is from, that's recognized as a salute to the University of Texas Longhorns. Fans make the sign and shout ``Hook 'em, horns!'' during athletic events.
But overseas, that same gesture is seen as a sign of the devil. And in Norway the salute is popular among death metal and black metal groups and fans. Some Confused By Bush's 'Satanic' Salute

I know how it is. Even in a good month, following the media and keeping yourself truly informed is rarely easy and infrequently pleasurable and unless you're a fanatical media junkie absolutely never better than sex.

And this is quadruply true when all we're hammered by is nonstop wartime atrocity and Bush-policy abomination and the fact that it has now been almost exactly four years since the last shred of good news about environmental improvement, health-care reform, progress on women's rights or gay rights or cleaner air or a crackdown on the worst industrial polluters (instead of more tax breaks), outreach for the poor or more protection for national forests or a broadened sense of spiritual diversity or maybe a nice new treaty with a new ally that's designed to actually improve relations instead of degrade and isolate and destabilize.

Of course we're exhausted. Of course we don't want to hear it any more. It's a decidedly fatalistic feeling, after Bush snuck in to Term II, that there's little that can be done and we might as well just hunker down and wait for it all to be over because, after the valiant and heartbreaking battle of last November, much hope has been lost.

This, then, is the irony. Because now is the time when vigilance is needed more than ever, when an informed populace and an outraged resistance is mandatory lest the current regime simply steam roll over the nation for the next 1,460 days with a blindly aggressive agenda, one that aims to decimate Social Security and gut the economy and flood the courts with rabidly homophobic and anti-choice Bible-thumping judges who will almost guarantee we start treating gays as abominations and women as chattel and progressives as flammable godless heathens all over again.

And let's not forget, there's another vital election in less than two years that could very well reshape Congress and make Bush's final two years much more thorny and difficult, and that could very well help further highlight the fact that he will go down in history as one of the most destructive, least articulate, most divisive presidents in American history. Place your bets now.

So, then. It's OK to take a break. It's OK to, in the wake of the deeply nauseating Bush re-election, stay away, refocus, recharge, focus inward and focus locally and focus on living your own life with the kind of temerity and resolve that you normally prescribe to rabid evangelicals from Kentucky. Never think you have all the answers. But just know that you know how to ask the right kind of questions.

Which is to say, it's all about validation. Of truth. Of your truth. Of what you know to be true of progressive kaleidoscopic open-thighed human consciousness, and how radically and beautifully that belief differs from the small-minded black/white pseudo-Christian BushCo truth.

And in fact, I would argue that this kind of regular, daily validation is mandatory right now, that as far as Bush goes, living well -- living your beliefs to their utmost and allowing them full, raw manifestation, sacred or profane, luminous or pointed, naked or slathered over in karmic whipped cream -- is the best revenge, is by far the best thing you can do to counter the seemingly interminable BushCo onslaught.

So go ahead, skip the dour headlines. Forget to read the newspaper for a while. Refocus your intent and screw the sneering BushCo pomp and ignore the conservative flying monkeys who've stormed the castle and have announced there will be no good or progressive or healthy or spiritually radiant news for the next four years.

Know that this is not you. Know that you do not have to kowtow and you do not have to succumb and you do not have to bury your head and merely endure. Know that you have this one humble and luminous choice, always and always and every single day: no matter if it's dark energy or light, low vibration or high, raw intimate self-defined sensual divinity or dumbed-down numbed-out force-fed conservative sanctimony, you can either trust that truth and follow your own hot moral compass, or allow it to be stained and warped and doused in fear and led wide, wide astray. It's not about them. It's about you. Make your choice now. Grip it like a baseball bat.

Then, the good news. No longer will you have to ask how to survive. No longer will you ask how you can possibly endure the next four miserable, homophobic, warmongering, Earth-bashing years without daily weeping and clenching and rending of karmic flesh.

That truth of yours won't just set you free; it will lay you open and feed the universe and allow you to laugh at the mad circus of it all, ultimately morphing that sad resigned news-fatigue nausea back into outrage and ire and healthy intellectual fire. And you will, by default and almost automatically, get your fine ass back in the game.

-- Mark Morford had a terrific article today about how Tired we all are of the news. Below is my response to his article with a few "other" thoughts about our malaise. maddi

Dear Mark --

Tired? Perhaps, but only for a moment or so. The Iraqis, who are bombed daily, are the ones who are tired. Their world has been rocked and socked by U.S. invaders and occupiers. They are really, really tired to the bone. Many Iraqis are now actual "bones", having minimal food to eat and dirty water to drink. And some are bags of bones waiting to be buried. Thus, tired might not be the exact word to describe the malaise felt here in our once-great country. Malaise, mistrust, cynicism might be better words to use.

Our problems could be cured quickly if we saw the major media (press, radio, TV), finally begin to cover the news of the day realistically and honestly, instead of parroting the propaganda of the Evil Empire! That would be a good start on the way to a cure for what ails us. As it stands, we stand alone.

How many media outlets will cover the "protests" at the Inauguration of George the Third? How many will honestly print or describe the pros and cons of Social Security privatization? How many will show photos of what is happening in Iraq, and in Palestine, for that matter? How many will interview and photograph the men and women in Walter Reed Hospital or those in overseas hospitals? How many will follow-up on the Tortures at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo and the numerous other places the CIA operates prisons this very day? Perhaps if these things began to happen in a "fair and balanced" way, then our spirits just might pick up.

What you do is wondrous and exhilarating and you are to be commended. You are one of a limited few opinion-makers whose writings are worth reading. I, for one thank you. However, the publishers and editors, the daily news writers and photographers seem to have lost their balls and guts and teeth early on in this new millennium. I am hopeful they will soon discover these necessary parts and become human again! If not, well I guess they can expect to sell fewer and fewer papers, and lose more and more viewers and listeners. It's only natural!

Thanks for all YOU do!

Madeline Ohio

Speaking on condition of anonymity he continued, “In the center of the Julan Quarter they are removing entire homes which have been bombed, meanwhile most of the homes that were bombed are left as they were. Why are they doing this?”

According to him, this was also done in the Nazal, Mualmeen, Jubail and Shuhada’a districts, and the military began to do this after Eid, which was after November 20th.

He told me he has watched the military use bulldozers to push the soil into piles and load it onto trucks to carry away. This was done in the Julan and Jimouriya quarters of the city, which is of course where the heaviest fighting occurred during the siege, as this was where resistance was the fiercest.

“At least two kilometers of soil were removed,” he explained, “Exactly as they did at Baghdad Airport after the heavy battles there during the invasion and the Americans used their special weapons.”

He explained that in certain areas where the military used “special munitions” 200 square meters of soil was being removed from each blast site.

In addition, many of his friends have told him that the military brought in water tanker trucks to power blast the streets, although he hadn’t seen this himself.

“They went around to every house and have shot the water tanks,” he continued, “As if they are trying to hide the evidence of chemical weapons in the water, but they only did this in some areas, such as Julan and in the souk (market) there as well.”

He first saw this having been done after December 20th.

Again, this is reflective of stories I’ve been told by several refugees from Fallujah.

Just last December, a 35 year-old merchant from Fallujah, Abu Hammad, told me what he’d experienced when he was still in the city during the siege.

“The American warplanes came continuously through the night and bombed everywhere in Fallujah! It did not stop even for a moment! If the American forces did not find a target to bomb, they used sound bombs just to terrorize the people and children. The city stayed in fear; I cannot give a picture of how panicked everyone was.”

“In the mornings I found Fallujah empty, as if nobody lives in it,” he’d said, “Even poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah-they used everything-tanks, artillery, infantry, poison gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground. Nothing is left.”

In Amiriyat al-Fallujah, a small city just outside Fallujah where many doctors from Fallujah have been practicing since they were unable to do so at Fallujah General Hospital, similar stories are being told.

Last month one refugee who had just arrived at the hospital in the small city explained that he’d watched the military bring in water tanker trucks to power blast some of the streets in Fallujah.

“Why are they doing this,” explained Ahmed (name changed for his protection), “To beautify Fallujah? No! They are covering their tracks from the horrible weapons they used in my city.”

Also last November, another Fallujah refugee from the Julan area, Abu Sabah told me, “They (US military) used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud. Then small pieces feel from the air with long tails of smoke behind them.”

He explained that pieces of these bombs exploded into large fires that burnt peoples skin even when water was dumped on their bodies, which is the effect of phosphorous weapons, as well as napalm. “People suffered so much from these, both civilians and fighters alike,” he said.

My friend Suthir (name changed to protect identity) was a member of one of the Iraqi Red Crescent relief convoys that was allowed into Fallujah at the end of November.

“I’m sure the Americans committed bad things there, but who can discover and say this,” she said when speaking of what she saw of the devastated city, “They didn’t allow us to go to the Julan area or any of the others where there was heavy fighting, and I’m sure that is where the horrible things took place.”

“The Americans didn’t let us in the places where everyone said there was napalm used,” she added, “Julan and those places where the heaviest fighting was, nobody is allowed to go there.”

On 30 November the US military prevented an aid convoy from reaching Fallujah. This aid convoy was sent by the Iraqi Ministry of Health, but was told by soldiers at a checkpoint to return in “8 or 9 days,” reported AP.

Dr. Ibrahim al-Kubaisi who was with the relief team told reporters at that time, “There is a terrible crime going in Fallujah and they do not want anybody to know.”

With the military maintaining strict control over who enters Fallujah, the truth of what weapons were used remains difficult to find.

Meanwhile, people who lived in different districts of Fallujah continue to tell the same stories.

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/

I just posted a comment to this site: http://www.humorgazette.com/blog/?postid=62#comment47 Carolyn Re: Bush inauguration Inauguration Day 2005 will go down in history as one of America's darkest days. Half the country mourned, the other half ate cake, but all too soon the party will be over and we will all unite and rid our land of the tyrants.

“They are fools and jackals. And you who blindly support them because of party politics or whatever are also fools and jackals. So what happened while we slept? America – known at one time as the Land of Kings because every man was a king over himself and his property – was overtaken and conquered.” "While We Slept" Came From this site: http://www.patriotist.com/elarch/el20030310.htm Posted 1 minute, 52 seconds ago by Carolyn Ward • • www • Reply