The sound of gunfire... off in the distance...

I'm getting used to it now...

(apologies to the Talking Heads)

This is the big headline story of the day (from CNN):

Police were searching the Rayburn building in the Capitol complex Friday after reports of gunfire in a garage in the building.

"At 10:30 this morning, we received a report of shots fired inside the Rayburn garage," Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, a public information officer for the Capitol Police, said.

"At this time, we continue to investigate. We have tactical teams inside the building."

Armed officers were searching "the old-fashioned way," Schneider said, going door-to-door checking the 50 acres of office space in the 169 suites in the building.

Now I haven't seen anyone else make this connection, and it is of course speculative. But does it strike anyone else as odd that just this past weekend the Justice Department and the FBI raided the very same building -- Democratic Representative William J. Jefferson's office, to be precise? And that the raid pissed off both Republicans and Democrats, some of whom viewed the raid as an unconstitutional act of intimidation by the executive branch?

This smells rancid. If, as it appears to be likely, this turns out to be a false alarm, I can only wonder what the hordes of police searching the building are really after. Or what they're puttingin there.

Anyone else have ideas about what's going on here?

And still the blood flows...

On the day the Haditha massacre is revealed for what it really was -- an Iraqi My Lai -- this story emerges:

(CNN) -- A human rights group said Friday that about 34 civilians were killed in a U.S. air attack Monday on the village of Azizi in southern Afghanistan, more than double the number previously cited by President Hamid Karzai.

"According to a witness who was wounded and is now in the Mirwais hospital in Kandahar, there were two separate groups of civilians killed in the village," said Engineer Abdul Qader Noorzai, director of the Kandahar office of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said.

He said one group of about 25 people was the extended family of a man named Atta Mohammad.

"They were living in a walled mud compound that was destroyed. The family included many women and children."

He said the second group, which included the witness, was composed of day laborers who had been constructing a second floor to the village madrassah when the attack occurred.

"There were nine people killed in this second group," he said.

The witness said "many more Taliban fighters were also killed, but that the 34 village people killed were civilians and were not involved in the fighting."

And so it goes, as it always does in war. I paraphrased Nietzsche in a previous post, but I think his quote deserves to be appended in full:

"Whoever battles monsters should take care not to become a monster too, for if you stare long enough into the Abyss, the Abyss stares also into you."

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Imprisoning Journalists

From the article:

The administration's assault on a free and vital press took a huge leap forward this weekend, when Attorney General Alberto Gonazles announced on national television that the Bush administration has the power to imprison journalists who publish stories revealing conduct by the President which the administration wants to conceal (such as the warrantless NSA eavesdropping program, which he specifically cited). Gonazles went further and made clear that the administration is actively considering prosecution against journalists who publish such stories. The video is here.

It really is hard to imagine any measures which pose a greater and more direct danger to our freedoms than the issuance of threats like this by the administration against the press. If the President has the power to keep secret any information he wants simply by classifying it -- including information regarding illegal or otherwise improper actions he has taken -- then the President, by definition, has complete control over the flow of information which Americans receive about their Government.

An aggressive and adversarial press in our country was intended by the founders to be one of the most critical checks on abuses of presidential power, every bit as much as Congress and the courts were created as checks. Jefferson said: "If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter." The only reason the Founders bothered to guarantee a free press in First Amendment is because the press was intended to serve as a check against Government power.

Can I get an amen?

Lawmaker: Marines deliberately killed Iraqis - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com

May God have mercy on us.

But no one should hold the Marines responsible. They wouldn't be in Babylon, and subject to the kinds of stresses and trauma of war, unless a certain cabal of oilmen sent them there.

The chess players are responsible, not the unfortunate pawns. When good human beings stare long enough into the abyss, eventually they see the abyss staring back at them.

Operation Regime Change (or here we go again...)

Same players, same game plan, clearly laid out right in front of our faces. I only wonder what they will use as a trigger to turn the (currently) skeptical population into a flag-waving, bloodthirsty, "nuke Iran" mob. Attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq by Iranian "terrorists?" A bomb in an Israeli market with "undeniable" links to Ahmadinejad? Photographic "proof" of missile silos outside of Tehran? Or something even worse?

An excerpt:

...The history of the conflict and the private strategic thinking of both sides reveal that the dispute is really about the administration's drive for greater dominance in the Middle East and Iran's demand for recognition as a regional power.

It is now known that the Iranian leadership, which was convinced that Bush was planning to move against Iran after toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq, proposed in April 2003 to negotiate with the United States on the very issues which the administration had claimed were the basis for its hostile posture toward Tehran: its nuclear program, its support for Hezbullah and other anti-Israeli armed groups and its hostility to Israel's existence.

Tehran offered concrete, substantive concessions on those issues. But on the advice of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Bush refused to respond to the negotiating proposal. Nuclear weapons were not, therefore, the primary U.S. concern about Iran. In the hierarchy of the administration's interests, the denial of legitimacy to the Islamic Republic trumped a deal that could provide assurances against an Iranian nuclear weapon.

For insight into the real aims of the administration in pushing the issue of Iranian access to nuclear technology to a crisis point, one can turn to Tom Donnelly of the neoconservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. Donnelly was the deputy executive director of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century from 1999 to 2002, and was the main author of ”Rebuilding America's Defenses.”

That paper was written for Cheney and Rumsfeld during the transition following Bush's election and had the participation of four prominent figures who took positions in the administration: Stephen A. Cambone, Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton.

Donnelly's analysis of the issue of Iran and nuclear weapons, published last October in the book ”Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran”, makes it clear that the real objection to Iran becoming a nuclear power is that it would impede the larger U.S. ambitions in the Middle East—what Donnelly calls the administration's ”project of transforming the Middle East”.

Contrary to the official U.S. line depicting Iran as a radical state threatening to plunge the region into war, Donnelly refers to Iran as ”more the status quo power” in the region in relation to the United States. Iran, he explains, “stands directly athwart this project of regional transformation.” Up to now, he observes, the Iranian regime has been “incapable of stemming the seeping U.S. presence in the Persian Gulf and in the broader region.” And the invasion of Iraq “completed the near-encirclement of Iran by U.S. military forces.”

Donnelly writes that a “nuclear Iran” is a problem not so much because Tehran would employ those weapons or pass them on to terrorist groups, but mainly because of ”the constraining effect it threatens to impose upon U.S. strategy for the greater Middle East.”

The “greatest danger,” according to Donnelly, is that the “realists” would “pursue a 'balance of power' approach with a nuclear Iran, undercutting the Bush 'liberation strategy.’” Although Donnelly doesn't say so explicitly, it would undercut that strategy primarily by ruling out a U.S. attack on Iran as part of a strategy of ”regime change.”

Instead, in Donnelly scenario, a nuclear capability would incline those outside the neoconservative priesthood to negotiate a “détente” with Iran, which would bring the plan for the extension of U.S. political-military dominance in the Middle East to a halt.

What is really at stake in the confrontation with Iran from the Bush administration's perspective, according to this authority on neoconservative strategy, is the opportunity to reorder the power hierarchy in the Middle East even further in favor of the United States—by pursuing the overthrow of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Grave Robbers

Could anyone craft a more apt symbolism for the Bush dynasty than elite, wealthy playboy descendants of Indian killers despoiling the grave of a Native American hero and stealing his bones for their clubhouse rituals? I hope Geronimo's restless spirit haunts their bloodless little hearts until the end of their days.

Maybe future fraternities will dig up Prescott Bush's bones and craft a way-cool bong out of his femur.

From CNN:

Yale University historian has uncovered a 1918 letter that seems to lend validity to the lore that Yale University's ultra-secret Skull and Bones society swiped the skull of American Indian leader Geronimo.

The letter, written by one member of Skull and Bones to another, purports that the skull and some of the Indian leader's remains were spirited from his burial plot in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to a stone tomb in New Haven that serves as the club's headquarters.

According to Skull and Bones legend, members -- including President Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush -- dug up Geronimo's grave when a group of Army volunteers from Yale were stationed at the fort during World War I. Geronimo died in 1909.

"The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club... is now safe inside the (Tomb) together with his well worn femurs, bit & saddle horn," according to the letter, written by Winter Mead.

But Mead was not at Fort Sill and researcher Marc Wortman, who found the letter last fall, said Monday he is skeptical the bones are actually those of the famed Indian fighter.

"What I think we could probably say is they removed some skull and bones and other materials from a grave at Fort Sill," he said. "Historically, it may be impossible to prove it's Geronimo's. They believe it's from Geronimo."

Harlyn Geronimo, the great grandson of Geronimo, said he has been looking for a lawyer to sue the U.S. Army, which runs Fort Sill. Discovery of the letter could help, he said.

"It's keeping it alive and now it makes me really want to confront the issue with my attorneys," said Geronimo, of Mescalero, New Mexico. "If we get the remains back... and find that, for instance, that bones are missing, you know who to blame."

A portion of the letter and an accompanying story were posted Monday on the Yale Alumni Magazine's Web site.

Only 15 Yale seniors are asked to join Skull and Bones each year. Alumni include Sen. John Kerry, President William Howard Taft, numerous members of Congress, media leaders, Wall Street financiers, the scions of wealthy families and agents in the CIA.

Members swear an oath of secrecy about the group and its strange rituals, which are said to include an initiation rite in which would-be members kiss a skull.

Ayahuasca and Human Destiny

An excerpt from the article below.

Just as ayahuasca has been for me personally something of a Holy Grail, as it has been for many others, I have the intuition that it may have a similar role with respect to our entire species. Anyone who is personally experienced with ayahuasca is aware that it has much to teach us; there is incredible wisdom and intelligence there. And to my mind, one of the most profound and humbling lessons that ayahuasca teaches – one that we thick-headed humans have the hardest time grasping – is the realization that “you monkeys only think you’re running things.”

Though I state it humorously, here and in other talks and writings, it is nonetheless a profound insight on which may depend the very survival of our species, and our planet. Humans are good at nothing if not hubris, arrogance, and self-delusion. We assume that we dominate nature; that we are somehow separate from, and superior to, nature, even as we set about busily undermining and wrecking the very homeostatic global mechanisms that have kept our earth stable and hospitable to life for the last four and a half billion years. We devastate the rainforests of the world; we are responsible for the greatest loss of habitat and the greatest decimation of species since the asteroid impacts of the Permian-Triassic boundary, 250 million years ago; we rip the guts out of the earth and burn them, spewing toxic chemicals into the atmosphere; at the same time we slash and burn the woody forests that may be the only hope for sequestration of the carbon dioxide that is rapidly building to dangerous and possibly uncontrollable levels. For the first time in the history of our species, and indeed of our planet, we are forced to confront the possibility that thoughtless and unsustainable human activity may be posing a real threat to our species’ survival, and possibly the survival of all life on the planet.

And suddenly, and literally, “out of the Amazon,” one of the most impacted parts of our wounded planet, ayahuasca emerges as an emissary of trans-species sentience, to bring this lesson: You monkeys only think you’re running things. In a wider sense, the import of this lesson is that we need to wake up to what is happening to us and to the planet. We need to get with the program, people. We have become spiritually bereft and have been seduced by the delusion that we are somehow important in the scheme of things. We are not.

Our spiritual institutions have devolved into hollow shells, perverted to the agendas of rapacious governments and fanatic fundamentalisms, no longer capable of providing balm to the wounded spirit of our species; and as the world goes up in flames we benumb ourselves with consumerism and mindless entertainment, the decadent distractions of gadgets and gewgaws, the frantic but ultimately meaningless pursuits of a civilization that has lost its compass. And at this cusp in human history, there emerges a gentle emissary, the conduit to a body of profoundly ancient genetic and evolutionary wisdom that has long abided in the cosmologies of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon who have guarded and protected this knowledge for millennia, who learned long ago that the human role is not to be the master of nature, but its stewards, Our destiny, if we are to survive, is to nurture nature and to learn from it how to nurture ourselves and our fellow beings. This is the lesson that we can learn from ayahuasca, if only we pay attention.

Robert Fisk: Americans provoking Iraqi civil war?

Thanks to Jeff Wells for finding this:

The Americans, my interlocutor suspected, are trying to provoke an Iraqi civil war so that Sunni Muslim insurgents spend their energies killing their Shia co-religionists rather than soldiers of the Western occupation forces. "I swear to you that we have very good information," my source says, finger stabbing the air in front of him. "One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained by the Americans as a policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 per cent of his time learning to drive and 30 per cent in weapons training. They said to him: 'Come back in a week.' When he went back, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to drive into a crowded area near a mosque and phone them. He waited in the car but couldn't get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the car to where he received a better signal. Then his car blew up."

Impossible, I think to myself. But then I remember how many times Iraqis in Baghdad have told me similar stories. These reports are believed even if they seem unbelievable. And I know where much of the Syrian information is gleaned: from the tens of thousands of Shia Muslim pilgrims who come to pray at the Sayda Zeinab mosque outside Damascus. These men and women come from the slums of Baghdad, Hillah and Iskandariyah as well as the cities of Najaf and Basra. Sunnis from Fallujah and Ramadi also visit Damascus to see friends and relatives and talk freely of American tactics in Iraq.

"There was another man, trained by the Americans for the police. He too was given a mobile and told to drive to an area where there was a crowd - maybe a protest - and to call them and tell them what was happening. Again, his new mobile was not working. So he went to a landline phone and called the Americans and told them: 'Here I am, in the place you sent me and I can tell you what's happening here.' And at that moment there was a big explosion in his car."

Just who these "Americans" might be, my source did not say. In the anarchic and panic-stricken world of Iraq, there are many US groups - including countless outfits supposedly working for the American military and the new Western-backed Iraqi Interior Ministry - who operate outside any laws or rules. No one can account for the murder of 191 university teachers and professors since the 2003 invasion - nor the fact that more than 50 former Iraqi fighter-bomber pilots who attacked Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war have been assassinated in their home towns in Iraq in the past three years.