Under the Radar: Ten Warning Signs for Today

by Heather Wokusch

1. Protest war, lose your property?

On July 17th, The White House quietly announced an Executive Order entitled "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq." Among other developments, it gives Bush the power to "block" the property of people in the US found to "pose a significant risk of committing" an act of violence which might undermine "political reform in Iraq."......More

2. Market meltdown

Economic fallout from the subprime mortgage market collapse has extended further, with prominent investment company Bear Stearns admitting last week that two of its hedge funds, once estimated at $1.6 billion, are now of "very little value.".....More

3. Escalating US military operations in Pakistan

Following 911, the Bush administration propped up Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf as a key ally in the "war on terror," spending billions of dollars on Pakistan's military while ignoring Musharraf's support for the Taliban. Those days might be over. Just last week, the White House announced US military forces could be deployed to strike "actionable targets" in the country - with or without Musharraf's permission.......More

LINK TO OTHER SEVEN

(I actually got a similar feeling from returning after seeing Morocco but from a much different scale then Iraq.....but still similar)

After Reporting in Iraq, America Feels Like a Bizarre Disneyland

By Dahr Jamail, Tomdispatch.com

"In violence we forget who we are" -- Mary McCarthy, novelist and critic

1. Statistically Speaking

Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.

But here's the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you're in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I'm in a bubble here that's only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the heights of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country -- and once defined my own life as well.

Here, for most Americans, you can choose to ignore what our government is doing in Iraq. It's as simple as choosing to go to a website other than this one.

The longer the occupation of Iraq continues, the more conscious I grow of the disparity, the utter disjuncture, between our two worlds......LINK

American Rant: We're Vampires Living on the Blood of Others
We're the Fat, Mindless Blobs That Ate the Planet. At present, Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has plummeted, due to the fact that he didn't deliver the goods. Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker people) as long as "the mission" doesn't drag on too long or reveal too much about ourselves. How did we come to be a nation of vampires who live by sustaining ourselves on the blood of others? Is our mode of collective being so toxic in the United States that a writer must bandy about metaphors culled from Gothic horror fiction to describe it? I'm afraid it's come to that: We are a people who psyches have grown monstrously distorted from an addiction to imperial power and personal entitlement. The corporate culture of exploitation has begot a hellscape of narcissists. It is an authoritarian culture riddled in kitsch and cruelty, in nationalistic hagiography and displaced rage -- all the distortions of national character inherent to privileged grotesques and ordinary monsters......LINK

The Militarization and Annexation of North America
by Stephen Lendman
The Militarization and Annexation of North America - by Stephen LendmanBesides the Bush administration's imperial aims and permanent war on the world, add the one at home below the radar. Its weapons include the WTO, NAFTA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, CIA, NSA, NORTHCOM, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA, and all other repressive instruments of state power and control. They target the people of three nations slowly becoming one headquartered in Washington. That's the apparent aim of those in power here wanting one continent, "indivisible" minus old-fashioned ideas like "liberty and justice for all" we used to believe in when, as kids, we recited our "Pledge of Allegiance." They now have a whole new meaning. They're just words drummed into young minds hoping they'll still believe them when they're old enough to know better......LINK to a great article

A Wake-up Call
By Paul Craig Roberts
07/19/07 "ICH" -- -- This is a wake-up call that we are about to have another 9/11-WMD experience.
The wake-up call is unlikely to be effective, because the American attitude toward government changed fundamentally seventy-odd years ago. Prior to the 1930s, Americans were suspicious of government, but with the arrival of the Great Depression, Tojo, and Hitler, President Franklin D. Roosevelt convinced Americans that government existed to protect them from rapacious private interests and foreign threats. Today, Americans are more likely to give the benefit of the doubt to government than they are to family members, friends, and those who would warn them about the government’s protection.
Intelligent observers are puzzled that President Bush is persisting in a futile and unpopular war at the obvious expense of his party’s electoral chances in 2008.
In the July 18 Los Angeles Times (“Bush the Albatross”), Ronald Brownstein reminds us that Bush’s behavior is disastrous for his political party. Unpopular presidents “have consistently undercut their party in the next election.” Brownstein reports that “88% of voters who disapproved of the retiring president’s job performance voted against his party’s nominee in past elections. . . . On average, 80% of voters who disapproved of a president’s performance have voted against his party’s candidates even in House races since 1986.”.......LINK

One of many sad stories from Iraq, yet we are still there and Bush is not faceing impeechment even though he lied to the American people....this stuff drives me crazy and sad like the author of this article..............
Maria Made Me Cry
by Joel S. Hirschhorn

I unexpectedly found myself crying over the Iraq war as I read the obituary of Capt. Maria Ines Ortiz, a highly praised Army nurse. What I read broke my heart. The story of this remarkable woman and her tragic, pointless killing in Iraq had so much more power than the endless statistics that have numbed our emotions and fed our anger about Bush’s Iraq War.
Maria was just 40 years old. She volunteered for duty in Iraq, eager to do her part. She wanted to take care of soldiers. She was the first Army nurse killed in combat since the Vietnam War.
Everyone who ever worked with Maria adored and respected her. She was one of those truly exceptional people who transcended her professional status with loving care for those she nursed and worked with.
Maria was killed on July 10 in the Green Zone in Baghdad. She was caught outside by a barrage of mortar shells and killed by shrapnel.....LINK to read the rest

A long needed update.

First off I apologize if any one has been waiting for an update from me. I have been sticking to emails and postcards and just did not ever do the blog thing. I will try to summarize the trip the best I can, but will surely come short of a description worthy of the trip's various stories.

I started this trip in Madrid, Spain but only spend about 6 hours in the bus station, as I missed my bus by about five minutes. The bus ride to Almeria was not to bad and looking back at it in comparison to bus rides in Morocco, it was quite the luxury. The first night in Almeria I stayed in a hotel way more expensive then I was willing to pay but because of how tired I was and on the verge of not being able to speak Spanish or English I payed and got a great night of sleep.

The next day I took the bus to my new temporary home for the next two weeks, a campsite right on the sea. The campsite was made up of Ex-pats burning and tanning the end of their life away, gypsies staying as long as the campsite would allow and then once they had stayed long enough would move on to the next campground, the occasional traveler, lots of French coming to work for the summer, locals coming for the day or to camp a night, and various other interesting individuals. So I spend my days trying to develop contacts for my trip in the fall, going to the library to find books on greenhouses, touring a greenhouse, getting plenty of sun, siestas, and internet.

After the two weeks I jumped on a boat and 8 hours later was in Melilla, the Spanish enclave in Morocco. Then a bus ride later was in Morocco. I have spent two and a half weeks here and it has been great but I am ready to move on. I have walked alone in cedar forest, seen monkeys in the Atlas mountains, ate food in a Berber adobe house, ate dinner with the town clown who lived on top a roof covered in rubbish, multiple bus rides where the heat seems to only go one direction....up, walked through waist deep water through gorges because that was the only way to get through, walked in arid mesas where the only form of life is beetles and plants that can stick you, medinas that seem to be lost in time, tanneries that are 2000 years old, and cites where the veils come off and the beer flows.

To Portugal on July 4th for a week. Then to Salamanca, Spain to visit my friends.

Peace and Love Ty