Mother Davis breathes through a wet cloth as she writes,

This week, the deadly effects of a petroleum-based economy are highlighted by two separate pieces of news.

First, we learn from the International Fund for Animal Welfare that there are hundreds of sea birds fouled with oil washing up on the shores of Newfoundland. One might assume that the oil coating these birds’ feathers and leaving them vulnerable to the harsh weather of these near-arctic seas came from the Terra Nova oil spill, in which one thousand barrels of oil was dumped into the Atlantic Ocean from an offshore oil production vessel owned by Petro-Canada.

However, it now appears that the oil that is threatening the lives of Newfoundland’s sea birds is in fact coming from another source in addition to the Terra Nova spill. It seems that some ocean vessel other than the Terra Nova intentionally dumped its bilge oil near the Terra Nova spill in the hopes that the dumping would not be detected.

Just a few ounces of oil floating on the ocean’s surface can be enough to kill a seabird. Between 200,000 and 300,000 seabirds are killed by exposure to oil slicks off the coast of Newfoundland every year. The ships responsible for the spills are rarely caught.

However, you don’t have to be a wild bird at sea to be threatened by the toxic effects of petroleum. Research sponsored by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis reveals that the burning of fossil fuels by industry, in power plants, and by cars on our highways is a significant factor in the development of heart disease.

You can stop eating bacon cheeseburgers, but you can’t stop breathing the air, and it turns out that the air all around us contains small particles produced by the use of fossil fuels. These tiny particles turn deadly when they enter the human body and cause inflammation of membranes around the heart. The particles are so small that they are easily able to travel between one and two thousand miles, so that even rural locations in non-industrial areas are put at risk.

From San Diego to St. Johns, America is being soaked by the dangers of crude oil. There are benefits, to be sure, to a petroleum economy. Burning fossil fuels is extremely convenient, to be sure. It’s a profitable business as well. However, for the sake of a little convenience and the profits of large energy corporations, humans and animals alike are paying a terrible price.

Alternatives to fossil fuels exist, and more can be created. The initial costs of change are higher than the expense of the status quo, but I think that it’s worth a little expense to have a more stable energy supply, air that is safe to breathe, and an ocean that is not fouled with the greasy residue of our laziness?

Turning down the heat,
Mother Davis

Today, we learn that the International Committee of the Red Cross has issued an official report based on its observations of conditions at the American military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in June of 2004. The report calls the treatment of prisoners it observed there as “tantamount to torture”, and describes repeated instances of physical and psychological abuse of the prisoners at the facility the military affectionately calls “Camp X-Ray”.

The Red Cross report concludes that “The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture.”

The Bush Administration has responded to the report by suggesting that the Red Cross is just a bunch of liars. Pentagon officials insist that the prison at Guantanamo Bay is a “humane and professional detention operation”. Neither the White House nor the Pentagon was able to explain why, if the conditions at the Guantanamo Bay prison are so humane, it was deemed necessary by the Bush Administration to declare the prisoners there exempt from the protections of the Geneva Conventions and refuse to allow the prisoners to communicate with any outsiders, even lawyers. Neither has anyone from the Republican leadership in the American federal government been able to reasonably explain why it was deemed suddenly necessary by the Bush Administration to make American soldiers immune from prosecution by international war crimes tribunals.

The Red Cross report is based upon conditions that it observed during a special tour of the prison planned and supervised by the American military. If the Red Cross was able to observe torture during its supervised tour of Guantanamo Bay, then the treatment of the prisoners there when no outsiders are present to witness the military’s interrogations must be truly barbaric.

Of course, as we are reminded by the Nationalist Broadcasting Corporation and its affiliates, protests of torture approved by the Bush Administration don’t really matter anymore, now that George W. Bush has a mandate of 51 percent of American voters. With such a huge 1 percent margin of majority status, Bush’s mandate allows him to do whatever he wants. Yes, that includes torturing people, even though it is against the law for the President to direct any government agents to conduct acts of torture. What is the law, after all, when the President has a 51 percent mandate?

We here at Irregular Times are relieved to be reminded of what really matters. After all, what’s a little torture, when there are real problems facing America…

Knock Knock.

Who’s There?

Little Old Lady.

Little Old Lady Who?

I Didn’t Know You Could Yodel!

Liberal idealists looking to accomplish real policy change in this country should definitely stay away from the abusive Republican Party. But we should be leery of simply running into the arms of the Democratic Party and embracing their agenda. On Election Day, they are most often THE alternative to the Republicans, and so must be dealt with. But when Election Day is over and the question is not whom to oppose but what to support, the Democratic Party is only AN alternative, and an alternative to be approached warily.

The problem is that the Democratic Party is an organization more than it is a movement, and in an organization each position develops its own interests. For instance, members of Congress…

Members of Congress have an interest in being re-elected. However, in most House districts and many Senate seats Democratic candidates are assured of a win if they manage to make it through the primaries, because opposition to Republican politicians is so strong in the district or state they represent. So as long as they keep the Democratic Party structure in their state or district happy enough to avoid primary challenges, they don’t need to listen to you. Instead, Members of Congress have an interest in mollifying their local district party organization.

Members of Congress enjoy the privileges of office. People call them “Senator” or “Congressman.” They have staff to take care of them. People listen to them when they speak. They get to experience the rectitude of pulling strings to get little Ricky a kidney transplant. Being a member of Congress can be fun. The last thing they’d want to do is go out on a limb and annoy enough people to get voted out of office. So being controversial, being opinionated, HECK, being NOTICED is not always a good idea. Members of Congress do NOT have an interest in doing interesting policy work or passing nifty bills. Members of Congress have an interest in going with the flow, in doing what it takes to win.

The next time you hear a member of Congress urging caution, patience, prudence and cooperation, ask yourself: from what position are they speaking? What are they getting out of it? And what can I do about it?

What can you do about it? I’ll jump in on that, but let me first ask you.

What do you think you can do about it?

From Agence France Presse:

A South Korean woman paralyzed for 20 years is walking again after scientists say they repaired her damaged spine using stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood.

Hwang Mi-Soon, 37, had been bedridden since damaging her back in an accident two decades ago.

Last week her eyes glistened with tears as she walked again with the help of a walking frame at a press conference where South Korea (news - web sites) researchers went public for the first time with the results of their stem-cell therapy.

They said it was the world’s first published case in which a patient with spinal cord injuries had been successfully treated with stem cells from umbilical cord blood.

The science seems to have shown it: it’s not just that stem cell research saves lives; it’s that stem cell research changes lives, for the better.

Update: Two years later, it turns out that it’s quite possible the stem cell injection had nothing to do with it. During the surgery to inject the stem cells, pressure was taken off the spinal cord in a compressed area, and that is known to improve function in spinal-cord-injured people. Occam’s razor!

Making my weekly tour of the web for members of the growing progressive resistance, I was pleased to find a link to an organization called Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change. The members of this organization, I was led to believe, were diplomats who had resigned their posts in protest against the Bush Administration, along with military commanders who also had their dander up.

I was pleased as punch - until I actually visited the web site. Near the top of the front page is an announcement that the group has formally disbanded as of November 14, 2004.

Now, taking a look at the history of the web site, I can see that Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change actually made its first public statement on July 28, 2004. To be generous, I’ll allow that the group spent some time getting organized behind the scenes before making a public appearance - say, since April of 2004. Even with this generosity, the Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change was only really working for change for eight months.

It’s not at all a mystery why Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change disbanded just a dozen days after Election Day. It seems that Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change was just part of that larger association known as Cheap Political Front Groups for Getting Their Candidate Elected.

I can understand that political campaigns come and go, but there’s something especially cheap about campaigns assemblling groups of citizens - who apparently have sincere political passion, and then scattering these organizations when they are no longer useful. We can only conclude from this organization’s history that the Kerry-Edwards campaign, or the Democratic National Committee, or whomever put this group together, does not want to see a bunch of politically active diplomats and military commanders continue to meet and work together for genuine change - such independent cooperation might provide competition to the ambitions of more established politicians, after all.

The diplomats and military commanders who allowed themselves to be herded together into this group share a great deal of the responsibility for their abdication, of course. They chose to put their reputations on the line. They chose to become the tools of a campaign machine. Now, they have chosen to be herded back off the political stage without so much as a whimper of protest.

What are we supposed to believe - that the change these diplomats and military commanders sought was accomplished? It most certainly was not. George W. Bush won re-election, and so American can expect more of the same, if not worse.

The plain fact is that America needs change now even more than it needed change before Election Day 2004. However, the leadership of Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change seem to believe that there’s just nothing they can do to make change happen, now that the election is over.

They could not be more wrong. Only the most uncreative, institutionalized minds could really think that the only way to create positive change is to support a political candidate for public office. Diplomats and military commaders are well known for just this kind of uncreative institutionalism, so perhaps I am naive to be shocked at their easy surrender.

On second thought, I don’t think that I’m the one who is being naive. The diplomats and military commanders who believed that they could make real change in just eight months are the ones who were naive.

For the rest of us, then, who have not had our minds solidified by decades of playing strict insitutional roles, let us remember this: Change cannot take place if we work for it only according to the electoral schedule.

Right now, the Republican elites in Washington D.C. are making all kinds of very serious changes to the American way of life. Their power has never been greater, and things will get worse before they get any better.

If we, the progressive citizens of America, make the mistake of 2001 and 2002, sitting around just waiting for the next presidential campaign to begin, we will be playing into the Repubicans’ hands. Luckily for us, there are a large number of progressive organizations that have not dissolved, many of which have long histories of standing up for freedom and fairness against the Republican vision of American nationalism.

Each one of us faced the same choice that was faced by Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change. We must now decide what all of our hard work in the last year was really for. Were we really working for change, or were we just working for John Kerry?

If we have truly been working for positive, progressive change, then we cannot give up now. America, and the rest of the world, has never been in greater need.

If there was ever any doubt of the Bush Administration’s plans to continue its policy of war built upon war built upon war, they were dispelled when the Pentagon was forced to release a report to the Bush Administration that had been completed this September, but kept secret from the American public until after Election Day. That report contains a memo in which Paul Wolfowitz, a close advisor of President Bush, declares, “Our military expeditions to Afghanistan and Iraq are unlikely to be the last such excursion in the global war on terrorism.”

Paul Wolfowitz made this statement in May of 2004, a full year after George W. Bush’s own declaration of “mission accomplished”, and after a year of disastrous continued fighting across Iraq. Now, six months later, with the American death toll approaching 1200 and the Iraqi death toll confirmed at above 100,000, President Bush refuses to distance himself from Wolfowitz’s promise of more war.

What’s most disturbing about Wolfowitz’s statement is that it promises more wars without even offering any reason to believe that more wars will be at all justified or wise. Wolfowitz promises more war without any need for a justifying context. Thus, the choice of war is anything but a last resort for the Bush Administration. Rather, White House insiders like Paul Wolfowitz continue to push for war for the sake of war itself. With the removal of all dissenting voices from President Bush’s candidates, there is no longer any one in the White House to stand in Bush’s way when he decides that the time for the next war has come.

Mother Davis calls a therapist specializing in the pampered as she reflects,

In the days after the Election of 2004, I worried quite a bit about the danger of the Republicans’ increased dominance in the United States Congress. Now, it appears that the Republicans in Congress are mostly a threat to themselves.

Oh, I do not mean to say that the Republican Congress will not threaten the rest of America as well. They will. Even in the space of a few weeks, the Republican Congress has managed to pass an impressive number of extremely corrupt and dangerous bills and amendments. However, at the same time, the Republicans in Congress seem surprisingly unable to deal with their newly strengthened status as America’s established political elites. At every move, they reveal their lack of grace, and provide ample fodder for a progressive counter-revolution in 2006.

When it comes to ethics, the congressional Republicans have proven themselves to be extraordinarily clumsy. Many of them surged into office in 1994 with the promise that they would restore honor and dignity to the government. Now, they are exhibiting gross dishonor and indignity at every opportunity, breaking almost all of the promises of superior ethics that they made in 1994.

Republican members of the House of Representatives like Jeff Flake, a right-wing extremist who has fashioned his career in the the mold of Barry Goldwater, once promised that they would limit themselves to only a few short terms in office. Now that the Republicans control Congress, they are quietly retracting their promises, and vowing to run for re-election once more in 2006. “I said that I would serve just three terms,” says Congressman Flake. “I was wrong… I will seek re-election in 2006.”

Tom DeLay, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives appears to be the target of a serious criminal probe. Yet, instead of replacing him, House Republicans merely changed their own ethics rules so that DeLay could escape punishment.

When it came to passing the budget for the federal government, the Republicans waited until after Election Day. During their campaigns, they promised fiscal responsibility. After the Election, however, they begged for permission to increase the national credit limit and inflate the national debt to record levels. Then, when it was time to pass the budget itself, the Republicans cut funding from vital education programs, yet still managed to increase the total amount of spending through luxurious items such as a brand new yacht designed just for President Bush. When Democrats pointed out such outrageous budget priorities, the Republicans defended themselves by insisting that they have voted for the budget without bothering to read it.

A year ago, I would have said that such clownishly corrupt behavior on the part of the Republican Congress foreshadows a change of political fortune for the Democrats. However, my experience since that time leads me to doubt that even the most arrogant abuses of power by Republican members of Congress will make a bit of difference in the 2006 elections.

The corruption of the Republican Congress is mirrored by a lazy apathy among progressive voters. This fall, I volunteered at a local Democratic office. I handed out hundreds of lawn signs for John Kerry’s campaign, but I found that even the most fervent of Kerry supporters simply had no clue who was running for Congress, or even what congressional district they lived in.

By and large, the American people pay attention to generic national news sources to the exclusion of local news. On an aesthetic level, I can understand this selective attention. Local news operations lack the polish of national news, and often resort to silly human interest stories in order to fill space. However, when it comes to real power, local politics matters a great deal, and ignorance of local political races leaves us all vulnerable to the manipulation of Republican incumbents’ well-funded political advertising campaigns.

This morning, I am making the gentle suggestion that those progressive voters who claim to be outraged at the results of the 2004 election shake the turkey gravy out of their brains and get busy with the first and most important step to electoral victory the next time around: Self-education.

If you really care about who controls the government, stop paying exclusive attention to who controls the White House, and widen your focus to include the politicians who represent your own little locality in the United States Congress. First, visit Congress.org and find out who your Senator and U.S. Represenatives are. Then, move on over to Progressive Punch to find out whether these politicians’ voting records fit with your progressive ideals.

Don’t kid yourself by thinking that the political season is over. It’s just begun all over again - with the campaigns for Congress in 2006 getting organized behind the scenes. We can no longer afford to wait until the week before Election Day to try to become informed. A repetition of 2004’s progressive apathy about Congressional races can only provide George W. Bush with two more years of executive power with no legislative opposition.

Making a list and checking it twice,

Mother Davis

An essential part of the new progressive resistance is the intelligent application of the power of the progressive economy. Progressives spend enough money in American that their financial support has become essential to the Republican Party. The only thing that keeps the Republican Party from collapsing is that so many progressive Americans are unaware of the ways in which their own money is being used to fund the Republicans’ radical nationalist agenda.

A case in point is JP Morgan Chase, a gigantic financial corporation as absurd as its conglomerized name. At a time when other financial giants have agreed to follow a basic program of ethics in their investments, JP Morgan Chase has refused. In fact, JP Morgan Chase has made its fortunes through the systematic ravaging of human and natural resources around the planet.

Ilyse Hogue, directior of the Global Finance Campaign at the Rainforest Action Network, states the case against plainly: “JP Morgan Chase is making a killing off of radical resource extraction from the most ecologically fragile ecosystems on Earth. JP Morgan Chase built its financial empire on oil exploitation and continues to profit from investments that are causing global warming. It defies explanation that JP Morgan Chase hasn’t embraced the most fundamental reforms like joining the United Nations Environmental Programme Finance Initiative or signing on to the Equator Principles. We must ask what is JP Morgan Chase waiting for? The Pentagon considers climate change a greater national security threat than terrorism, and this month’s Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, an unprecedented four-year study by over 300 scientists, provides clear evidence confirming that the Arctic ice sheet, Earth’s early warning system for global warming, is melting. It’s time for America’s second-largest bank to cut to the chase and stop making investments of mass destruction.”

Got a 401K? Got a bank account? If so, chances are good that you are helping to fund the efforts of JP Morgan Chase to profit from the destruction of planet Earth. Progressive principles are all well and good, but they don’t mean much when we allow our own financial actions to undermine them.

For more information on the dirty policies of JP Morgan Chase, visit DirtyMoney.org and read the descriptions of JP Morgan Chase’s investments of mass destruction.

Some time ago, we introduced Irregular News, a web page that brought daily updated progressive news from various sources to a single page for your perusal.

We’ve now reconceptualized and reorganized Irregular News into two pages, each offering something different:

The Irregular Wires offers the same service that the old Irregular News did, still updated daily.

The new Irregular News features original news stories that nobody is reporting, not even in the so-called Liberal media.

We hope you like.

Just when it looked like the Bush Administration couldn’t possibly make a bigger mess of the Middle East, the Bush Team of no compromise diplomacy is finding a way to engineer an end to the aggreement between Europe and Iran and set the groundwork for an invasion of Iran.

Just as the European Union and Iran are on the verge of a settlement to stop Iran’s efforts to enrich uranium, the Bush Administration is butting in and threatening to wreck the deal if mechanisms to facilitate a new war are not included in the deal.

The Bush Administration demands an “automatic trigger” that would wrest control of negotiations away from the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ), and into the United Nations Security Council, a body controlled by the United States and used by American presidents as a tool to manufacture the pretexts for war.

What the Bush Administration is loathe to acknowledge is that the nuclear game with Iran is already lost. Iran can easily finish uranium enrichment and build a nuclear weapon well before any American invasion. Thus, a war with Iran will necessarily be a nuclear war.

In the face of its failure to prevent such a situation, the Bush Administration continues its policy of Resolve No Matter What The Cost. In doing so, George W. Bush is starting to take America down a path that could easily make the quagmire in Iraq look like a peaceful Sunday brunch.

An irregular timeline for the war with Iran:

2005 - behind-the-scenes preparations and diplomatic preparations for the big bluster to come
2006 - the big bluster, including rapid reports of impending attacks by Iranians, Iran’s connections to Al Quaeda, and the increasing stories of epidemics of cannibalism “of their own people” throughout Iran, begins in the springtime, just in time for Congressional elections - a United Nations resolution is pushed through in September
2007 - warnings, warnings, warnings, leading to an invasion of Iran in April
2008 - come what may, the Constitutional Amendments start coming in February. Presidential election?
2009 - we’re all united, whether we like it or not

Engaged idly in speculation…

A writer named Matt sends out a passionate call for a Day of Mourning on Inauguration Day 2005:

We’re pissed. We’re incredulous. We’re sorry. We’re terrified. We’re eyeing Canada and New Zealand. We’re sick and tired of feeling helpless while our country speeds headlong in the wrong direction. The “steadfast” pursuit of an immoral preemptive war and at the cost of thousands of lives. The squandering of the budget surplus on tax cuts for the wealthy. The pandering to bigotry and fear. Much was lost when President Bush won re-election on November 2, 2004. On inauguration day, January 20, 2005, join me in a day of mourning for all we have lost. If you are scheduled to work that day and can afford to call in sick, call in sick or take a personal day. If you can get to a protest, huddle in the “free speech zone” with your fellow evildoers. Otherwise, if possible, stay home. If you go out, wear black. Spend as little money as you possibly can - ideally none. Call it a day of mourning, as I have. Or call it a one-day strike. Or consider it a boycott of the military-industrial complex. Or think of it as calling in sick of Bush. However you look at it, it’s a simple, legal, nonviolent way to express our hurt and anger, and will show that President Bush and his neo-conservative friends will not implement their dangerous agenda with our consent. And to our friends in “Old Europe,” Canada, and all over the world, I urge you to join us as well. Send a message to President Bush that if there’s a “global test,” he’s failed it.

Spread the word:

Also check out Blue Flu Day, people with the same idea.

Oh, dear. No Republican has responded to my question about the Presidential Yacht for George W. Bush.

Perhaps a rephrasing of the question will help:

How is it that the supposed party of the little guy, the party for the everyday Joe, the rugged red-state party, the by-your-bootstraps party manages to be the party that spends taxpayer funds to buy George W. Bush a Presidential Yacht?

I’m just dying to hear the explanation.

No changing the subject, please.

OK, Republicans. Homework time!

1. Members of which party snuck the following provision into the Congressional omnibus appropriations bill last week?

“Hereinafter, notwithstanding any other provision of law governing the disclosure of income tax returns or return information, upon written request of the Chairman of the House or Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service shall allow agents designated by such Chairman access to Internal Revenue Service facilities and any tax returns or return information contained therein.”

2. Was this provision included in the version of the appropriations bill that passed both Republican-controlled chambers of Congress?

3. Explain how this relates to the Republican Party being the party of “small government.”

I’m waiting.