BUSH, CHENEY INDICTMENTS IMMINENT?

Update in re my October 2003 prediction regarding the Plame Affair and the revenge of the CIA:

"Both resignations [Tenet and Pavitt], perhaps soon to be followed by resignations from Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, are about the imminent and extremely messy demise of George W. Bush and his Neocon administration in a coup d'etat being executed by the Central Intelligence Agency. The coup, in the planning for at least two years, has apparently become an urgent priority as a number of deepening crises threaten a global meltdown."

From COUP D'ETAT

The Real Reason Tenet and Pavitt Resigned from the CIA...
Bush, Cheney Indictments in Plame Case Looming

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LEGACY

"By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends and family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor."

From Who Lost Iraq?
by Paul Krugman

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PLUM FINALS ET SEQ.

Finally got all the plums off the tree, but not after I heard a big ruffle behind me while planting peppers and turned to see Dr. Crow's big black wings whiffling for balance while he beak-wrestled a plum off its branch; I clapped twice and he flew off, beak wide holding a plum, laughing silently. I immediately got the ladder and harvested the rest. Final plum score: Crow: 1; Monkeys: 14; Brady: 42. Victory is sweet. And juicy. [Note for plummers: if the plums have reached the yellow stage (no green) they will continue to ripen after picking.]

Late afternoon rain from skyhigh white thunderheads that have been marching in noble procession around the Lake all day in roiling majesty against blue sky; now at evening the heavy rain comes bearing implications of thunder and lightning, though none yet. And in the big sparse invisible drops that fall early, with no wind, the new rice dances jade and silver, backgrounded by a slanting late summer afternoon rain by Hokusai. Green. Cool. Fragrant with life.

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FROM GARDENIAS

These mornings on my way to and from the beans and lettuces I always stop to smell the gardenias (that creamy delicious fragrance lights a deep hunger we carry in our history, but personally know nothing of), an experience that never diminishes in its power, sets me thinking about how deeply and anciently the flowers know an aboriginal facet of us that we know so little of: our sense of smell.

The olfactory senses are situated in the limbic system, the oldest and most primitive part of the brain, because since we first stepped into the air we have used our sense of smell to survive; we still, if only figuratively, "sniff the wind"...

Our sense of smell is more than just the channel for aromatherapy, it's a root source of vital information on the state of ourselves, of others and of the world around us. The recognition of pheromones is just a small part of it. But so much of our aboriginal awareness has been silenced or atrophied by what we've surrounded ourselves with from mind to foot, I fear that in this case we may be breaking a primal connection, more than just a strong ally in our life on the Blue Jewel; we may be losing a source of life-health itself, the equivalent of going collectively blind.

Evolutionarily, when you can't sniff the wind for real, you're done for.

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EXPATS AGAINST BUSH

Step-By-Step Guide to Voting by Absentee Ballot

"I've never registered to vote back home, does that mean I can't vote by Absentee Ballot?
Whether or not you have ever registered to vote at home, registering for an absentee ballot guarantees you the right to vote by absentee ballot, period. Don't take any chances with your right to vote."

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THESE GUYS ARE SO CLUED IN!

"This is not a time for pessimism and rage."
Closing quote from Bush-Cheney anti-Kerry videospot containing shots of Hitler.

We have kept our word to the Iraqi people, says Bush

It's a four-letter word, says Cheney.

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RIPENINGS

Out here in the Japanese countryside there aren't any movie theater guards with handcuffs, there aren't even any movie theaters. I don't know how we survive out here with just trees and flowers, rivers, lakes, wild animals, genuine weather and distant neighbors-- the most exciting thing happening right now where I live is the plums ripening. Nothing like standing under the plum tree in the cool of the morning and having a couple of sweet ones for breakfast.

We saved a lot of plums from the ravages of the scoundrelly simians in the Battle of the Big Plum Job-- detailed a few posts ago-- thanks to the advanced rock-propulsion system we've developed during the million years of struggle between sapience and simiance (a struggle still ongoing in politics).

Right after that engagement I picked a couple of basketfuls of ripening plums, just in case the furry marauders returned, but I couldn't reach the ones high up, which are now hanging there ripening in the sun, like the finest rubies in perfectly complementary greenness. Beautiful. Whoever designed plum trees sure knew what she was doing.

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WORKING HARD TO KEEP YOU BLIND

"This is a lot of effort to try and stop you from seeing this movie. You have to ask yourself why? Is it so bad that you might get a dissenting opinion from this movie to counteract the daily spoon-fed media drivel? Why would so many people, go to such extreme lengths to stop you from seeing this film?"

From: Fahrenheit 9/11: Why the Far Right is Trying to Keep Americans From Seeing It and the Lies, Frauds and Deceptions They're Using

By Anthony Wade

W/thanks to Ron Andrews


Cryptofascist sampler: Storm Troopers At the Doors of Fahrenheit 9/11

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WEB ANARCHY

A few minutes ago I clicked on a My Yahoo headline to get to a news article and was welcomed at the Chicago Tribune site with a registration form, went immediately to bugmenot.com, pasted the Trib registration page URL, clicked and got an id and password that some cybermonkeywrencher had already registered: "fuck_registration" and "gocubs". Somewhat doubtful that this would gain me access to the Trib, I tried the id and password and got right in. At the right top of the page, I was hailed with: "Hello, fuck_registration!" I love web anarchy.

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THANK YOU, MICHAEL MOORE

"Michael Moore's film will snap that hypnosis, but good. Those Americans who believed what their President told them because they saw it on the TV will, after less than two hours in their local theater, look at both their television and their President with doubt and loathing when they walk from the darkness into the bright light of day. There are millions of Americans who believed what they were told - about 9/11, about Iraq, about George W. Bush himself - who will come into that bright light with the realization that they have been lied to.

From Thank You, Michael Moore

By William Rivers Pitt

[WAYDAGO, MICHAEL!

Day-after addendum: "In its opening weekend Fahrenheit topped the box office, taking $8.2 million. It opened in only 868 cinemas nationwide. For comparison, the much-hyped movie White Chicks, which opened at the same time but in a total of 2726 cinemas, took $6.7m.

"The online ticket service Fandango.com says Fahrenheit 9/11 had 48% of all advance ticket sales, compared to just 2% for Spider-Man 2....

"One Texan moviegoer said: 'Living in Houston, heart of Bush country, my whole family including in-laws piled into three cars and went to the opening... we were surprised to find the showing sold out at the first theatre, but managed to find seats at the second we tried.

'We loved the movie, which gave us real hope that freedom and democracy will return to this great country in November [at the presidential election]. The audience gave a long ovation at the end.'"

From Audiences roar for Moore as US right declares war]

[Even later:

"According to exit surveys in about 15 cities, 91 percent of respondents gave the film an 'excellent' rating, while 93 percent said they would 'definitely recommend' the film -- tallies that Ortenberg said were the best he had ever seen. The core audience was aged between 25 and 34..."

From 'Fahrenheit 9/11' a No. 1 Hit Across America]

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THE BIG PLUM JOB

After a morning hour spent among the greenbeans, and after I'd spotted reddening plums in the plum tree and harvested the ripe ones, I'd had lunch and was napping upstairs in a sweet purple plum reverie when I heard what was clearly a monkey argument in the garden, sounded like it was over plums.

Then I heard Echo join in, running out on the deck and shouting "Get out of here, get away from those plums," and I was up out of purple dreams like a shot, down and into my boots and thence to my handy supply of AMBMs (Anti-Monkey Ballistic Missiles), a bunch of rocks carefully selected for their ballistic properties, lined up on the deck railing ready for monkey battle.

The teenage monkeys (who had given the game away by arguing over the plums (I can see the monkey-adult note to self: DO NOT bring teenagers on plum jobs), already strolling in typically adolescent insouciance toward the pergola and out of the garden, carefully balancing their armfuls of plums, stopped once they got beyond the pergola, that point being (as they saw it) legally "out of the garden." The large rocks that sped toward them cast immediate and concrete doubt upon this interpretation of garden law. They then took off for real, shedding armfuls of bitten plums.

Missiles still at the ready I turned to assess the plum tree and was amazed to find there, seated right in the main crotch, the big fat leader of the tribe, who smugly thought he was hidden because he could not see me for the leaves, and possibly for the visions of ripening plums dancing before his very eyes. He was leaned back comfortably as in an armchair a bit too small for his corpulence, nibbling at his leisure on one of my delicacies. Awakened to reality by an AMBM (I once was blind, but now I see), he shed the plum and shot instantly out of the tree about ten meters in the direction opposite the missile source, landing all scrambled up smack in the middle of the thick bamboo, with more missiles following his rackety bamboozled progress away.

Fortunately I had picked the ripe plums on my earlier check, so our quick response had limited the loss to only a dozen or so ripening plums. Now I'll take all that are even slightly ripe, as soon as I finish my nap.

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF POETRY, SEPTEMBER 11

"We poets have been attacked for the stance we have taken. We have been attacked for speaking out. We have been accused of being unpatriotic because we do not believe that compounding murder is the best possible response to murder. It grieves us to see our nation's (or any nation's) children turned into killers before they have had the opportunity to study war and its vicious and inevitable consequences."

Excerpted from Open Letter from Sam Hamill

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SOPHISTICATED REPARTEE

At the highest levels of executive government. You want his finger on the red button?

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STAIRWAYS AND HEAVENS

When you own a house, particularly one as extensively vertical as mine is, there are any number of stratospheric problems that now and then need remedying, from shingles to chimneys to high windows to stovepipes and roofbeams, not to mention treelimbs. These problems worsen over time, and accumulate by orders of magnitude, if all you have is a short ladder.

There's the caulking and wood treatment that has to be done up near the roof in front; the upper front windows to be cleaned; the carpenter bee hole to be plugged. There's the stovepipe to be cleaned, the living room ceiling fan to be fixed, the new sleek stovepipe brace to be installed; the back upper windows to be cleaned. The long lower oak branch out over the garden has to be pruned, the lower cypress branches to be trimmed.

And here I sit at my keyboard, willing but unable to do these things with my little ladder. Until now. For at last I have a way to reach higher heavens: I have bought a shiny new extending ladder, delivered yesterday, that can reach to seven meters, over nine meters with me reaching from the top rung. Heaven is within my grasp.

And here I still sit at my keyboard, even though willing and able to do these things. The ladder's all wrapped up outside, where it's raining in a big hurry. There are higher heavens, with greater and more urgent tasks.

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META-ORIGAMI

"At first glance it does not seem possible that such a complex, curving form could have been folded from a single sheet of paper, and yet it was."

Fascinating.

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WHY ARE TRAITORS IN AMERICA LIKE WMDs IN IRAQ?

Well for SIX MONTHS now, that Special Prosecutor and his many assistants have been scouring the White House for the traitor who leaked the name of covert CIA op Valerie Plame, but they just can't seem to find out who, among the at most three people who had access to the info, committed treason against the United States of America for political gain. Traitors in the Bush administration appear to have something in common with WMDs in Iraq.

Of course the Prosecutor KNOWS that Robert Novak, who knowingly exposed Plame in his column, thereby committed treason. Wonder if he'll be prosecuted for what he in fact did. And of course Novak knows his source. No one seems to be focusing on Novak though, he must be too close the actual answer. But then he's clearly on the side of an administration that's still looking for WMDs in Iraq, so maybe Novak will never be found either. They are looking everywhere else, though, and at great length...

Washington is a strange place, but no matter what strings the Dubya marioneteers pull on this one, you can bet the intelligence community will not allow another term from this administration.

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THE SOUND OF 1000 LINGUISTS AGREEING

I can't imagine who would do such a thing, or where, but somebody got 1000 linguists together (must have been quite a Babel in itself), asked them which were the three hardest words to translate... I don't think their first choice holds a candle to wabi or sabi, just off the top of my head. And Japan only came in third with a Kansai miniword that translates roughly as "ain't that fer sher"? They should try chewing on sukkiri as opposed to sappari for a while.

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TEETH OR NO TEETH

My drive to the dentist must be one of the more beautiful of the world's many drives-to-the-dentist, it winds along the small road that skirts the Lake shore, the first road, the old road, the road in all the histories, all the folding screens and all the woodblock prints of this part of Omi.

The road to my dentist

I always enjoy traveling that road, even to go to the dentist. But on this occasion, when after all that beauty I arrived at said establishment and turned off the motorcycle, I was surprised to find that I was not traveling alone. Out from under the handlebars hopped a small green frog who'd hitched a ride all the way from home, and who after all that beauty now sat there on the chrome staring pointedly at the non-aesthetic sight of the dentist's office.

Then I noticed a larger frog on the fender, doing the same thing. Obvious seekers of beauty, the two of them. I asked why they'd come to the dentist, though, since they had no teeth, but I didn't have my shovel with me, so they didn't respond. I went inside; they stayed, staring, as though waiting for the beautiful ride back.

Sure enough, when I emerged an hour later, the green duo were still there, and traveled with me all the way back home, seeming to love the breeze in their faces, such speed being a rarity in their lives; they stared right into it. If they'd had hair, it would've blown wildly.

When we arrived at our place on the mountain the larger frog jumped onto my leg, croaked a quick thanks, then leaped to the ground and home with stories of his amazing adventure. The little frog dozed off on the sunwarm handlebar. Teeth or no teeth, it was a beautiful trip.

Image source

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JAPAN'S UNTHINKABLE HAS HAPPENED

"Tokyo subway shooting shocks nation

Wednesday's shooting of a Tokyo Metro employee has rocked the nation's capital with scenes of terror-stricken passengers rushing to escape one of the most crowded stations in Japan.

Railway passengers and station employees say that the incident could have caused a major disaster because thousands of people were rushing to work at the time."

This article gives some idea of the incomprehensibility of such an event in Japan, where the discovery of a live bullet in someone's luggage at the airport is national news.

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CATKINS

As I work in the garden these early summer days, for tantalizing moments I'm suddenly deep in a fragrance that whispers beauty through the air, an evocative scent whose source I can't identify. I try to track it, walk around sniffing the breeze for a scented trail but it's elusive; I end up standing by the road, looking off across the meadows for a likely cluster of wildflowers, or maybe a blossoming tree in the distance, but see nothing that might be the source of this singular perfume, now here, now gone. It's past the snowbell's time... Then back in the garden I realize I'm standing right beneath it, the sneaky thing: it's the chestnut tree, white-edged as if by inner light with catkins, that I hadn't associated with such a scent...

In the rush of new warmth, like feathery scent wicks the catkins (wondeful word for those tiny pussycat tails) send out their perfume on the high breeze to attract butterflies for the days and moths for the nights; the source was hard to locate because it's meant for butterflies and moths, not for me; or at least-- since I could detect it just now and then-- only when I'm a butterfly...

"The leaves, twigs, bark, and even the flowering catkins and the spiky cases of the nuts are astringent, and so can be used to help control bleeding, to aid healing, and in cases of diarrhea. Chestnut leaves also furnish a tea that soothes irritated mucous membranes and hence relieves the symptoms of whooping cough or any cough due to irritation."

Foto and quote from Herbs2000

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APOLOGY IN BLOOD

"FUKUOKA -- A teacher infuriated with a student who dozed off during class handed the student a paper cutter and ordered him to write an apology with his own blood..."

And this just after one junior high student killed another with a paper cutter...
Where do they get 'teachers' like this? Isn't there some kind of sanity test? BTW, the guy's still 'teaching'...

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