ojai news at The Ojai Post :: blog, newspaper, events in Ojai, California

Is anyone going to help the people of Darfur who are being slaughtered? Do we have any obligation to help?
Here is the situation:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/11/15/darfur14609.htm

evan, you're one of the unique souls of Ojai who make this such a great place to live. Keep up the vigilant work - it is appreciated.

Since Darfur was mentioned, please visit the Save Darfur site.

As we look back on 2006 and celebrate the accomplishments:

1. We are more secure.

a) A pro-Iran Shia government emerging from the rubble of a horrendous dictator, at a mere cost of 3,000 U..S. lives and a few hundred billion dollars (most of which we've kept in U.S. pockets), will control the the second largest oil reserves in the world - this will wake the liberals up!;

b) North Korea has the bomb, which has finally spurred those east Asian countries to get with the program and develop the capacity to arm and defend themselves;

c) Al Qaeda hasn't struck in the U.S. since our George W. Bush's second year in office;

d) We are putting eco-terrorists in jail. We have woken up to the new threat of Islamofascists and Greens and we are bringing the fight to them.

2. Our economy is robust:

a) Corporate profits among the highest in history;

b) Taxes on our most valuable citizens among the lowest in fifty years;

c) More people have pulled more money from their rising home values than ever before.

3. We're safer at home:

a) More criminals in prison than ever in our history;

b) We're finally building a wall to keep illegals out and deportations are way up;

c) We're keeping track of people in more ways than ever.

Why stop now?

The real Iraq war:
A NPR report recently
confirmed that the death squads all wear US funded
police uniforms or military clothes, with executions
averaging at leat 100 per day, and the US military
presense has been termed Men hiding in the green zone!

Anonymous:

i completely disagree with the value of everything you mentioned, but i like your organized layout.

i hope you'll join us to mourn the "merely 3,000 U.S. lives" that have been taken by this economically stable and security-enhancing war.

I agree with Evan that Anonymous’ organized layout is nice. However, I find Anonymous’ frivolous regard to the lives lost in the war to be very disturbing. With respect to Anonymous’ assertions regarding our “robust” economy, I am reminded of Lloyd Bentsen’s famous quote regarding the Reagan "boom": "You know, if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you the illusion of prosperity too."

The OMB projects that the national debt will exceed $8.7 trillion for 2006, an increase of over 55% since 2000. The national debt is projected to grow to $9.95 trillion in 2008. The current debt represents nearly 65% of our GDP, and is largely financed by foreign banks, with Japan and communist China our leading lenders. This does not strike me as a particularly robust situation, nor do the current fiscal policies strike me as conservative.

I agree with Anonymous, our economy is doing well. It's too bad that some people do not understand that if terrorist countries aquire nuclear weapons and explode them here in our country your world will change in ways that you can't even imagine.

thank you, Todd and Brian, for contributing! my sense is that Anonymous will not speak up again (although s/he is certainly more than welcome to), but i feel an urge to reinforce the idea that this upcoming tragic milestone of 3,000 U.S. military deaths (and the accompanying 655,000 Iraqi deaths) is about mourning and loss. it's about the sorrow that we all share when human life is extinguished, and how we're collectively poorer for sending our bright young people to die at war. this vigil is not a debate on the merits of the war, and it is not a public commentary on any political party. the world as a whole is worse off because there is war in it, and we're simply going to pause as human beings to mourn the loss.

Brian: i find your comment that the "economy is doing well" very striking in the face of what Todd just said. if you're feeling generous, i'd appreciate some more clarity from you. also, i agree with you that it's too bad that people do not understand that if countries acquire/build nuclear weapons and explode them in our world, it will change in ways we can't even imagine. or, in ways that we can read about in books about Japan.
the only nuclear weapons to ever be used offensively were detonated by US, remember? so it's no wonder to me that we've created this perpetual retaliation-complex for ourselves. let's try to agree that nuclear weapons are not safe in ANYBODY'S hands, and that waging illegal war and occupation on a nation is one of the demonstratably worst ways to reduce violence, anger, hate, and fear.

and while we're at it, let's pause to realize that within the last few days, more U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq than all the people who died in the World Trade Center. more killing, it turns out, doesnt seem to be doing the trick either.

As of this morning, the death count stands at 2,980. Please be mindful of your plans within the next week or so, so you can be ready to vigil on relatively short notice if you're so inclined.

Thank you Evan, for refocusing us on the original point of your post, which is the tragic loss of life in this conflict. With respect to Brian’s comments, I do think most people readily understand that a nuclear weapon exploding in the US is a really bad thing. As a former resident of NYC, I fully appreciate the catastrophic potential of an event such as this. My concerns in this regard pertain more to whether or not our current policies and safeguards are sufficiently protecting us from this horrific possibility and, equally important, mitigating the fundamental causes.

I say the economy is doing well because all of the economic indicators used to judge the economy say so. I think most all economists are in agreement. That’s not to say that everything is just fine and dandy. I’m not happy with the way Bush has been expanding government and increasing spending, he has also been expanding subsidies for the agricultural sector, which in the short term helps farmers but in the long term does not help them compete globally.
One big problem that we are going to face is all of the loss of our manufacturing jobs to places like China and India. It’s going to get to a point where we will not be able to make things in this country. Corporations are having things manufactured overseas and taking those jobs away. We are leading in the IT area now but with physical things like cars and heavy equipment we are falling behind. Japan has taken over in the auto sales and a lot of the heavy equipment they are starting to take over also.
Our lawmakers in their infinite wisdom are contributing to our demise. (Especially in California) by stifling the oil exploration and production. In Ventura County there are quite a few oil company people I’ve talked to at the farmers markets and they all tell the same story. People like Barbara Boxer and Lois Capps are putting them out of business. We can’t produce oil here so we have to get it from the Middle East. We also can’t produce nuclear power either, which would actually reduce our dependence on the oil by using less of it. All other industrialized countries are moving ahead with nuclear power except for us. And they are using our designs. Not only would it reduce our dependence on oil and natural gas but it would reduce hydrocarbons put into the air and, in the case of coal, would eliminate the multitude of poisons that burning coal produces. And if you believe we are contributing to earth warming, by burning fossil fuels, it would reduce the carbon dioxide emissions. Solar cannot supply our total needs.
Here is some back up for my economic assertions:

By Ron Scherer, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
This holiday period is an important test for the economy," says Lehman Brothers' Mr. Harris. "When you step back and look at how the consumer is doing, you see a solid job market, lower gasoline prices, which help low-income people, and a strong stock market, which is good for the upper income. The only dark cloud is housing."
Entire article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20061211/ts_csm/ajobs_1

Sure in a perfect world nobody would have nuclear weapons, yeh nuclear weapons are bad, I think we can agree on that. But there are nuclear weapons so we need to face up to the reality and deal with it. What if those terrorists on 9/11 had nuclear weapons instead of just airplanes? I’m sure they wished they would have had nuclear weapons! If they could get there hands on a nuclear device they would most certainly do so in a heart beat, because their whole goal in life is to destroy America, its no secret, they’ve announced it time and time again. What do you think is going to happen when you turn on your TV and see a mushroom cloud over New York city? And I have to say, it’s not a matter of if it’s going to happen it’s a matter of when.
Those 3000 service people who have died, died protecting our freedom and our country, they didn’t die for nothing. The Iraqi people have free elections and are not being killed and tortured by a brutal dictator. What other country would remove a dictator of another country and free there people besides the United States, probably only Britain. Sure its a mess the Sunnis and the Shites are at each others throats and our guys are still getting killed by Iranian backed insurgents and Sadam leftovers but if we can get the Iraqi army up to speed so they can protect themselves the Iraqi people will be able to have a country free of dictatorship.

Brian, thank you for the additional detail! economics is nowhere close to my strength, so i'm going to mostly leave it alone and hope that more astute readers than i will contribute on that end of things. my only economic commentary is that i find no surprise in the presence of "success" in certain sectors, as our economy (and i use "our" here to mean "the world's") has long been set up to reward war and violence. certain sectors flourish during war because of all the various accessories that it requires, which must be built and supplied. however, we can probably soon begin calling every skirmish on our planet a World War, since our equipment is undoubtedly built all over the globe. gun violence fuels the arms trade...it's in the arms dealers' best interest that there continue to be gunfights. the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are also the world's biggest arms suppliers, with the United States premier among them. in the same way, war fuels the war-machines trade. it is in the best interest of a nation that outspends the rest of the world combined on our military that we have some wars to justify the expense.

in terms of nuclear weapons, you seem to present yourself with what i see as a false choice: "nuclear weapons are bad, but they exist so we'd better deal with it." IMAGINE with me for a moment: what if they didnt exist? we have all the capability to eliminate our nuclear arsenal. what we lack is the courage and the will. i refuse to live my life in fear and terror...it is then that the terrorists win. so i do not join you in choosing to fear a "mushroom cloud over New York City", to quote both you AND Condoleeza Rice. i see us caught up in a spiralling game of fear and ammunition, and it's one we've played before to no good end.

if those "service" people died protecting our freedom and country, then why did it require lies to get them to do it? i feel a tighter fist on my freedom NOW than i did on September 10, so i'm not resonating with the supposed gain. the Iraqi people, incidentally, have traded being killed and tortured by a brutal dictator to being killed and tortured by an occupying military force. talk about a false choice...
clearly, the answer is a bigger and better Iraqi army. the "more and more and more and more and more military" model is working swell for us, so it'd be our greatest gift to them...

First of all I don't believe in a global world order that you are inferring by "our" world, there are a bunch of people that I don't share their values.

"Imagine all the people living life in peace you may say I'm a dreamer...but I'm not the only one..." I know the song, That's great the you refuse to live your life in fear and terror, I don't live my live in fear or terror either, its just that I have the sense enough to realize if we destroyed our nuclear weapons we would be attacked and destroyed. I'm not trying to be a fear monger it just the simple truth that the technology to build a Hiroshima type crude nuclear device is now almost 60 years old. It is no longer a secret how to make one, it's probably on the internet! It is still beyond most smaller country's capability but that is changing fast. Iran could do this, and they could very easily give it to some terrorists to plant in a shipping container.
Lies? what lies? You mean the WMD's that everybody aggreed Sadam had? Including the democrates, like Kerry, Pelosi, and all the others. That intellegence came from CIA , George Tenate the former CIA director under Clinton, Bush kept Tenent on after the Clinton administration. Would you like to see the quotes by Kerry and the other democrates calling for Sadam's removal?

Brian, when i use the term "our" to describe our world, i mean only that it's the one planet we have, and that we're all sharing it. i'm not trying to imply a global government or anything like that. there are certainly people on this planet whose values i do not share either, but i do recognize that we impact each other and are brothers and sisters in the human family. (and lest anyone think otherwise, i'm fully aware of how fuzzy that sounds.)

i'm not convinced with the certainty you are that if we destroyed our nuclear weapons we WOULD be attacked and destroyed. if that IS true, i would attribute it to decades of our own actions which have created animosity toward us...not that we can please everyone (nor is it our job to), but i see no evidence that we have consciously avoided creating enemies. you're absolutely right that nuclear technology is old and increasingly available...it's an inconvenient truth, one might say. still, i'm of the mind that eliminating (even reducing, rather than INCREASING, which we have plans to do) our nuclear weapons would be a tremendous gesture, though not all by itself.

yes, i'm talking about lies regarding WMD's. i'm talking about the very same lies that everybody bought. i'm talking about lies that i suspect SOME people KNEW were lies before they were told. even so, we now know that falsehoods abound, representing at the very LEAST a monumental failing of our intelligence agencies. so, we've destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives, blown apart buildings of all sorts, used illegal radioactive weapons, engaged in torture (blah, blah, blah...you know all of this) over mistakes? pretty costly mistakes at a pretty $354 thousand million, and the bill goes to my kids' kids. i'm not prepared to accept that.

'Big mistake' in justifying war in Iraq, Ford says
Ford, in an embargoed interview, says rationale for invasion was in error and that he would have sought sanctions.
By Bob Woodward
The Washington Post

December 28, 2006

WASHINGTON — Former President Gerald R. Ford, in an interview embargoed until after his death, said that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

In a four-hour conversation in July 2004 at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Dick Cheney — Ford's White House chief of staff — and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.

"Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people," Ford said, referring to Bush's assertion that the United States has a "duty to free people." But the former president said he was skeptical "whether you can detach that from the obligation No. 1, of what's in our national interest."

He added: "And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."

The Ford interview — and a subsequent lengthy conversation in 2005 — took place for a future book project, though he said his comments could be published at any time after his death. In the sessions, Ford fondly recalled his close working relationship with key Bush advisors Cheney and Rumsfeld while expressing concern about the policies they pursued in more recent years.

"He was an excellent chief of staff. First class," Ford said. "But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious" as vice president. He said he agreed with former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's assertion that Cheney developed a "fever" about the threat of terrorism and Iraq. "I think that's probably true."

Describing his own preferred policy toward Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Ford said he would not have gone to war, based on the publicly available information at the time, and would have worked harder to find an alternative. "I don't think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly," he said, "I don't think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer."

Ford had faced his own military crisis — not a war he started like Bush, but one he had to figure out how to end.

In many ways those decisions framed his short presidency — in the difficult calculations about how to pull out of Vietnam and the challenging players who shaped policy on the war. Most challenging of all, as Ford recalled, was Henry A. Kissinger, who was secretary of State and national security advisor and had what Ford said was "the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."

"I think he was a super secretary of State," Ford said, "but Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend."

In 1975, Ford decided to relieve Kissinger of his national security title. "Why Nixon gave Henry both secretary of State and head of the NSC, I never understood," Ford said. "Except he was a great supporter of Kissinger. Period."

But Ford viewed Kissinger's dual roles as a conflict of interest that weakened the administration's ability to fully air policy debates. "They were supposed to check on one another."

That same year, Ford also decided to fire Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and replace him with Rumsfeld, who was then Ford's chief of staff.

Ford recalled that he then used that decision to go to Kissinger and say, "I'm making a change at the secretary of Defense, and I expect you to be a team player and work with me on this" by giving up the post of security advisor.

Kissinger was not happy. "Mr. President, the press will misunderstand this," Ford recalled Kissinger telling him. "They'll write that I'm being demoted by taking away half of my job."

But Ford made the changes, elevating the deputy national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, to take Kissinger's White House post.

Throughout this maneuvering, Ford said, he kept his White House chief of staff in the dark. "I didn't consult with Rumsfeld. And knowing Don, he probably resented the fact that I didn't get his advice, which I didn't," Ford said. "I made the decision on my own."

Kissinger remained a challenge for Ford. He regularly threatened to resign, the former president recalled. "Over the weekend, any one of 50 weekends, the press would be all over him, giving him unshirted hell. Monday morning he would come in and say, 'I'm offering my resignation.' Just between Henry and me. And I would literally hold his hand. 'Now, Henry, you've got the nation's future in your hands and you can't leave us now.' Henry publicly was a gruff, hard-nosed, German-born diplomat, but he had the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew."

Ford added, "Any criticism in the press drove him crazy." Kissinger would come in and say: "I've got to resign. I can't stand this kind of unfair criticism." Such threats were routine, Ford said. "I often thought, maybe I should say: 'OK, Henry. Goodbye,' " Ford said, laughing. "But I never got around to that."

At one point, Ford recalled Kissinger, his chief Vietnam policymaker, as "coy."

Then he added, Kissinger is a "wonderful person. Dear friend. First-class secretary of State. But Henry always protected his own flanks."

Ford was also critical of his own actions. He recalled his unsuccessful 1976 campaign to remain in office when he was under enormous pressure to dump Vice President Nelson Rockefeller from the Republican ticket.

Some polls at the time showed that up to 25% of Republicans, especially those from the South, would not vote for Ford if Rockefeller, a New Yorker from the liberal wing of the Republican Party, was on the ticket.

When Rockefeller offered to be dropped, Ford took him up on it, but later regretted it as "an act of cowardice on my part."

In the end, though, it was Vietnam and the legacy of the retreat he presided over that troubled Ford.

After Saigon fell in 1975 and the United States evacuated Vietnam, Ford was often labeled as the only American president to lose a war. The label always rankled.

"Well," he said, "I was mad as hell, to be honest with you, but I never publicly admitted it."

Is it now just after 2pm on December 29th, and the American military death toll in Iraq has already moved up to 2,996 since this morning. That means that only 4 more deaths will put us at the 3,000 mark, which unfortunately is likely to happen between today and New Year’s Day.

Because it would be difficult to organize a well-attended vigil on New Year’s eve or day (and in solidarity with the AFSC’s suggestion), we’re going to set our vigil for TUESDAY, JANUARY 2 from 5-6:30pm at the intersection in front of the Ojai Valley Shopping Center. All the same messages, recommendations, plans, and cautions apply.

Ring in the new year however you will, and if you’re the resolution-making type, consider upping the ante on your activism. The extra energy is clearly needed.

See you on the 2nd.

-evan

P.S. Send this message along, PLEASE. I’m going to try to put the word out as best i can...please join me in this effort.

today is DECEMBER 31, and the U.S. military death count is 2,998.

3,000

What does 3,000 mean?

It means George W. Bush and his cronies have now killed more Americans than did Osama bin Laden on September 11, 2001.

According to a recent John Hopkins study published a few months ago in Britain's Lancet, George W. Bush and his cronies have killed more than 600,000 Iraqis with their illegal war. I heard of no vigil for that grim milestone. That 600,000 represents not dead soldiers but true innocents. So by that measure, if September 11 was tragic because innocents were targeted, George W. Bush and his sick cronies have murdered 200 innocent Iraqis for each innocent American killed by Osama.

And we are supposed to be afraid of Osama?

George W. Bush celebrates the 3,000 milestone by turning Saddam over to a lynch mob, before his trials have even finished. Saddam was hung in the most grisly manner, on the eve of one of Islam's holiest days, while a mob shouted slogans. George W. Bush called that "justice." Hundreds of millions of Muslims - no friends of Saddam - protested this grotesquery all over the world.

Under George W. Bush and his goose steppers, our soldiers have raided the homes of innocents in the wee hours of dawn, murdering entire families (Hadatha); torched cities (Falluja, Ramallah); broken into a family's home to repeatedly rape a thirteen year old girl and murder her parents; tortured prisoners in Abu Ghraib; kidnaped innocent villagers and caged them across the world in Cuba; on and on and on. Iraq is a wreck, its institutions shattered, its people decimated, desperate, in the streets, unified in only one goal - to oust the occupation forces.

What exactly does this vigil honor?

3,000 soldiers dead is a tragic waste. We all suffer and we will be bearing the fallout for a long time. But 3,000 U.S. soldiers killed while illegally occupying a sovereign nation cannot be the most significant milestone for honor and vigil.

How about instead honoring those brave soldiers who have refused to fight this criminal war? Can we keep a count of them? List their names as the true heroes of our military?

History surely will.