http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:paulscha&section=today deviantART RSS for by:paulscha en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:53:57 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/13397569/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/13397569/ Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:11:44 PDT
There isn't an artist there, or one whose work I've commented on, who doesn't give me a measure of hope for us all. And there are a whole lot of you that I just haven't been able to get to. This is a huge site and I'm a bit...well, slow.

I do hope you will all keep on keeping on.

The bringing of our best to a table we share, a very big table, but one where we can move about at will, that is just magic.

Not that it's perfect. Of course it is not. But it IS wonderful.

YOU are wonderful.

Yay for you.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/11463884/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/11463884/ Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:57:59 PST [link]

A new friend's work is on display here. If and when I can I hope to photograph his work, I think if you look you'll see why.

Love,

Paulscha

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/10696144/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/10696144/ Sun, 12 Nov 2006 01:21:19 PST
Yep, you heard it hear first.

Love,

Paulscha

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/9967714/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/9967714/ Mon, 04 Sep 2006 16:57:15 PDT Mood: ...

My Friend Dennis Du Bois

Passed away today. We had grown very close over the last year. There was this effortless peace that would just sort of settle in when we were together. We could talk about anything but often we did not need to talk at all.

Dennis was a big, big-hearted Dutchman, who gave many wonderful people the closest thing to a sense of ‘home’ and ‘family’ they ever had. Like many queer people I know who grew up feeling orphaned and alone, he was a natural mentor. He was the least sterotypical anything I have every known, a constant reminder of the freedom which so many never tap into, to create your own unique way of being in the world.

He was a man of strong opinons and definite tastes, a master chef, and, along with my dear Bob, the creator of the Café Cameleon, by far the freest, hippest establishment I have ever had the pleasure to frequent, and frequent it I did, savoring the unlikely mix of skinheads, queers, old people, students, artists of all kinds, the walls always alive with new work, and the most amazing variety of live shows, from local punk bands to European theatre troupes the Café seemed to draw free spirits to it with amazing consistency.

It was driven out of business by greedy landlords, an earthquake, and an unfriendly local government, which aspired (and still does) to turn Santa Cruz into some bland suburb.

They won’t succeed, if I have anything to say about it.

How do you honor a life? How do you thank someone like Dennis Du Bois for the amazing display of creativity and good will he brought into the world? How else but to strive to pass on the gifts he shared with us in our own lives? To make a place in the world around us where people of good will feel welcome and safe?

It’s the lesson of my mother’s death all over again. They actually died in the same room at the hospital. But I was not there for Dennis’ death, or feel the need to be. He is no less near and dear to me than if he were right here, sitting next to me.

Love, to Dennis and all of you,

Paulscha

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/4531035/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/4531035/ Tue, 08 Feb 2005 16:02:55 PST
I would like to start by saying that this isn't our friend Paul posting, but his friend ~azurephoto (Jeremy to my friends). As those of you who were in touch with Paul before he went MIA around here know, he's been going through some less then desirable times; he is certainly alive, though not in the best of health. After not having heard from someone in the time I'd not heard from Paul one assumes the worst, as I can imagine many of you had, too - I can certainly put that fear to rest at this time. Right now Paul is undergoing treatment for a somewhat advanced stage of lyme disease, which makes many things excruciatingly painful and near impossible to do - DA included. It pains me to learn about how restricted he is from that he loves, including us, his friends...family...and of course the passion he has for photography. As someone who grew a very close friend to Paul in the time I'd known him, there wasn't a moment when I couldn't ask him something or, if necessary, ask something OF him...[in fact, he offered me and my girlfriend residence at his home when we were planning our vacation..] I would like to think it's not much to ask for us to say a prayer, take a moment, or somehow pause in our day to think about our friend Paul (not that I'm sure you don't, anyways) in the hopes he experiences a speedy recovery and beats this disease. Please feel free to reply here with your thoughts and messages, which I'll be sure he gets to hear from everyone.

Thank you all for your time/With sincere love,

Jeremy/Paul ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/3774506/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/3774506/ Sun, 07 Nov 2004 08:24:19 PST
God, of course. We're killing those Iraqis for God.

The AFP reports:

Between the service's electric guitar religious tunes, marines stepped up on the chapel's small stage and recited a verse of scripture, meant to fortify them for war.

One spoke of their Old Testament hero, a shepherd who would become Israel's king, battling the Philistines some 3,000 years ago.

"Thus David prevailed over the Philistines," the marine said, reading from scripture, and the marines shouted back "Hoorah, King David," using their signature grunt of approval.

The marines drew parallels from the verse with their present situation, where they perceive themselves as warriors fighting barbaric men opposed to all that is good in the world.

According to the AP:

They are awaiting orders from interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to launch an all-out assault.

Col. Gary Brandl voiced his troops' determination:

"The enemy has got a face. He's called Satan. He's in Fallujah and we're going to destroy him."

"Victory belongs to the Lord," another young marine read.

100,000 Iraqi men, women and children have been killed as a result of our invasion of that country, a survey in last month's Lancet reports. The overwhelming majority of those killed died at the hands of US Forces.

In the AFP article, a marine chaplain explains that before a "big fight" like Fallujah, this kind of religious exuberance is to be expected, because "sometimes, all you've got is God." Right. God, and enough overwhelmingly superior firepower to maintain a kill-ratio of 100 to 1. That's right: for every person killed in Iraq by insurgents, US troops kill 100, according to Iraq's interior ministry.

Hoohah! God is good!

Meanwhile, the US appointed Prime Minister of Iraq yesterday declared Martial Law in that country, with emergency powers to remain in effect for the next 60 days. But then, by golly, in January we're having us an elect-shun!

Despite the best efforts of both parties and the media to ignore it, there is mounting evidence of electoral fraud in Ohio, New Mexico and Florida. Possibly only 48% of the electorate cast their vote for God and Halliburton. Pundits agree, however, that anti-gay ballot measures likely played a decisive role in many states, including Ohio.

As Barbara Streisand never sang,

People who hate people are the luckiest people in the world. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/3739601/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/3739601/ Wed, 03 Nov 2004 04:27:14 PST
A person is about to drink a poison, for which there is no antidote. You cry out to him, ‘No! You must not! You will die a slow and horrible death!’ If you didn’t cry out a warning, what sort of human being would you be?

But suppose the person does not hear you, and drinks the poison anyway. There is nothing to be done, now. Is it not pointless, even cruel, to grab him by the shoulders and tell him just how bad an end he has chosen?

The same compassion that made you cry out, when there was still time to hope, compels you to silence, when the time for hope has passed.

The story of the man who swallowed his own poison ends badly, but at least it ends.

The one whose warning went unheeded, though, what of his story? He must live with what he has seen for the rest of his life. What possible meaning can it have for him?

Perhaps this:

“At least, when I am dead, I will no longer have to witness such things.”

That is what the re-election of George Bush means to me. My life has not been short on suffering and loss. My recent life has been a pretty steady diet of suffering and loss. Nonetheless, until tonight, it had not occurred to me to look forward to being dead. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/3698752/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/3698752/ Fri, 29 Oct 2004 01:53:29 PDT 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of America's decision to invade and occupy that country.

The vast majority of these victims of war were civilians mowed down by US forces.

People puzzle over how the insurgency can be popular in Iraq, when it's violence often claims Iraqi lives.

The answer is revealed in these numbers. Iraqis are 100x more likely to perish at the hands of US forces than they are to be killed by insurgents.

I am mentioning this in case there is someone among you, of age to vote, whose conscience is still slumbering.

Try putting faces to that number, try to imagine a 100,000 faces, most of them young, whose eyes will never open again.

Add to those numbers over 1,000 young American soldiers whose lives have been lost.

Now consider that the numbers of the 'merely maimed' are likely to be at least 10x that high on both sides.

Be mindful as well of the massive numbers of depeleted uranium shells fired in densely populated areas. Estimates are that the dust from these weapons will cause hundreds of thousands of cancers and birth defects, among both Iraqis and Coalition troops.

We are talking about millions of lives either snuffed out or twisted beyond recognition, all for the sake of...what?

The Bushovics have run out of justifications. No link between Saddam and 9-11. No weapons of mass destruction. No evidence that Iraq could have threatened the weakest of its neighbors, let alone the United States.

No provocation, in other words, whatsoever. When are not provoked, when your hand is not forced, when you just up and kill 100,000 people for no good reason, this is what is known as mass murder.

ABC also reported today finding solid video evidence that the 350,000 or so tons of missing high-intensity explosives from Al Quaqa were still there, under lock and seal, immediately prior to the US invasion.

The video was taken by reporters embedded with the 101st division, when they opened massive stores of explosives at Al Quaqa on their way to Baghdad.

The troops had NO ORDERS to secure the facility. They took a quick glance inside and moved on, leaving the doors open behind them to anyone who fancied enough super-powerful, easy to handle conventional explosives to kill up to 2 million human beings.

Roadside bombs crafted from those explosives have been killing American troops for many months.

I cannot believe it, I refuse to believe it, that half of my fellow citizens are willing to suffer four more years of this lethal incompetence.

This is, as they say, the tip of the iceberg. We live in a world that is vastly more dangerous today because of the actions of this President and his band of neoconservative thugs. We should be contemplating their prison terms, not wavering over whether or not to allow them another term of office.

Are half of you really that far gone in the head? In the heart?

As far as I'm concerned, there is simply no excuse. I have spent the last two years battling an extremely painful and debilitating illness. Nonetheless, I have somehow managed to pay enough attention to the world to know that it will be infinitely safer on the day that George W. Bush no longer commands its most powerful arsenal.

I am rarely well enough to leave the house, even, but I managed to vote for John Kerry. If you're a citizen 18 years or older, you can do that much too.

We cannot afford voters who are sleepwalking through history. Wakey-wakey, dammit! ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/3449478/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/3449478/ Sun, 26 Sep 2004 09:11:51 PDT
The closest I get to an enlightened view of life is seeing change as one long series of good-news/bad-news jokes.

I have been laughing a lot lately.

Paulie says:

There must be lightness to balance heaviness.
The heavier your burdens, the lighter you must be.
Go lightly. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/3309856/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/3309856/ Tue, 07 Sep 2004 16:20:32 PDT Mood: Being There

I am sorry I continue to be too ill / tired / distracted to comment on other people's work. It was the part of this site I used to enjoy most. Unfortunately, fatigue / migraines / doctor visits / eye-strain / assorted neurological nasties make it impossible for me to keep that up now.

I can't begin to cope with my devwatch. While I may not be able to comment, if you have a piece that you especially would like me to see feel free to note me with a link or post it here - when I can I'll try and take a look.

At the moment Santa Cruz is experiencing a wave of freakishly hot weather. 102 yesterday downtown, fairly close to where I live. Heat makes every part of this illness worse.

As part of a new treatment protocol I am hoping my doctor will agree to, I've ordered some nifty new NOIR sunglasses. By blocking both UVB and InfraRed, they should help with my photosensitivity and may make time in front of the PC less draining.

I am always thinking fondly of you and wanting to encourage you all to keep up the creative work that has given me so much pleasure. Don't despair of me, like Ahnuld "I'll be back."

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2928105/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2928105/ Tue, 20 Jul 2004 18:19:34 PDT
For example, however little they suspect it, when people ask me what I'm sick with, they are asking a political question.

If I answer "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome," I am using a name which has been rejected by a great number of those who suffer and research this illness, a name which makes it sound as though one were simply feeling 'tired' or 'a little run down.'

Yet a study comparing measures of vitality and well-being in CFS patients and patients in the late stages of AIDS showed that CFS patients have less physical stamina and score lower on several measures of well-being.

Calling a condition this debilitating "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" is like calling torture "a more vigorous interrogation technique." It is one of those acts of naming whose purpose is to obscure, rather than reveal, the reality it describes.

This illness attacks both mind and body, often incapacitating both to such a degree that not merely one's livelihood but the better part of what we think of as 'life' is no longer possible.

SPECT imaging reveals that people diagnosed with CFS suffer from inadequate bloodflow to the brain - particularly the brain stem and occipetal lobes. Not only that, but exercise makes the problem worse, further reducing blood flow to the brain - exactly the opposite of what happens in healthy people, even those who are clinically depressed.

In studies of cognitive function, CFS patients consistently register significant cognitive impairments, and it is not uncommon for IQs to drop dramatically. So far, mine has fallen by 60 points.

Studies also show that in CFS patients the pain threshold - the point at which physical distress actually registers as pain - is lower than it is in healthy people. Exercise, which in healthy people raises the pain threshold, measurably lowers it in CFS patients.

CFS pain ranges from the deep, all-over body aches that accompany a bad flu to searing, acute, localized pain, especially in the larger muscles of the lower body. When this acute pain matches a certain profile, it may be diagnosed as Fibromyalgia.

Pain specialists who treat Fibromyalgia know that the severity of the pain has no clear upward limit - it can outmatch even the most potent narcotic painkillers, yet is routinely undertreated by doctors who have no grasp of its nature or intensity.

I myself have acute, localized chronic pain in my legs, lower back, shoulders and neck. It is severe enough that just getting out of a chair can force tears. In trying to get this pain treated, I have encountered not just resistance but humiliation and abuse at the hands of physicians.

Without absolving the individual doctors who have withheld treatment, one has to say that this too is political, one of many tragic consequences of a misguided and utterly hypocritical 'war on drugs'.

In moral terms, what is the difference between torturing someone and withholding pain relief? I don't raise that question frivolously. I want you to think about it. I want you to consider whether the torture this government has sanctioned in Iraq and elsewhere is really an isolated case, or reflective of a general coarsening of our culture and a growing trend of institutionalized sadism. I want you to think of the millions of Americans suffering needless extremes of pain tonight, and the doctors who condemn them to that fate, and the moral character of a society that lets this go on in its midst.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2921466/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2921466/ Mon, 19 Jul 2004 19:33:02 PDT
I do love you all so much. Glad you're here, even if i'm not.

Ciao, darlings.

P

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2857285/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2857285/ Sun, 11 Jul 2004 15:41:17 PDT
Today's lesson on pain:

There is pain that is acute, and then there is pain that is chronic. These are unfortunately not mutually exclusive categories, as the person who experiences acute, chronic pain is quick to find out.

On Friday, I had a lumbar punture. They're checking my spinal fluid for signs of infection. Anyhow, the puncture itself was not terribly painful. Today, though, there is a deep, intense, throbbing pain right at the puncture site, that radiates up my spine and down the sides of my legs.

This body is now accustomed to the shock of acute, incapacitating pain. I take medications knowing that they will at most provide a thin fraction of the relief I crave. I make a point of shifting between diffierent sitting, standing and reclining positions, always looking for the one that I can maintain for more than a few minutes.

Meanwhile, the illness continues to increase its toll on my brain, I spend more hours than ever staring blankly into space, unable to sustain a complete thought. It's more than a little disturbing, uncanny really, how abruptly my brain seems to turn itself on and off, as if some critical circuit had gone on the blink.

Despite this grim litany of complaints, I am not depressed, nor am I without hope of regaining at least some portion of my health.

Sometimes the pills work, the pain is dulled down a bit, and I am able to jot down bits and pieces in a journal I keep, or chat briefly with a friend online. I take great pleasure in those things.

Focusing on photography, my own or anyone else's, is mostly impossible for me now. On a rare good day, I can still enjoy it, and I promise on those days to try to catch up with your wonderful work.

Here's something that gave me a chuckle: [link]

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2806256/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2806256/ Mon, 05 Jul 2004 00:41:14 PDT
I was back at University, a student again, and I had discovered some sinister plot by a group of professors to turn all their students into Bushes and Cheneys, Rumsfelds and Wolfowitzes.

I found myself running breathless into the classroom of my old Professor and friend, Jack Schaar, to warn him of this threat and seek his advice.

I found him, took him aside, and started out "Jack, have you noticed that some of the faculty here..." Before I could go any farther, he flashed me an indulgent smile and finished my sentence: "...like to start their classes on time? Why yes, Paul, some of us still do."

Chuckling, he pointed me to a seat and, as there seemed nothing else to do, I sat down.

There was a very handsome young student sitting next to me, which added to my confusion. Perhaps I had run all this way simply to get next to him? Did he know? I was relieved when he looked over at me kindly, noticed I had nothing to take notes with, and handed me a notebook and pen.

And then my professor began his lecture, speaking in that deep, sonorous voice I remember so fondly:

"We dare not dream that we are the decendents of ancient Egypt, whose works continue to astonish us to this day, for they create the impression that not millions of individuals but one great, towering genius roamed this part of the earth, seeing farther and thinking bigger than any mere mortal can hope to. To the likes of us, the Eygptians are as inscrutable as the great Sphinx they left behind them, to haunt the sands of time.

"Still less dare we call ourselves children of ancient Greece. The Greeks were perhaps the first people to conceive of greatness on the scale of the individual human being. Their genius was to recognize the heroic character and largesse of spirit it requires, to live consciously within the bounds of a single mortal life. For all our talk of liberty and the pursuit of happiness, by comparison with the Greeks we are a timid, slavish lot. For all our love of novelty, we hardly know what it would mean to be 'an original,' or to measure the happiness of a life by its authenticity.

"This is the dark secret of our modern age, that human beings find themselves alone to a degree they can neither escape nor embrace."

As he paused there, I suddenly heard a sound like gunfire, and snapped awake.

I looked at the clock. 8:34, it said, and I thought to myself that the morning must be terribly overcast, to be so dark. It took several minutes for me to realize that it was evening, and several more before I realized that what woke me were children setting off fireworks in the parking lot.

Right. Of course. It's the 4th of July.

The fireworks have mostly stopped now. It's half-past midnight. I'm going back to bed.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2740980/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2740980/ Sat, 26 Jun 2004 12:34:05 PDT
For me, and for many of my friends on DA whose work involves nudity, this attitude quickly becomes tiresome.

First, let's address the question of motivation. My impulse to photograph nude models is driven by a love of beauty. Is that the impulse behind porn?

Second, consider the content of the photographs. In the best nude photography, the subject is naked in more than one sense, revealed both outwardly and inwardly - more than the clothes have come off.

The model's unique personality becomes the real focal point, and his or her nakedness a physical metaphor for something that goes beyond undraped anatomy. This does not describe the content of most pornography.

Third, what is the intended effect of an 'artistic nude' photograph? My own work is intended to show that people are most beautiful when they are most fully themselves. I want to challenge the dominant cultural notion, that beauty means hiding who we are to conform to the idealized types of some narrow aesthetic.

It is true that my models are conventionally attractive, but in photographing them it is their unique qualities I try to draw into sharp focus.

By contrast, it is a defining quality of porn, (and even obstensibly 'artistic' photo genres like physique photography), to emphasize the body to the exclusion of everything else, and frame the body in visual cliches that cater to popular tastes.

Fourth, what role does the model play in the creation of these photographs? In my photoshoots, I spend time talking to my models, getting to know them, joking with them and helping to put them at ease. The shoots themselves are interactive. I will sometimes tell a model a sad story, or a funny one, to evoke a reaction - or better, yet, have the model tell stories from his own life to me.

In a real sense, the model calls the shots - I take photos when he's at a point in our interaction where to me he seems clear, open and very much himself.

There are several other photographers on DA whose nude work shows a very similar approach. Yet we all get the occasional 'this is just porn, dude' or 'you call this art?' comment.

Perhaps these people suffer from something akin to colorblindness, an inability to distinguish different shades of human feeling from one another. Maybe they're just dworks. Who knows.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2714118/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2714118/ Mon, 21 Jun 2004 18:38:33 PDT Mood: naptime!

...the tough get drugs.

Well, that's what I did, anyhow - two new things to try that might help give my poor dim bulb a few more kilowatt hours.

Had to pay to see this doctor myself, but he's nice and very willing to try different things to see if they help.

Yay for me.

Next project: adequate pain meds.

Chronic pain is routinely undertreated here in the U.S. - it's a kind of institutionalized sadism. Mine is at the point where all by itself, without the other symptoms, it's incapacitating a lot of the time.

I WILL get adequate treatment. I will grab this healthcare system by its mangy neck, turn it upside down, and shake its pockets clean if I have too.

Yay for me again.

A little progress on the brain front, a little progress on the pain front...the lancing of that unspeakable boil in the White House come November...things to look forward to.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2684810/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2684810/ Fri, 18 Jun 2004 12:37:23 PDT Mood: Jark-Bait

"Derek and Bryan Together," a photo that had racked up something like 17 favorites last time I checked, has been deleted by deviantart.com as a 'policy violation'.

We all knew it might happen. Nonetheless, I find it offensive, and stupid, and wrong.



The moral of the story is: if you post a male nude on deviantart, just make sure that his member is so tiny and flacid that not even a DA admin could possibly mistake it for an erection.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2675905/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2675905/ Wed, 16 Jun 2004 15:41:14 PDT Mood: Melancholy, Baby

Exile is a fate that befalls both persons and peoples, when they are forced to leave their native soil, to cut off their lives at the roots and wander as strangers through a world where they no longer belong.

In our time one can reasonably ask whether exile has not become a universal human condition.

The uprooting of whole peoples by advancing empires has driven much of our world's history, and been an essential element in the spread of what we call the 'western' religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

All three of these religions speak powerfully to the existential predicament of people who have lost their place in the world.

At their best, they call on their believers to cultivate their better natures, and establish just and honorable relationships with one another, because this is the way that leads back, this forward-looking effort to build humanity a home.

At worst, they tempt the displaced to regard other peoples and faiths as obstacles to their own homecoming, and to seek to uproot them, in turn. Cycle upon cycle, playing so viciously upon each other that it can seem history will not be content until humankind itself has been evicted from our world.

I am not a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Jew. Nonetheless, I too am an exile seeking a way back home. I am pretty clear in my own mind about where that way leads.

The exile must search deeper inside himself, and farther beyond himself, than is in any sense 'easy' or 'comfortable.' He must search and not stop searching until his feet are firmly planted on the common ground of our shared humanity. That is the only soil where his need to belong can finally take root, and become a source of strength instead of weakness.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2632980/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2632980/ Thu, 10 Jun 2004 23:50:04 PDT Mood: Okely-Dokely

How can I can concern myself
With any moment but this,
Here, now, with you?
So warm and bright,
So present,
That every fear and sorrow
Fades away,
As long ago as yesterday,
As far off as tomorrow.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2531556/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2531556/ Fri, 28 May 2004 20:53:33 PDT
Beauty evokes strong emotions and is often described in sentimental language...but beauty is ultimately something far greater than these feelings, it is a harmony, an agreement, between what should be and what is.

The experience of this harmony inspired our spiritual traditions. Belief in a divine creator, whether Father or Mother, is born of beauty and the sense of wonder it awakens. In the Biblical genesis myth, God consummates each stage of creation with the words "it is good." When human beings encounter beauty, this affirmation echoes powerfully in their hearts.

So much in our world today is very far from beautiful.

A certain part of us rebels at the very notion of beauty: "Nothing is as it should be, everything is defaced, deformed, ugly and wrong."

It is important to hear that voice, to register its pain, but it is equally important not to be seduced by its argument.

If we allow ourselves to turn away from beauty, it will not be long before we no longer recognize ugliness for what it is, and allow it not simply to surround but become us.

It is important, of course, to accept what we cannot change - but it is even more vital to change what we cannot accept.

Make beauty, not war. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2514699/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2514699/ Wed, 26 May 2004 15:48:02 PDT
After several days of being too sick to get out of bed, today I woke feeling much better. I could chat with friends online, I could do some physical therapy exercises, and I actually walked to the apartment complex mailbox and back on my own! Yay for me!

Good News Item #2

Al Gore gave the speech of his LIFE today, and if you read it I promise it will make you feel better about this country. It was given at a moveon.org rally, and you can read the full text here: [link] ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2489286/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2489286/ Sun, 23 May 2004 09:14:02 PDT
In my last journal piece I explained that on many days my illness makes it impossible to focus enough to write. When I submit an essay, it represents a real effort of will, and I would be most grateful if some of you, particularly in the U.S., could find the time to read this one. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2438265/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2438265/ Sun, 16 May 2004 01:19:25 PDT
I live by the sea. When it's quiet, late at night, and you hear the waves breaking, the sound they make is love.

We who have ears, let us hear! ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2430757/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2430757/ Fri, 14 May 2004 21:25:14 PDT
I am having a hard time. That's alright. Lots and lots and lots of people are having a hard time.

I am standing in the center of a whirlpool, where all the world's grief swirls away.

This would make more sense to you if you were my age, but I'll say it anyway:

I don't see the TidyBowl Man yet, if i do I promise I'll let you know.

Nighty. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2401402/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2401402/ Mon, 10 May 2004 19:11:54 PDT
In other countries, they like to give us the benefit of a doubt, they'll say "oh, you know, it's not the people, its just that mad government of theirs." They say that these days more out of courtesy than conviction.

Those jolly-faced torturers did it. The longer we study their grins, the more we remember the America where not so long ago white families were photographed laughing together at lynchings, eating picnic lunches.

That one, strikingly perky American MP, the one photographed dragging a naked Iraqi by a rope around his neck - would it matter, would it give us reason to think, if she turned out to be the grandchild of slaveholders?

In every poll, without exception, close to half our people say they will vote for George Bush in November.

Something is wrong with them.

Here in Santa Cruz, praise God for small favors, the ratio is more like 10 to 1 against. Even so, the tenth bother me. I wonder what such people might do, or allow to be done in their name.

If you're of voting age, and you have a conscience, please do try to use it. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2382664/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2382664/ Mon, 10 May 2004 06:57:05 PDT UPDATE: In a report just made public, the Red Cross says Coalition officials in Iraq estimate that 70-90% of all Iraqi detainees are arrested by mistake. You can read more here: [link]

Senate testimony today revealed that vast amounts of photographic evidence, including video, of U.S. mistreatment of Iraqis has yet to be made public. We have seen only the tip of the iceberg, apparently.

Reports from the Red Cross and Amnesty International say U.S. torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners is not limited to one prison in Baghdad but is in fact 'systemic' throughout Iraq.

Airwaves in the Middle East are abuzz tonight with images of Americans gleefully stripping Iraqis of their clothes and their humanity.

Judging by the photos, America's torture factories seem quite a bit livelier than the Nazi's. These puckish soldiers with their gaping grins, their gungho, 'thumbs up' attitude, show no visible trace of concern or moral unease...God damn them, they've written an unmistakably American signature on these crimes, they've left the brand of our nation's demons on every pound of flesh they've violated.

It is as if we were saying, not just to Iraq but to the whole Arab world, 'your humanity does not count for a damn, as far as we're concerned.'

I don't care if the soldiers in those photos were taking orders. If a patriotic soldier is asked to commit an atrocity, a crime that can only add to the number of his country's enemies, he ought to refuse. The military should be required to provide legal protection to soldiers who refuse orders on the grounds that they consider them grossly immoral.

We like to say that the buck stops with the President, but in reality the President is off campaigning somewhere while on the other side of the world the buck is stopping with buck privates, the footsoldiers our country has foolishly entrusted to the Bush regime. I support our troops. I support our troops doing the right thing, and when they are asked to commit crimes against humanity, I support our troops telling their commanding officers to go to hell.

Every day in the Middle East, millions of people are given new reasons to hate the United States. This mass-production of enemies is not some unintended side-effect of our policy, it is the very heart of the policy itself, which aims above all at its own perpetuation. The Bush strategy has been to inflame so much hatred, in so many places at once, that even if they lose the White House its occupant will be 'locked in' to a beligerent foreign policy.

I will resist that strategy with all the strength I have left in me. There are many, many citizens in America who feel the same way. I'm not saying we're a majority, or anything close to it, but there are enough of us to make a definite impact.

The recent disclosures give us a chance, and it could well be our last chance, to raise our voices together and say to this White House, 'you are acting without our authority, and we want you to stop.'

If we are not willing to do that much, knowing what we do now, what the hell good are we? ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2340232/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2340232/ Sat, 01 May 2004 20:56:23 PDT
I like that.

It is an important part of why I am here.

I know how wretched your inheritance seems, I feel the weight of this half-baked world that has been thrust on your shoulders. We owe so much more to you. To ourselves. This is a collective failure, a generational failure, and I am sorrier than I know how to say for my part of it.

To ask that you listen to your elders, when we have failed you so badly, would be absurd. I just want you to entertain this possibility, that you have grown up in a world that looks a great deal more hopeless than it actually is. I want you to hope and believe in your hearts that what you are seeing is not the best of which even this world is capable.

If you can understand that America is not humanity, that is good.

If you can understand that at this particular moment in history, America is not, even, America, if you can take that much in, that is really outstanding.

If you can imagine that the pageant of evil unfolding in this country now is not 'the future' but a desperate attempt to hide from it, then I think you may have what you need to keep what is most true and vital in yourselves intact, in these dark times.

If you can help it, do not judge the future by the present. Do not assume that all your tomorrows will labor under the same prevailing insanity that determines today. There are noble spirits in this world, trying desperately to do the right thing, hoping you will notice, hoping you will weigh the exception as well as the rule. Please, please, please try to do that.

Here on DA, in spite of the best efforts of its 'keepers', I have found abundant evidence that the human spirit is alive and still searching.

Believe in that, as much as you believe in anything else.

I love you tons.

Paul ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2322686/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2322686/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 08:57:13 PDT
The sheer, paranoid stupidity of it gave me an idea: maybe instead of letting them control America, we could just put the Bushevics in charge of DA!

Think about it! America could have its constitution back, and the Bushevics could apply their completely warped and dysfunctional view of the world to DA, where it has been in effect for years anyway and no one would notice the difference! ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2322273/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2322273/ Thu, 29 Apr 2004 07:29:37 PDT
By Orit Shohat

From the Israeli Daily Newspaper Haaretz

view complete story online here: [link]

During the first two weeks of this month, the American army committed war crimes in Falluja on a scale unprecedented for this war. According to the relatively few media reports of what took place there, some 600 Iraqis were killed during these two weeks, among them some 450 elderly people, women and children.

The sight of decapitated children, the rows of dead women and the shocking pictures of the soccer stadium that was turned into a temporary grave for hundreds of the slain - all were broadcast to the world only by the Al Jazeera network. During the operation in Falluja, according to the organization Doctors Without Borders, U.S. Marines even occupied the hospitals and prevented hundreds of the wounded from receiving medical treatment. Snipers fired from the rooftops at anyone who tried to approach.

This was a retaliatory operation, carried out by the Marines, accompanied by F-16 fighter planes and assault helicopters, under the code name "Vigilant Resolve." It was revenge for the killing of four American security guards on March 31. But while the killing of the guards, whose bodies were dragged through the streets of the city and then hung from a bridge, received wide media coverage, and thus prepared hearts and minds for the military revenge, the hundreds of victims of the American retaliation were practically a military secret.

The only conclusion that has been drawn thus far from the indiscriminate killing in Falluja is the expulsion of Al Jazeera from the city. Since the start of the war, the Americans have persecuted the network's journalists - not because they report lies, but because they are virtually the only ones who manage to report the truth. The Bush administration, in cooperation with the American media, is trying to hide the sights of war from the world, and particularly from American voters. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2294259/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2294259/ Sun, 25 Apr 2004 09:16:36 PDT
Easter Sunday came and went two weeks ago. Late as usual, I am only now remembering to reflect on the meaning of this day, when mourners visit the cave where Jesus' body was laid to rest and are shocked to find the tomb empty.

A great boulder that had been placed at the mouth of the cave has rolled away.

Even in death, Jesus has not been contained.

For those who seek to rule this world by force, death and the fear of death confer absolute power over life.

Easter is the day when they are shown to be wrong.

With apologies for my lateness, I wish you all a very happy Easter. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2277988/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2277988/ Thu, 22 Apr 2004 19:59:44 PDT
What shocked everyone yesterday will by tomorrow be business as usual.

Democratic institutions are enfeebled by a public too dazed to identify, let alone resolve, the most pressing questions before it.

To be free, a people must be able to decide together those things which no one can decide for himself alone.

It helps if you know what those things are - and just as importantly, what they aren't.

Who a person has sex with, for example, is clearly a question that ONLY the individual can answer - nonetheless, America persists in treating it as a fit matter for politics.

The conditions under which we will send our sons and daughters to kill and to die, by contrast, a question that deserves the most serious, concerted collective attention. Yet in America we are told that to raise this question in earnest is somehow unpatriotic.

Thus we will have to listen interminably as John Kerry describes the Bushevics war in Iraq as 'poorly planned' and 'ineffective' when the point, of course, is that it is illegal, immoral and profoundly at odds with the security of our people.

If Kerry loses, it will be because he appears to too many people to be a blurrier version of our President, because he ultimately lacked the courage to admit to his convictions.

Instead of accomodating the dazed minds and dulled consciences that constitute our body politic's dead weight, Kerry should be shaking the country awake, relentlessly focusing its attention on the same simple truths and walking it step-by-step through at least the more obvious moral consequences.

Kerry should also be using his candidacy as a forum for people like that small army of prize-winning scientists who blasted the Bushevics for their systematic suppression and distortion of science. They cited hugely important issues like global warming, environmental safety, and occupational health where the Bush administration had stood the facts on their heads to sell unsellable policies. Get 3 or 4 of the most articulate of those guys, hold a joint press conference, propose creating an permanent, independent commision on scientific integrity in government.

There are a lot of other people America should hear from, and I think Kerry would benefit from sharing his podium with them. We should hear from military and intelligence people about how the Bushevics ignored the best advice from their institutions and what it has cost us. Kerry should propose structural changes that restore the constitional role of Congress by giving it a more direct, independent relationship with the Pentagon, the State Department, and the intelligence agencies.

The simple fact today is that the executive branch of our government is too big, too powerful, and entrusted with too much responsibility to be under the control of the White House.

Especially a White House that can be occupied without the benefit of having won an election. Kerry never mentions what happened in Florida in 2000. This is a mistake, if only because it could so easily happen again. All institutions in a democracy ultimately derive their legitimacy from the integrity of the vote, and in case you don't read the newspapers that integrity has never looked shakier. Easily hacked electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail and are utterly 'recount-proof' have been peddled agressively all over America by companies like Diebold, a major Bush campaign contributor.

There's an MIT professor who's so good at talking about this, he gives me nightmares. He's also, however, very confident that there are practical methods for securing the integrity of the vote in future elections. Kerry should let him speak and pledge to implement the steps he recommends.

The sanctity of the vote is the closest thing to a national religion America or any free country can have, and John Kerry ought to invoke it with gravity and as much passion as his New England temperment permits him.

This is the first in a series of loosely structured but deeply considered essays I will post here on the topic of what John Kerry should do. More soon. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2256728/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2256728/ Mon, 19 Apr 2004 15:00:34 PDT
We need to empower those people.

The first step is trust, not in institutions, but in the potential of human beings to seek to know and do what is right.

When one is trusting, of course, one gets hurt.

The trick is learning to protect yourself without demonizing other people.

Some people find that almost impossible.

They're like moral Flintstones, they can't defend themselves without resorting to 'me good, you bad'.

The best protection of all, i think, is a strong, universal regard for human dignity, beginning with our own. We reject actions which violate the dignity of human life, whether they are aimed at us or at someone else.

That is a principle that if we uphold it consistently will confer great benefits on all our lives.

There are other such principles. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," a motto attributed to Karl Marx, is in itself not a Marxist doctrine but a simple application of common sense. The great debate between economic systems is not a debate about this principle, which all sides of the question at least formally embrace, but the best way to realize it.

If we see our society underfunding education, neglecting at its peril the cultivation of a whole generation's potential, and we stand for that, what are we?

If we see tens of millions of American children in poverty, deprived even of adequate nutrition, and we look the other way, what are we?

If we see coal-burning power-plants spewing mercury into the sky, that comes back to us in the form of toxic seafood, and causes neurological defects in 60,000 newborn children every year, and we say 'tough luck, kids', what are we?

The really decisive question is not whether we, the people, can summon up the power to change these things. The question is whether "we, the people" even exist. That question can only be answered with deeds. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2222295/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2222295/ Wed, 14 Apr 2004 13:23:53 PDT
If we are not too literal about it we can imagine that heaven represents the highest, most expansive way of being we can imagine, while hell embodies the lowest, least human depths to which we might descend.

The landscape of life consists of mountains, plains and valleys. The mountains embody the pull of heaven on this earth, the valleys reveal the pull of hell, and the plains are places where these two forces are in a kind of stasis.

These heights and depths exert their pull on all peoples and on each human being. When we aspire to our highest potential, the pull of heaven lifts us up, and we step lightly on this earth. When we succumb to our lowest impulses, the pull of hell drags us down and the ground we stand on sinks beneath our feet.

When enough people in the same time and place fall into this condition, their collective weight can cause the ground to give way beneath them, so that instead of sinking slowly they tumble all at once into hell.

These are only metaphors, but they allow us to consider the terrain of history in moral terms. As we cross that terrain, images like these provide a means of navigation, a 'moral compass' that makes it possible to ask where we are going and why.

America under the Bushevics has surrendered the better part of its shared aspirations and allowed itself to be governed almost exclusively by fear, suspicion and mistrust. If the ground has not yet collapsed beneath us, it is only because our people, collectively, have yet to commit their wills to this rapid march to hell. This is what makes the election in November so critical.

The Bushevics were never elected. This is why responsible people try to avoid describing them in ordinary legal terms as 'the administration,' or 'the current leadership.' They are in actual fact nothing of the kind. But in 7 and 1/2 months, they have an opportunity to change that.

We can tell the Bushevics to go to hell, or we can sign on to follow them there. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2216953/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2216953/ Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:21:15 PDT "...it became quickly apparent, particularly in the area that I was focusing on, which was the repressive if not obsessive secrecy -- that it was policy. They knew exactly what they were doing. They wouldn’t want to hear or entertain any warnings or alerts from anybody who might see what they’re doing as not the wisest course to take."

John Dean, Author, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush."


When I came across Dean's comment in an interview today, I was struck by the subtlety of his argument. Secrecy, Dean is saying, is not only about keeping information in, it is also about keeping information out. "If we tell them what we're doing, they'll only try to tell us why we shouldn't be doing it."

I don't doubt that it's true. Like all wannabe-totalitarians, the Bushevics equate power with a one-way conversation. If you're listening, if you're allowing a conversation to take place, you've already lost your advantage.

Also, many of the Bushevics are probably at least mildly troubled by the moral implications of their actions. Concealing those actions from the public becomes a matter of hiding from their own shame.

The great political thinker Hannah Arendt, who knew quite a lot about totalitarianism, chose as her motto the simple statement:

"Human beings must think what they are doing."

Bushevism inverts that statement. Where power and its exercise are at stake, human beings must forgo thinking altogether.

That is actually the Bushevic theory. They believe that we live in a world where the only choices left to us are morally unthinkable. It follows logically that the ones who will make the choices, the only ones who possibly can, are the ones who are least troubled by the need for moral justification.

The Bushevics love to talk about evil. You hear it now all the time, often in the most awkward, unnatural sentence constructions, as if they all had a tic that compelled them to blurt out "evil!" at 20 second intervals.

A former FBI director testifying before the 9-11 commission today at one point ranted maniacally about 'evil chemistry', presumably an updated form of black magic.

"Evil!"

A Bushevic is like a talking doll - squeeze its belly and it tells you in no uncertain terms who and what you're dealing with:

"Evil!"

The business of America is business, but the business of its government is:

"Evil!"

Tonight's broadcast was sponsored by:

"Evil!"

Sorry. I needed a little comic relief. From, you know, "Evil!"

Which brings me back to Hannah Arendt, a Jewish philosopher who barely escaped Nazi Germany with her life.

Hannah attended the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann, and what she saw there led her to write of "The Banality of Evil." Her point, really, was that evil hides like Oz behind a grand facade when in reality it is really only a deficit, a failure of the qualities which make us human.

Eichmann supervised the mass-production of Jewish corpses, personally signed off on the murder of more than million human beings. What shocked many at his trial was the revelation of Eichmann as a perfectly ordinary bureaucrat, rather than the deranged, rabid antisemite that his actions had led them to expect. What stood out was not Eichmann's malice but the ease with which he simply ceased to think and feel when it was no longer convenient to do so.

In reading the transcripts from Eichmann's trial, Arendt confessed, she often found herself laughing outloud, helpless against the sheer smallness of the man, juxtaposed absurdly against the magnitude of his crimes.

The secrecy of the Bushevics betrays a fear of being laughed at in exactly this way.

I think very few people realize how extreme the secrecy of this administration really is. It is not just a matter of keeping the people and the media misinformed, whole sweeping blocks of the government have also been effectively shut out.

The flow of information to the President has been subject to especially careful control. This might be the first White House to make 'plausible deniability' job one.

To sum up:

"Evil!" ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2209459/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2209459/ Mon, 12 Apr 2004 17:58:52 PDT
November is 7 and 1/2 months away. We need to pressure Congress to reassert its constitutional duties now. That in itself would represent a kind of regime change, and one that is long overdue.

Yes, its a Republican controlled Congress. No, that doesn't mean that nothing can be done.

Many Republicans know that something is going fatally wrong in the middle-east. They know that the bloody US occupation of Iraq is mass-producing anti-American jihadist groups, who will bear fierce grudges and seek equally fierce revenge on Americans for years, perhaps decades, to come.

Are there really no Republican senators or congressmen who care enough for their country to save it from these mad policies? Are we sure of that?

I am not suggesting that Congress move to impeach the President - though I believe that is more than warranted.

I am suggesting that the Congress reassert its constitutional responsibilities and at the very least 'clarify' its prior authorization of military force in Iraq. After all, Congress authorized the use of force to defeat a threat that was never there in the first place. Are the military operations that continue in Iraq in any remote sense compatible with the purposes Congress had in mind when it authorized the war? No, they are not.

Paul Bremer, the US Administrator of Iraq, needs to be fired. Now. Rather a lot of this whole recent cycle of violence could have been avoided had Bremer not chosen to close Sadr's Iraqi newspaper, an act wildly at odds with the US' stated goal of 'building democracy'.

Bremer's handling of this matter has been condemned by virtually every outside observer of the occupation, including several retired US military and diplomatic personnel familiar with conditions in Iraq. It is of a piece with an approach to security that creates far more enemies than it deters, and a near total lack of interest in providing Iraqis with meaningful assistance in the rebuilding of their country.

Congress should also take action to correct the gross nepotism that has marked US management of Iraqi reconstruction funds. Measures can and must be taken to assure that more of those funds are used to employ, assist and empower Iraqis themselves.

A new Administrator, with a much clearer charter from Congress, might be able to make a credible case to Iraqis that America is learning from its mistakes and capable of responding to the language of reason and justice - an impression we have done nearly nothing to create, more than a year after toppling Saddam's government.

British military officers have been telling the world press that the US is inflicting indiscriminate, disprortionate violence on Iraqis, that our forces regard Iraqis as subhuman and value their lives cheaply if at all.

The British are our chief ally in Iraq, and today that is how their officers describe American conduct in Iraq. How in God's name do you think it looks to the Iraqi's? Or, for that matter, the Syrians or Iranians, whose countries are next on the neocon hit list? Or to Palestinians, who see in our occupation the mirror image of their own protracted suffering?

If Bin Laden were running America's foreign policy today, he wouldn't change a thing. That ugly fact is what Republicans in Congress need to face. To let this nightmare continue unchallenged is tantamount to treason. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2208111/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2208111/ Mon, 12 Apr 2004 14:41:24 PDT
"There's just one thing Congress lacks in order to pursue the public interest: a public whose interest it is."

My friends on the left will sigh at this point and remind me of the many ways in which Americans have been disempowered, reduced to passive spectators of a political process that offers them no meaningful role.

Of course my friends disprove their own rule, being very far from passive spectators themselves. The fact is that some of us take a very active approach to our duties as citizens. We may be discouraged by our chances of effecting real change but we do not allow discouragement to turn into paralysis.

I suspect that we simply have lower pain thresholds. Apathy means literally 'without feeling', and is always a matter of degree (only a corpse could be purely apathetic). One can see it as a protective mechanism, a way of securing the psyche from the endless barrage of disturbing information we are all now subject to. We deaden our nerves, we learn not to react.

Apathy, however, has limits. If tomorrow your government announced a week of public hearings on the question of whether you and all your friends should be executed, you'd snap right out of it.

The limits of apathy shift over time and vary from person to person - they are not fixed or reliable. Nazi Germany continues to be the definitive statement on just how far apathy, and the violence required to shatter it, can go.

If we in the US aren't going to end up claiming that shame for ourselves, each of us must ask himself: what will it take for me to act? ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2206491/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2206491/ Mon, 12 Apr 2004 11:28:24 PDT
"The U.S. military, battling Sunni Muslim insurgents west of Baghdad and Shi'ite militants to the south, holds almost daily briefings and issues statements from offices in Baghdad.

But gaps between statements read from the briefing room podium and information coming from the ground has widened in recent weeks. Many queries to the army press office remain unanswered, and official reports sometimes emerge days after an event.

Deflecting questions about civilian casualties, the army's chief Iraq spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, has described the Falluja operation as "tremendously precise, tremendously circumspect and well within the rules of engagement."

The few independent pictures that have come out of the besieged city of 300,000 would suggest otherwise. Reuters footage that took a day to make it from Falluja to Baghdad showed dead children and old men and women lying wounded in packed makeshift clinics.

Hospital directors in Falluja estimate about 600 people have been killed in the past week, many of them civilians. More than 1,000 have been wounded. Doctors say ambulances have been shot at. Residents say airstrikes have killed families.

He (Brig. Gen. Kimmit) told a news conference Sunday that news outlets that said American forces were responsible for large numbers of civilian casualties should simply be ignored.

"On the images of American and coalition forces killing innocent civilians, my advice to you is change the channel. ... The stations that are showing Americans killing women and children are not legitimate channels," he said.

You can read the full Reuters report here: [link]

Today's Guardian discussed the same US effort to stand facts on their head:

As a tense ceasefire held in the turbulent city west of Baghdad and an international hostage crisis persisted across Iraq, the US marine commander in charge of the siege of Falluja claimed 95% of those killed were legitimate targets.

Yesterday, the director of the town's general hospital, Rafie al-Issawi, said the vast majority of the dead were women, children and the elderly.

But when asked about the victims numbers, US marine Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne said: "What I think you will find is 95% of those were military age males that were killed in the fighting. The marines are trained to be precise in their firepower ... The fact that there are 600 goes back to the fact that the marines are very good at what they do," he said. ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2199548/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2199548/ Sun, 11 Apr 2004 12:19:59 PDT
Senior British commanders have condemned American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate.

One senior Army officer told The Telegraph that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of "unease and frustration" among the British high command.

The officer, who agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for "sub-humans".

Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful."

If this is how the British, America's only major ally in the occupation, characterize the behavior of US forces, how the hell do you think the Iraqi's see it?

You can read the full article here: [link] ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2192948/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2192948/ Sat, 10 Apr 2004 13:14:50 PDT
Consider the lead-up to the war. All over the world, news outlets reported and people understood that the 9-11 attacks were the work of Bin Ladin terrorists, and had nothing to do with Iraq. Yet in polls most Americans claimed that Iraq had attacked the US, and no one monitoring US news coverage at that time could be very much surprised.

Similarly, outside the U.S. it was widely understood that Iraq no longer posed a military threat to anyone, yet within the US Iraq stood unchallenged for title of "the world's most dangerous regime."

UN Inspectors made it clear that Iraq had effectively disarmed, that any discrepancies in accounting for old arsenals were of marginal consequence, that the country had neither stockpiles of WMDs nor active efforts to produce or acquire them.

Again, most of the world accepted these reports. Only in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Britain, were unproven assertions about 'hidden stockpiles' allowed to stand substitute for known facts.

The reality-gap on those earlier issues has been closing, slowly, as a somewhat emboldened press in the US begins to let the light back in. However, when it comes to the occupation, our ongoing military operations, and their effects, the reality gap continues to be huge and deadly.

I want you to read this article about how things are in Iraq under the occupation. The author is an Iraqi woman, a novelist who was a political prisoner under Saddam. This is the kind of person that Americans might expect to be supportive of her country's 'liberators.' Hearing what she has to say may help Americans cross the reality gap that claims more of our young soldier's lives every day.

[link] ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2175082/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2175082/ Wed, 07 Apr 2004 20:58:28 PDT Mood: Can We Talk?

In their volume and magnitude, the crimes of this administration are truly without precedent.

That is not just my opinion. You might consult John Dean's new book, "Worse Than Watergate."

Dean was a member of the Nixon White House, whose courageously candid testimony helped expose the Watergate scandal. He says the Bush Cartel makes Nixon and his crew look like rank amateurs. Dean points out that secrecy and disinformation are standard operating procedure under Bush, not just on defense-related questions but on domestic policy as well. Witholding or misrepresenting the key facts about major policy decisions is business as usual for the Bushevicks.

This wholesale approach to Presidential wrong-doing has the effect of quickly overwhelming anyone who tries to come to grips with it. The Bush Cartel has launched so many assaults on the public interest, compromised so many public institutions, that the mind is left reeling. It is like a quicksand pit that grows larger and larger until there is hardly any solid ground left to stand on.

We have to hold each other up against this deluge. We have to lean in together and support each other's efforts to register and respond to these outrages.

We also need to be as clear and honest with each other as we can, about what we believe in.

I am not a Republican or a Democrat, a Capitalist or a Communist, or any of those other 'capital' things. I am a human being who believes that human beings can and should do better by one another.

'We are human beings first. Human freedom and dignity are our highest priorities.' If that describes you, than I am a member of your party.

If I had to have a label, I would say I am a Humanist. But I see no reason to capitalize it. Human beings, individually and collectively, should strive to act in the best interest of human beings, individually and collectively. This is not rocket science.

I believe that democratic societies cannot tolerate entrenched social inequality. I maintain that we need something like an economic bill of rights. That makes me 'left-wing.' I also believe that the best way to correct inequality is to set federal standards and allow states to devise their own ways of meeting them. The states themselves should decide when a particular program or policy needs to be implemented at the federal level. That makes me 'right-wing'.

The left/right model of politics has never made much sense, but today it makes no sense at all.

In broad strokes, a leftist is someone who distrusts big-business and a rightist is someone who distrusts big-government. How on earth can any intelligent person construe this as an 'either-or' proposition? Clearly, concentrations of power are dangerous in both cases, and in actual practice the two reinforce each other far more than they come into opposition.

There are people who are 'moderate' in a very dysfunctional sense, whose stance in the 'middle of the road' is an invitation to being run over, who fundamentally prefer life in a world where all the big questions are decided by a handful of people and everyone else passively complies with their edicts.

There are other people, and I am one of them, who regard big-government and big-business with equal skepticism and prefer a world in which decisions are made horizontally, with the participation of those whose lives they will effect, rather than vertically.

Let me give you a concrete example. If I were President, I would push for a federal law that identifies healthcare as a right and asks each state government to make its own assessment about the best way to make enjoyment of that right a reality. Each state would have 1 year to report. Some states may decide that with adequate federal funding they can do a better job of providing universal health care than the federal government. Funding would be provided and those states would be ordered to proceed. States that prefer a federal program would be pooled together and enrolled in a federally managed single-payer system.

Approaching the question along these lines would neutralize most of the partisan rhetoric on both sides and make the larger proposition, of assuring health care to everyone, politically almost impossible to oppose.

The parties do not think of these things. You could shorten that sentence to 'the parties do not think' without doing much violence to reality.

I know a lot of people who call themselves conservative, who voted for Bush in the last election, who are every bit as apalled by his conduct... ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2151619/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2151619/ Sun, 04 Apr 2004 15:31:58 PDT Mood: Surprisingly Chipper

If I get my health back, I am running for Congress. I promise.

In the part of America where I live, a guy like me could actually win.

Plus I'm tall, I shave my head, and in person I look and often sound as if I know what I'm talking about.

I think I could take on Diane Feinstein for her Senate seat. No one actually likes Diane. She's a cold, aloof, uber-wealthy pseudo-liberal with bad hair. Also, she's boring.

California doesn't like to be bored. Gray Davis, our previous governor, was a real bore, so we recalled him and put Arnold Shwarzenegger in his place. Arnie is not boring. Also, Arnie has a certain amount of personal warmth - hell, compared to Diane, he's positively huggable.

I'm a relaxed, friendly guy. Even Arnie looks stiff and constipated compared to me. But I'm also tough. I don't pull punches. Lying liars like Diane make me ballistic, they unleash some deep, primal instinct to kick ass. If I run for Diane's Senate seat, I promise to use the words 'lie', 'liar', and 'lying' liberally.

I know what you're thinking. Diane's a Democrat. I should make nice. Hooey.

I'm a 'small d' democrat and Diane isn't. In a 1-on-1 debate it would take me about 5 minutes to make that abundantly clear to everyone.

Really, I could do it in 5 minutes. I promise.

Of course, someone will bring up the fact that I'm queer and try to make that an issue. You know they will. I plan on sticking to one simple, to-the-point reply:

"We are facing huge, planet-wide threats like pollution and global warming, war in the middle-east, nuclear weapons proliferation, a worldwide AIDS epidemic, and international terrorism and the most important thing you can think of to talk about is who I choose to diddle in my spare time?"

You can say 'diddle' on television without being bleeped.

You can also say 'evil, lying crypto-Nazi bastard' - I wonder why no one ever does? If elected to the Senate, I will break this unnatural silence.

I promise.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2146035/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2146035/ Sat, 03 Apr 2004 18:27:32 PST Mood: Surprisingly Chipper

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Paulscha:

Welcome back to 'Blow It Out Your Ass, You Nazi Creep.' My guest tonight is Donald Rumsfeld. Don, how the hell are ya?

Rumsfeld:

I think you know I'm not going to be able to comment on that. *winks*

Paulscha:

Well, then. Let's move on. Here's a question that a lot of us have been asking ourselves, maybe you can help us out, Don. I think we're all really wondering, when June 30th comes around, will the President be donning the codpiece and jumpsuit again?

Rumsfeld:

Well, you know, Paulscha, I don't even know what's going to happen tomorrow. So I certainly can't comment on that.

Paulscha:

I can sure understand that, Don. No worries. Let's talk about the past. In fact, let's just limit ourselves to talking about the fully declassified, 'on the record' version of the past.

5 days before 9-11, you went before Congress and said 'hell no, you can't have $600 million of our Missile Defense budget for counterterrorism." That's in the Congressional Record, Don. So its definitely not a state secret.

I think the question that comes to mind is, "what the fuck were you smoking, man?!"

Rumsfeld:

Well, respectfully, Paulscha, it's not WHAT we're smoking but WHO we're smoking that matters. If you get my meaning.

Paulscha:

I think we all do, Don. Although - well, maybe you can help us understand this one. I just read that we've lost far more soldiers in Iraq after President Bush declared victory than before. I'm wondering if you can tell us when, if ever, you expect this war to be over.

Rumsfeld:

You mean, the war on terror?

Paulscha:

No, Don, the other war, the war that has nothing to do with 9-11, the war on Iraq. When will that one be over, do ya think?

Rumsfeld:

Well, sure, we have these pockets of terrorists to clean out...but I wouldn't say...I don't think it's actually been proven...and, we really can't ever know these things, I think everyone acknowledges that...so its speculative, all of it, in this case, and really in most cases...I think that's clear.

Paulscha:

Yup. Doesn't get any clearer than that, Don. It's been a pleasure, as always, but I'm afraid we're out of time.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2139533/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2139533/ Fri, 02 Apr 2004 19:24:17 PST Mood: Formidable

If you take citizenship seriously, you of necessity become a political actor, rather than a spectator.

You are forced to develop a strategy for acting on your convictions.

It is then, at that precise juncture, that you absolutely require a 'theory', a framework of reasoned assumptions about what you and the people you are hoping to influence have to do with each other.

Many people are impatient with political theory. Action, action, we want action. Don't just stand there, do something.

That is often good advice, but so too is the reverse: Don't just do something, stand there.

It is no mean trick to be sure of where we stand on a question. But until we've made solid contact with that ground we cannot really act. Our perspectives need to be tested. We need to enter into them consciously, and consider where they lead, their logical extensions and conclusions. Above all, we need to try to move outside them, to see how things look from the perspectives of others.

Hannah Arendt, the great 20th century political theorist, said simply, "Human beings must think what they are doing."

Political views need to be tested not just in the mind but in the heart. In politics, one must not say a thing is true unless one is ready to live as though it were true.

Many people, for example, when they talk about 'the poor' imply that poverty is a personal problem, arising from private failings, and deserving of no public relief. They assert the principle that person must accept his place in life as his due, no matter how untenable it may be.

Such people rarely see their own failings or those of their friends in that same austere light. If they get in trouble, they expect to be helped out of it. They are, in other words, in no sense prepared to live by the principle they invoke on behalf those whose fortunes are, for the moment, less lucky than their own.

Even if their principle were 'true' in some abstract sense it is false the moment they utter it.

The President's doctrine of 'preemptive war' is a great example of this kind of double-think.

If someone justifies bombing our friends and neighbors by saying: "if we don't, it's possible that your country will harm us in the future," are we persuaded that they acted in the right?

It is by the same token a matter of simple integrity, if we say some military goal is worth the loss of human life, that we be prepared to sacrifice our own lives or those near and dear to us to achieve it.

Exactly one of the hundreds of senators and representatives who voted to authorize the war on Iraq have a son or daughter in military service.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2130879/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2130879/ Thu, 01 Apr 2004 15:51:11 PST Mood: Indignant

A crock of shit is a crock of shit, no matter how many people pretend it's a pot of honey. The Bush Administration has been a crock of shit from day one, from the Florida election fraud that history will view as 'ground zero' in an unprecedented attack on American democracy.

That was the time for patriots to act, and let's face it, we were asleep at the switch, we mounted no defense, we simply watched in stunned disbelief as a band of quasi-fascist thugs seized offices to which they had not been elected.

The Bush regime would later alienate most of our allies by asserting it did not need the authorization of the UN Security Council and or any other legal foundation for its 'pre-emptive' invasion of Iraq.

Do you see the continuity here? How could anyone be surprised that a regime that dispensed with "consent of the governed" at home would feel free to flout international law?

Let's talk about pre-emptive attacks. The electoral fraud in Florida was planned well in advance. Months before the election Jeb Bush and Kathleen Harris* hired a GOP contractor to purge Florida's voter roles of convicted felons. This private contractor performed their task so dutifully that thousands of people with NO criminal record - a disproportionate number of them African-Americans and registered democrats - were 'inadvertently' removed from the rolls.

Had those votes not been pre-empted, instead of losing Florida by hundreds of votes Gore would have won by thousands. To make no mention of butterfly ballots, hanging chads, overvotes, and other Florida ballot-exotica.

For those who watched it unfolding on cable news, the Florida vote even looked like an invasion. When precincts with large numbers of Democratic voters attempted recounts, hordes of GOP lawyers and congressmen, including Tom Delay, descended on them. They brought the process to a crawl by filing bogus legal motions and rounding up angry Republican mobs to surround precinct offices.

It looked exactly like what it was - a putsch. Democracy sentenced to hang by the chads until dead.

A vote for Bush in 2004 is a vote to ratify an illegal occupation of the White House. So naturally we will be told that re-electing these goons is our patriotic duty. Day is Night, Wrong is Right, Slavery is Freedom.

*Florida Governor Jeb Bush is the's president's brother, Florida Sec. of State Kathleen Harris moonlighted as the president's state campaign manager.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2046751/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2046751/ Sat, 20 Mar 2004 00:36:02 PST Mood: time to flush

I don't know how you define terrorism. I'm not sure it is a word that lends itself to neat definitions. Still, I think the word has certain unmistakeable connations. If I'm trying to decide if something is 'terrorism' I'll ask questions like:

Are the victims people who have little if anything to do with the actual grievances of the terrorist? Were they chosen, not because of who they are but because they were vulnerable, easy targets?

Is part of the purpose of the act to set in motion a cycle of escalating hostility and suspicion, to generate reactions that then provide the terrorists with justification for further outrages?

Does the party responsible get around the obvious moral objections to its actions by framing them as unfortunate necessities dictated by a need to defeat 'absolute evil'?

The Bush regime's war on Iraq fits these criteria perfectly.

We attacked a nation that both the CIA and the FBI said at the time had nothing whatseover to do with 9-11. We fired depleted uranium shells and dropped cluster bombs on people who had not fired so much as a slingshot at us.

Though the Bushites now justify the war as part of an effort to bring democracy to Iraq, what we have really done is bring that country to the brink of civil war. Iraq was not a mecca of terrorism before the war. It is now. Bin Laden could not be happier. A secular regime in Iraq that he hated has been eliminated. The US occupation of that country is a daily affront to arabs everywhere and by far the most potent recruiting tool for a whole slew of terrorist groups.

The Bushites allow themselves to be critized for being bumblers, guilty of shoddy planning, who failed to anticipate the problems of occupation. I don't buy it. They knew perfectly well what would happen. They counted on it.

Jay Garner, the General who was originally put in charge of the US occupation, was relieved of that post because he believed that early, free elections were a good idea and privatizing the Iraqi economy, with no legal authority to do that, was a bad idea. General Garner thought we should act as liberators, not thieves.

The Bush people disagreed, and put in his place Paul Bremer, who issued the notorious "Order 39" allowing 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses and immediate, unlimited expatriation of profits from those businesses to their foreign owners. Several state industries were privatized and immediately laid off thousands of Iraqi workers. The unemployement rate in the country is now about 70%.

Meanwhile, our approach to providing 'security ' in Iraq has so far consisted mostly of house to house searches for 'rebels' conducted in the middle of the night, destruction of people's homes as a punishment for being 'associated' with insurgents by family tie or friendship, filling Saddam's old prison with Iraqis who have not been charged with any crime, and depriving them of counsel and visitation (even Saddam let his prisonsers have weekly visitors) like the prisoners at Guantanamo.

We have, in short, gone out of our way to commit outrages that go beyond and compound the outrage of the war itself. We are in Iraq not as peacemakers but as agent provacateurs, fanning the fires of terror to insure that the 'war on terrorism' never runs out of enemies. This is not the fault of the enlisted men and women who carry out their orders, but that crew of draft-dodging, neo-con desk warriors who write the orders, half a world away, sitting in air-conditioned rooms.

Attacking people who pose no threat to you. Doing it in a way that assures reprisals and initiates new cycles of violence and mutual suspicion. All the while casting these crimes as a kind of holy duty, and branding all who question them as heretics, appeasers, wimps, people in league with the devil.

What's the difference between Al-Quaeda and the Bush Administration? For the likes of Bin Laden, terrorism is still more or less a cottage industry, whereas the Bush regime, commanding the resources of the richest and most heavily armed nation on earth, is engaged in nothing less than the mass-production of terror.

Today Colin Powell announced that in return for its fabulous cooperation with US foreign policy Pakistan is being promoted to a special, privileged status as one of our key Middle East partners. Pakistan, unlike Iraq, actually has nuclear weapons, and has admitted to all the world that it shared nucelar weapons technology with Iran, Libya and North Korea. But Pakistan has other distinctions, besides being the world's leading nuclear... ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2033507/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2033507/ Wed, 17 Mar 2004 21:27:06 PST Mood: *rolls eyes*

Someone wasn't sure about something I'd written regarding current events, so I wrote back with citations and the good fellow said, "that's what I really wanted, was for you to cite your sources. Didn't mean to insult you, so please don't interpret it that way."

I wasn't insulted, and wanted to write a little note saying so, and in the process I ended up saying this:

No, no, I'm not insulted at all. I often have the urge to ask people to cite their sources. For example, if someone tells me that 'most people just don't care, so nothing can be done' I ALWAYS want to ask, "and how, exactly, do you know what all those people do and don't care about?"

Provided with abundant evidence of intentional wrong-doing by public officials, Americans equivocate.

Yet with no evidence at all of what their neighbors are thinking or feeling, Americans rush to declare each other politically and morally comatose.

So you end up with a bunch of people who are too timid to speak bluntly about what their government is doing, in no small part because they doubt whether there is anyone there among our citizens to back them up.

I believe that we need to reverse these tendencies.

We give our politicians entirely too much credit, until it becomes inevitable that they will spend it on something that discredits both us and them.

We regard each other with unwarranted suspicion and cynicism, and so like prisoners who outnumber their guards we end up trapped behind bars of our own making, lacking not a way out but the trust and cooperation it would take for us to make our escape.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2029954/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2029954/ Wed, 17 Mar 2004 12:11:37 PST Mood: *rolls eyes*

Here a Coup, There a Coup, Everywhere a Coup-Coup

In my last journal essay, [link] , I talked about the Pentagon office created by Donald Rumsfeld to pump out phony ‘intelligence’ on Iraq, the now-infamous Office of Special Plans (OSP). The OSP was necessary because too many intelligence analysts in the CIA, the State Department, and the Pentagon were actually doing their jobs and accurately reporting that Iraq was no threat and had no role in the attacks of September 11.

This is government by coup d’etat. It is by definition illegal, because its whole purpose is to circumvent the people, procedures and institutions who are charged under our nation’s laws with determining policy. Yet the OSP is only of one of many such coups carried out by the Bush regime.

Another example was reported just yesterday by the Los Angeles Times:

“Political appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency bypassed agency professional staff and a federal advisory panel last year to craft a rule on mercury emissions preferred by the industry and the White House, several longtime EPA officials say.”

“The EPA staffers say they were told not to undertake the normal scientific and economic studies called for under a standing executive order. At the same time, the proposal to regulate mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants was written using key language provided by utility lobbyists.”

The article quotes many environmental regulators who say they have never seen the rules they work under usurped so brazenly, and it is worth noting that many of these outraged officials are Republicans.

To anyone familiar with the seriousness of the mercury issue, their anger is not hard to understand. According to the Times, “In 2000, a National Research Council study commissioned by Congress estimated that each year about 60,000 children born in the United States could have neurological problems because they were exposed to mercury before birth. ”

On the basis of this and similar studies, in one of its final acts the Clinton Administration issued an order “under the Clean Air Act would have mandated reducing the amount produced by coal-fired power plants by as much as 90%, to about 5 tons annually by 2008.”

An advisory panel was created to draft new mecury emissions rules, and requested comparitive studies of different approaches from EPA researchers.

Then President Bush appointed “Jeffrey R. Holmstead, a lawyer who represented industry interests on air pollution issues” to run the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. Holmstead blocked the EPA studies, ending the work of the advisory panel and substituting a much weaker rule that caps mercury emissions at a level almost 7 times higher, at 34 tons annually, in 2010.

So if EPA analysts and advisory panel members didn’t get to write the new rule, who did?

According to the Times, “the administration's proposed mercury rule, published in the Federal Register in December, contains numerous paragraphs of verbatim language supplied by two separate industry advocates.”

These are not isolated incidents of wrong-doing. Rather, they define the standard operating procedure of a regime that arrived in power by circumventing the electoral process, and has continued ever since on a course that moves over, under and around the constitutional limits on its authority.

We need regime change, alright.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2016202/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2016202/ Mon, 15 Mar 2004 09:28:30 PST Mood: *rolls eyes*

Yesterday on Face the Nation, CBS reporters Bob Schieffer and Tom Friedman interviewed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

During the interview, Shieffer asked Secretary Rumsfeld,

"If they (Iraq) did not have these weapons of mass destruction, though, granted that all this is true, why then did they pose an immediate threat to us, to this country?"

Secretary Rumsfeld replies,

"Well, you're the--you and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase 'immediate threat.' I didn't. The president didn't. And its become kind of folklore that that's--that's what's happened."

Tom Friedman responds by reading verbatim from one of Secretary Rumsfeld speeches leading up to the invasion of Iraq:

"No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."

Caught in an open lie about his history of lying, Secretary Rumsfeld deftly replies:

"Mm-hmm. It--my view of--of the situation was that he--he had--we--we believe, the best intelligence that we had and other countries had and that--that we believed and we still do not know--we will know."

---------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------

Back in January, White House Spokesman Scott McClellan had made the same claim at a press conference, angrily insisting

"Some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'.Those were not words we used."

The previous February, just a month before the invasion, McClellan told reporters "This is about imminent threat."

---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- --

So we have this whole chorus now of Administration liars lying about having lied.

In his famous speech making the case for war on Iraq at the UN, Colin Powell used up whatever credibility he had left by trotting out a whole series of lies.

Iraq was attempting purchase nuclear materials from Nigeria (according to documents the CIA had already dismissed as transparent forgeries). The U.S. government not only knew that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but knew where they were located (neither claim was true). Iraq had forged ties with Al Quaeda terrorists (the CIA rejected this claim at the time as unproven and unlikely - Al Quaeda's 'holy warriors' hated Iraq's secular government and everyone knew it).

Today the Bush adminstration blames these mistatements on 'bad intelligence', insisting they acting on the best information they had.

In February of 2001, however, there was more than enough 'good intelligence' for Secretary Powell to declare the containment of Sadaam a success:

"He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

No weapons of mass destruction. Not a threat to neighboring states, let alone the US. Powell knew it then, and he knew it when he went to the UN two years later claiming exactly the opposite.

---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- --

The Bush Administration did indeed rely on bad intelligence to support its case for invading Iraq. But they created that bad intelligence themselves, through a new Pentagon office created for exactly that purpose by Donald Rumsfeld, the 'Office of Special Plans'. Knowing the CIA would never provide them with the justifications they needed, the president's men went to work compiling their own 'intelligence'.

This 'intelligence' consisted almost exclusively of statements by Iraqi expatriots, members of a political organization headed by a Mr. Chalabi, who was led to believe that he would be installed as Iraq's new leader once Sadaam was removed.

The CIA had no use for Chalabi, who had fled Iraq with his families weath in 1958, been convicted of bank fraud in Jordan in 1992 and sentenced in absentia to 22 years of hard labor. They attached no credibility to Mr. Chalabi's statements or those of his cronies.

Secretary Rumsfeld's OSP, however, had no such reservations and reported the exiles claims as 'hard evidence'. Though stamped 'Classified' they were leaked by the administration to the press on a regular basis. The CIA's refutations of the claims, also classified, were not.

A number of CIA official... ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2007051/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/2007051/ Sat, 13 Mar 2004 20:46:11 PST Mood: I can think!

Politicians are not journalists or historians, tasked only with speaking 'after the fact'. Their words double as actions, are transformed into deeds. What is said determines what is done.

Different people draw different conclusions from this distinction.

When words acquire the power to affect reality, do they become mere means to an end, so that a politician can be expected to say virtually anything if it serves his purposes? Many would say yes.

I do not agree.

Yes, political speech affects the world in profound ways. For that very reason, it demands a certain gravity, a stubborn determination to remain grounded in consensual facts and faithful to what we know in our hearts to be true.

The fact that our politicians lie constantly is not a statement about the inherent duplicity of politics. It is a statement about the wretched political state that we occupy here and now, a kind of all-time low in modern world's pursuit of democracy.

It is the duty of politicians to do what they say. It is the duty of the press to say what was done. In both cases, the standard is a congruence of word and deed, speech and action.

Yet today most us quietly accept that politicians will not do what they tell us and the press will not tell us what they do.

This is not 'the nature of reality'. This is a crisis of the highest order, that threatens our lives on so many levels at once that to blandly accept it is a kind of suicide.

The stakes are simply too high now.

I will not sit by and watch the systematic undoing of every forward-looking step modern human beings have taken.

Every past, a professor of mine used to say, is an alloy, a mix of base and noble metals. That is not a reason to treat human history as scrap, bending and twisting it into some new and unrecognizable form to suit the whims of the present.

But today in America we have a regime as determined to change the past as they are to control the future. The whole world fears this regime, because its ambitions are violently at odds with 'the nature of reality'. The past is by definition that which cannot be changed. The urge to control the future is today the main threat to the future itself.

I often worry that our society has forgotten the sacred obligations each generation of humanity bears to those who preceded and will come after it. We were given a world we never made, and for better or worse we will ourselves in turn bequeath a world that bears the stamp of what we did and did not do.

I will not utter mindless banalities or stretch out on a hammock of idle cynicsm. That is not who I am.

I enjoy watching The Simpons. I do not want to BE the Simpsons.

I am quite certain that no presidency in the history of the United States has produced as many lies, as willfully, or with more maleovelent purpose than the presidency of George W. Bush.

I am in the same measure determined that this president and his men be removed from their positions and made to answer for their crimes.

I want especially for the younger of you to know, that I am far from alone when I pledge to go after these crooks like a rabid rottwiler. If they're still there after the next election, it won't be because I didn't try.

There is unfortunately a tendency for mouths to become more active as souls enter into deep hibernation. Do not be tempted to despair if you hear a lot of heedless idiots waxing cynical about the world you are going to inherit. These tired old f**ks need the political equivalent of viagra, and the limpest d**k is invariably attached to the loudest mouth.

I'm telling you flat-out: there is an awakening of conscience going on in the world, and you should be glad of it. Rumors of the death of the human spirit do once again seem to have been exaggerated. Don't you despair. Don't even think of it. And if you can't help but think of it, email me and talk to me about it. Right now, the world needs you to entertain the possibility of hope. I will help you do that in any way I can.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1965909/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1965909/ Mon, 08 Mar 2004 19:52:03 PST Mood: Apalled

The President's men are making campaign commercials out of the carnage of September 11.

The only thing wrong with these ads is the text, which should read:

"I am George Bush, the commander-in-chief who did nothing to prevent nearly 3000 Americans from being murdered in a single day.

"2 1/2 years later, I remain unable or unwilling to account for this failure.

"Why were a long series of well-documented warnings from our own intelligence agencies and those of countries around the world ignored? Why were not one plane but three allowed to strike their targets? Why were so few fighter planes scrambled, so late? When American fighter jets finally took to the sky why did they move to intercept at a tiny fraction of their maximum speed? Someday Americans may have answers to those questions, but not from me or anyone who answers to me.

"Instead, I have used every means at my disposal to prevent such questions from being asked. To the loved ones of those who died on my watch, who continue to ask how such a thing could have happened, my answer is: 'none of your business.'

"I speak as one of you when I say that I have great faith in the moral cowardice of the American people. Most of us would much prefer to leave these troublesome questions behind. After all, haven't we moved on? Haven't we been busy?

"Didn't we launch an illegal and completely unjustified war on Iraq? Didn't we kill a whole lot of people, including (at least) 10,000 Iraqi civilians, and didn't we do it with a breathtaking disregard for world opinion, international law, and common decency?

"Didn't we multiply, almost exponentially, the numbers of those around the world who view our country as a mindless, souless machine of world domination? Didn't we make it clear to all sorts of people who might have hoped otherwise that America is beyond all appeals to reason and conscience, and speaks only the language of violence? Sure we did!

"So really, the choice is clear. We can fixate morbidly on unanswered questions about the tragedy used to justify all these bold steps, or we can march forward together, united in our complete lack of concern for what we are doing and why.

We have places to deface, and people to kill. We have a 'Project for a New American Century' to complete, and we must not allow ourselves to be detained. As for those who are not ready to join us - we must reserve the right to detain them indefinitely.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1960048/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1960048/ Fri, 05 Mar 2004 23:59:37 PST Mood: oops

Observe the photographer, sitting at his keyboard, staring blankly at the screen.

He is thinking that while all people have their moods, what he has lately are more like fits, arising out of nowhere in a kind of spontanteous combustion of the synapses.

Is it the migraines, breaking up the flow of his thoughts and feelings? Or is is his conscious life being 'crowded out' by the thick mental fog that claims more and more of his waking hours? So that when the clouds finally part, he is overwhelmed by having to think and feel too much at once?

Out of boredom, perhaps, he begins to mythologize this condition. He imagines himself as some obscure Himilayan guru, who alternates between long periods in deep trance and brief outbursts of giddy profundity. He imagines, and pities, the guru's poor disciples, waiting patiently for the vegetable matter before them to return to its human form and cough up some dazzling nugget of wisdom.

It occurs to him that one could easily imagine God in the image of that guru, sleeping through most of human history but rousing now and then (at the most suprising moments) to give humanity a good dose of what for.

The idea pleases him so much he takes a long piss to celebrate. Then, in the ineffable space between flushing and zipping, he looks up at the ceiling, gives it a good John Kerry-like squint, and says:

'I have 3 words for you. BRING IT ON."

With that last syllable - almost, but not quite, 'om' - things start to go sour.

He tumbles back into the living room and suddenly he is seeing with camera-like clarity, everything around him is coming into apalling focus.

Starting with the 'executive chair' that has become his usual perch - an absurdly overpriced piece of crap that were it electrified could give new meaning to the words 'cruel and unusual'.

His best friend, who has fits of his own, spent a frantic afternoon trying to rehabilitate the beastly thing, adding foam to the arms and seat and covering his handiwork with pieces of nylon fabric that cling loosely, like hair-nets.

If they made office furniture for homeless people, it might look like this.

Ah well. A little less dignity, a little more padding. That, surely, is par for the course.

He closes his eyes, lowers himself into the chair, and mutters his favorite prayer:

"May the next thing I see be too lovely to bear or too blurry to make out"

And the next thing he sees is...

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1933059/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1933059/ Mon, 01 Mar 2004 12:24:36 PST
Mood: Happily Wrecked

I was up till 4 chatting with the gorgeous, insanely talented ~Christiana and a clever, charming elfin boy known here on DA as ~4shades. These aussies with their ridiculous time zone! I love them to death.

Earlier yesterday I had a wonderful chat with *roninbearz, who shared an amazing poem with me. And got a sneak preview of a new piece by my gorgeous friend Dee, also known as ~shmeedia. She and I had some fun joking about founding our very own porn dynasty (well, I THINK we were joking).

The photographer who calls himself ~myny has been giving me 'happy-eyes' in a big way - if you haven't, go check out his gallery. You'll be oh-so-glad you did.

~joecoopdog writes me amazingly thoughtful comments and is the best thing to happen to flowers since Georgia O'Keefe. Go have a looksie at his gallery!

I woke up this morning and my bedroom was crowded with rotund New Zealanders thanking each other to death. Oscars flashbacks are the worst.

I love you all.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1923704/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1923704/ Sat, 28 Feb 2004 21:11:39 PST Mood: Stars and Stripes

A reform school for DA admins, staffed by 'Nuns of the Above', bike-riding holy-dykes who can give the Hells Angels a run for their money any day of the week. Think Mary Magdalene on a heavy-flow-day. Oh, Mary! Whip those bad boys into shape!

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1893732/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1893732/ Mon, 23 Feb 2004 13:23:59 PST Mood: Cowlike

In the last year, I have been seen by two DOs, two MDs, a neurologist, a neurosurgeon, and most recently a cardiologist.

As this list suggests, my body has been falling apart, with a list of symptoms that seems to grow at an accellerating rate. When lab tests ruled out HIV or Hepatitis C, doctors suggested various endocrine and autoimmune disorders as possible culprits.

To date, only Dr. Singh, my cardiologist, has ventured a diagnosis: Hypertension and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This Wednesday I will be consulting a new doctor, the Dean of Medicine for a major university, who has been reviewing my symptoms and lab results. We hope this may lead to a more complete diagnosis.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago my best friend Bob was diagnosed with cancer. He is now undergoing radiation and chemotherapy. Bob has been a constant companion in my year of bad health. He has been there for me in so many ways, helping with shopping, cooking, driving me to appointments, and above all keeping my spirits up with his stubborn good humor. Now it will be necessary for us to do that for each other, sort of the feeble leading the feeble, or what-have-you. It is a situation not without comic implications.

So it is in this context that I have been trying to decide how far to pursue changes I feel are badly needed for DA.

Well over a dozen people volunteered to serve on a review panel with me, to consider cases where work may have been deleted erroneously. Meanwhile, I have heard privately from some in DA's leadership and some of what I have heard is reassuring. Not definitive. Not public yet, so I can't tell you what I'm talking about. But encouraging in any case.

For the last two days, I have been wrestling with what to do next. My conclusion ends up being a very personal one:

Given the immediate demands on my time and attention, I can't hope to do anything like an adequate job of pursing real change on DA.

I've raised a bit of ruckus, and hosted on my page a fairly uninhibited dialogue about both the problems and the promise of this site. I don't regret that at all. But I think for now I have done all that I can do.

I have a hard time remembering how limited my energies are now. I still think like a healthy person, and am prone to overextending myself. Now though the thing that matters is giving back to my friend some little portion of the care and attention that he has lavished on me.

I'll post less photos for a while, I think. When I have the leisure for creative work, lately what I mostly want is to write.

If I individually thanked all the people who have offered their encouragement and support this last week or so, you'd wear out your mouse scrolling down. Thank you all so much.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1846573/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1846573/ Thu, 19 Feb 2004 23:57:15 PST NOTE 7:45AM, Tuesday - Today my best friend Bob starts chemo and radiation treatment for cancer. I'll be with him at the hospital most of the day, so if you need to get ahold of me try this evening. In the meantime, please keep Bob in your thoughts. Thanks!

Mood: devious

Update I'm pleased to say that well over a dozen people have now offered to participate in a review panel. I'd allowed two weeks to get to that point, but we managed it in 5 days.

So I want to clarify the proposition, for those who've volunteered and for everyone:

We will not review past cases, for as one of the admins points out, they've deleted a million and a half deviations, by hundreds of thousands of DA artists. We will only consider cases that occur on or after the day we announce the panel is open for business.

The admins laugh at even that prospect, saying that they are now deleting roughly 2,000 deviations a day.

I hear them, but I am not laughing. I suggest we deal with the sheer volume of these things as follows:

We will require that members file helpdesk requests and allow 24 hours for a response before referring their cases to us.

After 24 hours, whether they've gotten a response or not, they can submit their pieces to our panel for review, emailing them to me with an explanation of the category the deviation was posted in, and the verbatim text of any reply their helpdesk ticket received.

If, out of that 2,000 daily deletions we find ourselves faced with several hundred or more that seem to merit review, our job will be unmanageable. We will then report that fact to the community, provide a generous number of examples, and open a discussion of what those results mean for the state of this site. Who knows, if it comes to that maybe at least some of our admins will stop laughing and start paying attention.

My time is a little constrained, at the moment, but I will over the next few days be in contact with all of those who've expressed a willingness to serve on this panel, to confirm your interest and work out with you a process we can all feel good about.

Once we're ready to proceed, I will ask the many people who've expressed their support to help us spread the word. And to spread it in this spirit: this is a community, and if you feel that your work has been removed in an unfair, arbitrary manner that is not a concern only for you but for us as well.

It will be very important, in getting the word out, to put it in those terms. The admins who've commented in my journal have wanted to make the issue an attack on them. That is a measure of conceit. This is not about them, its about the art and artists who make up DA and the minimal level of respect they are due.

News You Can Use Courtesy of DA's Admins

You can view these remarks in full context in the journal comments.

Our first news item comes to us from admin alphakx, who brags:

"We've been presented with maybe 4 or so strong serious petitions throughout the years this site has operated and *NOT ONCE* has any petition whatsoever create any substantial change."

Hey guys, good going! Nobody ignores the express wishes of this community like you do! Keep up the great work!

Our 2nd news item is a set of statistics provided by admin syragon:

1 out of every 4 pieces posted to DA has been deleted by an admin, and 9 out of 10 artists have had work 'disappeared.' To date, this means that nearly a million and a half deviations have been 'disappeared.' The hectic pace of this process (2000 additional deviations are removed daily) makes close review impossible.

But, I objected, you say that you only step in and delete work when there is a gross abuse of the categories or the site. Surely you are not saying that 90% of DA's users are 'gross abusers'? Ah, but he is.

I will quote his response: "A majority of deviants on this site either:
1) Have become inactive or 2) Are very ignorant or 3) Ignore notices even if they become aware or 4) Abuse and neglect proper conduct."

If you're an artist on DA, there is a 90% chance that syragon is talking about YOU.

A contempt this broad and deep is hard to take in. Still not quite registering it, I made a final appeal:

"When you are doing this to 90% of your membership, when you are doing it to fully a quarter of their work, this is clearly no longer 'private admin business,' but an issue of the gravest concern to the entire community."

... ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1844242/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1844242/ Sat, 14 Feb 2004 12:25:34 PST Mood: You Tell Me

What is happening now on deviantART.com is a war beteween two fundamentally opposed cultures.

On the one side there is a community of artists that has grown steadily larger and more diverse, whose culture consists first and foremost in a continuing celebration of that diversity. The guiding principles of this culture are openness, creative expression, and mutual support.

On the other side there is an administration which has given itself entirely too much credit for DA's astonishing growth, developing in the process a collective ego even larger than the notorious collective rectum. This administration has grown not broader but more narrow, insular, and secretive. It has steeped itself in a culture of bureaucratic arrogance, 'disappearing' art and artists from the site with little or no explanation.

These two cultures cannot coexist indefinitely. One or the other must prevail.

Over the last few months, it has become clear to me that while the administration grows bolder in its arrogance daily, the artistic community that is the life and soul of deviantART.com is increasingly demoralized. Those who have given the most to the site are typically the most disenchanted. I cannot pretend not to see this. I cannot continue on as though nothing were wrong.

Those of you who know me well know that I am by nature optimistic, and a fighter. But I am also a single person, and one person cannot win this fight.

Countless numbers of you have told me that you've given up on changing this place for the better. You're tired, you're worn out, you've had it. No fight left in you. I completely understand. But I also know that there are things worth fighting for, even when one is tired and the odds of success are not promising. Is saving what we love best about DA one of those things? Your answers to that question matter to me. If enough of you say yes, I'll be back.

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1832524/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1832524/ Fri, 13 Feb 2004 20:15:48 PST Erotic gallery for being 'digitally edited'. The same admin who made this decision had no problem at all with THESE images, submitted within days of mine:

[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]
[link]

Mood: Pissed Off

It was annoying enough when I posted them and they disappeared into the collective rectum for hours or days at a time. Now 'You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet', which displayed on my page for days, has apparently been deleted.

I am SO not in the mood.

UPDATE

Here is the very UN-illuminating note I just received:

paulscha,

Your deviation, listed below, has been removed from deviantART due to a violation of our policies:

URL: [link]
Title: Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
Submitted: 2004-02-10 8:55:24 am

Your deviation was removed because deviantART does not tolerate deviations which are submitted in to a category, or section, for which they obviously do not belong.

deviantART enforces a zero tolerance policy in regards to violations of our submission policy and therefore will take the actions that we deem necessary on a case by case basis. There is a possibility that you will be banned from interactivity on deviantART therefore it is suggested that you visit your user page to see if this is in fact the case.

If you feel that you are receiving this in error, or have questions regarding it, then visit the deviantART Help Desk in order to submit an inquiry. It should be noted that replies to this note will go unanswered and your only course of action is the deviantART Help Desk!

--
deviantART Staff

so a model as gorgeous as Chris, shot nude from behind, "obviously does not belong" in the erotic section?

what is WRONG with these people?

UPDATE #2
I have now been informed by Hesitation that my deviation was deleted because it was a 'manip' that had been digitally edited and belonged in 'IndyArt>Photomanipulated'. So I go to look at the erotic section, and there are dozens and dozens of photos that have been digitally edited to an equal or greater extent. I mean, TONS of them. [link]

Clearly, there is no consistent policy of removing digitally edited photographs from this gallery.

If I had done a manip of someone else's photo, I could see submitting it to the indyart category. But this is MY photo, and the edits in NO WAY go beyond what is commonly accepted in the erotic gallery.

There IS something going on here that 'obviously does not belong' on DA, and it isn't my photo. It's abritary, capricious, and heavy-handed administration of galleries that properly speaking belong to all of us.

UPDATE 3
Hesitation and I have exchanged emails over this. She has looked at the examples I provided of other erotic gallery images, and written that she understands and agrees with my objection to this decision. She is forwarding our correspondence to the admin for the erotic gallery [link] , who never replied to my help desk ticket.

had a little chat with the poor fellow they stuck with admin of the erotic gallery. he's a genuinely talented photographer, but the poor thing has been working as a toad of a radically comprimised system for so long, not even his own very heterosexual rear end knows it when he's being fucked. this place is in... ]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1815622/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1815622/ Sun, 08 Feb 2004 22:31:55 PST Has blown wide open
The heart that swore off loving
Is counting all the ways
That it was wrong
Even your watch
Has lost its sense of time
The tension in your jaw is gone
And when you smile
You smile
Like you mean it

]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1807519/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1807519/ Sat, 07 Feb 2004 10:41:35 PST
]]> *paulscha http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1805938/ http://paulscha.deviantart.com/journal/1805938/ Fri, 06 Feb 2004 21:34:41 PST I ran out of breath,
Just trying to keep up
With the parade.

You lost me.

You lost me where
You will not find me.

I'm holed up in a pIace
You'll never think to look.

But hey, that's ok.
'Lost' must be my middle name.
Makes me wish that my last name was 'found'.

Makes me think
That we are always
Running out of time.

Yup.
That's the punchline.
Knew it was true,
The minute I typed it.

We are always running
Out of time.

]]> *paulscha