And Now The Ambulances

Fallujah Iraq
33° 28' North; 48° 48' East

Hospitals First.

First Aid Stations Second.

And now the Ambulances, as reported in the Guardian:

"....Sami al-Jumaili, a doctor at the hospital who escaped arrest when it was taken by US troops, said the city was running out of medical supplies and only a few clinics remained open.

"There is not a single surgeon in Falluja. We had one ambulance hit by US fire and a doctor wounded," he told Reuters. "There are scores of injured civilians in their homes whom we can't move. A 13-year-old child just died in my hands."

And what about all the 13 yr olds that don't die? How many future suicide bombers have just been born amongst them?

And while the NeanderConan Barbarian Architects of this naked agression are clearly unable to grasp the concept of cause and effect there may be a few of them who will be forced to come to grips with it if it is put another, slightly more biblical, way:

"You reap what you sow."
Hosea 8:1-10:15

No Help Too Small....

Fallujah Iraq
33° 28' North; 48° 48' East

.....that it can't be bombed.

Yesterday we reported that hospitals in Fallujah were being targetted.

Now the LA Times, in an A1 story, provides evidence that makeshift first-aid stations are being bombed.

"...Dr. Hamid Mohammed, speaking from a makeshift clinic that is serving Falloujans after U.S. and Iraqi forces took over Fallouja General Hospital early Monday, said that 15 dead and 20 injured people had been brought to the clinic.

"There are women and children among them."

That clinic was bombed this morning by the Americans, several witnesses said. It was unclear whether it was still receiving patients."

You can also find a report of the story at Democracy Now.

Soon, the Hague will not be enough.

To The Hague With Them

Fallujah Iraq
33° 28' North; 48° 48' East

We've said it before and we'll say it again.

For the Rovians and their minions the Hague is their Hades.

And now, according to the New York Times, they know it.

"It was the second time in six months that a battle had raged in Falluja. In April, American troops were closing in on the city center when popular uprisings broke out in cities across Iraq. The outrage, fed by mostly unconfirmed reports of large civilian casualties, forced the Americans to withdraw.

American commanders regarded the reports as inflated, but it was impossible to determine independently how many civilians had been killed. The hospital was selected as an early target because the American military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy casualties.

"It's a center of propaganda," a senior American officer said Sunday."

Again, they targetted a hospital, thereby depriving the civilians they are bombing of emergency care such that even more of them will be left in the rubble to die, and not because the hospital was a military target but rather because they are worried about what the doctors inside might tell the world about those very same casualties.

We're sorry but, assuming the quote is accurate (and given that the story was not written by Judith Miller we figure the odds it is are about 3:5) we are having great difficulty distinguishing the difference between this and the worst atrocities of the last century, including those perpetrated by the aggressors of World War II.

(thanks to Uncle $cam, posting on the AllSpinZone , for pointing us towards the NewPravda piece, and to Kate's StormWarning for the title)

Update: Thanks to Reader A.G. for the link to Marjorie Cohn's piece in which she lays out a detailed comparison of current US practices in Iraq and the biggest act(s) of fascism from the not so distant past.

No FDR?

Seattle Washington
47° 38' North; 123° 18' West

What if Herbert Hoover had Diebold in 1932?

Do The Right Thing

Ottawa Ontario
75° 25' North; 75° 42' West

This is no time for Canadian smugness.

So go read Mr. Good, do what he says, and then do more.

Because if we don't?

Well, let's just say that, I for one, don't want to be remembered as a reluctant fascist who was 'just following orders' a generation from now.


Update: If you want a healthy dose of smugness see John Allemang's column in today's Nov 06th Globe and Mail (it's below Mallick on F2 and behind that bloody subscription wall in Webland).

Bonus Update: It's not just Iraqi's we need to help. It's disaffected, and likely soon to be endangered, Americans too (read the 'pledges'; you'll laugh your stinkin' head off).

The Caine Mutiny Revisited

Whistler, British Columbia
49° 58' North; 123° 09' West

We've been speculating all over the place, based purely on external observations, that there are serious leaks springing in the SS Gordon Campbell.

But now it's clear that some of the holes are being punched in the rusting hull from the inside.

Because Sean Holman is reporting that some delegates at this weekend's Whistler Wingding are:

".....wearing blue and red scarves emblazoned with the words Coleman Country."

Be interesting to get a look at the raw feed of Mr. Campbell's Keynote Address to see if his eye starts twitching like Inspector Dreyfuss or, even better, he tries to release the bouts of debilitating paranoia by obsessively fondling a set of brass Queegian marbles behind the dais.

Clearly, all is not yet (way) right with the BC Liberals.

(Note to Gordo....just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.)

The Melancholic Map Maker

San Francisco, CA 37° 37' North; 122° 23' West

Don't know whether to laugh or cry about this one.

Do know, however, that there is no Jesus like a fauxJesus.

Unless, of course, you stumble on the real thing somewhere like, say, in the Candlestick Park Outfield circa 1963.

Big Grover and Little Gordo

Kamloops, British Columbia
50° 40' North; 120° 20' West

Big Grover Norquist, the Neandercon King who gives Karl Rove his marching orders, is the guy who came up with the idea of chronically underfunding public programs such that they eventually, shrink, curl, cringe and atrophy to the point where the public will perceive them as being so useless that they start screaming for them to be taken one by one, into the bathroom to be drowned in the tub.

Clearly, it is very difficult to ignore the fact that this recent business of creating a phony 'nursing crisis' that triggered the outsourcing of surgeries from St. Paul's Hospital is the 2nd hand around the neck of our own cherished Public Health Care system (the first hand was the jacking-up of MSP premiums).

But that was expected.

What wasn't expected was the fact that Little Gordo and his minions would decide to drown our wild salmon in their own excrement by shrinking the funding to rebuild BC's forest industry-destroyed rivers and streams to just 20% of its 2001 (ie. NDP-funded) levels.

And now it is well known wacko, way gone lefty, and eco-terrorist, Provincial Auditor General Wayne Strelioff (and accountant!) who is calling the Campbell government out on this issue because he, Strelioff, is very concerned that the wild Salmon will be soon be gone forever.

Repeating. Forever. As in..... For All Time.

All because of a strangulation strategy that has saved a measly $40 million a year out of the Provincial Salmon Conservation Program (that's approximately 4% of the two week short, '24-Hour-Party People' 2010 Olympic Budget).

Of course none of this really matters though because, sure as a vengeful and spiteful god made sour little green apples, the Ferret's $30 million dollar Whirlitzer has already been programmed for an early spring photo-op on some Sandspur near Kamloops where the Thompson meets the Fraser. There, under the glare of a halogen-backlit, faux groundhog day sky, Mr. Campbell will announce a brand spanking never been seen before, better than ever, New Era, scientifically disproven, $1.01743 million pilot program to have Maximus manage the outsourcing of Stikine Salmon to the Fraser/Georgia Straight Watershed that will be assisted by jetboat-propelled tourist attractions carved into the canyon cliffs at 10 km intervals (fully equipped with gameboys and wireless internet access and rented out in US dollars unless, of course, the latter falls below par by then, in which case they will switch to Euros....just like BigOil which is rumored to be a major corporate sponsor of the program).

And Johnny VanD has likely already had a private moment with the Premier and told him not to worry because his staff will be sure to shake the sea-lice off the farmed Atlantic Salmon that they will truck in for the event, and the cameras.

(Paul Willcocks has the measured and balanced scoop on this story. Me, I'm more steamed about the thing than Rafe Mair with downrigger hooks stuck in his thumbs.)

Gloating is One Thing, But....

Dieboldville OH 33° 33' North; 45° 78' West


.....Suggesting that yesterday's result affirms the right of BushCo to repudiate everything they have botched, mostly on purpose, during the last four years is quite another.

Because no matter what the smug pundits, including some pretty sharp boys in Canada, have to say, Planet Rove is still a place.....

1) Where no healthcare is great healthcare....

2) Where mounting Stop Loss Orders do not signal a back door draft.

3) Where instituting draft boards and forced high school registrations for special service do not signal preparations for a real draft.

4) Where sending ill-equipped troops into harms way for no good reason at all is supporting the troops.

5) Where a war hero is a war coward.

6) Where a war coward is not a coward because of midnight kerning.

7) Where anti-science is the best science.

8) Where global warming is actually an ingenious Madison Avenue ad campaign for air conditioners.

9) Where puppet regimes are democracies.

10) Where $50 dollar barrels of oil are really $25 dollar barrels of oil because the extra $25 dollars are actually going to Halliburton and KBR, which is good for the economy.

11) Where outsourcing is good for you, especially if you've lost your job because now you're an entrepeneur.

12) Where burger flipping is really high-tech manufacturing.

13) Where morality is the 4 G's....Guns, Gays, Grizzlies and God

14) Where no child left behind means that dumb kids are expelled so they won't be counted.

15) Where affirmative action means that only dumb rich kids get a free pass to Yale and Harvard.

16) Where deficits don't matter because Reagan proved it.

17) Where love is hate.

18) Where family values means putting leashes on your kids.

19) Where fraternity hazing is torture.

20) Where torture is not torture as long as you've written yourself a memo saying torture is not torture.

21) Where human rights are wrongs.

22) Where the Hague is Hades.

23) Where 100,000 deaths don't count, because dead people are free.

24) Where forced loyalty oaths are termed freedom of expression.

25) Where crypto-fascism is no longer cryptic

26) Where lying is just another word for rhetorical asymmetry.

27) Where really, really lying is really the truth.

28) Where the truth is irrelevant as long as you win.

29) Where a man who strangles you in the bathtub is your friend and hero.

Oh, and one more thing....as our guitar player from Coquitlam makes clear, it is no longer possible to pin the 'Wheres' listed above on the Rovians and the Gloating Repudiators alone, because those Wheres are now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the 50 million plus Americans who punched their ballots red yesterday.

All of them.

Swim Sideways

Geographic Center of a United Cascadia
Redway California 40° 07' North; 123° 49' West
Wed 9:14am

Wasn't going to post today, but when I got to the Student Union to buy my morning bagel I traded election condolences with the young woman behind the counter and then, as she was giving me my change, the inspirational sounds of the Indigo Girls 'Closer to Fine' began blasting from the big speakers high on the wall.

And I was struck dumb by the fact that that kid will be my kid in a few years.

So now is not the time to give in to the Undertoad.

****

But still.....

Looks like those currents pulling things down at the moment are very, very strong.

And if Kerry does concede politically, here's hoping that the legal challenges proceed until things are thoroughly investigated. And perhaps more importantly, let's hope that the next generation of Mencken's, Morrows, Hersh's, and dare I say Thompson's, are out there ready to root out any true evidence of voter suppression and dirty tricks wherever they are hidden.

I'd suggest Naomi Klein for the job, but the US is not big enough for her. She's got the whole world to work on.

****

Something else became very clear to me last night as I moved around the Net commiserating with like minded folks while endlessly dragging the mouse over that bloody CSPAN map.....

and that is....

Blogistan is not enough.

We've got to do more than preach to the converted to make the change, and that includes the coming election in British Columbia.

In other words, we've gotta change direction and swim sideways, as fast and as hard as we can, to get out of this damnable Riptide that threatens to sweep us all, and I do mean all of us, out to sea.

Watch Out For the Undertoad

Cleveland Ohio 41°25' North; 81° 52' West
10:43pm Tuesday

Apparently the big blue wave is down beneath the surface, hidden in the provisionals and absentees.

Ignore the Networks, especially FauxNews.

This will not be decided tonight.

Update 11:38pm Tuesday: John Edwards just made it official. There will be 'No Surrender' in 2004.

Bit of A Lull

Palm Beach Florida 26°41' North; 80° 07' West
7:34pm Tuesday PST


OK.

Looks like the seas have calmed a bit. Maybe has something to do with all those absentee ballots in Florida, as many as 250,000.

And Ohio may come down to provisional ballots.

Update: 11:30pm Tuesday: kos says there may be a million votes still to be counted in Florida.

Break Out The Boogie Boards!

Scranton Pennsylvania: 41° 20' North; 75° 44' West
4:20pm Tuesday PST

Based on exit polls and early returns Zogby calls it 311 Electoral Votes for Kerry (270 needed to win).

Grab the Wave!

Whitecaps Forming?

Honolulu Hawaii: 21° 20' North; 157° 55' West
Noon PST Tuesday

First exit polls suggest Swings are going Kerry

PA 60/40 Kerry
OH 52/48 Kerry
WI 52/43 Kerry
FL 51/48 Kerry

Tsunami building off on the horizon for arrival at 6pm Pacific?

Kerry Goes Surfing

Dayton Ohio: 39° 54' North; 84° 12' West

Pollsters that actually get things right once in awhile, people like John Zogby, have it as a dead heat late on election eve.

Now, the thing to remember is that Bush historically polls 5% above his actual numbers (ie. in Sports Action/Betting parlance take BushPoll - 5). A good example is the Presidential race four years ago when Gore actually won the popular vote despite the fact that CNN's last polls before the election went like this:

" The new CNN/"USA Today" Gallup Tracking Poll results are being released at this hour. It shows George W. Bush with 48 percent, Al Gore 43 percent, Ralph Nader with 4 percent, Pat Buchanan with 1 percent."

So take that 5% and give it to Kerry, then take all that youth/first time vote, take all the mobilized get out the vote campaigns in Swing States, and you've got a wave for Kerry to ride, a wave that will build into a Tsunami as the world-wide absentee and early voter ballots start to be counted.

It takes 270 electoral votes to win.

We, the Gazetteers, figure Kerry will win Ohio and thus will not even need Florida this time around, but if he does it'll be a 300 vote wall of water.

____
Update Mon Nov. 1st 11:30pm: Here's hoping for that landslide, not for the gloat factor, but instead to prevent the execution of a 'November Surprise' which would be little more than an anti-election litigation diversionary slaughter of innocents in Fallujah that is being planned right now, as we type, by BushCo.

Update Tues Nov. 2nd 6:42am: Appears the slaughter of his own people in Fallujah is in the puppet's hands; While President Ghazi al-Yawe is against it,Prime Minister Pinocchio (Allawi) says time is 'running out' for the resistance. The interim constitution says the bombing/killing/maiming must be sanctioned by the Iraqis, which is little more than wafer-thin, anti-Hague protection for Messers. Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney et al.