A crazy thought occurred to me: if Clinton, Obama, and Edwards can throw their egos in the trash, and instead of being adversarial in the primary, negotiate a concession and vice-presidential cabinet for one of them, they can then put their time and money to work on destroying the Republicans.

Clinton/Obama? Obama/Edwards? Clinton/Edwards? Obama/Clinton (egos in the trashbin, remember)? Any of those tickets could rocket Democratic power into the stratosphere for several elections to come, I think. Obama talks a good talk about direct negotiations with Iran, for example, and yet apparently he can't pick up the phone and ask Clinton "what do I have to give you in order to be your vice-president (because you *know* that if I'm on your ticket, we're going to be *in* the White House, no if ands or buts), and if I am you Vice President, how much real power will you give me?"

I know I'm breaking with reality here, and that this will never happen, but on the other hand, I'd like to think Clinton is a far easier bargaining partner for Obama than Iran would be?

saul williams' niggy tardust is 'really good™'. that's officially my rating. 4/5 stars, something like that. you should know that means i like it enough that i'm going to have it on incessant repeat on my stereo, my mp3 player, my mind, for the rest of the week and then some. it's right up there with NIN's with_teeth and year-zero, and a step/giant-leap below The Downward Spiral, or Led Zeppelin (the album), or The Wall.

at first i thought it was too obviously crammed with reznor's year-zero soundscaping. but i get it now. saul and trent are a very organic fusion at this moment. Trent can write very intense lyrics when he's picking at his own emotional scabs, and while *he* doesn't get close to that level of power when he's trying social commentary, that's what Saul's all about.

So I don't think Niggy's sound is a case of trent not being able to sound like anything but himself, even when trying to make a hip-hop album. "Niggy" isn't Trent trying to do hip-hop. It's more like an in-between sequels, alternate take of year-zero. It's an iteration of year-zero. it ought to have a halo number. Saul's lyrics, notwithstanding their frequent use of "NGH" (which is often ironic at two or more levels), could easilly have formed the semantic content to year-zero. you might have to listen to Niggy a bit slant to hear that, but that's only fitting: saul's diction is down with dickinson's idea of truth and divinity.

Download it at niggytardust.com

funny addendum: my CD changer just tracked off the end of 'Niggy', and onto NIN's "Broken". Till the lyrics of "WiSH" kicked-in, I didn't quite notice that we'd switched discs!

New York Magazine interviewed Trent and Saul (unfortunately mostly about the distribution model rather than the music). Trent confesses to putting his money where his mouth his [when asked how much he paid for Radiohead's in rainbows]: "I bought the physical one, so I spent a whopping $80. [Pauses.] But, then I re-bought it and paid $5,000, because I really felt that I need to support the arts, so people could follow in my footsteps."

From Yahoo News: WASHINGTON - The economic costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to total $1.6 trillion — roughly double the amount the White House has requested thus far, according to a new report by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

The report, released Tuesday, attempted to put a price tag on the two conflicts, including "hidden" costs such as interest payments on the money borrowed to pay for the wars, lost investment, the expense of long-term health care for injured veterans and the cost of oil market disruptions.
Read more...

Fair enough, actually, as an estimation of the *costs* of the war. But they haven't attempted to balance that with the *gains* of the war, so really it's meaningless. What about spurred economic activity due to the war, military manufacturing, jobs created for Americans, and the potential returns from investsments that have been made in reconstruction efforts? I'm not an economist, and I have no idea what these "hidden gains" might be, but I'm sure they total to more than $0.00, which is what the Democrats are implying when they went about tallying hidden costs.

If they'd made a good-faith effort to look at gains as well as losses, the net loss would be a much more potent statistic.

It's not just the war either. Climate change folks need to do this. Sure there may be increased costs to society from the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, land lost to rising seas, species loss, and a slew of public health problems due to flood conditions, increased energy expenditures for heating and cooling, etc. But perhaps grasses or C4 plants (that includes corn and rice) are more productive under higher temperatures? Perhaps growing seasons for some temperate crops will be extended? All plants need CO2 to photosynthesize, but when they open their stomates (basically air- and water- tight pores in the leaves that can open and close) to let CO2 in, they lose water vapor as it evaporates out. Under low water conditions, plants may not be able to photosynthesize as much as they could if they didn't have to conserve water. But with more CO2 in the air, the plants can get more bang for each second they have their stomates open. Under some conditions of heat, water availability, and sunlight, some crops may grow better with more CO2 in the air. (This benefit is NOT likely to be of the same magnitude as the costs of climate change, but it may be a real, measurable effect).

Any attempt to tally costs without equal zeal spent on discovering off-setting benefits is an unscientific and political scam. Same goes for reporters or former Presidents elect Presidential candidates who quickly hand-wave away the potential benefits while schooling us on the costs. That won't do. Give us a *number* for the benefits, say 4 cents on every dollar of costs, and more people will listen. Make the effort to always always report the offsetting number (benefits, when you're reporting about costs; costs, when your reporting on benefits). Should be journalism 101, but I rarely see it done in practice.

I'm in SoCal for a week. I was planning on schlepping up to San Mateo to skate at an inline race, but for various reasons, not least that I can see fire up on a ridge from the window at this moment, I've decided to skip the race and am looking for volunteer opportunities while I'm here.

Last night, the moon was a deep orange color due to the smoke and haze, and today around noon the sun was that impossibly-deep crimson that you normally only see for a few minutes in certain sunsets. Snowflake-sized pieces of ash float down sporadically. The ash and haze reminds me a bit of the immediate aftermath of 9/11 in NYC, but without the horrible feeling of knowing that you are breathing air from fires that had consumed human flesh.

People who are not first responder-trained, and who want to volunteer should check out local charities, or the following county-based volunteer clearinghouses:

http://www.laworks.com/ (la county)
http://www.volunteercenter.org/ (orange county)
http://www.handsoninlandempire.org/HomePage/index.php/wildfires.htm (Riverside and San Bernadino)

or one of the many San Diego sites:
http://www.volunteersandiego.org/vsd/fire07.html

From afar, you can probably do as much good as anyone here can.
Most charities are accepting cash donations. Local animal shelters will accept PetCo gift cards, or you can donate directly to the PetCo Foundation.

San Diego Zoo Loses 600 acres, saves all but two animals

The San Diego Zoo reports:

of the over 3,500 animals that reside at the Park, two animals (a clapper rail and a kiang) were lost due to complications from the fire. More than 600 acres of Wild Animal Park property were burned. These were open buffer zone areas and not exhibit or public access space....

...It amazes me hearing the stories of the Park’s employees. So many of them did not know if their homes were still standing. Their homes were directly in the path of the fire, many had been evacuated themselves, and still they stayed for hours fighting to keep the animals safe. They stayed until they were asked to leave when the fires threatened the Park and returned as soon as it was safe. There was no hesitation on anyone’s part and that’s what made the Park lucky!

They've emerged relatively unharmed by the fires, but you might still want grant them something off their general wishlist.

As is usual I guess in situations like this, there are way more non-first responder volunteers than there are opportunities, and as time goes on, that will invert. To quote handsoninlandempire.org:

We urge you to be patient and wait until real needs are assessed. As we learned during Hurricane Katrina, the greatest need for volunteers will occur after the immediate danger is passed. Two years after the floods in New Orleans, volunteers are STILL actively engaged in recovery efforts.

On page F6 in the health section of Tuesday's New York Times is an aprox. 200 word article: "Abstinence-Only Programs Not Found to Prevent H.I.V.". I'd skimmed the main "A" section of the paper that gives international and national stories, and hadn't seen an article there. Surely this is bigger news, in a country that still practices abstinence-only health education, than the front page article devoted to Brooke Astors' passing?

Anyway, the facts reported in The Times are that a study was published in the August issue of the British Medical Journal comparing abstinance-only programs to various controls, including no treatment. Abstinence-only had no effect positive or negative towards STIs, pregnancy, unprotected sex, or the age of first sexual experience. I'll have to take a gander at the actual journal article to tease out what exactly their control groups included in addition to "no treatment" groups.

The lead author of the study is quoted in The Times as saying: "It appears that this evidence base is frequently neglected in debates over abstinence-based prevention". No kidding.

Brian Lehrer reports that the US, after participating strongly in some aspects of the negotiations, is not expected to sign the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities.

The US pushed negotiations to, among other things, remove any language pertaining to "occupied territories", and to excise any explicit reference to abortion when talking of the right to health services.

If we can't sign this convention, what *can* we sign? Instead, apparently, the US pointed out that it has existing legislation in the Disabilities Act, which other countries are invited to emulate. In other words, human rights for the rest of the world, American rights for Americans. The US seems to wish to politically secede from the Human race.

Worse, we wish to retain veto-power or just plain bully-power over the rest of humanity. Perhaps it's the done thing in UN negotiations, but it strikes me as rather sinister that the US participates in shaping an international instrument that it plans not to join. I could be wrong, but this doesn't seem like a case of negotiations having been made in good faith, only to fail to live up to some sine qua non that the US needs in order to sign on. I find it hard to believe that the US could not have negotiated for a palatable treaty on disabled rights, seeing as the US does indeed have advanced national laws in the area already.

We also haven't signed certain other human rights convections such as the convention on the rights of the child, and the convention against discrimination of women. (Moral failiures which may or may not have been originally committed by previous Presidencies, but obviously upheld by the current one).

Shame on us. Again.

Nine Inch Nails knows how to make money without seeming like that's all they're after. When the 2005 album With_Teeth was released, the *whole album* was available to listen to on mySpace. Hordes of NIN fans went out and bought the album.

NIN promises a new full-length release in April. The marketing for this one is just plain fun. First, they've set up a bunch of websites purportedly created in the 2022 world that the album describes. The sites are ( the usual suspects for a dystopian future world )

Parallel to this Alternate Reality Game (ARG), USB drives are being left in bathroom stalls at NIN concerts. The drives contain mp3s of tracks from the forthcoming NIN album (thusfar three have been leaked), along with other files that contain clues to the ARG. There are more clues in tour T-shirts, and numbers to call with recordings on them. The latest (and most disturbing) is 216-333-1810 (in conjunction with the leak of the song "Me, I'm not" and the uswiretap.com site). WARNING The recording at that phone number is a simulated cellphone call from a girl in a nightclub where people get locked-in and massacred. Not pleasant to listen to (for me, much worse than the torture stuff in the Broken movie, which was clearly simulated), and you can find transcripts online if your interested in the ARG, but not getting the heebie-jeebies.

Oh yeah, the Songs... You can find the dload sites at echoingthesound.org and other places. As these are unofficial "official" leaks from NIN, they're not pirated. Go get them and listen.

was the 1st leak (and indeed is officially released to radio stations). It's OK.

" was next. People have called-it Public Enemy-ish, which is kindof like saying Stravinsky is Mozart-ish because they use the same instrumentation. I'm not sure what to classify it as. It's fun as hell to dance to with it's crazy beat.
came out today. Very, danceable. Not in an 'industrial EBM' way, but just flat-out nightclub stuff. Reminds *me* of the Timbaland/Timberland "Sexy Back" thing, although it's a very different song. Both songs have deceptively insipid sounding lyrics (if you bother to look them up, you'll realize that Justin Timberlake isn't just moaning about 'get your sexy on', but actually goes into some light bdsm stuff in that song!).

Anyway, Year_Zero, is a damn geeky and fun concept for an album release.

Just watched a very tough documentary about an OB/GYN in Afghanistan, himself originally an economic refugee to the States from Afghanistan in the 70s. The one hospital he worked at, which was supported by the US dept. of Health & Human services had rotting toilets, and was so low on supplies that they use dirty needles as paper clips. The problems were not all due to the logistics of US supply and funding however: one pregnant woman was brought near-death to the hospital after first having been taken to a local mullah who beat her with a whip to exorcise her. What he exorcised, unfortunately was her unborn baby, whom he killed. The doctor was caught between the lack of resources on the one hand, and what he himself called "thirteenth century" cultural ignorence of medicine.

Another hospital which was founded and run by a local organization was clean, and adequately supplied, but many of the patients who walked miles to get there were pretty far gone.

Here's the website for the documentary: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/motherlandafghanistan/

Afghanistan's problems started well before we in the US decided to blast it, and I really don't know if we've helped or hurt what was already a dismal situation. We have to stop equating destitute countries who host terrorists with *being* "The Terrorists". I'm not really articulating it but I'm really angry. Ordinary citizens who backed the wars really had no idea of the reality of it all. And we still don't. We continue to watch FoxNews, or perhaps listen to the equally vapid vitriol of AirAmerica, but nobody's watching PBS documentaries.

The internet may have made the global village possible, but in practice it functions much like a bunch of segregated barrios within a megaplex megapolis [wrong suffix lol].

On NPR's Weekend Edition (link Audio avail. after 13:00 EST), a story aired about the Palestinian Holocaust museum. According to the director, Palestinian understanding of the Holocaust would cause Palestinians to realize that there is no justification for violence against Israellis, which in turn would cause Israel to treat Palestinians with legitimacy. The director's own brother doesn't speak to him because he's seen as an Israelli lackey, and on the other end, both the Israelli Museum and the Anti-Defamation league have issues about the Holocaust "being politicized".

At the same time, PBS will run a documentary this week about the rise of global anti-semetism (by which word they mean anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe and the Middle-East).

I don't presume to think that Palestinians have internet access, but WTF? Is it too much to wish that they are at least exposed to virtual (or video) tours of Auswitz, and that the Western world, OTOH, is more exposed to realities of Palestinian life.

On that second point, Kudos to Tavis Smiley in his interview of President Carter. The title of Carter's new book compares the Palestinian situation to Apartheid in S. Africa. I say the title does the comparing, not the book itself, because it's a marketing thing. Carter himself is way too nuanced and understanding of the issues involved to not identify the shortcomings of the comparison.

Carter said that one thing he strongly condems the Bush Administration for is for caracterizing Hamas as a terrorist organization, after the administration unilaterally (suprise) insisted on the Palestinian's holding an election when both Arafat and Israel didn't want it. Ooops! some 40% of the voters voted for Hamas. While Hamas doesn't recognize Israel, Carter also mentioned that no Israelli civilian has died at Hamas' hands in several years, and that the reason for this is that Hamas wanted widespread political legitimacy with Palestinians, and that avoiding terrorism was a precondition to that. So we have a democratically elected group that provides needed services within the Palestinian community, and they are condemned as terrorists.

I wish I had a camera phone. Last night it was 61 degrees and it had just stopped raining. It was so humid that the water in teh air was freezing on the surface of the ice at teh rink, and instead of the ice getting shaved-down by skaters, it was actually building up. Mist hung over the rink and would blow around in the breeze.

Very picturesque, but that's not why I felt the need for a camera. Rather it was the sign that some child had posted on the stairs leading up from the rink. It was a drawing of the city. It said "Help stop global warming. Fly or drive only when necessary". At the bottom of the drawing, where the rink should have been, was a swath of blue. An arrow pointing at the blue pointed out "the ice is melting".

It was very cute, and my words don't do it justice. A lot of the country is having a warm winter, and this is being used in the media to highlight climate change issues. Honestly, blaming *this particular warm spell* on climate change is rather like an assault victim blaming the crime on the ethnic background of the offender, and claiming that assaults are disproportionately perpetrated by certain racial groups. Maybe that particular person, on that particular day, was having the worst possible time, and just flipped out, for reasons having nothing to do with race. Maybe this warm spell has to do with the Jet stream or something, not greenhouse gasses. Indeed, even the statistic that eight of the warmest winters in the century have happened in the last eleven years might be oversimplifying the case.

However, the child who posted her picture at the rink is right: the ice *is* melting. And arctic polar bears don't like it one bit. They are drowning.

Police using tazer against a non-compliant subject in UCLA library in November:

The ensuing discussion at youTube is quite interesting.

Knowing that several people were killed in Iraq during the course of that blog-discussion is even more interesting.

There's an LA times article floating around somewhere about the incident. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-taser18nov18,0,4080498.story?coll=la-home-headlines

"Get up, Stand up" Isn't that a line, ironically, from a Bob Marley song?

And before screaming police brutality, take a gander at this next video. Admittedly not the same kind of weapon and the shocks are very brief. But people do take this kind of pain for fun. Lack of consent makes all the difference. You can run both vids simultaneously for a VERY interesting effect.

And there's always the remix version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmRoNM_dzcU

NPR did a story on PTSD and the lack of mental health care that vets receive. A congressional study found that -- surprise! -- vets are not getting proper mental health care.

One real issue is that the military is built on diciplined training, and mental health problems disrupt that with messy symptoms that, unlike a severed limb or even the flu, might look to commanders like poor dicipline, morale or behavior. Paraphrasing a low-level commander: "PTSD is the classic back-door excuse that soldiers use to get out of the Army". Think about that, folks. It's a volunteer army. There's no draft. People do not *need* excuses to get out of the Army in the way they did during the Vietnam era. There's this whole fucked up economic system of federal jobs -- as advertised on goarmy.com -- and it's sucking people in, and lo and behold when they face the reality of deployment, we the civilians who put them in harms way in the first place, are suprised that they're not hapilly chewing on their Thanksgiving Turkeys or flipping Playstation III's for profit on eBay.

For what it's worth, I'm complicit in the war, and since I'm really not having to pay the price yet, I'm going to be grateful for my blessings. Do something good for yourself, -- or for your friends and familly, or for the world -- today. There are plenty who don't have the opportunity.

A few hasty words on the Foley scandal, in which representative Foley resigned from the House after being accused of sending inappropriate electronic messages to Congressional pages:

Age of Consent?

As much as the US pretends to have zero-tolerance for child sexual abuse, we are awfully confused about the issue. I have no idea what state ages of consent for sex are, but until recently (and for all I know, even now) they are not uniform. "Legal" is not necessarily 18, *as far as state law goes*. When it comes to homosexual acts, consent may not be allowed at the same ages as for heterosexual ones. In some states of course, homosexual sex is still technically illegal. AFAIK, the military code bans sex with those under the age of 16 (which makes sense since many soldiers are just out of high-school). Don't know if this applies whithin the US or only outside of it.

I notice that news reports today (BBC and WNYC) are careful to use the word "teenager" in response to the Foley issue, while reports on saturday said "children". A journalist erroneously used the word "pedophillia" on WNYC.

Statutory Rape

I'm not sure what exactly Foley did or said, but if it was limited to asking a 16 year old if his messages "makes you horny", or asking for a picture, lets please *not* call that pedophillia OK? The behavior may well have been illegal under federal laws that Foley himself sponsored. But that doesn't mean that they were blatently evil acts that should be implicitly compared to child abuse.

Corrupting a minor

Sexual messages between adults and minors are regulated on the internet. However, nothing prevents adults from hyping up, glorifying, and encouraging teenage sex via the popular media. As usual, we Americans are horribly confused about sex. Influential adults are screaming "BUY! SEX! BUY!" to kids, and yet interactions between adults and sub-eighteen year olds are supposed to be strictly platonic.

Sexual Harrasment

Foley was a congressman. He should *not* have been sexually fraternizing with underlings, be they underage or not. As they were indeed underage, he ought to have been that much more sensitive to the issue.

Hypocrisy

Democrats are going to fall over themselves to condemn Foley's hypocrisy for having sponsored internet child-protection laws, and for having been critical of President Clinton's "sexual addiction". They are going to cry foul about the Republican leadership, including Speaker Hastert, for having permitted and covered-up Foley's behavior. Fine. But I hope they don't get holier-than-thou and adopt the Republican's moral agenda, in this one expeditious case, and call for fire-and-brimstone against Foley and Hastert for acts of perverted homosexual pedophilia. Verbal irony intended.

Further proof of intelligent design:

• Bikers who go the wrong way down a bike lane at night with no lights whatsoever. Nevermind that they are endagering pedestrians who aren't expecting wrong way traffic, and seriously endagering bikers and skaters going the right way: it's a bike lane so they have to use it. Going the right way on the adjacent avenue would be too much trouble.
  
• Pedestrians in Central Park who cross the road against the walk light without looking, despite the fact that bikers and skaters are hurtling towards them. It's a park, so they have the right to walk wherever, however, and whenever they want. Corollary: Bikers and skaters who don't bother to slow down when pedestrians are crossing when the walk light is on.
  
• People who don't move to the back of a bus or into the middle of a subway car.
  
• People who insist on walking into a subway car before people have gotten out.
  
• People who leave their dogs' shit all over the sidewalks.

And you wonder why the Middle East conflict is seemingly intractable in this decade.

On the other foot...

I absolutely adore the fact that I can step out the door at 9PM, lace-up my inline skates, hit the park loop, hear a live band and interrupt my laps to skate to their music, and finish-up my workout at 10:30 or so in relative safety. And yes, I wear lights so the clueless pedestrians and wrong-way bikers won't hit me :-)

Slightly paraphrased from NPR: "Believe me when I say that I've never even had this conversation before. This is the first time I'm discussing it... I believe we should adhere strictly to the Geneva Conventions... when they are whacking people around in these secret prisons... you don't need blanket advanced aproval for blanket torture... the President could take personal responsibilty for it, but on a case-by-case basis"

1) He's never talked about torture before? Did he never attend CIA security briefings when he was President?

2) He's as opposed to torture as he can be without closing the door for the case when you know he knows that a bomb's about to go off.

3) "whacking people around in these secret prisons"? That better make the sound bites on TV!

4) Once again, hearing him speak has left me with a near-desperate need to vote for him. For something.

5) It abuses my credulity to think that he was investigated for getting a blowjob, and W. is legally declaring himself, the CIA, the military, and some of his administration above the law.

First, Andre Agassi received a mind-blowing standing ovation at his retirement at the US Open. Andre's father is an Armenian of Iranian descent. Kind of interesting how we think of Andre as all-American, while our (popular-media) impression of Iran has mostly to do with nukes, religious zealots, and terrorism.

Second, check out this picture of the Iranian Women's in-line speedskaters at the world championships. Picture was taken by one of the Canadian team members, whose blog about the event is at: http://2006worlds.blogspot.com/

The women are wearing old 5x84mm skates (everyone skates on 4x100mm skates these days), but talk about global village!

Yes, that's right, even in 2006, 25 cents can actually buy something more interesting than the New York Post! Imagine that.

The carousel is in Burlington, the eastmost town on I70 in Colorado. I spent some time there in 1994. Good to know the carousel is still alive and kicking, and indeed had its centenial last year.

From Sen. Clinton

Dear Voter:
As we wrap up the second session of the 109th Congress, I want to take this opportunity to share with you just some of the progress we have made for New York this past year. Recently, you expressed an interest in learning about my work in the Senate; I am pleased to offer this broad look at the previous year's initiatives and achievements.

At a time when we face great challenges to our economy, our security, and our values, we have made strides for our state. I am proud to have worked on your behalf, every single day. When traveling throughout New York , I am always heartened by the hope and optimism of New York 's families. Having spoken with many of you about your concerns, I have worked hard in the Senate to honor my duty to you, to represent the interests of all New Yorkers. I am proud of all that we accomplished and remain hopeful that we will continue to achieve great things for our state.

• Securing our Economy
  
• Protecting our Communities
  
• Investing in Education
  
• Strengthening our Health Care System and Improving Public Health Preparedness
  
• Standing Up for Seniors
  
• Promoting Energy Independence
  
• Standing with our Armed Forces and Veterans
  
• Standing up for Children and Families

For reasons of political expediency or belief, Clinton is constrained to using such conservative-friendly language. Warren Buffet, my new hero, can afford, literally, to be more direct. He borrows from John Rawls' veil of ignorance theory, and has us imagine a pre-birth scenario in which a creator gives us the opportunity to design the world we will be born into. The only catch is that once we've designed our system, we have to choose a slip of paper from among 3 billion, and that will determine which parents we are born to. Rawls says that any theory of justice ought to be designed from behind such a veil of ignorance. What's powerful about Buffet's reformulation is that it comes not from a left-wing academic philosopher, but someone who made his wealth in the market. The market system, says Buffet, has failed the poor.

It's a blindingly obvious statement, but how many of our political leaders feel able to say it or act accordingly?

What are we enabling our leaders to get away with?

I'll try to be brief.

On this Memorial Day, let's please remember to, as the movie Saving Private Ryan exhorts us, earn the sacrifices that were made on our behalf in WWII. We can do so in many ways, encouraging freedom, democracy and prosperity in our own country and abroad. However, if we continue to soil our flag with blood shed in a war waged for reasons of commerce and political expediency, it calls into question the very meanings of the words "freedom", "democracy", and "prosperity". We can't walk out of Iraq, but lets not celebrate what happens there with nationalistic pride misapropriated from WWII.

I watched some of the Memorial Day concert, and was rather moved. The big mistake is in categorizing all war casualties as heroic deaths made in the defense of freedom. Any soldier in combat can desert in the face of the horrors they face. The overwhelming majority do not, and this certainly does make them brave and heroic -- to a depth that most civilians aren't able to comprehend. Unfortunately, the current wars that the US is fighting were not necessary to the defense of freedom: the bombing of Afghanistan was retaliatory, and the war in Iraq is just plain senseless when the human cost is totalled.

During the Memorial Day concert broadcast, great efforts were taken to personalize the sacrifices made by soldiers, including having actors read 1st-person narratives written by a prisoner-of-war, a mother of a dead soldier, and a member of a combat unit that experienced casualties. The taboo that that the broadcast dared not break was to further personalize these accounts into being the accounts simply of people experiencing war, rather than of United States soldiers waging war. When one strips the flags off the carcass, one sees that deaths caused by collateral damage, the deaths of enemy soldiers, and even the deaths whithin terrorist militias all leave behind grieving families.

I'm sure I've said it before: Memorial Day is a profound argument against the unnecessary waging of war. To read of President Bush being "in awe of the men and women who sacrifice for the freedom of the United States of America," or to watch Gen. Colin Powell shake hands with and thank soldiers, makes me sick.

National leadership forces one to make terrible decisions whose consequences are fraught with peril no matter how one decides them. But surely the need for Bush and Powell to send troops to Iraq cannot in any way compare with the need for Roosevelt and his cabinet to enter into WWII. The flags and roses planted each year by Belgian schoolchildren at the foot of the US WWI graves in Flanders Field do not symbolize the same things as the flags that are draped over the steel caskets that are coming home today from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Christianity has a saying "love the sinner but hate the sin". In loving the sacrifices made by those in uniform, lets not forget to continue hating war.