Where disappointment and regret collide...

It has been a long time since I have blogged and that is kind of nice. I am recharged and I have some new things to say (on the same old boring themes of course). I have been in Portland on work and I really haven’t felt like logging on. I am back home now and ready to waste some time.

I heard yesterday morning on NPR that Porter Goss, the head of the CIA, says that they have a very good idea of where Osama is. That’s all he said. What the fuck does that mean? To me this means:

A) We don’t know where he is, but maybe we can spook him,

B) We already have him and as we approach the next election cycle he will be spectacularly captured and paraded around to show that the out of control military spending on the “War on Terror” is worth every penny, or

C) When I say we have a very good idea of where he is this includes a million square miles of mountains and desert in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and we aren’t really looking all that hard, because if we catch him then some people might think that the War on Terror needs to have an end.

Also back in the news is the Downing Street memo. That’s the one detailing how Bush asked Tony Blair to help create the false impression that Iraq had WMD’s and was involved with Al Quaida. Yet more evidence that Bush was implicated in the impeachable offense of lying before congress. I don’t fool myself that this would ever happen, but I like to keep score.

What is up with wars on concepts like terror or hunger or drugs anyways? These things are so nebulous that there seems to be no way to win. What is the goal? Who is the enemy? In the war on drugs, mostly interurban black men have been arrested, therefore the enemy in this war is mostly black men. Drugs can't be the enemy because they are a concept. It takes people to make an enemy. Why is it that of the over 300 people arrested and charged with "terrorist" activities under the patriot act only 30 of them have been non-US citizens and the majority of these arrests have been for eco-terrorism. In the homeland war on terror, who is the enemy? Terrorists are the enemy. Who are the terrorists in the US? Apparently based on arrests conducted under the Patriot Act, environmentalist trying to protect our natural resources from exploitation by large corporations are the enemy. What do you and I have to do to become terrorists? When will I become the enemy?

Eco-terrorism is really the lamest concept anyways. Who is terrorized? I have not been terrorized, nor have you or your family. Are the loggers terrorized? No, they are pissed off. Yes, crimes have been committed and we have laws to cover those offenses. Do we really need a back door law called the Patriot Act (was Sam Adams a patriot or a terrorist?)that allows our fellow americans taking non-violent direct action against corporate interests to be charged with terror? Can't we just charge them with felony arson (or whatever the actual offense is) and call it good?

On another front, the Death Cab for Cutie Website has a pretty cool format going right now where they are playing a shuffle of their song on the site as you visit. I listened for a while and it seems that if you just leave that window open in the background it will play a good selection of songs from their catalogue. If you what to check out their tunes this a cool free way to do it. If you are looking for an album to buy and you liked the lyricism of the Postal Service I strongly reccomend DCFC.