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I'm modelling a scheduler that accepts a sequence of requests and outputs a sequence of responses, one response per request. It can partially reorder requests, but only within a finite queue. Specifically, I have a queue with maximum size q. The numbers 1 through N are fed into the queue in order. When the queue reaches its maximum size, the scheduler removes an item from the queue and outputs it. When the end of input is reached, the scheduler removes and outputs items from the queue, one at a time. The choice of which item to remove from the queue is completely up to the scheduler. Therefore, the output is a permutation of the input, however, not all permutations are possible. For example, if the queue size is only 2, it would be impossible to output the numbers 1 through N in reverse order. I'll call the set of possible permutations P.
I have two permutations x and y that are elements of P. I want to compare them by looking at the inversion count of $xy^{-1}$. ($xy^{-1}$ is not necessarily an element of P.) What is the maximum possible value of this inversion count? Is there literature available on this topic?
If it makes the problem any easier, Spearman's footrule could be used as the comparison instead of the inversion count. The particular choice of metric is not important as long as the distance of 21345 from the identity is less than the distance of 52341 from the identity, i.e., the distance between transposed elements is important. The triangle inequality is nice, but not absolutely necessary. (This is an engineering problem after all, so the constraints on the math are flexible.) Also, the most useful value for q at the moment is 32, although this will vary in the future.
It looks like P is not closed, which is a shame, but not surprising. Using q=2, if we let x=2143 and y=1324, then $xy^{-1}$=2413, which is not in P.


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Caught in the Act!
Plus: Emma Stone eats a steak lunch in Paris, Glee's Jenna Ushkowitz and more
• Jake Gyllenhaal caught an early movie with a group of male and female friends at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood. According to the onlooker, the newly shorn actor was trying to look incognito at the theater. His movie of choice? The French thriller Point Blank.
• With a day off in Paris before heading up to the Deauville Film Festival, The Help's Emma Stone enjoyed a little time off – plus some French cuisine. Specifically, the actress had a steak lunch – solo – at Relais de l'Entrecôte. Meanwhile, her costar Jessica Chastain was window-shopping at boutiques around the Place Vendôme.
• Glee's Jenna Ushkowitz is staying in shape for season 3 of her show. The actress worked out with a personal trainer at Equinox in West Hollywood, and she looked cute in a pink tank top and black leggings. According to a source, she had a great attitude and was laughing during her exercise regimen, which included using arm weights and jogging in place.
• Candace Cameron Bure hosted a 13th birthday bash for her daughter Natasha – and there were plenty of treats. Cold Stone Creamery provided chocolate, cheesecake and other flavors of cupcakes, and guests also received glitter tattoos and manicures by the Painted Nail.
• By JENNIFER GARCIA, PETER MIKELBANK and JESSICA WEDEMEYER

subset: commoncrawl


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Thank goodness, J.K. Rowling has resisted the temptation to spin out the Harry Potter universe endlessly, now that she's got more money than the Queen. Rowling has inked a deal for a new adult novel, to be published by Little, Brown. In a statement, she said:
Although I've enjoyed writing it every bit as much, my next book will be very different to the Harry Potter series.... The freedom to explore new territory is a gift that Harry's success has brought me, and with that new territory it seemed a logical progression to have a new publisher. I am delighted to have a second publishing home in Little, Brown, and a publishing team that will be a great partner in this new phase of my writing life.
Let's hope it's still in the fantasy/science fiction wheelhouse. Either way, we can't wait to read it! [Publishers Weekly]


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September 1998
- How does the Department review my application?
- What criteria do reviewers use to score my application?
- How does the Department take into account variations in scoring practices among reviewers?
- Does a high score guarantee funding?
- How long does it take the Department to decide on my application?
- How can I become an application reviewer?
Frequently, some months elapse between an application deadline and the day when applicants learn about the funding decision or disposition of a particular group of applications. The Department is always seeking ways to reduce the time period between application deadline and award day. In fact, the Department has modified its grant award process to reduce the time from application to award. Nonetheless, some waiting is always involved because of the volume of applications the Department receives as well as the added time required for the Department to act on its commitment to give each application a fair and thorough review. This section describes what happens to your application after the Department receives it.
How does the Department review my application?
For the majority of the Department's grant competitions, program offices recruit grant application reviewers (reviewers) from outside the federal government who have expertise in the subject area(s) of the applications being considered. Program offices also use federal employees within and outside the Department to serve as reviewers. Each reviewer reads and scores a group of assigned applications. After the reviewers score the applications, the grant team conducts an internal review to assure that the reviewers' scoring sheets are correctly completed and that the application meets all the requirements of the program. These two review processes become the basis for a final listing of applicants that the grant team considers for funding.
What criteria do reviewers use to score my application?
Reviewers score each application against the selection criteria published in the Federal Register as part of the program regulations. If there are no program regulations, the reviewers score each application against the selection criteria in EDGAR. In reviewing applications, reviewers are not permitted to use additional criteria or consider any information that is not in the application.
How does the Department take into account variations in scoring practices among reviewers?
Grant teams have the option to use a computer program in the review process to normalize reviewers' scores. This normalization compensates for the tendencies of some reviewers to score applications higher or lower than other reviewers for the same group of applications. With normalized scores, the grant teams are able to prepare a rank order list of applications that negates, as much as feasible, any unusual variations in scoring.
Does a high score guarantee funding?
No. Even if your proposal ranks high and the grant team considers it for funding, your application still might not be funded because of one or more of the following reasons: the large number of high quality applications that were received under the competition; the limited amount of funds Congress has allocated to the program; and/or a geographic distribution requirement for the number of grants awarded to specific regions of the country for the program for which you applied. Keep in mind that a project is not guaranteed funding until an official Grant Award Notification (GAN) has been signed by the authorized program official and mailed to and received by the applicant.
How long does it take the Department to decide on my application?
Although the time varies from program to program, it takes approximately four to six months from the time the Department receives a new application to the time the award is made. The Department must follow carefully its own procedures, as well as requirements established by Congress and OMB, in reviewing applications and awarding grants. We must assure that the review and award process is fair to all applicants. As the Department adopts new technology, we expect the time required to process applications will be reduced.
How can I become an application reviewer?
Contact the program office that handles grant programs in your area of expertise and inform them of your interest in being a reviewer. Phone numbers for program offices can be found in the Guide to U.S. Department of Education Programs. Usually, a grant team member asks the person interested in being part of the review process to send a resume or curriculum vitae to the Department to enable the team to evaluate the person's credentials as a potential reviewer.
|On the Paper Trail


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Lodge-to-Lodge Package - 3 Lodges Want to visit all of Alaska Wildland Adventures' lodges? This 7 day, 6 night itinerary makes it easy to visit all three of our award-winning locations
in less than a week, while providing an experience you'll remember for a lifetime!
Begin your adventure at Kenai Riverside Lodge, followed by Kenai Backcountry Lodge
Starting from Anchorage, you'll visit our Kenai Riverside Lodge and Kenai Backcountry Lodge on Days 1 - 4 to enjoy freshwater rivers, glacially-carved lakes and forested retreats. Raft, hike, relax and explore.
Enjoy the beautiful drive to Seward, where you'll cruise to Kenai Fjords Glacier Lodge
Next, embark by small boat and enjoy the beauty of coastal Alaska, viewing hanging and tidewater glaciers, bird and sea lion rookeries and scanning for whales! Your home for the next two nights (or longer) is Kenai Fjords Glacier Lodge. Set deep inside Kenai Fjords National Park, this remote setting offers a magical experience and a personal connection with seacoast Alaska.Canoe, kayak and explore at the Lodge before returning to Seward. Return to Anchorage on board the Alaska Railroad - a relaxing ride wandering through the Chugach Mountains, alongside Turnagain Arm and Cook Inlet.
Pricing for three-lodge combination package: Starts at $3790 per person, after applicable discounts
This 7 day, 6 night adventure includes a special discount of $600 off per person for combining all three of our Alaska Wildland Adventures lodges!
Ask us about extending your stay with a Kenai Riverside Fishing trip or additional nights at any of our lodges.
Two of our Alaska Adventures include all three Alaska Wildland Adventures lodges on the Kenai in a seamless, small group tour. See if the Alaska Wildland Collection or the Ultimate Alaska Adventure are trips that fit your travel goals!
Top 5 Reasons to Choose the Three Lodge Combination Sample
- Begins and ends in Anchorage, keeping logistics and planning to a minimum, yet visits three unique and different lodges.
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All transportation, guided activities, unique accommodations and most meals are included in price. With all the details of your individual itinerary arranged, you can simply be on vacation and leave the little things to us. We've got you covered.


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This is a very good question. I have been moving slowly toward the pov of view that for most people studying these lower yānas is a complete waste of time. Oh, it can be useful to study a bit of Abhidharma because it helps contextualize mandala practice, and Madhyamaka does help cut through intellectual proliferation, properly studied and absorbed. Studying a bit of Madhyamaka helps one avoid the pitfal of crypto-advaita.Bhusuku wrote:And if Dzogchen contradicts the sutra/tantra teachings even on such basic buddhist doctrines, what is actually the use of studying sutra teachings at all for someone who's mainly interested in Dzogchen? I mean, isn't it actually a waste of time studying Abhidharma, if later on you realize that the Dzogchen teachings have a complete different POV on many Abhidharma subjects? The same applies for studying Madhyamaka: why waste many years to gain an in depth understanding of the two truths if later on you realize that there's only one truth in Dzogchen?
Also places where Dzogchen differs from sutra and tantra will not be readily understood if one does not have at least some superficial familarity with them.
You don't really need to study all this sutra stuff to understand Dzogchen, and as far as Tantra goes, anuyoga is sufficient. On the other hand, also a practitioner needs to understands that nothing really limits their practice to so called "Dzogchen practice" -- anything at all whether from Buddhist or non-Buddhist sources like Yoga, etc., can be incoporated into Dzogchen practitioner's life. One can even participate in a non-Buddhist religion, if for some reason that is necessary.
I personally think one will understand Dzogchen much better if one is grounded in sutra and tantra, but no, it is not completely necessary to learn these things. Understanding the five elements, three gates, emptiness, and bodhicitta are about all one needs at bare minimum. That, and a realized Guru -- and those are in rather short supply.


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Looking for more information? Check out our USPTO Journeys of Innovation story featuring Josephine Cochran, the woman who invented the modern dishwasher.
Woman Invented Dishwasher
Patent For First Practical Dish Washing Machine Issued December 28, 1886
Press Release
Brigid Quinn
Josephine Garis Cochran invented the first useful dishwasher in Shelbyville, Ill., and received patent # 355,139 on December 28, 1886.
Cochran, a wealthy woman who entertained often, wanted a machine that could wash dishes faster than her servants, and without breaking them. When she couldn't find one, she built it herself.
She measured the dishes first, then she made wire compartments, each designed to fit plates, cups, or saucers. The compartments were placed inside a wheel that lay flat within a copper boiler. A motor turned the wheel while hot soapy water squirted from the bottom of the boiler and rained down on the dishes. Her invention worked! She showed the dishwasher at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, but only restaurants and hotels showed interest in it. Cochran founded a company to manufacture her dishwashers, which eventually became KitchenAid®. It wasn't until the 1950s, however, that dishwashers started to become a standard household kitchen appliance.
Cochran's patent and the trademarks registered to KitchenAid®, as well as the more than 6 million patents issued since the first in 1790 and the 2.3 million trademarks registered since 1870, can be seen on the Department of Commerce's United States Patent and Trademark Office website at www.uspto.gov.
Last year USPTO issued 182,223 patents and registered 127,794 trademarks.


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Imperial Default for Dummies
by Paul William Roberts
Editor's Note: Our Senior Writer, Paul William Roberts, gives us a rollicking tour of the Bush-induced Gotterdamerung in Iraq. Roberts, whose book, A War Against Truth, is one of the very best accounts of the mad march to aggression, was in Iraq during the earliest days of the invasion, as "Shock and Awe" gave way to shakedown and atrocity. If you want to grasp the realities about the Middle East, about the Iraq war, ask someone who knows. Paul William Roberts knows.
A friend of mine in Baghdad wrote to me a few days ago about a conversation he'd had with an elderly lady from West Virginia who was seated next to him on an airplane between Los Angeles and Washington earlier this year. The subject under discussion was how Iraqis generally view the American invasion and occupation of Iraq, and my friend was trying to find an analogy that would work for a sweet eighty-five-year-old grandmother who had never traveled anywhere beyond the USA in her life. He came up with this:
Imagine you are visiting with one of your daughters who is married to a man who is a bit of a brute. He beats the kids occasionally and has knocked her about from time to time as well. You don't like it, she doesn't like it, the kids don't like it, but at the end of the day he's Dad, he works hard, he provides, and no one's going to break up the family after all this time – besides, the monster's mellowing with age and hasn't hit anyone very hard in a long while.
So there you all are, watching TV one night, the kids doing their homework or playing downstairs, your daughter preparing dinner in the kitchen, the son-in-law having his beer and reading the sports page….When all of a sudden, the front door is smashed open, there are loud explosions all around the house, and five men come crashing in through the windows on ropes, as another five pour through the broken door firing guns.
One of the kids is killed, another staggers around covered in blood screaming, a third lies groaning somewhere nearby, then flames erupt from the kitchen as your daughter runs out, her body on fire, and you feel something smash into your knee breaking the leg. Before anyone can work out what's happening, there's another terrifying explosion above and the house rocks from side to side as the roof caves in and the whole structure collapses around you in rubble and dust. As you wipe the gravel and concrete from your face, you see that some of the intruders have handcuffed the son-in-law and are dragging him away at gunpoint. One of these gunmen then comes over and identifies himself as a representative of the Chinese Children's Aid Society of Beijing, saying they would have come sooner but they had trouble getting visas.
They were here now, though, and your family was at last free of the brute and you could finally relax. Another gunman sweeps a bit of rubble to one side with a broom and apologizes for the mess, giving you the business card of a local contractor who also happens to be a friend of his brother and specializes in fixing houses reduced to rubble for a reasonable price. The men then say in a chorus, Have a nice day! They throw the brute into a van and are off leaving you sitting there alone in the dark with raindrops starting to pitter-patter on your head. How do you think you would you feel about all this?
"Well, I wouldn't be happy,†the old lady apparently replied.
"And that's pretty much how we feel,†said my friend.
The spin-doctors sure are busy
in Washington these days, and their focus is Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq again.
Not because the country has been transformed from a police state ruled
by fear into a fearful state ruled by no one, but because the mid-term
elections are coming up and the Republicans are going to lose their
rubber-stamp majority control of the US Congress unless George W. Bush
really does have a friend in Jesus. But poor George doesn't
seem to have any friends at all, suddenly, does he? As he's rolled
out for yet another White House press conference, where the reporters
look like an audience watching some miserably talentless borscht-belt
stand-up act, his face is increasingly a parody of a man watching the
shit hit the fan.
On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann delivered a blistering attack on the President for signing the Military Commissions Act into law and thus effectively abolishing habeas corpus, the legal lynchpin of Liberty that allegedly protects citizens who can afford a lawyer from completely arbitrary arrest. Most Americans, of course, won't notice any difference, unless they look like Arabs.
A day earlier,
in an editorial, the New York Times, as part of its ongoing attempt
to look like a real newspaper to historians researching this period
in the distant future, said Iraq could become "the worst foreign
policy debacle in American history". Cut out 'debacle' and
'American', pasting them back earlier as a subheading if you want,
and you're closer to the truth – something the paper of record is rarely accused of being.
In Canada, the National Post,
normally so rabidly pro-American that its owners would have been shot
for treason in an earlier age, ran a column by one of its editors, Jonathan
Kay, sincerely apologizing for being so wrong about Iraq. Kay, who had
frequently sniped from the safety of his column at critics of the war,
including myself, cited the hellish conditions in which Iraqis now dwelt,
and even conceded the civilian death-toll had to be far higher than
Bush's 30,000 --- if not quite as high as 600,000 – concluding with
"mea culpaâ€. To his credit, Kay made little attempt to sugar the
pill, but is this because he was biting the bullet, or because the American
Enterprise Institute has issued its troops the order to implement Plan
All over the media, there are so many molting hawks around these days that those of us allergic to feathers are breaking out in hives. Remember, these are the same merchants of misinformation who, three years ago, sang you hymns of praise about the wonders of modern military technology as they thundered into Baghdad, unsure themselves if they were reporting this war or fighting it. For an accurate assessment of the Fox News audience ratings now, all you need do is check the polls to see how many Americans still believe the US is winning the war in Iraq. It's down to 20% this week, half of whom probably don't know who won the Civil War either.
Over in the Green Zone, oasis of Central Hell, Paul Wolfowitz's faithful Afghan hound, Zalmay Khalilzad, now the American Ambassador (though to what and where he isn't sure) clambered out of his bomb-proof kennel briefly for a joint press conference with the performing quisling-du-jour, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who can barely control a quarter of Baghdad, let alone all of Iraq. Stressing what was at stake, without stressing what was really at stake – the rubber-stamp Congress, neoconservatism, corporate profits, American pride and credibility as planetary potentate -- Mr Khalilzad called Iraq "the defining challenge of our era" which would "profoundly shape... the future of the world." Well, we know that because you said it ten years ago, when Überfuhrer Wolfowitz and the other neoconmen were trying to shove it down Bill Clinton's throat, while he was busy trying to shove something else down almost anyone's throat. Perhaps if Khalilzad ventured beyond Fort Rumsfeld's concrete cocoon he'd notice the future of the world doesn't look so good, if the current condition of Iraq is its shape, and it's painfully clear to six billion of us that America obviously wasn't up to the defining challenge of our era. It's just as well the Age of Irony gave way to the Age of Bullshit, otherwise someone might make more of the fact that the most powerful and well-financed military force in history has so far never won a war.
Why break a perfect record now? Rather than cut and run, the British and American imperial task forces cut and stayed, and it's evident now that they really don't know how to leave. Operation Together Forward II, the failed attempt to pacify Baghdad during Ramadan, clearly awaits another sequel, while in Basra, the British army's Operation Sinbad --- an effort to retake the hearts and minds that Brit soldiers otherwise toil so hard to lose – seems as pointless as the retaking of Amara from Mahdist militias, who had seized it earlier in the month.
Looking more like a psycho schoolboy than ever, the neolab's chief technician, Tony Blair -- for whom denial actually is a river in Egypt -- appeared to have gone even further down the Road Less Traveled than his boss in Washington has yet been pushed. Blair seems to think Iraq and his job are the same thing, refusing to discuss a deadline for the pullout of either.
Somebody around tireless Tony must remember Suez, and Field-Marshall Montgomery – hero of WW II's North Africa campaign – asking Prime Minister Sir Antony Eden what his objective was in invading the canal zone. Eden replied, "To knock Nasser off his perch…â€. Then what? said Montgomery. Silence.
It is a major neocon tenet, according to Wolf O'Wits at least, that the style of government affects national character. And thank God it does, otherwise some eager lieutenant in the Pentagon would point out that when a distraction from the humiliating retreat in Vietnam was sorely needed, Kissinger bombed Laos. Or that Reagan's 1984 bombardment of the Shouf mountains provided great cover for the "redeployment†of US forces in Beirut – which occurred a couple of days after he had promised America would never cut and run. Or that the previous George Bush had incited a Shia uprising in Iraq to cover the fact that there actually was no Gulf War, although there had been "a massacreâ€, as Gen. Colin Powell then termed it. The Shia waited 12 years for those US forces Bush had promised would be in like Flynn to back them up, but unfortunately Saddam himself couldn't wait this long, mowing down tens of thousands in the open desert with the very helicopter gun-ships Rummy had sold him back in 1988.
When Arabs think of all the promises kept that were made to them by Western governments over the past century, the first that surely springs to mind is…er…well… George the First's pledge to "reduce Iraq to a pre-industrial state…â€. And the second must be…um…ah…er…
And so the spin goes on. Asked why he hadn't fired Rumsfeld yet – as anyone else would have done in his position – Boy George further confirmed suspicions that English is not his first language by first praising the Rummer's administrative flair (as if the question had been, "Is Rummy fit to run the Harlem Wal-Mart?â€), and then inviting everyone to blame him if they had a problem with the war, not Rumsfeld (as if the question were, "What would Wyatt Earp have done in your shoes?â€). George, hello! Everyone's already blaming you, buddy: the press corps are just trying to be kind because you look like you need a break. Or a beer.
George is bushed, his face doesn't work at all any more; he's pale, wan – he ain't himself. He must think wistfully about all those good ol' boys who voted for him 'cos he seemed like a guy "you could have a beer with†– no matter that he isn't a guy you can have a beer with, unless you're willing to swill the stuff with a zero alcohol by volume content, and even then he'd have to call his AA support team. But George doesn't look as if he treasures his sobriety as much as he did when standing on the poop deck, or wherever he was, wearing a codpiece bigger than Rummy's head, and saying, 'The US and our allies have prevailed. Now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country'. Iraq, he meant. Was that only three years ago? It seems like 23, doesn't it?
Never easy to keep on-message, poor George is now hard to keep, period. The Republicans can't decide whether they should renovate him or pull him down. They have to build another one anyway, but is it credible to hang him out to dry so soon? Should he seem to have a plan for Iraq? Should he actually have a plan? What happens when rats leave a sinking ship? Are they okay? How do they leave it anyway? On another ship? Or are they airlifted off? What's wrong with leaving a sinking ship? Doesn't it make sense to leave it? Is it only the rats that leave? Doesn't that make the rats the smart ones? Rats really get a bad rap, don't they? Hey, boys: Can we get some spin for rats? Yeah, 'Nature's Sanitary Engineers' --- I love it!
Nuri al-Maliki must be asking himself if anyone will tell him when the ship is due to sink, so he can pack his little case in time and go home to England without having to walk there backwards brandishing his Kalashnikov. He should read the pamphlet on How Great American Military Victories Are Achieved, no doubt available from his own office. There, under How To Tell Victory From Defeat, he will find:
The principal difference between a humiliating retreat and a great victory lies in thorough control of the media. Remember, only the enemy will know what actually occurred – so make sure no smart-ass reporter asks them for their opinions, and of course restrict their access to all media in languages anyone speaks.
One must be careful not to create any impression of failure. A country that has been brought freedom and democracy by US troops yet has failed to embrace these gifts has only itself to blame. Thus emphasis must be placed on the uselessness and ingratitude of the natives for any chaos and destruction that remains when our brave soldiers leave.
Since Americans are big-hearted generous people, they are reluctant to tar an entire nation with the same brush for long, so it is more effective to select a particular individual as the target for long-term blame. Usually,this individual will be the leader we have been trying in vain to support. But it is not wise to denounce his venality and incompetence for too long, since this could be construed as a reflection on us --- after all, we did choose him for the job. Far better, then, to emphasize his treacherousness and cunning – qualities easily concealed as drive and intelligence – and ideally reveal his role in a plot or scandal of some sort to further blacken his reputation so that no one will mind when the enemy torture and execute him.
If unsure whether to stay the course of liberating a country or leave it, you should immediately consult the booklet called Classic American Foreign Policy Paradigms: a Primer, available wherever fine American imperialism is sold and celebrated. Under section A, Installation and Operation of a Strongman, you will find copious information about our best-loved, most tried and tested overseas policy of all. As President Richard Milhous Nixon used to say, "When in doubt, get the Strongman out.â€
And remember: "Covert ops isn't missionary work,†– Dr. Henry Kissinger.
All those with a good view over Constitution Park, and indeed pragmatists and positive thinkers all over Washington who would like one, are now muttering about the need for this good old American standby, "a Strongman.†George the bushed has said – and meant it sincerely – that his patience with Maliki's government "is not endless.†In fact, it will apparently run out early next year. So before then Nuri will have to be a busy little quisling indeed to secure cooperation (at the very least a promise to keep the bloodbath from overflowing) from the two dozen militias over which he has no control at all and in whose brutal hands Iraq's future rests. As he well knows, these militias are just the result of Iraq's hapless, terrified millions, in all their ethnicities and denominations, attempting to give themselves a little of the security that America was legally obliged but failed to provide itself. Their cooperation with this or any other US stooge is not going to happen, thus, as US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley also admitted in this confessional week, the "violence is going to go on for a long time.â€
Although some journalists imagine they heard Bush set a deadline for withdrawal of US troops – 12 to 18 months – he said nothing that couldn't wriggle from beneath a boot and vanish into the sand. Even when they do withdraw, they will not have left any more than Fort Rumsfeld. Read Some Do's and Don't's in US Occupation of Foreign Lands, section 3 A:
The central guiding principle in US occupation policy lies in asking one simple question: Does the country make a good base? If it does, you know all you need to know, because the cardinal rule tells us:AMERICA NEVER QUITS A GOOD BASE. That's right, folks: it ain't never happened yet!
From the day they entered Baghdad – and this is why we hardly ever saw them – the US Army was busy looting office furniture and supplies to ferry out to the numerous ex-Iraqi military bases hidden deep in the desert and always out-of-bounds to ordinary citizens. Saddam couldn't have constructed a state more conducive to US invasion -- oppressed population, fortified presidential zone in secure area of capital, numerous conveniently-located desert bases, huge underclass guaranteed to cause a smokescreen of trouble for as long as its needed, monster as president, with psychopathic asshole son and heir no one will support as insurance against future invasion failing if the first one does -- and some Iraqis still believe this was the mission the CIA had hired him for all along.
One regularly encountered caravans of khaki trucks miles long winding their slow and deafeningly noisy way out through the shimmering dunes, and most Iraqis knew instantly where they were headed, and what it implied. It was Rumsfeld's original plan – if you can call it that – to have a quick victory and hand over a decapitated Iraqi army to Shia authorities imported on the coattails of the US invasion, then appear to come home, while actually leaving 30-40 thousand US troops to watch the store (or gas station) from those invisible desert bases. This minimalist plan unraveled, as Rumsfeld would say, rather quickly when the imported Shia authorities turned out to have no authority at all in Iraq.
Did anyone wonder if taking advice and information only from exiled Shia Iraqis was such a good idea? Obviously not. Indeed, consulting exiles of any stripe about invading a country they clearly had good reason to leave, and of which they thus probably have a vested interest in changing the regime, doesn't strike me as a very sound principle in general. Only one thing is certain: the Rumster didn't dream up this catastrophe himself -- it merely fit in nicely with the plans he had to enrich corporations he had recently run.
"Blame me,†says Spurious George. Okay…
But who has the heart to do
it? He's become such a pathetic, frazzled little creature, I almost
feel sorry for him. Almost. When Richard M. Nixon stood spluttering
his apology to the nation he'd lied to (about not much, though, let's
face it), his pirate's jowls wobbling, his paranoid Beagle's eyes
darting about woefully, I never thought I'd see another US president
look more wretched or pitiful. Compared with poor George, though, Nixon
looks like Abe Lincoln (compared with George the First, he's Young
Washington at the cherry tree's stump).
You wouldn't hire this guy to run a vacuum cleaner over your carpet, let alone run roughshod over your country. We know he stole the election, but did the Republicans really even elect him as their finest available candidate? No one now admits to voting for him, of course, but you have to wonder what those votes must have cost, or what they served up for cocktails that night. Or if this dyslexic dipshit cowboy from West Texas (via Connecticut) actually was the best they could come up with?
In which case, prepare to believe the only choice there is for Most Powerful Leader in the World lies between Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain. Actually, it's an alternative, not a choice -- and it's not even that, since Johnny obviously spent too long in that POW camp (the eyes, the eyes!). So, Hillary, the job's yours, if you want it…
If nothing else, it will be fun to watch Bill create the template for First Laddie, and it will silence the shrill bleating of our sisters who still imagine only men can make such a cock-up of the planet. Besides, Hillary's kinda sexy, no? Well, she's the first First Lady I've ever found myself having carnal thoughts about. Come to think about it, Chelsea's the first First Daughter to obtain that sincere tribute too. Bill's not my type.
I hope Hillary realizes that the mess in the Middle East is part of the job description, because by the time poor George is back chasing armadillos in West Texas, and the Republicans have come up with a feasible explanation and suitably groveling apology for him, they will get back to doing what they do best: blaming someone else for their greedy blunders. After a year of tweaking and spinning, Hillary, 60% of your fellow amnesiacs will think the entire fiasco was your idea. 15% will probably think Reagan won the war, so the numbers aren't going to be that good by the mid-terms, which will be exactly when the rats will probably try reboarding the ship.
So, let's try helping Hillary out here.
In order to get Project America back on course – if it's possible – the crew have got to stop thinking like Brits, whose default mode for foreign policy is going to be marooned in the shoals of pompous meddling imperialism until Pakistanis run the country. Globalism doesn't mean America runs the world, let's get that straight. Yet a global government is coming, whether we like it or not, so it will be more prudent to magnanimously assist its advent rather than bitterly resist the inevitable.
A big part of the mental preparation for this will be getting it through our heads that no one wants Britain or America telling them how to behave, let alone tearing into their country with guns blazing to forcibly make them behave. Most of all, though, no one wants their behaviour used as an excuse to loot their natural resources, enslave their people for labour and medical experiments, or otherwise exploit what may not look like much to us, but to them is home. It used to be possible to get away with this sort of crap, but now it isn't. It's over. Plus, we have to give back some of what we stole, if only to avoid having all of it taken back by force -- and let's hope that force is merely international law.
The planet is not a business, so big business has no business running it. The sooner we get a handle on this idea the sooner we will be able to salvage the environment we live in, which isn't going to be an enterprise making anyone a dime, and is going to be one where corporate profits will plunge. But surely no one would want to grow rich knowing they were impoverishing the future, would they? Just as no one surely would want to enrich themselves while consigning their fellow human beings to sickness and hunger, or would they?
The United States is indigenously a mirror of what it also is globally. Five percent of the population control 95% of the wealth, and the country, which represents a few percent of the world, has about half of the wealth, and similarly generates figures of grotesque excess for consumption and waste, including industrial pollution. If you read about such a situation in a sci-fi novel, Americans would be the evil, greedy overlords who get overthrown by the gentle sylph-people in the end. Face it, this is the stark truth. The numbers don't lie and no one contests them. It may well be that enterprise, industriousness and organization are virtues that should be rewarded, but that is not going to make the dark overlords any more likeable, since these virtues are only possible through the exploitation, manipulation and terrorizing of others, so they will never seem virtuous to anyone else, and there is no ultimate authority to decide conclusively that they are really virtuous. Virtues always tend to benefit those who decide they are virtues in the first place, and always tend to be regarded with suspicion by those who see no benefit in them at their end of the deal.
Life is very simple when one's sole concern is the next balance sheet. Decisions are easy to make when they're between making a profit and not making one. But life in its entirety is not simple. It is complex, and of the few laws that do seem to be universally obeyed -- by nature, that is, from galaxy to molecule – the most prominent is this: every action elicits an opposite and equal reaction. In other words, what you do is what is done to you, or what you do comes back to you, or what goes around comes around. You don't have to believe that the law of karma is a reality: you can see it operating all around you. It's a fact, and as such has no interest in anyone's opinion of it, any more than the sun cares whether or not you believe it will seem to rise tomorrow as it did today.
There are very few facts about this existence of ours, so we ought to treasure the few there are. It does not take much imagination to see that a full acceptance of the fact of karma would dramatically change human behaviour. And if your religion tells you otherwise, it is clearly not so wise a religion as it doubtless claims to be.
Having established these lofty goals for President Hillary, let's give her something a bit more attainable too, shall we?
A good start to the aversion therapy needed to stop thinking like a Brit might be to point out that all the chatter after the Suez catastrophe was about the folly, the foolishness of the venture, just as all the current yack about Iraq laments the war's stupidity and lack of planning. This is where the imperial default mode can most clearly be seen in both responses. For these military adventures were primarily wrong, and only incidentally stupid, the way breaking into someone's house to steal and kill is primarily wrong. No one really wants to hear a felon's views about how the B&E could have been pulled off more efficiently and effectively. To air them shamelessly is obscene, inappropriate and offensive to the victims. We don't tolerate people discussing how Hitler might have achieved his genocide more effectively, do we?
America now stands in the dock of the court of world opinion -- which will one day be much more than a metaphor -- and the judges only want to hear genuine contrition and remorse, not the details of Plan B. Hillary will have to weep very convincingly.
As for a Strongman, there is one available who would be perfect for the job – in fact his credentials are impeccable – but someone will have to unlock his jail cell before he can apply for the position.
There is, however, a somewhat better solution to providing the opportunity for "redeployment†of US forces in Iraq under an aura of dignity, if not precisely victory. You can called it whatever you like, but a retreat is still a retreat. Leaders of the Sunni resistance have apparently tabled an offer that will not make anyone happy, but will make most of the people in the region less unhappy than they would be with any other solution.
Put us back in charge, say the Sunni, and we guarantee to keep the country western-leaning, keep the oil deals in place, keep the Iranians out, and keep ourselves from killing all the Shia, whom we promise henceforth to treat equitably as full citizens of Iraq's democracy, a shining example to the Arab world. No one in Kerbala or Teheran is going to like this, of course, but the Saudis, Jordanians, Israelis, Syrians and Turks are going to breath a great sigh of relief to find anything implemented that prevents a Shia theocracy opening for business on their doorsteps. And there is wiggle room for Washington to call it a mission accomplished -- if they have to.
The Sunnis also have a little-discussed yet very persuasive additional bargaining chip. Syria is supplying them with new hi-tech Russian rifles equipped with digital telescopic sighting devices that allow trained snipers to pick off coalition soldiers regardless of body armour from distances so great that any defense against them or detection of the assassins is impossible. They do not have many rifles or trained snipers yet, but they will be getting more, and Syria's only condition for supplying them is that the targets not be Muslims. Every day for some weeks now, two or three US soldiers have been shipped out in body bags with high-velocity bullet wounds to the neck or face. Sunni leaders have stated grimly yet realistically that these numbers will only increase -- along with all the other more low-tech horrors now wearyingly familiar to life as usual in hell.
These men, it must also be
remembered, are mainly ex-Republican Guard commanders, and their fighters
are the highly-trained elite core of Saddam's old army, not some undisciplined
rabble. Just as the Romans liked to portray zealot forces during the
Jewish Wars as if they were roaming bands of disorganized brigands,
the Americans have never wanted it known that their "Sunni insurgencyâ€
is really a legitimate and ongoing war of resistance by members of Iraq's
former army, who are merely keeping the oath they once swore to defend
their country. Knowing this explains why the resistance is so organized,
sustained, well-trained and formidable, just as knowing the zealots
were actually a highly-trained, disciplined and brilliantly commanded
army explains how they managed at one point to drive out all Roman legions
from Palestine and raise the Jewish flag over Jerusalem again. But in
the world of electric communications, the victor may no longer be able
to remain the one who gets to write the history. Things change.
From deals that were done by US commanders with Iraqi generals like Ahmed Hussein to betray Saddam and avoid a Stalingrad at the gates of Baghdad, Washington has long known that the actual plan for Saddam's defense of Iraq consisted of a guerrilla war to be fought during the occupation, not any Mother of All Battles that would have achieved nothing except a battlefield of martyrs and a paragraph in the histories of military disaster. For this purpose, secret caches of weapons, explosives and ammunition had been concealed all over the Sunni Triangle, the locations known only to a handful of generals. The pretence of an "insurgency†has only served to keep those poor grunts, the sons and daughters of American poverty, from the hideous urban ghettoes, hopeless tenements and deserted factories along the shores of the Great Lakes, and from the tarpaper shacks and moonshine stills in the rolling hills of Tennessee, from knowing the "violence is going to go on for a long timeâ€.
The "three months maximum†that Rummy promised them has now turned into three long years, during which thousands never got that free education most had joined up solely to obtain and improve their hope of a better future than Mom and Pop could provide. They left Iraq instead with just a pine box, a cheap cotton US flag, and a white stone grave marker to show for their sacrifice to the cause of spreading democracy.
The rest may even be poorer,
though, having lost all respect for their nation's leaders, their
institutions, and in some cases themselves. They were lied to, exploited,
subjected to a nightmare no one on earth could prepare himself to handle
with reason and sanity. Some, whether out of animal fear or raging unmanageable
anger, committed deeds they have come know are beyond any forgiveness,
and impervious to repair. Hollywood never shows us what happens to someone
who knowingly takes the life of an innocent fellow being -- a child,
a woman, an old man – without any justification or mitigating reason.
It changes them profoundly in that deep core of the self we used to
call the soul.
Whether it is eternal damnation they know they will face, or whether it is a knowledge of what it really means to destroy something so precious and unique it can never be replaced and the world will always mourn its absence, doesn't really matter. They know they have done the most terrible thing it is possible to do in life, and they are fully aware that the universe's immutable need for balance, for order to be restored, has now bound them to a karmic wheel of fire that will never again allow them to know peace or joy until that same awful deed is done to them. Ask anyone who has killed without cause how it really feels, because no Battleground America video game is going to let you know.
From the ill-trained grunts, to the dehumanized killing machines that emerge from conveyer belts at the US Marines' brainwashing plants, these are America's war victims too, and their presence -- when they do finally come home -- will most certainly be felt, as the stories they have to tell begin to filter out into the tens of millions who have never tasted a slice of America's Dream-Pie, who live no better than Roman slaves, and will never even seeManhattan or Beverly Hills, let alone live there.
A nation where it is basically a crime to be old and sick and poor, where education is a privilege of the rich, where human sexuality in all its rich diversity is considered sinful or is even punishable by Federal law, where equality under the law itself is a transparent myth, rich men never sit on death row, and where wars are waged continually at the behest of political leaders who are also beneficiary shareholders in corporations connected with a privatized war industry, whose profits exceed the sum total of those from all other business enterprises combined -- this, I suggest, is a nation that has no claim on the title 'civilized'. This is a feudal tyranny.
"Blame me,†says George the Second.
Nah – it would be like having Mike Tyson beat the crap out of Forrest Gump once a week on prime time. George has a victim-complex already. He'd get into it. He'd hit the hooch again and disappear on a bender, to end up in those profile-full-face police photos with black eyes and lank disheveled hair. Remember, he's going to be the first ex-president who will not get to keep a Secret Service detail for protection at the taxpayers expense. I wonder who knew that would make a brilliant budget cut? Let's just watch him blame himself, eh? There are far better people for us to blame.
Announcing her candidacy, Hillary ought to strongly recommend in the same speech acceptance of the Sunni deal (unless a better one has emerged), then point her finger at the three men who really have got some explaining to do, and whose recent silence and absence is becoming so obvious that it's getting to resemble a higher form of presence: Paul Dundes Wolfowitz, Donald Henry Rumsfeld, and Richard Bruce "Dick†Cheney. Anyone seen them recently?
Paul Wolfowitz, just like his earlier counterpart Robert McNamarra, whom we largely have to thank for the Vietnam Vexation, went off to run the World Bank – that we know. It was a job for which – if the bank really did what it's officially said to do -- Bono had better credentials than Wolfo. However, Banco Mondo is really just a global wing and conduit for Bluddbarth, Smashem & Grabbe Inc. ( motto: "You knock 'em down, we build 'em up again -- and guess who gets the tab?â€), that self-replicating splatter of companies, subsidiaries, beneficiary trusts, holding companies, off-shore tax-dodges, anonymous Swiss money bins, and numerous other conspiracies of industry, law and banking that both Dick and his pal Rummy, along with a bestiary of other immoral crooks, leave in their wake like rabbit shit in the woods of Maryland. Every one of these nefarious enterprises makes its obscene profits from peddling death in many forms, and a good number offer services the army used to provide for itself, such as food and other supplies, logistics, and even combat troops.
In all fairness, though, Wolfo isn't such a bad guy. He has a heart of gold, your honour, and just fell in with the wrong crowd, who used his scholarly naivety and ravenous political ambition to lure him down the road to hell -- a few miles of which is actually paved solely by Wolfo's good intentions and named in his honour. But he did first propose invading Iraq back in 1978 -- of that there's no denying.
It was actually quite a clever idea then, however, since young Wolfo had worked out that Iraq was the only country capable of fighting a proxy war for the evil Soviet Union, which would finally allow them access to a warm water port, the lack of which had left the Soviet navy in a similarly embarrassing position to the Polish navy, as well as a shot at control of the world's oil supply. If such a thing occurred, Wolfo had discerned in his contingency studies (read 'studies of catastrophes that might happen'), NATO would find its war machine screeching to a sudden halt when the oil supply was cut off. This was true – or rather could have been true – and Wolfo was considered a genius for discovering it. If you can be said to have discovered something that might happen but hasn't yet. Still, it was a good reason to entertain the idea of knocking Saddam off his perch. Although very few members of any Washington administration thought so for 25 years, during which the project came to obsess Wolfo to the point of irrationality.
Around the time this brainwave struck, he also became chummy with Rummy. Together they hatched a dubious scheme known as Team B that entailed going through all the CIA's data on the Soviet Union and reinterpreting it in a more frightening light.
Not that anyone bothered to inform the citizens of America of it, but the CIA had seen signs the Soviet Union was falling apart at the seams since the early seventies. The very fabric of commie society was tearing apart for numerous reasons, but principally because the US had done an excellent job of undermining its economy in any way available. The evil empire was heading towards bankruptcy, said the CIA, and the end was inevitable.
Rummy and Wolfo's motives for the Team B operation, therefore, can only have been to find reasons to prolong the Cold War – possibly for ten years longer than necessary. Why on earth would they wish to do that?
Rummy's motives are easy to spot: those ten years saw a staggering increase in military spending, totaling some $600 billion, a good deal of which went into the coffers of Bluddbarth, Smashem & Grabbe. Very few in Washington thought Team B's methodology had much basis in reality at all, though. For example, Wolfo announced the Soviets had developed a non-acoustic form of radar that could well make the entire US navy obsolete (picture that tab!). Upon what was the astounding discovery based, though? Well, it was based on the fact that the Yanks had not been detecting any Soviet radar scanning their shipping lanes. There was nothing whatsoever to suggest a new form of radar had been invented, except Wolfo's assertion that the absence of acoustic radar scanning was incontrovertible proof the commies had come up with something else.
What the Soviets had actually come up against was their own lack of any naval history worth more than a footnote, and their complete lack of funds to do much about creating one now. Wolfo also claimed the devils were hiding new kinds of intercontinental ballistic missiles under the Ural Mountains, a point he knew full well could not be proved or disproved. But Wolfo's own motives in prolonging the Cold War seem to have been so he could keep peddling his invade Iraq scheme, which had no justification whatsoever if the Soviets no longer posed a threat, did it?
Either way, the taxpayers got an epic fleecing before the diabolical Red Threat -- unparalleled in wickedness, unmatched in vast arsenals of deadly weapons, all of them aimed at your house, Joe! -- suddenly vanished into a puddle of Stolichnaya, just like the Wicked Witch of the West. Splat, poof -- gone!
That $600 billion would have bought a lot of free health care and education, wouldn't it? But this is not the kind of enterprise that made America great. The cost benefit analyses of these businesses, health and education, make the Rumsfelds and Cheneys of this world run out yodeling into the street with mirth. It's a mug's game. Guns an' ammo are where the big boys play. Yes-siree! there's no business like Woe Business: it's so straightforward. You can only use a cruise missile once, then you have to buy another one (range about $ 100,000 to $ 1 million per, depending on the bang you want for your buck). Night One of Shock & Awe's son et lumiere extravaganza to entertain the citizens of Baghdad, and present a symbolic image of the kind of might they were up against, cost, ooh, aah, tens of billions of dollars to stage --- no one is going to admit the exact amount, but Lockheed-Martin's annual take alone is around $35 billion – and detonated more high explosives than were used by both sides during all of WW II. The hundreds of billions presented to US taxpayers as the cost of the war, the price of liberty, or of being God's Chosen Security Guards, whatever unadulterated bullshit the crooks on the hill think will fly, is not really the drain of cash by pipeline into a bottomless pit near Baghdad that it's made to seem. Most of it goes into the pocket of someone like…well, like Dick Cheney.
So, Hillary, first you suggest Wolfo ought to be summoned before a team of experts and interrogated for weeks on his motives for pushing the Iraq invasion scheme, no matter what justification he had to adopt for it, and on the reasons why his research and planning for this war could have been the work of a modestly intelligent baboon or gibbon, and would certainly have fit on the reverse of any coat-check ticket or business card. Leave it at that, since the answers will demand the immediate appearance of Bruce "Dick†Cheney to start explaining things stretching back into the mists of time.
It begins with the palace coup he pulled off with his sidekick Rummy during the forgotten presidency of Bob Hope (although he used the alias Gerald Ford). While Gerry was off golfing, Dick and Don contrived to box him in and terminate everyone who stood between them and full-spectrum domination of the government -- including Henry Kissinger and Nelson Rockefeller -- which left Dick, at 14, or however old he was back then, with the second most powerful job in the White House, and Don, who was 12, as the youngest ever Defense Secretary in US history. Now, a century later, he's the oldest Defense Secretary in history -- as well as the most unpopular man on earth (after poor George, naturally). The ladies still think he's sexy, though, but then they thought Claus von Bulow was a hunk too after his murder trial. The intervening years saw this double-act, the Dick and Don Show, perform various versions of the same coup both in and out of office, moving on the war business with the same ruthless rapacity as they did on any political plum that served their avaricious purposes. Even Kissinger said Rummy frightened him.
Unlike Wolfo, Dick doesn't have a heart of gold. In fact he doesn't have a heart at all now, and runs on batteries. I will just throw Hillary the starter question for him, though, then the rest is up to her -- should she choose to accept this mission.
Dick, the Inquistor should ask, tell us about that study you commissioned from Kellogg, Brown, Root when you had George the First as front man and Rummy's job at the Pentagon.
Dick asked KBR -- not a nasty breakfast cereal, but an even nastier subsidiary of the giant crime syndicate, Halliburton – to do him a study looking into whether or not privatizing the military was a good idea. Asking a private company in the war industry this is like asking a shark if it wants fat children with nose bleeds dropped into the ocean every ten minutes. The study probably came back an hour later.
After Iran-Contra and other crimes against humanity and the taxpayers' gullibility, Dick realized the scheme he'd roped Wolfo into concocting for him to move the Pentagon into world domination wasn't going to fly. Poppy Bush would be flushed down the partisan toilet, and Dick didn't fancy his chances bullying big Bill Clinton. So he cleared his desk, shredded his files, and looked through the want ads for a real job. His net wealth at this point was around $1 million. Nothing, right?
By sheer coincidence, it seems, Halliburton were then looking for a CEO, and, again astoundingly, Dick was hired on the spot. Imagine his surprise when he found that study he'd commissioned from KBR! He'd forgotten all about it, probably. But now he got to work, using the study's findings to persuade his pals back in the Pentagon that Halliburton -- and the dozens of subsidiaries it owned or would start up on an ad hoc basis if the others didn't supply an item, service, or need -- should be hired to do absolutely everything the military used to do itself and that the public wouldn't notice so easily.
I doubt if anyone knows exactly
how many contracts Dick hauled from the Pentagon by tractor-trailer,
but over the next four years his personal net wealth definitely grew.
In fact it grew to $70-odd million. Explain that, Dick. Explain how
this doesn't amount to something rather fishy -- like a shark chomping
on chubby kids.
I won't get into the question of whether or not private contractors, who are not answerable to the US Congress or public for their actions, really ought to be hired to conduct wars at all. Nor will I question the wisdom of paying mercenaries $1,000 a day to fight next to grunts earning $50 to dodge the same bullets. I won't get into Halliburton's outrageously fraudulent billing practices either, nor the fact that instead of supplying purified drinking water to US soldiers -- as it had been handsomely paid to do -- Halliburton pumped water from the Tigris river, which I wouldn't even paddle in, and few fish seem able to drink, serving this amoebic swill to the troops instead. The Pentagon has already said they'll never hire Halliburton again, so they will ship over the crate of other crimes Dick ought to explain. And the army will deal with Rummy -- ideally with one of those closed military tribunals he's so keen on. Pity we won't see the bollocking though.
The Dick and Don show could surely have no greater finale, no more fitting final act than the one broadcast live every night from their cage in Guantanamo Bay's Pentagon Plaza Beach Resort & Country Club. Thank you folks, we'll be here all week until 2020, or Dick's batteries run down….
The twinges of conscience from molting hawks are nice, no question about that, but the people of Iraq need Dick and Don Do Penance. After a week like this one, I need to see some real medieval punishments handed out to these bastards too. Take away their two-thousand-dollar suits, their silk neckties, their bespoke monogrammed shirts, their gleaming custom-crafted wingtips, and their weekly housecalls from the barber and manicurist, then let's see what a few months in orange monkey-suits does for them. By then they will look more like the disgrace to our species, the thieves, war criminals and scumbags they really are. No torture, no firing squads, no stooping to their level (those days are gone). Just regular visits from and chats with the relatives of all the hundreds and thousands of men and women, in Iraq and the USA, whose irreplaceable lives were snuffed out, whose unique light was extinguished, and directly because these two men were greedy for wealth and power. The trips will be funded from their confiscated assets --- the houses, the cash, the fiduciary trusts, the numbered Swiss accounts, the safety deposit boxes in Turks and Caicos banks, the lot, every last cent, and from the assets of their families that can be tied to them.
Let them learn to feel what wretches feel, out there in the wind and the rain, in the dust of barren marketplaces, and in the blackened ruins of bombed-out cities, where the tap water is foul with sewage, and the nights are dark as death, redolent of burning rubber and the sickly-sweet perfume from rotting corpses. Let them tell us all what this is like, and how very, very sorry they are for engineering this inferno at the very gates of Eden.
Accepting that all of this is the unvarnished truth, and that our dim, unaccomplished, violent species stands on the very edge of an abyss called extinction, which it may just be possible to avoid if we wake up now and finally act as one for our joint future on the only planetary home we have -- this, I suggest, will be "the defining challenge of our eraâ€, for which Iraq may well be our final warning of things to come.
It's not dark yet, as the prophet says, but it's gettin' there…


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Foote, Julia A.J.
|Indignities on Account of Color--General Conference
I Reached Rochester on the 16th of March, where I remained three weeks, laboring constantly for my Master, who rewarded me in the salvation of souls. Here God visited me after the same manner he did Elijah, when Elijah prayed to die. He strengthened me and bid me go forward with the promises recorded in the first chapter of Joshua.
April 21st I bade good-bye to Brother John H. Bishop's people, who had entertained me while in Rochester, and went to Binghamton to visit my parents again. I found them all well, and labored constantly for the Lord while I was there. I remained at home until the 8th of May, when I once more started out on my travels for the Lord. There was but one passenger in the stage besides myself. He gave his name as White, seemed very uneasy, and, at each stopping place, he would say: "I am afraid the public will take me for an abolitionist
I staid one night in Oxford, at Mr. Jackson's. At six o'clock the next morning I took passage on the canal packet "Governor Seward," with Captain George Keeler. That night, at a late hour, I made my way into the ladie's cabin, and, finding an empty berth, retired. In a short time a man came into the cabin, saying that the berths in the gentlemen's cabin were all occupied, and he was going to sleep in the ladies' cabin. Then he pointed to me and said: "That nigger has no business here. My family are coming on board the boat at Utica, and they shall not come where a nigger is." They called the captain, and he ordered me to get up; but I did not stir, thinking it best not to leave the bed except by force. Finally they left me, and the man found lodging among the seamen, swearing vengeance on the "niggers."
The next night the boat stopped at a village, and the captain procured lodging for me at an inn. Thus I escaped further abuse from that, ungodly man.
The second night we reached Utica, where I staid over Sunday. Then I went to Schenectady, where I remained a few days, working for my Master. Then I went to Albany, my old
On May 21st I went to New York. During the year that followed I visited too large a number of places to mention in this little work.
I went from Philadelphia in company with thirty ministers and Bishop Brown, to attend the General Conference, which way held in Pittsburgh, Pa. The ministers chartered the conveyance, and we had a very pleasant and interesting journey. The discussions during the day and meetings at night, on the canal boat, were instructive and entertaining. A very dear sister, Ann M. Johnson, accompanied me. The grand, romantic scenery, which I beheld while crossing the Alleghany mountains, filled me with adoration and praise to the great Creator of all things. We reached Pittsburgh on the 4th of June, and the General Conference of the A. M. E. Church convened on the 6th of June. The Conference
The business common to such meetings was transacted with spirit and harmony, with few exceptions. One was, a motion to prevent Free Masons from ministering in the churches. Another, to allow all the women preachers to become members of the conferences. This caused quite a sensation, bringing many members to their feet at once. They all talked and screamed to the bishop, who could scarcely keep order. The Conference was so incensed at the brother who offered the petition that they threatened to take action against him.
I remained several weeks, laboring among the people, much to the comfort of my own soul, and, I humbly trust, to the upbuilding at my dear Master's kingdom. I found the people very kind and benevolent.


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WASHINGTON — Pressuring Congress, President Barack Obama is laying out an election year "to do" list Tuesday that urges lawmakers to take another look at economic proposals to promote job creation and help families refinance their mortgages.
Obama planned to discuss the list during a stop at college science complex in Albany, N.Y. It's his latest attempt to portray congressional Republicans as obstructing his economic agenda at a time when millions of Americans are out of work. Obama has sought to tie Republican Mitt Romney to GOP leaders in Congress, arguing that the likely GOP presidential nominee would simply rubber-stamp their policies.
Obama's wish list includes a number of proposals that he has outlined previously but have failed to gain traction in Congress. They include eliminating tax incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas and promoting new tax credits for small businesses and for companies to develop clean energy.
For veterans, Obama planned to press Congress to pass legislation creating a Veterans Job Corps to help service members returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan find work as police officers and firefighters.
And to address the housing crisis, Obama was expected to press anew on a measure designed to help homeowners refinance their homes at lower interest rates. Obama was making the housing pitch during a stop Friday in Reno, Nev., the state that has been the epicenter of the nation's housing meltdown.
White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted the measures should be able to pass in Congress, despite the fact Obama has not been able to persuade lawmakers to act on them previously.
"These are the kinds of initiatives that traditionally enjoy bipartisan support," Carney said. "They're the kinds of initiatives that outside independent economists identified as things that would have an immediate impact on economic growth and job creation."
Obama was issuing his list during a stop at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the State University of New York. The president has made a number of trips to universities, manufacturing plants and technology firms, seeking to promote research and development.
Republicans said they had a lengthy list of their own in the form of bills that have cleared the GOP-led House but remained bogged down by Senate Democrats. They accused Obama of recycling old ideas.
"We've passed nearly 30 jobs bills to increase American competitiveness, expand domestic energy production and rein in the red tape that is burdening small businesses. Democrats are blocking every one of them," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Carney said Monday that Congress was under increasing pressure to approve measures to help the economy.
"Every member of the House is up for election this year and a third of the Senate, and each of those members who are running for re-election has to explain to his or her constituents what they did while they were in Washington these last two years. Did they just say no?" Carney said.
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Colorado District, Union Team Up to Solve Budget Crunch
Cynthia M. Stevenson | Superintendent
Jefferson County Public Schools, Colo.
Kerrie Dallman | Former President
Jefferson County Education Association
As anyone who has ever sat at either side of a bargaining table can attest, the labor-management relationship is already challenging enough in flush times. And it's an order of magnitude tougher when budgets are tight and talk turns to paring things back. But as one Colorado district shows, it is not impossible for district and union leaders to work together to make tough decisions.
When the state's Jefferson County school district faced a budget crunch in 2011, officials of the district and its teachers' union purposefully decided to take a chance and collaborate, rather than engage in the common alternative: posturing, internal squabbling, an impasse, and, ultimately, layoffs.
Superintendent Cynthia M. Stevenson and Kerrie Dallman, then the president of the Jefferson County Education Association, hosted an "employee summit" at which representatives from the district, the union, and other employee groups outlined budget fundamentals, agreed on areas to cut, and then carried the details into their respective bargained contracts.
The accord kept employees on the rolls, minimized class-size increases, and preserved electives. And it has been generally (though not uniformly) praised in the 85,000-student district, located west of Denver.
The new approach to budgeting in Jefferson County, the state's largest district, is notable partly because the administration and the union, while not sworn enemies, had had their fair share of uneasy moments. Contract talks had stalemated before, both over wages and over policy issues, such as the process for dismissing probationary teachers.
But the budget situation, Stevenson says, demanded a different way of interacting.
"We are just like every other place in the country: changing," she says. "And in a changing environment, in times of declining resources and increased expectations, you have to operate differently."
Put to the Test
Stevenson, who has been the superintendent for 11 years, understands change in the district better than most. She grew up in Jefferson County and attended school there.
Dallman only recently left the local union to assume the presidency of the state's National Education Association chapter; her biography on the state affiliate's website lists her collaborative work on the summit among her top accomplishments.
The idea for the summit grew out of a 2011 national conference on labor-management cooperation sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. That convening, in Denver, brought together some 150 teams, each consisting of a district's superintendent, school board president, and teachers' union leader, to try to identify new ways of working together.
For a good number of the attendees, the notion of collaboration never went further than a group photo with the U.S. secretary of education. But for Jefferson County's leaders, the ideal would be put immediately to the test.
Midway through the conference, team members received word that the state portion of K-12 aid would be cut by nearly 10 percent. Jefferson County's revenue, like that of other school districts in the state, had depended increasingly on the state money.
Fresh from attending a session in which Montgomery County, Md., officials made a presentation on a financial process drawing on input from employee associations, Dallman floated the idea with Stevenson and with David Thomas, then the chairman of the Jefferson County school board. Back in Colorado, the three leaders won board approval to pursue a similar approach.
"The way we'd done bargaining in the past really pitted groups against each other," Dallman says. "This was a way we could come to the table around common values. And the common value chiefly was student achievement."
Two representatives each from the district, the teachers' union, the school board, and groups for administrators and classified staff members attended the two-day summit.
According to Jane Barnes, a school board member from 2003 to 2011 who sat in on the proceedings, negotiators discussed cuts in everything from transportation to academic programs to compensation to athletics.
Budget Details
The final agreement cut some $40 million from the 2011-12 budget, which was approved at $932 million. Among other provisions, it:
• Cut some 200 positions, mainly through attrition;
• Instituted two furlough days and eliminated four professional-development days for teachers;
• Set a 3 percent wage reduction for teachers to match the shorter year;
• Closed two schools; and
• Imposed new transportation fees for parents.
As painful as those reductions were, Jefferson County's education leaders say the alternatives might have been worse, resulting in the elimination of counselors' jobs, higher class sizes even in early grades, and the decimation of arts and music programs that would have "taken the heart and soul out of our schools," in Stevenson's words.
Barnes says the process also demonstrated unity in the face of adversity.
"We didn't go into nasty board-union negotiations or air our dirty laundry in public," she continues. "We came out of there with a much deeper respect for one another, and were able to say collectively that this was the best for the children of Jefferson County. ... It was a great solution to the situation we had at the time."
The process was used again in 2012, with several of the previous decisions carried over, including the furloughs.
The agreements helped solidify other areas of accord between the district and the union, such as working to support a property-tax increase, which voters narrowly approved this past November.
And they're also united in pressing for changes in the state K-12 funding process.
'Right Players'
The summit process itself was not necessarily easy, though. Both the superintendent and the union leader say they faced internal constituents who were uneasy about the new approach.
Describing the negotiations, Stevenson draws a parallel between letting go of favored initiatives and giving up a degree of control she'd been accustomed to in her position.
"One of the dangers of being a superintendent is that you can really start thinking you're important. You really have to work against that," she says. "In the summit, when you're all equal players, suddenly what you say has no more impact than what everyone else says, and that can be difficult."
Both she and Dallman praise a mediator brought in from the Washington-based Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service to help with the discussion. Asked what advice she'd give other administrators interested in the process, Stevenson cites having a working relationship with local employee associations first. She meets with union leaders at least once formally and once informally each month.
And she recommends being prepared to give up "sacred cows" during negotiations, and having a mediator on hand to help guide discussions.
"We had the right players, the right relationships, the right mediators, the right shared values," she says.
Moving Forward
As of December, the budget cycle in the district was just beginning again, and it was not yet clear whether the summit process would continue. Despite the new revenue from the tax increase, officials anticipate more cuts.
Not everyone shares the opinion that the summits have been a successful approach. Laura Boggs, the only school board member to vote against entering into the summit process in 2011 and 2012, feels that since the convenings weren't formally part of bargaining, they should have been open to the public.
And their results didn't necessarily reflect community wishes, she contends. In 2012, community members put furloughs last fjon a list of cost-saving strategies in surveys commissioned by the school board, yet they were continued into a second year, she says.
"It's a fantastic concept; anything you can do to take the adversarial [nature] out of collective bargaining should be a good thing," Boggs says. "The dilemma comes when you put these people who are so like-minded in the same room, and the result is students are in school for fewer days. How is that focused on academics?"
She would like the district to consider longer-term structural changes to the teacher-salary schedule and pension plan.
Barnes, the former school board member, acknowledges that most of the committee's fixes have been short-term. But she says that was partly a function of the need to make immediate budget reductions.
Ultimately, she believes that the summit delivered the right results at a critical time, and that it will be up to Stevenson, the school board, and Dallman's successor at the JCEA to determine whether it continues to be the appropriate way to budget in tough times.
"I think communities are ready for different processes at different times," Barnes says. "You need to keep bringing new folks in, and they may be ready for a different process. Who knows?"
Vol. 32, Issue 20, Pages s16, s18Published in Print: February 6, 2013, as Cynthia M. Stevenson Kerrie Dallman
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