D. Grant Haynes

Hayward symbol of all that is wrong with capitalism

2010-06-19T17:25:00-07:00

Gulf residents and others that defend capitalism with its excesses of wealth and privilege should not be surprised that BP CEO Tony Hayward is participating in a "glitzy" yacht race in Great Britain this weekend.

Hayward reeks of insufferable British snobbery and a lifetime of privilege. His accent and delivery--his delicately sculpted profile--his snotty British reserve--all speak to who he is and what might be expected of him.

BP paid Hayward a salary of $1,478,940 and a bonus of $2,216,928 last year. I should imagine one could afford a yacht or two on those earnings.

That's what capitalism is about--excesses and inequities. Hayward has a yacht, while Louisiana fishermen have no reason now to pilot their hard-banging old shrimp trawlers out of port.

But, sadly, the ignorant Cajun fishermen now venting about Hayward would be the first to punch one in the nose if he mentioned "socialism" as an alternative to the present inequitable system of excesses. They send their sons to "I-rak" to fight for alleged "freedom and the American way" when that American way, as now formulated, is, in reality, their greatest enemy.

They have been indoctrinated for multiple generations by capitalism's propaganda machine to defend with their blood a system that is dumping millions of barrels of crude oil onto them even as BP CEO Tony Hayward sails his yacht during a lark back home. This speaks to the unworkable and futile nature of the American economic experiment.

Our nation has been hijacked by jackals and the common man defends those jackals as they rend him asunder.

D. Grant Haynes

Joran van der Sloot product of capitalistic excess

2010-06-15T12:27:00-07:00

From Wikipedia:

"...Joran van der Sloot is the eldest of three sons born to Paulus and Anita van der Sloot, a prominent lawyer and art teacher, respectively. The family traveled frequently to exotic locations as a result of Paulus' work and settled in Aruba when Joran was 16 because Paulus had an opportunity to become a judge there. Joran was considered a star soccer and tennis athlete in high school at Aruba. He hoped to play for a college in Tampa, Florida. He led a privileged life with a $5,000 credit line set up for him by his father and frequently gambled and partied with friends..."

_____________________________

And that explains why the world had to fool with this psychopathic punk until he killed again. His parents are persons of means and influence in The Netherlands and Aruba. He would not have been able to walk away from Natalie Holloway's murder five years ago were he a poor boy or a minority group member.

Money and influence peddling always trump justice in this world.

We need a thoroughgoing socialist revolution in which wealth is leveled and perceived worthiness is based on service to the cause of the proletariat. People like the van der Sloots would then no longer be able to get away with murder because of their holdings and positions in society.

D. Grant Haynes

BP now burning vast pools of oil on Gulf surface

2010-06-12T18:07:00-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2wH-3i1FZA

Oh, that's just great, BP. Mother Earth can always assimilate some more smoke. No wonder the Gulf States have such poor air quality this summer.

Folks, it just isn't getting any better in the Gulf of Mexico. And blind and greedy men are not seeing the light--even now.

This oil spill may be the beginning of 2012's anticipated Armageddon. Seriously. Many have been looking for signs of the end. This may be a precursor.

That oil is going to go around the Florida Keys and then get into the Gulf Stream that will carry it into North Atlantic fisheries--the Newfoundland Banks and everywhere. The Gulf Stream flows all the way to the coast of Scotland.

BP and greedy Americans may have mucked up the entire Western Hemisphere.

And still, even now, they want the drilling ban lifted so they can drill more wells in coastal waters, refine more oil, and make more money. Money to do what with? Their world will be dying or dead and they will not be able to take the money with them when they transition out of here. It is sheer madness.

I am no longer a member of this species. I renounce membership in the human race. They are insane and I am ready to part company with them all.

D. Grant Haynes

Maddow on GOP hypocrisy re: BP oil spill

2010-06-11T00:28:06-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Maddow on BP negligence

2010-06-09T23:31:29-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

GOP hypocrites on parade

2010-05-20T00:29:38-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Oil spill disaster should serve as sobering way marker

2010-05-17T01:45:00-07:00

The major and exponentially expanding disaster that is the Deepwater Horizon oil spill could not have happened to a more deserving nation and culture, to be brutally honest.

Never in the history of mankind has one cultural or national grouping been as collectively greedy, self-serving, manipulative, hedonistic, heedless of warnings, and destructive of the Earth and of all other races getting in their ways as have Americans since the end of World War II.

Americans must learn the hard way that they cannot always have their ways and control outcomes--that they cannot consistently have the best and most of everything desirable, while running roughshod over all the world.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster will, hopefully, become a sobering episode and way marker in the national history of the United States of America.

D. Grant Haynes

And the crude oil continues to gush on day 22 of unprecedented BP Deepwater Horizon disaster

2010-05-12T22:54:00-07:00

(For reference, the pipe is 21 inches in diameter.)

Alien world?

2010-05-08T04:06:00-07:00

Alien world? Alien, indeed, for creatures of the Gulf of Mexico that are floundering and dying in choking crude oil now coming ashore in Louisiana. Pea soup smog presided over an oil slicked and dying Gulf of Mexico Friday afternoon--an altogether fitting commentary on man's blindness, self-centeredness, and greed. Men, nations and worlds are all subject to the universal cosmic law of karma. Modern industrial man will, both individually and collectively, get his--reap what he has sewn.

D. Grant Haynes

How many gallons of BP crude oil went into the Gulf of Mexico while we slept? Counter was on 4,089,564 gallons May 8 at 11:50 PDT.

Maddow on long-term effects of an oil spill

2010-05-06T00:08:49-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Olbermann on BP safety record

2010-05-05T01:01:27-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Burning Transocean rig sinks, releasing 336,000 gallons crude oil daily into already-polluted Gulf of Mexico

2010-04-23T01:24:00-07:00

Transocean's burning Deepwater Horizon rig before it sank

As if to place an exclamation point onto what I had written about Earth Day 2010, a burning oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico has sunk and 336,000 gallons of crude oil are pouring out of the well daily into the beleaguered waters off Louisiana--already one of the most polluted coastal areas in North America.

Thanks, greed hounds and environmental rapists, for again reminding a complacent Americans of the dangers of oil rigs off our coastlines as Obama's proposal for greatly expanding such activity is being accepted without so much as a peep from most so-called environmentalists.

D. Grant Haynes

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/23/oil.rig.explosion/

Earth's day will come only when men and their defiling machines are relics of the past

2010-04-22T11:03:00-07:00

The first meaningful Earth Day will come when men and their destructive technology are rusting, deteriorating relics from another time.

Until such time, all the rest is so much falderal about nothing--a feeble attempt by a few to tap into the collective guilt of the many and sell posters, tee shirts, and trinkets on the side.

Earth Days mean nothing to the politicians, industrialists, and assorted greed hounds that dominate every industrialized society on the planet.

These evil men continue to destroy ecosystems and life forms at an accelerating pace, even as their public relations arms churn out an Earth Day press release or two each April.

D. Grant Haynes

Prince tragedy should represent wake-up call to all public school teachers, administrators, boards of education

2010-04-15T02:25:00-07:00

I have followed the tragic story of the Irish teen, Phoebe Prince, who hanged herself in January after a period of merciless bullying and harassment by her peers at South Hadley High School in Massachusetts.

The incident has drawn national attention and has prompted many in public education to discuss adoption of anti-bullying policies for their districts or schools. Whatever changes may come will, of course, represent too little too late for Phoebe Prince and her family.

Phoebe, 15, had enrolled in the freshman class at South Hadley High in September. She was a new immigrant to Massachusetts from Ireland.

Phoebe’s hazing and endless cruel harassment by certain fellow students is said to have begun after she dated a South Hadley High School varsity football player, and later another senior male, in the fall following her arrival at the school. Several apparently jealous female students set about to make Phoebe’s life hell each day thereafter. And they did so in full view of other students and, reportedly, teachers and administrators on occasions.

Phoebe was repeatedly threatened with physical violence from her tormentors who verbally assaulted her, calling her an “Irish slut” and worse in the cafeteria, the school library, the halls, the girls restroom, and wherever else she went on her daily rounds at the school.

Finally, on January 14--after an especially difficult day for Phoebe in which jeering vehicle-born students had thrown a beverage can at her as she walked home from school, she hanged herself in the stairwell of her family’s apartment.

No counselor, principal, or teacher employed at South Hadley High School had intervened effectively to halt the unspeakably cruel ritual destruction of Phoebe Prince that had been unfolding in their midst for several months.

Having been a high school student in the mid-20th Century and a high school teacher several decades later, I can well understand what Phoebe Prince probably encountered.

An American high school can represent a highly demoralizing experience for the well-adjusted and wholly accepted freshman student. But for an introverted student--or a student that represents in any way a deviation from the common denominator social, intellectual, and cultural “norm” of a given community, the high school experience can be overwhelming.

Such was apparently the case with Phoebe Prince.

She was an Irish immigrant and culturally different. She was also an attractive girl who had early caught the eye of a vaunted and likely predatory football player. These were reasons enough, apparently, for her tormentors to seek to destroy her.

But they weren’t reasons enough for the adults charged with Phoebe’s welfare while she was at school each day to permit the cruelty to have continued until her self-destruction.

Every teacher understands the in loco parentis concept. A teacher or school administrator has the duty, right, and obligation to assume parental prerogatives and responsibilities in the absence of a minor’s parent. Someone should have intervened to end the harassment of Phoebe Prince in time.

The careers of those teachers, counselors, and administrators that permitted the Prince tragedy to occur at South Hadley High should be reexamined. These callous men and women are probably unfit for their alleged calling as educators.

But more--much more--is wrong in America and in the American public education system than a few ineffectual or indifferent secondary school personnel in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

A child deriving from Ireland or any other European or Asian nation where life is simpler and children are still under some cultural, parental or institutional restraints in their adolescent years would probably be unprepared for the insane circus of mindless assemblies, noisy pep rallies, bon fires, homecomings, football games, crushes, “steady” couples, achy-breaky hearts, endless pettiness, fights in the halls, and the not infrequent verbal and physical bullyings of the timid or the different that occur daily at an American high school.

Unfortunately, that’s what American high schools are at this point in time--frenetic and hellish places more notable for violence, aggression, cruelty, blatant sexual posturing, and sports-related hoopla than for learning.

And where did the students attending a typical public high school in America learn the violence, aggression, cruelty and sexual posturing they bring to school?

From the larger society of which they are an immature part, of course.

Not infrequently students have learned many wrong lessons from parents who are often still more into their own gratification than into rearing their offspring.

Nor are the news and entertainment industries of America without fault.

Violence, aggression, cruelty, indifference to the plight of others, and blatant sexuality are part and parcel of almost all Hollywood flicks and of much television programming nowadays. The negative influence of these mediums on impressionable children cannot be exaggerated. It is pervasive.

What American child whose first memories were of trashy women slapping one another and pulling hair on the Jerry Springer Show could grow up with an abundance of decorum and respect for their peers--with a sense of love, peace, and goodness in their hearts as they enroll in high school?

And what American child might be inclined to display kindness, compassion, and decency toward a freshman girl from a faraway land--one who had some problems of acceptance in her new environment--after that American child has grown up seeing Simon Cowell’s callous verbal cruelty that is directed without compassion at the untalented and the faltering on American Idol?

The entire genre of so-called “reality television” has desensitized impressionable young viewers and others to cruelty, violence, and an indifference to the suffering of others--perceived “losers”, especially. Americans have been taught by their dog-eat-dog capitalist culture of excess to admire winners and to shun and dismiss without compassion so-called “losers”.

What American child might refrain from physical coercion and violence toward a fellow student after growing into adolescence to the background din of news programs on which reportage of torture, murder, and mayhem being visited daily on Iraqis and Afghans by Americans in uniform is a nightly occurrence?

We have been told by former vice president Dick Cheney that water boarding is acceptable. We were told by various Bush administration spokespersons that stress positions, sleep deprivation, and other torture techniques clearly in defiance of the Geneva Conventions were justified because the victims were terroristic “others“.

What adolescent Internet surfer in America has not seen and possibly been impressed by the terrible Abu Ghraib prison photos in which grinning young Americans gave the “thumbs up” after beating an Iraqi prisoner to death?

An unjust war is the greatest moral evil in which any nation or society can become involved and today’s American teens have seen their nation pursuing cruel and unjust wars for the majority of their lives--almost a decade now.

In truth, an American high school represents nothing more than a hormone-laced adolescently volatile microcosmic distillation of the pervasive American culture that has shaped students and made them what they are when they enroll in high school. The nation is reaping an inevitable whirlwind nowadays with the young.

But these hard truths about our nation and its shallow, hedonistic culture of violence, disrespect for decorum, and lack of compassion do not mitigate the guilt of every South Hadley High School teacher, counselor, and administrator who might have intervened to prevent the death of Phoebe Prince. Teachers, counselors, and school administrators should be exemplars. Rightly or wrongly, more is expected of them than of most others. They should have been more alert to what was occurring and more assertive in wading in to stop it.

The “kids will be kids--let them work it out” admonition is a cop out at any school. It was not good enough at South Hadley High School and it is not good enough at any other public secondary school.

Despite their swagger--their occasional athletic prowess and popularity--their new vehicles--their familial relationships to influential school board members in some cases--high school students are minors in need of much direction and imposition of definite limits on their behavior. They cannot be left to their own devices and youthful excesses.

Phoebe Prince is gone, but in the wake of her tragic story, schools across America should adopt as soon as practical whatever rules of so-called “tough love” are necessary to enforce decorum and bring an end to hazing and bullying in all its forms.

During the six or more hours students are in the care and under the supervision of teachers and administrators, they should be supervised and controlled at all times. If this necessitates a higher degree of security on campus--professional security guards, guard dogs and metal detectors--less “freedom” for students--so be it.

What is more important than rescuing from the hell that was Phoebe Prince’s lot the public schools of this nation and the students that pass through them during their turbulent adolescent years?

If this nation is to be saved, that redemption must begin with the young. Now is the time.

D. Grant Haynes

Obama thumbs nose at progressive base

2010-04-13T00:20:00-07:00

When Barack Obama came into the White House in January 2009, his polled approval rating ran at 60 or 61 percent.

Now, a brief 15 months later, only 41 or 42 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing.

Although reliable polling numbers gauging the allegiance of Obama's progressive Democratic base are hard to come by, my guess is that segments of the Democratic Left are now about as excited about the Obama presidency as is Senator Mitch McConnell (R) of Kentucky.

Such is the case with this writer.

Never in my memory has a president elected with so rousing a mandate--such a sense of a fresh start and a new and hopeful beginning for our nation--squandered that mandate as quickly as has Barack Obama.

While factors of partisan politics and Tea Party lies are certainly involved in Obama's retreating poll numbers among Americans in general, his determination from the outset to pander to the threats and sullen demands of petulant congressional Republicans–-his obsession with “bipartisanship” where no bipartisanship was in the offing–-has been a major cause of an early loss of momentum with his progressive base.

Progressives are disgusted with Obama for ceding so much to Republicans on health care reform without a fight. We have no public option and the medical insurance industry has millions of new customers mandated by law to purchase health insurance from them.

Progressives are further disappointed with Obama’s blatant sop to Big Oil as outlined in his unprecedented proposal to open vast areas of the Continental Shelf to oil exploration and drilling.

And if those departures from our expectations--those slaps to our faces-–were not enough, Obama has given new life to the Bush administration’s most egregious human rights violations with his assent to summary assassination of Americans without so much as a hearing or a trial.

One can assume a Predator drone will take out Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and his family somewhere, some night, while they sleep. Such an action is cowardly and disgusting and not representative of the collective ethos of Obama’s progressive base which he apparently takes for granted.

I will not vote for Barack Obama again. I will sit the election out in 2012 or I will vote for a Green or Socialist candidate

Mark Twain Tonight

2010-03-25T23:51:15-07:00

"That California get-rich-quick disease of my youth spread like wildfire. And it produced a civilization that destroyed the simplicity and repose of life, its poetry, its soft, romantic dreams and visions, and replaced them with the money fever, sordid ideals, vulgar ambitions, and the sleep that does not refresh.

It has produced a thousand useless luxuries and turned them into necessities and satisfied nothing. It has dethroned God and set up a shekel in his place. Oh the dreams of our youth . . . how beautiful they are and how perishable."

Mark Twain Tonight

Twitter connection

2010-02-20T23:01:54-07:00

Obama's State of the Union address

2010-01-27T23:43:00-07:00

I watched President Obama's State of the Union address tonight. He was, as always, a gifted orator and communicator.

But he remains naively optimistic that he can woo obstructionist Republicans into cooperation on his major programs by invoking a warm and fuzzy sense of kumbaya bipartisanship in the name of what is best of the American people. That will never occur.

Most of Obama's address was devoted to a new and excessive appeal to fiscal conservatism--one born, no doubt, of the recent election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts.

Obama promised a three-year fiscal freeze in federal budgets beginning in 2011 (military spending exempted, of course), expanded tax credits for middle class parents with enough income to send children to college in the first place, and various job creation schemes with an emphasis always on the importance of the "private sector" in job creation.

He also assented to Republican talking point issues such as offshore drilling, new nuclear power plants, and that monumental oxymoron of our time, "clean coal technology".

Obama soft peddled the health care issue during his address, not mentioning it for the first 30 minutes of his 70-minute speech and then only in general terms. He made no demands of Republicans. He threatened no passage by reconciliation of health care in the face of continued Republican opposition. He only begged them to cooperate in passing some sort of health care reform because of the crying needs of the American people. That approach will not sway Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, or Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Those politicians are bent on destroying Obama and his legislative agenda, as DeMint indicated in a recent interview. I doubt they and their constituents were moved by Obama's silver tongued oratory tonight.

I heard nothing to cause me to believe life will become any less stressful for a man such as myself who has to live on $12,000 annually--one who has had no dental insurance for 20 years and is about to lose all of his teeth because Medicare pays for one set of dentures in a retiree's lifetime and for no other dental work--one who is expected to pay 20 percent of the cost of any medical procedure, however expensive, or be referred to a medical collection agency, even as he approaches three score and ten years.

No, Barrack Obama is definitely not a socialist or a champion of the down and outs of this nation. He cannot identify with poverty and lack. He is centrist Democratic politician who is crab crawling to the right as fast as possible because of apparent political trends in this nation of unthinking knee jerk reactive fools.

I want to live in a socialist society or a social democracy at the very least. I want to live where I can receive generous dental and medical care because I am a human being and deserving of it--not because I am financially able to augment my Medicare with private supplemental dental, ocular, and medical insurance.

I want socialism--not Barack Obama's watered down centrist version of corporatized capitalism, the best the Democratic Party of this nation dares to hope for or strive to achieve.

Should I ever vote here again, I will not be voting for a Democrat or a Republican. The similarities of the aims, goals, and platforms of these major American political parties far outweigh their largely cosmetic differences.

I am as disgusted as hell with the entire process and, as I often write, truly grateful I don't have too much longer to tarry here.

D. Grant Haynes

Watch powerful statement against Iraq occupation

2010-01-10T03:51:00-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8&fmt=18

Indians more alarmed about global pollution than greedy, blind Americans

2010-01-03T22:15:00-07:00

(From the Times of India)

Climate change far worse than thought before

3 January 2010, 12:09pm IST

NEW DELHI: Global alarm over climate change and its effects has risen manifold after the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Since then, many of the 2,500-odd IPCC scientists have found climate change is progressing faster than the worst-case scenario they had predicted... .

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/Climate-change-far-worse-than-thought-before/articleshow/5406955.cms

Even the Indians with their unimaginable population and poverty pressures will come to their senses about global pollution before greedy, self-centered, and wholly hedonistic Americans do.

Of course the global pollution crisis is worse than business-as-usual capitalists and their sycophantic bureaucratic followers in Congress will admit.

I, personally, have learned that there is nowhere left to run in North America to escape choking, killing air pollution. I've tried every quadrant.

We are all screwed now for following the siren songs of the business community that told us for the last 50 years that more and bigger was always better.

How many times was I told in my youth, "well, you can't stop progress and that building, (or strip mall or paper mill or coal plant or whatever) represents progress."? Far too many times.

And far too many times did I accept the lie of open-ended economic growth and industrial prosperity as a panacea when I should have, rather, sought to do something to save my planetary home while I was still young and while there was still time.

I should have possessed the cajones to become a radical activist who devoted his life, however short or long, to an attempt to stop the "progress" that I knew, even then, was poisoning the future home of my unborn children and grandchildren.

Such a course of action would have been more honorable, by far, than the teaching career I chose--one in which I whiled away my years seeking to please unimportant little pissant public school principals and superintendents while keeping my actual interests and sentiments to myself lest I fail to see a teaching contract renewed the next spring. What do those contracts mean to me today?

D. Grant Haynes

Haynes' other bully pulpit

2010-01-02T23:00:00-07:00

http://dgranthaynes.blogspot.com/

Who and What I Am

2010-01-01T20:00:00-07:00

I am, in reality, a hyperspatial energy being whose forever home is the infinitude and grandeur of the multidimensional universe.

I temporarily inhabit--cast a shadow in--a dense physical shell in order that I may experience, learn and grow.

But I am not, ultimately, bounded by the so-called physical universe or by the apparent human condition.

These too shall pass, and I will retain my identity--remain consciously aware--whatever challenges may be mine at that point in my ongoing journey to the Light.

D. Grant Haynes

September 1997

Ain't nuthin' wrong with my air!

2009-12-07T18:23:00-07:00

(From The Christian Science Monitor)

Global warming: Why public concern declines

"On eve of the global warming summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, an informal global survey shows that public interest in the issue is waning. But many people are taking individual steps to curb global warming... ."

Public concern about global warming declines in the United States because the average American is an ignorant, selfish, stupid ass who is more interested in his 401K, an upcoming football game, or next Saturday's sex, than in the future of our beleaguered planet.

For more than a decade, I have desperately sought escape from growing clouds of man-made pollution that shroud every corner of North America. No locale is clean now. There is, literally, nowhere left to run.

Yet, the "average" man in the street is oblivious to the pollution he breathes, day and night. He "don't see nuthin" wrong with the air and is happy to think global warming issues represent a socialist plot to do something to him--take away his "freedom", I presume.

Where did he glean this gem of rare insight? Why, from Fox News' Glenn Beck, of course!

I believe the very urgent planetary pollution issue should be couched in a perspective Joe Sixpack can more readily grasp than is presently the case.

To have former vice president Al Gore and scholarly climate scientists cite glacial retreats on Mount Blanc and the Antarctic Continent, or increasing desertification in the Southern Kalahari, means nothing to Joe so long as his myopic little cocoon in Middle America hasn’t been directly jostled.

"Joe, you have developed premature cardiovascular disease because of the smoke from that coal-fired steam plant up the road that you have breathed all of your life. The prognosis is that you will die before you are 55 if the plant isn’t shut down immediately," might better get Joe’s attention.

One has to meet the Joe Sixpacks of the human species where they are, intellectually, if one wishes to communicate with them.

(See also ABC's "Climate Concern Waning in US" for further evidence of American selfishness and stupidity on the world stage.)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/09/2767037.htm

D. Grant Haynes

Our bucolic little world shattered

2009-10-27T21:12:07-07:00

(Published October 22, 2009, in local Eastern Washington newspaper.)

Dear Editor:

As a newcomer to Washington, I have been especially pleased to be close to the abundant wildlife of Lincoln County. We have regularly seen small herds of black-tail deer, large flocks of California Quail, and a myriad of other beautiful and harmless wild creatures near our dwelling place since arriving here in June.

Our hearts have been made happy and given solace through interaction with God’s wild creatures--an experience that is all too rare in 21st Century America.

But a pall descended on our world at dawn October 17 when the 2009 deer hunting season opened here.

Since, we have seen none of our timid animal friends with whom we had sought all summer and fall to establish rapport. There are no deer grazing behind our back fence now. And there are no deer in their usual haunts when we take our walks.

Nor have the flocks of exquisitely beautiful California Quail that had graced our lives each afternoon returned.I assume these creatures are either dead or in hiding because of the ghastly spectacles they witnessed over the weekend as hunters from throughout the state descended on Lincoln County to bag their limits in a barbaric ritual called "sport hunting".

The fall skies weep, as do we, that so many innocent expressions of love, beauty and goodness have been snuffed out by misguided men who find pleasure and sport in killing beings that have done them no harm.

Dixon Haynes

Dedicated to the hunters of North America

2009-10-17T18:01:00-07:00

"A little later in a quieter bend of the shore, I see ahead of me a bleeding, bedraggled blot on the edge of the white surf. As I approach, it starts warily to its feet. We look at each other. It is a wild duck, with a shattered wing. It does not run ahead of me like the longer-limbed gull. Before I can cut off its retreat, it waddles painfully from its brief refuge into the water.

The sea continues to fall heavily. The duck dives awkwardly, but with long knowledge and instinctive skill, under the fall of the first two inshore waves. I see its head working seaward. A long green roller, far taller--taller than my head, rises and crashes forward.

The black head of the water-logged duck disappears. This is the way wild things die, without question, without knowledge of mercy in the universe, knowing only themselves and their own pathway to the end. I wonder, walking further up the beach, if the man who shot that bird will die as well."

Loren Eiseley

The Night Country

Surveying the road ahead

2009-10-10T05:14:00-07:00

From William Buhlman's "Adventures Beyond the Body"...

Journal Entry, January 3, 1987...

"I feel the vibrations and lift out. I'm standing in my bedroom and, looking around, I see that the surroundings are similar but not exact. The woodwork and walls are different from those of my physical home. I move to the door and step through it. Instantly, I'm in a new environment. A woman that I somehow seem to know approaches me. She is tall, with long brown hair and sparkling eyes. She steps close to me and smiles, "I've missed you." Spontaneously I respond, "Me too." She kisses me warmly and takes my hands. Suddenly, we're in another environment.

A magnificent parklike setting comes into focus. We stand together at the edge of a crystal blue-green pond. Everything around me--the trees, the grass, the pond--are vibrantly alive. As I look at the woman, an intense feeling of love swells inside me. She stares at me and holds both my hands. "You travel so much. I need you here." I hold her close. "I'm here now." Her face and body seem to shine like ten thousand points of light. We kiss and a surge of energy floods into my mind. Our bodies and minds come together in an intense explosion of pure energy and joy. Our thoughts merge and touch one another in a thousand subtle ways. I feel immersed in her mind and she and I become as one. The ecstasy is beyond words. For the first time, I feel complete and whole....

As we evolve, we will begin to chart the unseen universe much as astronomers are now charting the visible universe. The exploration of the interior of the universe is a massive endeavor reaching far beyond our current intellectual concepts of time, space and energy. The exploration of the unseen dimension is a task that all of us will eventually confront, for it is our birthright and our destiny to explore beyond our primitive biological vehicles and experience the magnificence of our true home within the multidimensional universe.

Every physical problem is a new opportunity to grow; each hardship helps us to develop our inner qualities of courage, love and compassion; each new challenge is a new opportunity to learn. In a sense, each of us uses matter as a tool of transformation.

Our biological bodies are temporary vehicles for expression and experience in this dense realm of matter. The very act of assuming physical form and being human is an integral element of our development. Each of us is currently experiencing the most effective system of growth ever devised: evolution by direct personal experience, by the very act of being.

It doesn't matter what we believe or don't believe; each of us will shed our temporary biological vehicle and continue to evolve. We are all active participants in a magnificent evolutionary system that extends far beyond the narrow limits of our physical vision. Birth and death themselves are essential elements of our progress--the entrance and exit of consciousness upon the molecular playing field of evolution...

The continuum of consciousness extends inwardly to the very heart of the universe; unending levels and frequencies of non-physical life and realities exist just beyond the dense limits of our sight. Each of us has much to look forward too: incredible worlds of beauty and light patiently waiting for us to explore... ."

Walking away from the rat race

2009-08-05T06:12:00-07:00

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common -- this is my symphony."

William Ellery Channing

A tribute to what might have been--and may yet be

2009-07-27T19:36:00-07:00

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967

(Listen to a Russian language rendition of The Internationale at link below.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCFibtD3H_k

(And then, there was the equally stirring hymn of the Soviet Union--guaranteed to make the hair on your neck rise.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-zzmCmMVI&feature=related

Fidel no longer alone: From left, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Fidel Castro of Cuba, and Evo Morales of Bolivia are all advocates of varying degrees of the Latin American socialist reform for which Ernesto 'Che' Guevara gave his life.

The Internationale

Arise ye starvelings from your slumbers

Arise ye prisoners of want

For reason in revolt now thunders

And at last ends the age of cant.

Away with all your superstitions

Servile masses arise, arise

We'll change forthwith the old tradition

And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally

And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.

So comrades, come rally

And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction

On tyrants only we'll make war

The soldiers too will take strike action

They'll break ranks and fight no more

And if those cannibals keep trying

To sacrifice us to their pride

They soon shall hear the bullets flying

We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers

No faith have we in prince or peer

Our own right hand the chains must shiver

Chains of hatred, greed and fear

E'er the thieves will out with their booty

Each at the forge must do their duty

And we'll strike while the iron is hot.

(Hugo Chavez of Venezuela delivered a remarkable and moving speech at the World Climate Change Conference in Denmark on December 16, 2009. But that speech was largely ignored by the U.S. media, despite repeated standing ovations among delegates at the conference. Following is the complete text of Chavez' remarks. -- DGH)

Copenhagen, Kingdom of Denmark

December 16, 2009

President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez:

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, Excellencies, friends, I promise that I will not talk more than most have spoken this afternoon. Allow me an initial comment which I would have liked to make as part of the previous point which was expressed by the delegations of Brazil, China, India, and Bolivia. We were there asking to speak but it was not possible. Bolivia's representative said, my salute of course to Comrade President Evo Morales, who is there, President of the Republic of Bolivia.

She said among other things the following, I noted it here, she said the text presented is not democratic, it is not inclusive.

I had hardly arrived and we were just sitting down when we heard the president of the previous session, the minister, saying that a document came about, but nobody knows, I've asked for the document, but we still don’t have it, I think nobody knows of that top secret document.

Now certainly, as the Bolivian comrade said, that is not democratic, it is not inclusive. Now, ladies and gentlemen, isn’t that just the reality of the world? Are we in a democratic world? Is the global system inclusive? Can we hope for something democratic, inclusive from the current global system?

What we are experiencing on this planet is an imperial dictatorship, and from here we continue denouncing it. Down with imperial dictatorship! And long live the people and democracy and equality on this planet!

And what we see here is a reflection of this: Exclusion.

There is a group of countries that consider themselves superior to us in the South, to us in the Third World, to us, the underdeveloped countries, or as a great friend Eduardo Galeano says, we, the crushed countries, as if a train ran over us in history.

In light of this, it’s no surprise that there is no democracy in the world and here we are again faced with powerful evidence of global imperial dictatorship. Then two youths got up here, fortunately the enforcement officials were decent, some push around, and they collaborated right? There are many people outside, you know? Of course, they do not fit in this room, they are too many people. I've read in the news that there were some arrests, some intense protests, there in the streets of Copenhagen, and I salute all those people out there, most of them youth.

Of course young people are concerned, I think rightly much more than we are, for the future of the world. We have -- most of us here - the sun on our backs, and they have to face the sun and are very worried.

One could say, Mr. President, that a spectre is haunting Copenhagen, to paraphrase Karl Marx, the great Karl Marx, a spectre is haunting the streets of Copenhagen, and I think that spectre walks silently through this room, walking around among us, through the halls, out below, it rises, this spectre is a terrible spectre almost nobody wants to mention it: Capitalism is the spectre, almost nobody wants to mention it.

It’s capitalism, the people roar, out there, hear them.

I have been reading some of the slogans painted on the streets, and I think those slogans of these youngsters, some of which I heard when I was young, and of the young woman there, two of which I noted. You can hear among others, two powerful slogans. One: Don’t change the climate, change the system.

And I take it onboard for us. Let’s not change the climate, let’s change the system! And consequently we will begin to save the planet. Capitalism is a destructive development model that is putting an end to life; it threatens to put a definitive end to the human species.

And another slogan calls for reflection. It is very in tune with the banking crisis that swept the world and still affects it, and of how the rich northern countries gave aid to bankers and the big banks. The U.S. alone gave, well, I lost the figure, but it is astronomical, to save the banks. They say in the streets the following: If the climate were a bank it would have been saved already.

And I think that's true. If the climate were one of the biggest capitalist banks, the rich governments would have saved it.

I think Obama has not arrived. He received the Nobel Peace Prize almost the same day that he sent 30 thousand soldiers to kill more innocents in Afghanistan, and now he comes to stand here with the Nobel Peace Prize, the president of the United States.

But the United States has the machinery to make money, to make dollars, and has saved, well, they believe they have saved the banks and the capitalist system.

Well, this is a side comment that I wanted to make previously. We were raising our hand to accompany Brazil, India, Bolivia, China, in their interesting position that Venezuela and the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance firmly share. But hey, they didn’t let us speak, so do not count these minutes please, Mr. President.

Look, over there I met, I had the pleasure of meeting this French author Hervé Kempf. Recommending this book, I recommend it, it is available in Spanish – there is Hervé - its also in French, and surely in English, How the Rich are Destroying the Planet. Hervé Kempf: How the Rich are Destroying the Planet. This is what Christ said: it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. This is what our lord Christ said.

The rich are destroying the planet. Do they think the can go to another when they destroy this one? Do they have plans to go to another planet? So far there is none on the horizon of the galaxy.

This book has just reached me, Ignacio Ramonet gave it to me, and he is also around somewhere in this room. Finishing the prologue or the preamble this phrase is very important, Kempf says the following, I’ll read it:

“We can not reduce global material consumption if we don’t make the powerful go down several levels, and if we don’t combat inequality. It is necessary that to the ecological principle that is so useful at the time of becoming conscious, ‘think globally and act locally,’ we add the principle that the situation imposes: ‘Consume less and share better.’”

I think it is good advice that this French author Hervé Kempf gives us.

Well then, Mr. President, climate change is undoubtedly the most devastating environmental problem of this century. Floods, droughts, severe storms, hurricanes, melting ice caps, rise in mean sea levels, ocean acidification and heat waves, all of that sharpens the impact of global crisis besetting us.

Current human activity exceeds the threshold of sustainability, endangering life on the planet, but also in this we are profoundly unequal.

I want to recall: the 500 million richest people, 500 million, this is seven percent, seven percent, seven percent of the world’s population. This seven percent is responsible, these 500 million richest people are responsible for 50 percent of emissions, while the poorest 50 percent accounts for only seven percent of emissions.

So it strikes me as a bit strange to put the United States and China at the same level. The United States has just, well; it will soon reach 300 million people. China has nearly five times the U.S. population. The United Status consumes more than 20 million barrels of oil a day, China only reaches 5-6 million barrels a day, you can’t ask the same of the United States and China.

There are issues to discuss, hopefully we the heads of states and governments can sit down and discuss the truth, the truth about these issues.

So, Mr. President, 60 percent of the planet’s ecosystems are damaged, 20 percent of the earth's crust is degraded, we have been impassive witnesses to deforestation, land conversion, desertification, deterioration of fresh water systems, overexploitation of marine resources, pollution and loss of biodiversity.

The overuse of the land exceeds by 30 percent the capacity to regenerate it. The planet is losing what the technicians call the ability to regulate itself; the planet is losing this. Every day more waste than can be processed is released. The survival of our species hammers in the consciousness of humanity. Despite the urgency, it has taken two years of negotiations for a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol, and we attend this event without any real and meaningful agreement.

And indeed, on the text that comes from out of the blue, as some have called it, Venezuela says, and the ALBA countries, the Bolivarian Alliance say that we will not accept, since then we’ve said it, any other texts that do not come from working groups under the Kyoto Protocol and the Convention. They are the legitimate texts that we have been discussing so intensely over the years.

And in these last few hours, I believe you have not slept, plus you have not eaten, you have not slept. It does not seem logical to me to come out now with a document from scratch, as you say.

The scientifically substantiated objective of reducing the emission of polluting gases and achieving an agreement on long-term cooperation clearly, today at this time, has apparently failed, for now.

What is the reason? We have no doubt.

The reason is the irresponsible attitude and lack of political will from the most powerful nations on the planet. No one should feel offended, I recall the great José Gervasio Artigas when he said: “With the truth, I neither offend nor fear.” But it is actually an irresponsible attitude of positions, of reversals, of exclusions, of elitist management of a problem that belongs to everyone and that we can only solve together.

The political conservatism and selfishness of the largest consumers, of the richest countries shows high insensitivity and lack of solidarity with the poor, the hungry, and the most vulnerable to disease, to natural disasters. Mr. President, a new and single agreement is essential, applicable to absolutely unequal parties, according to the magnitude of their contributions and economic, financial and technological capabilities and based on unconditional respect for the principles contained in the Convention.

Developed countries should set binding, clear and concrete commitments for the substantial reduction of their emissions and assume obligations of financial and technological assistance to poor countries to cope with the destructive dangers of climate change. In this respect, the uniqueness of island states and least developed countries should be fully recognized.

Mr. President, climate change is not the only problem facing humanity today. Other scourges and injustices beset us, the gap between rich and poor countries has continued to grow, despite all the millennium goals, the Monterrey financing summit, at all these summits as the President of Senegal said here, revealing a great truth, there are promises and unfulfilled promises and the world continues its destructive march.

The total income of the 500 richest individuals in the world is greater than the income of the 416 million poorest people. The 2.8 billion people living in poverty on less than $2 per day, representing 40 per percent of the global population, receive only 5 percent of world income.

Today each year about 9.2 million children die before reaching their fifth year and 99.9 percent of these deaths occur in poorer countries.

Infant mortality is 47 deaths per thousand live births, but is only 5 per thousand in rich countries. Life expectancy on the planet is 67 years, in rich countries it is 79, while in some poor nations is only 40 years.

Additionally, there are 1.1 billion people without access to drinking water, 2.6 billion without sanitation services, over 800 million illiterate and 1.02 billion hungry people, that’s the global scenario.

Now the cause, what is the cause?

Let’s talk about the cause, let’s not evade responsibilities, and let’s not evade the depth of this problem. The cause, undoubtedly, I return to the theme of this whole disastrous panorama, is the destructive metabolic system of capital and its embodied model: Capitalism.

Here’s a quote that I want to read briefly, from that great liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, as we know a Brazilian, our American. Leonardo Boff says on this subject as follows:

“What is the cause? Ah, the cause is the dream of seeking happiness through material accumulation and of endless progress, using for this science and technology with which they can exploit without limits all the resources of the earth.”

And he cites here Charles Darwin and his “natural selection”, the survival of the fittest, but we know that the strongest survive over the ashes of the weakest.

Jean Jacques Rousseau, we must always remember, said that between the strong and the weak, freedom is oppressed. That’s why the Empire speaks of freedom; it’s the freedom to oppress, to invade, to kill, to annihilate, and to exploit. That is their freedom, and Rousseau adds this saving phrase: “Only the law liberates.”

There are countries that are hoping that no document comes out of here precisely because they do not want a law, do not want a standard, because the absence of these norms allows them to play at their exploitative freedom, their crushing freedom.

We must make an effort and pressure here and in the streets, so that a commitment comes out of here, a document that commits the most powerful countries on earth.

Well, Mr. President, Leonardo Boff asks... Have you met Boff? I do not know whether Leonardo might come, I met him recently in Paraguay, we’ve always read him.

Can a finite earth support an infinite project? The thesis of capitalism, infinite development, is a destructive pattern, let’s face it.

Then Boff asks us, what might we expect from Copenhagen? At least this simple confession: We can not continue like this. And a simple proposition: Let’s change course. Let's do it, but without cynicism, without lies, without double agendas, no documents out of the blue, with the truth out in the open.

How long, we ask from Venezuela, Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, how long are we going to allow such injustices and inequalities? How long are we going to tolerate the current international economic order and prevailing market mechanisms? How long are we going to allow huge epidemics like HIV/AIDS to ravage entire populations? How long are we going to allow the hungry to not eat or to be able to feed their own children? How long are we going to allow millions of children to die from curable diseases? How long will we allow armed conflicts to massacre millions of innocent human beings in order for the powerful to seize the resources of other peoples?

Cease the aggressions and the wars! We the peoples of the world ask of the empires, to those who try to continue dominating the world and exploiting us.

No more imperial military bases or military coups! Let’s build a more just and equitable economic and social order, let’s eradicate poverty, let’s immediately stop the high emission levels, let’s stop environmental degradation and avoid the great catastrophe of climate change, let’s integrate ourselves into the noble goal of everyone being more free and united.

Mr. President, almost two centuries ago, a universal Venezuelan, a liberator of nations and precursor of consciences left to posterity a full-willed maxim: “If nature opposes us, let’s fight against it and make it obey us.” That was Simón Bolívar, the Liberator.

From Bolivarian Venezuela, where a day like today some ten years ago, ten years exactly, we experienced the biggest climate tragedy in our history (the Vargas tragedy it is called), from this Venezuela whose revolution tries to win justice for all people, we say it is only possible through the path of socialism!

Socialism, the other spectre Karl Marx spoke about, which walks here too, rather it is like a counter-spectre. Socialism, this is the direction, this is the path to save the planet, I don’t have the least doubt. Capitalism is the road to hell, to the destruction of the world. We say this from Venezuela, which because of socialism faces threats from the U.S. Empire.

From the countries that comprise ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance, we call, and I want to, with respect, but from my soul, call in the name of many on this planet, we say to governments and peoples of the Earth, to paraphrase Simón Bolívar, the Liberator: If the destructive nature of capitalism opposes us, let’s fight against it and make it obey us, let’s not wait idly by for the death of humanity.

History calls on us to unite and to fight.

If capitalism resists, we are obliged to take up a battle against capitalism and open the way for the salvation of the human species. It’s up to us, raising the banners of Christ, Mohammed, equality, love, justice, humanity, the true and most profound humanism. If we don’t do it, the most wonderful creation of the universe, the human being, will disappear, it will disappear.

This planet is billions of years old, and this planet existed for billions of years without us, the human species, i.e. it doesn’t need us to exist. Now, without the Earth we will not exist, and we are destroying Pachamama as Evo says, as our indigenous brothers from South America say.

Finally, Mr. President, and to finish, let’s listen to Fidel Castro when he said: “One species is in danger of extinction: Humanity.”

Let’s listen to Rosa Luxemburg when she said: “Socialism or barbarism.”

Let us listen to Christ the Redeemer when he said: “Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, we are capable of not making this Earth the tomb of humanity. Let us make this earth a heaven, a heaven of life, of peace, peace and brotherhood for all humanity, for the human species.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much and enjoy your meal."

(See video of parts of Chavez speech.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp90gNCDaNw

Another GOP hypocrite exposed

2009-06-18T01:34:00-07:00

"He has no credibility left." -- Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), quoted by the Las Vegas Sun in 1998, urging Bill Clinton to resign after he admitted an extramarital affair.

You made my day, Senator Ensign

One more Republican hypocrite has been exposed for talking one way and living another way.

And John Ensign is not merely another conservative protestant Republican hypocrite.

Ensign is a born-again member of the Pentecostal International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, no less--the only member of the U.S. Senate who is affiliated with a Charismatic gathering of latter day Holy Rollers.

And there is more.

John Ensign has been prominent in the "Promise Keepers" evangelical group.

Promise Keepers set themselves apart with special vows, several of which are germane to Ensign's present dilemma.

A Promise Keeper is committed to practicing spiritual, moral, ethical and sexual purity.

A Promise Keeper is committed to building strong marriages and families through love, protection and Biblical values.

(See Wikipedia entry below for other "Promise Keeper" vows.)

Looks like Beelzebub got into John for a spell there!

D. Grant Haynes
__________________________________________________________

Analysis: Ensign affair one more woe for GOP

By LIZ SIDOTI - June 17, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - It's just about the last thing the beleaguered Republican Party needed: a Christian conservative with national aspirations admitting to an extramarital affair with an ex-staffer.

Add Nevada Sen. John Ensign's infidelity admission to an ever-growing list of woes for the out-of-power GOP.

One senator's predicament hardly condemns an entire party. But the episode is an unwelcome distraction as the Republicans, their ranks shrinking, seek a turnaround after disastrous losses in consecutive national elections.

Since President Barack Obama took office, Republicans have struggled to counter his popularity and the Democrats' command of Congress.

The GOP's new national chairman, Michael Steele, got off to a rocky start. Moderate Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter defected to the Democrats. And Democrat Al Franken is favored to eventually be declared the winner of the disputed Minnesota Senate race over incumbent GOP Sen. Norm Coleman.

Now this.

"Last year I had an affair. I violated the vows of my marriage. It is the worst thing I have ever done in my life," Ensign said Tuesday at a hastily arranged news conference in Sin City itself, Las Vegas.

He didn't name the woman, but Cindy Hampton came forward later to say through an attorney that she regretted Ensign's decision to "air this very personal matter." Federal records showed that she was on his political payroll and received a promotion and a pay raise around the time he said the affair began in late 2007.

There also was a report of a previous affair, in 2002, an indication that the drip, drip of dalliance details may only just be beginning.

On Wednesday, as fellow senators remained mum, Ensign resigned his leadership post. The skilled communicator and proven fundraiser was the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, the No. 4 Senate Republican.

Until his admission, Ensign was trying to raise his national profile. Popular in Nevada though virtually unknown elsewhere, he recently flirted with a 2012 presidential run, visiting the early voting state of Iowa and refusing to tamp down speculation of a bid.

Those dreams now seem dead... .
__________________________________________________________

(From Wikipedia)

Ensign is a member of the Pentecostal International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and is the only Pentecostal in the Senate. He attends a Foursquare church in northwest Las Vegas.

According to The New York Times, during college at Colorado State, he became a born-again Christian and he and his wife, Darlene, were active in the Promise Keepers, an evangelical group.

He and his wife have three children.

The core beliefs of the Promise Keepers, outlined in the Seven Promises, consist of the following:

A Promise Keeper is committed to honoring Jesus Christ through worship, prayer and obedience to God's Word in the power of the Holy Spirit.

A Promise Keeper is committed to pursuing vital relationships with a few other men, understanding that he needs brothers to help him keep his promises.

A Promise Keeper is committed to supporting the mission of his church by honoring and praying for his pastor and by actively giving his time and resources.

A Promise Keeper is committed to reaching beyond any racial and denominational barriers to demonstrate the power of Biblical unity.

A Promise Keeper is committed to influencing his world, being obedient to the Great Commandment (Mark 12:30-31) and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20).

How do you repay a man for 7 1/2 years of hell at Gitmo?

2009-06-09T00:39:00-07:00

Held Seven Years, Former Aid Worker Tells ABC News He Was Tortured

By JAKE TAPPER, KAREN TRAVERS, and STEPHANIE Z. SMITH

For 71/2 years, Lakhdar Boumediene was known simply by a number: "10005."

These were the digits assigned to him when he arrived at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, swept up in a post-Sept. 11 dragnet and accused of plotting to blow up the U.S. and British Embassies in Sarajevo.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Boumediene said the interrogators at Gitmo never once asked him about this alleged plot, which he denied playing any part it.

"I'm a normal man," said Boumediene, who at the time of his arrest worked for the Red Crescent, providing help to orphans and others in need. "I'm not a terrorist."

The 43-year-old Algerian is now back with his wife and two daughters, a free man in France after a Republican judge found the evidence against Boumediene lacking. He is best known from the landmark Supreme Court case last year, Boumediene v. Bush, which said detainees have the right to challenge their detention in court.

That decision was a stunning rebuke of the Bush administration's policies on terror suspects. It set up a ruling by District Court Judge Richard Leon, a former counsel to Republicans in Congress appointed to the bench by Bush, that there was no credible evidence to keep Boumediene detained.

After what Boumediene described as a 71/2 year nightmare, he is now a free man. Boumediene: "I don't think. I'm sure" about torture.

In 2001, Boumediene, his wife and two young daughters lived in Sarajevo, Bosnia. He worked for the Red Crescent Society, having done stints for the organization in Pakistan and Albania.

He was arrested by Bosnian police in October 2001 and charged with conspiring to blow up the U.S. and British Embassies. He called the charges false and ludicrous.

"They search my car, my office, nothing. Cell phone, nothing. Nothing. Nothing," he said.

The charges were dropped, and the Bosnian courts ordered him and five others freed. But under pressure from the Bush administration, the Bosnian government handed him over to the U.S. military.

On January 17, 2002, Boumediene's hands and feet were placed in shackles, and he was put on a military plane en route to Guantanamo Bay. It was a time of high anxiety, and the Bush administration was taking no chances.

Two weeks later, in his State of the Union address, President Bush touted the arrests in Bosnia to show early progress in the war on terror.

"Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy," Bush said in his address. To this day, officials of the Bush administration have provided no credible evidence to back up that accusation.

Boumediene said the interrogations began within one week of his arrival at the facility in Cuba. But he thought that his cooperation, and trust in the United States, would serve him well and quicken his release.

"I thought America, the big country, they have CIA, FBI. Maybe one week, two weeks, they know I am innocent. I can go back to my home, to my home," he said.

But instead, Boumediene said he endured harsh treatment for more than seven years. He said he was kept awake for 16 days straight, and physically abused repeatedly.

Asked if he thought he was tortured, Boumediene was unequivocal.

"I don't think. I'm sure," he said.

Boumediene described being pulled up from under his arms while sitting in a chair with his legs shackled, stretching him. He said that he was forced to run with the camp's guards and if he could not keep up, he was dragged, bloody and bruised.

He described what he called the "games" the guards would play after he began a hunger strike, putting his food IV up his nose and poking the hypodermic needle in the wrong part of his arm.

"You think that's not torture? What's this? What can you call this? Torture or what?" he said, indicating the scars he bears from tight shackles. "I'm an animal? I'm not a human?"

Vice President Dick Cheney has been adamant in his defense of the Guantanamo detention center and the treatment of those held there.

Last week Cheney said, "The facility down there is a fine facility. These people are very well treated."

Oddly, Boumediene said no one at Gitmo ever asked him about the alleged plot to blow up the embassies in Sarajevo. They wanted to know what he knew about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, he recounted, which was nothing.

Boumediene said it was in his interest to lie to the interrogators, who would reward the detainees if they admitted guilt.

"If I tell my interrogator, I am from Al Qaeda, I saw Osama bin Laden, he was my boss, I help him, they will tell me, 'Oh you are a good man,'" he said. "But if I refuse ? I tell them I'm innocent, never was I terrorist, never never, they tell me. 'You are, you are not cooperating, I have to punch you.'"

After nearly four years locked up, Boumediene went on a hunger strike to protest his treatment.

He said he had believed that the United States honored religious diversity but believed guards at Guantanamo took actions to disrespect his religious beliefs. "They shaved my beard, because they don't respect me, because the guards they don't let me sleep. They don't let me read my Koran, they don't let me pray normal like people like Muslim outside the Guantanamo," he said.

Boumediene broke his hunger strike just twice over 21/2 years -- first, when he learned of Barack Obama's election win and next when Judge Leon ordered his release.

Despite the harsh treatment and uncertainty over his fate, Boumediene said he did not want to die because he had something to live for back home.

"Every day, I think about my wife and my daughters," he said.

Boumediene's personal effects were taken from him at Guantanamo, including his wedding ring. He now has a stack of letters, that his wife wrote to him that never arrived, a "return to sender" stamp on the envelope.

"Over there you lose all the hopes, you lose all hope," he said. "Any good news, they don't want you to be happy."

It took more than six years before Boumediene started to receive good news.

Boumediene v. Bush

Last summer, in a landmark war-time decision, the Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects held at Guantanamo have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal court.

The decision was a harsh rebuke to the Bush administration's system for detaining and eventually trying terror suspects.

In a blistering dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said allowing federal judges, rather than military officials, to release terror suspects could have disastrous consequences.

"The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays upon the nation's commander in chief will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed," he wrote.

Boumediene saw the 5-4 decision as his first victory against President Bush. His second came last November when Judge Leon ruled that the evidence against Boumediene was weak -- a "thin reed," he called it -- and ordered his release from Guantanamo.

The Bush administration never charged him with conspiring to blow up the embassies. Rather they said Boumediene and others had been planning to travel to Afghanistan to fight the United States. To mark the occasion, Boumediene made himself a T-shirt that, like a soccer scoreboard, reads, "Boumediene: 2, Bush: 0."

Last month, in a tearful ceremony at an airport outside Paris, Boumediene was reunited with his family. His daughters, who were toddlers when he was detained, are 13 and 9 years old.

"I cried, just cried. Because I don't know my daughters," he said. "The younger, when I moved from Bosnia to Gitmo, she had 18 months, only 18 months. Now 9 years. Now she's big. Between 18 months, baby and 9 years, she walking, she's talking, she play, she's joking. It's a big difference."

Because of his hunger strike, Boumediene was not in good health when he arrived in France. He was treated at a military hospital and could not eat regular food at first.

After he was released from the hospital, he went with his wife and daughters to enjoy a first meal as a family in seven and a half years. On the menu? Pizza.

_________________________________________

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzeyM20GAGI

(Do you Bush apologists possess the cojones to watch ABC's interview with Lakhdar Boumediene, an innocent Algerian who gave more than seven years of his life to the "mistake" you people made in supporting George W. Bush for almost a decade? Watch the video at the URL above and think about how you would feel if Boumediene was your father, brother, husband, or son. -- DGH)