Catching up

Obviously I have not posted anything here since February, when I began blogging on a Mac site. Now returning to Blogger, I'll begin by copying the Mac entries that I made during my absence (although they won't have their photos):

Mar. 28, 2006
The financial cost of Bush’s war --
An old friend recently did some calculating and sent me the results. (In view of the incredible numbers here, it is especially appropriate that my friend is an astronomer.): At a projected cost of $1.3 trillion, the cost of the war in Iraq is $5,000,000 every hour, or $1400 per second. If you wonder where your taxes went, just wait for the next tick of the clock!

Mar. 30, 2006
The monstrous HR 4437--
In the last couple of days, gracias a Dios, the Senate has been throwing water on the xenophobic flames of Rep. Sensenbrenner’s immigration bill. Fiercely stoked by Rep. Tancredo, that bill would demonize millions of migrants and their advocates and helpers. My old friend Fr. Enrique Lopez, defined the bill with his graphic of a jailed Lady of Guadalupe. I hope some of you readers will help to spread it around the web. And for that, muchisimas gracias!

April 4
10,000 march in Tucson--
I took this picture last Sunday morning at Tucson’s Pueblo High School well before our march to Rudy Garcia park to protest the likes of the Sensenbrenner bill. The police (who indeed were very helpful) figured there were 6.500-7.000 marchers; the Tucson Citizen said 10,000. Leading the march were Rep. Raul Grijalva and UFW co-founder Dolores Huerta. On the same weekend, national “reporters” were bumping into each other just west of here to give yet more attention to the (sigh) returning vigilante “Minutemen” - maybe 200 vigilantes in all. Well, at least some of the media camera shots dropped below the solemn faces of hype and showed the pistols.

April 9
The Iraq death count--
As of today, the number of US military deaths in Iraq since Bush attacked on Mar. 19, 2003, is 2,350. The “official” number of US wounded is 17,269, but estimates run from 18,000 to 48,100. Published Iraqi deaths now stand somewhere between 34,030 and 38,164, but it has been many months since The Lancet published its extensive study reporting over 100,000 Iraqi deaths. And today the Washington Post reported in some detail how the White House is considering bombing Iran. Sheer madness all around.

April 13
Now 15,000 Tucsonans march--
I thought 10,000 Tucson marchers on our Cesar Chavez day, April 4 ,was a glorious turnout. But Tucson’s part of last Monday’s national call for just immigration legislation - among at least 140 US cities - saw 15,000 people take to the streets. The man above marched with two more generations of his family. On my other side was a woman from Honduras who is now a practitioner of integrative health care. “Ya basta” - we have had more than enough xenophobia, scapegoating and downright racism. I do believe it’s a new day.

April 18
Where your income tax money goes--
So far, George W. Bush’s war upon and occupation of Iraq have cost taxpayers $300 billion. The whole tax pie looks like this: Current military, 30%; past military, 19%; physical resources, 6%; general government, 12%; human resources, 33%.
Something is very rotten, and it’s not in Denmark.

April 23
The neo-Nazi plague--
Three examples out of a host of dangerous crazies (cf. the Southern Poverty Law Center):
* Barbara Coe (Huntington Beach, CA), close friend of Rep. Tom Tancredo, in two hate groups, calls Mexicans “savages.”
* Laine Lawless (Tucson, AZ) told neo-Nazi “SS Commander” Mark Martin to “create an anonymous propaganda campaign warning that any further illegal immigrants will be shot, maimed or seriously messed-up upon crossing the border.”
*Hal Turner (North Bergen, NJ), neo-Nazi radio talk-show host, recently posted this on his website: “I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition...Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done.”

April 26
A century of overthrowing governments--
Former NY Times foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer has written “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq,” where he documents 14 overthrows where the US was the prime mover. (Times Books, 2006)
The countries: Hawaii (sugar companies vs. queen), Guatemala (United Fruit vs. Arbenz ), Chile (copper interests vs. Allende), Nicaragua (US lumber & mining vs. Santos Zelaya), Honduras (US banana magnate vs. Honduran govt.) and the same story in Cuba, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Iran (Mossadegh), South Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq.

April 30
Mission disastrous--
Tomorrow will be the third anniversary of George W. Bush’s arrogant “Mission Accomplished” performance on the deck-turned-stage of the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln. Of the 2,399 US troops killed in Iraq since the war began (on March 19, 2003), 2,262 of them have been killed since Bush donned his fly suit on May 1, 2003, and made his messianic descent from the heavens. It is an anniversary first for weeping. And then for beginning the withdrawal from the quagmire.

May 4
Singers and workers--
Will someone tell the pols screeching about the national anthem in Spanish to please go and learn some history.
The first-known Spanish version (La Bandera de las Estrellas) was written in 1919. In 1943 Dr. Abraham Asen did a Yiddish translation. There is a German version and a Finnish one, and here in Southern Arizona an O'odham one. And by the way, the music for Francis Scott Key's words comes from England. Also by the way: a recent Harris poll found 61% of us USA folks don't know all the English words. (Thanks to the Arizona Daily Star's E. Portillo for all this info.)
Then there was CNN's good ol' Lou Dobbs, fretting that all those Hispanic families marching in the street last Monday were somehow being un-American. Maybe he thinks Lenin invented May day in 1917. But the day originated in Chicago in the 1880's as part of the workers' struggle for an 8-hour day. (And for Catholics worldwide, it is also the feast day of St. Joseph the Worker.) Calm down, Lou.

May 10
Mind-boggling Baghdad contrasts--
So why the photo of Vatican City? Because this is the actual size of the largest embassy in the world, the US embassy now going up in Baghdad. It will have all the necessities and amenities of a US town. And outside the walls? Iraqis still lack clean water; they even drink the polluted water of the Tigris. Children walk through sewage to get to school. There still are daily electricity blackouts. In the meantime, the Iraq death count since Bush began his “shock and awe” madness on March 19, 2003: 2,426 US troops killed (as of last Monday), and over 128,000 Iraqis killed. The number of US wounded may be over 48,000. What have we done? What are we doing? It is mad.

May 20
Sigh.... --
As a Catholic and a priest, I can only sigh (deeply) at high level churchmen (yep, just men up there) telling us not to see The DaVinci Code. Adults can make their own decision (as I did when I decided not to put out money for Mel Gibson’s “Passion.”) This movie and novel are fiction, even if Dan Brown got carried away sometimes in claiming how much is factual. Sure, there is no real evidence that Jesus was married Sure, Opus Dei has plenty of caring, hardworking people. But I do hope that interested people will investigate how church “Fathers” demoted women from the leadership prominence they had in the early church. I hope they look into all that Opus Dei founder Jesusmaria Escriva de Belaguer stood for in his lifetime. If the movie gets a lot of people to critically study the formation of the gospels and church history, ancient and modern, we’ll all be better off.

May 27
Lies, more lies, everywhere--
Gross lying at the top in our nation is nothing new. But these days it’s become an all-out plague. The most deadly strain erupted early within the Bush cabal - WMDs in Iraq and a Saddam-Al Qaeda-9/11 connection. The cabal’s super-mendacious hubris was wildly contagious. So we’ve seen long wooden noses in every corner, from the Haditha massacre to the Pat Tillman coverup to the who-knows-how-many-tentacles octopus named Jack Abramoff. But hope is ever new, as Abramoff, Lay and Skilling face the music that just might become a long, long symphony.

June 6
Yes, it IS a civil war --
Why do the media keep saying month after month that civil war in Iraq may be “near”? Today the BBC confirmed that the Baghdad mortuary has received so far this year the bodies of 6,000, most of whom died violently and mostly, it is believed, from sectarian killings. The BBC adds that nobody believes these are the true Baghdad figures, since many bodies are not taken to the morgue or are not even found. In the meantime, today’s US death count since March 19, 2003, is 2,475. Since Bush’s “mission accomplished” show (May 1, 2003), it is 2,338.

June 11
Guantanamo suicides--
Amnesty International reports that “hundreds of people of around 35 different nationalities remain held in effect in a legal black hole (in the Guantanamo prison camp), many without access to any court, legal counsel or family visits.” That’s how they are treated alive. Once dead, things apparently change. Now that three of them have just committed suicide, the US military says that their bodies are being treated "with the utmost respect," and Tony Snow tells us Bush says we should treat the bodies humanely and with cultural sensitivity. (In the meantime, the camp commander tells the world that the three prisoners had killed themselves in "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".) And we wonder why the rest of the world looks askance at us?