Molly Ivins RIP

Well, no surprise, Matt Rothschild of The Progressive had warned at the start of the year that Molly might not last another month or two because of her cancer, but damn if she wasn't the feistiest loudmouth to come out of Tejas. She will be missed. Who's gonna rag on about the "dumber-than-a-fencepost Texas lege" now? Molly Ivins, presente!

Three Cheers for German Prosecutors...

... for issuing arrest warrants against 13 CIA operatives involved in "extraordinary renditions" in Germany. Of course, the U.S. will never extradite them. But the word needs to go out to U.S. citizens that any folks involved in aiding CIA proprietary airlines in North Carolina and elsewhere, serving as pilots and medics as well as active CIA agents, should be subject to international arrest, maybe even subject to the same extraordinary rendition procedures they inflicted on others. End of story.

Mahdi Cults and Najaf End-Times

It's easy to roll our eyes and make fun of the "Soldiers of Heaven" cult in Najaf, that tried to eradicate Shia religious leaders, sparking a U.S. assault Sunday afternoon in which more than 250 eventually were killed. Shia killing Shia? Mehdis looking for the twelfth imam? What is this shit?

We forget that, wedged between the Iranian hostage-taking and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, was a very eerie event that took place on November 20 of that year. An internationalist Islamic army of 1500 tried to take over the Qaaba, the holy black stone of Mecca, sparking violent reactions by Saudi and international forces. The leader of that particular revolt also claimed to be a mahdi who would change the face of Islam's future, just as in the Jan. 28 Najaf event. The 1979 revolt may have been a sardonic footnote to everything else that went on that bleak fall, but it set the tone for a new kind of Western consciousness, one that turned Jimmy Carter into a de facto conservative, willing to listen to Zbig Brzezinski on CIA funding, and willing to bring back the draft.

We should not underestimate the ability of crazy end-times Islamic cults to set a new scary consciousness tone to the already wretched situation in Iraq. End-times thinking begets end-times thinking. The Evangelicals will be ready to goad the Zionists into attacks on Iran. Turkey will be ready to play turkey over the status of Iraqi Kurdistan (and with the way we've been treating Kurds in Irbil lately, we shouldn't think the U.S. has friends on either side of that divide). The Democrats have been thinking that Bush's surge will be a slow, inexorable push to a bigger meatgrinder. That might be the optimistic scenario. If Nov. 20, 1979 is any guide, multiple calamities could begin to erupt much, much faster than that. Allah Aqbar.

ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION: Patrick Cockburn of the Independent in the UK cites several Islamic Web sites and Shia sources to suggest that the "Soldiers of Heaven" was really a pilgrimage of Iranians for Ashura, and that the story was made up to justify U.S. attacks on Iran. Perhaps. The U.S. is certainly involved in a lot of covert efforts to prod Iran into a fight. But plow deeper into Cockburn's story, and you'll see admissions that Ahmad al-Hassani (Abu Kabar) was indeed involved in the Najaf incident, and that this group of pilgrims, from the Hawatim tribe, was "heavily armed." Maybe there was no cult attempt to attack Shia holy sites in Najaf. Maybe the U.S. and Iraqi governments both over-reacted. But somehow I'm inclined to show even more skepticism for Cockburn's take on this than I do the Iraqi government's.

Which Kind of Ethanol?

President Bush was rightly taken to task for pushing fiber-based ethanol in his State of the Union speech -- not because it isn't the preferred brand, but because it's years away. But at least Bush was smart enough not to run around insisting corn-based ethanol was in any way green. This point of view is being touted in both parties within Congress, led by Iowa caucus power lobbyists, and Archer Daniels Midland.
Kudos, then, to IEEE Spectrum magazine for listing corn-based ethanol among the loser ideas in its January 2007 "winners and losers" issue. Not only does ethanol production from corn take more energy input than the fuel it creates, but many projects are based on coal for fuel production. And the consequences of corn shortages could be profound. Already, Mexican consumers and farmers are protesting about the rise in corn commodity pricing combined with NAFTA dumping, and the days of "8 ears for a buck" corn may be gone. Before you slap that "ethanol is green" button on your shirt, think about the type of ethanol you're promoting.
Postscript: Thanks to the Lansing State Journal in Michigan for a Jan. 29 article that debunks corn-based ethanol. Can someone please throttle Corn Cob Bob?

What Mandy Moore and I Have in Common

Don't laugh. She told Jane magazine about her struggles with depression, saying "I'm a very positive person, and I've always been glass-half full. So it was like someone flipped a switch in me. I wanted to figure out why." Sounds like me. Since age 12, I was like a manic-depressive stuck on manic, and I wondered when the ol' switch would hit. Happened somewhere between 9/11 and Bush's second term, and it seemed like a permanent shift of tectonic plates.

I'm doing OK, trying to find little things to be joyful about each day, but the way in which depressive states of mind can overwhelm you really limits the ability to toggle that switch. Carrie Newcomer described this state of mind very well in her song "Below the Waves" from the CD Regulars and Refugees, about a woman whose depressive states feel like treading water without breaking the surface:

An unwelcome guest in your home,
That comes to stay and never wants to go.
Not so much a shadow but a visitation,
A haunting foreign movie with no translation.

There's buzzing white noise in my head,
Then sometimes so silent I'm almost dead.
One true thing I hold to dear and fast
is the voice that whispers "Darlin' this too shall pass."
Even when I'm dying for air.

This is a picture not complaint
And making full sentences has never been my strength.
Some call this thing the soul of sadness
Self-indulgence or a brilliant madness.
All I know is I'm dying for air.

Good luck, Mandy. I'll just use my mental state to watch Bush's State of the Union and try to turn it into a constructive option.

Next Step, Arrest the Musicians

Who will rid me of this noxious Recording Industry Association of America??!!! The latest antic, reported by Pitchfork today, involved the actual arrest of two hip-hop DJs who dared to have their own Web site to sell and manufacture music. Listen up, RIAA - the recorded form of music as implemented in CDs and LPs will be dead soon. It will only survive in home-brewed CDs cooked up by independent musicians operating out of their basements. All else will fail. The RIAA has less than a few years to live.

Five Minutes to Midnight

This morning, Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking moved the hands of the doomsday clock at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to five minutes to midnight -- one of the closest tick-ticks since the height of the H-bomb era. I'm of two minds on this move. One side of me says that the huge nuclear arsenals have been reduced since the Cold War, weapons have gone off alert, and global crisis seems less imminent than during most of the 20th century. But another side says that the social fabric of humanity is more frayed in this century than it has ever been. Nuclear weapons have proliferated to states and actors who are truly scary. Environmental conditions may have improved on some limited fronts, but global warming appears to have passed the tipping point already. Enlightenment principles have been tossed out the window in many cultures, and the Bush administration has erased the firebreak between nuclear and conventional weapons.
"The unthinkable seems more likely now than it ever has been," said Lawrence Krauss, professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve, speaking at the BAS conference. I'm afraid he's right.
We don't face the sheer terror of the two world wars or the Cold War of the 20th century. But things are falling apart, the center is not holding, and I'm afraid we're five minutes away from being toast, utter toast.