I am trying to prevent  massacre of 3,500 survivors ofthe People's Mujahadeen of Ashraf City, Iraq.
My site is DadsBlueAngel easiest to find through a keyword--maybe storming. You might also try Brigadier General Phillip, former Commander of the Camp under Bush. He hasaVideo on Facebook
and You Tube, on the immediate situation.  Please watch it. The situation is being blamed on Obama, but I think Hillary is much more likely to be at blame.  There was a vast prison massacre under
Clinton and Ashraf contained museums and memorials that were very detailed.

Obama would have to fire her, very nearly or in fact, and she is likely to be the next president.
Unlikely if this is brought to light and blown up large. The conservative link may come from a very
little spoken of CIA project to create an  assasen using Ashraf as a base. Idon't know this, but it may be inferered by many connect the dots mentions. Sometimes it is a mistake to connect the dots, sometimes not. But that Obama may not have the power to take  the PMOI off the terrorist blacklist,for whatever reason, is likely orhe would have done it.  A process of elimination keeps bringing me back to Hillary as the source.

To Abe Lincoln Tries Again:  Thank you for your comments on As I See It.  Scary times ahead, but not, I think, time to give up just yet. Occums razor is sharper than ever and comes increasingly to the hands of those whose collective power is bankrupting our nation and its longtime values.  The truth is complex. Goodness is complex and complex to implement.

I am very ill.  I've nearly died twice and am amazed and elated to have survived to the age of 59.  I thought I would not see 30. So as I await my life's milestone, I wonder, as many do, what this year will bring.

Who will win the human race, good or evil, peace or chaos and war, tears or smiles and laughter.  The fate of the CIty of Ashraf, built by the survivors of Khomeni in the Iraqi desert by the remnant of the Iranian resistance will be, for me the acid test.  ''May all be well, may all things be well'' TS Eliot.

Tracers, a play about Vetrans

I suppose you could call this a multiple-memory play since it recounts eight veterans' tour of duty in Vietnam at the height of that disastrous conflict through a series of vignettes and soliloquies. If you think of a memory play as a low-key, quiet drama, scratch that description in relation to Tracers.

This is an in-your-face primal scream of a play with more noisy and disquieting moments than quiet ones. Definitely not the show for introducing your visiting aunt from Ft. Wayne to New York's Off-Broadway Theater. It also isn't for those who feel that plays about that unfortunate war should be relegated to the history books and visits to the Vietnam War Memorial.

Hard-edged and gritty as it is, this drama nevertheless has intermittently amusing moments. Within its tough-as-nails and seemingly single word vocabulary, are poetic nuggets that invest the otherwise army-issue cast of characters with individuality and humanity. I can't compare the current limited run production to the 1980 version directed by its creator, Vietnam veteran John DiFusco, or to its other permutations, including a 1984 production at the Papp Public Theater (again directed by DiFusco). However, while Vietnam is no longer a hot theme,Tracers as directed by Leo Farley, (also a Vietnam veteran), has arrived at the 29th Street Rep with its dramatic muscle intact. Farley has mounted the play with production values that, considering the confines of the tiny stage, are nothing short of amazing. The eight actors he's assembled work as a solid ensemble while also making the most of the star turns the script provides.

The cast's ensemble excellence is best illustrated by two scenes:

The first, shows six of the young vets as new recruits being put through a grueling discipline session by their drill sergeant (William Francis Smith). Each ""maggot" is humiliated and stretched to the limits of his physical endurance -- this being a live stage and not a movie, one can only marvel at the stamina of the actors. Just when the drill becomes almost unendurable and the sergeant unbearable, he grabs our hearts with the saddening insight that drives him: The fact that one in a thousand of these kids is a warrior and that eighty per cent of them will be "targets".

Even more wrenching is a scene where the under-privileged, under-educated, under-trained soldiers drag the green net that serves as an effective multi-purpose prop, (and the centerpiece of Mark Symzak's set), to simulate a blanket in which they are wrapping the bodies of their dead compatriots who will go home in body bags, (often with missing or mismatched limbs). The war has coarsened them and seduced them into drug and alcohol abuse, but they have not become too dehumanized to be sickened by the scene in which they've been cast -- a scene that epitomizes the comment by the soldier known as The Professor (Neil Necastro) about often feeling "like a character in a Pirandello play".

Some of the most affecting of the individual and duet scenes are the more quiet ones. For example, Dinky Dau's (Thomas Wehrle) reading of a "Dear John" letter and the short but doomed get-acquainted scene between the above-mentioned Professor and Doc (David Mogentale).

Abetted by Stewart Wagner's lighting and Gerard Drazba's sound design, the play seagues from grunge and war to the dance movements of a Greek chorus -- highly dramatic if a tad too self-conscious and mannered.

Like the last show I saw at the 29th Street exactly a year ago, (Pig), Tracers is very much in keeping with the company's dedication to "daring, thought-provoking" plays even if they run against the grain of what is considered commercial.

TRACERS by John DiFusco
Directed by Leo Farley
With Tony DeVito, David Mogentale,
Neil Necastro, Jonathan D. Powers, Walker Richards,
Vincent Rotolo, William Francis Smith, Rhomas Wehrl

On Hard Science

At this time and for the last nearly 40 years or more, science has been, at least in the field of virology, microbiology and immune dysfunction, a matter of satisfying personal and geopolitical prestige and the egos of nations and those who act on their behalf as they imagine it--their maintenance of power through retention of incumbency.

Animals, moving in their simpler worlds, can only act rationally.
The cat devises stratagem to catch the mouse in order to catch
and eat it.

People, on the other hand employ complicated means in order to get money and through that prestige through possessions. The cat simply sprays its scent about in order to lay claim to its territory.

In science, a previous paradigm must be upheld in order to impress those who maintain the status quo and pass out the grants or paychecks.

The idea is not to reach a conclusion through scientific means, but to fail to reach a conclusion
that is unwanted. A question may be asked and answered repeatedly, only for grant money to be payed out again to repeat the research until someone is willing to be a team player on a pretty damn crooked team.

Deer graze and drink and flee from enemies--all simple rational processes. Humans use means to ends which may make no sense at all, except that it is what reigning powers and institution desire or wish to conceal.

Kathleen

Science Writing and Existence

Monday, October 19, 2009

Science, Writing and Existence

I don't think I wrote this.

Before the break, I promised I would say something about the difference between the logical and the existential conceptions of science. Heidegger makes this distinction in Being and Time, where he distinguishes between approaching science as "an interconnection of true propositions" and a "mode of Being-in-the-world" that discovers truths (H. 357). Heidegger is interested in the ontological conditions of "the theoretical attitude".

He emphasizes, however, that it is not merely the opposite of a "practical" attitude. Science ("theoretical exploration") is not a matter of "hold[ing] back from any kind of manipulation". On the contrary, Heidegger says, science requires a great deal of practical activity: setting up experiments in physics, preparing slides for observation through the microscope, digging up artifacts for archaeological research. Here, already in 1927, Heidegger is heralding the emergence of what we today call "science studies", i.e., the interdisciplinary study of science as variety of social and material practices. Playing on one sense of the German word "Betrieb", I have previously called this conception "science as hustle and bustle" (here and here).

Writing plays an important role in this regard. "Even the 'most abstract' way of working out problems and establishing what has been obtained, one manipulates equipment for writing, for example" (H. 358, my emphasis). In fact, Heidegger has earlier defined human existence by rereading Aristotle's famous characterization of human beings as "rational animals" as "that living thing whose Being is essentially determined by the potentiality for discourse" (H. 25). In this sense, then, Foucault's early work on "discursive formations" can be considered an "existential" analysis of science. It is also, of course, an important part of the transition from the philosophy of science in the traditional sense to contemporary "science studies". While writing is not the only practical aspect of modern research, it may be the most straightforwardly "existential", as the slogan "publish or perish" reminds us.

Ashraf City via the Deseret News

U.S. decision on dissidents will affect relationship with Iran

9/12/2009 3:25:58 PM

By John Hughes
Deseret News , Sept. 11, 2009

syndicated by Christian Science Monitor

reprinted by The People's Mohajhedeen

at english.mojahadeen.org

The Obama administration is facing a difficult foreign policy and humanitarian challenge that could have serious implications for its relationship with Iran. It concerns 36 Iranian dissidents, promised protection by the United States, held captive in Iraq by Iraqi soldiers. Without American intercession, they may be returned to Iran, where they face dire retribution from a regime that has shown how brutal it can be to those who defy it.

The decision the United States must take is whether to stand aloof from the disposition of the 36 dissidents, risking criticism on humanitarian grounds, or to intervene, irritating the sovereign government of Iraq and infuriating Iran.

The 36 dissidents are part of a force of more than 3,400 members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran who once mounted military operations against the Tehran regime from sanctuary in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. During the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the U.S. military surrounded the PMOI’s Camp Ashraf, some 60 miles north of Baghdad. The PMOI surrendered their weapons and the Americans pledged protection of the camp and its inhabitants.

The Mujahedeen have been credited with supplying U.S. authorities accurate information about clandestine Iranian nuclear facilities and other intelligence.

With the signing of a Status of Forces Agreement and the beginning withdrawal this year of American forces to their bases, the United States ceded sovereignty over Camp Ashraf to the Iraqis. The United States sought, and received, promises from the Iraqi government that Camp Ashraf’s population would be protected after the handover.

But Iran has been pressuring sympathetic Iraqi politicians to close the camp and expel the PMOI members. On July 28, Iraqi forces, saying they were establishing a police presence in the camp, launched an attack, killing 11 dissidents, wounding 450 and taking 36 hostages. U.S. forces nearby remained aloof.

An Iraqi judge ruled that the 36 dissidents, who went on a hunger strike in captivity, should be released. But Iraqi Interior Ministry officials, using new tactics, have argued that the dissidents entered the country illegally and should be expelled - obviously to Iran. If this tactic is successful, it could be applied to the 3,400 or so PMOI members remaining in Camp Ashraf.

One bizarre complication is that the PMOI is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization, mainly on grounds of guerrilla action it took earlier against the present Iranian regime. The U.S. army was directed in 2003 to protect an organization banned by the State Department as terrorist, but which has provided helpful information to the United States.

Iranian exiles in the United States and the free world have been demonstrating for some time in support of the dissidents. Various entities have raised their concerns. In reply to a petition on behalf of a majority of British Members of Parliament and 200 members of the House of Lords, a senior State Department official, ’responding on the president’s behalf,’ declared the United States is doing its utmost to ensure that residents of Ashraf ’will not be transferred to any country where there are substantial grounds to believe they would be subject to persecution … or to torture.’

One solution to the Iranian dissidents’ problem would be for the United States to give them asylum as political refugees. However, the United States can hardly accept them as such while it continues to brand them members of a terrorist organization. Nor would that sit well with the Tehran regime, with which the United States seeks engagement on Iran’s suspected pursuit of nuclear weaponry. In view of the political implications, an asylum decision would need to take place at the highest official level, at least the secretary of state, if not the president.

The PMOI has raised the prospect of the United Nations dispatching a monitoring force to Camp Ashraf. That is even less likely while such Iranian friends as Russia and China sit on the U.N. Security Council that would have to authorize it.

Clearly, the Ashraf dissidents should not be sent back to Iran against their will. That requires that the United States exerts enough pressure on the Iraqi government to keep its word.

John Hughes teaches journalism at Brigham Young University. He is a former editor and chief operating officer of the Deseret News and a former editor of the Christian Science Monitor, which syndicates this column.

Special news available to servicemen and women in Churches harassed by the Christian Right who may be more serious about International Law and are less likely to commit any sort of rape or proselytize where the Government does not want it. They had an office on most US bases to deal with the legal problems of religiously persecuted servicemen and women last checked.

Ashraf City does need a return to the Geneva Convention and to good faith promised in individual contracts signed by the US with each Ashraf resident when they were disarmed. The good faith promised and not respected has caused us immense distrust in Europe and the world.. If anyone reading this can think of an acceptable way of assisting, please do.