Pakistan’s dictator, Pervez Musharraf, is starting to lose his grip on power.
First it was that feisty supreme court that they have over there.  Lawyers and professionals from around Pakistan–a country with many educated, liberal people–fought to have their independent-minded chief justice reinstated after Musharraf fired him, and won.
Now everyone wants in on the party, and Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf kicked out in 1999 in a coup, is flying back into the country. And Benazir Bhutto, a dynastic former premier, is returning to the political scene there as well–looking for a deal with the dictator as way back to power for herself.
Well, sure, these former leaders may be corrupt like the current president, but freedom is “untidy,” as Donald Rumsfeld once said.
Besides, this kind of disorderly democracy is lot better than Pakistan being run out of Cheney’s office.

How long must we endure the insane propaganda coming from the right-wing war mongers that have been urging on the Iraq occupation since the beginning?
When war hacks Mike O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack came back from a posh military-escorted happy tour in Iraq and declared that (a) they used to be against the war (though not the brutality of war as a geo-political strategy per se, just the tactics) [this was not previously known] and (b) they are now for the continued occupation, the best reaction was actually offered by serving soldiers.
Well no one believes that kind of story anyway, even if were true–just ask the Washington congressman who finds anger at himself from constituents because of his sudden “surge” in support for Bush’s war.
Kenneth Pollack is a longtime propagandist for the war, having written a book about the so-called case for invading Iraq and used fake-liberal outlets like Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo as eager dumping grounds for his swill.
But it’s not just shady Beltway propagandists making the case for more war in Iraq instead of withdrawal. Lots of Republicans have been getting one talking point after another and repeating it about how the situation in Iraq is improving. But that’s just not the case. US military deaths are up over last year, violence continues largely unabated, and core government departments like the Interior Ministry continue to spread terror among the population.
This is not progress. To the extent that things are calmer in a few pockets here and there, it’s because the fighting has lulled for a while. These lulls will happen as the civil war slowly burns itself out over the next decade. This process (or some other chain of events, maybe–who knows?) is not under the control of US forces, who are just side actors and armament suppliers to the various Iraqi factions. Getting in the middle–arming one group of Sunnis (”the tribes”) against another (Salafists, or in the media’s misnomer, “Al-Qaeda”) for example–is really just a matter of arming one gang of thugs against another. And eventually, whichever group of Sunnis we choose to arm is likely to eventually turn those weapons against our own Shia-dominated Iraqi government. Why keep picking factions and giving them weapons? They’re not going to run out of weapons that way, that’s for sure–but then we are talking about an “AK-in-every-home” kind of society.
Iraq is such a quagmire for America that it is hard to truly fathom. The corrupt contractors enriching themselves with shoddy projects; the incompetent grandees like Paul Bremer and David Patraeus who have pretended to rule Iraq; the enormous number of civilian deaths from bombing and from deprivation, well into the hundreds of thousands by now; the broken promises to military men and women about overseas time, equipment and health care; the cynical fiscal pump priming by the administration with excessive spending paired with excessive tax cuts, designed to put the real costs of the war as far into the future and as far out of the public consciousness as possible–everything about this war has been disgusting, and even some of those people willing to show their face at the Republican debate in New Hampshire tonight were cheering Ron Paul for calling out his own party about this disaster.
But many Republicans, and plenty of their servants from other corners, are still cheering the silly nonsense from most of the other candidates on stage about leaving Iraq “with honor” and finding “a way to win, and that’s victory.”
It’s just like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear. They are going to sit there, and they believe their “victory” will appear, and their sincerity will make it happen. These people are not just obedient, or gullible–these people are blanket suckers!

How long must we endure the insane propaganda coming from the right-wing war mongers that have been urging on the Iraq occupation since the beginning?
When war hacks Mike O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack came back from a posh military-escorted happy tour in Iraq and declared that (a) they used to be against the war (though not the brutality of war as a geo-political strategy per se, just the tactics) [this was not previously known] and (b) they are now for the continued occupation, the best reaction was actually offered by serving soldiers.
Well no one believes that kind of story anyway, even if were true–just ask the Washington congressman who finds anger at himself from constituents because of his sudden “surge” in support for Bush’s war.
Kenneth Pollack is a longtime propagandist for the war, having written a book about the so-called case for invading Iraq and used fake-liberal outlets like Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo as eager dumping grounds for his swill.
But it’s not just shady Beltway propagandists making the case for more war in Iraq instead of withdrawal. Lots of Republicans have been getting one talking point after another and repeating it about how the situation in Iraq is improving. But that’s just not the case. US military deaths are up over last year, violence continues largely unabated, and core government departments like the Interior Ministry continue to spread terror among the population.
This is not progress. To the extent that things are calmer in a few pockets here and there, it’s because the fighting has lulled for a while. These lulls will happen as the civil war slowly burns itself out over the next decade. This process (or some other chain of events, maybe–who knows?) is not under the control of US forces, who are just side actors and armament suppliers to the various Iraqi factions. Getting in the middle–arming one group of Sunnis (“the tribes”) against another (Salafists, or in the media’s misnomer, “Al-Qaeda”) for example–is really just a matter of arming one gang of thugs against another. And eventually, whichever group of Sunnis we choose to arm is likely to eventually turn those weapons against our own Shia-dominated Iraqi government. Why keep picking factions and giving them weapons? They’re not going to run out of weapons that way, that’s for sure–but then we are talking about an “AK-in-every-home” kind of society.
Iraq is such a quagmire for America that it is hard to truly fathom. The corrupt contractors enriching themselves with shoddy projects; the incompetent grandees like Paul Bremer and David Patraeus who have pretended to rule Iraq; the enormous number of civilian deaths from bombing and from deprivation, well into the hundreds of thousands by now; the broken promises to military men and women about overseas time, equipment and health care; the cynical fiscal pump priming by the administration with excessive spending paired with excessive tax cuts, designed to put the real costs of the war as far into the future and as far out of the public consciousness as possible–everything about this war has been disgusting, and even some of those people willing to show their face at the Republican debate in New Hampshire tonight were cheering Ron Paul for calling out his own party about this disaster.
But many Republicans, and plenty of their servants from other corners, are still cheering the silly nonsense from most of the other candidates on stage about leaving Iraq “with honor” and finding “a way to win, and that’s victory.”
It’s just like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear. They are going to sit there, and they believe their “victory” will appear, and their sincerity will make it happen. These people are not just obedient, or gullible–these people are blanket suckers!

I’ve got the footage, cover screens and a rough cut done for pacificpelican.us podcast 8, which features Jessica and me at Yosemite. However our recent change in camera equipment has left me searching for the appropriate editing software for the new video format we’re recording in. For now the sound on the rough cut is the problem–way, way too much noise–and so I will keep looking for the right software before I release it, and for now rest assured that a beautiful Yosemite podcast is in the can, just waiting to be finished.

In addition, I have the footage that will comprise podcast 9 already over 90% shot. This podcast features the fallout on a San Francisco MUNI bus after a car smashes into the rear of the vehicle on Geary Boulevard. I will probably finish shooting the scenes today–all I need is a brief intro and possibly and outro–but the actual podcast will have to wait to be finished some time after number 8 is done.