The jacarandas are in bloom. Like most of us, the jacarandas are immigrants; the ones in bloom in southern California this time of year, the Jacaranda mimosifolia are from South America, Argentina and Bolivia to be exact. Rebel Girl doesn't remember seeing them when she was growing up in Los Angeles but then that spring in 1977 when she left home, age sixteen, suddenly they were everywhere. One grew in the slim strip of grass separating the sidewalk and the street in front of the house where she lived with four roommates. Rebel Girl thought the blooms were beautiful. She clipped the branches and put in them in a jar on the kitchen table. 
Now she looks for them each spring and remembers how, in 1992, they seemed especially brilliant, especially extravagant against the black backdrop of burnt-out neighborhoods of post-riot Los Angeles.
These are some shots around campus that Rebel Girl took last Tuesday, a week ago, before the apocalyptic mudslides that made her look down instead of up. The summer's Fourth of July banners were being put up along Jeffrey Road. On one side is the Statue of Liberty, on the other: Let Freedom Ring.
Later that evening, Rebel Girl joined Red Emma at a political fundraiser out by Irvine Lake. Ron Shepson is a Democratic challenger for the congressional seat held by Republican Gary Miller. That's draw enough in her book; the last time Miller ran, he was unopposed. For shame. Last night, former Ambassador Joe Wilson was there to stump for Shepson. You remember Wilson, aka Valerie Plame's husband, the author of the New York Times editorial, "What I Didn't Find in Africa" which documented his 2002 CIA investigation into whether Iraq had purchased or attempted to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger. Wilson concluded that the George W. Bush administration twisted intelligence to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat. You remember. It was some evening out there by the lake. Let freedom ring indeed.
To donate to Ron Shepson's campaign, see Rebel Girl. Shepson can use all the help he can get. (Look at that district! It stretches across three counties from Whittier to OC's canyons. Can someone spell jerrymander?)
Meanwhile, U. Utah Phillips, the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest, songwriter, storyteller and card-carrying mamber of the International Workers of the World (aka the Wobblies) passed away last Friday evening at his home in Nevada City, California at age 73.
Rebel Girl and Red have seen Utah in concert countless times and in January 2003, marched in the streets of San Francisco alongside him in the big anti-war protest, pushing the little guy in his stroller. The little guy is partial to Utah's train songs and hobo stories, but his parents, of course, like the labor sinaglongs and the love songs, the stories about Ammon Hennancy, Big Bill Haywood and Lucy Parsons. Utah's memorial is scheduled for this Sunday in Nevada City and the music is sure to be fine and heartfelt. Rebel Girl wishes she could be there.
7 comments:
I think I'm picking up on Rebel Girl's politics.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Wilson couldn't find evidence that no one was willing to tell him about in Niger. It is not his fault for not finding the hidden trail but it is his fault for claiming there wasn't one.
The United States military found and removed some 500 tons of yellowcake post invasion. Some 1.8 tons was low enriched uranium. The U.N. did not find and remove this material.
Several questions arise from this fact. First, at least half of the yellowcake originated in Niger. Where did the balance come from? Second, was the enriched uranium processed in Iraq, by whom, and how?
This whole Plame/Wilson mess was obviously another example of a botched job by the Bushies. But it smacks of being deliberately botched. This affair has the smell of some pretty rank moves behind it. Sometimes when you don't want the truth out it is convenient to bury it under a scandal. I believe Wilson, Plame, and the gullible press were useful tools in an effort to cover something up. Wilson and Plame are in this deception right up to their eyeballs. Come on people he is a career diplomat and she is a career spook!
Just chew on this fact. 500 tons of yellowcake is worth about 100 million bucks. Where did that stuff go?
BDS is real...don't be a victim.
"The United States military found and removed some 500 tons of yellowcake post invasion. Some 1.8 tons was low enriched uranium. The U.N. did not find and remove this material."
Any reliable source for this?
There are reports that this material was under seal by the IAEA (a finger on the UN hand). But it was not removed by them. There are also reports that it was "looted" by the time US troops arrived. Believe what you want .... one thing us peasants ain't never gonna find out is what happened to it. It is not gonna show up on someones tax return either.
Hitchens has a great little piece in Slate that deals with the OTHER Iraq uranium story. Saddaam sent an envoy to try to procure more uranium after Gulf War I. That is the water that Plame/Wilson muddied up. That is also one thing that the Bushies made a big deal out of. The Bushies didn't need to do that...Saddaam was out of compliance was all the reason we needed to go to war.
As far as the rest of the WMD stories; gas and bio agents etc. there isn't any evidence that there had been a recent active program after we took Baghdad. There still is the chance that the stuff left for Syria before the bombs fell. There was the recent Syrian/Nork reactor bombing by Israel after all. That might be where the "looted" uranium went.
The part that really cracks me up is that the US dumped maybe as much as 2000 tons of depleted uranium on Iraq in its use of munitions. Fortunately it is spread all over hells half acre so terrorists can't get to it...but it's a menace that we will have to mitigate some day.I have no doubt we used it to see how well it worked.
And one other note here...Saddaam resisted inspections. He wanted the UN off his back and always left doubt in his enemies minds. It cost him a kingdom and his life. This whole thing could have been avoided if he would have complied with the Gulf War I armistice terms.
"What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest.
What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering.
What is his worldly God? Money.
Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time."
- Karl Marx; essay, The Jewish Question; 1844
man, tora bora and Mr. Marx - get your own blogs!
7:46 You show up on my doorstep and get medieval on me over it...I'll considerate it.
Until then whenever I see Joe effin Wilson (or his wife) being paraded around here or anywhere else like he is some paradigm of virtue I'm jumping it. He's another of the rat bastards that feed off the public largesse. The world is full of rat bastards. 7:46....Grasshopper you must focus on YOUR Number One rat bastard ....the Goo monster! (And get those rat bastard Bored members unelected too.) I did here and you can do it there!
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