Deep Blade Journal

March out like a lamb

One week earlier than last year

I think these garlic shoots are volunteers

Last year’s fruit shriveling away

We did plant some garlic bulbs in the fall. But I think the ones emerging now are volunteers from last year, and may be from bulbs we forgot to dig up.

Meanwhile, it’s dry–easily the driest spring since we arrived here from Minnesota in March 2002. This is what the weather service says about it:

VERY DRY CONDITIONS CONTINUE ACROSS DOWNEAST MAINE AND SNOW FREE AREAS OF NORTHERN MAINE TODAY…

THE MAINE STATE FOREST SERVICE HAS INDICATED THAT THE GRASS AND WILDLAND FIRE DANGER ACROSS MUCH OF MAINE IS HIGH TO VERY HIGH TODAY. THIS AREA INCLUDES ALL OF DOWNEAST MAINE AND SNOW FREE AREAS OF NORTHERN MAINE…WHERE MINIMUM RELATIVE HUMIDITIES ARE EXPECTED TO FALL BELOW 25 PERCENT THIS AFTERNOON.

YOU SHOULD CHECK WITH YOUR LOCAL FIRE DEPARTMENT OR FORESTRY OFFICE BEFORE DOING ANY BURNING. PLEASE REMEMBER THAT A BURN PERMIT IS REQUIRED FOR ALL BURNING.

The laundry was pretty close to bone dry in an hour, with the temperature at 20°C and low relative humidity. Imagine how explosive the brush is becoming in these conditions…

Pentagon is scrubbing the image of war, even for American troops themselves

It’s been known since last fall that, “As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.”

Now Andrew Buncombe in the UK Independent yesterday–while declaring “Oh, what a lovely war”–has published an analysis of many of the these stories, laying out a firm refutation of the Pentagon response that their planted psy-ops pieces “did not constitute propaganda because they were factually correct.”

Buncombe quotes a former employee of the Lincoln Group, the Pentagon contractor paid to generate the stories:

A former employee of the Lincoln Group, who spent last summer in Baghdad acting as a link between US troops who were part of the Information Operations Task Force and Iraqis contracted by the company to establish contact with Iraqi journalists, said his job was to ensure “there were no finger-prints”.

“The Iraqis did not know who was writing the stories and the US troops did not know who the Iraqis were,” said the former employee, who declined to be named. It is not known whether the stories included here were ever printed or simply prepared for publication, but he said it was normal for around 10 stories a week to be printed. He said US troops routinely fabricated their quotations.

The effort parallels the false strategy projected by Bush domestically, and even directly to US troops, as the president did on a trip through Korea in November:

Our strategy can be summed up this way: As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down, and when our commanders on the ground tell me that Iraqi forces can defend their freedom, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.

The troops should be very, very skeptical.

Pro-Bush sycophants who inhabit the halls of pro-war wingnuttery should carefully review the Buncombe article. That is, if they ever bother to wonder how all those strange ideas about the utility of war & death that are in their heads get there in the first place. Buncombe paints a pretty good picture of how it works.