AUSTIN, Texas -- The administration is now in The Full Ostrich on Iraq: Dick Cheney put on a fabulous performance last Sunday on "Meet the Press," in which he insisted everything in Iraq is trickety-boo, right as rain and cheery bye. I haven't heard anyone lie with such gravitas since Henry Kissinger was in office.

            But for the complete black-is-white, up-is-down, peace-is-war mode, you have to check out this administration on the environment. I am fascinated by its rank chutzpah. The latest brass-balls moxie episode was President Bush's Monday visit to the Detroit Edison power plant in Monroe, Mich., which he actually touted as a "living example" of why his dandy Clear Skies (gag me) initiative is so good for us all. "You're good stewards of the quality of the air," Bush told the plant's pleased workers.

            The Monroe plant is one of the worst polluters in the country: In 2001, it sent 102,700 tons of sulfur dioxide, the leading cause of acid rain, into the atmosphere, along with 45,900 tons of nitrogen oxide, 810 pounds of mercury and 17.6 million tons of carbon dioxide. A study done in

Watching the high school kids tottering up the hiking trail under ridiculous burdens I was reminded of the studies of GIs who jumped into the surf in the Normandy landings with 80-pound packs on their backs and promptly drowned. These days, the overloaded backpack is coming under scrutiny as kids totter home from school hefting 30-pound loads. I've become a devotee of the famous long-distance hiker Ray Jardine, whose philosophy of life and loads is set forth in his 1992 classic "Beyond Backpacking," which should be nestled next to the works of John Muir on your bookshelf.

            Jardine and his wife Jenny have hiked all the major trails, Pacific Crest, Continental Divide and Appalachian, and watched with horror as overloaded plodders lost any sense of pleasure and often quit the trail altogether. After thousands of miles and much experimentation, the couple ended up with a total packweight each, minus food and water, of around 8 pounds.

            I read the book in the spring and was convinced. Out went the heavy hiker boots, and in came modestly priced sneakers. (Jardine counsels

"It's not about oil.  It's not about oil."

But we're taking their oil. And not just to finance reconstruction.

Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of the Iraqi occupation, made that clear back in July when he declared that Iraq needs to accept foreign investment and privatization of its oil before a permanent government is put in charge of the country. In other words, democracy is welcome only after the most important economic decisions for the future of Iraqis have been decided for them.

You’d think that such a blatant rejection of democracy and obvious grab at Iraq’s oil would attract more notice. Bremer made it clear that corporations have priority over people in Iraq, and that the U.S. occupation plans to ensure that.

Our occupation of Iraq has an eerie similarity to another intervention in the Middle East that occurred 50 years ago--the CIA-British coup that ousted Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammed Mossadegh and installed the infamous Shah of Iran.

So when Arab nations greet our rhetoric of creating democracy with suspicion or outright derision, we’ve earned it. Iranians struggled

Just wanted to say I was really impressed with the Farm Aid article by Harvey Wasserman.  It really rang true to me at each turn and I was also at almost everything he explained.  

If you'd like some pictures to go along with the article I've got some posted at:

www.funtigo.com/kelvs

Check under "Farm Aid 2003 Keeper."

On September 10, opening day of the Fifth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization, Lee Kyung Hae, leader of the Korean Federation of Advanced Farmers Association, climbed the fence that separates the excluded from the included and took his life with a knife to the heart.  

"I am 56 years old, a farmer from South Korea who has strived to solve our problems with the great hope in the ways to organize farmers' unions," Lee read from a statement minutes before his death. "But I have mostly failed, as many other farm leaders elsewhere have failed."

Earlier this year, Lee staged a one-man hunger strike in front of WTO headquarters in Geneva. He was ignored. Here in Cancun he marched with more than 15,000 farmers, indigenous people, and youth wearing a sandwich board that read "The WTO Kills Farmers." When the protesters reached the point where they could go no farther, he plunged a knife into his heart. He was pronounced dead in a Cancun hospital just miles from where WTO Ministers deliberated on how to promote the same agricultural trade that drove Lee, and hundreds more farmers in Korea, India, and other developing countries,