Seems that even without pulling out of Iraq, the terrorists are starting to find the way here. Obviously, a lot of traffic in and out of Iraq goes through Germany. Flights to and from Iraq stop in Germany to refuel. Germany is home to some top-notch military hospitals, where severe trauma cases from Iraq are sent.

Apparently, the terrorists in Iraq have started following our planes, and have now discovered the first stop in the long trek from Iraq to the US.

Threat of attacks on Americans in Germany

Follow me over the pond for the rest.

So, I'm working downtown (I'm a stagehand - see my backstage blog) and we just took a break from rehearsing. I walked outside and could see the flames from the fire in Griffith Park. Many of my co-workers live in that area, and are wondering what they'll be going home to. Even when the fire doesn't get to your home, the smoke can do damage, ash gets in everything...

As I stood there watching the embers glow and the flames jump, I thought about how little rain we've had this year, and how very, very dry this brush is.

And then I thought about terrorism. Not the kind of idiot punks the Bushies are all bragging about having stopped today. No, I mean the real terrorists, who just look around and see our weaknesses, and say, oh, wow, look how vulnerable they are here...

Yesterday I diaried about Dehumanizing those you kill. I was elated that the diary (my first rescued diary, thanks to the rescue rangers) gathered so many insightful comments, which led me to start thinking about the flip side of dehumanizing the "enemy." Specifically, I was reminded of one of my Grandfather's WWII stories from the Pacific.

A friend of mine (Garth) told me a story recently about a tribe in central America that his Dad, a missionary, communicated with. This tribe was very brutal, and often warred with their neighbors using spears and knives. They still did this even as late as the 1970's, apparently.

When Garth's dad was there, they took a movie projector and showed the natives footage of WWII bombing runs. The natives were shocked and asked for an explanation. When told that those were bombs they were dropping on people from the air, thereby killing them, the natives were even more shocked.

"You kill people you don't know?" they asked.

The economist has an interesting piece on capital punishment, Here is thy sting - More and more countries have doubts about the death penalty. One of the more interesting points in this gruesome accounting of world wide executions is that just six countries are responsible for more than 9 out of ten known executions last year.

Care to guess the six countries?

Arianna's excellent dissection of Republican Petraeus Praising Points (typical Republican tactic to alter plotlines to fit their political ideology) set me off like Hunter Thompson on adrenal extract. In her story, she mentions a little tid-bit that has apparently been missed by the main stream and tributary media (my apologies to anyone who already diaried this).

For the first time since the war began, we've just had five straight months with 80 or more U.S. fatalities.

And it's getting worse. Nine more soldiers were killed yesterday and today, meaning

April has been the deadliest month for U.S. soldiers in Iraq this year. The latest deaths raise to nearly 100 the number of U.S. soldiers killed this month.

Cross Posted at the Bush Treason Blog.

I never met Roscoe Lee Browne, who died April 11, but here in the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles right now, they're holding a memorial service that is, well, astounding. What a man. Laurence Fishburne just finished speaking, a very moving speech, reminiscing about the time he spent with Browne, with whom he performed on this very stage in Two Trains Running.

Cross posted at Backstage w/ Supak.

I left a leaner version of this as a reply to RenaRF over in WinSmith's diary I don't care about Tony Snow. There are already 1000 comments there, so I think this deserves a diary.

Isn't it ironic that a mouthpiece for the people who deny natural medicine (marijuana) to patients whose doctors have recommended it now might need that very medicine? Isn't it ironic that the mouth piece for the people who fought the Death with Dignity Act, passed by the good people of Oregon, now might want to move to Oregon for a peaceful, dignified death, rather than a painful, horrific one in an over-priced hospital bed?

I'm not sure how they decide what the feature article is going to be each day at Wikipedia, but today Wes Clark got that front page honor. Interesting. Do the editors at Wiki know something we don't? Is Wes close to an announcement, or is he still running for Secretary of Defense?

Every Sunday, even though I don't have to leave for work until a quarter after, I try to get in the car at noon so I can hear the whole second half of Ian Masters' Background Briefing, which I consider to be the best political show on radio. Masters, who appears here in LA on KPFK 90.7 fm and nationally on the Pacifica Radio network, is a BBC trained broadcast journalist, commentator, author, screenwriter, and documentary filmmaker. His interviews are insightful, informative, and, often, scary as hell. He gets into the truth of matters that show how totally fucked this planet is. Honestly, after listening to his shows, I'm always amazed that human beings have survived as long as they have.

As you could have learned from my last diary, I freep the Yahoo Recommended list. It's a little pass time, like a video game, that I can use a small part of my brain on while I'm working (I'm a stagehand running projection on a play in LA).

Today I was shocked to find an AP story charting the similarities between the marketing of the Iraq war and what the Bush Co. is saying now about Iran.

I was wondering where all the freepers had gone.

Right now, they're over at Yahoo News pushing Ann Coulter's latest page of puss to the top of the recommended and viewed lists. Head on over and give her a 1, and we can at least knock her off the recommended. Having her up there never bothered me much, because we could go into the discussion area and bash some real dumbasses, but Yahoo has removed the discussion sections.

So get on over there!

Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus had a few thoughts on George W Bush in an interview with El Mundo today. I found the AFP story at Yahoo News (where I was freeping), but I hope someone can find an English version of the whole interview at El Mundo (I didn't see it there), because, well, when Nobel Peace Prize laureates speak, people should listen...

After reading BarbinMD's piece on the bias of the AP, it's refreshing to read an AFP story that just cuts right to the facts of the matter. In this case, AFP is reporting that General Wes Clark believes sending more troops could worsen the situation.

My union, IATSE Local 33 in Los Angeles, and a few others, are on strike against the LA Forum (former home of the Lakers, over in Inglewood). We had hundreds of strikers on the streets for Madonna, Pearl Jam, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Eddie Vedder mentioned us on stage. But apparently Dylan went all out to get the unions back in the building, to no avail. He had signed his contract before the strike, so he's stuck.

From Erin Aubry Kaplan: Labor vs. the Lakers' old lair - Los Angeles Times:

"I HAVE A DAILY ambition of taking an hourlong walk around the Forum in Inglewood. I don't realize that goal every day, but I have managed to fulfill a few others in the process, including staving off weight gain and literally keeping an eye on signs of life (or decay) in my fair city.

Usually my walk is a reaffirmation of small-town stability and continuity that counters a sense of urban decline; from day to day, not much changes around the Forum. That lack of change, while frustrating in one sense, is also comforting. I was jolted out of that comfort a couple of weeks ago. Turning the corner at 90th Street, I came upon a knot of picketers outside the Forum."

America's most famous advance team gets a little lost.

After four months of discovering how the state disability insurance program of California works, I'm back at the Mark Taper Forum theater in LA, tech rehearsing Lewis and Clark Reach the Euphrates. The last play I did here was Stuff Happens, which was a critical look at the run up to the Iraq war, featuring Keith Carradine as George Bush. That was back in July and August. Since then, Bush's poll numbers have steadily tanked. While this play isn't as directly critical of the Bush administration, it does explore American interventionist policies in wars based on questionable intelligence, and I'm hoping it will lead us to Bush approval numbers somewhere in Cheney land (end snark). When it comes to actual impact on Bush's numbers, hopefully there will be many more Lawrence Wilkersons.

I've seen arguments here about why we shouldn't compare Bush to Hitler, and I agree with Bill Maher. We shouldn't do that because Hitler was a decorated soldier who fought on the front lines. But, generally, I think comparisons to Hitler make us look a little loony, unless, of course, we carefully explain why we're making the comparison.

I've been hanging out here at the dKos for a while now, and I know this has been argued ad infinitum. But there is one aspect of this argument that I've never heard here. Excuse me if I just missed it, but here goes.

The environmental damage being done by the Bush administration will, in the long run, cause more deaths than the Nazis ever dreamed of.

Tell me why I'm wrong.