informant38
.

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...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica

Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.

Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors


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31.12.07

and U.S. film director Oliver Stone:

Marxist Colombian rebels kept three hostages waiting to be released on Monday as leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez worried that more delays could derail the hand-over he had negotiated with the guerrillas.
- Hugh Bronstein/Reuters 31.Dec.07
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Marxist, leftist, see below

a "buffoon, rude person, slanderer and a liar":

[Colombian Senator Piedad] Cordoba also said she had received death threats from "a high functionary of the Uribe[Columbian] government" however she assured she would continue working towards a humanitarian exchange. Cordoba confirmed she would fly to Caracas on Friday to discuss preparations for the liberation of the hostages.
Venezuela Analysis
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This is being spun in the US media as a who-knows-why sort of thing. But it's the same guys that are expediting the rest of the shit-for-brains operations we're being treated to every day, except possibly for [the escape of] Tatiana, the four year-old tiger at the SF zoo, now deceased. They don't want Chavez to pull any glory out of the nightmare they've created in Colombia. Uribe's an American puppet, simple as that. He wouldn't make move one without US permission.

30.12.07

“the people have no voice because they have no information”
Which is pretty much exactly what I was thinking about half an hour before I saw this. What's most exasperating is the presence of literally millions of for lack of a better term nice people in the US who don't know what to do. About anything. Except keep the household stuff going to the best of their abilities.
Almost immediately before I thought that I had the misfortune of viewing cinemax's new year's celebration of its snarky little self, featuring some essentially Judeo-Christian God-fearing satire of generic Eastern religion and stuff. Also featuring prominently that valiant warrior Sasha Baron Cohen as Borat. Cohen's the brave artist who's made his quick fortune belittling Arabs and those whatever-they-are's over in the 'stans.
Maybe he didn't realize it but, thanks to his efforts on their behalf now every time most - many more millions sadly than the nice - Americans think of the people in those countries they'll be thinking how ludicrous and unimportant they are. Which will work to someone's advantage here pretty damn soon, I bet.

Shooting Back

B’Tselem has given Palestinian families across the West Bank video cameras to document how they are treated by Israeli soldiers and settlers. Some of the videos depicting abuse by settlers sparked a national debate earlier this year after they were broadcast on Israeli television.
]...]
The result of the settlements is a lot of restriction of movements on—that are being held on Palestinians. There are many streets that they cannot really walk. A Palestinian cannot drive cars in these areas. And there is a lot of violation that’s happening there from the settlers that are living there. There are very radical settlers, more radical even than the rest of the West Bank. And we know from a lot of years of watching the place or getting testimonies that a lot of violations is happening there.

What you’re going to see is a clip from a settlement called Tel Rumeida in Hebron. What we will see is a settler from this settlement, from Tel Rumeida, pushing Palestinians that basically are living across the street, on the other side of the road, pushing her back to her home, calling her “whore,” cursing her very viciously. And all this time, you see the soldier standing next to the woman doing nothing, not interfering.
Oren Yakobovich/DemocracyNow! 26.Dec.07

28.12.07

It is startling that the appeasers in the press only accommodate to a new force in Congress which insults 2,000 years of the European tradition and religious history and on the day of Christmas at that. As torture, like the repeal of habeas corpus and the establishment of American gulags, has only entered into the American political realm and discussion since American politicians, like George Bush and Mitt Romney, have promoted themselves as Christian. Romney, in fact, the most fascistic of the lot, has promised us that he is also - Mormonism aside - the most Christian of this squalid pack of hungry wolves and in his extreme positions on torture and Gitmo he appears to want to bolster his Christian karma.
Bernie Quigley

26.12.07

Molly says:
"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."

June report from the Division of Occupation Safety and Health

Police are treating the San Francisco Zoo as a crime scene this afternoon, one day after a 350-pound tiger escaped and fatally mauled a 17-year-old San Jose boy before attacking two other men 300 yards away.
SFGate
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A 48-year-old man was killed Monday night on Interstate 880 in Oakland, according to the California Highway Patrol.
The man was on foot in the northbound lanes of the freeway near Seventh Street when he was hit at 7:40 p.m., the CHP said, and the roadway was closed for nearly two hours.
ibid.
A state investigation later ruled that the zoo was at fault for the attack because of the way the cages were configured.
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State Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS):
2005 Annual Report of Fatal and Injury Motor Vehicle Traffic Collisions
Table 8A - Collisions and Persons Killed/Injured by City, County, and Road Classification, 2005
San Francisco - 32/3797

25.12.07

Merry Christmas from Dr. Matthew

disorderly conduct:
...about 230 "clients" - full-time students at the Rotenberg Center - who are mentally retarded, developmentally disabled with diseases like autism, or have been diagnosed with ailments such as depression, schizophrenia, or conduct disorder.
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One thing you won't see at the center is traditional psychological counseling. While students do meet with clinicians, there are no regular appointments or group therapy. School literature states that counseling is done "as needed," but not when it could be seen as a reward for bad behavior, and adds: "The purpose of the counseling is to enhance the student's cooperation with, and progress within the program."
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In a few cases where a student is suspected of being capable of an extremely dangerous but infrequent behavior, the staff at Rotenberg won't wait for him to try it. They will exhort him to do it, and then punish him.
Even the people watching the screens are themselves on camera.
Jarrett Murphy/village voice 10.Oct.06
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Michael P. Flammia, the lawyer for Rotenberg, defended the practice in an interview.

“People want to believe positive interventions work even in the most extreme cases,” he said. “If they did, that is all we would use. Many of these kids come in on massive dosages of antipsychotic drugs, so doped up that they are almost comatose. We get them off drugs and give their parents something very important: hope.”
Leslie Kaufman/NYT 25.Dec.07
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...encourages employees to file anonymous reports about their coworkers’ lapses.
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The Milgram joystick. It seems pretty obvious that technicians like B.F. Skinner and his disciples have some kind of autism-like disease, its cause likely as complex as its manifestation. But that there's something wrong with them can't be denied. But they don't think so, and they serve a purpose. It's like arguing with a different species to confront them.
Saying it gives "hope" to the parents is placed against accusations of inhuman behavior as a rebuttal without being a response. This is a common strategy for the immoral - rather than justify the means let the outcome do it. That same logical road follows the killing of the same "clients" as it would bring the parents "relief". Well, possibly some grief too, but relief. There should be some grief here, as well.
The problem's traceable right back through the electrodes. The values and norms of the skeins of human culture that program the behaviorists, who then program the patients to a template of right living that isn't right at all.
It isn't all black and white and there are a few chilling testimonies of other last resorts for the socially disabled, warehouses of the dysfunctional and dangerous. Somebody's got to deal with it all, and it takes more money and more heart than most people have, and even then. But this is not the way to go.
What's exposed is the flaw in the passive morality that wants everyone to live happily ever after, but doesn't want to expend the energy necessary for that vast and bizarrely unnatural undertaking. So the less fit slip through the cracks on down to where there's fewer and fewer choices and these fiendish behaviorists have a freer hand.
And that ghastly ominous "conduct disorder". That's exactly where you'll find kids who can't speak their wounds. It says right there they get kids with "conduct disorder" and it says right there they don't have traditional "counseling". How much genuine affection do you think they see, or get?
Probably a lot of the clients are hopeless cases. But what the Rotenberger Center's doing can't be justified. Not to a human being. Not to someone whose heart and mind are still connected.
Helen Keller would be appalled, and outraged.
American boot camps for rebellious teenagers are a different brand of the same snake oil, and those places still make bank off desperate parents. Because they get results, at least temporarily - in the short term.
Results. Nothing else works.
It's still wrong.

24.12.07

Stay strong baby. I love you forever:

I am innocent. I am being punished for a crime I did not commit. I have professed my innocence for nine years, and I continue to say I am innocent.
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I would like to say to Damien's family I did not murder your son. I did not do it. I just want you to know that
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What I want people to know is that they call me a cold-blooded killer when I shot a man that shot me first. The only thing that convicted me was that I am a Mexican and that he was a police officer. People hollered for my life, and they are to have my life tonight. The people never hollered for the life of the policeman that killed a thirteen-year-old boy who was handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. The people never hollered for the life of a Houston police officer who beat up and drowned Jose Campo Torres and threw his body in the river. You call that equal justice. This is your equal justice.
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I love you Angel. Let's ride. I guess this is it.
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When you look at the video, you know you can't see anyone. You overplayed your hand looking for something against me and to cover it up the State is killing me. I'm not mad or bitter though. I'm sad that you are stuck here and have to go through all of this. I am going somewhere better. My time is up. Let me get ready to make my transition. Doug, don't forget Marcy.
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Offender declined to make a last statement.
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Uh, I don't know, Um, I don't know what to say. I don't know. (pauses) I didn't know anybody was there. Howdy.

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Profanity directed toward staff.
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Go ahead Warden, murder me. Jesus take me home.
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Jesus had a few questions before he died

arnold's alternatives

Look forward:

...conditions today feel eerily familiar: the paramilitaries, the rising tension, the mysterious activities of soldiers, the renewed isolation from the rest of the country.
Naomi Klein on Acteal ten years on and Chiapas ahorita
via wood s lot

The next president faces an unenviable task::

Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt:
Simple put, the U.S. has to go into "let's save the federal government from bankruptcy" mode. If we don't then we're going to have worse trouble then you've ever seen.
Hale Stewart/Huffington 23.Dec.07
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Stewart seems right on the unenviable and you've ever seen but it's always the national debt as an unbreakable commandment. As a thing intransmutable. This is a debt so severe in its terms it will destroy the United States to leave it unpaid. The national debt, entered into by a handful of men but legally binding for all 300 million Americans and all future Americans as well, to and past the point of the loss of their lives and property, that being what can only be meant by Stewart's "worse trouble than you've ever seen".
We were told we had to invade Afghanistan to stop people who wanted to harm us from succeeding. We were told we had to invade Iraq because Saddam wanted to harm America. We were told to tolerate all the intrusions and insecurities and inconveniences of the national security apparatus because there are those who seek to damage America, to hurt us, and they must be stopped from accomplishing that, no matter what it takes.
How did financial institutions and their boards and their promissory notes become more sacred to the law, more deserving of protection, than the people themselves?
-
The Debt to the Penny and Who Holds It

21.12.07

US: NKorea Won't Meet Nuclear Deadline
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North Korea recently turned over to the United States equipment found to be contaminated with traces of highly enriched uranium — HEU — apparently contradicting the country's stance that it never had such a program, FOX News has confirmed.
The equipment was described as a set of "smelted aluminum tubes" suitable for an HEU centrifuge program, a step necessary to make a nuclear weapon.
"They got some 'splainin' to do," one U.S. arms control official said when first told of the discovery about a month ago, he recalled to FOX.
However, North Korea claims the tubes were intended for use in the development of a conventional "artillery" weapon, sources told FOX News.
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Reuters:
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice strongly urged North Korea on Friday to keep its promise to disable all its nuclear facilities and give a full declaration of its nuclear program by year-end.
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Our friend, Japan
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Japan, parts of which lie just 120 miles from North Korea across the Sea of Japan
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"2000 kilometers." That is the distance from Israel to Iran
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Israel is our friend
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"US may attack Iran"
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'US ready to strike Iran on Good Friday'
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US generals ‘will quit’ if Bush orders Iran attack
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'Israel will attack Iran on its own'

20.12.07

$100 billion in the past six months alone:

Morgan Stanley, the No. 2 U.S. investment bank, reported a $9.4 billion writedown on Wednesday from bad bets on mortgage-related debt, leading it to take a $5 billion infusion from an arm of the Chinese government.

China Investment Corp. was launched in late September with $200 billion in capital, one-third of which was to be invested outside of China. It is one of the world's richest investment funds...
Bel Bruno/AP/Yahoo 19.Dec.07

We are obviously upset with our 2007 results,
particularly in light of the fact that weakness:

...in fixed income more than offset strong and, in some areas, record-setting performance in other businesses,” James E. Cayne, Bear Stearn’s chairman and chief executive...in a statement.
The fate of Mr. Cayne, its longtime leader, has been the subject of much speculation on Wall Street since this summer. As two internal hedge funds that had bet on home mortgages began to crumble, questions about Mr. Cayne’s leadership arose. Reports that he had gone golfing during the worst parts of that crisis did not help.
The investment bank lost so much capital that Bear Stearns formed a partnership this fall with China’s Citic Securities, in which the two firms swapped shares. Though not as drastic as other firms’ measures to shore up capital — Morgan Stanley on Wednesday announced the sale of a $5 billion stake to China’s sovereign wealth fund, and both Citigroup and UBS made similar deals with Middle Eastern and Asian governments — it was a reflection of how weak Bear Stearns had become.
The firm has also suffered much internal turmoil.
de la Merced/NYTimes 20.Dec.07

18.12.07

"We need our own radar that we don't share with others."
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Unit cost
F-35A: US$48 million
F-35B: US$62 million
F-35C: US$63 million

In 2003, Israel signed a letter of agreement, worth almost $20 million, to formally join the system development and demonstration (SDD) effort for the F-35 as a "security cooperation participant". The Israeli Air Force (IAF) stated in 2006 that the F-35 is a key part of IAF's recapitalization plans, and that Israel intends to buy over 100 F-35A fighters at an estimated cost of over $5 billion to replace their F-16s over time. Israel was temporarily reinstated as a partner in the development of the F-35 on 31 July 2006, after Israeli participation was put on hold following the Chinese arms deal crisis.
wikipedia

"a 'fantastic' story about conditions at the residence"

Top Stories

The Christian Science Monitor 7:57 pm. 18.Dec.07
  • Now, world buoys U.S. economy - 19 hr ago
  • With many toys recalled, Americans find new ways to give - 19 hr ago
  • India's superrich get even richer - 19 hr ago
  • Republicans score key wins on spending - 19 hr ago
  • High-tech brings rural towns back to life - 19 hr ago

"insulting the President"

15.12.07

An apple a day:

If you were to substitute a variety such as Monty’s Surprise in place of a ’supermarket’ commercial variety, you would receive 3.4 times the amount of phenolics in the skin and 5.9 times the amount in the flesh. Hence one Monty’s Surprise apple a day would be comparable to eating at least four modern apples.
cryptogon 15.Dec.07
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The paranoid assumption is it's intentional, the leaching away of health and healthiness from what were natural organic traditional food sources, but I think it's viral, an infection. The way infection starts from small basically harmless things that get critical mass and become pathogenic.
Letting the greed-driven desperate get their hands on the wheel, even for a moment, meant they in turn would come to drive us all. Religions that elevate the weak and ill at the expense of the strong and healthy play their part. As do eugenic campaigns that rise from the middle of the already compromised, taking their templates from the extrapolated self. Always someone benefits from the way things are, and this is what's missing from most analyses of what's wrong now. There are always those whose lives are bettered by the way things are, no matter what's happening. The undertaker goes to the bank each day of the plague etc. etc. In this case the myopic substitution of apples that look more inviting, that look healthier than the older smaller blemished traditional ones has made profits for those who put profit ahead of all else. And by now we're centuries and generations into letting myopic greed-driven assholes make the rules of how things are.
That's who's setting our unwritten policies about the apples in the store. Bigger, emptier, brighter, emptier, sweeter, emptier.
But they're blind. Selfishly myopic, they can't see where they're going, where we're all headed - making decisions and plans from only the immediate, based only on immediate benefit.
Letting those kinds of people drive has gradually made those kinds of people normal, as conditions are shifted in their favor, and health advocates - people who advocate health - are made freakish and marginal. Even though most everybody normal wants to be healthy, especially when things start slipping.
It happens slowly, with no clear bright line that marks where healthy living becomes unhealthy living, or where the direction of human progress shifts from traditional sane direction to rationalized immediate gratification and insanity - "gimme that" and hang the future. Kids grow up thinking it's "natural" to breathe exhaust every time they go outside, thinking there are no birds to begin with, thinking all kinds of weird shit that comes straight out of their empty experience, which is coming straight out of a steadily disintegrating womb, the world the environment, that's being broken down by the unhealthy minds that now own and run it.
Letting expediency call the shots, letting cowardice justify its actions and its existence, means that eventually cowardice will be justifying the death of all of us, because how else could things have gone?

Settling out years ago from a psychedelicly creative evening and a metamorphic visionary all-night, floating down into a morning of humble calm and sensibility, I cooked and ate some organic oatmeal from the health food store and my body said very clearly that it was a life-confirming thing to do. Said it whole-system, said it to me and to the world. It was an undeniable conversation, a small thing in the larger context but sometimes it does get so bad we have to remind ourselves those voices are real.
Those voices, which we all have naturally, are what resonate when we read stories like this. We know raising pigs to live nightmare lives in gigantic swine prisons has to be unhealthy for the family that eats the meat taken from them. But the greed-blind men and women who now drive us forward drown that voice out with the dominating noise of their scams and seductions. So that it's only in from the margins by necessity, and faintly, these reminders come:
We don't have to live like this, and it's toxic, poisonous and fatal; we don't have to and it's bad.
So why keep on doing it?
Because those desperate men and women are the subset of the population that can't survive in a healthy environment. Or can't survive as dominant, have to take a back seat, have to get humble.
Sort of like how modern transportation, while it has just about set the whole world on fire and looks to pretty near doomed us all, has at the same time made it possible for a paraplegic to get from New York City to Washington D.C. just about as easily and swiftly as a champion marathon runner. A man with no legs can ride from Atlanta GA to Miami FLA just as fast as anyone else.
This leveling has exacted a price we all now pay. The cause isn't the disabled, it's the greed, the putting of the self above what's far more important than the self.

"These men probably went insane because they worked too hard."

13.12.07

here poor statecraft has trumped
our improved efforts :

Wouldn't oil production policies be used to separate us from our allies or further manipulate the world's economy? Wouldn't we face a region increasingly hostile to our interests? Wouldn't we see the prospect of Arab-Israeli peace diminish as Iran worked to weaken, isolate, and demoralize the Jewish state? And to avoid being at the mercy of Iran, wouldn't the Saudis decide to go nuclear -- and wouldn't that impel the Egyptians to do the same?
The point is that even the image of Iran as a nuclear power carries with it very dangerous consequences, including that the Middle East might become a nuclear-armed region.
Dennis Ross/WINEP 12.Dec.07
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Heaven forfend the Middle East should become the fertile womb of nuclear weaponry.
As for Israel being "weakened, isolated, or demoralized", depending on the degree, and the attitude with which a response to that degree is undertaken, it may be the only possible path toward actual healing now available, to the Middle East and the world.
These are precisely the conditions near-universally imposed by communities on their erring brethren or sistren. They must be made to realize that communality is more to be honored than individuality, at least in some circumstances.
This is the prison experience generally - isolated, weakened, demoralized, then ideally, remoralized, strengthened, and brought back into the fold.
Israel and its apologists are convinced they must lie to the world in order to survive. Israel has nuclear weapons, lots of them. Israel wants Iran out of the way nuclear or not, and Israel wants the Americans to remove Iran for it, and Israel and its apologists and champions are lying to make that happen, exactly as Americans were lied into supporting the removal of Saddam Hussein and the destruction of Iraq. To the great and lasting detriment and shame of America.
The academic community is appalled by how many of its university freshmen have taken the myth of Saddam's responsibility for 9/11 into the core of their lives. No accident there. An intentional lie pounded into the heads and hearts of American families through insinuation by the television and the radio. Media whose interests are never exposed, whose owners and their interests are never exposed. The pretense that there are no interests other than mercantile there matching the cynical "blood for oil" most soldiers in Iraq still find at the bottom of their search for answers to their personal nightmares.
Inasmuch as the interests of the Jewish state are profoundly altered by what's happened to Iraq, and what's proposed for Iran, and that those interests are never, at least until now, discussed prominently in the public air as a possible cause for these military assaults, it is a committed lie.
The risk and burden of lying about such grave matters is it can produce sociopathic denial.

“The Arctic is screaming”

12.12.07

An Escherian staircase, lengthening
via RWA

7.12.07

a modern-day allegory

"...instead of being lured into a sterile argument about how offensive the word 'Muhammad' can be, it's probably much more sensible to either ignore this horseshit entirely or diagnose the media obsession itself. But then there are other people, probably some of them sniffing around this blog, who want to do exactly what the news says, follow orders and belch out feckless denunciations every five seconds. I know some people imagine that they're seriously, unproblematically outraged at someone being locked up for something this ridiculous. Well, fine, but I don't believe you. I think you only care about this because the television said so, so you can take your fake 'concern' about this case and go fuck yourself with it. Here's a reminder: for every minute you've spent emoting about this case, you've ignored another dead Iraqi (approximately one a minute is the going rate). Not that this is the only thing worth focusing on, but let's not pretend that your apparent outrage is anything other than a disgusting display of narcissism."
lenin's tomb 03.Dec.07

6.12.07

We know where Al Smith would have stood

"Either the argument will be, as our enemies want, framed as Islam versus the West; or it will be, as we want it, framed as moderates of whatever faith, colour or race against extremism however it manifests itself..."
Tony Blair, speech to the Al Smith Dinner 18.Oct.07
democratiya
via wood s lot

Fur's quiet comeback
- Weisman/IHT

In Russian luxury market, companies strategize to reach the rich consumer
- Alderman/IHT

The Millionaire Fair: Art becomes the next step along the path of riches
- Kishkovsky/IHT

5.12.07

China's military budget is set to rise 17.8 percent this year
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fishbowl media

...under the watchful eye of soldiers a sigh of relief always getting tricked power grab 10 times as much money just to scare the daylights out of the Jewish community an unabashed anti-Semite the greatest thing that could have happened a doomsday scenario the rabbi a frequent target anti-Semitic expressions on state-controlled media:

The defeat of Hugo Chavez's broad-ranging referendum has eased Jewish fears in Venezuela. Yet many remain fearful about their future in the country and are making plans to leave.
For me it’s very easy an apartment in Miami one in New York a large home behind a high protective wall in Altamira cheese blintzes and chocolate eclairs...

JTA/JDF 04.Dec.07

2.12.07

"After seven years of waiting, [Dziekanski] arrived to his utopia, Vancouver," said the Polish consul general, Maciej Krych. "Ten hours later, he was dead."

and to meditate at length

"It doesn't look good. I agree with that":

Friday, the Bush administration did an about-face, abruptly withdrawing the text while Israeli diplomats reiterated

The incident raised the hackles of some State Department officials, who said Khalilzad has a history of diplomatic freelancing and that he had stumbled into his current predicament by failing to adequately consult the Israelis or his boss, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"the need to encourage the parties concerned to follow diligently the joint understanding that was reached."
Lynch/WashingtonPost 01.Dec.07

1.12.07

This investigation will help end the war:

On the weekend of 13-15 March, 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will assemble history’s largest gathering of US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Iraqi and Afghan survivors. They will provide first hand accounts of their experiences and reveal the truth of occupation.
They saw it for themselves, now — with your support — they’ll tell it for themselves. On the weekend of 13-15 March, 2008 Iraq Veterans Against the War will assemble history’s largest gathering of US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan , as well as Iraqi and Afghan survivors. They will testify to their first hand experiences and reveal the truth of occupation.
Support Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan Investigation

Freedom of the press is dead in totalitarian Venezuela, but alive and well in the democratic United States.
except
...the opposition in Venezuela still broadcasts on more major TV channels than there are channels sympathetic to the government. In stark contrast, the alternative media in the US cannot be viewed on any major channel. Consequently the vast majority of Americans receive all their news from a mainstream media which never questions whether the US has any right to dominate other nations
[...]
The most dramatic increase in social spending was in the area of health care. In 1998 there were over 14,000 Venezuelans for each primary healthcare physician, and few physicians worked in rural or poor urban areas. By 2007 there was one primary healthcare physician for every 1,300 Venezuelans, and many of the new physicians were working in clinics in rural areas and poor barrios that had never had physicians before. There are also now 16,000 stores in poor areas throughout the country selling staples at a 30% discount on average.
Robin Hahnel/Monthly Review 30.Nov.07 > feral scholar

30.11.07

Foreskins and smegma years ago:


JOSEPH J. SCHATZ, AP writer:
A southern African radio correspondent has been receiving a flood of text messages and cell phone calls — some from offended listeners and readers.
All because Kennedy Gondwe chose to get circumcised to protect himself from AIDS, and took the British Broadcasting Corp.'s radio and Web audience through the procedure with him Friday.














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Oddly, foreskins have been popping up right and left these last few days.
ex. 1; ex.2;
and bears, as well. Sometimes together.
This may be one of those swellings-toward-fruition that afterwards look so obvious but at the time seem at most obscurely and mysteriously connected.
For instance, who would have thought after all these years of dark and grotesque cruelty directed at young male penises by threatened but still powerful male elders and their acquiescent co-dependents, the very act of circumcision itself would be revealed as all along an example of divine mercy, at least in some cases, statistically, possibly, or recently anyway, at least in Africa, or Zambia anyway, or in some parts of it, evidently, according to some sporadically collated and unprofessionally conducted informal polls funded by theocratic delusionals.
Also David and Saul, those wild and crazy Biblical In-laws of great historical repute, temporarily somewhat out of whack with each other as well as in and out of sync with the plans of the Great, uh, You Know:
And it came to pass as they came, when David was returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, that the women came out of all cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet king Saul, with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music.
And the women answered one another as they played, and said,
Saul hath slain his thousands,
and David his ten thousands.
And Saul was very wroth, and the saying displeased him; and he said, They have ascribed unto David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands: and what can he have more but the kingdom?
And Saul eyed David from that day and forward.
And it came to pass on the morrow,
that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul, and he prophesied in the midst of the house: and David played with his hand, as at other times: and there was a javelin in Saul's hand.
And Saul cast the javelin; for he said, I will smite David even to the wall with it. And David avoided out of his presence twice.
The slaughter David's just then getting back from being his main pre-nup princely task - set by old King Saul in order to intrigue him on out of town, hopefully for keeps - of gathering up the foreskins of the sundry dead Philistines he's gone out there and recently killed. Probably he had some lesser individuals - slaves, immigrants, you know, to do the actual foreskin removalling - grab it, stretch it out, slice it off, pop it in the bag, hand in the bag to Prince for counting - David heads home, delivers the bags, gets the girl. Good old days.
These circumcison-as-prophylaxis-against-AIDS-(in Africa) stories seem to be on a kind of time-release lately. Every few weeks the timid journalistic cry emerges. "But it's good for you!" "Circumcision prevents AIDS!"
Never mind that a bizarre and sub-humanly cruel religious superstition/mind-control technique was officially adopted as standard modern medical practice for well over two hundred and fifty years in the erstwhile Enlightened West- with no scientific justification behind it whatsoever, none, zero.
But that's the magic! See, it was in anticipation! Just getting ready for now and stuff! End Times! What's that? Look! Over there! Terrorists!
Ah, sorry, wrong narrative.
Read the early rationalizations about anti-masturbatory effects, anti-epileptic effects, anti-disease effects - all nice projects, but none of it holds any water at all.
Stories made up by men who were already committed to cutting off the tips of young boys dicks and sucking away the blood.
It's about the psychological intimidation, hey? And it was always about that - grown men once made crazy by the acts of their elders making the young go crazy in turn, because that's how it is in the world. That's just how it is, and that's just how God wants it. Crazy, violent, cruel, and disgusting.
You don't think snipping off the end of a kid's dick when he's too young to understand any of your Godly horseshit might be actually more than a little traumatic do you?
Intimidating, humiliating - an expression of irrefutable sadistic power, out of a dynamic in which the victim holds no power at all, except the ability to scream in helpless outrage with all his being.
Another victory for the Great I Am.
And the screams of outraged infants are meaningless noise to men who are themselves borderline or full-tilt sociopathic already.
This subject has come up before - ex.1; ex.2; ex.3.
In other tangential cutting-off-your-dick news notes, the man Wolbarst quoted herein:
In 1914, erroneous medical beliefs about smegma were compounded by influential American urologist and eugenicist Abraham Wolbarst (1872–1952), who updated the demonization of the foreskin and promulgated the idea that it harboured ‘carcinogenic secretions’. Wolbarst’s lifelong crusade to promote circumcision was initially provoked as a means of countering contemporary medical concerns over the unsanitary and occasionally deadly aspects of ritual Jewish circumcision, specifically the prescribed sucking of blood from the wound. Rather than being unsanitary, Wolbarst countered that circumcision was, in fact, so sanitary that it should be imposed on all males. Wolbarst’s definition of ‘sanitation’, however, was more heavily suffused with the antimasturbation hysteria concept of ‘moral sanitation’ than concern for physical cleanliness. Referring to smegma, Wolbarst made the bigoted characterization of ‘gentiles’ of even middle-class standing as being unable to ‘pay proper attention to the cleansing of their genitals’. Wolbarst thundered in JAMA: ‘Times innumerable, in my experience, the stench arising from the confined and retained balanic secretions has been almost unbearable’, and thus ‘the argument for circumcision as a measure of hygiene must be apparent to any but a man deprived of his olfactory sense’.
was also involved in the following whatever it may have been at its clearest and most fundamental hinky-ass weirdness:
DECLARES SUICIDE LETTER ONLY A JOKE Dr. Wolbarst Says He and Wife Each Wrote One to See Who Could Do It the Better. SENT TO TIMES BY ERROR Wife's Letter Found and Mailed by a Servant -- Statement on Arrival in England. Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. LONDON, Sept. 5 -- The liner Kronprinz "Wilhelm arrived at Plymouth this morning having on board Dr. and Mrs. Abraham L. Wolbarst, from the latter of whom THE NEW YORK TIMES recently published a letter announcing her intention to commit suicide. To a NEW YORK TIMES correspondent, who boarded the' liner. Dr. Wolbarst related the folio-wing curious story: His wife, he said, wrote the letter printed in THB NEW YORK TIMES after having read a sensational novel In which a wife Indited a missive to her husband Uireatenlng to commit suicide. Mrs. "Wolbarst. according to the doctor, suggested that each should -write a letter to see which could pen the more startling effusion. They did so. and his wife addressed hers to THE NEW YORK TIMES. Dr. Wolbarst repeatedly Impressed upon the correspondent that all this was done as a Joke, and happened some ten or twelve weeks ago. He destroyed his own letter, he said, but his wife s letter, jokingly Intended for him, was addressed to THE TIMES, and somehow or other got put away In a drawer.
Abraham Wolbarst, son of David - enemy of smegma.

29.11.07

now that we're all on the same page:

Rodney King, famous for a videotaped beating from Los Angeles police back in 1991, was shot and wounded on a San Bernardino street corner late Wednesday.
-
Using Video Share from the new AT&T, Lauren Conrad and her friends give you VIP access into their lives! Check back soon for the next segment. And remember, when words can’t describe,
Video Share shows it live.
TMZ/AOL 29.Nov.07

28.11.07

Vota 'Sí':

On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday, December 2, 2007.

The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled ‘Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer’ and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym ‘HUMINT’ (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA’s polls concede that 57 per cent of the voters approved of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60 per cent abstention.
Petras/Counterpunch 28.Nov.07 > fanonite

a lightning strike into France’s troubled suburbs

total assault on the existential platforms of human identity and existence
-
the biggest drug seizure — not just in Mexican history — but in the history of the world.

27.11.07

forged in the middle of the night
-
Body of War
-
This is perplexing.
-
Chinese reality

Still No Balls:

NYTimes:
In French Suburbs, Same Rage, but New Tactics
By ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS, Nov. 27 — Two years after France’s immigrant suburbs exploded in rage, the rituals and acts of resentment have reappeared with an eerie sameness: roving gangs clashing with riot police forces, the government appealing for calm, residents complaining that they are ignored.

And while the scale of the unrest of the past few days does not yet compare with the three-week convulsion in hundreds of suburbs and towns in 2005, a chilling new factor makes it, in some sense, more menacing. The onetime rock throwers and car burners have taken up hunting shotguns and turned them on the police.
-
FOXNews :

Nov. 27: Young residents of Villiers-le-Bel, a northern Paris suburb, vandalize an abandoned police car during clashes.

PARIS — One of the victims of a moped crash that sparked days if rioting in a Paris suburb presented himself on his blog as a confident teenager who love his mother and was looking for a girlfriend, Reuters reported.

The current riots were triggered by the deaths of two teens killed in a crash with a police patrol car on Sunday in Villiers-le-Bel, a blue-collar town in Paris' northern suburbs.

Residents claimed that officers left the crash scene without helping the teens, whose motorbike collided with the car. Officials cast doubt on the claim, but the internal police oversight agency was investigating.

Balls, no balls

Tran/GuardianUK:
The world has less than a decade to change course to avoid irreversible ecological catastrophe, the UN warned today.
-
Revkin/NYTimes:
A new United Nations report warns that progress toward prosperity in the world’s poorest places will be reversed unless rich countries promptly begin curbing emissions linked to global warming while also helping poorer ones leapfrog to energy sources that pollute less than coal and oil.

26.11.07

the future of Jerusalem
-
DNow!:new statistics show that the vast majority of foreign fighters in Iraq are not coming from Iran but Arab allies of the United States. The New York Times reports Saudi Arabia and Libya were the source of about 60 percent of the foreign fighters who came to Iraq in the past year. While American officials have accused Iran of aiding anti-U.S. militants, only 11 Iranians are in U.S. detention in Iraq.
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good/bad for everybody
-
Suicide Soldiers
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Alarming UN report on climate change too rosy, many say
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bad example of the good
-
160 Airbuses off to China any day now

"when it makes sense to leave."

The bottom line for me in Israel policy is what I saw in the Occupied Territories. The separate roadway system, the religious girls stoning Arab girls who were going to school... the settlements are, as poet David Shulman writes, evil. The settlers are driving Palestinians off the land and getting the Israeli army and American political system to back them. I want no part of this, emphatically. Any other country that carried on such a policy would merit American sanctions. But Israel is immune to such considerations
Mondoweiss 26.Nov.07

in Israel's hands:

Tuesday's Arab-Israeli peace summit in Annapolis, Maryland, is supposed to be about resolving long-standing Palestinian issues, the Golan Heights, and other contentious matters. But, increasingly, it is framed in the United States and Israeli media as a dual-purpose conference, the other being the containment of Iran.
Thus, an editorial in the Jerusalem Post writes that "the process that Annapolis seeks to launch will be inherently conditional on Western success against the Iranian challenge ... The idea that holding an Arab-Israeli peace summit would be a setback for Iran is a valid one." The more liberal Ha'aretz went even further by stating the goal of the Annapolis conference to be the formation of a "global coalition against Iran".
Similarly, in the US a number of pundits have painted Annapolis as a "means of sorts of cementing a coalition against Iran and its allies", to paraphrase Tamar Cofman Wittes of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. According to Cofman and a host of media pundits paraded on American television news programs, Annapolis is President George W Bush's wakeup call to the world on the "Iran threat".
[...]
[The Us has been] relatively blind to what another Tehran analyst, Elias Hazrati, has termed as "substantial reduction of radical and offensive positions in Iran's foreign policy during the past few months". In his "The road for compromise with Tehran is open", Hazrati has, however, placed disproportionate blame, for lack of adequate progress in resolving the nuclear crisis, on the government of Ahmadinejad, without adequately taking into consideration the US's schizophrenic, contradictory, approach that, as in the run-ups to the Annapolis summit, fuels the very Iranian radicalism that it purports to disfavor. This it does by falsely accusing Iran in Iraq and ignoring the impressive results of Iran-IAEA cooperation in a relatively short time.
"We are committed that the IAEA's next report will be even more positive," Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi...
Afrasiabi/AsiaTimes 27.Nov.07

"a 'dark day in the history of the City of Brotherly Love' "

22.11.07

"My 5-year-old and the beautiful weather"
Unseasonably balmy weather greeted cheering crowds as the giant balloons in the traditional Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade floated through the streets of Manhattan.
Goldman/AP 22.Nov.07

17.11.07

Life at the dump yard#4
GMB Akash
via Shahidul Alam

There's a gymnastic series of moves that are still pretty common in the US nice-people and smart-people clads, where the hysterical claims from the margins about ZOG intrigue and iniquities are met with a nice-smart person shrug of tolerant intolerance, the "I don't have time for your dipshit racism" thing, even though you know figures like Pound and Eliot had that stain etc etc, so that saying Nicholas Negroponte and Rupert Murdoch are both Jews, which lends a lot of weight to the accusations of Jewish control and Jewish over-presence in American political media and political life, is rebutted with a refusal to engage the claims on evidence, because they're anti-Semitic, which is at least as nasty as white on black racism or even worse - think of the Holocaust! - and socially unacceptable, in the sense that it exposes the holder to ridicule. So anti-Semitic claims will not be taken seriously, or investigated.
Yet the CNN post-Demdebate show was run by a Jew, the debate itself was MC'd by a Jew. So what? Well if they were both black men that would be a thing all by itself, hey? Yet still somehow saying that is seen as bigoted.
When does the truth itself become a form of bigotry?
Saying those things isn't possible now, in a real political sense. You can't make the claim because the erstwhile open minds won't look beyond the grotesque and unacceptable surface to the uncomfortable material below the surface.
Mukasey's suddenly the USAG - how amazing that the rejection of Albert "Torture? We don't got to show you no stinking torture, we don't got no stinking torture" Gonzales would lead to Mukasey's odd little headshot there instead - which virtually guarantees AIPAC and its escort phalanxes won't be prosecuted for the treason they've been accused of, for the treason they've clearly been plotting and performing for years.
Either America is a worthless failed experiment or it's in mortal danger, right now. Choose one and act.
Myself I was intensely put off by the whole ZOG thing when it first crossed my line of sight, back in the early 90's. It stank of ignorance and bigotry, it called up the sound of threatening ignorance in southern accents and images of swaggering macho bullying. It had paranoia and amped-up stupidity gleaming all over it.
And yet now here we are, in the US in 2007 - all ZOG'd up with nowhere to go.


Mother Theresa with lipstick.
Or maybe not. Is there a pattern? The way the pigs keep scuttling on stage hidden in the skirts of mediagenic women.
The US is in Afghanistan to rescue women from the Taliban, in Iraq to rescue women from sharia law, and exercizing to get ready to rescue the women of Iran; the Ukraine thing, and that sad little soldier-girl Jessica Lynch all bound up in the swine scenario, not to mention the pigs' next chosen candidate for whatever it is the US Presidency's become being a woman.

15.11.07

from the archives:

thumbs

The mayor of Las Vegas has suggested that people who deface freeways with graffiti should have their thumbs cut off on television.
"In the old days in France, they had beheadings of people who commit heinous crimes," Mayor Oscar Goodman said Wednesday on the TV show "Nevada Newsmakers."
Goodman said the city has a beautiful highway landscaping project and "these punks come along and deface it."
"I'm saying maybe you put them on TV and cut off a thumb," the mayor said. "That may be the right thing to do."
Goodman also suggested whippings should be brought back for children who get into trouble.

CNN 04.Nov.05

!
US, allies circulate questions ahead of UN nuclear report !
Los Angeles Times, CA - 17 hours ago

UN Says Knowledge of Iran's Atomic Work `Diminishing' !
Bloomberg - 48 minutes ago
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New UN Report on Iran’s Nuclear Program
New York Times, United States - 55 minutes ago
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IAEA set to deliver Iran report
BBC News, UK - 2 hours ago
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IAEA: Teheran continues to defy the UN Security Council !
Jerusalem Post, Israel - 41 minutes ago
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Allies Maneuver To Avert Iran A-Bomb !
New York Sun, NY - 14 hours ago
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China encourages Iran to continue dialogues, co-op with IAEA, EU
Xinhua, China - 6 hours ago
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Iran comes clean with the IAEA... sort of !
Foreign Policy Passport - 18 hours ago
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Iran on right track
Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates - 15 hours ago
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Iran hands over uranium blueprint
Aljazeera.net, Qatar - Nov 14, 2007
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Iran not in the clear if UN report partly good: US !
Reuters - Nov 14, 2007
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In Gesture, Iran Provides Nuclear Document
New York Times, United States - Nov 13, 2007
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Iran gives IAEA uranium papers before report
Reuters - Nov 13, 2007
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Elbaradei delays to refer report on Iran's nuclear issues
Xinhua, China - 20 hours ago
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IAEA seen citing some progress in Iran atomic probe
Reuters - Nov 13, 2007
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US, Britain, France asking tough questions
about Iran's nuclear...
!
International Herald Tribune, France - 23 hours ago
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Iran making 'substantial progress' but more needed: UN nuclear ...
AFP - 59 minutes ago

OCTOBER HOME SALES (% change from Oct. '06)
Los Angeles -48.3%
Orange -42.0%
Riverside -44.1%
San Bernardino -54.8%
San Diego -32.5%
Ventura -44.0%

14.11.07

"Christian" "Socialist":

While Baduel was Minister of Defense, Venezuelan landlords' armed paramilitary groups assassinated over 150 peasants active in land reform while the National Guard looked the other way. Under Baduel's watch over 120 Colombian paramilitary forces infiltrated the country. The Colombian military frequently crossed the Venezuelan border to attack Colombian refugees. Under Baduel, Venezuelan military officials collaborated in the kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda (a foreign affairs emissary of the FARC) in broad daylight in the center of Caracas. Baduel made no effort to investigate or protest this gross violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, until President Chavez was informed and intervened. Throughout Baduel's term as Minister of Defense he developed strong ties to Colombia's military intelligence (closely monitored by US Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA) and extradited several guerrillas from both the ELN and the FARC to the hands of Colombian torturers.
At the time of his retirement as Minister of Defense, Baduel made a July 2007 speech in which he clearly targeted the leftist and Marxist currents in the trade union (UNT) and Chavez newly announced PSUV (The Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela). His speech, in the name of 'Christian socialist', was in reality a vituperative and ill-tempered anti-communist diatribe, which pleased Pope Benedict (Ratzinger).
[...]
Venezuelan democracy, the Presidency of Hugo Chavez and the great majority of the popular classes face a mortal threat. The US is facing repeated electoral defeats and is incapable of large-scale external intervention because of over-extension of its military forces in the Middle East; it is committed once more to a violent overthrow of Chavez. Venezuela through the constitutional reforms, will broaden and deepen popular democratic control over socio-economic policy. New economic sectors will be nationalized. Greater public investments and social programs will take off. Venezuela is moving inexorably toward diversifying its petrol markets, currency reserves and its political alliances.
Time is running out for the White House: Washington's political levers of influence are weakening.
Petras/Counterpunch 14.Nov.07
via Stan Goff's Feral Scholar

13.11.07

Executive Action:

"...a private CIA and Defense Department available to address your most intractable problems and difficult challenges..."
Laura Rozen/MoJo via ATR

12.11.07

His master's voice:

On a parallel level, the Pentagon has practically finished a base in southern Iraq less than 10 kilometers from the border with Iran called Combat Outpost Shocker. The Pentagon maintains this is for the US to prevent Iranian weapons from being smuggled into Iraq. Rather, it's to control a rash of US covert, sabotage operations across the border targeting Iran's Khuzestan province.
Pepe Escobar/AsiaTimes 10.Nov.07

I wasn't as skeptical as some about the "one laptop per child" enterprise, but this image has completely tipped it for me. Even the file name is disgusting.

11.11.07

Iraq Veterans Against The War:

The L.A. chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War was recently denied permission to march in the Long Beach Veterans Day Parade on the grounds that they do not "represent the spirit of the parade."

anti-American:

Finally, I wish to directly refute Mr. Schoenfeld's claim that I "cast aspersions on American Jews." I do not cast aspersions, I forthrightly damn, and pray that God damns, any American – Jew, Catholic, Evangelical, Irish, German, Hindu, hermaphrodite, thespian, or otherwise – who flogs the insane idea that American and Israeli interests are one and the same. The nation-state of Israel is an intolerable burden to the treasury and security of the United States, and Washington's current relationship with Israel...
Michael Scheuer/AntiWar 08.Nov.07

10.11.07

Dennis Kucinich:

I think that the American people and their response is becoming more and more powerful, and we’re seeing that there being rising discontent among Democrats in Congress about the direction that our leaders have said is not possible. I think that people want to see this administration held accountable. After all, what could be more important than having an opportunity to get to the truth of what happened in Iraq, that the war was based on lies; that over almost 4,000 of our brave young men and women who represent this country have lost their lives because of those lies; that over a million innocent Iraqis, noncombatants, civilians, have lost their lives because of those lies; that we will spend between one and two trillion dollars for this war, even borrowing money from China? And our whole domestic agenda is being capsized by this war. And the administration is preparing still to take us in another war against Iran, similarly lying about a cause for war. So what can be more important?
Democracy Now! 09.Nov.07

the craziest thing in the world:

As the insurgency in Iraq escalated in the spring of 2004, American officials entrusted an Iraqi businessman with issuing weapons to Iraqi police cadets training to help quell the violence.
[...]
...help explain how the American military lost track of some 190,000 pistols and automatic rifles...
[...]
In July, the company, American Logistics Services, which later became Lee Dynamics International, was suspended by the Army from doing future business with the government amid accusations that the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to military contracting officers. The company had won $11 million in contracts to manage five warehouses with arms and other equipment in Iraq.
NYTimes 11.Nov.07
-
That and then there's always the still-marginal theory that it's on purpose, that the idea from the get was to arm various and sundry competing and conflicting groups to create and then maintain a fragmented, fractured Iraq, in perpetuity.
That the whole point all along was to destroy Iraq as a Middle East power, then leave it self-metabolizing, like an auto-immune runaway where the body just keeps tearing itself apart. So getting arms to the combatants would be a task in that. So mission accomplished.
Plus corruption all by itself, but mostly corruption as a fermentation agent, a way of reducing energy investment, using the corrupt processes to expedite the Great Plan.
The people doing this have been working for centuries if not millenia with vice as an indispensable universal solvent - it creates its own easily-dominated economies, and it creates a wealth of the blackmail-vulnerable.
"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas", meaning we have tapes of that wild-ass crazy-fun time you were all having up in that room.
Corruption and the obscene manipulation of lives considered by their manipulators to be inferior and unimportant. Torture's right out of that same shithead playbook.
So geo-political agenda strategies and pandemic corruption tripping hand-in-hand through the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.
Separating them as causes is just more lies, it isn't one or the other it's both, and this sappy horseshit where the poor Americans "entrusted" the "Iraqi businessman" and the poor Americans got burned is meant to be consumed by the sadly naive and ever-not-so-swift American news audience, such as it is.
Playing the last forlorn tune of this final nightmare - that Bush was well-intentioned but incompetent, that the mess in Iraq was nobody's fault but Bush and Cheney's, with back when Rumsfeld running around on the lawn like a housedog just let out. Though a lot of the money's on the sadly naive and ever-not-so-swift Americans not remembering exactly who the fuck Donald Rumsfeld was anyway.
Much less Paul Bremer.

"anywhere, in any space and in any manner"

Waterboarding is Torture… Period
Small Wars Journal

7.11.07

Torture is a tool of state terror:

And we talk about torture so often in this country as being just about getting information. Torture is a tool of state terror. That is what torture is, and that is why it’s prohibited. It is about instilling -- it’s a method of instilling terror in an individual, and it’s also a method of spreading terror throughout a whole society, saying we are willing to use these techniques; if you cross us, you will be subject to these techniques. So it is the science of terror. It is literally terrorism.
-
the language of personal responsibility:
People have gone back to their neighborhoods now, and they see neighborhoods which have just been destroyed by the fires, but a few houses standing, and are asking questions about why some of those houses were saved. And in some cases, you can’t explain it, you know, it’s mysterious. But in some cases, it’s not mysterious. The reason why some houses were saved and others were not is because the people who lived in those saved houses pay insurance to the company AIG, and AIG offers privatized fire response.
Naomi Klein and Amy Goodman
a couple of nice Jewish girls, hanging out and talking

DemNow! 07.Nov.07

dem belly full eh:

The great population scare is mainly notable for what didn't happen: widespread deaths from famine. In the 1960s, when Erhlich penned his eloquent alert, about one out of every ten nations was having a famine at least once a decade. By the 1990s, just one country out of the two-hundred in the world had a famine. Global population did about double from 1960 to 1998, but food production tripled over the same period in both rich and poor nations. Far from us seeing increasing food shortages, food prices have fallen by nearly half over the past two decades. ...
William Easterly/MIT/delanceyplace 07.Nov.07
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Something else in there, I don't know what exactly, maybe the world's on fire?
Maybe all that lack of famine is good but still somehow everything's not okay. Maybe the world's not on fire. Maybe we haven't learned how to metabolize virtually everything but granite and sand, yet. Maybe this giant barnyard's been allowed to "breed out" so the invisible farmers can pick and choose which animals their swinish little ark will carry. Docile, dumb, obedient, basically good-tempered and unquestioning, with some kind of spark plug in their brainstems for the master's fire. Maybe there's nothing there at all and everything's fine now - no famine, lots of cars, lots of people, all these computing modalities engaged, medicine's got the upper hand, and the future looks very bright indeed. Or maybe not.

6.11.07


Human Photos
Eelavision - photo visions of Eelam
-
Assassination of Tamil Leader Prompts Fears of Escalated Sri Lankan Civil War
A Tamil leader[Suppiah Param Thamilcelvan] was killed Friday with five of his associates in an air strike by the Sri Lankan military. Analysts suggest this could be the beginning of a return to a full-scale war.
DemNow!
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Thamilchelvan laid to rest, 25 000 attend funeral
More than 25,000 people took part in the funeral procession of LTTE's Political Head and Chief Negotiator S.P. Thamilchelvan, despite the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) Kfir bombers circling over the Ki'linochchi town.
Tamilnet
The military that killed him are flying around up above his funeral, the people who killed him by dropping bombs on him from above, from planes just like the ones that are flying around overhead at his funeral, and 25000 people show up for it. Under the conditions they're in it's amazing anyone showed up.

a symbolic display:


After meeting with the French-American Business Council, the French community in Washington and Washington’s mayor, Adrian Fenty, Mr. Sarkozy and his large entourage are to be honored by President Bush at a black-tie dinner at the White House.

On Wednesday Mr. Sarkozy will address a joint session of Congress, as his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, did, before having lunch and holding a joint news conference with Mr. Bush at George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. He also will meet with leaders of the American Jewish community.

“Sarko l’Américain,” as he is called, is considered the most pro-American French president in decades. He unabashedly confesses his admiration for the United States, particularly the American work ethic and American popular culture, joking last month: “The trial has started. I will be a friend of the Americans. Oh, yes, it’s true!”
Sciolino/NYTimes 06.Nov.07

5.11.07

Naomi Klein:

country club disaster management - HelpJet and Sovereign Deed

a high enough price:

These days, it's becoming downright chic to hint forebodingly that America's Jews are just too powerful. But whether it's the political scientists John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt or former president Jimmy Carter, those who accuse modern Jews of having excessive clout are getting it precisely backward. In the real world, Jews have too little power and influence. They also have too little self-confidence about defending themselves.
Ruth Wisse/WashingtonPost 04.Nov.07
via xymphora
-
The US Attorney General is about to be a Jew
The United States Secretary of Homeland Security is a Jew
The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is a Jew
The chairman of the Democratic Caucus is a Jew
The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, pretty much the single most directly in-charge person in the construction of that whole nightmare debacle, was and is a Jew
The first-ever Director of National Intelligence, ambassador to Iraq from June 2004 to April 2005, now United States Deputy Secretary of State, and all-around bloody son-of-a-bitch, is a Jew
The Democratic front-runner for US President in 2008 Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's former campaign finance director is a Jew
Hillary Clinton's chief strategist and pollster is a Jew
The Republican front-runner Rudolf Giuliani's foreign policy advisor is a bellicose and somewhat irrational Jew
The man who runs the most powerful corporation in worldwide news media is a Jew, a corporation owned by a man who may or may not be but likely is a Jew.
If there were a Jewish conspiracy to dominate world affairs, especially financially, you'd expect the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to be mostly Jews .
Not that I'm keeping track or anything.
US media is definitely, inarguably, provably, owned by Jews virtually exclusively - but at some point wading through the ignorance and viciousness that comprises internet documentation of that, and the vicious responses to the ignorance and viciousness that attempt to combat it, becomes contagious and debilitating and no fun at all.
Still, it's important to remember that the last two generations of Americans have been raised primarily by television and only secondarily by their families and schools, and American television has been for its entire existence a Jewish franchise.
This, not so much for its philo-Semitic conspiracy and intrigue aspects, but for the clear and extensive damage to the souls and minds of children who were raised that way, is condemnation enough.
How creepy, futile, sad, and discouraging this is, when there was so much promise, among us all, so close to realization.

4.11.07

In due time the hour will strike:

no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.
Eugene V. Debs, in a speech that got him sentenced to ten years in the pen for sedition.
at The Memory Hole via wood s lot

3.11.07

an independent life path

"First and foremost, Michael Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales" - Diane Feinstein
By posting a comment, you affirm that you are 13 years of age or older.
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Judge Michael Mukasey appears to have cleared the last major hurdle to becoming the next US Attorney General, after concerns about his views on waterboarding and warrantless surveillance threatened to derail his nomination.
Senators Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced on Friday that they will support his nomination. Both senators are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will vote on Tuesday on whether to send the Mukasey nomination to the full Senate for approval.
Bayou Buzz
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It's still taboo forbidden bigoted racist and anti-Semitic to point out that Schumer Feinstein and Mukasey are all Jews. Because that has nothing to do with anything but ancient irrational hatreds and canards. And even worse would be pointing out that with Mukasey securely in place virtually the entire US federal police apparatus is being run by Jews. Because that doesn't mean anything. No more than if the Attorney General and the head of Homeland Security were black or Irish. No difference whatsoever. Back when it mattered the assertion that Negroponte is a Jew would be met with scornful cries of "Oh he's Greek!" Or "Oh he's Greek Orthodox!" But Negroponte is an historically Jewish reserve in the eastern Mediterranean and our John's name and family comes right out of that enclave. Negroponte, John, being the blood-soaked hero of Central America's decades of nightmare under the boot of whatever swine-apparatus was running things through the auspices of US military/DEA/whatever etc intervention down there back then. Then John was off to bring his tidying skills to our thin brown brothers in Iraq, following in succession to Paul Bremer himself a Jew. Now Mr. Negroponte bides his time like some bat-winged day-sleeper clung to the walls of the executive branch as Director of National Intelligence. Not that I'm criticizing, just pointing out. Chertoff Negroponte and now Mukasey.
I keep hearing what used to be called "lowing". The lowing of cattle disturbed from their grazing, headed up and moved out, with no idea at all what or where.

27.10.07

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni: Iranian nuclear arms pose little threat to Israel

blasted, disputed:
Reps. Darrell Issa, Duncan Hunter and Brian Bilbray — all California Republicans — this week blasted a California policy that requires a "military helicopter manager" to sit aboard flights of military helicopters that are joining state firefighting efforts.
[...]
Michael Padilla, chief of aviation for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection — or Cal-Fire — disputed the lawmakers' assertion in a telephone interview.
Padilla said anyone saying those helicopters were sidelined by the policy alone are "absolutely wrong. Those aircraft could have been used had they had properly trained crews" and proper equipment
Simmons/FOXNews 26.Oct.07
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slams
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demanding
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accusing
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disgusting, inexcusable foot-dragging
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CAL FIRE
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Without knowing anything else about it, I'd way rather be on a fireline under the current CAL FIRE chain of command than anywhere doing anything under any of the asshole politicians so obviously trying to get leverage and recognition off this disaster.

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