Tag Archives: children

C.E.L.L. house of horror indoctrination

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THE CELL passcardDENVER, COLORADO-
The visitor brochure explains that THE C.E.L.L. exhibit SHATTERED LIVES is “designed to encourage critical thinking.” But a step through its doors proves it intends everything but. With a patronizing audacity beyond Orwell, these A.G.E.N.T.S. lurk with sensory trauma to infect your personal American idyll with fear.

To my mind, they’re Alarmist Goons Elevating a Nonsensical Terrorism Scare.

Picture-taking is forbidden beyond the lobby doors, but after the collage assemblage in the atrium, there’s nothing to photograph. The ticketed portion of the ride consists of crooked halls filled simply with video screens, projections, and blurbs of text on the walls; self-described “sophisticated multimedia techniques.” Monitors and kiosks are peppered throughout in multiples, as if the installation were anticipating subway-strength traffic making a beeline through; or large school groups with no freedom to move laterally.

Of course, the omniscient repetition also indoctrinates us subliminally. The TV news clips sample a half dozen terrorism incidents, Munich, Lockerbie, Nairobi, et EL AL. Remote voices accompany still photos of bloodied carnage. Fear falling shards Amidst the intonations of observers and analysts ring two repeated motifs: JFK’s mocking condemnation of terrorists, and Edmund Burke’s admonition “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Someone can’t resist that adage. I wonder if it’s true.

PUTS YOU AT THE SCENE
Before I relate the plenty creepy details, I’ll jump straight to the orchestration’s third movement. Perhaps someone else can compare the programming of THE CELL according to known indoctrination stratagems. I’ll call the third chamber the climax. Automatically-timed doors enforce a six-minute collective “immersion.” Signs warn away anyone with a weak heart, etc, although I didn’t see an alternate passage around. Neither do the doors allow anyone to pass quickly through. They release the previous group before locking to entrap the next.

( S P O I L E R – A L E R T )
Inside, a video-surround chamber simulates a camera obscura viewpoint, first we’re at a summer fair in Denver’s Civic Center Park, then outside the DAM, then a sunny morning on the 16th Street Mall. The movement of bystanders and passersby around us sometimes slows or accelerates. Until SUDDENLY –OF COURSE– we’re at the epicenter of a FURIOUS EXPLOSION and our mid-west urban tranquility is engulfed in fire. Soon enough, floating in the flames come images of urban battlefields, destruction and carnage. Eventually we can recognize the iconic photographs of Pan Am Flight 103, and the rescue of embassy employees in Kenya, about which we were just reminded in the previous chamber. Then we’re treated to a large text message which reminds us that a terrorist attack can strike “anyone, anytime, anywhere,” and we’re released into an antechamber of analysis.

Actually, claustrophobes might want to know that every segment of THE CELL is time-released. But there will be intrusive control elements to offend everyone.

PERSONALIZED ID
For starters, the entrance fee is $8, or $6 to Coloradans. Can you think of why the cost of admission would be more expensive for out-of-state visitors? I can’t. But the discount means patrons must show their ID to buy a ticket. The clerk issues a computer receipt.

Along with your ticket you get a magnetic passcard which you’re instructed to use at progressive kiosks along your route. You swipe your card to gain access to biographical information about a particular victim of terror. The first row of kiosks will reveal a first page of info, a later pod will reveal a second page, etc. No matter which kiosk, your card will only access a single bio, meaning passcards are keyed to the visitor. Mine brought up a middle aged professor whose life was shattered by terrorism. Perhaps a younger visitor would be given a passcard corresponding to a like-aged victim of “Shattered Lives.” Learning, as their own immersion into THE CELL progressed, how their adopted personage fared in THEIR brush with terrorism.

INDOCTRINATION
Let’s see. First chamber: Kennedy, Burke and multimedia barrage. Second chamber: news clips, kiosks with bio part one. Third chamber: BOOM. Fourth chamber: Rand Corporation analysts, so-called experts sitting beneath bookshelves of law books. Dershowitz and the usual talking heads that you see as FOX advisers. One important meme is the accusation that the internet is increasingly being used as a propaganda tool of the Islamists. Websites, blogs, chat rooms are suspect. Trust only the credentialed media apparently…

Two of videos in the last chamber are timed so that you have to watch one, then the other. They include snippets of the videos available at the interactive displays, in case you had chosen not to watch them. There are numerous clips from Islamic television which purport to demonstrate how Muslim children are being indoctrinated against the west.

No forewarningPHOTOGRAPHS:
Here is what greets us at the entrance of THE CELL, before we even get to the exhibit. First, flashing images of violence and victims. Next, a collage of the FACES OF TERROR. Already we are able to recognize faces from the video sequences on the first wall. (Are there so few victims of terrorism? Or are the show’s makers deliberately limiting the selection of iconic fear-triggers?)

Faces of Terror
Faces of fear. Isn’t that what “terror” means? We can project ourselves in those images. Faces forever fearful.

Bright dark future for terrorismNext a map with cross-hairs roaming at seemingly random locations “anywhere.” The text explains that acts of terrorism began in the latter 20th century, and apparently EL AL airline was its principle early target.

Definition of Terrorism
What young scholar’s essay does not begin with a “definition?” In this case the word, even more typically, is “for various political, social and cultural reasons” defies definition. How extraordinary! (It reminds me of the www.thecell.org website, which by any standard is written for under-sophisticated readers.)

Terrorism shatters lives
Here’s the exhibit’s theme, SHATTERED LIVES, adjacent the reception desk ticket counter. The wall is papered with names, resembling the black marble of the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, probably these are names from the WTC.

I was directed to take no pictures of the main installation, but I pulled my camera out again right before the exit door.

Mayor Hickenlooper says thanks
There I found Denver Mayor Hinckenlooper thanking everyone for visiting the C.E.L.L. and urging us to become active eyes and ears against the terrorist threat.

Giuliani says helloOf course, could there be any official statement about 9/11 without ex New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani weighing in? Etc, etc, and so it goes.

But I loved one of the parting shots, TV footage of Giuliani at Ground Zero in 2001 showed him wearing a mask. There’s the brave mayor making a quick round of handshakes, with workers notably not wearing any protection. Every one of those workers is now most famously dead, or suffering respiratory ailments in NYC hospices. While Giuliani still tramps around as 911 hero.

Wears mask at Ground Zero

(See previous NMT article about THE CELL.)

DHS and AIPAC implant fear cancer CELL, a house of horrors in Denver museum circuit (Photos) (Spoiler)

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the-CELL-center-for-empowered-living-and-learning
DENVER, COLORADO- Just in time for this year’s 9/11 commemoration, and in the spirit of deepening America’s public commitment to the self- described endless Global War On Terror, comes THE CELL, a permanent museum exhibit to keep US citizens vigilant to the treat of terrorism. The DHS has provided funds to AIPAC and erstwhile Jewish lobbyists to build this display at the Mizel Museum next to the Denver Art Museum. You might well ask, WHAT are Israeli/Jewish interests doing fanning the flames of the so-called GWOT?

From ML:

collaborators are Rand, MIPT, Lawson Terrorism Information Center, AIC, Melanie Pearlman, regional director of AIPAC, Toby Dershowitz, Courtney Green (Mizel’s daughter) Mark Dubowitz, David Grey, Michael Inlander, Jonathan Schanzer, David Heyman, Brian Michael Jenkins, spook, mercenary, and false flag agent with Kroll Associates, who was in charge of WTC security and hired John O’Neill, who fingered the US ambassador to Yemen in the USS Cole bombing, and who was killed on 9/11, and Clifford May, of the RMN, NY Times, Committee on the Present Danger, and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, ngo CIA fronts.

The CELL is an acronym for Center for Empowered Living and Learning, but in a political world where a reference to “lipstick” is automatically taken to refer to the Ugly American fundamentalist/ bigot/ corrupt/ simpleton/ sow running for GOP VP, the word “cell” is incredibly unsubtle. It’s the dreaded “sleeper cell” of dormant terrorists, meant to allude to the malignant cancer cell poised to spread until its host is dead. Fighting cancer of course means excising every single trace of an inclination of a tumor. While “cell” also describes a small organization, it has another definition certainly inconvenient to our would-be DHS fear-mongering jailers.

It’s a prison cell to which we confine ourselves for the sake of “security.” This hysterical fear spreads like a cancer throughout our nation, seeded by 9/11 and apparently folks who think we need regular inoculations of fear cells.

the-cell-anyone-anytime-anywhereThe display at the CELL is called ANYONE, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE: UNDERSTANDING THE THREAT OF TERRORISM. It teaches people to join Neighborhood Watch programs, etc, and to keep in touch with the Department of Homeland Security.

When FDR said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he was encouraging Americans to overcome their fear. Like a parent’s bedside advice: there’s no bogeyman in the closet, it’s all in your head. How far have we fallen when our own leaders pervert FDR’s axiom to mean the only thing you have to fear is terror (fear itself). Never mind what you have to fear, just fear.

What then do AIPAC and the Simon Wiesenthal Center have to do with scaring Americans into serving the GWOT? Does Israel think that unless Americans are reminded to fear Islam, they might begin to question white man’s incursion into the Middle East? Are Israel’s atrocities against Palestine and Lebanon likely to come into question unless the American public is kept mesmerized by Muslim Terror?

To refer to terrorism as an ideology is already an adolescent fallacy. The term is even inappropriate to isolate a particular means of warfare. Terrorism may be a tactic, but you cannot differentiate between suicide bombers and aerial bombing, between beheadings and extra-judicial preemptive assassination, between kidnappings and extraordinary rendition and torture.
the-cell-doors
We’re making a visit to THE CELL today, by coincidence on 9/11.
I can’t wait to see how an entire exhibit is going to riff on the never forget always remember TO FEAR illogic. A little knowledge can plant the seed of fear, sufficient knowledge can weed it out.

UPDATE:
The good news is that THE CELL looks like a low-rent Sharper Image meets espionage store. What is the graphic on the front door, a sniper’s crosshairs? All the windows are mirrored except where neon text is scrolling cautionary warnings. In other windows silhouettes of crowds huddle together beneath illuminated shards of falling structures. Another window glamorizes rack after rack of data processing electronics.

denver-civic-center-cultural-complexThe main logo (photo at top of article) features a map of the world overlaid on a fingerprint. I had to laugh at the forced acronym. Center for Empowered Living and Learning. Isn’t to “Live and Learn” an expression for wisdom gained by experience, basically at the expense of mistakes made?

Most distressing however was to see this sign, an indication that the C.E.L.L. is not a temporary exhibit but an integral component of the Denver museum-scape. Does fear-mongering propaganda belong in the CULTURAL COMPLEX? Between Art, History and Library, a House of Horrors?

WE GO INSIDE!
THE CELL passcardThe visitor brochure explains that THE C.E.L.L. exhibit SHATTERED LIVES is “designed to encourage critical thinking.” But a step through its doors proves it intends everything but. With a patronizing audacity beyond Orwell, these A.G.E.N.T.S. lurk with sensory trauma to infect your personal American idyll with fear.

To my mind, they’re Alarmist Goons Elevating a Nonsensical Terrorism Scare.

Picture-taking is forbidden beyond the lobby doors, but after the collage assemblage in the atrium, there’s nothing to photograph. The ticketed portion of the ride consists of crooked halls filled simply with video screens, projections, and blurbs of text on the walls; self-described “sophisticated multimedia techniques.” Monitors and kiosks are peppered throughout in multiples, as if the installation were anticipating subway-strength traffic making a beeline through; or large school groups with no freedom to move laterally.

Of course, the omniscient repetition also indoctrinates us subliminally. The TV news clips sample a half dozen terrorism incidents, Munich, Lockerbie, Nairobi, et EL AL. Remote voices accompany still photos of bloodied carnage. Fear falling shards Amidst the intonations of observers and analysts ring two repeated motifs: JFK’s mocking condemnation of terrorists, and Edmund Burke’s admonition “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Someone can’t resist that adage. I wonder if it’s true.

PUTS YOU AT THE SCENE
Before I relate the plenty creepy details, I’ll jump straight to the orchestration’s third movement. Perhaps someone else can compare the programming of THE CELL according to known indoctrination stratagems. I’ll call the third chamber the climax. Automatically-timed doors enforce a six-minute collective “immersion.” Signs warn away anyone with a weak heart, etc, although I didn’t see an alternate passage around. Neither do the doors allow anyone to pass quickly through. They release the previous group before locking to entrap the next.

( S P O I L E R – A L E R T )
Inside, a video-surround chamber simulates a camera obscura viewpoint, first we’re at a summer fair in Denver’s Civic Center Park, then outside the DAM, then a sunny morning on the 16th Street Mall. The movement of bystanders and passersby around us sometimes slows or accelerates. Until SUDDENLY –OF COURSE– we’re at the epicenter of a FURIOUS EXPLOSION and our mid-west urban tranquility is engulfed in fire. Soon enough, floating in the flames come images of urban battlefields, destruction and carnage. Eventually we can recognize the iconic photographs of Pan Am Flight 103, and the rescue of embassy employees in Kenya, about which we were just reminded in the previous chamber. Then we’re treated to a large text message which reminds us that a terrorist attack can strike “anyone, anytime, anywhere,” and we’re released into an antechamber of analysis.

Actually, claustrophobes might want to know that every segment of THE CELL is time-released. But there will be intrusive control elements to offend everyone.

PERSONALIZED ID
For starters, the entrance fee is $8, or $6 to Coloradans. Can you think of why the cost of admission would be more expensive for out-of-state visitors? I can’t. But the discount means patrons must show their ID to buy a ticket. The clerk issues a computer receipt.

Along with your ticket you get a magnetic passcard which you’re instructed to use at progressive kiosks along your route. You swipe your card to gain access to biographical information about a particular victim of terror. The first row of kiosks will reveal a first page of info, a later pod will reveal a second page, etc. No matter which kiosk, your card will only access a single bio, meaning passcards are keyed to the visitor. Mine brought up a middle aged professor whose life was shattered by terrorism. Perhaps a younger visitor would be given a passcard corresponding to a like-aged victim of “Shattered Lives.” Learning, as their own immersion into THE CELL progressed, how their adopted personage fared in THEIR brush with terrorism.

INDOCTRINATION
Let’s see. First chamber: Kennedy, Burke and multimedia barrage. Second chamber: news clips, kiosks with bio part one. Third chamber: BOOM. Fourth chamber: Rand Corporation analysts, so-called experts sitting beneath bookshelves of law books. Dershowitz and the usual talking heads that you see as FOX advisers. One important meme is the accusation that the internet is increasingly being used as a propaganda tool of the Islamists. Websites, blogs, chat rooms are suspect. Trust only the credentialed media apparently…

Two of videos in the last chamber are timed so that you have to watch one, then the other. They include snippets of the videos available at the interactive displays, in case you had chosen not to watch them. There are numerous clips from Islamic television which purport to demonstrate how Muslim children are being indoctrinated against the west.

No forewarningPHOTOGRAPHS:
Here is what greets us at the entrance of THE CELL, before we even get to the exhibit. First, flashing images of violence and victims. Next, a collage of the FACES OF TERROR. Already we are able to recognize faces from the video sequences on the first wall. (Are there so few victims of terrorism? Or are the show’s makers deliberately limiting the selection of iconic fear-triggers?)

Faces of Terror
Faces of fear. Isn’t that what “terror” means? We can project ourselves in those images. Faces forever fearful.

Bright dark future for terrorismNext a map with cross-hairs roaming at seemingly random locations “anywhere.” The text explains that acts of terrorism began in the latter 20th century, and apparently EL AL airline was its principle early target.

Definition of Terrorism
What young scholar’s essay does not begin with a “definition?” In this case the word, even more typically, is “for various political, social and cultural reasons” defies definition. How extraordinary! (It reminds me of the www.thecell.org website, which by any standard is written for under-sophisticated readers.)

Terrorism shatters lives
Here’s the exhibit’s theme, SHATTERED LIVES, adjacent the reception desk ticket counter. The wall is papered with names, resembling the black marble of the Vietnam War Memorial Wall, probably these are names from the WTC.

I was directed to take no pictures of the main installation, but I pulled my camera out again right before the exit door.

Mayor Hickenlooper says thanks
There I found Denver Mayor Hinckenlooper thanking everyone for visiting the C.E.L.L. and urging us to become active eyes and ears against the terrorist threat.

Giuliani says helloOf course, could there be any official statement about 9/11 without ex New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani weighing in? Etc, etc, and so it goes.

But I loved one of the parting shots, TV footage of Giuliani at Ground Zero in 2001 showed him wearing a mask. There’s the brave mayor making a quick round of handshakes, with workers notably not wearing any protection. Every one of those workers is now most famously dead, or suffering respiratory ailments in NYC hospices. While Giuliani still tramps around as 911 hero.

Wears mask at Ground Zero

No fishing

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no-fishing.jpg Everywhere life is under attack despite our sweet little Colorado license plates urging us to ‘respect life’. Unfortunately though, there is little in capitalism that does respect life much, whether it be human life or other. If we did respect life, then we wouldn’t have allowed our world wilderness areas to be reduced to ashes and ruins. We would not have allowed our oceans, rivers, and lakes to be degraded. We would not have allowed THEM to degrade US, since how can a degraded population really not turn around and degrade other forms of life, too?

One form of life we are in increasing danger of losing is fish. Fish may soon become a thing of the past for most of us in our food chain. The day of the cheap tuna or cheap sardine may be soon gone for good. Many of our water ways may soon become dead zones, as many already are. Just how bad is the situation now?

‘Only 50 years left’ for sea fish says it all, and the situation in fresh water is no better. See Silent Streams? Escalating Endangerment For North American Freshwater Fish We take no action to stop this destruction of fish life simply because most people are too busy defending the society they live in rather than trying to change it.

But look what is being defended here? Our neighbors are defending the extermination of life by their defense of the status quo. Soon there will be no fishing and it will be because most of us played stupid for so very long. I will miss the fish, as so too will your children and their children, too. Destruction of life is permanent, and this will be the legacy of the capitalist system on our planet. The legacy will be dead zones and desolation. Time is about out.

The Good War & the Good Soldier’s work

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AfghansHaving just heard from a ‘Good Soldier’ on this blog, along with several thousands of them old timer ‘Good Soldiers’ all marching in mass to see their poor, ever so tortured GI Joe hero, John McCain, I thought it might be nice to post some of their recent work in their ‘Good War’ online via youtube. Dead Afghan Children After US Air Raid

Nawabad Afghanistan civilian casualties

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Oops. US military spokesmen have had to do an about-face on their account of the NATO air raid on Nawabad which may have killed in excess of 60 Afghan children. It turns out a western doctor on the scene the next day made a video record on his cell phone which depicted more bodies than the US Special Forces had admitted, by a factor of too many.

UN and Afghan representatives are calling for an investigation into the over 90 casualties. Their counts are corroborated by the villagers and eyewitnesses. The official US and NATO casualty figure is still eight. This is the number recorded by the ISAF soldiers and corroborated by an embed reporter, working for none other than Fox News, and being none other than Oliver North!

A letter from an American Soldier

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I received a well written letter yesterday from an American Soldier. It was addressed to me, but I thought I’d post his arguments for general comment.

Mr. Verlo,

I stumbled upon your website by a pure stroke of accidental misfortune while searching for current news on the Fort Carson Installation.. My wife, my son and I are from Colorado, and I am an American Soldier. I am college educated and studied Middle-Eastern history, and I am well versed as it pertains to Mesopotamia, global-terror and global insurgencies.

I have deployed to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. In 2003-2004 I served in Al-Fallujah and Ar-Ramadi in the Al-Anbar province, and in 2005-2006 in Tal’afar in the western Ninewah province with the 3d Armored Cavalry from Fort Carson (maybe you heard about the letter that Najim Abdullah wrote to George Bush about my unit?).

I spent seven months in Afghanistan training Afghani Security Forces, and would go back again to either country to serve for one reason only: to support my Soldiers. Although I am career-military, I do not now, nor did I ever support the Bush Administration or the pretenses under which we invaded Iraq. But, unfortunately, our elected officials thrust us into this mess, and we (Americans and American Military alike) are essentially left to deal with it. I am writing to you to comment on a few articles that you have authored, and provide my own opinions and citations.

First, in your article titled: “It’s in the Percentages”, you note that “apparently” 30% of Soldiers don’t have a high school education, 30% are returning with PTSD and 25% percent of their children are considered “special needs”. These are very interesting statistics, yet, you provided no citations. You go on to state that (and I quote): “I find it an absolute nightmare to imagine soldiers in positions of authority, making life and death decisions over others, who don’t know right from wrong, history from high stakes poker, or intelligence from drunken stupor. How do you reason with someone whose only motivation is their next beer?” and “It’s a war crime to subject civilian populations to rule by incompetents”. Again, very interesting. Here are some solid statistics for you, as well as citations. I chose to contrast military service members to college students in this case, but the same could be applied to any demographic (i.e., individuals who were recently laid off nation-wide, or illegal immigrants).

– 40% of college students who come from middle to upper class families engage in binge drinking on a regular (weekly) basis, as opposed to 26% of military personnel who have recently returned from combat tours overseas, where they suffered some sort of physical and/or emotional trauma (ABC news poll, 2007/2008). In addition, over 22,000 service members have called suicide hotlines in an attempt to get help (VA poll, 2008).

– 20% of college students engage in heavy drug use, as opposed to less than 5% of military personnel (ABC News Poll, 2007).

Here’s my favorite one:

3% of all college women report sexual assault at some point in their college career. In 2007, there were 2,212 reported cases of sexual assault on military installations by service members. In a military that exceeds roughly 2,000,000 people, that’s less than 1%.

Second, in your article titled: “Turning out to support fewer Troops”, you allude to Soldiers “riding in on a black cloud”. Hmmm, I’m not quite sure I understand that one. Is this a reference to the environmental damage we do with our vehicles, or the perceived “evil” that we bring with us because we are all, in fact, rapists, murderers and psychopaths?

Third, in your article titled: “Colorado Springs Military Community”, you state that (and I quote) “FIVE MAJOR MILITARY INSTALLATIONS ALREADY AND THE CITY AND COUNTY ARE BROKE”. El Paso County is broke? Since when? I would love to see a citation in reference to this one, because I have “Googled” it to no end and have found nothing that would lead me to believe anything but the contrary. The Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation reports that: “Colorado Springs has a 3.1 million labor force within an hour radius, a Fast track permitting and planning program (30-60 days), 27 Fortune 500 Companies and a quality of life which is 70% the cost of coastal communities” (CSEDC 2008).

Sir, I have read your opinions on the media (many of which I share with you, by the way), so I would presume that you think this is a fabrication. Here’s the bottom line; the military presence in Colorado (the big, scary war-machine that we are) boosts the economy of the area due to its service members buying cars, houses (and paying taxes on their properties), shopping at local businesses, applying for and receiving loans from local banks, etc. There is no doubt in my mind that if the military left Colorado Springs, the city would continue to thrive, but the economy would noticeably decline anywhere that 30,000 people leave, military or not.

Fourth and final, in your article titled: “On Jan 14 let us not expand Fort Carson”, you state that more military in the area would make (and I quote) “Colorado Springs even more dependent on poor paying jobs, predatory businesses, and skyrocketing social problems. Only developers, car-dealers, pawn shops, strip clubs, liquor stores, social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit from a higher soldier population”. Wow, seriously? These are only issues tied to the influx of more military in the area? So, if 3,000 recently released convicted felons chose Colorado Springs as their new home, it would have less of an impact? Or how about 3,000 illegal immigrants, or 3,000 pregnant teenagers?

Well, let’s go ahead and analyze this a bit further. Developers and car-dealers will benefit from ANY new arrivals to the area, not just military. In reference to pawn shops and strip clubs, the owners of these businesses know exactly what they are doing by placing them outside of military installations. Service members are targeted by these establishments. That’s why they are placed where they are in the community. The same can be said for pay-day loan houses and used car dealerships on Powers and Academy blvd. But if you placed strip clubs next to colleges, would it still be the military that held the higher attendance record? It’s all about business strategy my friend, not the assumption that all military service members are sex-crazed, alcoholic lunatics.

Social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit wherever there are people with problems, criminals and people who have died. I suppose that again, it’s only military who fall into these categories. Ah yes, and our children are even more screwed up than we are. The fact that you said (and I quote): “The rest of us suffer increased crime and their children’s behavioral problems in our schools” vividly displays your utter incompetence and lack of any compassionate notion. You realize that less than 30% of military children who have been separated from a parent experience behavioral issues (USA Today poll, 2008)? The percentage of non-military children who experience behavioral issues as a result of a parent’s incarceration, or divorce, or even domestic abuse is almost twice as high.

Sir, I will be the first to admit that military service members are not perfect. But we are human beings, who are susceptible to the same things that civilians are. We are an easy target, because so many of us are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe problems, after having served in a war that has lost most of it’s public support (and rightly so).

What I have a hard time understanding is why people such as you exercise your freedoms of speech, protest, religion, etc, and then malign the very people who provide, protect and preserve those liberties? I am as anti-Bush as the average American left-wing protestor, but to blame service members for the actions of their elected leadership is immoral. You are essentially grouping us with Nazi’s, which is absolutely ridiculous. The Nazis’ goal was global domination, and they had no clearly defined rule of engagement. They knew that what they were doing was wrong, and did it anyway.

Does the US Military have people who behave in this manner? Absolutely, and they are dealt with within the justice system for their actions. We are in fact “just following orders” with our presence in the Middle-East. As I realize that this was also the defense of Nazi war criminals at Nurnberg, allow me to elaborate. The US military has clearly defined Rules of Engagement, and our greater mission is to stabilize an unstable region, not global control as conspiracy theorists would have everyone believe. Unless you have a solid understanding of counter-terror and counterinsurgency doctrine, you are in no position to presume anything about the US Military in the Middle-East (unless YOU have been there) other than the fact that we invaded Iraq under false pretenses. I’ll give you that one, and take it for myself as well.

Sir, have you ever held a young Iraqi child in your arms, returning him to his parents as they kiss you and your Soldiers’ cheeks, after he had been treated at a US facility because terrorists sodomized him and cut out his tongue? Have you ever looked straight into the eyes of a terrorist, who swore allegiance to Zarqawi and proclaimed himself a “holy warrior”, and seen pure evil? And while your medical personnel treated him for burns (which were sustained when he poured kerosene on a child and his father and attempted to set them on fire publicly, only succeeding to set himself on fire) he spoke perfect English and vowed to remember your name and kill your family? I presume you would view this as our fault, correct?

But here’s the difference between the American Soldier and everyone else: when it is our fault, we acknowledge it, and DO something about it. We help people, good and bad, bottom line. Do bad things happen? Of course. Are all Soldiers and Marines upright citizens? Of course not.. That’s why one Marine out of 30,000 threw a puppy off of a cliff, and four Soldiers out of 121,000 raped a 14-year old girl and killed her family. These actions were inexcusable and tragic, and the individuals in question were/are being dealt with. To generalize every American service member based on these isolated incidents vividly shows your lack of any rational thought.

So in closing, allow me to say that whether you care to acknowledge it or not, it is the MILITARY who grant and preserve liberties and who TRULY make a difference, not politicians, protestors, or half-minded anti-war bloggers. And understand (or don’t) why we are involved in the Global War on Terror, it is because it doesn’t matter whether or not you are white, black, Canadian, American, gay, straight, blind, deaf, or how many anti-Bush websites you manage or protests you attend, there are fundamentalist extremists who want to murder you and your family because you represent western culture.

I want this war to be over so badly that it consumes me at times. I do not want my son to have to see what I have seen as a result of a failed administration. Sir, we are human beings also, and I gladly serve to protect the liberty and freedom of individuals like you who don’t support me at all. So at your next rally, or the next article you write which slanders US service members, take a moment to reflect on your freedoms, and understand who it is that truly grants them. I wish you all continued health and happiness.

Sincerely,

[D.]

Who to blame if nobama

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nobama pinA lot of people are still irrepressibly buzzed about electing Barack Obama to the presidency. For many months now the prospect has buoyed such hope, that Obama’s victory over John McCain has seemed almost foregone. I hate to suggest we’re starting to catch a whiff of an ill wind change.

School children still jump up and down at the mention of Obama, who they know is clearly better than smells-like-farts McCain. But while you might marvel that schoolteachers are passing along this election enthusiasm, they’re also making sure not to get the children’s hopes too high. “America, the children explain soberly, may still have too much racism.”

Or too many nay-sayers. Or discontents who’ll split the vote.

Anyone who thinks that public protest of Obama, or criticism of Obama, or too spirited derision of Sarah Palin, will sink Obama’s bid for the presidency, is ignoring who the real party pooper is already showing itself to be. It’s their party and the corporate shills are going to cry when they get their cue.

The media had to get excited about Obama when their focus groups confirmed he’d caught the public’s interest. In the meantime of course they gave McCain a free ride, with the exception of telling old man jokes at his expense. But now that they’ve played along with the DNC, and given equal time and a half for the RNC, the mouthpieces have liberated themselves from nonpartisanship.

Did you watch any of the RNC? Are the media describing it with superlatives where you’d have used expletives? From now until November, the pundits are going to cover John McCain on the campaign trail according to scripted GOP talking points. And they’ll report the travails of Barack Obama, according to the GOP talking points too.

You’d almost be convinced that there is a difference between the two corporate parties, considering the ferocity the media displays in protecting its apparently conservative interests. On the other hand, the more uphill the challenge looks for Obama, the more ad revenue MoveOn members will pump into the effort. All that campaign spending pours into one place, the national media.

Wake up and smell the shit coming from your television.

Confusing actuarial lies for statistics

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LYING WITH STATISTICS. It’s a worn truism, but what do you do when the public’s mathematical literacy ebbs ever lower? Lie without statistics. Give new meaning to mean, median and average. Use false statistics to reinforce the new lie. Here are a couple ugly examples.

ISAF Air Raid on Nawabad
Afghans are up in arms about a recent US air raid in Herat Province which they say claimed more than 90 lives, the majority of which were children. US spokesmen claim the death toll was not ninety, but five, er, eight. A disparity which they explain could be complicated by the rubble from the bombs.

US puppet Hamid Karzai is standing by the Nawabad villagers, likewise is the UN. So it’s NATO and the US versus Afghanistan and the UN, as to whether the NATO International Security Assistance Force air raid should be investigated so that Karzai might be able to assure his people that US warplanes will be more careful next time.

The US press have been phrasing their interviews like mediators hoping to find a middle ground figure to reconcile the vastly disparate casualty record. But is that how casualties of war are accounted for? Can you imagine OJ refuting his ex-wife’s demise? Would a criminal court consider that an agreeable fraction of Nicole Simpson was murdered that night?

LA law enforcement found two bodies on the front steps of Nicole’s Brentwood residence. Just as tangibly, survivors on the ground in Afghanistan were able to count their missing. Journalists, UN workers, and Afghan authorities on our payroll have had access to the bodies, graves and witnesses.

American military personnel admit they may not know the full extent of the casualties, conceding that some might have been buried in the stony debris. Consider how horribly disingenuous is this admission.

We’ve all seen the leaked aerial gun-sight video footage on which we know the airmen can see every heat-emiting body. The bombers and their command-center triggermen on land can see little white bodies running around before they are hit, and then the faint gray pieces of human beings as the warmth leaves their ex-lives. Thus, American soldiers are lying, to whatever degree it makes a difference. Regardless, is the murder of civilians any place to equivocate with median approximations?

Bisphenol A
Here’s another example in pharmaceutical news. Studies have been released to show that the chemical Bisphenol A is a danger to humans. Well, news presenters well tied to the chem-agra-pharma industry are careful to note that some of the scientific results are inconclusive. So we have, on one side, harmful, and on the other, uncertain, championed by the FDA. The corporate media advises us that the conclusion probably lies somewhere in the middle. Oh? It’s a toss up, is it?

Heads and tails is a toss up. Heads –and can’t read the face of the coin exactly– is heads. Bisphenol A harms human brain activity, or at best, half-harms it. We’re muddied or partially muddied. It takes evidence to the contrary to muddle a middle.

The corporate media mantra of offering us two-sided analysis is serving well to temper findings which point at wrongdoers. Global warming becomes global luke-warming, becomes: leave the knob set on a harmless simmer.

I swing the other way. The media are all liars. Every last motherfucking one. From right to left, the mean average is a liar. If that stat is irrefutable, tell me, am I lying?

The difference between GOP and a pig? Lipstick.

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Alaska governor Sarah Palin hunts wildlife from a plane doorIn her speech last night at the RNC, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin riddled us: What’s the difference between a HOCKEY MOM and a PIT BULL? LIPSTICK. Maybe those of us who aren’t Alaskans or Canadians don’t know what “hockey moms” are. The raised placards at the RNC would have us think, and the cheering response would have us believe, that this is an appeal to homemaker feminists. We’re meant to confuse “hockey moms” -I’m sure- with “soccer moms,” a term which has nothing to do with tenacious blood-lust / sports advocacy.

“Soccer Moms” is about multitasking mothers overtaxed by the myriad after-school activities which excuse their driving Subarus or SUVs. The lexicographic link must be “soccer hooligan” from which we can derive the disproportionate competitive fervor shown by Little League parents. (Soccer Mom — Soccer Hooligan — Hockey Mom?) Would that explain the pit bull comparison? Or are Alaskan pit bulls beasts of burden on the dog sled teams?

No. VP candidate Sarah Palin is a pit bull alright, with the lies she’s pulling her children into, and the bold faced misrepresentations she’s making about her political record as a reformer and corruption cop, which she is everything but. But where Palin really needs the lipstick is to disguise her pit bull blood lust. Palin shoots moose and wolves from airplanes. lipstick She championed a ballot initiative to protect the rights of “Safari” outfits to take “hunters” like herself aloft where they can spot wild animals against the bare snow, stalk them until they are out of wind, then fire at them with high power rifles until they splatter dead. No need even to land the plane.

Pit bulls are outlawed in many civilized municipalities and Human Societies throughout the lower forty-eight won’t let people re-adopt them, choosing rather to euthanize pit bulls sooner than expose more would be pet owners to the genetically malignant brutes. Pit bull skulls shrink in on their brains as they age. Ever since the Budweiser pitchdog, people think they’re cute, and owners will insist they are friendly just like any other dog, yada yada yada. Except they are the preferred pets of meth dealers to guard the stash while they are replenishing ingredients at Wal-mart. Pit bulls were bred to have heads like anvils and vice-like jaws. They look like steel-toothed pot-bellied pigs.

I’m surprised the GOP wants to remind TV viewers about an analogy whose punchline is lipstick.

Lipstick cannot disguise a pig, and it’s not going to disguise Sarah Palin.

Uh, t’be or not t’be well spoken enough

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Barack Obama does it. So does Sarah Palin. On the national stage before millions of TV viewers. I think it’s time t’make it official. The word “to” has become an apostrophe’d “tuh.” Americans should have t’spell it that way if we’re going t’let our most prominent panderers put it forth in speeches for our schoolchildren t’emulate. Murcan, as some linguists call it, differentiates itself from British English by adapting common usage, taking the shtreet most traveled, basically. Americans consider it a shtrength t’be unshod mustangs, uh, mavericks.

Obama also contracts “y’know” to a back of the throat extreme I can’t even spell. “Yghn?” is how he prefaces every informal aside. He seems to rely on “you know” like teenagers use “like.” But is it an affectation meant to make him seem more pedestrian?

On the other hand, Sarah Palin shows herself to be the poor-mannered plain girl with “ya know” and ceaseless, unadorned YAs. “Ya gotta” love it apparently.

Will a daughter’s second pregnancy obfuscate Governor Palin’s coverup?

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Bristol Palin nurses Baby TrigThis story is not about the Palin daughter, it’s about VP candidate Sarah Palin.

Who was it that dragged young Bristol Palin’s private life into the political fray? The GOP would like to say it was Leftist bloggers. But who decided these not-ready-for- prime-time family foibles should face the scrutiny of an election podium?

A further preface: has a US public yet showed an interest in the real culpability of a politician?

Really, I’m not in the least prepared to allow the “left” to tell us what arguments should or shouldn’t be raised against Palin and the family members she drags into her schemes.

The Palin/McCain handlers think they’d averted a media firestorm by recasting the scandal as a simple teenage pregnancy. To counter accusations that VP candidate Sarah Palin lied about who mothered Baby Trig, they’ve announced that Bristol is NOW five-months pregnant. We’re supposed to do the math and conclude she couldn’t have birthed Baby Trig, when of course, there’s no corroborating testimony about Bristol’s condition, and there won’t be because inquests into the candidate’s children are off the table.

Redefining the Baby Trig news byte as a self-effacing confession about a pre-marital teenage pregnancy has so far shamed the critics. Even Obama is put in the position to be indignant for Bristol’s privacy. I’m amazed that the discourse has been about John McCain’s vetting process, instead of his good judgment of Sarah Palin’s character. Does a candidate pick a running mate based on their being impervious to scandal, or based on their capabilities as a partner?

A teenage pregnancy or two, a mother covering for her daughter, even pulling out all stops to help your sister in a custody battle with her ex, these are not uncommon predicaments for families anywhere. These things show Sarah Palin to be simply all too human. Being tempted to conceal your frailty is no great vanity either. But is succumbing to the common an indication of the strength of character required of a leader?

Going from junior college to council-person of a pop 7,000 person town to governor to potential President of the United States is a Heratio Alger story that feeds our American Dream. We all want to think we’re just one Lotto win away from riches. Of course, scratching a winning lottery number would qualify us for a life of leisure until the money’s gone. But some doddering Senator lifting us up from obscurity based on photogenic and possibly oratory skill can’t possibly qualify a person for a position of great responsibility and tact. In light of (just four days worth so far) of evidence to the contrary.

Was Sarah Palin’s baby Trig conceived in someone’s Trigonometry Class?

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Sarah Palin and daughter Bristol PalinThe Palin children were named apparently after where they were conceived: oldest son TRACK (Field), daughter BRISTOL (Bay), daughter WILLOW (Tree), daughter PIPER (Cub), and baby TRIG (-onometry Class?).

Would it matter if Bristol Palin gave birth to Trig Paxson Van Palin while sitting out school with mononucleosis? Would it matter if the 16-year-old daughter of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin gave her mother the Down Syndrome child to raise as her own? No.

It does matter that the otherwise grandmother is an outspoken opponent of birth control and abortion and would like to overturn Roe vs. Wade. It does matter that John McCain’s new running mate presents herself as a holier-than-thou religious zealot and is accumulating a trail of lies. It may matter that Palin’s doctor is an expert on child sexual abuse. Who’s the mother? Who’s the father?

Special note: this is not about the daughter, it’s about the grandmother.

Just say no, Sarah Palin

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Sarah Palin familyExactly who is John McCain pandering to by adding Sarah Palin to the ticket? Talk is that he’s hoping to hook the evangelical crowd, but he’s obviously missing a few key bits of information.

Conservative Christians do not put their women in positions of authority over men. Ever. In my former church, women were not allowed to preach to the general congregation because this was seen as unbiblical, and a condescension to their male counterparts. Believe it or not, they aren’t even permitted to lead the “praise and worship” musical segment of the Sunday service for the same reason. Jezebel can forget about the support of evangelical males.

As for females, they present an even peskier problem. Christian women have strong opinions about the roles of wife and mother. In my experience, few evangelical wives are employed full-time outside the home. Their lives are about rearing godly children and glorifying their husbands. Many consider themselves helpmates, subordinate to their husbands and the church. They are not going to view Sarah Palin as a sister in Christ. She resembles a Biblical harlot, not a Proverbs 31 role model.

There is a nonreligious unbridgeable gap here as well. In case you hadn’t heard, there is an ongoing feud between stay-at-home mothers (SAHMs) and women employed outside the home. The SAHMs claim the moral high ground in the area of child-raising and husband-tending, while the working women, especially those in traditionally male-dominated professions, cling to feminist values of independence, equality, and self-actualization. Ms. Palin — the working woman who calls herself a soccer mom — may strike both camps as an imposter. And many women, regardless of work status, will wonder why Sarah would leave five children, including a special-needs infant, to be used as a pawn in a good-ol’-boys ploy.

I feel sorry for Sarah Palin. She’s being used as hastily begotten arm candy to pretty up an ugly ticket. Things won’t go well for her this election season. In my opinion, she should have refused McCain’s offer. She should have thanked him for the honor of being asked, and then used the national spotlight to showcase who she really is. Not the life preserver he’d like her to be.

Obama is not “The One”

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Barack Obama defrauded the primary voters by campaigning as the “candidate of change,” then — as soon as he had the required number of delegates — he suddenly became the “candidate of same-old politics as usual.” You might as well have just voted for John Kerry again.

According the United States Constitution, John McCain is NOT eligible to be president! Not that either political party gives a damn about the Constitution anymore…

How sad that modern politics as devolved to the point where it takes a comedian to tell us the truth.

It’s only a crime if the target is a Republican. Feds to let Obama assassination conspirators off without charges. Hell, if they’d succeeded, Bush probably would have pardoned them anyway.

FDIC going broke over bank failures, and they’ve only just begun. Isn’t Conservative deregulation “glorious”?

Bill Clinton refusing to attend Obama’s acceptance speech. You don’t suppose he knows something, do you?

Who knew you can intimidate Nazis?

US troops murdered 60 children in Afghanistan. We are making Nazi Germany look like a boy scout troop.

US terrorism in Iran?

Alaska: The Land of Corruption.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes Aug 27, thomasmc.com.

American barbarians at work in Afghanistan

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USAF pilot….An operation by international forces in western Afghanistan on Friday killed 76 civilians, including 50 children and 19 women, the Afghan interior ministry said. Many of the cowardly American barbarians that bomb civilians from way up on high received their military ‘combat’ training right here in Colorado Springs.

I shouldn’t really call this training to slaughter children from high up in the air combat training though. Coalition air strikes kill 76 Afghan civilians: Govt Where’s the combat in this? These people who train to fly for the Pentagon are merely cowardly careerists who don’t give a damn about people at all.

Tiki Barber is my hero

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Marie Walden poolsideBeware. This is going to be a rant.
 
Today, I met with great misfortune. I watched MSNBC’s unbelievably sub-par coverage of the Olympics. Jenna Wolfe, know-nothing sports commentator extraordinaire, was recounting her favorite moments of the Games. To her, the most poignant moment was American swimmer, Dara Torres, being wonderfully gracious in defeat. Torres didn’t win, but the moment was inspiring nonetheless. Wolfe’s asswipe co-commentator back home, tight-pants Tamryn someone-or-another, chimed in “if you’re not first, you’re last.”

You have got to be fucking kidding me. Dara Torres, 41-year-old mother of two children, is competing in her FIFTH Olympic Games. She’s medaled in each and every one. In Beijing, she took silver in the women’s 50-meter freestyle race, .01 seconds behind the 22-year-old winner, Britta Steffen. About 35 minutes later, she won another silver medal as part of the American 4×100-meter medley relay team. Her 12 Olympic medals tie the all-time medal record for a female Olympian.

What a loser.

When Jenna Wolfe wasn’t supplying us with completely asinine commentary, she was mocking co-host and NFL phenom, Tiki Barber, for not having a Superbowl Ring.

My favorite moment of the Games? I’d say it was when Tiki Barber called Jenna Wolfe a cunt on-air for all the world to hear. He’s taking all the heat for the “lack of chemistry.” But for those of us who understand and revere sport, Tiki’s words are pure gold.

How many homes does an Elitist own?

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America the fucked. McCain promises to fix all of America’s problems by following the same policies that created those problems, and Obama promises to fix them by endlessly chanting the magic words “change” and “hope.” If the American voters are stupid enough to vote for either of them, then they’ll just get what they deserve.

“All your children are belong to US.” McCain says he “doesn’t disagree” with reinstating the military draft.

McCain: The Real Elitist

John McCain is such an ‘average guy’ that he doesn’t even know how many houses he owns.

McCain housing crisis

Forget “welfare queens”, how about “welfare billionaires”?

Poor old McCain, he gave up on learning new technology when the telephone was invented.

Nuclear Tit4Tat. In response to US plans to base missiles in Poland, Russia to base missiles in Syria. Which means if Israel attacks Iran, they won’t even have time to get to a shelter before Tel Aviv is vaporized.

Obama (Jackass Party) campaign caught selling “free” tickets for $1000 each. I guess in an Obama administration, “free” speech will be run the same way.

Location of DNC “freedom cages” and “lil’ Gitmo” announced. Because, let’s face it, the DNC is just as in love with the idea of a police state as the GOP.

Poll: majority of Americans say the church has no business in politics. First Church of the GOP disagrees, it’s their only business!

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes Aug 22, thomasmc.com.

Human Rights Watch is a US State Department vehicle, not a genuine human rights organization

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The broadening conflict between the US and Russia has brought to the fore the role of the Human Rights Watch in promoting US State Department and Pentagon propaganda. They do this by hiding themselves behind their name, which leads the public to think that they are an independent group of concerned world citizens merely working for human rights observance.

However, a brief visit to their web site alone should set off some alarm bells. Human Rights Watch That’s right! There is no interest shown by this organization about human rights abuses by the US in Iraq or Afghanistan! Somalia, too, is off their radar! These three countries are not mentioned on their web site! At least not on the front page, and I couldn’t locate anything at all on other pages either.

When one sees such a thing and thinks about it a tad, then one begins to wonder about where the funding comes from for a group called Human Rights Watch? Here is Source Watch about the funding…

‘On January 1, 2005 they obtained a five-year, $15 million challenge grant from the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation. “The Sandlers and their children will donate $3 million a year for five years through the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation as long as Human Rights Watch raises $6 million annually in matching funds from first-time donors or existing donors who increase their contributions.” [2]’

So who are the Sandler Family and their Sandler Foundation? We have to go to wikipedia to find out this about Herb Sandler. Yes, he is a billionaire Democratic Party promoter of the group, banker and businessman.

We need to inform the public more about these billionaire promoters of US State Department human rights propaganda who push the Pentagon program for US world dominance. It is not only Human Rights Watch that is a US State Department vehicle for propaganda dissemination, but also the Carter Foundation, where one can quickly find out (if you think to look?) that it too is head up by another billionaire. I am not talking about Jimmy Carter either, but rather John Jay Moore, who is director of the Board of Trustees of the Carter Center, another human rights constantly blathering group respected so much by so many Democratic Party voting liberal types.

So when you hear Human Rights Watch running on about such and such, or so and so, ask yourself, do you really want American billionaires to be defining ‘human rights’ for the world? Is it up to us to just blindly follow the billionaires like Bill Gates, George Soros, et al when they tell us who are supposedly being bad guys, and who are supposedly respecting human rights throughout the world? These American billionaires run US foreign policy even as they might be temporarily a little bit at odds with one president or the other. They are not grand defenders of human rights at all.

So back to Human Rights Watch for one more look at them and what they are really doing in the world about us. Who is behind Human Rights Watch? (2004)

Here below is the part about who is funding the HRW… You will see that there are lots of other American billionaires doing it beside Big Wig Businessman Sandler and his ‘foundation’. Do you think that these are the folks who really back human rights world wide? I don’t, and neither should you.

DONORS OF $100,000 OR MORE
Dorothy and Lewis Cullman
The Aaron Diamond Foundation
Irene Diamond
The Ford Foundation
The Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett Fund
Estate of Anne Johnson
The J. M. Kaplan Fund
The Fanny and Leo Koerner Charitable Trust
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The John Merck Fund
The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation
Novib, The Dutch Organization for Development Corporation,
The Overbrook Foundation
Oxfam
Donald Pels
The Ruben and Elisabeth Rausing Trust
The Rockefeller Foundation
Marion and Herbert Sandler, The Sandler Family Supporting Foundation
Susan and George Soros
Shelby White and Leon Levy

DONORS OF $25,000 – $99,999

The Arca Foundation
Helen and Robert Bernstein
Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
Nikki and David Brown
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Compton Foundation, Inc.
Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Davis
The Dr. Seuss Foundation
Fiona and Stanley Druckenmiller
Jack Edelman
Epstein Philanthropies
Federation Internationalbacktheyin thee des Ligues des Droits de L’Homme
Barbara Finberg
General Service Foundation
Abby Gilmore and Arthur Freierman
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund
Katherine Graham, The Washington Post Company
Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation
Hudson News
Independence Foundation
The Isenberg Family Charitable Trust
The Henry M. Jackson Foundation
Robert and Ardis James
Jesuit Refugee Service
Nancy and Jerome Kohlberg
Lyn and Norman Lear
Joshua Mailman
Medico International
Moriah Fund, Inc.
Ruth Mott Fund
Kathleen Peratis and Richard Frank
Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation
Ploughshares Fund
Public Welfare Foundation, Inc.
Anita and Gordon Roddick
Edna and Richard Salomon
Lorraine and Sid Sheinberg
Margaret R. Spanel
Time Warner Inc.
U.S. Jesuit Conference
Warner Brothers, Inc.
Edie and Lew Wasserman
Maureen White and Steven Rattner
Malcolm Wiener and Carolyn Seely Wiener
The Winston Foundation for World Peace

Big Rock Candy Mountain unsafe for kids

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big rock candy mountainHere was a true bit of American folk wisdom, Harry McClintock’s everyman philosophy whose context was whitewashed for the sake of children and the Protestant work ethic. The original lyrics of the hobo’s nirvana, Big Rock Candy Mountain, where omitted or reformed, are reprinted in bold here.

BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN
Harry McClintock, circa 1890

One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, “Boys, I’m not turning.
I’m headed for a land that’s far away
Besides the crystal fountains.
So come with me, we’ll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There’s a land that’s fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs.
The farmers’ trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay.
Oh I’m bound to go
Where there ain’t no snow
Where the rain don’t fall
The winds don’t blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks.
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind.
There’s a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain’t no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I’m bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
….
I’ll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

….
The punk rolled up his big blue eyes
And said to the jocker, “Sandy,
I’ve hiked and hiked and wandered too,
But I ain’t seen any candy.
I’ve hiked and hiked till my feet are sore
And I’ll be damned if I hike any more
To be buggered sore like a hobo’s whore
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.”

Finding respite in Beijing’s hutongs

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Beijing hutongs
BEIJING- Since I arrived in China I’ve made it my mission to avoid Westerners. Hitting the Beijing historical sites a week before the Games, then traveling by overnight train to Xi’an (three Chinese and me in a tiny cubicle with four bunks — now that was fun), I’ve found myself immersed in a sea of Asian faces. An odd feeling, but not as odd as being surrounded by only Chinese voices.

The Chinese are a garrulous people, speaking in monosyllabic singsong nasal tones, downright noisy by my standards. Interestingly, though, the sounds don’t bother me at all. The voices seem to blend with the screeching of the cicadas or the chirping of the birds. I hear them, but since I don’t understand the language, or even the intonation, the noise becomes like background music to me. Less intrusive than listening to my iPod because I don’t feel compelled to fast forward, contemplate lyrics, or sing along. I think it’s like being deaf, only with sound.

Avoiding Westerners has become more difficult now that the Games are underway. Yesterday, I found a safe haven in the hutongs of old Beijing. For several hundred years, the majority of Beijing residents lived in siheyuan, which are housing compounds with rooms arranged around a central courtyard. The hutongs, or narrow alleyways, run between rows of siheyuan. Hutong has come to refer to neighborhoods set up this way.

Life in the hutongs is a slow and simple affair. Elderly women sit side-by-side on stools barely six inches off the ground. The old men squat around wooden game boards, occasionally laughing at one thing or another. Middle-aged women sew or cook in tiny rooms with open doors, always facing the street so as not to miss any of the goings-on. Little children do as little children do everywhere. I didn’t see many young men and women in the hutongs. I imagine they were somewhere in the city, straddling the divide between the old and new China.

Wherever I walked, the people stared at me with undisguised curiosity. They didn’t appear friendly, nor unfriendly. They simply watched. I would return their gaze for a moment, bow my head slightly and smile. “Nin hao,” I’d say, hoping that my attempt to singsong the syllables didn’t pain them too much. Without fail, they smiled and returned the greeting enthusiastically. Often they offered me whatever they had in their hands—a piece of fruit, a paper fan, a plastic-beaded bracelet. I would point to my camera, asking permission to take a picture. They would laugh and blush and hide behind each other in protest. I wasn’t sure how to interpret their apparent reticence, but I thought it was best to accept it at face value and photograph the laundry or the bicycles instead.

With the modernization of Beijing, many residents have moved from the hutong to the high-rise. But I found that a few traditional hutongs, home to lovely people who can remember when, may still be found by a girl on a quest to avoid the West.

Beijing hutongs
Beijing hutongs
Beijing hutongsBeijing hutongsBeijing hutongsBeijing hutongsBeijing hutongsBeijing hutongsBeijing hutongsbeijing hutongsBeijing hutongs

Opening ceremonies of Beijing Olympics star humanity in his own flea circus

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Metropolis science fiction horror
Can you remember an Olympic Games opening ceremony that was not spectacular? Suffice it to say Beijing was the biggest, befitting the world’s most populous nation. “Awesome” provides perfectly qualified praise. I have to say this spectacle invoked colossal horror as it drew a full-color digital smiley face over Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

Automatons
I thought the drumming performance was the most impressive. Two thousand (and eight) drummers beating their hands on antique-style drums set in mobile tables. The bare skinned drummers beat hard, seemingly to illuminate the square table surfaces, like fireflies assigned coordinates in an array, or a spider’s web.

We’ve admired marching ceremonies before, and synchronized flags. We marvel at the precision ensembles of Rockettes, Busby Berkley choreography, and, for want of an example further afield, the Chinese circus. What made the Bird Nest Stadium extreme so horrific was the miniaturization of man’s role. If it had been a Seurat painting, one man, one dot, we might have been comforted to see ourselves woven into a tapestry which created an artistic expression. Instead, long shots showed the full effect to be an LED board, each pixel either on or off, flickering based on whether that person was activated or not. Man as electron, charged or uncharged.

I wondered what was the stadium perspective. Did the audience of 91,000 see the large electronic panel or the matrix of individuals sweating to power it? An aerial view gave the TV audience the full effect, while other cameras zoomed in as if to provide a microscopic perspective of the human termites working frenetically in the machine.

Putting people in the role of insect automatons would seem to me a phobia of a humanitarian society. But the mechanized human component of the 2008 opening ceremonies was not disharmonious with the way we already see China. Everywhere performers were tethered, playing tiny roles in gargantuan schemes. Some provided the piston power to undulating cubes. They revealed themselves only at the end, and emerged only partially, free but to give a smile and wave. These giant light-board shows were switched by computers, their human components alerted by electric signal, be it light, or tone, or sensor, to synchronize their positions. A TV commentator who remarked about the amazing lack of wires, would be overlooking how his personal computing devices communicate these days.

Human labor
The human element was required for the spectacle, otherwise we’ve seen more complex LEDs on old ballpark scoreboards. Technically the chain-link of humans was superfluous, but doesn’t it represent China, where labor costs are negligible?

And so we cheered the 2008 drummers, who worked drums mounted into tables that could pass for work desks. Indeed the drummers were bent over them like bent people, galley slaves exerting themselves to the rhythm of the whip. It was a sea of modern slaves, the sweatshop laborers. Actually, two thousand and eight impressed the crowd, but that number is probably small for a factory workforce. Probably there are scenes like this many times as big in daily Chinese work life.

Food processing

Later the performance took on a Disneyesque quality as dancers opened umbrellas illuminated with large smiling faces of children. Is that a touch-stone theme for pseudo international-harmony? The promise of children? I wondered after seeing the drummers harnessed to their sewing tables, coordinated by an electronic whip-master, if the faces of children represented the child workforce. In traditional cultures childhood idleness ends when a child can carry water or sweep the floor. The idealized child is a Western facade and here China appears eager to celebrate the ruse. Mankind’s aspiration should emulate the innocuous, non-threatening smile of a child.

Gladiators
Never before have I gotten a clearer sense of the Olympics as gladiator games. The audience are the privileged few, who do not bring politics to the games except the rivalry of nationalism, a preference for their athletes, rooting for a win to enhance their prestige. Ninety dignitaries were in attendance in Beijing. And what a celebration of harmony. Regardless the turmoil between nations outside, between world leaders, harmony. Because they’re going nowhere. Only rebels and coups threaten the ruling class. Did you know an IOC rule forbids the display of flags of entities not competing in the games?

Politics don’t enter the minds of the athlete class because they’ve got a singular focus, their performance. Some strive for financial rewards, others are focused on the physical achievement. All are vying to please the emperor, to live to compete again.

Even as the techno pageantry dazzled, by the end I was still shocked to see a human being reduced to flintlock to carry the flame to the gigantic torch, a blazing industrial altar.

The colossal fireworks show looked to be outside the view of the stadium audience, but I saw no throngs outdoors to witness it. The pyrotechnics reminded me of Shock and Awe the first night in Baghdad, cameras well recessed to take it all in. It turns out a chunk of the fireworks was CGI for the TV spectacular.

In hindsight for me the highlight of the evening was seeing President Bush sitting next to Vladimir Putin, each saluting their athletes in turn, neither turning toward each other, at least on camera, while in Georgia US backed forces battled Russian soldiers in all out war. An example of a tangible measure to which politics are kept out of the Olympic Games.

Photos:
Drummer pool

Umbrella children

Compulsory cannibalism could end killing

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“I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.

Murder in a uniform is heroic, in a costume it is a crime. False advertisements win awards, forgers end up in jail. Inflated prices guarantee large profits while shoplifters are punished. Politicians conspire to create police riots and the victims are convicted in the courts. Students are gunned down and then indicted by suburban grand juries as the trouble-makers. A modern, highly mechanized army travels 9,000 miles to commit genocide against a small nation of great vision and then accuses its people of aggression. Slumlords allow rats to maim children and then complain of violence in the streets. Everything is topsy-turvy”
-Abbie Hoffman

Savage-Weiner on Autism and Asthma…

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That would be Michael “savage”, the savage part being his stage-name.
The one who speaks more languages than anybody on the planet, the one who understands foreign policy better than anybody, who holds black belts in every martial art, including those which don’t even have a belt-ranking system, and some which don’t even exist, has a Higher IQ than Einstein, (it’s all True– He told us so, and he wouldn’t ever lie, and it’s on his Wiki page too!)

But somehow, even though he’s a big supporter of the Global War on Terror, isn’t using his skills or his super-genius IQ in the employ of the U.S. Military. And never has…

instead he spends hours every day on the radio “crank”ing out racist and ignorant rants about every subject under the sun, most of which he has no real knowledge thereof,…

Like Autism and Asthma….

Now it gets further into the Realm of the Absurd.

He’s saying that his comments about Autism and Asthma were directed toward mis-diagnosis, as opposed to his original statements that it was all faked.

But still claims he’s sticking by his original bull.

Maybe if he took a little time and actually learned a few things it would help, but then, his Corporate Whoremasters wouldn’t keep paying him. He’d have to get a Real Job.

Asthma is something that really can’t be faked. People who are supposedly of the Ignorant Class, as he so many times places everybody of darker skin tone than himself, how would they know the actual diagnostics for Asthma?

Asthma isn’t a chronic cough, it’s where the bronchii constrict and you can’t actually BREATHE.

Doctors, as a class, aren’t ignorant and recognize this.

Maybe he’s upset because he’s not allowed to smoke around one or more of his kids, in the custody of his former wives or lovers, because tobacco smoke is a trigger for Asthma.

It’s one of the many ways smokers flirtatiously dance with Death.

Even more likely is that he’s invested in Tobacco companies and is upset because smokers are being “discriminated against” because their [b]”Right”[/b] to endanger children is being infringed upon.

So he’s losing money.

I can see why he no longer pretends to be Jewish. Money is now his lower-case “g” god. Sad but true, it’s getting even more common for people to be like that. They even call it “The Almighty”.

Autism is even more thoroughly and rigorously diagnosed.

It’s not like Willfully Chronic Ignorance Syndrome, (what Weiner-Savage either suffers from or panders to) which can usually be diagnosed in a matter of seconds.

It can’t even be diagnosed by only One doctor, or even One discipline.

It take a minimum of three days, three days of intensive testing by psychologists, speech pathologists and therapists, neurologists…

Here’s a wild thought, follow along if you wish,

Maybe his son or daughter, again in the custody of the childs mother, (because he really is an unfit parent, somebody as hateful as he is shouldn’t even be allowed houseplants) is Autistic, he’s not allowed to slap the kid around or yell at him or any other forms of abusive “diagnosis and treatment” such as he relates (with Pride, no less!) that his own father subjected him to.

And he has to pay extra child support for his kid(s) to ensure that he/she/they actually get REAL medical treatment rather than being slapped around or yelled at.

Add in that one theory about Autistic disorders is the Genetic Link.

Guess which PATERNAL genetic line passes on that link?

Of course, guessing his motives is speculative at best.

Maybe he just enjoys railing on people, and he figures people who are Autistic are an easy target and wouldn’t be able to even comprehend what’s being said, far less be able to say anything in return.

He IS well known to be such a weak and pathetic hollow shell of a “man”.

Americans are stealing babies from Guatemala after all

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DNA tests have proven for the first time that a baby adopted in the US, was in fact stolen from a mother in Guatemala. Adopted Guatemala baby ‘stolen’

How many others have been stolen previously, but never were tracked down? Indigenous women in rural areas were always at risk in Guatemala of having their babies stolen, simply because it was so profitable for the criminals involved and because the mothers were so powerless.

This is reminiscent of another recent case of imperialist kidnapping, where a French agency was trying to steal children out of Chad, saying that they were ‘Lost Children’ from the war in Darfur. Chad Charges French Charity With Kidnapping When there is such a power imbalance like these between the US and Guatemala, between France and Chad, and between the US and Iraq and Afghanistan, abuses like this will be rampant.

Children should be treasured and not destroyed by war, poverty, disease, and other forms of criminality that help make the rich richer, and make the poor suffer in silence. What type of world is this where atrocities like kidnapping babies from their mothers goes virtually unnoticed? I have seen it for myself, and it was happening directly inside the US.

United States of Greed, Torture & Death

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Obama commits to escalating war in Afghanistan. I guess there weren’t enough wedding parties being bombed.

2009 forecast: nuclear winter. Israeli Mossad propaganda outlet predicts Bush will attack Iran between November election, and end of term in January.

If Freddie and Fannie want a bail-out, they should go directly to the Chinese and ask for a loan. The US gov’t should not go further in debt to the Chinese on their behalf.

Zimbabwe begins printing $100 Billion bank notes, worth about $1 US.

Pope appologizes for sexually molesting children.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says McCain is so boring, it’s torture. “If you took all the people at Gitmo, put them in the cabin for a weekend and made them listen to John talk about the birds, they would all spill their guts.”

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 21, thomasmc.com.