Whether an airliner disappears in thin air, or a ship capsizes right before the eyes of rescuers, the failure of modern technology is confounding television viewers. Will the common fate of passengers become the tragic constant?
Tag: Hubris
Bob Holmes said he cares for Homeless PEOPLE
...but that homeless women breed like rabbits. And while I wasn't there at the rally at UCCS or however the hell they put it, it strikes me that it's incredibly unlikely that he used the PEOPLE noun to modify the "homeless" adjective. I've noticed a tendency among the Repub/Tea Potty "leaders" here to forget that part. So, Bob, it's like this bubba. Seriously. Your Pomar Foundation welcomed George W into town for a Blasphemy Session yesterday. Guess you're a supporter of his policies, yes? See, he and Your Party don't just kill people with bullets and bombs. Although I suspect that's your prefered method. No, they also kill people by manipulating economic systems to favor a very few wealthy at the expense of a very huge large humongous outrageously big majority of the people, many of whom suffer from such diseases of Society as a result thereof, as Homelessness. Your Heroic Lion-Heart Bush made and indeed, as a consultant still makes, for instance Mexico into a nightmare state. His puppet dictators there have, at the insistence of YOUR Right Wing fellow-travelers, destroyed Mexico's economy using the same techniques they're applying to the economy of the United States today. The fast answer is that the devastation Capitalism has wrought in Mexico in the past two decades has brought infant mortality up to American Standards. Seems with all that Socialized Medicine they were leaders in the hemisphere in Infant Survival rates. The U.S. has had a third world rate for a while and, thanks to the policies being visited on us by YOUR party, it's going to get worse. So, Bob, all those extra babies caused by among other things YOUR party's War on Contraception, it'll balance out by your War on Health Care manifesting itself by killing off a substantial percentage of those babies. I know you'll get comfort from that. Fewer scions of the Poor who will outshine your Demon Spawn in education thus shaming you when they realize you were lying about Poor people being inferior. Take, for instance, Mexico. In Latin America Mexico was a major star because they had a revolutionary system that outlasted the Soviet Union. PEMEX, Petroleo Mexico, the state-owned Oil industry, paid for among other things food subsidies and medical and dental and educational programs that put America quite frankly to shame. But, Capitalism can't survive without Universal Participation so something had to be done. All those U.S. and U.K. trillion dollar corporations, eating their own intestines over the thought that Mexican "PEASANTS" were denying them Their Sacred Right To Own Everything, Especially Shit They Don't Own like sovereign nations. Something had to be done! Those Bad Ol' Socialists were denying you the privilege of running other nations as though they were divisions of your Diseased Corporate System! HOW DARE THEY!?!!! Mexico had a higher rate of literacy than the United States, still does because you can't actually take away an education once it's been achieved, and your Privatize Everything bullshit artists have succeeded in trashing American Public
According to “liberal” MSM, Hayward fired for not being P.C.
Nothing at all about being incompetent. No, it was his insensitive but, according to the now-official story line, unintentionally Snotty Snobbish remarks. The Anti-politically correct squad will of course react with their usual convulsive tantrums about anybody in the entire world criticizing them for being deliberately rude and otherwise acting in an uncivilized manner. I don't have to point out the Usual Suspects, I'll just look in their general direction and smile. They would be, and anybody can make an inference to match the implication, the titty-babies who scream as though being skinned alive, without anesthesia and using a dull pair of nail clippers, about being "denied liberty" if anybody scolds them for being Socially Retarded Animated Sphincters. The ones who led the charge against MoveOn and the New York Times for the latter publishing, under the same First Amendment The T.B.s say is violated by scolding their churlishness... Publishing an advertisement in their newspaper, using editorial discretion and using managerial discretion, as in "It's OUR newspaper, why can't we charge exactly what we choose to charge for any service we choose to provide?" and gave the MoveOn people the same deal they had recently given the Bush Administration and... the person the Rival News Organization screamed so loudly about the ad criticizing, Generally Betrays-us, aka King David Petraeus. Yeah. THOSE Socially Retarded Animated Sphincter Titty Babies. I'm sure this unsavory taunting of them for their arrogance and hypocrisy will be seen as a denial of their First Amendment rights to be rude, unsocialized and uncivilized. But, you see, I'm not turning loose a squad of Police State goon-squad types to beat them down for being rude and uncivilized, now, Am I? Just a gentle tsk-tsk'ing. I'd say that raises me several level above their organizations and management style automatically.
Clinton Seeks “Human Rights” improvements in VietNam
Actually the first real human rights improvements came after the French/American Puppet Saigon Government torture freaks were sent into exile. What does Ms Hillary think we're going to do, threaten to go in and get whupped by them yet a second time? Maybe if she could get U.S. troops, and Cops, over whom she has at least SOME nominal authority, to just freakin' QUIT KILLING PEOPLE for such crimes as Dissent, Dark Skin Color, and of course my personal favorite, Dissenting While Dark... at home and in the Conquered errr "Liberated" Territories. Hill, baby, Lead By Example. Because the Pentagon ain't gonna be able to take over any more countries. They won't even be able to hold the ones they've got so far. Meanwhile, a nation taking retribution against criminals who collaborated with the Occupiers isn't in any way abnormal. Oh, and Hillary, about that "lead by example" thing... Free Bradley Manning. Among many others but you do understand that High Profile Political Prisoners do attract a lot of attention to the Raw Hypocritical Hubris of instructing Other Nations in how to deal humanely with people.
Doug Bruce on video mouthing off about “illiterate peasants”
When Rivera shot off his own foot saying something similar, at least he wasn't running for Mayor (can't, term limits) To be fair, the "Illiterate Peasants" he was referencing weren't the Bus Riding Public who incidentally are the Working Class who support him and the rest of the Parasite Class. They're seasonal labor Farm Workers who quite literally feed his fat piggy ass and those of his Parasite Class comrades. The ones who, like him, feel that the bus service and the people who ride the bus to WORK, mostly, are extraneous and needn't be considered. One attitude spills into the other and then back again. "5000 Illiterate Peasants", compared to your similar indictments of people riding the bus? When Mayor Rivera said something similar, the "illiterate peasants" with whom I was riding the bus and discussing this same issue (Before the Big Purge of bus service) were a retired lady, with really bad health problems that come from aging, and a SCHOOLTEACHER who is blind from birth. I personally can't drive because of my neurological problems, similarly, from birth. Mayor Lyin' el had said that only bums and winos ride the bus. You could tell right there that he wasn't running for re-election. Doug Bruce and his accomplices at "Citizens for Accountable Leadership" who aren't "accountable" enough to put their Leaders Name (Doug Bruce) on their corporate letterhead even as a member of the board, are petitioning for a "strong executive mayoral city government". And it's just a coincidence that Bruce, Former Prosecutor, is rumored to be wanting another run for Mayor. Of COURSE it's just a coincidence. Doug Bruce would never lie, unless of course he needs to lie or just wants to lie. Nor would any of his Accomplic errr I mean "Associates" yeah, that's the ticket, Associates. By the way, Doug, if somebody is reading this to you... I don't like cops in any form, especially the Prosecutor type. I feel strongly that as a Prosecutor you would by default have covered many a crime committed "in the line of duty" by your fellow pigs. Especially as you feel that certain Racist Urge to dismiss whole segments of the people who work to support your system as "Illiterate Peasants" the way you did the farm workers. And, Brucie-baby, when I was riding the bus that day, Illiterate Peasant schoolteacher was on her way to work, Illiterate Peasant Senior Citizen lady was on her way from one of the Senior Centers which you're in the process of closing, to her home. SHE was worried because your shadow-government was cutting Saturday bus service off at 5 PM on the route she rides from her home to Church on Saturday evenings. Correction, (damnation, only an ILLITERATE PEASANT could possibly make such an error... RODE the bus to her church services... because you and your Noble, Intellectually Superior Ilk managed to get Saturday bus services cut off completely.) The third Illiterate Peasant, moi meme sui, who speaks three languages and has a larger English vocabulary than YOU
Think of it as enhanced evolution, Un-natural selection, cull the gulls…
The debate turns now to whether or not to rescue marine animals from the oil. Pelicans and gulls specifically, but there's more. Of course, animals that took millions of years to be what they are, should learn to mutate themselves a lot faster. Seagulls and turtles and manatees and sea-otters, fish, crustaceans, jellyfish, plankton, all need to mutate in a matter of days rather than eons. True, it would be a LOT simpler for the HUMAN species to modify our behavior, not set our entire economic plan on one focus, like Fossil Fuels. The plan with a built in Self-Destruct button that gets armed and starts ticking away once we drill the first well. Of course that first well was "well" over a century ago, BUT there's still time to ramp down the madness, get back to a point where we can actually turn off he Self Destruct switch. Of course, it would take eliminating some of the things the Oil Industry advertising partners have been selling us as "essential to the American Lifestyle". Things like easily available in large quantities "food" that our bodies don't have the ability to process correctly, at least not in the concentrations which are being sold to us as a "normal" diet. Thus diabetes, colon cancers, increased. Also increased are heart disease, respiratory, kidney, thyroid, liver, just every part of the Human Biotic System that depends on a certain chemical balance that the McDiet not only doesn't provide but actively disrupts. The private automobile, sure, if you could afford to drive it, but, really, the cost to The Rest Of Us to maintain YOUR "right" to a private car is long since out of control. Witness, for instance the Oil Spills. Witness the wars being fought to secure more Oil, publicly subsidized wars. If the person driving sole occupant in a car made for 8 actually had to Pay His Way he wouldn't be able to do it. The ultimate Welfare Cadillac. We're required to provide "cheap" oil to the Consumer or be called Terrorist and Traitor. A system where everybody in the entire world is required to chip in to make a really expensive activity "affordable".... for a privileged few. People in nations where starvation is in the top 5 causes of death have to chip in for YOUR automotive pleasure. But things like Public Transportation and subsidizing better forms of energy harvesting and use, that the bad ol' wicked "Socialism". Summary of that, Public support of the entire population, BAD. The entire World Population support of an elite minority GOOD. Public Support of Mega Corporations like McDonalds altering the agricultural economy, GOOD. Public criticism of the fact that this impoverishes other PEOPLE in other nations, to the point of people who live on gigantic plantation style "food" factory farms starve.... that's Bolshevism and BAD. The Oil Corporations have been for the past year putting out some very expensive publicity campaigns saying that actually requiring the Corporations (mainly) and the Consumers to PAY what isn't anywhere near the Real Cost
If you really don’t want to kill civilians, don’t point loaded guns at them.
I tell you what, if Bibi actually gets away with this shit, based on the defense he's mounting, then Death Row inmates across America will be rejoicing. What's the difference between Armed Robbery and Capital Murder? A twitch of the finger. Israel and the U.S. have this habit of (AFTER killing usually large numbers of Civilians in "accidents") insisting that they trained their Soldier/Cops to "minimize the risk" of blowing away civilians. That's a God-Damn lie. If they were to do "everything we can" to not kill civilians, one of the first and the most important elements of such a policy would be Not Shooting In Their Direction. When IDF blew away KIDS in Gaza they accused the Palestinians of the murders that were committed through bullets coming from Israeli Galil Rifles (a reworked AK-47 that fires U.S. standard .30 caliber rounds) held by Israeli soldiers. In an action where the IDF were actively invading a country they themselves had formally recognized as being Not Israel. Guess that when you declare a region to be SEMI autonomous it's like what my cousin used to laugh about in advertising... a Semi-Boneless Steak. Does it have bones in it or not? But a Semi-Autonomous country is one in which the Ruling Imperial Nation tells the peasants they won't get any benefits of Citizenship but still have to obey King Benjamin Netanyahu. And if the Peasants dare object to being declared not second, third or ANY class of citizen, but declared to be Subject to the governing whim of the IDF Master Race... then it's Their Fault that the IDF Gestapo/slash/TotenKopfSchutzStaffl murder their Kids. Bibi is calling the Murders aboard the relief ships a "Botched Raid". Oh, and King Bibi is having who, exactly, handle the evidence, as in the shot up boats, the bodies of the victims, the Murder Weapons? Why, Good Righteous Courageous King Benjamin is having the Murderers Themselves do the investigation. This is like when American Pigs murder somebody, who gets to investigate the Police Claims of "suicide by cop"? The Internal Affairs Division, of course. Let me remind our readers (and Our Readers should recognize that I'm not actually asking their permission to say anything) that having the Police in any form, including the IDF Commando Murder Teams, investigate murders committed by their Fellow Cops will GUARANTEE that the Murderous PIGS will be acquitted and the victims blamed for their own deaths. Look for, in the next three weeks, an IDF "investigation" to Clear The Commando MURDER Team of any wrongdoing. It's the way PIGS always do it, their Pigs and Our Pigs.
Between Iraq and a Hard Place, Slave Labor + Corporate Welfare = Warfare
Since all available national resources are being called in to fight what's the worst unnatural disaster and getting worse, to smite us in a long while, it pays to recognize one huge fact. The equally Corporate Welfare To The Oil Industry wars against Afghan and Iraqi people (for Corporate Profit-not "freedom") and the beneficiaries of this hastily pulled in Public Largesse, an Oil Corporation, BP, which presumably has more corporate money available than the entire U.S. Government does, is "big-assing" us on the subject of actually having to eventually repay the U.S. and State governments... Like Exxon-Valdez being blamed on the actions of one employee, who was imprisoned, and saddled further with a debt that's in the hundred billion dollar range, leaving the Creditors to twist in the wind (Exxon to fishermen: don't blame us, we ain't paying you a thing, F.O.A.D.) It pays, however little, to realize that the main reason for the lack of Federal Funding is the Corporate Welfare given to several of the Largest and Wealthiest entities in THE FRACKIN' WORLD, MON!!! including the very expensive for actual taxpaying citizens, as opposed to Tax-Dodging Corporate "citizens", Wars of Conquest which benefit exactly Whom? Why, the same Oil Companies, like BP, who are expecting the underfunded Federal Government to clean up their little oopsie. And are already filing briefs countering the expected bill coming their way. How very DARE those Peasants demand that we pay for the damage we do? They're also deploying Texas and Louisiana Inmate Unpaid Slave Laborers to fight the damage. Sweet, eh? The ultimate use of Slavery for the benefit of the Ultimate Slave Corporations. If there's any payment made to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, or the Louisiana counterparts, the Slaves ain't gonna get any of it, not an extra bean on their plates. Same as always.
Jealousy, envy, and the “natural superiority of Western Civilization”
First we need to define a few basic terms. Jealousy and Envy are often used interchangeably. They are not interchangeable. Jealousy is the notion that somebody else wants what you have, whether it's based in truth or in sick fear. Envy is the desire to possess something somebody else has. In America, most of the resolved homicides fall under those two motives, to the point that when a person is shot in his/her home, her/his spouse or lover is almost never immediately dismissed as a suspect. Envy takes the form of Avarice, Envy and Avarice are described theologically in the Seven Deadly Sins. Avarice leads to the taking of those things of which one is Envious. When that is done at gunpoint, it's called Robbery, and if one crosses the line between Armed Robbery and actually pulling the trigger, it's Capital Murder. What level of money would you wager that those charged with murder in the commission of a robbery are far more likely than those charged with murder of a "cheating" lover or spouse, to receive a Death Penalty or Life w/o Parole? Now, the Non-Western civilizations are accused of promoting Terrorism either through Jealousy or Envy of our "superiority"... but are we superior? One of the things that gets thrown around is the notion of Honor Killing. What, specifically, would be the biggest difference between killing your mate over alleged or actual adultery, and on the other hand, killing your mate over alleged or actual adultery? If you don't go all the way, don't kill, and merely beat your mate into a very dangerous medical condition in a "ritual" manner or if you do it in a non-ritual manner? Where is the difference? If a court system in one civilization condones by default, through lack of actual protections for the battered spouse, or a wink-wink nudge-nudge say-no-more Patriarchal lesser punishment for the Killer Spouse, How is it substantially different in a Religious Zealot society, like America, or another Religious Zealot society like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan? Is the murdered or battered wife of a Christian in a Christian society more or less, better or worse, than the same scenario in another culture or faith? Mind you, the apologists for bombing the living Hell out of other countries often avoid using the Religious angle, they say instead the "christian oriented" Superior Culture of America v. the "muslim dominated savage infidels" in the Rest of the World. Much like the racist notion that one's RACE isn't the primary divider, it's the White Anglo Saxon Protestant CULTURE and Heritage that's superior to the just-by-a-coincidence Non-White, Non-English-nor-Pretestant cultures they're ummm... not necessarily putting down as Inferior, mind you, more like "The White Anglo Saxon CULTURE is ever so much better, you understand, we don't think you're necessarily not as good as us, we're just Better Than You." A slight warning here, when you go around saying you're that much better than others that you get to run their lives or oppress, repress and suppress them if they don't
Obama breaks truth to widows: Miners died as Corporate Slaves, get used to it
Not really. He said they died in pursuit of a better life. But since the Coal Companies and other Corporate owners of West Virginia aren't going to actually invest anything in developing some other way for the people who live there to survive, and the people have not nearly enough opportunity to build their own enterprises, it IS a cycle of corporate slavery. The Horatio Alger and Ragged Dick rags-to-riches stories were Bullshit when they were first published, and still are today. The Mine Workers union song popularized by "Tennessee" Ernie Ford, 16 Tons, says it more realistically. "you load 16 tons what do ya get? Another day older and deeper in debt St Peter don'cha call me cause I can't go I owe my soul to the Company Store." The same people who lobby hard against Unions and fair wages, lobby for "Tort Reform" meaning a Landlord's Lien not only on your possessions, should you default on your lease, but a period of bond-service, debt slavery, should you default. The Mining corporations, in particular, used this as a way of keeping the workers docile. The Company Store, just that, the only way you could get groceries or clothing or any other necessities of life was to purchase them from a commissary owned by the Company. Your lodgings were also owned by the Company. A rigged system where you always owed the Boss for the privilege of working for him. Paid less than you're forced to spend to survive. Try to leave and you get a warrant for your arrest under the Fugitive Laws, have the equivalent of Dog the Bounty Hunter chasing you down, putting you into the County Prison to work out your debt. In a county that's owned by, you guessed it, your Loving Employer. America is sliding backward into that quagmire of Corporate Dictatorship. The saddest part, many of the miners and their families actually eat that crap up with a spoon, the Corporate Lies that they're working for a better future and for their freedom, and that of their children. It's a shameful thing for ONE political party to pay homage to that Blatant Lie. For ALL of the three largest political parties in America, Democratic, Republican, and Tea Parties, to pander to that meaningless CRAP is beyond shameful. Maybe he simply misspoke, and was off by one letter, they were working for a bItter life.
Massey orphan, suddenly fatherless, says Coal equals Freedom
AFTER the Massey Company took her daddy's life with their Union-Busting activities, AFTER they got rich off her Daddy's work and her Daddy didn't... (edit: the comment following was sloppy editing on the part of the "news" service, she blurts out that Fascist Anti-Earth Propaganda about working in the coal mine being the key to economic recovery and compared her Daddy dying to "fighting for freedom." The rest of it is Gospel.) The Massey company, their only concern is that the mine is out of production for a while so they don't get Richer off the sweat and blood and toil and deaths of "their" workers. They continuously refused to provide safety upgrades, "Too expensive." Miners are cheaper than safety equipment. The Massey Energy Corporation is already angling to use this tragedy as propaganda for the Open-Pit, or Mountaintop Removal, or Strip-mine method. Saying they're only concerned about worker safety, of course. This one, for instance, is what used to be southern Deciduous forest, sprinkled with a few pines, see anything growing anywhere near there? The parts downstream from the mine, a Massey project, look nearly as bad, from the toxic runoff. The usually rich forest environment locally suddenly ends up looking like the mountains of the Desert Southwest. Worse, actually. Downstream, the fish are changing sex. Male small-mouth bass are being genetically/hormonally changed into female smallmouth bass. Massey also operates strip mines on land coerced from Indian Nations, like the Northern Cheyenne, and the Navajo and Hopi tribes... and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation, one of our sacred mountains near Chattanooga Tennessee is scheduled to be eco-murdered by Massey. And after they get done killing the mountain they're going to give the toxic waste-dump to the State of Tennessee as a park and low-income housing sites. Aren't they wondrously generous? The state of Tennessee offices which decided to sell Property Which Is Not Theirs, say they can't find any heirs of the original owners, Excusez-Vous? There are tribal offices of the Eastern Band right down the street from them. If they can't find the Cherokee Nation they just ain't looking. They can't find their collective arse with both hands. So they gave... ooops "Leased" land to Massey. Now, if I leased a room and promised the landlord that I would trash it, and put poison all over it, the landlord would rightly be suspicious of my intentions. If I were to promise faithfully to clean it up afterward, even with a record (like Massey's) of destroying properties and never repairing them, and always with the prior promise to fix the damage, the landlord would have to be an utter fool to rent to me. Let's take another look at the CEO, shall we?
“Energy (oil) ministers say 23 Trillion in investment needed” according to AP
--to find new sources of Oil and natural gas, of course. Strangely, that's about what my estimate of the cost of the recent 8 years worth of Federal Giveaways to the Oil Corporations would total. So, do the Oil Corporations REALLY need Welfare from all the governments of the world? Where would that much-ballihooed "Free Market" supremacy account for such a huge bailout to what's supposedly the single most profitable industry of the past century? To be honest, I didn't read past that shocking headline. I just DON'T need to ruin my day reading veiled threats (almost typo-ed "vealed" as in Fatted Calf) from the richest people on the planet about what will happen if they're not given the rest of the Planetary Treasury, the fealty of every son of Adam and a lien on the souls and service of our children for generations to come.
Ol’ Momma Karma she’s a MEAN byotch
Saw another bumper sticker "I Will NOT be forced to learn a Foreign Language to accomodate Illegal Aliens in MY Country." First off, it's not YOUR country. You don't own the whole country. Too bad if your nasty little Klansman feelings are hurt. There were people speaking Spanish and French and Native languages HERE, in Colorado Springs, until the English came with their retarded ass "Manifest Destiny" and not only killed most of the Natives,they forced the rest of us to learn THEIR Language. The better to "accommodate" our Bigoted English Masters. Too damn bad y'all English-only Racist Freaks are getting back a small measure of what you dish out. You don't like it, move back to England. The English Nation appreciate your ill humour at those Bad Ol' Wicked Naughty Foreigners refusing to learn the tongue of their "betters". They had to murder Irish people for four centuries getting to speak English to their English Masters. And then the Irish INGRATES actually Rebelled against their Rightful Masters! How Very Dare They! Of course, the British would compel you to learn actual English grammar, spelling and usages.
Karl Rove admits error in Iraq strategy
ERROR? wtf? Since when, exactly, does a long string of bald-faced Lies work out as being mistakes? Saying something is orange when it's actually red is a "mistake". Losing count of how many beers you drank before getting behind the wheel is a "mistake". Voting for Bush once would be a "mistake" and twice would be unspeakable stupidity, (or Complicity). Underestimating the strength of the will of Human Beings to not be conquered, murdered and robbed might be a very large and stupid mistake, but once it's been pointed out that it never works and has historically FAILED every damn time, then it becomes Sheer Arrogance to push on with it. Not a "mistake". After being warned, calling everybody who warned you "Traitors, Idiots, Moonbats, Bleeding Hearts, Deluded, Crazy, Terrorist Sympathizers" and so forth, then having your collective nose rubbed in the big steaming pile of your own "mistake"... and then pushing on... that's not a "mistake". That's, in the case of sending Americans to kill and die for your money and your arrogance, Treason. And Murder. Thousands of counts of Capital Murder just for the American Soldiers, made airtight Capital Murder by the Patriot Act and several Executive Orders that Karl Rove wrote. Any one count of a serviceman murdered by their treasonous actions would get the entire Bush Administration including Rove and their Ministry of Propaganda Fox News HANGED. Much as I'm opposed to Capital Punishment, I believe I'd buy tickets to the event. Then there are the murders of Iraqi and Afghan and Somali and Sudanese and Pakistani and Uighur and Filipino and the list goes on Civilians and Prisoners of War, Each one of them an act of Capital Murder by reason of it being Terrorism. And again, through the definitions provided by Rove and Jeb Bush and Condi Rice and their fellow PNAC Imperialists. Which one would be a Mistake?
Respect…
Why do the same cops and their tame Social Workers who Demand, under threat of punishment, that we automatically and unconditionally "respect" THEM, Refuse to unconditionally and automatically respect US? Saying that we have to comply and conform to THEIR arbitrary orders, dress and appearance code, even the language we speak among ourselves? Or in the case of the Hotel Owner in Taos, and the cases of Muhammad Ali and Ojore Lutalo, that we take and accept the "White" names, either the ones we were given when we were born into the Slave System, or like in Taos, where the people were supposed to abandon the culture in which they were raised in order to please their White Anglo Saxon Master? Haiti, where they're supposed to abandon their cultural identity, the one the Slave Owners and their successive generations of Apologists have constantly bitched whined and snivelled about, saying the French or other EuroCentric "Cultures" are so far superior to that of the Negroes, who were after all slaves. And simply EVERYBODY knows, Dah-link, that the poor and especially the slaves bring their own poverty upon them by their own innate inferiority. The Cops and their Social Worker comrades have a saying "Respect has to be EARNED" but only in one direction, they obviously don't have any sense of a Reciprocal Duty to "earn" the respect of the Peasants and Commoners over whom they rule. Then they wonder why somebody would put a nine-millimeter slug through the front of heads, right between their piggy little eyes, while they're harassing or assaulting the person or handcuffing him so they can harass and assault him constantly, at their leisure, whenever they damn well feel like it while he's their prisoner. Like Jensen and Jordan found out.
“Separating the Sheep from the Wolves in Afghanistan”
A more polite version of the "Human Shields" crap the Pentagon puts out. Oh, and IDF. And, let's see, the VietMinh, North Korea, the Boxer Rebellion,Oh Here's One, the Rebellion in the British Colonies on the eastern coast of North America a couple hundred years ago. Translating Bullshit to English, using my patented Brother Jonah Pentagon to English dictionary, that comes out as "We don't know who the Hell we're looking for or shooting at, but we're going to tell you that we're only killing Terrorists because we're liars and we think you're stupid". Fellow over to the The Rag Blog named Jonah Raskin used the premise. My sister, and her husband, both Air Force Sergeants, related something that happened in Kurdistan, in the Northern No-Fly Zone a couple of years before the actual invas... ooops "Liberation, yeah, that's the ticket.. A USAF Pilot blew away a flock of sheep and consequently a Kurdish Shepherd, maybe more, can't be sure because the Pilot, with all his hi-tech imaging and targeting doodads and froo-frahs and zu-zus Couldn't Tell The Difference between Humans and Sheep. My Sergeant Sister and husband were LAUGHING about it. Ha ha ha, we murdered a person we were supposed to be protecting and think it's goddamn hilarious! The Pentagoons and later, George W Bush, made a statement that there were NO instances of USAF pilots firing on ground targets unless they were under attack from those "targets". Miss Sergeant made the mistake of telling ME this. OOPS. The joke was that the pilot was "Feeling kind of Sheepish because he was having a "Baaaaaddd day". They still, apparently, refuse to believe that Hell-Fire missiles and the Vulcan motorized 50 caliber Gatling guns then standard on their aircraft, which the Air Force boasts will kill everything within a certain zone, somehow didn't kill the inevitable Kurdish Shepherd. Or Shepherds. They didn't even mention that guy or those guys. They insist that no humans died in the attack, even though the whole premise of the narrative was that The Pilot Couldn't Tell The Difference Between Humans And Sheep. And that Domestic Sheep are never without their shepherds. We bred all the Wild Smart out of them about 40 centuries ago. They can't even give birth without human intervention, they're that damn dumb. For the record, I know my sister from the day they brought me home from the hospital and she hit me with a toy because I wasn't playing with her. She might make mistakes but she doesn't lie to me, especially not when boasting, George Bush lies so consistently that there's no possible way an intelligent rational sentient being could ever take anything he says as valid. The Pentagon is even (gasp) Worse than Bush. Jonah Raskin takes aim at the "American Innocence" where we can't actually believe that people whose nations we're invading and whose people we're shooting would take offense at that, very strongly dislike the idea and, oh, the Inhumanity, Shoot Back. There's a quote from War and Peace, (Warning: the book was written
Question of Nationalism v. Imperialism …again
EU officials not allowing Washington to monitor their economic transactions, Washington upset. So, does Washington allow the EU or Mexico or Cuba or Iran or who-the-hell-ever a similar privilege of monitoring United States bank transactions? Nationalism that doesn't grant equal sovereign rights to every nation isn't nationalism, it's Imperialism. That's the stated British Empires propaganda excuse for The Great War. While and at the same time they were doing to Ireland, India, China, Kenya. etc etc etc etc etc precisely what the King's Cousin the Hapsburg Emperor of Austria and Hungary was doing to Serbia. "Down from the trees, and onto your knees" White Man's Burden, Our Fledgling Civilization is better than yours, which was thriving when our ancestors were living in mud huts. (Hitler actually told Himmler that about his constant harping on Aryan Supremacy, his personal tastes ran more toward Rome) Speaking of Rome, the "Oderint Dum Metuant" policy that Bush made our official foreign relations Nightmare seems to be raising its ugly head once again. I was hoping, ever the optimist, that the hubris of the Bu'ush Regime would end when the Bu'ush Regime ended. Apparently not. There was absolutely NOTHING about the Bush administration or their annointed Replacement Palin/McAncient that indicates a moral or especially Intellectual superiority that they could use to justify their claim to having a right, indeed, a DUTY, to run the rest of the world. The Right wing can, and do, claim a tit-for-tat same-back-at-you about Presidents Obama and Clinton.
Technology, is it science or alchemy?
Woman and man? The X and Y for creating life? Actually, symbols for copper and iron, designated by the alchemists; curiously, X/Y to the Bronze Age overtaken by Iron, the supremacy of technology. Our sixth-graders are learning that alchemy was a science that is no longer practiced. I must be oversimplifying the lesson, because it occurs to me that modern science, on the contrary, has become exclusively alchemist. Not in its eastern spiritual form seeking enlightenment, nor the pre-Chemistry Islamic alchemy of Geber, but its indecorous European operation in pursuit of wealth-conjuring. We call it applied science, it's the academic denomination which gets the funding, whose patrons justify their investment in exchange for technological leaps, intent to deliver mankind from the laws of nature, by spinning straw into gold. It feels no less heretical to say it. Because we know something of alchemy's prospects. As distinguished from the spiritual seekers, the European alchemists were charged by their monarchs to make gold. They had very little to go on, except that lead was a substance closely resembling gold, it had the heft and malleability, it needed only luster. Those kings inclined to invest in laboratories jumped into the technology race. The more their scientists came to understand the material properties, the closer it seemed they got. Eventually of course we can all see on the Periodic Table that the alchemists had only to nudge Pb just a couple of frames over. But now we understand elements are as intractable as prime numbers. In their early grasping at straws, the alchemists figured the seven heavenly bodies which moved across the stars, might have an influence over the metals they hoped to manipulate. Maybe not so strangely, they were never closer to the truth. No, and not even. A Wiki-tangent: the seven celestial objects visible to the ancients already held influence over the days of the week. They were, in order of proximity to the Earth from farthest to nearest: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the sun, Venus, Mercury, and the moon. The Romans believed that these beings kept watch over the Earth in hourly turns, repeating in cycles of seven. Thus the English days of the week are named for which god/planet took the first hour that day, starting with Saturn's day, Sunday, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, and Venus (we substituted their Norse god counterparts: Tiw, Wodan, Thor and Frigg). The celestial bodies were associated by many cultures with the classic elements, earth, fire, water, air. When the alchemists correlated the planets to the known metallic elements, the sun became gold; the moon, silver; Mercury, itself; Venus, copper; Mars, iron; Jupiter, tin; and Saturn, lead. Interesting alignment isn't it? Lead and tin seemed the choicest starting blocks from which to morph a precious metal, but astronomically, they were the furthest away. The answer was literally in the stars, and could have saved a lot of trouble. Eventually man learned that he couldn't change the elements. Since then, the gold-from-lead alchemist has gone the way of the druid. But
Magna Carta one-ply tissue unscented
When I heard the Magna Carta described today as the basis for democratic freedom, in particular, as it set forth that no man is above the law, I worried about the symbolism. Someone will pay $21 million expressly to wipe their ass with it. Can I call it or what? The Magna Carta at Sotheby's is one of only 17 copies drafted in the 13th Century by William Wallace's oppressor. The other copies reside mostly at universities in the UK. The Smithsonian Institution, or the US National Archives, would like to have it in the name of the freedom loving American People. But I couldn't help think of the aristocrats lined up in Francis Ford Coppola's The Freshman, each eager to be the last man on earth to shoot, or eat, the last of whatever endangered species was on the menu. The Magna Carta may be symbolic of common man's hard won struggle, it launched the basis for our judicial system and English Common Law. But this document, certainly now, might hold special meaning to the better-than-thou sort. The entire Western world is seeing an eclipse of the commoner's leverage over his rulers. We're losing our rights and our rule of law. Having seen Habeas Corpus go the way of the Dodo, what could be next but the Magna Carta? "No man is above the law?" I'll bet there is someone willing to pay 21 million dollars to use the Magna Carta as toilet tissue suitable for his noble ass. It will probably become a Skull and Bones requirement. Lo and behold, the buyer is David Rubenstein, the founder of the single most powerful, privately held, oligarch-only warlord club, The Carlyle Group.