Tag Archives: Paris

Mao’s Chinese Revolution responsible for China’s fast capitalist growth today

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Communist Revolution
Many Americans don’t like to think about it this way (or admit it), but without the Mao Zedong led Chinese Revolution, China would not be doing as well as it is today. Because of the Chinese Revolution, China was able to free itself from the domination and control of other nations, and this has led to today’s large and still growing Chinese economy and today’s relatively stable government.

As comparison, take the Indian sub-continent, which was in a better state than was China post World War II. Today, this region has been torn asunder into three separate countries, two of which almost had a nuclear war between themselves, and one of which today is pretty much directly under US thumb. Also, one of these three countries, Bangladesh is the country most likely to be flooded by global warming, and the entire Indian sub-continent region continues to be torn by multiple regional, ethnic, religious, caste, and sectarian strife.

China today is a power that has the recourses to partially stand up to the US superpower, that wants to make all subordinate to its own needs. Thank the Mao Zedong led Chinese Revolution for that. It is not a nation that is totally servile to the mainstream capitalist world structure.

One cannot make too many apologies for China’s ruling group though, as they have now turned away from having any planned economy at all after some absolutely horrendous actions of Mao Zedong post Chinese Revolution. We are talking mainly about the deadly so-called ‘Cultural Revolution’, which was a giant murderous step backward, an action that actually destroyed both culture and economy, as well as much innocent individual life. It was the first step in China’s current Counter Revolution towards the restoration of the brutality of Capitalism in that country.

Despite the advances in economic life made in China due to its relative freedom from imperialist control, the current capitalist future looks grim for the Chinese. Ecologically the economy is being marched down a dead end alley. Yet is that not the fate of the entire world under capitalist domination? We can only wish the Chinese the best in the years ahead. They deserve it after what their society has been through.

Zimbabwe, caught between 2 groups of gangsters

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Pity the poor people of Zimbabwe, who have found themselves caught in the crossfire between two groups of gangsters.

One group of gangsters is made up of the Black clique around home towner Mugabe, while the other bigger group of gangsters is White, and is centered in the foreign capitals of DC, London, Paris, Germany, Belgium, etc. These White gangsters have been campaigning against the Black gangsters for years, and the common folk of Zimbabwe have become the injured and dead victims falling down in the battle for control.

Ground Zero of the White Gangster camp has to be Great Britain, the ex-colonial controller of Zimbabwe. There, the Whites just drool with hatred of the Black gang that had gained ground on them. How to overturn the situation?

The solution was in ‘elections’. There, the control over financing, control over the international press, the control over the international imperialist armed forces, could all be brought out as heavy artillery. The common people got caught in the crossfire.

London’s man, has now run off to the Dutch Embassy… Tsvangirai seeks embassy refuge for help. Condi Rice, amongst others, will see what she can do? It is a pitiful drama now being played out, and though one can have little sympathy with the Black Gangsters, the White ones are even worse. The poor people caught in between…

I just visited a country whose people fell in between local and international crowds of gangsters. The country of Nicaragua, now living the lowest standard of life in the Americas, outside of Haiti. This is a county whose people fell back into the clutches of the White Gangsters of DC through an ‘election’. We forget the war though, as is the same these days as in the case of Zimbabwe. Pity the people caught in the crossfire…

McCain was dubbed the “POW Songbird”

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An excerpt from prisoner of war John McCain’s November 9, 1967 interview for the North Vietnamese newspaper NHAN DAN:
McCain told vietcong about US attack procedures
Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain have released a fact sheet on the highly decorated hero’s service in Vietnam. If this is reminiscent of the Swiftboat shits against John Kerry, at least these vets have the official records and news reports. Apparently John McCain III crashed a total of five planes, received one and a half medals per hour of service, and while the admiral’s son was pampered in the Hanoi Hilton, his extensive singing earned him the name “POW Songbird.”

FACT SHEET: Military record of John Sidney McCain III

Both McCain III’s father and grandfather were Admirals in the United States Navy. His father Admiral John S. ”Junior” McCain was commander of U.S. forces in Europe – later commander of American forces in Vietnam while McCain III was being held prisoner of war. His grandfather John S. McCain, Sr. commanded naval aviation at the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

McCain III, like his father and grandfather, also attended the United States Naval Academy. McCain III finished near the bottom of his graduating class in 1958.

McCain III lost five U.S. Navy aircraft

1 – Student pilot McCain III lost jet number one in 1958 when he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay while practicing landings.

2 – Pilot McCain III lost another plane two years later while he was deployed in the Mediterranean. ”Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula, he took out some power lines which led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral.

3 – Pilot McCain III lost number three in 1965 when he was returning from flying a Navy trainer solo to Philadelphia for an Army-Navy football game. McCain III radioed, ”I’ve got a flameout” and ejected at one thousand feet. The plane crashed to the ground and McCain III floated to a deserted beach.

4 – Combat pilot McCain III lost his fourth on July 29, 1967, soon after he was assigned to the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk combat pilot. While waiting his turn for takeoff, an accidently fired rocket slammed into McCain Jr’s. plane. He escaped from the burning aircraft, but the explosions that followed killed 134 sailors, destroyed at least 20 aircraft, and threatened to sink the ship.

5 – Combat pilot McCain III lost a fifth plane three months later (Oct. 26, 1967) during his 23rd mission over North Vietnam when he failed to avoid a surface-to-air missile. McCain III ejected from the plane breaking both arms and a leg in the process and subsequently parachuted into Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi. After being pulled from the lake by the North Vietnamese, McCain III was bayoneted in his left foot and shoulder and struck by a rifle butt. He was then transported to the Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the Hanoi Hilton.

1973 New York Daily News labeled POW McCain III a “PW Songbird”

On McCain III’s fourth day of being denied medical treatment, slapped, and threatened with death by the communist (they were demanding military information in exchange for medical treatment), McCain III broke and told his interrogator, ”O.K., I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital.” U.S. News and World Report, May 14, 1973 article written by former POW John McCain.

It was then that the communist learned that McCain III’s father was Admiral John S. McCain, the soon-to-be commander of all U.S. Forces in the Pacific. The Vietnamese rushed McCain III to Gai Lam military hospital (U.S. government documents), a medical facility normally unavailable for U.S. POWs.

By Nov. 9, 1967 (U.S. government documents) Hanoi press was quoting McCain III describing his mission including the number of aircraft in his flight, information about rescue ships, and the order of which U.S. attacks would take place.

While still in North Vietnam’s military hospital, McCain III gave an interview to prominent French television reporter Francois Chalais for a series titled Life in Hanoi. Chalais’ interview with McCain III was aired in Europe.

Vietnamese doctors operated on McCain’s Leg in early December, 1967. Six weeks after he was shot down, McCain was taken from the hospital and delivered to a U.S. POW camp.

In May of 1968, McCain III allowed himself to be interviewed by two North Vietnamese generals at separate times.” May 14, 1973 article written by former POW John McCain In August 1968, other POWs learned for the first time that John McCain III had been taken prisoner.

On June 5, 1969, the New York Daily News reported in a article headlined REDS SAY PW SONGBIRD IS PILOT SON OF ADMIRAL,

“…Hanoi has aired a broadcast in which the pilot son of United States Commander in the Pacific, Adm. John McCain, purportedly admits to having bombed civilian targets in North Vietnam and praises medical treatment he has received since being taken prisoner…”

The Washington Post explained McCain III’s broadcast:

“The English-Language broadcast beamed at South Vietnam was one of a series using American prisoners. It was in response to a plea by Defense Secretary Melvin S. Laird, May 19, that North Vietnam treat prisoners according to the humanitarian standards set forth by the Geneva Convention.”

In 1970, McCain III agreed to an interview with Dr. Fernando Barral, a Spanish psychiatrist who was living in Cuba at the time.

The meeting between Barral and McCain III (which was photographed by the Vietnamese) took place away from the prison at the office of the Committee for Foreign Cultural Relations in Hanoi (declassified government document). During the meeting, POW McCain sipped coffee and ate oranges and cakes with the Cuban.

While talking with Barral, McCain III further seriously violated the military Code of Conduct by failing to evade answering questions ”to the utmost of his ability” when he, according government documents, helped Barral by answering questions in Spanish, a language McCain had learned in school. The interview was published in January 1970.

McCain III was released from North Vietnam March 15, 1973

In 1993, during one of his many trips back to Hanoi, McCain asked the Vietnamese not to make public any records they hold pertaining to returned U.S. POWs. McCain III claims, that while a POW, he tried to kill himself.

McCain III was awarded “medals for valor” equal to nearly a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat

For 23 combat missions (an estimated 20 hours over enemy territory), the U.S. Navy awarded McCain III, the son of famous admirals, a Silver Star, a Legion of Merit for Valor, a Distinguished Flying Cross, three Bronze Stars, two Commendation medals plus two Purple Hearts and a dozen service medals.

“McCain had roughly 20 hours in combat,” explains Bill Bell, a veteran of Vietnam and former chief of the U.S. Office for POW/MIA Affairs — the first official U.S. representative in Vietnam since the 1973 fall of Saigon.

“Since McCain got 28 medals,” Bell continued, “that equals to about a medal-and-a-half for each hour he spent in combat. There were infantry guys — grunts on the ground — who had more than 7,000 hours in combat and I can tell you that there were times and situations where I’m sure a prison cell would have looked pretty good to them by comparison. The question really is how many guys got that number of medals for not being shot down.”

No one is faulting John McCain for collaborating with his Vietnamese captors. He survived captivity, however arduous or not. It is enough to say he is a survivor. It would be too much though to call him a hero.

John McCain the maverick unfavored filly

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CNN ignored Cindy McCain 100 million beer fortune to paint husband as lowest income underdog
John McCain isn’t just a maverick TM, he’s that unfavored horse in the Kentucky Derby!

They made a movie about him. America’s favorite underdog, a Heratio Alger story, T-Bone Pickens, poor boy makes good, Beverly Hillbillies, overcoming odds, Everyman, a dog’s life, Because of Wynn Dixie, Benjie, Fire House Dog, Rudy, boy struggling against disability, custodian math whiz, Pay it Forward, Sling Blade (didn’t see either), Bad News Bears, Rocky, mongrel saves world, Ugly Betty, what was that damn horse’s name? Old Stewball?

McCain kisses Bush 18% approval Ass, embraces Neocon war fiasco as his own, dons Yarmulke despite growing brazenness of Israeli crimes, and eclipses Keating Five savings and loan corruption infamy. Try as he might, McCain can’t paint himself dumber than good ol’ boy, how-bout-a-beer, George Dubya. But it makes him look pretty dumb, doesn’t it?

The maverick label was a whole cloth invention and Rockford should take it back for trademark infringement. McCain is no more a lone maverick than he is the poor-boy candidate on CNN’s income comparison. McCain’s wife beer-heiress Cindy is worth 100 million. What’s the income/ dividend/ interest on that kind of fortune, and why isn’t it included on this joint income survey? Oh my goodness. Are you getting any sense that our media is going to represent the election with any honesty? If John McCain mounts a mechanized Trojan horse at polling stations in predominantly Democratic districts, and personally tramples black voters, are we going to hear about it?

To Recreate 68 at the Denver DNC is not a call to incite a Rumble in the Jungle

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Free the Conspiracy EightContrary to the hype it is encouraging, RECREATE-68 does not want to recreate the violent clashes of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. That would have to be up to the police. While we know the Chicago Seven (+1) and their cohorts did not go quietly, it is now also well admitted that the violence in 1968 was perpetrated by the Chicago police without provocation.

I don’t think anyone wants to relive that brutality again, especially as riot police today have much more debilitating and potentially lethal weaponry. Recent demonstrations, as in Seattle against the WTO and in Miami against the FTAA, have seen militarized police force used against a well intended, if obviously outraged, outcry.

Last week at a public debate against Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown, Recreate-68 event coordinator Glen Spagnuolo made clear that they are not interested in receiving a beating or permanent injury at the hands of overzealous police. Of course the catch-phrase “recreate 68” does titillate with accompanying slogans like “Do It in Denver,” but this is done to pique people’s interest, and it has accomplished that.

Recreate-68 is determined to get people engaged with the DNC, in the streets, instead of in front of their televisions as passive spectators to the usurping of their power. The Democrats are party to continued funding of the war, raiding the US treasury for the rich, denying Americans universal health care, taking away our civil liberties with the Patriot Act, and colluding with murder, torture and profiteering. If the American people go along with these crimes, they are accomplices. Too bad they are also the victims. Official channels do not permit people to raise their voices above a silent consent. The DNC in August, in Denver, is opportunity knocking in the streets.

When party organizations admonish you to work through the system, they perpetuate their power to deny progressive reforms. The will of the people has only ever expressed itself through protest. Democracy, Human Rights, Abolition, Suffrage, Child Labor, Civil Rights, Pacifism. We have only made these gains by collective action. A redress of grievances is what it’s called in the constitution. I can just hear Democratic representatives saying, “oh we can’t go that that far, we could never get elected if we advocated for such extremist reforms.” They are undoubtedly right, because real reform is always up to you. But as much as Obama can urge you to feel hopeful, “you” doesn’t mean you voting for a representative who is promising you in actuality nothing.

Recreate 68 is about recreating the sense of connectivity Americans held in 1968, when young and old put their bodies into the line of fire desperate to bring an end to the disastrous Vietnam War. The people’s movement of the sixties had been growing, led by men soon assassinated. Students were rioting in London and Paris, and Cassius Clay was suspended from boxing for having declared himself a conscientious objector. By 1968 people understood that nothing would change unless they did it themselves.

Today we are into the sixth year of the Iraq War and there is no American antiwar momentum to speak of. There are diverse projects on the internet and in sporadic protests, but the US effort is a pitiable movement compared to the public outcry overseas.

Particularly lacking are young people. You may say it is because there is no draft, but enough are still volunteering to fight. I rather think that the youthful opposition is absent because of No Child Left Behind. Our children are being educated to be uncritical thinkers, in particular, narcissists and apolitical bubble babies with no immunity to corporate misinformation. They may be cynical, and clever by half, to the extent that they lack a social conscience. As a result, their forever adolescent thinking that nothing can touch them keeps them civically disengaged until it is too late and they are indebted to the machine.

The youthful cynicism which the slick corporate media celebrates as hip irreverence keeps kids from caring for their fellow people, and certainly holds them from believing that anything they do can make a difference. Look at the average age of the typical social activists. They’re past middle age. Is this a coincidence?

Young Americans, even up to age thirty something, are so jaded to have become tragically ineffectual. Electoral politics might be the extreme of their participation, and look where it will get them, against fraudulent pollsters and rigged voting systems.

I’m curious about what will happen in Denver if Recreate-68 is able to mobilize the youth. Perhaps kids will only be able to express themselves as Grand-Theft-Auto and Half-Life have taught them, as our soldiers are doing, cast adrift in Iraq. In that case, the disembodied violence to which we carelessly expose them will have come home to roost. If Denver becomes a riot, it is a development I think we will need to face.

For my part, I hope we can recreate 68. Let’s break through the media moratorium on the social issues important to us. Let’s remind the TV populace that we want to hold at least our Democratic Party politicians accountable to listen to our needs. If the candidates will not, and we’ve already learned that someone like Dennis Kucinich cannot get the nomination, perhaps the party system is too phony to matter.

What if the Democrats are only shills for the Republicans in charge? I believe the Democratic convention might only be setting up a candidate to lose to John McCain. For example, do you think Americans are ready to elect a woman or a black man to the presidency? I’d like to think so too, but I have a feeling the media is prepared to inform us in November, “oh, so close but no cigar!” Who is suggesting that Americans are past the gender or race card? Is it the corporate media, tool of the rich white man? Since when did the average American TV viewer wise up? George W. Bush’s approval rating was already at a dismal low when Americans reelected him in 2004. This, even after televised debates showed unequivocally that Bush was the dunce everyone remembered from the back of their classroom. Even if Bush didn’t really win in 2004, as in 2000, at least there were enough dumb white voters to make it look legitimate. Are those constituents going to vote for an unexperienced, non-veteran non-white Obama? Those errant voters are still out there, you see them, they still have W-04 stickers on their cars. And the the black box vote counting, voter registration and poll both gate-keeping are still in the hands of Republicans.

If the Democratic Party really hopes to represent the people, it has to do much better. If the Democratic Party is not prepared to offer Americans a real alternative to the corrupt misrepresentation in Washington, we can find better entertainment with the charades of the WWWF. Should the Dems hear this from you? Is your representative listening or still asking you to show patience? Take him or her to the mat, in Denver, in August.

My Earth Minute of Reflection

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I’m typing this on the Earth Hour. Immediately after, actually. By the time we’d thought to look at the time, we’d missed the whole thing. Our usually regressive city council had registered Colorado Springs as an official participant, and we wondered if we’d watch the city lights go dark, on a Saturday night, when offices and stores are vacant anyway. Except for the clubs, which would surprise me if they even dimmed the music to mark the event.

Earth Day became Earth Hour became an Earth Minute of Reflection.

Had we observed Earth Hour, extrapolating that by advocating turning off the lights, the organizers had meant all power, I would have unplugged by laptop, to rely on my battery until such a time, the hour later, when I could plug back in to recharge and resume my online connection.

I’m playing right into the comparison described by a friend. He said the Earth Hour effort reminded him of the calls to boycott gas stations on a collectively agreed date, which keep circulating via email. Even if everyone is able to conspire to stop buying gas for one day, the gas companies can count on twice as many customers the next day. Nothing changes unless we curb our consumption of energy.

Earth Hour is wonderfully pragmatic by offering a palatable measure of ECO effort for attention spans which could no longer apply themselves to a whole day of green etiquette required by Earth Day. Perhaps this hoopla garnered more adherents. I missed it. The thought I gave to the environment and Global Warming was my Earth Minute or two. Talking about it. Probably next year I can shorten that.

What does it accomplish when we lower the bar to accommodate the slower adapters? Earth Hour seems all the more a tragic opposite of another progressive concept, the Long Now. Thinking in terms of expanding our sense of responsibility to the future, by tying it to our present, seems a more promising revelation. Earth Minute seems to me like Pennies For Peace, it suggest we can get away with paying the fiddler from just the change in our pocket.

Way of the Cross, Way of Justice

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Stations of the cross, March 21, Noon to 2pm, downtown Colorado Springs
Pikes Peak area Catholics presented their annual Good Friday Stations of the Cross downtown. The stations were manned by Pax Christi Pikes Peak Region, Sisters of St. Francis, Holy Cross Novitiate, Benedictine Sisters of Benet Hill, Colorado Springs Friends Meeting (Quakers), National Alliance on Mental Illness, PPJPC, Dignity Colorado Springs, Penrose Clinical Pastoral Education, and Holy Family Parish.

Fed makes emergency donation…

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In terms of a rate slash, on a Sunday evening. Because it’s Monday in the asian markets and now the London and Zurich and Paris and Berlin markets…

In six hours the markets on Wall Street are going to open, just from what’s already happened in Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, HongKong, and Shanghai, and is rolling across the continents like a huge tsunami of Economic Doom, and early trades here, the Market is going to take a 200 point hit at opening bell.

In a sick ironic twist, the Bear Market is actually as of today a reaction to the Fed bailing out the Americans, the rate slash made it possible for J.P.Morgan/Chase to buy up … Bear …

The markets are now skittish across the world because “the Housing Bubble” the “we overbuilt for a decade and now the market is adjusting mr Bush was babbling about on Tuesday, is only the tip of a very large pimple.

So they cheated, lied, swindled and outright stole, and then got several Tax breaks on top of that… selling the debt on the Predatory Lending to finance other scams… and still other scams….

Did I mention the Chase group in that? why yes I did… they’re the ones who appointed Wolfowitz to be head of the World Bank just last year.

Now, I’m reasonably certain that Mr Bush had plans for what to do when the airborne fecal mass contacts the rotary atmospheric circulation device…

Plans that no doubt involved a quick resignation and being whisked off on the first available flight out of the country, with suitcases full of cash,…

…then spending the rest of his unnatural life in some Mediterranean villa, sitting around the pool drinking martinis with other exiled dictators…

Hey, there’s a Job Opening for him in Afghanistan, and he’s already expressed interest in filling the position!

Meanwhile the victims of this massive ripoff won’t get reimbursed anything.

The thieves who created the problem will have taken too much of the money for any to be left over, to distribute to their victims…

If all this sounds cynical and bitter, that’s only because I’ve calmed down a bit.

I was enraged, vengeful and hate-filled before.

And they wonder why people throw airplanes at their buildings.

Advising Hillary about advising Obama

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Weren’t they so cute, Mary Matalin and the bald guy, circa Election 1992, political advisers and marital partners, swinging for opposite teams, both obviously high-roller clever wits. It could have made a sitcom. Did it? I remember a Mork-n-Mindy-esque book cover. Mr. and Mrs. Smith of political hit-making, presumably. Now I hear there’s another Carville-Matalin academic dream pair advising the Democratic rivals. Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste. He for Obama, she for Hillary. Isn’t that cute? Now wait a minute.

Are we to believe the stakes are so high, and political acumen such a rarity, that married couples have to divide their energies between political campaigns? Out of our entire population, or out of the small pool of “experts” consulted by the networks, the political campaigns have to hire professors whose partners are otherwise indisposed with the other side?!

In any other line of work, it would be called a conflict of interest. But in politics we’re supposed to think it’s a matter of tomayto or tomahto. Nothing you can’t resolve after the 9 to 5. At the end of the day, which candidate wins is a wash.

Probably we’re encouraged to make this comparison. But do you know any couple to survive even a mismatched allegiance to sports teams? The only way I know to stomach a partner’s at-odds political views is to have separate abodes. I’m thinking that elections have indeed become so sophisticated that in order to collude effectively, you have to have intimately briefed operators. What are they called? Bed fellows!

Competing businesses can’t even be caught meeting in the same hotel room without drawing an investigation into price fixing. Election fixing, even with Diebold’s collusion, has got to be quite a tenuous balancing act. You can’t have a Rove type working on both sides simultaneously, attending the meetings at least. But if you’ve got dueling advisers, perhaps they can coordinate the tempo, mood and fiddle, lest one side or the other fall out of step.

If you were being considered for a consultancy, wouldn’t you recuse yourself if your wife was already advising the competitor? If you didn’t offer up the info voluntarily, you could be liable for civil damages if it was found out.

But when it concerns politics, what? Never mind that your wife works for the other side. We need YOU. Oh, and you can tell us what she’s up to, without letting her in on the game. And make certain she isn’t playing you for the same. Or, your recruiters could make this pitch: The public loves a team couple. It dispels the wacky idea that politics have to do with class, or social differences.

Americans are such romantics. They believe (1) love conquers all, it even settles differences of opinion, and (2) that married couples are ultimately faithful to each other above all. One person playing double agent between rivals, betrays both naturally. But two people? They’re kept honest because they can’t lie to each other. Dirty politics become sanitized by Ward and June, each too much a patriot to betray each other.

Holding Iraq down for others to kick it

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It’s been repeated we cannot pull US forces out of Iraq before we have established an Iraq military with which the Iraqis can defend themselves. Not a police force, not a constabulary or carabinieri, but a veritable army to defend Iraq against its neighbors. Unless we’re talking about Turkey.

It did sound surreal the first time they made the case, didn’t it? The US expends all that ordnance to destroy the Iraqi army, then we claim to need to build it up again. But Iraq has enemies besides just us, we’re told, so fair enough, we’ll defend them until they can do it themselves. But that doesn’t apply to Turkey.

Apparently, the US, and the Iraqi Puppet military role with respect to the Iraqi northern neighbor of Turkey, is to hold the region open to surgical strikes on select Iraqi malcontents. The Turkish incursions have the same elements of Israel’s excursions into Lebanon. They are facilitated by the US.

These extra-judicial posses, lynch mobs I suppose you could call them, are like the raids General Pershing used to conduct into Mexico in search of Poncho Villa. Complete violations of another nation’s autonomy. The US provides the equipment, the intelligence, often with advisors, and the diplomatic cover. When international outrage reaches critical mass, the US finally relents and expresses its concern that the offender show proper restraint. In Israel’s case, the US withheld its admonitions like an old man who’d lost his hearing aid. Watch if the same is not happening with Turkey.

Turkey’s beef with Iraq has to do with the longstanding effort on the part of the Kurdish minorities in Iraq, Iran and Turkey to call for an independent Kurdistan. Turkey does not want to lose its mountainous regions to the Kurds, and has suppressed its own Kurds by even criminal means. Turkey resists admitting responsibility for the Armenia Genocide lest comparisons be drawn to how it has been resolving its Kurdish problem.

Turkish General Haldun Solmazturk describes the latest Turkish incursion into Iraq on Voice of America as having dealt a blow to the PKK, the faction in the highlands of Iraq and Turkey which is fighting for Kurdish independence.

“Fatal would be too much to describe the potential effect,” he said. “But it would be a major blow. Because in any conflict you do not fight the people, you fight the minds and wills of the people. Such an operation will be a major blow on the will of the people.”

Brewing your competitor’s beer

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Acquired by Carlsberg Heineken
Family owned breweries keep getting bought up by the beermeister conglomerates. It’s very easy to illustrate why this is a bad thing, in terms we can all savor at the tip of our tongues, to lament as they slip from us.

Say you’re a tomato farmer who’s perfected the tasteless red orb. It looks nice, held up to the light it has no imperfections, it has a shelf life of uranium (not by coincidence), with your advertising budget you’ve dubbed it the King of whatever, and your huge outfit is selling gangbusters.

Say there linger still some small-timers growing old-tyme tomatoes that still taste of whatever inspired people to eat tomatoes in the first place. In comparison they make your tasteless thingies look bad. No one’s buying your dismissive tomayto – tomahto rebuke, your toMAHtoes taste like buffalo piss, excuse me, like stalks of tasteless ruffage.

It’s not your fault, the growing market, the demands of mass distribution, the lower expectations of middle of the road taste buds have dictated less dramatic flavors and aromas. Your product is what the doctor ordered, which explains hospital food.

But upstarts and throwbacks reminding your customers of the savors of yore is the last thing your tomato and his deservedly fragile self-esteme can handle. Buy those damn farmers out and serve up their moldy oldies like the inconsistent, pungent manure patch kids they are. Tweak ’em to make sure they only ever appeal to the fringe. Like buttermilk and salted meat, you’ll see the last of ’em.

If you’re a beer executive, and you’ve got a cheap beer. It’s inexpensive to make, easy to sell and yields the profit margins that made you a powerhouse in the first place. Say you’ve finally acquired that damn boutique beer but that it is less profitable. Which would you rather be selling to your customers? What if the less lucrative beer threatened to cannibalize the sales of the other? What are you going to do about that?

Ancient Costa Rica for sale

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Denver-Art-Museum-LibeskindThe kids are still on Christmas break and are starting to show definite signs of cabin fever. To stave off a domestic implosion, we took a trip up to the Denver Art Museum yesterday. The DAM recently opened a spectacular addition designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect chosen to rebuild the World Trade Center site. But I had an ulterior motive. I’d recently read about the DAMs 16,000-piece assemblage of pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial art, including one of the world’s largest collections of Costa Rican artifacts, nearly 2,000 items, donated to the museum by Denver businessman, Frederick Mayer, and his wife. I wanted to check it out.

We’re planning a trip to Costa Rica. Although not much is known about pre-Columbian Costa Rica in comparison to the high cultures of Mexico and South America, recent excavations have uncovered numerous artifacts, including jade carvings. Jade is green and pretty and shiny, perfect for an art lover of my caliber, so I wanted to see it for myself. Call it a bit of research before hitting the craft markets in Sarchi!

Sure enough, Eric and I lost ourselves in a huge room filled with thousands of artifacts. Stone, ceramic, textiles, gold and, oh yes, jade. After an hour or so, we’d barely made a dent in the pre-Columbian collection. Vowing a subsequent visit to the Spanish Colonial galleries, we left to collect the kids before their art experience became Night-mare at the Museum.

As always, looking at ancient artifacts leads me into lofty reverie of past worlds and bare-chested warriors. But this time I couldn’t help but wonder about Jan and Frederick Mayer as well. Certainly amazement and appreciation for their commitment to art and to philanthropy. But really, how on earth had one couple managed to collect this much art from a small Central American country? And why aren’t many of the beautiful pieces residing in Costa Rica, teaching and providing inspiration to Costa Ricans? Especially because Costa Rican pre-Columbian history is not nearly as well-documented as that of its neighbors.

Costa Rica has taken significant measures to protect their natural environment from exploitation. Nearly 20% of the land is set aside for preserves, parks or refuges of some sort. But after my trip to the Denver Art Museum, I’m thinking that perhaps Costa Rica should endeavor to protect other national treasures, especially art created by the hands of largely unknown ancestors, from passionate and well-meaning American oilmen.

Jade museum Costa RicaI will visit the museums in San Jose and let you know how they measure up against the breathtaking Denver Art Museum, with its encyclopedic collection of pre-Columbian Costa Rican artifacts–and hopefully return with a few shiny jade replicas of my own!

Ohm, the katoey

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The world press took a brief respite from studying in detail Britney Spears, Hillary Clinton, and Paris Hilton to titillate us all with the grand search for one pedophile.

I am surprised that there was time to do this since the OJ Simpson case is also needing reportage time. Still, I am glad that the eyes of the world press did what they had to do, otherwise we would never have been introduced to Ohm, the katoey, the ‘ hero’ in all this!

I wonder if he will later publish a book for the world to read? It would be nice to have his story fleshed out some.

Oh, and here is some info about how the pedophile got his start as a Canadian military chaplain! Religion and the military are always a fine mix to help build character…

Don’t eat French Fries

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OK, OK! The dittoheads are back to eating French Fries, and we get stuck with the damn Freedom Fries. They taste so damn plastic, too.

Did this ‘socialist ‘French foreign minister, Kouchner, get tutored by the US Democratic Party? He is to socialism as Gorbachev is to communism… a negation. And in the US many Right Wingers are way more ‘Left’ than the Democratic Party ‘progressives’, too. We live in a topsy turvy world, it seems.

Now, we should all begin to pity poor France. Because so many dummies over there hated immigrants more than they ever loved France, now their France will be torn apart like Bush has torn apart America and Americanism.

The least we can do for them to show solidarity is to stop eating French Fries. Let’s try Belgian Fries instead. The Paris Commune is now turned into a Starbucks.

From the Times….

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Bichon FriseThis article in the NYT made me laugh. Just this morning, while driving my kids to tennis lessons, we saw a Bichon Frise. I said, “Hey kids, it’s a Bitchin’ Freeze.” Devon, age 9, said, “Mom, is our dog a bitch?” Lara replied, “You just said bitch.” Devon, “Yes, but not IN VAIN!” Ho, ho, ho.

August 7, 2007It’s a Female Dog, or Worse. Or Endearing. And Illegal?
By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM

The New York City Council, which drew national headlines when it passed a symbolic citywide ban earlier this year on the use of the so-called n-word, has turned its linguistic (and legislative) lance toward a different slur: bitch.

The term is hateful and deeply sexist, said Councilwoman Darlene Mealy of Brooklyn, who has introduced a measure against the word, saying it creates “a paradigm of shame and indignity” for all women.

But conversations over the last week indicate that the “b-word” (as it is referred to in the legislation) enjoys a surprisingly strong currency — and even some defenders — among many New Yorkers.

And Ms. Mealy admitted that the city’s political ruling class can be guilty of its use. As she circulated her proposal, she said, “even council members are saying that they use it to their wives.”

The measure, which 19 of the 51 council members have signed onto, was prompted in part by the frequent use of the word in hip-hop music. Ten rappers were cited in the legislation, along with an excerpt from an 1811 dictionary that defined the word as “A she dog, or doggess; the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman.”

While the bill also bans the slang word “ho,” the b-word appears to have acquired more shades of meaning among various groups, ranging from a term of camaraderie to, in a gerund form, an expression of emphatic approval. Ms. Mealy acknowledged that the measure was unenforceable, but she argued that it would carry symbolic power against the pejorative uses of the word. Even so, a number of New Yorkers said they were taken aback by the idea of prohibiting a term that they not only use, but do so with relish and affection.

“Half my conversation would be gone,” said Michael Musto, the Village Voice columnist, whom a reporter encountered on his bicycle on Sunday night on the corner of Seventh Avenue South and Christopher Street. Mr. Musto, widely known for his coverage of celebrity gossip, dismissed the idea as absurd.

“On the downtown club scene,” he said, munching on an apple, the two terms are often used as terms of endearment. “We divest any negative implication from the word and toss it around with love.”

Darris James, 31, an architect from Brooklyn who was outside the Duplex, a piano bar in the West Village, on Sunday night was similarly opposed. “Hell, if I can’t say bitch, I wouldn’t be able to call half my friends.”

They may not have been the kinds of reaction that Ms. Mealy, a Detroit-born former transit worker serving her first term, was expecting. “They buried the n-word, but what about the other words that really affect women, such as ‘b,’ and ‘ho’? That’s a vile attack on our womanhood,” Ms. Mealy said in a telephone interview. “In listening to my other colleagues, that they say that to their wives or their friends, we have gotten really complacent with it.”

The resolution, introduced on July 25, was first reported by The Daily News. It is being considered by the Council’s Civil Rights Committee and is expected to be discussed next month.

Many of those interviewed for this article acknowledged that the b-word could be quite vicious — but insisted that context was everything.

“I think it’s a description that is used insouciantly in the fashion industry,” said Hamish Bowles, the European editor at large of Vogue, as he ordered a sushi special at the Condé Nast cafeteria last week. “It would only be used in the fashion world with a sense of high irony and camp.”

Mr. Bowles, in salmon seersucker and a purple polo, appeared amused by the Council measure. “It’s very ‘Paris Is Burning,’ isn’t it?” he asked, referring to the film that captured the 1980s drag queen scene in New York.

The b-word has been used to refer to female dogs since around 1000 A.D., according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which traces the term’s derogatory application to women to the 15th century; the entry notes that the term is “not now in decent use.”

But there is much evidence that the word — for better or worse — is part of the accepted vernacular of the city. The cover of this week’s New York magazine features the word, and syndicated episodes of “Sex and the City,” the chronicle of high-heeled Manhattan singledom, include it, though some obscenities were bleeped for its run on family-friendly TBS. A feminist journal with the word as its title is widely available in bookstores here, displayed in the front rung at Borders at the Time Warner Center.

Robin Lakoff, a Brooklyn-born linguist who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, said that she despised the word, but that enforcing linguistic change through authority “almost never works,” echoing comments from some New Yorkers who believed a ban would only serve to heighten the word’s power.

“If what the City Council wants to do is increase civility, it would have to be able to contextualize it,” said Ms. Lakoff, who studies language and gender. “You forbid the uses that drive people apart, but encourage the ones that drive people together. Which is not easy.”

Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr., the Queens Democrat who successfully sponsored a symbolic moratorium on the n-word that was adopted Feb. 28, said he supported Ms. Mealy’s measure, but acknowledged that the term had many uses.

“We want to make sure the context that it’s used is not a negative one,” Mr. Comrie said yesterday.

Back at the West Village piano bar on Sunday evening, Poppi Kramer had just finished up her cabaret set. She scoffed at the proposal. “I’m a stand-up comic. You may as well just say to me, don’t even use the word ‘the.’ ”

But at least one person with a legitimate reason to use the word saw some merit in cutting down on its use.

“We’d be grandfathered in, I would think,” said David Frei, who has been a host of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in New York since 1990. The word is a formal canine label that appears on the competition’s official materials. But Mr. Frei said he worried about the word’s impact on some viewers, especially younger ones.

“I think we have to take responsibility for that word on the air. The reality is it’s in the realm of responsible conduct to not use that word anymore.

Goyim in TV land

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No need for a holsterWhy are we promoting dorks like Texas Ranger and Conan O’Brian as centers of attention on television? Is this Hollywood’s idea of the accessible every-man? Somebody’s got to be laughing their head off behind the scene.
 
Clearly the standard for leading men is otherwise high. Consider that the Oceans 11 frat pack have no peers to cast in competing blockbusters. There have always been Ralph Kramdens and Ed Nortons, re King of Queens et al, or flat out queens and eunuchs, but where does medialand come off casting Chuck Norris as any kind of Tommy Lee Jones ranger? Norris looks as absurd as the stereotype he pioneered, the white man in Eastern man’s pajamas, where they don’t tuck 45-Magnums under their judo belts.

And where does Conan O’Brian embody anything more than the wiseacre comedy writer’s idiot kid brother (Eddie Haskell minus Dennis the Menace), who was visiting the set but had to step into frame because everyone even remotely qualified was throwing up. We all know how competitive comedy is, comics don’t grow on trees but they crowd the stand-up circuit.

Acts like Chuck and Conan are onscreen to insult us. Like miserable quiz-show contestants, they give every-man a sense he’s not the dumbest, dumbest-looking loser in TV-viewer-land. The beer ads don’t have to be so clever by comparison.

Creepylocks and the three blondes

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Petit family as media would have you see them- Natalee, JonBenet, Nicole and STRAW DOGS emasculated husband Dustin Hoffman.
The spectacular triple-murder-rape invasion of the Petit family home in Cheshire Connecticut drew comparison to the brutality of the supersexed ruffians from A Clockwork Orange. Sam Peckinpaw’s Straw Dogs was released the same year, banned in the UK until only recently, and depicted the similar rapist bogeyman but focused on cultured man’s incapacity to safe-keep his house and blonde.

Failing as a protector is a timeless phobia which has driven such memorable protagonists as Braveheart, Rob Roy, Josey Wales, the Coward of the County, ad manipulatum. So well explored in fiction and fantasy, why must the media exploit those unlucky victims in real life?

We already know legions still vicariously work over the ritual assault of little JonBenet. Our whole populace displayed an embarrassingly unhealthy curiosity about the ease with which an unaccompanied young white girl could vanish in Aruba. And then there’s the slut fetish, aimed at Nicole Simpson, defiler of America’s Hertz sweetheart, given her due, where we got to stalk her sexual promiscuity and cut it quick. Those ugly national predilections are known. Why then parade the Petit cadavers through the grinder?

The Petit blondes were murdered, their house burned, the perpetrators apprehended. Already the story sows fear and drives firearm sales and home alarm upgrades. Why dwell further into the grim of their grisly deaths? Can we not resist hearing that mother and daughters were tied to beds, raped, etc, tormented, revisited, etc? The two joy-rapists are going to be celebrated in prison. Not only for despoiling the rich man’s white women, but for Goldielocks taste testing womanhood from a controlled sample: supple experience, freshly husked, and Media’s favorite fixation the forbidden fruit. And though the news pretends a hushed reverential tone, a voyeur America along for the ride.

The Good Samaritan in few of us

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I sat in the church pew absolutely shocked to be reminded how many times the word peace is mentioned at mass. I was struck mainly to think that American church-goers pay lip service to this word every weekend, year by year at war, and yet our military aggression persists without congregations raising their voices to protest. What kind of peace are they praying for? You know it of course, for peace at the barrel of a gun.

These churchgoers also listen every week to readings and homilies about religious virtues. What context is piety given in the midst of deliberate war and economic predation?

Last Sunday I was treated to the parable of the good Samaritan. Probably you know it, Jesus’ answer to how we should treat our neighbor. Jesus told of a man fallen victim to brigands, left for dead at the side of the road. A priest passed unmoved, so too a fellow Jew, crossing to the other side to avoid the man in need. Finally the Samaritan, an ethnic origin unchosen by God and held in general suspicion and disdain, interrupted his journey and the rest is history, well biblical history. The Samaritans might have been dog-fighting Nazi bastards every last one, until Jesus immortalized the hypothetical actions of one and now Samaritan is synonymous with good.

Today we hear the story about the traveller in need and think it’s a no brainer. We liken ourselves to natural Samaritans and can all but visualize our fellow parishioners lining up to help as readily as we queue for communion. But would that be true? Why were the original passersby so reluctant to help? I wondered if our priest sermonizing on the moral was prepared to explain his ancient colleague’s un-priestly callousness.

Perhaps the priest and the other unhelpful fellow formed a particular opinion about the denuded victim. Maybe he was thought to have been damn foolish or careless to have fallen victim to the bandits. What good does it do to help a person who doesn’t have sense enough to help himself? Give him money and it will likely flow directly to the next bandits on the trail. Perhaps that’s what the passersby were thinking. The Samaritan knew better, he knew that true compassion shows itself toward your enemy. Compassion toward your brother or compatriot is just teamsmanship. Real compassion is finding sympathy for someone unlike you out of kinship for all beings.

It’s certainly time to update the parable. How likely is it for any of us today to encounter a denuded mugging victim? Of course we’d be on board, but we’re never tested. What if, however, the victim is a welfare recipient beaten down by the system? Or a fat person on food stamps duped out of an understanding of health and self-preservation by predatory capitalism? What about a drunken derelict whose self-destructiveness is owed to some demon and now he’s likely to medicate himself to death and even rob you of more than your assistance to do it?

What if it’s a drug pusher or pimp or gang banger, who’s been given no other option? Perhaps a gambler who’ll throw away the last cent meant for his baby’s formula? Or perhaps a well-fed hag who runs a windowless bordello full of girls abducted from the countryside, she herself dying of cancer, a victim of tobacco brigands or chemical pollution robber barons? That person. Would you stop to help that person, as Jesus asks, as a good neighbor?

Life in the fast lane

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Have you ever fasted? We all have heard about people who do, but why do they fast? Why on earth would they fast? Self deprivation and delayed gratification have no place in the American way of life. Growing up Catholic we always tried to give something up for Lent. Usually it was something that we didn’t much care for to begin with, like black-eyed peas. But to truly take oneself out of a state of constant satiation seems unnecessary, if not downright crazy.

I’ll tell you something unbelievable. Fasting is fantastic. It is healthy. It is powerful. Physically, the process of digestion consumes more energy than nearly anything we human beings do. It is nonstop and tiring to the body. The garbage we put into ourselves on a daily basis overwhelms our systems…thanks in part to gluttony but with big kudos to the food industry who has meddled with the food supply to the point of absurdity.

The absolute best way to fast requires copious amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables, an expensive juicer, lots of time. A simpler fast that I’ve discovered has been around for 50 years or so. 3 ounces of fresh-squeezed lemon or lime juice, 3 ounces of Grade B maple syrup (this is not the syrup you buy at the local supermarket….look at a health food store or buy it via the internet). 2 or 3 capsules of cayenne pepper. 24 ounces of distilled water. Drink this all day long.

Day one is the most difficult. The body begins to release toxins. You may feel sluggish. You’ll certainly feel your addictions to various foods. Day two is a bit easier. By day three or four you’ll begin to feel powerful…akin to runners’ euphoria. Your body is free, your mind is unencumbered, you are living life on a higher plane.

Jesus fasted in the desert for 40 days. Do you think that this was a sacrificial act? If so, it certainly pales in comparison to death on a cross. No, I believe Jesus fasted to release himself from the bonds of human frailty….to put himself in contact with the divine. That’s why yogis fast, why Muslims and Christians fast. Why I fast. Try it. It will certainly change your body. Perhaps it will change your life.

Condoleezza Rice pushes for US into Sudan intervention

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The liberals pushing for US/ European ‘action’ on Darfur seem totally delusional. Right now, they are pressuring Rice and Bush to do what Rice and Bush want to do anyway, which is to push US governmental intervention into Sudan. The Save Darfur crowd thinks that necessary to stop genocide.

And who’s to stop US genocide against the Iraqis and Palestinians? In a decade and half of US intervention in Iraq, 10 times the number of Iraqis have lost their lives compared to those lives lost in the Darfur conflicts. Two million+ Iraqis have lost their lives while the US has lost less than 5,000 dead. In Darfur, several hundred thousand have lost their lives inside their own country of Sudan. It is a civil war, unlike the Iraqi vs US War/ Invasion/ Occupation.

GENOCIDE, that is what the US has been about for decades now. Not just in Iraq, too. How stupid to ask genocidists like the American government to intervene, supposedly all to stop a supposed genocide. It is crazy to be doing just that.

Next weekend, the CS Justice and Peace group will be holding a ‘benefit for Darfur’. I will be there with a sign that demands that the USNATO stay out of Darfur. Those inside will be demanding that the US take ‘action’. That’s what Condoleezza Rice plans to do. See BBC commentary about the Paris Summit and Rice and the result will be a US firmly planted in Africa and yet more bloodshed across that continent.

Map of GDP comparisons

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How does the US economy compare with other countries? Check out The Map. Kind of explains the US ruling elites’ addiction to imperialism.

East Timor has the distinction of being the world’s most pitiable economy, closely followed by other places that US foreign policy has helped make absolutely miserable; places like Somalia and the Gaza Strip.

The Map given above is only one estimate of world and state economies, and may be dated. Here is another grouping of the numbers

‘Save Darfur’ interventionists seem bloody ignorant about Africa, its culture, and its history- Save Lado, too, Comrades!

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Free Tibet, Stop Genocide in Kosovo, Liberate East Timor, and now Save Darfur with that ‘genocide’ tag being thrown around again. And lots of vitriol against Arabs and China mixed in. There seems to be all sorts of poorly thought out comments and ill considered positions going around town concerning this issue of ‘Darfur’, currently in the national spotlight ala Paris Hilton.

One local activist recently claimed on his web site that the Sudanese government was a US puppet state. Talk about getting it totally backwards! The reality is it’s the independence of the Sudanese government from DC control that Another activist here in the Springs was cheer-leading Democratic Party Colorado Governor Ritter for taking steps to firm up the US campaign beginning an economic war against Sudan. Colorado will not do bizness with bad Africans! Oh, Whoopee, Guvnor! I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you will do business helping your political buddies commit GENOCIDE against Palestinians and Iraqis, though. Am I right?

Right now, the Colorado Springs pro-peace people seem to be stumbling around in the dark on many fronts. The police attack on the St Patrick’s Day parade participants has them stumbling, and the anemia of the national Pro Peace folk hasn’t helped either. So why not jump on the ‘Save Darfur’ bandwagon? It makes sense. I guess there is just not enough problems on the home-front at this time? So let’s go save some Black folk from the evil Arabs and Chinese! And we’ll be led by Dubya, who will correct his problems in Iraq by changing a letter and nuking Iran.

The Justice and Peace had ourselves up a booth at Juneteenth today. They placed us right next to our old buddies, the storm troopers under the command of Police Chief Liars Myers. We’re getting to be almost family at this point. And on our nice little table we had some lit about Saving Darfur.

No, nobody had brought any material saying it might be nice saving all of Africa by getting the US the fuck out of their. I felt in a genteel mood and just sat for a while chitchatting and smelling the bbq. The Gazette was Heiled as being so very generous for poor Black folk by having ‘given generously’ with the publicity. It felt so good, so why be contentious? I just couldn’t…

I had my sign ‘Stop US War on Somalia’ with me, but Aw Shucks. Why confuse folk still trying to decide whether the Dar is for the Fur, or the Fur is for the Dar? And every body’s Albanian is still not much up to par And what’s the national language of island nation of East Timor anyway? Uh sorry, I meant the half island nation of East Timor. Hey, why shouldn’t we demand liberation and independence for West Timor, too? And what’s the next half-island down the shore? The world is complex, but you can speed read it if you are a liberal interventionist, for sure! I would have felt like a simpleton with my sign at the picnic.

There were some pamphlets to help you out on this with Darfur on our table. Did you know that Darfur was once an independent nation? Until the British defeated them of course.

Believe me, you will never learn this sort of stuff from the ‘Save Darfur’ crowd. They just don’t know it. That’s right. Darfur was pasted onto Sudan by the British. Those who paste on may want to peel the paste on back off, though. For humanitarian reasons, no doubt. From Blair to Brown to Save Darfur!

By the way, I am thinking of starting up a Colorado Springs society to save the Lado people. Don’t know about them? Hey, they’re just right down the road from Darfur. And guess what? They are victims of genocide, too. Save Lado! Is it pronounced like in Spanish, or like ‘lad oh!’ in English? It’s always fun when nobody can pronounce the name of the place we’re headed to ‘intervene’ into. Makes it more fun to watch the TV news!

I’m not making this up, so do the research on your own and let’s then get together and start a group (or 2 or 3) at Colorado College and get some sweet chickens (let me know if the use of ‘chickens’ here is not pc, like headless chickens) to help us out. What do you say? This is America, is it not? Anything can happen. We’re a good people for sure. So let’s do something for the Lado people right now! Start the propaganda, uh I meant ‘education’ going and we’ll get the troops in as soon as we can!

Meanwhile, let the conservatives increase the military budget a tad more, so that we’ll all then be ready to move into action together.

Save Lado!

Mommy, it’s not right!

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All of us, of course, are very concerned about Britney and Paris, Ted and Rush. They all seem to suffer from substance abuse, and our hearts go out to them as they deal with their own private demons.

Ok, so they don’t suffer so much from private demons, but rather public ones. Still, when Ted’s makeup is wrecked by tears, and Rush shows us his crotch since he’s wearing no thong, it’s rather disconcerting to us all. So, thank God we have reporters like Professor Gary Leupp, whose The Unfair Treatment of Paris Hilton keeps us socially backward denizens of the Left informed with what’s real, and what’s not.

Let’s hope he starts up a column titled ‘SOCIETY’ to give us more regular coverage of our American Idols. We need it to help balance our unbalanced minds.

Lebanon in ruins

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Lebanon lies in ruins after the imperialist allies, the US and Israel, destroyed it once again. Israel’s invasion destroyed about $5 billion dollars worth of civilian infrastructure, and much of South Lebanon’s population has had to pass the Winter amongst the rubble of their former houses and cities.

No help has come, and the only possible assist for them in aid is coming through promises to help from those responsible for the destruction in the first place. At a conference in Paris, the US, France, European Union, and US Arab ally supreme, Saudi Arabia are promising 7.6 dollars of aid mirage to the Lebanese, but only if they do as the imperialists want them to do.

What we have is the mirror landscape that the US has forced upon Iraq and Afghanistan, and seems also determined to force on Iran and Syria in the days ahead. First the US and its allies reduce to rubble your country, and then if you obey us we offer to help repair some of the damage we have done! And everywhere the imperialist US Empire goes it foments warfare race against race, language group against language group, religious sect versus religious sect. Always divide and destroy in order to rule.

US ally, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, in control of the present Lebanese government in great part cooperated with Israel’s last entry into his own country. He thought to use the invasion against his internal opponents, the Shia. Instead, the resistance of the Shia headed Hezbollah to that invasion and destruction, strengthened them and weakened him. He is also held widely responsible for having allowed Lebanon’s foreign debt of $41 billion to have piled up. In short, he is the epitome of corruption, and this is the man the US is supporting against the majority of Lebanon’s population.

We in the US have watched stupid and ignorant from the sidelines, as our government has spread anarchy and chaos from Afghanistan to Iraq to Lebanon to Somalia to where next?….probably Iran, Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, and on beyond. In the last 2 weeks, the Democratic Party voters, that sat passively behind the passivity of their consenting-to-Bush DP leaders, have finally chosen to go out and protest some. The Democrats finally have stirred some. There is a current of optimism and hope in the air for them because of it.

But what of their newly found ability to oppose a little? Is it real, or just a pretense to get the Democratic Party back into office? Are they really opposed to their government’s imperialism? I have my own thoughts to what the true answer actually is. I am less than hopeful that their opposition is anything more than the most shallow and skin deep. I wish that I am proven wrong, but I think that I know my fellow Americans well, and that is what fuels my pessimism. Meanwhile, my heart goes out to the people of Lebanon, who are once again being forced into living in total Hell, all but ignored by those who put them there.

Nuke Dublin and other stories

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Ok so not many other stories in this.

But you know how you can go into certain stores, you know the ones, that have posters and bumper stickers and tee shirts with the Tricolor in the international NO sign, the red circle with the diagonal slash?

And short snappy slogans like Nuke Paris or Boycott France or whatever the hell else the Freedom Fries commando would gladly wear or display.

You hear stupid jokes about how the French are worthless as soldiers, the one about “have you heard the joke about the french army? Well the french army IS the joke!!” and every redneck in earshot busts a gut laughing at how very clever that is.

And you think, to yourself, Self, if the French army really were worthless, why are these buffoons so angry that they didn’t throw their worthless soldiers’ lives away the way GW throws away American and British lives?

So I came up with a new thought for Tee Shirts, and Bumper Stickers, a non-slogan to monkey wrench the slogan driven world gone mad.

Boycott Ireland, ask me why or Nuke Dublin (ask me why)

When somebody asks what that means, tell him that the Irish Republic had also refused to back The Chimp’s war play. Along with other Commonwealth nations like Canada.
It seems to me, personally, that all the invective thrown against the French, is done by cowards.

Simple math tells these cowards that though Ireland had also flat out given the Bushmaster the bird on Iraq, in America there are one fuck of a lot more Irish descendants than French. So they play the Frog-baiting game because they feel that the French descendants probably aren’t nearly as likely to kick their damn teeth down their throats.

Of course, that wouldn’t play very well in Louisiana, because most of the non-French whites there are Irish, so who would they target there?