A Note from a Jew to Mel Gibson:

Dear Mel --


IN VINO VERITAS

So please -- it's MORE insulting for you to stand there
and pretend that what you said isn't what you really think.

"It takes 20 years or more of peace to make a man;
It takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him."

Baudouin I (King of Belgium)

Video: Fishing Bats Battle Catfish in Belize

It's a jungle out there --- but this is amazing, hard as it is to take for us bat-lovers

You MUST see this

****************
July 24, 2006—In the forests of southern Belize, an airborne angler called the fishing bat makes its living by snatching fish from rivers in mid-flight.

But even a small mistake could prove fatal for the bats, because catfish linger near the surface of the water, and they're hungry, too.

Watch a fishing bat go after its prey, and see what happens when one bat finds itself trapped in the water at the mercy of the catfish.

*********************

Go Skippy, go get 'em -- and look out for that Tree Croc!

Killer Kangaroo Had Wolf-Like fangs, Scientists Say --

Sean Markey for National Geographic News

July 25, 2006

A cache of bizarre animal fossils unearthed in Australia includes killer kangaroos, marsupial lions, and a giant relative of a huge bird nicknamed the "demon duck of doom," scientists say.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney say they found the remains of as many as 20 new species during a recent two-week dig in northeastern Queensland (map of Australia).

"There are weird, flesh-eating kangaroos," Michael Archer, science dean at UNSW, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio earlier this month.

"There are about 35 different kinds of extinct kangaroos in [Queensland] deposits. None of them would've looked like anything we would have recognized today, because they didn't hop," he said.

"These were galloping kangaroos with big powerful forelimbs. Some of them had long canines like wolves."

Henk Godthelp, a UNSW vertebrate paleontologist, says the new kangaroo discoveries include a saber-toothed species that may have used its large teeth for grooming or to attract mates.

"[The teeth] don't really look [like] anything used to rip intestines out of unsuspecting prey," he said.

The team also found more complete skeletons of a previously known carnivorous kangaroo, an early species with short, muscular arms.

"[It] looked like it would give you a very serious bear hug," Godthelp said, adding that 'roo may have used its arms to grab ambushed prey.

"[It] used to leap out from behind trees and scare the bejesus out of prey and then calmly chomp it to pieces."

"Demon Duck of Doom"

The UNSW paleontologists also found fossils of a larger relative of a giant bird previously dubbed the "demon duck of doom."

Most closely related to modern ducks, the flightless "demon bird" probably resembled an enormous emu or ostrich, although fossil remains are scarce. A single fossil leg bone from the new, larger find stands as high as his hip, Godthelp says. The bird's entire leg would have towered above his head.

"And I'm not a short chap. I'm well over six foot [two meters]," he said. "So these were big birds, and you can only imagine what some multinational like Kentucky Fried [Chicken] would have done with them."

The fossils come from the Riversleigh fossil beds in northeastern Queensland, an area rich in old river beds that later became riddled with limestone caves...

Examples from recent years include a number of early crocodile species that were smaller than today's crocs and appear to have been land-based.

It's been suggested that the ancient reptiles may have behaved more like modern-day goannas, or Australian monitor lizards.

The crocs may have climbed trees to escape predators and to leap on prey, scientists theorize.

al-Zawhari calls for Muslims to rise up...

---y'see, OUR leaders aren't the only ones flinging bullshit around ....

***************

Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader issued a worldwide call Thursday for Muslims to rise up in a holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza until Islam reigns from "Spain to Iraq."

In the message broadcast by Al-Jazeera television, Ayman al-Zawahri, second in command to Osama bin Laden, said that al-Qaida now views "all the world as a battlefield open in front of us."

The Egyptian-born physician said that the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah and Palestinian militants would not be ended with "cease-fires or agreements."

"It is a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," al-Zawahri said. "We will attack everywhere." Spain was controlled by Arab Muslims for more than seven centuries until they were driven from power in 1492.

*****************************

Translated, what this means is that the Sunni Fundamentalists that are Al Qaeda DESPISE the Shi'ia Hezbollah and Hamas, and are TERRIFIED that Hezbollah might actually destroy Israel and thereby solidify their position in the Arab world, or even worse, fall in to become a part of the new Persian Empire.

They really don't understand.

60+ post-WWII years of psychotic weapons-buying has put us in a position where Americans may have to go without health care or food, where our human military elements are totally disposable and given sociopathically impossible assignments, but we can blow ANYONE and ANYPLACE to Hell if it gets to that point.

Given the insanity of CRP (ahh, no, not Nixon's CRP, but the Cheney-Rumdum-Bushwah Triumvirate) it's not beyond possibility that our psychos will finish off THEIR psychos by turning Lebanon into one vast black glassy surface of heat-fused sand extending border-to-border, north-to south and east to west.

A skateboarder's paradise.

Re-Posted from Friday, August 05, 2005

"What I am kicking around is this notion: that KNOWLEDGE either goes for the CENTER or it's inevitably a State Whore -- which American and Western education generally is, has been, since its beginning... it's a question of re-establishing a concept of knowledge as culture rather than a question of what's wrong with the schools..."


Charles Olson, The Human Universe

Regarding the posting just below this one:

Am I pro-abortion?

Pro-choice?

I believe in the absolute right to make one's own personal choices* ... and just as soon as I grow a viable ovary-active uterus, I'll let you know about this specific issue.

What I am against is the age-old tradition of self-serving men beating up on young women and girls whenever they feel insecure.

I believe, as Tom Paine did, although he said it with more eloquence and explanation in Rights of Man** --

"Religious zealots -- your god's dicta stop at other people's front doors."

(Tom Paine also said that to you, it's revelation but to him, it's hearsay.
Used that exact word, "hearsay.")

*******************************

**
"The law ought to prohibit only actions hurtful to society."
(This means, if you are offended by what someone else does, too bad -- it is NONE of your business.)

"Political liberty consists in the power of doing whatever does not injure another."
(Again -- no matter what form of moonlight you believe in -- for 9 months, a fetus IS that person in which it grows. If you think not, fine -- think it as regards your own life.)

---------
*
Thomas Jefferson:

"I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

This means, as I take it, that you and I and everyone else has a right to live his or her own life without suffering harassment or haranguing from the religious beliefs -- sincere or otherwise -- of you or me or and anyone else.

Why would he say such a thing? Well, he also had this to say on the subject:

"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty."

Congresspeople kill their own futures by crapping on teenagers...

Senate Removes Abortion Option for Young Girls

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, July 25 — The Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would make it a federal crime to help an under-age girl escape parental notification laws by crossing state lines to obtain an abortion.

The bill was approved on a 65-to-34 vote, with 14 Democrats joining 51 Republicans in favor.

A similar measure passed the House last year, and President Bush said he would sign the legislation if the two chambers could work out their differences and send a final bill to him.

In a statement, Mr. Bush said that “transporting minors across state lines to bypass parental consent laws regarding abortion undermines state law and jeopardizes the lives of young women.”

Critics questioned the necessity of the measure, saying it would apply to only a small number of cases and could result in criminal charges against close relatives or clergy members who interceded to help in a time of personal crisis.

*************************

What gets me, although it shouldn't, is that they're not only totally self-serving swine -- we already knew that -- but amazingly short-sighted self-serving swine.

Do they think the then-to-be 18-year-olds will forget this happened in a year or two?

**************************

Link

"Why look, son -- there's a gay married couple burning a flag over yonder."
"Mom, so what? I'm still hungry. Any more scorpions to eat?"

"Urrp.
Oh, excuse me.
I just ate the hopes of the Lebanese people for breakfast and
it keeps coming back up on me."










Illustration courtesy of Blondesense

Three old whores from Winnipeg
Were drinkin' the cherry wine.
Said one of them to others:
"There's none that's bigger than mine"...

In the world of politics, "oral gratification" means mouthing whatever might tickle the ears of the voters while studiously avoiding EVER speaking of those things that trouble their hearts and minds.



I would never demean a working girl by comparing her to a politician.

As any whore could tell you:

"We're not selling anything that doesn't belong to us.
And there isn't a politician that can make that same statement."


Furthermore, whores actually provide a service.

"The protesters at the DLC's convention derided them as Republicans. But the real pachyderm in the Denver Hyatt was Iraq -- a subject Hillary Clinton and other moderate Democrats don't want to talk about."

Dear Hillary -- if you don't have the fortitude to talk straight to us, answer our questions and concerns, then fuck you.

Let Barbara Boxer run.
Or Joe Biden.
Wesley Clark.
Even better -- Tom Harken of Iowa.

Because -- bet on it -- if you run, you will cost the Democrats MORE votes than Ralph Nader did. And don't pretend it's because people "call strong women bitches." Some of us would LOVE to see a strong woman as our president -- Barbara Boxer, Barbara Lee, Nancy Pelosi, even.

You ARE a bitch -- a signifying, hypocritical, self-serving, phoney.

And we already have one of those in the oval office.

The ironic thing -- if you bow out gracefully now, the Democrats will applaud you, honor you, perhaps even decide you MIGHT be worthy of the office afterall.

YO, BLAIR! -------- Edited (censored) just in case the people who worship some God or other still think His creations are obscene.

We all know that Dick Cheney is the man with the hand up the ass of the sock puppet who calls himself The Decider, but who (or what) tells Dick Cheney to do? Now we know. This is a photo of Graxar the Engineer, out for a breath of fresh air after all day inside Chcney's skull, working the controls. (This is NOT a partisan shot -- you really DON'T want to see what's behind the controls in Hillary's head.)

On Leaders -- self-appointed and otherwise:

They see about as much as an ant crawling at the edge of a bleeding athlete's foot patch between the toes of Helen of Troy. Those who define, categorize, limit, and assume they know it all, are just fucking themselves and pointing accusingly at lovers.

They make their wars and then hire social moralists to point fingers and fix the blame. No good. They say they'll end the wars they started but they don't and they lie when they get caught. People who start wars don't end them. Wars end by attrition. Or by love. Who has enough love to end it?

Wars end themselves. When the sheep stare at the body-garbage, at all the blood and bones, when enough young men are buried alive in pieces of their friends and their recent enemies and can NOT see any difference between the two. When enough people see their own entrails hanging over their belts, dragging on the ground in the mold. When enough mothers have cried and enough fathers have felt despair and enough children wander around the bomb holes, orphaned.

And they they'll all build their power games and put down war until it suits them again. And then the next war starts with gasps of surprise and alarm from the power freaks. And then they get all solemn and consecrate the remains. So sweet and sad. And then they lie and make speeches about how they never wanted a war, no, not them, when all they did was lay low until people forgot. "We must stop the tide!" ... of people who might have some power instead of US.

All the old men who eat hot dogs and beg for votes, and all the stupid old men who make decisions -- let them fight their own fucking wars. At least in the Crusades, the leaders went along and took some risks. Now all they do is sit around in leather bars and talk about casualty rates. All that technology has done has allowed cowards to become leaders.

All the generals and captains and privates and mothers and fathers and industrialists and unions and labor leaders and peace marchers and writers and artists all own the wars. No one is innocent.

If you motherfuckers want a war so goddamn much then fight each other and let us be. GET OUT OF OUR LIVES! Congress and Parliament and the UN and NATO and Presidium and every country-game fucker in the world ... get some axes and wail on each other. And if all the politicians in the world killed each other off that would be the first war that ever did anybody any good ... think about what you've done and what you're doing and what you do for POWER and if you want to put bullets anywhere but through your own useless brains.


From Mandrake's Book
by Howard Pearlstein,
John Muir Publications, 1974

Report on the State of the Union

Nine Hundred Thousand Tons of Steel
Out of control
The brakes don't work
and this grade's so steep
the engine's sure to blow

Nine Hundred Thousand Tons of Steel
Out of control
It's more a roller coaster
Than the train I used to know.

"Tons of Steel" by Brent Mydland,
1987 by the Grateful Dead on In the Dark

What is this crap about Democrats turning on Joe Lieberman because he's moderate, rational, and pro-war?

Democrats are turning against Joe Lieberman because he's an ass-licking toady to George W Bush and an embarrassment to anyone who ever thought their senator should stand up with a LITTLE BIT of dignity.

You don't have to know his policies to see he's a snivelling, whining, flunky who is totally morally compromised and represents nothing but being a jock-sniffer to the big boys with the hammer.

I'm just still amazed (as I was then) that the Democrats would put him up as a candidate for V.P., or that his constituents have tolerated him this long.

He felt up the German chancellor, chewed and talked with his mouth open at a diplomatic dinner, and is arguably on the sauce again...

Presidential Groping

By: John Amato on Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 at 4:15 AM - PDT

She sure doesn’t seem to happy about it to me.

Mash: At the G-8 summit, President Bush grabs German Chancellor Angela Merkel from behind and gives her a quick massage before rushing off. Chancellor Merkel is not amused.

This comment by Majikthise is absolutely and appropriately to-the-point:

Every woman will recognize the guy who sidles up and starts "casually" giving you a backrub without even looking at you, because he wants to preserve deniability in case you freak out. Like any practiced groper, Bush stares right past Merkel as she recoils from his touch.

The play fails, but he just moves on, eyes averted, like it's her problem. ("Oh my God, there's a hysterical woman displaying inappropriate behavior! I'll just pretend I don't notice her egregious gaffe.")

To comment using the words of our beloved oval office idiot:

Isn't about time we got SOMEONE to make him "..stop doing this shit?"

Worth Repeating

This from Bad Attitudes:

From the home page of William Blum, author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II...

Yet, despite the fact that it would be difficult to name a single area of Iraqi life which has improved as a result of the American actions, when the subject is Iraq and the person I’m having a discussion with has no other argument left to defend US policy there, at least at the moment, I may be asked:

“Just tell me one thing, are you glad that Saddam Hussein is out of power?”

And I say: “No”.

And the person says: “No?”

And I say: “No. Tell me, if you went into surgery to correct a knee problem and the surgeon mistakenly amputated your entire leg, what would you think if someone then asked you: Are you glad that you no longer have a knee problem? The people of Iraq no longer have a Saddam problem.”

Former Bush aide kills son, self

Washington Post, July 15, 2006

A former Bush administration official, after arguing violently with his wife Thursday night, shot and killed his 12-year-old son inside their McLean home, then turned a shotgun on himself and committed suicide, Fairfax County police said.

William H. Lash III, 45, was an assistant secretary of commerce from 2001 until last year, then returned to teach at George Mason University Law School in Arlington, where he had begun as a professor in 1994. His wife, Sharon K. Zackula, fled the house before the shootings, and police said yesterday they were not sure what ignited the murder-suicide in a first-floor bedroom.

And yet, when people used to say "There's something unwholesome, not quite healthy, about Bush and his pals," people would say "Oh that's just because you don't like him." True -- I don't like him, have NEVER made any claim to being objective and him and his cronies, but still...

Why greed may be preferable to ideals...

Alan Watts, the Buddhist philosopher and interpreter of Zen, put it this way, in a lecture made during the late 1960's. (This is not an exact quote)

Wars for acquisition (resources, property, factories, etc) tend always to be less destructive than wars of ideology (clash of cultures), since the aggressor wants to own and use those factories, that farmland, those resources. Whereas ideological war is hell-bent on total destruction of the other people.


Something to think about.

You can tell what someone is REALLY like by finding out what they do when (1) they're really scared, and (2) they think no one can see them.

Bob Herbert describes it well:

New York Times, July 13, 2006

Could it be? Will the Bush administration, under pressure from the Supreme Court, actually make an attempt to emerge from the Middle Ages? Is the post-9/11 American Inquisition beginning to come undone?

Here’s the way it has been. The administration has rounded up people at various points on the globe and dumped them like animals (sometimes literally in cages) at the U.S. prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Top officials have insisted not only that these were terrorists, but that they were, as Donald Rumsfeld loudly proclaimed, the “worst of the worst.”

Dick Cheney told Fox News: “They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans, innocent Americans, if they can.”

In the administration’s view, these prisoners had no rights. They could be kept in a state of permanent degradation. They had no right to a lawyer, or even to see the evidence against them. They could be sentenced to life in prison or even death in what could only be called a kangaroo court.

The entire system was rigged. Hearsay evidence would be allowed. Witnesses could be concealed. Information obtained through abuse and even torture could be used.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, in a new report documenting myriad abuses at Guantánamo, noted that a prisoner named Hadj Boudella was told by military intelligence officers: “You are in a place where there is no law. We are the law.”

Lawyers from the center, a public-interest organization in New York, have fought long and heroically to bring even the most minimal legal protections to the prisoners. Along the way it was learned that the inmates at Guantánamo were far from the worst of the worst. Many of them, it turned out, were no danger to the United States at all...

The article continues here:

There's an Irish expression James Joyce used: "Who is he when he's at home?" It asks the question, for all the public posturing, for all the aristo titles, who is the person REALLY?

Guantanamo shows us, when you scrape the eggs off the pan and get down to the metal, who these chickenshit swaggering rec-room patriots of the Bush-league Administration really -- Monkey Boy, Dumfuck, and Cheney (and their sonderkommando sidekicks -- Gonzalez, Rove, Addison, etc).

Terrified little sadists. Mean little boys. Junior versions of Heinrich Himmler. Scum.

We (actual Americans) will be a long time making up for their crimes.

Is there STILL any question that Bush is the anti-christ?

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 11 — More than 50 people were killed in Baghdad on Tuesday in violence that included a double suicide bombing near busy entrances to the fortified Green Zone, scattered shootings, mortar attacks, a series of car bombs and the ambush of a bus with Shiite mourners returning from a burial.

Tuesday’s killings, many of them apparently carried out with sectarian vengeance, raised the three-day death toll in the capital alone to well over 100, magnified the daunting challenges facing the new government and deepened a sense of dread among Iraqis.

**************

MUMBAI, India, July 11 — A string of powerful bombs ripped through a vital spine of Mumbai’s commuter train system during the evening rush hour on Tuesday, killing nearly 200 people, bringing India’s financial capital to a standstill and resurrecting memories of bloodbaths past.

The Indian police placed the death toll at 190, with the number of wounded exceeding 600, according to the Press Trust of India. The casualties are likely to climb, for if nothing else, it was clear even in the chaotic aftermath of the blasts that the attacks were as cold-blooded as they were well-coordinated, intended to inflict maximum carnage.

****************

Posing as a Christian, but committed to stirring up as much war, death, destruction, murder, greed, and horror as possible. Turning the world into a screaming mass of pain.

Dear George -- THIS is what YOU have created -- not God, not Dick Cheney, not the Devil -- YOU OWN THIS PAIN AND HORROR AND MAY YOU SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE SEEING IT EVERY TIME YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES AND HEARING IT EVERY TIME IT'S QUIET.

THIS WILL ALWAYS BE REMEMBERED AS YOUR LEGACY, YOUR ONLY GIFT TO THE WORLD.

Link

Rahm Emanuel hasn't ALWAYS been so critical of the ethically challenged, but still nice to see a congressman who actually knows what "irony" means

Originally posted: July 12, 2006
Dem. tells White House how to save

Posted by Frank James at 10:53 am CDT

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) has taken a recent report on White House salaries and turned it into a sharp stick to poke in Republican eyes.

Here's a press release on Emanuel's House floor speech.

Emanuel on White House Director of Lessons Learned

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) released the following statement in advance of delivery on the House floor:

"Mr. Speaker, yesterday the President said we continue to be wise about how we spend the people's money.

"Then why are we paying over $100,000 for a 'White House Director of Lessons Learned'?

"Maybe I can save the taxpayers $100,000 by running through a few of the lessons this White House should have learned by now.

"Lesson 1: When the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State say you are going to war without enough troops, you're going to war without enough troops.

"Lesson 2: When 8.8 billion dollars of reconstruction funding disappears from Iraq, and 2 billion dollars disappears from Katrina relief, it's time to demand a little accountability.

"Lesson 3: When you've 'turned the corner' in Iraq more times than Danica Patrick at the Indy 500, it means you are going in circles.

"Lesson 4: When the national weather service tells you a category 5 hurricane is heading for New Orleans, a category 5 hurricane is heading to New Orleans.

"I would also ask the President why we're paying for two 'Ethics Advisors' and a 'Director of Fact Checking.'

"They must be the only people in Washington who get more vacation time than the President.

"Maybe the White House could consolidate these positions into a Director of Irony."

Baghdad Erupts in Mob Violence

July 10, 2006

By KIRK SEMPLE

BAGHDAD, July 9 — A mob of gunmen went on a brazen daytime rampage through a predominantly Sunni Arab district of western Baghdad on Sunday, pulling people from their cars and homes and killing them in what officials and residents called a spasm of revenge by Shiite militias for the bombing of a Shiite mosque on Saturday. Hours later, two car bombs exploded beside a Shiite mosque in another Baghdad neighborhood in a deadly act of what appeared to be retaliation.

While Baghdad has been ravaged by Sunni-Shiite bloodletting in recent months, even by recent standards the violence here on Sunday was frightening, delivered with impunity by gun-wielding vigilantes on the street. In the culture of revenge that has seized Iraq, residents all over the city braced for an escalation in the cycle of retributive mayhem between the Shiites and Sunnis that has threatened to expand into civil war.

*********************

THREATENED?

It's here.

It's clear.

They (the Bush-wah admin) needs someone to blame for this, the most grievously monstrous government-organized pig-fuck since George Armstrong Custer decided the Little Big Horn would be a cakewalk, will need someone (besides themselves) to blame.

History tells us it will be the people who WARNED them this would happen.

A sense of pity and compassion would indicate that pulling the troops out would make some improvement, but addictive greed says "Stay the course."

Link

Three New Lemurs Discovered, Add to Madagascar's Diversity

Three new species of lemur in the African island nation of Madagascar have been discovered (Madagascar map and facts). ..


All three are mouse lemurs and are as tiny as their name implies. The palm-size creatures are primates—the group that includes apes and humans.

Researchers first located the three new mouse lemurs in Madagascar's eastern rain forests in 2001. It took several more years to gather sufficient data and complete the genetic analysis that confirms the three as distinct species.
The new lemurs are described and assigned their scientific names in a paper appearing in the current issue of the International Journal of Primatology...


The species Microcebus mittermeieri, for example, is named for primatologist and Conservation International president Russell Mittermeier, "for his commitment and dedication to protecting wildlife and forest habitat all over the world."

The other newfound species were named Microcebus simmonsi, after Lee Simmons, director of the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, Nebraska (the study's lead author, Edward Louis, works for the zoo), and Microcebus jollyae, for Alison Jolly, a lemur researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey.

Read on -- more in the article about lemurs, Madagascar, and like that ... a lot better than reading about the politics of the "higher" primates.

Mouse Rides Frog in India Monsoon

From National Geographic, July 5


It could be the most spirited interspecies escape since The Rescuers. But unlike the 1977 Disney movie, this situation is anything but fun.
Photographed Friday in the northern Indian city of Lucknow (India map), a mouse perches on a frog in waist-deep (for a frog, anyway) floodwaters—a small sign of the early arrival of annual summer monsoon rains.
So far, more than 30 people have died in India as a result of this year's monsoon-driven landslides and floods. Last year's deluge killed some 1,000 people in the financial center of Mumbai (Bombay) alone. Today polluted, knee-deep waters are raising fears of a repeat disaster among the city's roughly 17 million inhabitants.
In drought-stricken areas, too, frogs were playing the role of rescuer.
According to the Indo-Asian News Service, some rural Indians are holding frog weddings in the hopes that the amphibians' bliss will inspire farm-saving storms. After marking the bride and groom with vermillion and turmeric—traditional adornments in human Hindu nuptials—villagers take the supposedly happy couple to a nearby pond to honeymoon.
"If we get the frogs wedded, the Varuna, the god of the oceans, will bless us with rains," Beni Prasad, a farmer in the village of Khapa, told the news service on Sunday.
—Ted Chamberlain

**********

And I wonder, "Wow -- what if we -- humans -- could work together like that when disaster strikes? We could .... nahhh, never happen."

Link

From Blondesense

The Iraqi government, or at least its PR people are getting smarter and more media savvy...

They commented that it was a bit too obvious that the Allied Forces were not able to uphold their end of the agreement. The agreement to provide security and stability to the area. Why is that a smart thing to do? 1] It puts the blame on the outsiders, 2] It puts the Allied Forces in a put up or shut up stance, 3] It also places the ball squarely in the Allied Forces court...

*************
Very good move, get back to the basics -- hey, are you guys doiing what you told us you would do, which is why we're putting up with your presence?




There's more at Blondesense

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)
Non-Violence in Peace and War

Update on the story below:

Li'l Kim Jong Il has fired a 7th missile today and:

The missiles, all of which apparently fell harmlessly into the Sea of Japan, provoked international condemnation, the convening of an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council and calls in Tokyo for economic sanctions against the impoverished communist regime.

In other words, Li'l Kimjong was saying

"Haha fooled you all -- PSYCHE!!"


In further comments he was quoted as saying:

"Boy you guys have no sense of humor at all. What did you think, when I named it Type O Dong, like Type O blood, the Universal Donor.. in other words, the Dong everyone can take. What a bunch of dorks. Look at me -- does the word "CLOWN" come to mind? Learn to take a joke."

Run and Hide! Run and Hide! Election Year is here, and almost like Christmas, only spelled differently -- Satan Claws.

So Kim Jong Il's North Korean Fantasy Politik League fired off some missiles, the only one of which concerned our government was the one that fell down and drowned in the Sea of Japan. (Sort of a match for our anti-missile defense which does exactly the same thing.)

I am not defending or condoning the Korean Li'l Kim in any way, just pointing something out, relative to the guidelines of the words of Ente Grillenhaft:

"The first casualty of war is not truth, but perspective.
Once that's gone, truth, like compassion, reason,
and all the other virtues, wanders around like a wounded orphan."

So consider this:


Most of the world considers the Unholy Trio of Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney to be every bit as batshit crazy as Mr. Kim -- and much much much more unstable and dangerous. And we actually HAVE long range missiles that work and which have nuclear warheads.

Eulogy for Ken Lay

July 05,2006 | HOUSTON -- Kenneth Lay, founder and vilified former chairman of scandal-ridden Enron Corp., died of a heart attack Wednesday morning. He was 64.

Nicknamed "Kenny Boy" by President Bush, Lay led Enron's meteoric rise from a staid natural gas pipeline company formed by a 1985 merger to an energy and trading conglomerate that reached No. 7 on the Fortune 500 in 2000 and claimed $101 billion in annual revenues.

He was convicted May 25 along with former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling of defrauding investors and employees by repeatedly lying about Enron's financial strength in the months before the company plummeted into bankruptcy protection in December 2001. Lay was also convicted in a separate non-jury trial of bank fraud and making false statements to banks, charges related to his personal finances. He was scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 11.

*************************

Oh what a crying shame -- Hey Kenny Boy -- don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way into Hell.

Just to be safe, can we have the mortuary drive a stake through his verminous heart to make sure he doesn't come up again?

He won't be forgotten -- every time we California residents pay our outrageously high PG&E bills, every month of the year, we will curse his name as a sociopathic self-serving thief who ripped off everyone who ever trusted him.

And perhaps Texas (or wherever his remains are interred) will pass a law allowing every former Enron employee whose pension was stolen by that scumbag to choose between spitting on or pissing on his grave.

Hallazgos 2004-2006

Hallazgos 2004-2006

6 al 29 de julio de 2006
Curador: Rolando Castellón

Inauguración: Jueves 6 de julio, 7 p.m.
Invitados especiales: Dibujantes Cabécares

Desde 1970 he ejercido varios cargos en museos, galerías alternativas y centros culturales, organizando exposiciones y eventos de diversa naturaleza en varios países. Uno de los placeres de esta profesión es el haber visto una amplia gama del quehacer artístico, y tener la oportunidad de seleccionar obras que a mi criterio ejemplificaban lo mejor que se realizaba en su momento. En 1999 me retiré oficialmente de la profesión y desde entonces me he dedicado a organizar exposiciones que apelan a mi gusto personal y no necesariamente para satisfacer las necesidades de un “sistema” artístico.

Esta exposición titulada Hallazgos 2004-2006, incluye obra seleccionada de lo que me he encontrado en mis continuas andanzas en el ambiente artístico costarricense durante los últimos tres años. Obras que de una u otra manera me han afectado emocional o intelectualmente y que llenan mis expectativas estéticas. La mayoría de los participantes son jóvenes que comienzan sus carreras, así como algunos mayores cuyos trabajos no conocía. Con esta selección me permito introducir sus trabajos al diálogo artístico nacional.

Rolando Castellón / Curador invitado

Artistas: Luis Diego Vargas-Eduardo Vargas - Bytty Tassara - Eugenia Sánchez - Javier Rossel - Umberto Postal - Giovanni Postal - Karla Piedra León-Melissa Panages - Eugenia Murillo Herrera - Mónica Morales - Adriana Montealegre - Maureen Maquillan - Victoria Marenco - Viviana Madrigal - Keren Kroul- Georgia Hayes - Paola González Viscaíno - Jonathan Delgado - Adriana Castro - Javier Calvo - Diana Barquero Pérez - Alexander Arias -Lucía Alfaro-Berta Alegría

400 Norte kiosco Morazán, C 7 Ave 11 #953, Barrio Amón, San José Costa Rica e-mail comunicación@teoretica.org www.teoretica.org

Footnotes (headnotes?) to the article below

A very bright friend who knows me well asked me if I'm saying the kid should be given a medal or if I think Bush et al negate his crime. So I realize I may not have been clear enough:

What I was saying:

1. He was discharged for mental instability after a tour in Iraq with the 101st Airborne -- in other words: "GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO... ooops, he broke. Let's just move him out quietly and hope no one ever wants to know what happened."

2. Anyone with actual military experience knows people flip out in war ... that in fact, war itself is a controlled flipout. So going to war on a whim CREATES people like that. Sort of like musical chairs.

3. Marines shoot entire families, plan and execute civilians, Army guys run rampant here and there, etc etc. It happens because, in a Vietnam Redux (i.e., can't tell who the enemy is, what the objectives are, etc) people finally break down and go nuts. But they prosecute ONLY this poor bastard, even though he was one of four doing the raping -- the only one to pull the trigger, but the other three told him to take the rest of the family into the other room and "take care of them."

4. I never meant to imply that ANYTHING negates his guilt, but that this is an election year public trial designed to get votes and also to show, we're prosecuting HIM so that means that anyone NOT being tried is not guilty of anything.. So the hypocrisy on TOP OF the vicious insane crime is disgusting.

5. If I implied he should get a free pass, I wasn't clear. He's right up there with the Columbine kids, but I wanted to point at WHAT IT IS that made him crazy and WHO IT IS that put him at risk, wasted his and others' lives after they were willing towear the uniform and stand up, ostensibly for America, only to find it turn out to be for Halliburton, et al, war profiteers..

6. And once again, these rec room patriots think everyone is supposed to play not-nice by the rules, but then they make their recruiters take anyone they can -- like the one who recruited an 18-year old autistic kid who had no idea there was a war going on...

7. This is like finding someone you once knew who took a vacation to Transylvania and came back a vampire. You really have to drive the stake in its heart but you also may have some compassion -- "I'm sorry what happened to you, man, but this is totally unacceptable." It's when you drag it out in public that it becomes one more monstrosity the soulless ones use for political currency.

So.

This is such bullshit

Ex-Soldier Charged With Rape of Iraqi

On one hand, good, I guess -- it means justice or something that sounds enough like it to play in an election year is served...

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July 03,2006 | CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Federal prosecutors accused a former U.S. soldier Monday of raping and murdering a young Iraqi woman and gunning down her family, all of whose bodies were found burned in an apparent coverup.

Steven D. Green, a 21-year-old former Army private first class who was recently discharged because of a "personality disorder," appeared in a federal magistrate's courtroom in Charlotte Monday.

The murder and rape charges against him grew out of a military investigation involving up to five soldiers in the March rape and killing of the woman in Mahmoudiya and three of her relatives, one of them a young girl believed to be about 5 years old.

Prosecutors said Green and others entered the home of a family of Iraqi civilians, where Green shot the three relatives, and he and another soldier raped the woman and killed her. According to an accompanying affidavit, photos taken by Army investigators in March showed a burned body of "what appears to be a woman with blankets thrown over her upper torso."

FBI agents arrested Green on Friday in Marion, N.C. He is being held in Charlotte without bond pending a transfer to Louisville, Ky.

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But on the other hand, this is what happens in that thing called War -- most people manage to keep straight while having their souls and sprits permanently wounded by what they see and what they have to do, but beneath the discipline and training, beneath the mission statements and the high-minded shovelsfull of steaming festering vermin-laden bullshit those sub-humans in power throw at us, it's simple unadorned carnage -- soul-destroying vicious chaotic violent insanity -- it's what Sherman said (and what Christians SHOULD understand, since they believe in that Manichaean crap of Heaven and Hell) ---- "War is Hell."

-- He didn't say "War is Heck."

But then, does ANYONE believe George W Bush or Dick Cheney or Donald Duck Rumsfeld is an actual Christian? ("I'm notreally a Christian but I play one on TV to keep my base voting for me.")

It's why so many of us were appalled that the soulless scum who stole the election in the year 2000 and used the murders of September 11, 2001 to advance their own self-serving agenda, decided to send the few people who cared enough to wear the uniform into the maw of madness, and tough shit if any one cracks and goes nuts with "the horror, the horror," he or she gets busted, andall the hypocrites point an accusing finger because if they say you're bad bad bad they think it means they're good good good.

But all it means is they're a scared lynch mob looking for some form of person they can dehumanize and kill, whether they call it "nigger" or fag" or "bitch," whether it's some 16 year old girl needing an abortion or some soldier who finally went apeshit screaming meemies wild and couldn't tell the diffiernece between "good" killing and maiming and "bad" killing and maiming.

It's the "good" people who need to be brought to justice.

J'accuse

Glenn Greenwald -- Daring adventurer through the world of the right wing crazies

"America is currently at war and its enemies are domestic liberals and The New York Times. This war was started by Al Gore and Jimmy Carter when they opposed the invasion of Iraq. The New York Times is allied with Al Qaeda and their latest plot against America is to provide their terrorist friends with a roadmap to the vacation homes of Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld so that they can be assassinated. That is what is being reported today by three of the largest 'conservative' blogs on the Internet, along with Horowitz, the leader of the conservative effort to wipe out anti-conservative bias on college campuses."

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Use the link, read the entire article. As for me, in order to try to understand our current political situation, I went to Dark Carnival Books in Oakland and bought a copy of the Collected Superman Bizarro stories.

Link