[click image]And I didn't do enough nerve movies, so I got The Secret Life of Bees, Rocknrolla, and Everybody Wants to Be Italian....
[Ooooo, Rocknrolla, beefcake, man... Gerard Butler and Idris Elba... handsome bastards....]
07 February 2009
bad to worse
[click image]And I didn't do enough nerve movies, so I got The Secret Life of Bees, Rocknrolla, and Everybody Wants to Be Italian....
[Ooooo, Rocknrolla, beefcake, man... Gerard Butler and Idris Elba... handsome bastards....]
06 February 2009
woops, they forgot to cap his fillings for his 300 poster
[click image]Not very authentic-looking, now is it?
I'm cashing in my chips for some cheap escapism now. Will, of course, report back if there's anything good in American East, The Lucky Ones, The Family That Preys or Pride and Glory....
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1:15am: American East was very much on topic. It was put together strangely, and some technical stuff was pretty weird, but it was a serious look into the wrenching situations our xenophobia brings down on the heads of innocent, decent people. I highly recommend you rent it. Keep some kind of a bead on your humanity, our humanity.
The Lucky Ones was also right on the now. Three soldiers home on leave. Outright spectacular acting, and a serious look into the wrenching situations our xenophobia brings down on the heads of our military and their families. Another high recommendation.
I have a feeling the next two won't be nearly as worth seeing.
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Pride and Glory was okay. Good to see the bad boyz go down, but very hackneyed cop talk, a waste of Edward Norton and Jon Voigt, in a decent plot line....
The Family That Preys is evidently one of a huge catalog of releases aimed strictly at taking blacks mainstream, which is starting to irk the snot out of me -- see? they're just like us! -- oh, really? WTF took you this long? -- but it's got Kathy Bates in it so it rocks any old how.
yuh, if he heads anywhere but iran, we'll be mad
[click image]Either this is a sign of just how angry Pakistan is with the United States right now, or it's their ticket out of our bombing raids. Either way, this is really, really bad news.
zinni out, hill in
[click image]Hillary picked Zinni. Obama trumped her with Hill. Maybe he's trying to make up for the Dennis Ross debacle? I suppose this signals an intention to deal with Iran via Iraq and get tough on nuclear issues, but this fucking minuet in place of -- dare I use the term? -- straight talk, creeps me out.
media as mindfuck
[click image]Britain is full of Russian Oligarchs who don't want to sell back the fortunes in resources they looted at the end of the Soviet era. They have had enough time to become thoroughly used to the privileges of their bank accounts' status, and do not want any part of Putin's antifascist, anitplutocrat, dreams for Russia. They will be happy to engage in the tsunami of Western business' drive for control of Russian resources and manpower. We all know the inducements are many and the boosts to the self-image beyond anyone's wildest dreams, and this democratic opposition we keep hearing about, ad nauseam, is better thought of as the front line of fascism.
It bugs me how people all over the world are never moved to protest anything until their own livelihoods start shrinking. Maybe we're not rioting in the streets because we know how guilty we are. We're fat and lazy and completely spineless sissies by nature, but maybe we really do have a strain of honesty running under our blubber. Maybe that accounts for it.
Nevertheless, the Russian workers are now up in arms because of what our criminal plutocrats did to their economy. This isn't any part of Putin's or Medvedev's doing, and they are doing what they can to blunt the blow.
We used to be antifascist. Now we just call ourselves that. But Russia's leadership and Venezuela's leadership and Ecuador's leadership and some others are the antifascists now.
How many more Americans are going to believe this well-scrubbed pig, Alexander Lebedev, about the scene in Russia? Lots more because it's on MSNBC, the liberals' favorite cable news.
Fuck.
[Meanwhile, this is a big score for the antifascists.]
maybe a break for remembering updike
[click image]I think it's already been longer than I've gone in years since I've read a short story of his.... Anyway, maybe you're interested in downloading a broadcast of a sort of retrospective/criticism, with a snippet from his last interview... only the first fifteen minutes of the download.
Or... you could listen to an interview he did with Christopher Lydon back in 2000 in this 50-minute mp3.
05 February 2009
abba?
[click image]I'd've put money on Led Zeppelin. Has to be his wife's favorite music. Only reasonable explanation.
[Bushehr on schedule....]
fabled enemies
[click image, playlist, video in 10 parts, thanks, Flo]Basically the same crowd that brought us Loose Change, switches gears to give us a little more of the peripheral stuff that adds so much weight to the direct evidence. Not as riveting and convincing as the original Loose Change videos, and more like the disappointing Final Cut, but full of good information. Quite worth the nearly two-hour investment of time.
while he did save utah from drilling, he's still bumming me out
[click image]And keeping it in the unconstitutional vein in other areas as well....
By now, we might as well let Pilger pile on, too. I mean, what the heck. He's got a point. We should fucking well grow up. Yesterday.
versus liar indyk
[click image]Look up Indyk. Outright lies. More Clinton Administration crap. Will Obama spare us this liar?
And I'm not kidding, now, are you guys watching these Finkelstein links and sending them around to your friends? I'm getting crickets in the comments threads on these posts and it's VITAL stuff for you and everyone to take in.
Whether they are firing or not, Israel continues to starve Gaza. This is not NOT trivial, NOT stuff you can just put off because you're expected at dinner or need to make your French class, or miss your hobbies so much you need to stall it while you dawdle in your pleasures. This is vital. Lives depend on your understanding and your commitment to helping/making others understand.
I just received another link in my email this morning to that flash video that narrows the numbers of humans down to 100 and expresses how many have what, are what, do what, do without what. If you have a closet for your clothes, a table on which to eat, a bed in which to sleep, and roof over your head, you are better off than 75% of humanity. The carnage will not cease unless take stock of what a lucky asshole you are, start paying attention and, as they say, "pay it forward".
04 February 2009
03 February 2009
yer probably not going to like this
[click image]Think of squid making their escape. What do they do? They blast you with a black cloud of ink so you can't see where they're off to... what they're up to. Maybe this piece will part the cloud.
Extra Credit
For PhD candidates....
Michel Chossudovsky puts the Gaza Extermination Campaign, and just about every other rasty act by the first world, in the context of the [bogus] economic crisis. [video, 1 hour, 20 minutes]
breathtakingly simple solution
[click image]Cart them off to The Hague with Condi and Rummy. Pft. Justice will be done.
i gotta go get this stitch outta my arm
If it had been on my left arm I might have stood a chance of accomplishing it myself, but, alas, I'm too blind, right-handed and creeped out to swing it. So. Deal with it. I'll be back later.
and hubris impedes your learning capabilities
[click image]Pakistan militant attack cut US, NATO supply line
By RIAZ KHAN – 4 hours ago
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Islamist militants blew up a bridge in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, cutting a major supply line for Western troops in Afghanistan in the latest in a series of attacks on the Khyber Pass by insurgents seeking to hamper the U.S.-led mission against the Taliban.
A NATO spokesman in Afghanistan confirmed that supplies along the route had been halted "for the time being," but stressed the alliance was in no danger of running out of food, equipment or fuel.
Underscoring the insecurity that plagues many parts of the country, authorities said they were questioning 15 people in connection with the abduction of an American U.N. worker John Solecki in the southwest of the country.
They said the men, among them several Afghans, were not considered suspects in Monday's kidnapping, which underscored the threats to foreigners in Pakistan as it battles al-Qaida militants.
The latest Khyber Pass attack highlights the urgent need NATO and the U.S. have for alternative supply routes to landlocked Afghanistan through nations to its north, an already vital task given American plans to double its troop numbers in the country.
U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus said last month that agreements are in place to use routes that cut through Central Asia, but details have yet to be announced.
Hidayat Ullah, a government official in the Khyber tribal area, said the 10-meter-long (32-foot-long) bridge was about 15 miles (25 kilometers) northwest of the main city of Peshawar. He said private cars as well as trucks carrying NATO and U.S. supplies were unable to cross it.
It was not immediately clear whether supply convoys could reach Afghanistan through alternative, smaller routes in the region.
Another official in the area, Fazal Mahmood, said repair work had begun on the bridge.
Up to 75 percent of the fuel and supplies destined for U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan travel through Pakistan after being unloaded at the port of Karachi. Most are driven along the Khyber Pass.
Pakistan has dispatched paramilitary escorts for supply convoys and cracked down on militants in Khyber, but attacks have persisted in an area that up to three years ago was largely free of violence.
U.N. worker Solecki was kidnapped as he traveled to work in Quetta city in Baluchistan, a province that partly borders Afghanistan but has largely been spared the al-Qaida and Taliban insurgency in the northwest.
The government called the abduction a "dastardly terrorist act." But police said it was not clear whether Islamist militants, criminals seeking a ransom payment or members of a regional separatist group were responsible.
"We have opened investigations, and our various teams are working on this case and the effort is to safely recover the man," said senior police officer Wazir Khan.
Solecki headed the Quetta office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which has worked for three decades in the region helping hundreds of thousands of Afghans fleeing violence in their homeland.
Suspected militants have attacked or kidnapped several foreigners in recent months.
In August, Lynne Tracy, the top U.S. diplomat in the northwest, narrowly survived an attack on her vehicle in Peshawar by suspected militants. In November, also in Peshawar, gunmen shot and killed American aid worker Stephen Vance.
Quetta has been mentioned by Afghan officials as a likely hiding place for Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders thought to have fled Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion in 2001.
Baluchistan is also the scene of a low-level insurgency driven by nationalist groups wanting more regional autonomy. They are not known to target foreigners.
Also Tuesday, someone threw a grenade inside a mosque in the northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan, killing at least two people and wounding eight, officials said.
The grenade attack occurred in the evening as worshippers prayed in a mosque, police officer Jehangir Khattak said. The city has witnessed increasing Taliban activity, but it also has a history of sectarian clashes Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
At least two people died and eight others were wounded, said Ashiq Saleem, a doctor at a local hospital.
Meanwhile, at least 35 Islamist militants were killed in an overnight operation in Swat Valley, an area in the northwest which has been increasingly overrun with insurgents, Pakistan's military said in a statement.
02 February 2009
what difference could it make now?
[click image]What could have taken place through back channels that could be considered useful for the cause of peace, given the population of enemies in the Obama Administration?
I saw a copy of a lame letter to Secretary Clinton from numerous Congresspersons this morning. I didn't deign to post it because it was clearly one of their lip flapping appeals to appeasing outraged progressives and peaceniks. They were calling for her help getting aid to the suffering Gazans. Excuse me. They voted unanimously in support of Israel in this matter and now they're circulating a letter to Hillary Clinton asking for Gaza aid? The cynicism of our politicians is staggering. So, my point here is that this bullshit about back channel communications between the Obama camp and Iran before his inauguration is more of that, more dangling vaguely appeasing reasons the outraged left should still support what is shaping up to be no change at all, except maybe for the worse.
No. Seriously. Four hundred babies were shot dead by snipers, incinerated by white phosphorus, crushed by rubble or blown to bits in the weeks preceding the inauguration, and what has been his response? Right there. Right there. Like my teacher always warned me. WATCH WHAT THEY DO. People, especially politicians, can say anything, and do, but what matters is their action. What has Obama done to show decent intent in the Middle East? Grant an interview to al-Arabiya?
That's the mouth, not the feet. And, seems to me he's doing his own blackening of the hope message, or at least graying it pretty convincingly.
whut? you mean he left someone alive all this time?
[click image]Another body from Minot AFB? Are you kidding? Does this ever end?
Will the final accounting for the missing nuke/s be when it/they blow up somewhere?
there has not been a ceasefire
[click image]I found this image months and months ago while looking to express my feelings about Zionism. I only used part of the image, because, as you can see, even with my having blurred the stark, sharp-edged original, the whole of it is, or was, possibly fiercer than my vehement desire to evaporate them from the map of time. I'm not sure I want to hold back anymore. I want, yes, to be as reasonable and humane as is extra-humanly possible, but the situation is beyond the pale, as wrong, and more, than what we died in our thousands to beat in Germany.
If you have not yet listened to Norman Finkelstein on the matter, I can't stress heavily enough how much it would benefit you to do so. His words about our having defeated the Nazi psychosis in Germany, releasing them from the sickness and giving them a way to manifest positively into the future, are cogent and well taken. While I want Israel moved to the South Pole, I can see the elegance and the truth in his assertion, but, no matter what, this vicious and malign pathology must die as surely as Nazism had to, whether America is the prime mover or Israel, as he and his teacher have so hotly debated.
So maybe this image is no longer too harsh for me to use.
01 February 2009
listen!
[click image]Ripped from the pages of P U L S E, swiftly becoming one of my favorite places on the tubes, and about an hour of time well spent:
I gotta listen again, but I didn't want you to die of Super Bowl flu while I dithered about getting it for you. He was Norman Finkelstein's teacher, and so you gotta listen to that action. You just must.
____________________________________________________________________________________
So, well, I listened again, and wanted to hear him debate Finkelstein, whom I worship, and lookee hyere:
another hour [17 April 2007]
Ain't I clever....
[They're really going at each other here, and half way through it, I gotta say Petras is fairly well mowing down Finkelstein, once his student, the old coot... oo, oh, no, wait, Norman's back up... oh, uh, nope, back down he goes, but more level.... Even so, I'm still going to worship him... and Petras.... Until one or the other of them does/says something unforgivably wrong/rotten, just out of pure ego, or gain, that is. You don't want to be a blind worshipper. I'm here to tell you. Nope, not, never, not that!]
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I don't think he understands that Obama would not have been allowed to be president without these conditions -- Hillary had to cheat him to a draw in so many places -- and I don't think he understands that the organization he so carefully documents will do worse than just badmouth Obama if he crosses them, much, much worse....
Or: Obama really, truly, doesn't give a shit what we want and will simply invite in anyone who will support him in exchange for anything they want.
Those are the only two explanations I can come up with.
Pick.
It could be a combination of both.
We are so fucked.
can this be true?
[click image]Did the AP investigate something?AP Investigation: Banks sought foreign workers
By FRANK BASS and RITA BEAMISH
Associated Press Writers
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) -- Major U.S. banks sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers into the country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year and Americans were getting laid off, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.
The dozen banks now receiving the biggest rescue packages, totaling more than $150 billion, requested visas for more than 21,800 foreign workers over the past six years for positions that included senior vice presidents, corporate lawyers, junior investment analysts and human resources specialists. The average annual salary for those jobs was $90,721, nearly twice the median income for all American households.
As the economic collapse worsened last year - with huge numbers of bank employees laid off - the numbers of visas sought by the dozen banks in AP's analysis increased by nearly one-third, from 3,258 in the 2007 budget year to 4,163 in fiscal 2008.
The AP reviewed visa applications the banks filed with the Labor Department under the H-1B visa program, which allows temporary employment of foreign workers in specialized-skill and advanced-degree positions. Such visas are most often associated with high-tech workers.
It is unclear how many foreign workers the banks actually hired; the government does not release those details. The actual number is likely a fraction of the 21,800 foreign workers the banks sought to hire because the government only grants 85,000 such visas each year among all U.S. employers.
During the last three months of 2008, the largest banks that received taxpayer loans announced more than 100,000 layoffs. The number of foreign workers included among those laid off is unknown.
Foreigners are attractive hires because companies have found ways to pay them less than American workers.
Companies are required to pay foreign workers a prevailing wage based on the job's description. But they can use the lower end of government wage scales even for highly skilled workers; hire younger foreigners with lower salary demands; and hire foreigners with higher levels of education or advanced degrees for jobs for which similarly educated American workers would be considered overqualified.
"The system provides you perfectly legal mechanisms to underpay the workers," said John Miano of Summit, N.J., a lawyer who has analyzed the wage data and started the Programmers Guild, an advocacy group that opposes the H-1B system.
David Huber of Chicago is a computer networking engineer who has testified to Congress about losing out on a 2002 job with the former Bank One Corp. He learned later the bank applied to hire dozens of foreign visa holders for work he said he was qualified to do.
"American citizenship is being undermined working in our own country," Huber said in an AP interview.
Beyond seeking approval for visas from the government, banks that accepted federal bailout money also enlisted uncounted foreign workers, often in technology jobs, through intermediary companies known as "body shops." Such businesses are the top recipients of the H-1B visas.
The use of visa workers by ailing banks angers Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.
"In this time of very, very high unemployment ... and considering the help these banks are getting from the taxpayers, they're playing the American taxpayer for a sucker," Grassley said in a telephone interview with AP.
Grassley, with Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., is pushing for legislation to make employers recruit American workers first, along with other changes to the visa program.
Banks turned to foreign workers before the current economic crisis, said Diane Casey-Landry, chief operating officer for the American Bankers Association. The group said a year ago that demand exceeded the pool of qualified workers in areas like sales, lending and bank administration. Now with massive layoffs, the situation is different, Casey-Landry said.
The issue takes on a higher profile as the government injects billions of dollars into the economy and President Barack Obama pushes for massive government spending to create jobs nationwide, on top of the $700 billion already approved for the ailing banks.
"You're using taxpayer dollars and there's an expectation that there are benefits to the U.S.," said Ron Hira, a national expert on foreign employment and assistant public policy professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "What you're really doing is leaking away those jobs and benefits that should accrue to the taxpayers."
But New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes more access to "worldwide talent pools" will better position U.S. financial companies against global competitors, spokesman Andrew Brent said.
The U.S. Customs and Immigration Service declined to disclose details on foreign workers hired at the banks that have received federal bailouts. The AP has requested the information under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
Nearly all the banks the AP contacted also declined to comment on their foreign hiring practices. Arlene C. Roberts, spokeswoman for State Street Corp. of Boston, which has received $2 billion in bailout money, said the company has reduced H-1B hiring in recent years, and just hires for specialized positions.
Jennifer Scott of Yreka, Calif., a retired technical systems manager at Bank of America in Concord, Calif., said in 2004 she oversaw foreign employees from a contractor firm that also sent overnight work to employees in India.
"It had nothing to do with a shortage, but they didn't want to pay the U.S. rate," she said, adding that the quality of the work was weak. "It's all about numbers crunching."
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Frank Bass reported from East Dover, Vt.
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