not like there isn't much at stake

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Cancer — The Deadly Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq
Eye on Arab Media
New America Media, News Digest, Jalal Ghazi, Posted: Jan 06, 2010

Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.

Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.

The cancer rate in the province of Babil, south of Baghdad has risen from 500 diagnosed cases in 2004 to 9,082 in 2009 according to Al Jazeera English.

In Basra there were 1885 diagnosed cases of cancer in 2005. According to Dr. Jawad al Ali, director of the Oncology Center, the number increased to 2,302 in 2006 and 3,071 in 2007. Dr. Ali told Al Jazeera English that about 1,250-1,500 patients visit the Oncology Center every month now.

Not everyone is ready to draw a direct correlation between allied bombing of these areas and tumors, and the Pentagon has been skeptical of any attempts to link the two. But Iraqi doctors and some Western scholars say the massive quantities of depleted uranium used in U.S. and British bombs, and the sharp increase in cancer rates are not unconnected.

Dr Ahmad Hardan, who served as a special scientific adviser to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, says that there is scientific evidence linking depleted uranium to cancer and birth defects. He told Al Jazeera English, "Children with congenital anomalies are subjected to karyotyping and chromosomal studies with complete genetic back-grounding and clinical assessment. Family and obstetrical histories are taken too. These international studies have produced ample evidence to show that depleted uranium has disastrous consequences."

Iraqi doctors say cancer cases increased after both the 1991 war and the 2003 invasion.

Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of “Uranium in Iraq” told Al Jazeera English that the incubation period for depleted uranium is five to six years, which is consistent with the spike in cancer rates in 1996-1997 and 2008-2009.

There are also similar patterns of birth defects among Iraqi and Afghan infants who were also born in areas that were subjected to depleted uranium bombardment.

Dr. Daud Miraki, director of the Afghan Depleted Uranium and Recovery Fund, told Al Jazeera English he found evidence of the effect of depleted uranium in infants in eastern and south- eastern Afghanistan. “Many children are born with no eyes, no limbs, or tumors protruding from their mouths and eyes,” said Dr. Miraki.

It’s not just Iraqis and Afghans. Babies born to American soldiers deployed in Iraq during the 1991 war are also showing similar defects. In 2000, Iraqi biologist Huda saleh Mahadi pointed out that the hands of deformed American infants were directly linked to their shoulders, a deformity seen in Iraqi infants.

Many US soldiers are now referring to Gulf War Syndrome #2 and alleging they have developed cancer because of exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq.

But soldiers can end their exposure to depleted uranium when their service in Iraq ends. Iraqi civilians have nowhere else to go. The water, soil and air in large areas of Iraq, including Baghdad, are contaminated with depleted uranium that has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years.

Dr. Doug Rokke, former director of the U.S. Army’s Depleted Uranium Project during the first Gulf War, was in charge of a project of decontaminating American tanks. He told Al Jazeera English that “it took the U.S. Department of Defense in a multi-million dollar facility with trained physicists and engineers, three years to decontaminate the 24 tanks that I sent back to the U.S.”

And he added, “What can the average Iraqi do with thousands and thousands of trash and destroyed vehicles spread across the desert and other areas?”

According to Al Jazeera, the Pentagon used more than 300 tons of depleted uranium in 1991. In 2003, the United States used more than 1,000 tons.
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BLUEBEAR'S DU POSTS
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because progressives won't modify their hauteur even to save themselves

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This is the documentary they were discussing on Riz Khan last night. The one where the documentarian himself pointed out that because of the failure of progressives to move in here, where seriously motivated allies could be found, we may now be feeling ourselves lucky if it has not swelled the ranks of the white supremacists to the point where they become the spark for the wrong kind of Second American Revolution.

Oh! Not yer intent? Well maybe you should take your eyes off your dazzling intent and PERFORM. The world doesn't give a shit what your intent is, is sick, in fact, of your endless celebrations of your intent while the world burns down around us all. Are you going to wake up even when the flames are consuming you? Or are you going to sleep through the end of the world?
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i'd carry this sign

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You might want to use this marvelous tool to read that looooong page full of reasons progressives get a big fail stamped on their foreheads... and keep prancing around anyway....
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galvanized

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I was having one of my attacks of drowsiness earlier this evening, and decided to get in bed and listen to al-Jazeera instead of struggling to remain upright. Figgered I could just doze if I had to and not miss anything, since they repeat the headlines so often. Sure enough, I immediately started doing my in and out of it thing, catching snippets and diving into the blackness over and over and over... and then... Riz Khan came on and I guess he poked me with a cattle prod because, heh, I woke the hell all the way up like a bolt.

He was talking to Rick Rowley about his White Power USA documentary that's going to be aired on Thursday, and a couple other guys. They were talking about white supremacists moving in to coöpt the Tea Parties. Most of you probably know I've been whining about certain progressives thither and yon getting off their us-versus-them shit, quit going for the further alienation of people fed up with this mess, and seek to join and inform the Tea Parties, take them out of the clutches of fascist maniacs and religious kooks and, now, racial purity fanatics... use that energy to help scare the power structure away from some of the more murderous and perfidious practices they've taken up... but no. They'd rather shoot spit wads and boast of their superior intellects than create a better world.

I was struck by Rowley mentioning that this white power play starting to unfold is a direct consequence of progressives failing to seize the day, so to speak, failing to get over their holier-than-thou, shit-don't-stink stinking shit and create a truly American force to be reckoned with. I don't know if all is lost yet, with that idea, but it seems it very well may be. These chumps, these so-called "progressives" are very, very reliably playing right into the hands of the plutocrats trying to get us all into the meat grinder... and, I should try to be clear about it, by "us all" I mean all us humans.

I am the moderator for one of these chumps. I have been trying very hard to shine a light on this for him and for others for quite some time now, and no dice, but keep trying despite everything, and still no dice. The blindness and the prejudice on full blast on "the left" is so far beyond mortifying to me that I can barely express it. Something is going to have to give in this scene I have going or I don't think anything worthy can come of it.
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On an obviously not unrelated note, even before finishing the piece I'm going to have to say, duh, stupider also means greedier and meaner and... drumroll... clearly... even if counterintuitively... FASTER... not belabored with all these sense-stultifying head trips and air sculptures of intellectual vanity....

Perhaps, though, it also made the Boskops excessively internal and self-reflective. With their perhaps astonishing insights, they may have become a species of dreamers with an internal mental life literally beyond anything we can imagine.

So we ate them.
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not so much

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I think he's gonna get wet on this one.

Maybe if their numbers tank too damn badly they'll mystically come out with universal healthcare...? [No. Right. I'm being sarcastic. I wasn't hoping or anything.]
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obama's machine

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Definitely still set on kill... even us....

... it is McCain who, along with Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., has sponsored a bill to repeal Gramm’s legislation, while Obama seeks to preserve it.

Yes, yes, you heard me, Obama's trying to keep Glass-Steagall repealed... and McCain isn't. I know, I know, McCain wouldn't be taking this position if he were in the White House, but what's Obama's excuse? Can only be one of two choices: [1] he's 100% bought; or [2] he'll be assassinated and he's 100% bought.

Neither excuse is good enough.
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a little closer to balanced

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I'll be switched.
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plastic

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Scroll down for the full picture....
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i want to say i'm stupid for this kid

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... but he's coming up on thirty-six, so no kid, and being cracked for him just isn't stupid.

No way you slice it.

Maybe after yer done with his short but salient piece you will like to hear Scott Horton interviewing Philip Giraldi on this little incident....
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taibbi highlights partisan hypnosis

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For what we’ve learned in the last few years as one scandal after another spilled onto the front pages is that the bubble economies of the last two decades were not merely monstrous Ponzi schemes that destroyed trillions in wealth while making a small handful of people rich. They were also a profound expression of the fundamentally criminal nature of our political system, in which state power/largess and the private pursuit of (mostly short-term) profit were brilliantly fused in a kind of ongoing theft scheme that sought to instant-cannibalize all the wealth America had stored up during its postwar glory, in the process keeping politicians in office and bankers in beach homes while continually moving the increasingly inevitable disaster to the future.

That is a terrible story and it is also sort of a taboo story, since we don’t really have a system of media now that is willing or even able to digest that dark and complicated truth. Instead, our media — which has always been at best an inadvertent accomplice to these messes — is basically set up to take every revelation about the underlying truth and split it down the middle, feeding half to one side of the political spectrum and one half to the other, where the actual point is then burned up in the useless smoke of a blame game.

The essentially complicit nature of the two ruling political parties was in this way covered up for decades, as the crimes of the Democrats were greedily consumed as entertainment by the Limbaugh crowd while the crimes of the Bushies became hot-selling t-shirts and bumper stickers for the Air America listenership. The abiding mutual hatred the red/blue groups shared consistently prevented any kind of collective realization about the structure of the overall scheme.

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one funny panel out of six

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The rest is just partisan blather.

I mean, cut to the chase, people, cut to the chase.
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oh no!!!!!!

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Boats collide in anti-whaling clash in Antarctica
By ROHAN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer – 26 mins ago

SYDNEY – A conservation group's boat had its bow sheared off and was taking on water Wednesday after it collided with a Japanese whaling ship in the frigid waters of Antarctica, the group said. The boat's six crew members were safely rescued.

The clash was the most serious in the past several years, during which the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has sent vessels into far-southern waters to try to harass the Japanese fleet into ceasing its annual whale hunt.

Clashes using hand-thrown stink bombs, ropes meant to tangle propellers and high-tech sound equipment have been common in recent years, and collisions between ships have sometimes occurred.

The society said its vessel Ady Gil — a high-tech speedboat that resembles a stealth bomber — was hit by the Japanese ship the Shonan Maru near Commonwealth Bay and had about 10 feet (three meters) of its bow knocked off.

Locky Maclean, the first mate of the society's lead ship, said one crewman from New Zealand appeared to have suffered two cracked ribs, but the others were uninjured. The crew members were safely transferred to the group's third vessel, though the Ady Gil's captain remained on board to see what could be salvaged, he said.

"The original prognostic was that it was sinking, but at this point it is flooded with water but it seems to still have a bit of buoyancy," Maclean told The Associated Press by satellite phone from the ship, the Steve Irwin.

The group accused the Japanese ship of deliberately ramming the Ady Gil.

"They were stopped dead in the water when the incident occurred," Maclean said of the Ady Gil. "When they realized that the Shonan Maru was aiming right for them, they tried to go into reverse to get the bow out of the way but it was too late. The Shonan Maru made a course correction and plowed directly into the front end of the boat."

Glenn Inwood, a New Zealand-based spokesman for the Institute of Cetacean Research, the Japanese government-linked body that carries out the hunt, disputed Sea Shepherd's account, saying video shot from the whaler showed the conservationists' boat moving toward the whaler just before the collision.

"The Shonan Maru steams to port to avoid a collision. I guess they, the Ady Gil, miscalculated," Inwood told The Associated Press. "Sea Shepherd claims that the Shonan Maru has rammed the Ady Gil and cut it in half — its claim is just not vindicated by the video."

Japan's Fisheries Agency said it was still checking details about the clash. Spokesman Toshinori Uoya said there were no injuries on the Japanese side.

Sea Shepherd sends boats to Antarctic waters each southern summer to try to stop the Japanese whaling fleet from killing whales under what it calls a scientific whaling program. Conservationists and many countries say the program is a front for commercial whaling.

Each side routinely accuses the other of dangerous activity during what has become a cat-and-mouse chase in one of the world's most remote regions.

Australia and New Zealand — which both have Antarctic territories and are among the closest nations to the waters where the hunt goes on — have urged both sides to show restraint, warning that they are far away from rescue if anything goes wrong.

"Our strongest condemnation applies to any violent or dangerous activity that takes place in these remote and inhospitable waters," Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett said Wednesday. He said he could confirm the collision, but that details were still unclear.

The Ady Gil clashed earlier Wednesday with another Japanese ship, the whaling fleet's mothership, the Nisshin Maru.

The Institute of Cetacean Research said the Ady Gil came "within collision distance" of the Nisshin Maru's bow and repeatedly dangled a rope in the water that could have entangled the ship's rudder and propeller.

The Ady Gil's crew lobbed small projectiles designed to release a foul smell, and the whalers responded by firing high-powered hoses to keep the Sea Shepherd vessels away, the institute said in a statement.

"The obstructionist activities of the Sea Shepherd threaten the lives and property of those involved in our research, are very dangerous and cannot be forgiven," it said.

Maclean confirmed the earlier clash.

Japan's whaling fleet left in November for its annual hunt in Antarctic waters. Uoya said that for security reasons, details of the fleet's composition, the number of whales it hopes to take and the number of crew members are not being released to the public.

The Ady Gil is a 78-foot (24-meter) black-painted trimaran made of carbon fiber and Kevlar in a design meant to pierce waves. It was built to challenge the record for the quickest circumnavigation of the globe and can travel faster than 46 mph (75 kph).

Sea Shepherd unveiled the Ady Gil last October saying a California millionaire with the same name had donated most of the money for it. At the time, the group said the boat would be used to intercept and physically block Japanese harpoon vessels.

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don't walk that street

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I did it again. I clicked on a "Zen" link and then surfed sidebars until, whut? The sun coming up yet? I have given myself a headache. There is absolutely not one particle of a doubt that anyone who wants to wake up must not be allowed to hear that z-syllable. Under. Any. Circumstances.
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you fuckers!

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I want you to get mad.
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president einstein steps in it

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The Democratic Party is getting back the full measure of their own. Their whole—murderous—strategy to take back control of Congress and the White House was to make Bush own the wars and own Blackwater, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Let that sink in. Rather than IMPEDE Bush, than even temper his outrageous breaches of International Law and our own Constitution, they sat back, they abetted his administration, using our rage to get their power... notwithstanding the incalculable amount of damage this strategy was ensuring. Well, kids, guess what? The Democratic Party now owns everything they let Dubya and Fuddy Boy pull on the world. Richly deserved. So very richly deserved.

Except, of course, this still leaves the world in ruins, but... who the fuck is counting anymore?
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distractingly sententious but brilliant

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Chris Hedges annoys the crap out of me. I love most of his stuff but, yuck, he's such a moralizing pain in the ears. Anyway, annoyed as I was to listen, listen I did, and he honestly has quite enough to say here to make it well worth annoying oneself to heed.
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eat yer hearts out, hydrocarbon hogs!

[click image—Do you think that woman behind him had just goosed him?]

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Doesn't it just kill you those damn Iranians are piping our natural gas out of Turkmenistan?

What nerve....

Plus, just finished listening to Riz Khan's latest show on Iran and am very, very happy to hear people beginning to talk sensibly about this sham revolution. It helped, also, to listen to Hillary Mann-Leverett being her usual supremely level-headed and well-informed, damn sober, self.
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i'm watching al jazeera

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And I'm crestfallen to report that I think they took their copy for their top story straight from last night's Daily Show. You know this cannot have been their inclination, but... they did it.
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globe-trotting plus full-time lying is really, really hard on a girl

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Yes, yes it is.
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the real question is: can we move there?

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No. Really.
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federal prosecutors "behaving like defense lawyers"

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For the 298th time: THIS IS FASCISM.

Wake up.
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not awkward: typical

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Sheesh.
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you should pay peter for your attention stream if you can

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I'm listening to him talk to a couple ex-CIA agents talking about recent events right now, and kinda cringing at the thought of what they might say about the not-a-lap-bomber, but, well, fully 95% of what Peter B does is very worth our time, and I hope to heck he makes a good enough living at this to keep it up....
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Okay, so this one and the one a few days ago about the freedom march were not excellent. They usually are.
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would it were only republicans they're blocking

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hard to argue against

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Except everybody may be giving Obama too much credit for wittingly doing this. The witting ones made him do it, and since, really, it's only his own special obsession with charisma that interests him, there probably wasn't really any trouble getting him to sign on. They let Dean win this one, and then showed him how utterly they could turn it into complete defeat. If Obama had an ounce of courage or a half an ounce of faithfulness this wouldn't be the case, but... it sure is.
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not the year of the bald eagle, that much is sure

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mild mannered and thoughtful not a lap bomber

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They're talking about the Sana'a Institute in the video, and the kid they're talking about seems most likely to have been interested in a Sufi School in Hadramaout than looking for bin Laden roots... but I haven't gotten to the bottom of that one.
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this stuff just leaves me spluttering

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Hillary Mann-Leverett, a former US diplomat who worked at the national security council, told Al Jazeera that Yemen had long been a troubled state plagued by poverty and violence.

"The most important thing here for geopolitics globally and within the region, is that Yemen has been a fractured, desperately poor and deeply fractitious country that all the countries in the region and the superpowers have used as a battleground," she said.

But Mann-Leverett also said that the Obama administration's policies towards the region were partially to blame for threats against Washington and its allies.

"We have given the Saudis a green light to militarily intervene in Yemen and to characterise what is happening in Yemen as a Sunni-Shia war [with] the Saudis there to defend the Sunnis against craven Shia," she said.

"We're paying the price today of outsourcing our policy to the Saudis."

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good christ and jeebuz, as they say

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I ate something bad for me last night and I am a puffed-out wreck with breathing troubles today. I can't even face the tubes until later. I don't know how people put that crap in their bodies and go on with their lives. I don't. I don't. I don't.
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i don't wanna watch anything called world's greatest dad

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... but it's Robin, so... well... I have to.
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What a nightmare of a movie. It was making a good point, but the only things not crass or outright disgusting about it were Robin and his neighbor lady and Bruce Hornsby.
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it's for sure getting loud here tonight

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I won a couple free movies tonight. So. Watch out Northern California. I'm stupid for The Edge, and I loof, luff, lurve Jimmy Page, and this other kid does not suck... so... well... eat yer hearts out....
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With Page absolutely nothing escapes and everything about the very pulse of the exceptional is conveyed. With The Edge absolutely everything is conveyed and nothing but the very essence escapes. With this kid White absolutely everything is against talent—you keep looking, keep hearing, keep expecting—and it pops out only when he's given up.
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michael moore, a love story

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Bearing in mind that this clip is three months old, Michael Moore talking about his latest release, there is so much in it worth listening to. I find myself wishing the Commonwealth Club would have him back to talk about what's happened to his hopes since then.
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one question

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Think this one came pre-painted with nanothermite?
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the right of everything to exist

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REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL
The right of humanity to exist
(Taken from CubaDebate)

CLIMATE change is already causing considerable damage and hundreds of millions of poor people are suffering the consequences.

The most advanced research centers assure that very little time is left for avoiding an irreversible catastrophe. James Hansen, of NASA’s Goddard Institute, says that a level of 350 parts carbon dioxide per million is still tolerable; today, however, the figure is in excess of 390 and it is increasing at a rate of 2 parts per million every year, exceeding the levels of 600,000 years ago. Each one of the last two decades has been the hottest ever recorded. The abovementioned gas increased 80 parts per million in the last 150 years.

The ice of the Arctic Sea, the vast, two-kilometer-thick layer that covers Greenland, the glaciers of South America which feed its principle sources of freshwater, the colossal volume that covers Antarctica, the layer that covers Kilimanjaro, the ice that covers the Himalayas and the enormous frozen mass of Siberia are visibly melting. Notable scientists fear qualitative jumps in these natural phenomena that give rise to changes.

Humanity placed great hope in the Copenhagen Summit, after the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997, which entered into effect in 2005. The summit’s resounding failure gave way to shameful episodes that require due clarification.

The United States, with less than 5% of the world’s population, issues 25% of its carbon dioxide. The new president of the United States had promised to cooperate with international efforts to confront a problem that is affecting that country as much as the rest of the world. During meetings prior to the summit, it became evident that the leaders of that nation and of the richest nations maneuvered to make the weight of the sacrifice fall onto emerging and poor countries.

A large number of leaders and thousands of representatives of social movements and scientific institutions, determined to fight to preserve humanity from the greatest threat in its history went to Copenhagen, invited by the summit’s organizers. In order to focus on the political aspects of the summit, I will not go into details concerning the brutality of the Danish public forces, which attacked thousands of demonstrators and guests of the social movements and scientists who went to Denmark’s capital.

In Copenhagen, real chaos prevailed, and unbelievable things happened. Social movements and scientific institutions were not allowed to attend the debates. There were heads of state and government who were not even able to issue their opinions on vital problems. Obama and the leaders of the richest countries took over the conference with the complicity of the Danish government. The agencies of the United Nations were relegated.

Barack Obama, who arrived on the last day of the summit to remain there for only 12 hours, met with two groups of guests "hand-picked" by him and his collaborators. Together with one of them, he met with the rest of the highest delegations in the plenary hall. He spoke and immediately left via the back door. In that plenary session, except for the small group selected by him, the representatives of other countries were not allowed to speak. During that meeting, the presidents of Bolivia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela were allowed to speak, because the president of the summit had no alternative than to concede that in the face of the strenuous demands of those present.

In an adjoining room, Obama met with the leaders of the richest countries, several of the most important emerging states, and two very poor ones. He presented a document, negotiated with two or three of the most important countries, ignored the United Nations General Assembly, gave press conferences, and marched away like Julius Caesar during one of his victorious campaigns in Asia Minor, which prompted him to exclaim, "I came, I saw, I conquered."

Even Gordon Brown, prime minister of the United Kingdom, had affirmed on October 19, "If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late."

Brown concluded his speech with dramatic words: "We cannot afford to fail. If we act now; if we act together; if we act with vision and resolve, success at Copenhagen is still within our reach. But if we falter, the earth itself will be at risk… For the planet there is no plan B."

Now he arrogantly stated that the United Nations cannot be taken hostage by a small group of countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Tuvalu, while accusing China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other emerging states of giving in to the seduction of the United States and signing a document that dumps the Kyoto Protocol into the garbage bin and contains no binding commitment whatsoever on the part of the United States and its rich allies.

I feel obliged to remember that the United Nations was born just six decades ago, after the last World War. There were no more than 50 independent countries at the time. Today, it is made up of more than 190 independent states, after the odious colonial system ceased to exist because of the determined struggles of the peoples. Even the People’s Republic of China was denied UN membership for many years, and a puppet government held its representation in that institution and on its privileged Security Council.

The tenacious support of a growing number of Third World countries was indispensable to the international recognition of China, and an extremely important factor for the United States and its allies in NATO recognizing its (China’s) rights in the United Nations.

In the historic struggle against fascism, the Soviet Union made the largest contribution. More than 25 million of its sons and daughters died, and enormous destruction ravaged the country. Out of that struggle, it emerged as a superpower, capable of countering, in part, the absolute dominion of the imperial system of the United States and the former colonial powers in their unlimited plunder of the peoples of the Third World. When the USSR disintegrated, the United States extended its political and military power toward the East, toward the heart of Russia, and its influence over the rest of Europe grew. There is nothing strange about what happened in Copenhagen.

I would like to emphasize the unjust and offensive nature of the statements of the prime minister of the United Kingdom, and the yanqui attempt to impose, as a summit agreement, a document that was never discussed at any time with the participating countries.

At a December 21 press conference, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez stated a truth that is impossible to deny; I will use some of his exact paragraphs: "I would like to emphasize that in Copenhagen, there was no agreement whatsoever of the Conference of the Parties; no decision whatsoever was made with respect to binding or non-binding commitments or international law; there was simply no agreement in Copenhagen.

"The summit was a failure and a deception of world public opinion…. The lack of political will was laid bare….

"It was a step backward in the actions of the international community to prevent or mitigate the effects of climate change….

"The average world temperature could rise by five degrees…."

Immediately, our foreign minister added other interesting facts about possible consequences according to the latest scientific investigations.

"From the Kyoto Protocol to date, the emissions of the developed countries have risen by 12.8%... and 55% of that volume comes from the United States.

"One person in the United States consumes, on average, 25 barrels of oil annually; one European, 11; one Chinese citizen, less than two; and one Latin American or Caribbean, less than one.

"Thirty countries, including those of the European Union, consume 80% of the fuel produced."

The very real fact is that the developed countries which signed the Kyoto Protocol drastically increased their emissions. They now wish to replace the base of emissions adopted starting 1990 with that of 2005, with which the United States, the maximum issuer, would reduce its emissions of 25 years earlier by only 3%. It is a shameless mockery of world opinion.

The Cuban foreign minister, speaking on behalf of a group of ALBA countries, defended China, India, Brazil, South Africa and other important states with emerging economies, affirming the concept reached in Kyoto of "common, but differentiated responsibilities; meaning that the historic accumulators and the developed countries, those responsible for this catastrophe, have different responsibilities from those of the small island states, or those of the countries of the South, above all the least-developed countries….

"Responsibilities means financing; responsibilities means the transfer of technology under acceptable conditions, and then Obama makes a play on words, and instead of talking about common but differentiated responsibilities, talks about ‘common, but differentiated responses.’

"He leaves the plenary without deigning to listen to anybody, nor had he listened to anybody before his speech."

At a subsequent press conference, before leaving the Danish capitol, Obama affirmed, "We've made meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough in Copenhagen. For the first time in history the major economies have come together to accept their responsibility…"

In his clear and irrefutable statement, our foreign minister affirmed, "What is meant by ‘the major economies have come together to accept their responsibility?’ It means that they are shrugging off an important part of the burden signified by the financing for the mitigation and adaptation of countries — above all the entire South — to climate change, onto China, Brazil, India and South Africa; because it must be said that in Copenhagen, there was an assault on, a mugging of China, Brazil, India, and South Africa, and of all of the countries euphemistically referred to as developing."

These were the resounding and irrefutable words with which our foreign minister recounted what happened in Copenhagen.

I should add that, at 10 a.m. on December 19th, after our Vice President Esteban Lazo and the Cuban foreign minister had left, there was a belated attempt to resuscitate the corpse of Copenhagen as a summit agreement. At that point, virtually no heads of state or even ministers were left. Once again, the exposé of the remaining members of the Cuban, Venezuela, Bolivian, Nicaraguan and other countries’ delegations defeated the maneuver. That was how the inglorious summit ended.

Another fact that cannot be forgotten was that, during the most critical moments of that day, in the early morning, the Cuban foreign minister, together with the delegations that were waging their dignified battle, offered UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon their cooperation in the increasingly difficult battle that is being waged, and in the efforts that must be undertaken in the future to preserve the life of our species.

The environmental group WWF warned that climate change will become uncontrollable in the next 5 to 10 years if emissions are not drastically cut.

But it is not necessary to demonstrate the essence of what is being said here about what Obama did.

The U.S. president stated on Wednesday, December 23 that people were right to be disappointed by the outcome of the Summit on Climate Change. In an interview with the CBS television network, the president noted, "Rather than see a complete collapse in Copenhagen, in which nothing at all got done and would have been a huge backward step, at least we kind of held ground and there wasn't too much backsliding from where we were…"

Obama, according to the news dispatch, was the one most criticized by those countries which, virtually unanimously, believe that the outcome of the summit was disastrous.

The UN is now in a predicament. Asking other countries to adhere to the arrogant and antidemocratic agreement would be humiliating for many states.

Continuing the battle and demanding at all meetings, particularly those of Bonn and Mexico, the right of humanity to exist, with the moral authority and strength the truth affords us, is, in our opinion, the only way forward.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 26, 2009
8:15 p.m.

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just in case you were hoping that was a mirage last night

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It wasn't. And, just in case you think I enjoy being a bitch about Obama's dickless impersonation of a president, I don't. Further, I remind you, that I don't even think he wants to be this way. He's just too afraid they will kill him if he doesn't go this route. It may seem harsh, but, well, that's no goddam excuse. When you are so all-fired avid to be president, THIS is what you sign on for. Period. Full stop. No shit. Sorry, bub. You keep your oath and if they kill you for it, that's none of your lookout.

And it's getting more familiar by the minute....

If you have not yet heard what witness Haskell has to say about the Lap Bomber, click in to the blog and it's right near the top of my sidebar. About a half an hour run time and there won't be part of a doubt left in your mind that this was a false flag to whip up support for our aggression in Yemen... which... heavy sigh... is almost certainly about whipping up Saudi aggression toward Iran, so, well, LISTEN TO THAT INTERVIEW AND START SCREAMING!
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pleading with ernie

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You know, some days I just spend entirely too much time getting my ideas out in comments elsewhere, and I have been doing it again too much yonder and then becoming too drained to cover the same ground here, or then it all starts running together in my head and I forget who I told what bit of it, or maybe subconsciously I think you are omniscient and see absolutely everything I set out anywhere, including just in my own head. This probably isn't the case.

So, Ernie, someone I suspect of being a deeply good man, or trying hard anyway, wrote a piece about getting Winograd in to do instead of the deplorable Harman, struggling with the progressive imperative, and just becoming irked by my foreign pronouncements no matter how hard I try to put in the pointer arrows that he might get the right idea. Anyway, I just spent a bunch of time again trying to spit it out such that he might not snap closed and follow the contours of his gray matter in his chess game against the awfulness in the world.

You know, Ernie, I think what I'm forgetting to say about all this is that it isn't a matter of progressiveness right now so much as it's anti-fascism, anti-neofeudalism, that is the imperative. They have a lock on our country and all its political mechanisms. This has to be broken before progressivism can ever get its ass back off the ground, no matter how hard we work to get progressives in to replace the fascists. They continually are turned into appeasers of that beast, if not becoming finally too tired of the pressure and just joining in, settling for the perks. So if you want to be effective you shoot for gathering everyone who is anti-fascist under one tent, whether or not they're "progressive" and make sure that lock is blown off the door to American governance.

Beside my multifarious attempts to show where mental blocks impede the sight needed, at the bottom of all of them is simply, You can't get there from here!

Jane Hamsher is on the right track. We should not be letting our prejudices and long-held feelings of animosity toward "the other side" get in the way of our sight, our ability to create the force that gives us back a country wherein it's even possible to place our kind of candidates in office and expect results.

Truly, now, truly, we've done this too many times to still be thinking it's going to get us anywhere. Personally, I have been thinking the only cure would be armed insurrection, but Jane has put a klieg lamp on the way that would not involve literal bloodshed and yet very well might be sturdy enough to get the job done.

I implore you to stop being so closed-minded about this stuff. I spend a great deal of time snooping around the web and listening to people from all political leanings, and the tea party people have been coöpted from heavily Ron Paul people to heavily stanky Republican shills. It was very easy to do because they are all so angry. Not stupid. Angry. An angry person is the easiest person in the world to manipulate! So it would be just as easy for us to inform that anger and turn it toward a more productive force. And a billion times more so with assholes [or maybe former assholes] like Grover Norquist on our side. Long as we stick to the truth we can manipulate people's anger to fight for it.

You have stated, and quoted Old Droner, on how the vast majority of Americans are progressive, and I believe this honestly cannot be questioned. I believe it because I know so many self-identified "conservatives" who want mostly the same things I want, and you want. That vast majority of progressives doesn't fit into one party or the other, and a bunch of them are certain all these taxes and this hulking government are NOT the way.

And they MIGHT be right! There are other ways government can get the money for progressive things besides taxes. Or if it's taxes paying for them, they have to be so wonderful even the people we think are just selfish tightwads right now are also so happy they stop minding paying.

A lot of them only mind paying this much because they're struggling too hard to make it and getting bubkes but a steadily growing mountain of dead brown people for their trouble.

People struggling that hard resent the snot out people who get things for free. It's not very nice, but even the nicest people can cave to this weakness under this much pressure.

Truly, Ernie, please open your mind. We are in dire trouble. Even if everything else might somehow be straightened out to stop threatening so much, the climate crisis won't wait, and it's thoroughly reprehensible—MONSTROUS—to let them keep piling up so many bodies while we dither and "hope" and scheme about how to eke another progressive into the House.

I left the Democratic Party, after a lifetime in it, in 2006 when they decided to let more millions be slaughtered for political gain. Now it's much worse even than that. A line in the sand must be drawn, and the big guns need to come out.

Please. Jane's right.

Jane Hamsher's really, really on the right track.

I maybe, probably, should have pointed out how easily his anger has been used against him, too, but people continually become insulted instead of relieved by this sort of information....
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let's be careful out there

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Happy holidays, everyone, and don’t get captured. —Matt Taibbi
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we don't have to further neofeudalism to get healthcare

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Don't be stupid. We can still fight this and do better. We can. Yes, yes, we can.
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move israel to the south pole

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Several Palestinians, including an eight-year-old girl, were injured during Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip on early Saturday, Gaza-based Al Quds radio said.

Israeli warplanes targeted militants, the radio in the Palestinian enclave controlled by radical Hamas group said.

Israel's military said the raids were in response to Gaza rocket fire on the Israeli border community of Netivot on Friday. No casualties were reported.

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i know it's not a popular thing to say

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... but I do seriously admire the determination to teach Western leadership about their audacity this way. Every time I pay attention I find the Iranian leaders trying to teach decency to Westerners one way or another. This is part of how I know they are not as awful as people there or here are making them out to be. They might be awful in many ways, but on the question of standing up to assholes, they are impeccable, impeccable, impeccable. From the refusal to give a straight answer to some shithead asking them hugely discourteous questions, outrageous questions, as though they had every right, as though they can't hear themselves being green fuming shills for fascists, right on up to issuing an ultimatum back to world leaders with bloated ideas about what they're entitled to do and say to other world leaders, and never forgetting their stubborn support for freedom fighters where others are too cowed to do the right thing.

Plus, knowing not at all how much truth there is to the reports of such harsh treatment of the stupid assholes on the streets trying to start WWIII, because so much lying has been going on in the press and on the blogs that no one I've found can tell anymore, I gotta say it would follow that they aren't a tenth as nasty as they're made out to be. I could be wrong, completely wrong about this, because, as I say, the lies and the obviously American-backed insurrection make it impossible to get a reasonable read on it. I did hear some Iranian guy on al Jazeera the other night, while hands too wet from washing dishes to come to my machine and try to note his name, who was sympathetic to the reform marchers/rioters, mentioning that they still needed to get the working class and general population behind them before they had a real movement, imploring the kids to cut the violence toward the regime... and I don't know if he realized it while he was also conceding that the election wasn't rigged, but he was in fact conceding too that this is not the general population of Iran kicking up all this fuss. It's the rich kids.
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about that resolution

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i'm going to bed

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I'd switched on Moyers' latest thing about Lincoln and, pfeh, people in the arts can be so tiresomely shallow, while waxing, of course, transcendentally deep.... As you well know, I was pretty sure the Lap Bomber was no lap bomber, but, well, listening to that interview with Kurt Haskell, which is now also near the top of my sidebar for a while, just blew out all my pipes. This is another false flag. There isn't a particle of doubt left in my mind. And that's just so huge it blew all my tolerance for the people out there just getting on with their lives as best they can under this pall clean out my window and far over the sea.

I want to bite nails in half at the thought of a playbill and a cocktail at intermission. Society dames throwing parties to raise money for a new wing of an art museum, I feel, just now, ought to be lined up and shot. It's still okay with me if farmers are out in their fields, and maybe doctors and nurses still doing their things, but I think that's about the limit of my tolerance at this moment.

I can't begin to express how appalled I am, or all the maniacs running around inside my skin to make this stop forever. If people don't start howling now, there just isn't any hope. I saw somewhere, probably in the comments on that AntiWar Radio post, that everything big and awful that has ever happened was this kind of fakery. At first blush that seems a little over the top, but then you consider for half another beat and you realize we're a great sleeping beast and we never do this stuff. Someone does it for us like this. We can't get off our butts while the president stands in front of us on camera, ripping the constitution to shreds. So there's no impediment to grasping this fruit whenever somebody deems it time.

I just can't shake off this vision of seedy fucks out there in some dark motel room, cackling about blowing that Hajji kid's nuts off... and, so... you might agree. I need to go to bed.

All of it, from start to finish, pure horseshit:

Obama: al-Qaida link to Christmas terror suspect
By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer – 29 mins ago

HONOLULU – President Barack Obama laid blame Saturday on an al-Qaida affiliate for a Christmas Day terrorist attack that has prompted a top-to-bottom review of how the nation's intelligence agencies failed to prevent the botched bombing aboard a Detroit-bound airliner.

In his most direct public language to date, the president described the path through Yemen of 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of trying to destroy Northwest Flight 253. The president also emphasized that the United States would continue its partnerships with friendly countries — citing Yemen, in particular — to fight terrorists and extremist groups around the globe.

Obama's homeland security team has been piecing together just how Abdulmutallab was able to board the plane. Officials have described flaws in the system and by those executing the strategy and have delivered a preliminary assessment.

A senior administration official had said the United States was increasingly confident there was a link between Abdulmutallab and an al-Qaida affiliate, but Obama's statement is the strongest connection between the two.

"We're learning more about the suspect," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address that the White House released on Saturday as the president vacationed in Hawaii.

"We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of al-Qaida, and that this group — al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula — trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America," the president said.

Officials have said Abdulmutallab's father warned the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that his son had drifted into extremism in the al-Qaida hotbed of Yemen. Abdulmutallab's threat was only partially digested by the U.S. security apparatus and not linked with a visa history showing the young man could fly to the United States.

Obama has ordered a thorough look at the shortcomings that permitted the plot, which failed not because of U.S. actions but because the would-be attacker was unable to ignite an explosive device.

Intelligence officials prepared for what was shaping up to be uncomfortable hearings before Congress about miscommunication among anti-terror agencies and sweeping changes expected under Obama's watch. The president has been vocal in his criticism of the agencies and against extremists who would harm the United States.

"This is not the first time this group has targeted us," Obama said. "In recent years, they have bombed Yemeni government facilities and Western hotels, restaurants and embassies, including our embassy in 2008, killing one American."

"So, as president, I've made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government — training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al-Qaida terrorists," he said.

The United States provided Yemen $67 million in training and support under the Pentagon's counterterrorism program last year. Only Pakistan got more, with some $112 million.

Obama said the money had been well spent: "Training camps have been struck, leaders eliminated, plots disrupted. And all those involved in the attempted act of terrorism on Christmas must know — you too will be held to account."

At the same time, administration officials warned this week that Obama also would hold accountable his own government. To that end, Obama has summoned homeland security officials from across the government to meet with him in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday.

Obama was expected to run the meeting and press his team on how they missed what appears to be clear connections.

Aaaaaaaaagggggh!
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i was going to talk about certain deadly aspects of vanity

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And maybe I will tomorrow... but it seems to have blown out of me today.
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attitude is everything

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Go for it.
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listen to this and start screaming

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Like I said before, it's more plausible that the Lap Bomber wasn't a bomber at all... more like drugged... or thinking he was part of some drill. There were other guys involved and law enforcement has formally come out and lied their heads off about it. This is not a drill. This is not a drill. This is another fucking false flag.

START YELLING VERY LOUDLY... NOW!

No. Seeeriously. Call yer local stations. Pitch a fit. Don't let the lies turn into the basis for so many more deaths we can't ever tell the truth, even when we know it. Make all kinds of noise. Right now. Don't wait. Don't be shy. Yell.
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i'm waaaaay looking forward to this

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...which makes it the more vexing that I found it last night and saved it to blog today and forgot plum all about it until just now trying to clean up around here to go get some dinner and then come back and finish up on whatever else it is trying to come out of me today....
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an elephant reproducing in my room

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Alongside all the crap turning up about Yemen and Yemenis, there has been a new piece of crap about Iranian perfidy popping up and then falling right off the AP every single day for weeks now. They're just making shit up and printing it. And I'm not seeing people freaking about this stuff. Why?
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the essence of partisan bickering

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Yes, you.

But, blissfully, not Jane....
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intermission

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there'll probably be more, and different

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Okay. A lot of things are weighing on my mind damn heavily lately. For quite some time I have been struggling with my urges to tell that shill yonder to stick it where the sun don’t shine. It is no longer worth it to use up so much time and energy trying to keep his blog running smoothly, keep things from going too far into the awful zone. It was way worth it when I felt it was going to help him make a difference in the too damn fashionable election fraud thing, but he, somewhere along the line, decided to settle in for the long haul instead of go supernova to make it stop, now, and that means he has all the time in the world to keep his own blog rolling along... or find someone who does not mind filling their time herding the scandalized minions while he fills every page with the mob-generating polemics that pass for American culture these days.

Not my bag.

I have news for everyone. The people on the other side—and, clue, there is no other side—are people in the identical sense as those on this side—and, clue, there is no this side—are people. We’re all people.

The critical mass superiority complex battling the right wing echo chamber is every bit as pernicious as those they battle. It’s identical, actually. They're actually battling themselves. It’s all us-versus-themming all humanity to death. What's wrong with this picture?

C'mon, you can do it....

No excuses. There are none. It’s crap. Smart people can think up and spew endless excuses. So what? So it pisses off people who are desperate for something REAL to happen to make things better... no matter what the idea of “better” might turn out to be in each head. We can’t ever get to better this way. The strongest—aka, the meanest, most energetically greedy, most singlemindedly determined—will forever turn out to feel things are better when they have their way, but the rest of us won’t. And it’s worse even than that! Once the strongest get a taste of that exalted better, they can’t stop themselves from continuing their massively destructive shit to keep heaping that better on themselves at everyone else’s expense.

This is precisely as true with “progressives” as it is with “conservatives”... with the “altruistic” as with the “selfish”... with the downtrodden as with the downtreaders... EVERYONE, high and low.

And, well, high time we cut this out, no?

Yes.

Doug Hofstadter, someone who used to bear the brunt of many of my New Year’s Day letters, brought up the concept of “jumping out of the system” a couple thousand years ago in the Pulitzer Prize winning Gödel, Esher, Bach and, even though I don’t think he ever got anything like a good grip on the basics of Zen, it was a damn Zen thing he put forth there. The book is a very hard read, but rewards one with a little cosmos of wonderful concepts, gloriously abstract, and useful for a lifetime... but... er... I digress.

When you find yourself trapped in a system that does not work, you jump out of it, look at it from outside so you can SEE what makes it unworkable and how to go about fixing that.

This seems dirt evident to me.

So, while it is also thrilling to read Doug coming up with it and playing with it, sending you off down a path more wonderful than Alice’s adventures down the rabbit hole, it is dirt evident that one must jump out of a system that doesn’t work, or only works on a level too low to satisfy the imperatives, to make that dull insufficiency stop wrecking things for everyone. Right? Oh, right? Uhm, duh? Please? Are you strapped to a full length mirror and calling that freedom? Or can you look up from the contents of your own mind long enough to get the lightbulb on and dance? Hmmm?

Try to divorce this argument from the smart/dumb axis, because looking up from this jail cell mirror thing doesn’t seem to favor smart people over dumb people. In fact, sometimes stunted intellect means there’s less of a hinderance to assimilating dirt evident stuff.

What is it about your own ideas that make them more important to you as weapons to bash others with than your basic love of living things? I mean, even the most evil fuckers of all time loved living things, no matter how many of them they slaughtered, no matter how many they squished like bugs. They couldn’t help it. Life itself loves life itself. Life itself is love. The only self you have more fundamental than your status as a living thing is your status as star stuff, which means, of course, not only do you love everyone in your very essence, but you love everything, every atom, every quark, in your very essence. You ARE every quark in your very essence. So, pfeh, this left/right, Republicrat, good/evil, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, mode of picking up a standard to bear is just SHIT okay?

Can you stop long enough to take this in?

Can you bring yourself up short, just stop, for long enough to realize all your, say, anti-racism crap is as stupid as racism? Does that sound too nihilistic to you? It ain’t, and if you can’t hang with it, you have not stopped for that moment to take a gander at the basics.

We’re star stuff. So are rocks.

[So is Glenn Beck.]

Hating racism is as hateful as racism. Whenever you build up an us-versus-them to fight bad things, you are creating an isomorphism containing the same awfultude you flatter yourself you combat. You have to jump out of us-vs-them, this-versus-that, or you’re a bipedal exercise in futility. Period.

That’s why I use New Years’ Days to do this sort of thing. A great do-nothing day to just stop and look at actuality, remind somebody of it. I know you probably don’t come here for me to bap you over the head with Zen, use up yer eyeprints being told to stop being a jackass for a few moments, but, ahem, it’s getting dire out there and this should only take a few moments. You can get pissed at me for calling you a jackass tomorrow. For right now, just, please, shut the fuck up, and stop.

You’re supposed to be sentient. You’re supposed to be possessed of more intelligence than warring troops of chimpanzees, and this means you have to do this sort of thing from time to time. Or would you prefer the Social Darwinism we call Globalization, the Social Darwinism that already is the Third Millennium, the Social Darwinism that is melting our planet with wars and greenhouse gasses? If yer so almighty clean and righteous and progressive, then whut’s yer problem taking this in and DOING BETTER?
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