it hurts

[click image — Steve Lukather on guitar]

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I am deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Gary Moore.
Gary was not only a fellow musician but also a soul mate;
ever since he played in my solo band we developed a special bond
and I will miss him dearly. May he rest in peace.

—Greg Lake, February 7, 2011

It hurts.

I can't think of Gary, without thinking of Greg too. It's my whole life. That voice, my whole life because that guy opened his mouth one day and ecstasy sprang out. I bet he's feeling this with us... all of us who have loved them for this long.

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love, 99
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a good death

[click image]

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One of my heroes went out with a bang yesterday. He picked a nice setting for a heart attack. Agent BB2 has made a playlist so we can contemplate our loss. Damn. He probably had the definitive album still in him when he checked out. I suppose it's too much to hope that he might fill the cosmos with it now instead....

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You know... it just hit me that some astonishing number of my heroes were born in Belfast.... Do you think I better get there before any more of them slip away?

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I ended up making a playlist too, because BB2 is always more forgiving of the vicissitudes of live performances than I am, and I like listening to the produced stuff along with the better live performances....

Many nights I fall asleep listening to a playlist low, and I think this one's going to be it tonight... well... maybe when I get up... maybe I'd rather it were playing low while I'm agape at the perfidies of the day, sipping my coffee, feeling my life crashing up against the impossible and groping madly for it as I'm sucked down the tubes of hell....

Yes. I'll listen again to it then.

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love, 99
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yes, i really do hate that funhouse mirror image

[click image]

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I know he didn't mean for me to take it that way, but—he really IS a funhouse mirror image of a human, aka SPACE LIZARD.

Oddly, not a single journalist raised this extraordinary connection with US government officials — nor the blatant conflict of interest it appears to represent.

Mr Wisner is a retired State Department 36-year career diplomat – he served as US ambassador to Egypt, Zambia, the Philippines and India under eight American presidents. In other words, he was not a political appointee. But it is inconceivable Hillary Clinton did not know of his employment by a company that works for the very dictator which Mr Wisner now defends in the face of a massive democratic opposition in Egypt.

So why on earth was he sent to talk to Mubarak, who is in effect a client of Mr Wisner's current employers?

Fuck. No matter how devious he is, he can NEVER out-devious Hillary. And this is what people call "presidential" in 2011. How mindfucked are you to even consider it?

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I suppose I could as well put this under Harman's post below, but Glenn Greenwald is saying it in the Egyptian Corruption vs. American Corruption column, so I will too:

How many American politicians with a national platform over the last thirty years have failed to convert their political standing into great personal wealth? Perhaps only those who began their political careers with great wealth. Ex-Presidents and their wives and top aides are routinely lavished with many millions of dollars from media companies and other corporations for books, speeches and other services (Obama didn't even wait to become President to capitalize on his political celebrity), while a large portion of ex-members of Congress and administration officials with any real power feed at the trough of corporate largesse in exchange for peddling their influence. It would literally be impossible to list all the top officials from both parties who have quickly converted their political influence into vast personal wealth over the past two decades; it'd be much quicker to list the few who haven't.

And that's to say nothing of the virtually limitless political power automatically wielded by those with great private wealth, who own America's government institutions and literally write most of its laws.

Kablammy, and to think he's dulled by dengue fever!

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love, 99
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that reminds me

[click image]

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I set us all to setting our hearts on Julian's release last night, resolving to get in bed with the determination to dream of this, even, and then got in bed and picked up a magazine to combat the alertness trying to poke through my drowsiness. I was reading some blather about the relative merits of a couple of maverick Muslim scholars when I dropped into dreamland and kept being annoyed by the vision of some Muslim official somewhere lying very charmingly to some parliament or other. He was kind of handsome. He was doing an Obama. I kept being so angry about it that it would wake me back up, pissed off, and then I'd sink right back into it. I don't think it was a dream. I think it's happened or is happening or will happen and I was seeing it, but so unwilling that this is all I can say about it.

So I got up this "morning" chuffed and puffed and cranky as anything over not having gotten to the part where I invoked the good dream for Assange... but... after thinking about it a while, I'm now much more pissed off even that I was so obtuse about noting the precise specs of this Muslim politician I saw.

Never mind. JULIAN. We must concentrate on this ending tomorrow. We must concentrate on freeing a truthteller.

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love, 99
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what a pansy

[click image]

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It has been louder, harder, harsher, outright psychotic in the redwoods for 25 years—more, but at the psycho pitch for 25.

Mark Harper, the Conservative MP for The Forest of Dean, was attacked by protesters as he exited a public meeting where he had been defending the Government's plans for a forestry sell-off.

He was pelted with eggs by protesters who also attacked the police van to try to prevent him leaving.

Mr Harper accused a number of objectors of being "bent on violence" and likened them to a "baying mob".

This guy ain't seen nuthin' yet. If you want to cut down a redwood tree nowadays, you have to be willing to endure major flak—grateful when it's only eggs—from mobs first.

Unfortunately—and against all reason—there are people willing to endure that to get at the wood. When I tell you that the difference between us and them is that they have the will, believe me, I know what I'm talking about.

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This would also constitute why I know the awfulness will not stop short of whole populations going postal on their governments. NOTHING else is big enough to halt the march of capital. Global enlightenment would do it, but, who ever said I was completely insensible to reälpolitik?

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love, 99
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i wanna hear more about unknown unknowns

[click images]

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Don't you think Barackhenaten should give him back his job? I see on the news feed that HuffPo says Rummy fought LBJ over Vietnam. He's a nice progressive peacenik who has been given a bad rap. And he had the class to wait a matter of years before coming out with his book. I mean, hell, we should all reconsider, shouldn't we?



Oh, don't be so mean....

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love, 99
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i meant to link this yesterday

[click image]

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Not that it isn't something we don't already know, but I really think this slips back from front and center while we attend to current events, and so it bears stressing. It probably would have been more impressive if I'd put it in with the part about the US sending warships to Egypt. But better late than never, and probably more impressive than THIS, depending on yer tastes, I guess....

AJ reports the same number of protestors are having to inhabit ever smaller areas of the square as the military hems them in... the thrust being to let them go out with a whimper... or keep their presence forever in the form of a ratty little kiosk as in all perpetual peaceful demonstrations in public places. Soon Egypt will be as modern and free as we are, with their very own designated protest areas, free speech zones....

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From a piece about the Muslim Brotherhood not being Muslim...

In Egypt, the die is now in the process of being cast and most sheeple (especially the young university-class air heads hysterically spouting off about "freedom" [LOL] to western news media — they can't think, only parrot and go into denial) are too lazy and dumb to realize it, because they are obsessed with eating, TV, money and ego while their nations, freedoms and children's future are stolen from them under their noses without their even realizing it. Gulag candidates.

Yikes.

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love, 99
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why do they call them 'think tanks'?

[click image]

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They only take people who unthinkingly obey in them. When your fund raising perfidies reach classic heights, you are put in charge. This isn't about thinking in the sense we were all taught went on at think tanks. I grant that one must not be a dope on the meretricious scale, but... surely... that doesn't count, does it?

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love, 99
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test the power of your heart

[click image]

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Keep Julian Assange in it all day. Let's see what we can do.

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love, 99
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at least it will be obvious now even to diehards

[click image]

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I mean, I don't like admitting I know people who go there every day for their news.

The Huffington Post is privately owned by its two co-founders, Huffington and Kenneth Lerer, as well as investors. AOL's statement said the directors of each company and shareholders of the Huffington Post have already approved the [sale to AOL], which is expected to be completed by the middle of the year.

Originally a politics blog aimed at Democrats, the Huffington Post branched out into celebrity coverage and turned itself into one of the biggest pieces of real estate in online news media in the US, rapidly overtaking more established media organisations such as the Washington Post by deftly utilising the internet to exploit untapped markets.

Huffington has said that her site made a profit in 2010 for the first time. The New York Times reported that Huffington Post executives estimate that the site will generate $60m in revenue this year, compared with $31m in 2010.

Maybe now people will grok that this is MSM we're talkin'... brain sucking mass hypnosis... brought to you by space lizards... sliming you from every corner of "civilization", INCLUDING the intertubes.

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love, 99
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another meditation

[click image]

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I may have linked the first hour in this playlist a while back. It's Henrik interviewing Jordan, and Jordan may have gone permanently cantankerous. What a guy. He's always been all over the map and I can hang with that because he keeps looking. He has inspired and/or helped quite a few brilliant people in his day, and I can't say I'm one of the inspired, because he seems to me always to be mixing so much poppycock with the profound, and I'm sure part of my problem is my own mental conditioning, but I'm also sure part of it is his failures in communication. Anyway, I have been listening to the rest of this interview for the past couple hours, and he is just beside himself angry with the meatheads running around posing as sentient beings.

He's not alone.

It's actually fashionable.

It's a waste of breath, a waste of brain space, an indulgence, beside the point, and I hope this is only him blowing off steam from the mountains of insults heaped upon him in certain quadrants of cyberspace. I'm a little worried because, honestly, this can't be anything new to him. He's seventy years old. He should be serene amidst the shit slinging by now, after fifty years of doing this. But, yikes, he's not. This isn't the only interview he's filled up with mostly ranting and repeating himself, ad nauseam, and I'm worrying that this is the herald of dementia.

If it is not, here is a man who has spent his whole life glued to wonderful things to contemplate, divining important bits from arcana and riveting people with the retelling of both ancient wisdom and his insights from it, and he hasn't gotten further in his spiritual work than this? Truly now, there is cause for alarm.

If he spent half as much time talking about the nuts and bolts of his researches as he does about how stupid and useless and debauched Americans are, we might not be so stupid and useless and debauched! Or even if we still were, fewer of us would be. He can't not know that. How can he have spent all this time on it and not have seen at least that much? I mean, I feel for him. I do. I have been that way about learning things ever since I got out of school. I was never as keen on studying then as I have been since... although... you know, I think the tubes has jumbled this up, inhibited it harshly on one end, while expanding it amazingly on the other. I maybe need to go sit on a stump at the beach for a day or two and see if I can't devise an approach that balances this better.

We need to seriously assess how much we are losing in our gains here. I don't think any one of us, let alone all mankind, can afford to do the usual level of learning everything the hard way with this. I don't think all you frustration addicts out there should be so judgmental about all the Out There stuff I try to bring to the table. I'm trying to help you unhook from the great mesmerism you maybe even think isn't working on you. But it IS. Keeping you nonstop appalled is the lock on your consciousness needed to keep you weak.

Weak. Yes, yes, "knowledge is power". Right? Well, misters and mizzes, where's yer fuckin' power? What have you got that can't be ripped away? What have you given that can't be ripped away? How much better is the world for your access to all this information? Why is absolutely every comments thread at all the greatest sites riddled with so much drivel you can't keep reading or you'll have to go dive into a vat of boiling oil? I know, I know, I'm probably more burnt out on this particular feature of the intertubes than most, having had to pay attention to it for too long, but, even so, it's at least 95% crap out there, and I'm being generous.

Is that because we're as moronic as Jordan says? Or is it because we are too bombarded with inputs to function right? I have trouble with this. I have had trouble with this my whole life. I can't help my IQ and I've never had another one. I know most people are stuck down where the atmosphere is thicker and I don't know how to pull them out. Be that as it may, I can tell where their intent is, where their hopes are, and by far the most of them want good things for everyone, so what is the deal here? Where's the rub? Where's the beef?

If you can recognize your own ineffectuality and realize your own disinclination to change anything in your life for real, doesn't this alarm you? Do you want to come sit next to me on that stump?

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love, 99
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when the going gets weird

[click image]

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The weird get going.

The first three on this playlist are the interesting part, and the rest are calls from all over the world....

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No. Really. This could be why I feel so damn loopy so often....

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Honestly. You know how you just feel like total crap if the head of your bed isn't aligned north? You don't? Move yer bed so your head is pointing north in your sleep. Tell me what happens. I'll wait.

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love, 99
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TURN OFF THAT MOTHERFUCKING TV!

[click image]

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The only people on the street right now are pre-teen girls and new mothers with strollers—not necessarily the same females—and a seriously shiny crunched up cherry red Accord EX full of gang bangers who aren't EVEN as stupid as you are! No. Really. LISTEN TO ALEC.

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Oh, and STAY OFF TWITFACE TOO!!!

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I must remind you that comedy is the BEST way to deliver the unbearable truth... second best is Hallmark mushy....

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They were goddam calling the game over the pharmacy and grocery store PAs. I almost screamed for them to goddam declare it a motherfucking HOLIDAY and spare me this crap. The Point Lobos Creamers are ahead of the Pigglyville Crankers by 98 points. You can watch the damn commercials on YouTube. Pickle yerself for five minutes and stop being so ever-lovin' EASY.

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irascibly yours, 99
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a little meditation on the blowout, thirty hints

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☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ☼ — ...

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love, 99
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oh, man, it's odd i should come across this today

[click image]

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I was back trying to pull together my sidebar again last night. Deleting or replacing dead links, etc., and finding myself miffed about that damn unemployment chart I keep faithfully updating every month, and which increasingly feels wrong to me. Kabam and kablooey! Pft! This now finds my eyeprints today.

Cosmic.

So. Since it now feels wrong, starting to feel as understated as the official line—and, yes, I know I clearly do like to err on the side of overstatement, but gimme a break, the country is comatose—I think I'm going to take that Shadow Stats graph off my sidebar. It ceases to say something meaningful to me....

For those of you on the feed, I don't know if you've noticed the updating on the matter of Egypt today. I think you should notice now.

Okay. Right. Off to nix the annoying graph.

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love, 99
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hmmmm, world traveler? president? world traveler? president?

[click image]

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Gonna have to choose from now on....

Former President George W. Bush has canceled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to address a Jewish charity gala, due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture, rights groups said on Saturday.

Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod's annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.

Criminal complaints against Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials say.

Human rights groups said they had intended to submit a 2,500-page case against Bush in the Swiss city on Monday for alleged mistreatment of suspected militants at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. naval base in Cuba where captives from Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts in the so-called War on Terror were interned.

Leftist groups had also called for a protest on the day of his visit next Saturday, leading Keren Hayesod's organizers to announce that they were cancelling Bush's participation on security grounds — not because of the criminal complaints.

But groups including the New York-based Human Rights Watch and International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) said the cancellation was linked to growing moves to hold Bush accountable for torture, including waterboarding. He has admitted in his memoirs and television interviews to ordering use of the interrogation technique that simulates drowning.

"He's avoiding the handcuffs," Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch, told Reuters.

The action in Switzerland showed Bush had reason to fear legal complaints against him if he travelled to countries that have ratified an international treaty banning torture, he said.

Brody is an American-trained lawyer specialized in pursuing war crimes worldwide, especially those allegedly ordered by former leaders, including Chile's late dictator Augusto Pinochet and Chad's ousted president Hissene Habre. Habre has been charged by Belgium with crimes against humanity and torture, and is currently exiled in Senegal.

PROSECUTE OR EXTRADITE

"President Bush has admitted he ordered waterboarding which everyone considers to be a form of torture under international law. Under the Convention against Torture, authorities would have been obliged to open an investigation and either prosecute or extradite George Bush," Brody said.

Swiss judicial officials have said that Bush would still enjoy a certain diplomatic immunity as a former head of state.

Dominique Baettig, a member of the Swiss parliament from the right-wing People's Party, wrote to the Swiss federal government last week calling for the arrest of Bush for alleged war crimes if he came to the neutral country.

Bush, in his "Decision Points" memoirs on his 2001-2009 presidency, strongly defends the use of waterboarding as key to preventing a repeat of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Most human rights experts consider the practice a form of torture, banned by the Convention on Torture, an international pact prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment. Switzerland and the United States are among 147 countries to have ratified the 1987 treaty.

"Whatever Bush or his hosts say, we have no doubt he canceled his trip to avoid our case. The message from civil society is clear — If you're a torturer, be careful in your travel plans. It's a slow process for accountability, but we keep going," the Paris-based FIDH and New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights said in a joint statement on Saturday.

Sami El Hadjj, a former Al Jazeera journalist and former detainee at Guantanamo, had been due to speak at their news conference in Geneva on Monday, where they will release the 2,500-page complaint.

"I'm surprised he (Bush) would even consider visiting a country that has ratified the torture convention and which takes its responsibilities seriously," said Brody.

"I think George Bush's world is a very small place at the moment," he said. "He may enjoy some kind of impunity in the United States, but other countries will not treat him so indulgently."

I'm surprised things have gotten so bad as to make Dubya seem like the good old days to me. I actually, no kidding, am forced to admit that I do miss him now. Not the kind of miss him like I want him back, but the kind where I can't help but wish it were at least that less awful again. We were beside ourselves over the opacity of that administration, even as we kept catching them at everything and Dubya would stick out his lower lip and defend it outright. NOW the opacity is near complete in its impenetrability. Were it not for Wikileaks, how much darker would it be right now?

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love, 99
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tuned in at the wrong moment — UPDATING

[click image]

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They were airing a retrospective of the uprising and I thought all the police mess on the screen was current for, like, a whole minute....

Sheesh.

Opposition will be sitting down with the government, and banks and businesses are reöpening today....

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Noon Fifteen... not willing to sound like we're taking sides, but...

PLENTY WILLING TO TAKE SIDES....

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AND... bad enough Hillary's on record as considering the Mubaraks family friends, but now Fudd reminds us of it too:

Former vice president Dick Cheney late Saturday praised beleaguered Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as a "good friend" to the United States, and called for an evenhanded US response to continuing unrest in Egypt.

"I think President Mubarak needs to be treated as he's deserved over the years, because he has been a good friend, not only to the United States but a lot of other folks that we do business with," Cheney said a gathering in Santa Barbara, California to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of late US president Ronald Reagan.

"He's been a good friend and ally of the United States and we need to remember that," Cheney said.

Despite those words of support, on the issue of whether Mubarak can or should hold on to power, the former vice president added: "There comes a time for everyone to hang it up and move on."

"That's a decision only the Egyptians can make," Cheney said.

He made his remarks as US President Barack Obama stepped up a diplomatic effort for a quick transition of power in Cairo.
Obama underscored the need for "an orderly, peaceful transition, beginning now," the White House said in a statement on Saturday as a 12-day protest for an end to Mubarak's 30-year-rule showed no sign of abating.

Some 300 people have been killed since anti-Mubarak demonstrations erupted on January 25.

I can't believe everyone in the Middle East hasn't come to shut down Washington, DC. I can't believe WE haven't done it.

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AJ ON VP TALKS WITH MB....

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Oriental Dental Hour... Another take. I don't agree, but....

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love, 99
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happy birthday

[click image]

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We will always love you.

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love, 99
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a little tsarion for my early evening nap

[click image]

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I know I just got up, but I wanna go back down. Sometimes that's all it takes to make me go alert again, and sometimes it just turns into a good snooze, but either way it goes, I listen to stuff with all kinds of jumping off points for positive contemplation....

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And, since I've given him his own label, I'm moving his sidebar stuff off herewith, and even other stuff, while I'm at it. You can find it by hitting the TSARION label or the SIDEBAR STUFF label.

They spray aluminum, barium and strontium all through the atmosphere as though they are fumigating. We are the bugs. —check and check

zeitgeist: moving forward

ORIGINS AND ORACLES, PARTS 1 AND 2

AGE OF MANIPULATION

truth frequency tsarion interviews

tsarion on red ice playlist

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love, 99
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at least rummy took his time

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That's sort of elegant, ain't it?

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love, 99
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what's going to stop the profit in becoming a puppet?

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People aspire to it! What are a few morals next to guaranteed comfort while everyone else goes down in abjection? You only pay for it if you defy your masters. Otherwise, yer jake. Billions of people would sign that dotted line.

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love, 99
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alex being as clear as possible about his opposition to the agw theory

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I maintain that we have no real way of knowing, but it helps to understand the motivation of people who are fighting all the clean freak elite tooth and nail. Knowing as I do that "they" do this nefarious stuff to keep us hypnotized and enslaved, I can't even accuse Alex of paranoia.

Just remember that it's mooted as a mind game only when you stop playing.

And there is NO cost to stopping because we are NOT doing what it would take anyway. Not only are we not doing it, but there is NO way to begin doing it so long as the status quo holds sway. So do yourself and your brothers and sisters a favor. Quit playing.

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love, 99
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clear as mud again

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If yer freakin' about not ever being able to tell what the hell is going on in this brilliant "Information Age", don't worry, because that's why we have it to begin with. You're right where you're supposed to be.

I don't know if Mubarak's son resigning from the party will appease the real forces lined up against him.

I do not know what the fuck is up with yet another Barackhenaten underling going public with opinions not sanctioned by the White House. That action can't be accidental either. If it's just to keep it muddy, well, bravo. Well done.

Fewer people holding the square. More peaceful today, but still occasional short flare-ups to keep anxiety at the appropriate level. Egyptian government insists the pipeline explosion this morning was NOT sabotage.

Maybe that's all to report for today, and we can just content ourselves contemplating if there could be anything real in the notion of China breaking the back of American fascism without firing a shot....

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love, 99
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okay, okay, sorry, but i've been yammerin' with mister north about this

[click image, audio, mp3, two hours]

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I am very late coming to the party today. I slept in and I started right in fooling with this temporary dream of fair play and good faith. There is no authority for any of it. It's just guys talking and no way to prove it out one way or the other, but there's a lot of good things to think about during the course of it, so I can recommend it to you.

I should take this time to mention something I've been wanting to mention to everyone freaking about money out there, Max Keiser included, for quite a while. I have been loath to bring it up as a position I will need to hold against all comers because you either understand it or you do not and it's completely your own lookout whether you understand it or not.

Money is not real, not actual. Neither is gold or silver or diamonds or whatever else you want to use for money. Money is a figment of your imagination. You want to get real? Recognize this. You want to stay in hell? Ignore it and proceed.

There is not, nor has there ever been, even one good reason for any monetary system. Including barter. It's pure delusion from start to finish and thin air that blinds almost everyone from earliest childhood.

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love, 99
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i'm reverting to ancient egypt tonight

[click image]

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I have my doctoral work to catch up on, you know.

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Momentary slip back into modern Egypt:

Unknown attackers have blown up a pipeline that runs through El-Arish area of Egypt's north Sinai area and supplies gas to Israel via Jordan, according to Egypt's state television reports.

It was not immediately clear what impact Saturday's blast had on gas flows. There were no immediate reports of any casualties as a result of the blast.

"Saboteurs took advantage of the security situation and blew up the gas pipeline," a state television correspondent reported, saying there was a big explosion.

State TV quoted an official as saying that the "situation is very dangerous and explosions were continuing from one spot to another" along the pipeline.

"It is a big terrorist operation", a state TV reporter said.

Residents in the area also reported a huge explosion and said flames were raging in the area.

According to a security source, the Egyptian army closed the main source of the gas supply to the pipeline.

"The armed forces and the authorities managed to close the main the source of flow and are trying to control the fires," the source said.

Israel's national infrastructure ministry said that it was looking into the incident. Israel imports 40 per cent of its natural gas from Egypt, in a deal built on their 1979 peace accord.

Al Jazeera's corrspondent, Ayman Mohyeldin reported from Egypt that, "We do not know yet who was behind the explosion as no group has claimed responsibility.

"The strategic Egypt-Israel relationship comes under very intense scrutiny here in Egypt because of the perception that very few people benefit from it.

"And many Egyptians believe that it benefits Israel more than it benefits Egyptians."

According to Al Jazeera's sources, eye witnesses are being interviewed by authorities and the investigation is focusing on some bedouin tribes of Northern Sinai.

Bedouin tribesmen of the Sinai Peninsula attempted to blow up the pipeline last July as tensions intensified between them and the Egyptian government, which they accuse of discrimination and of ignoring their plight.

"They do not enjoy the wealth that the state generates from the Sinai peninsula, the money has not benefitted the communities there," our correspondent added.

It's really pretty. Hope we get some good still images coming over the wires.

Al Jazeera had an Israeli analyst on to talk about it. The guy kept whining about what a good friend Mubarak has been, how insecure everyone in Israel is feeling, and how they need help. I think maybe they've freaked out the space aliens who'd come down to get them so badly that they turned tail and shot back to Betelgeuse without them....

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Extra credit: in case of insomnia....

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love, 99
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it seems this has been going on for centuries

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Fighting over it and fighting on it....

Thai and Cambodian soldiers exchanged fire in a two-hour border clash on Friday that killed two Cambodian soldiers and a Thai villager, the latest in an ancient feud over land surrounding a 900-year-old Hindu temple.

The fatalities were the first in the militarized border area since a Thai soldier was shot dead a year ago and could rekindle diplomatic tensions between the Southeast Asian neighbors over the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple.

Some things never change.

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love, 99
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someone has managed to cobble it together

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So, in a fit of ennui, I am listening to old Alan right now. Something more than thirty years ago, I spent my whole two weeks of vacation housesitting for some friends who lived in the attic apartment of a huge victorian mansion in a very quiet corner of San Rafael, California. They had a pet hermit crab who needed attending to. It was a splendid two weeks, except for spending most of it believing the hermit crab had died instead of merely molted. As I recall it was in the midst of one of the spells where my living situation had blown up in my face and I was camping back at my parents' place while finding another suitable arrangement. So I was greatly relieved to have my solitude back and an elegant escape from the attentions of suitors as well. I could loll on the most comfortable couch and listen to Alan Watts lectures coming over the radio. This I did.

The other radically cool part of this time was the discovery of Manx cats. There was a Manx living downstairs. He rocked.

I also wrote my first book in the window seat of that flat.

It was very girlish.

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love, 99
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closer to the truth

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I have noticed some troubling inconsistencies in the al Jazeera coverage, and, as you know, have been complaining about the precipitous drop in the veracity meter in general there over the last year or so. Webster Tarpley seems to think it's a puppet of British Intelligence. I don't know, and we have all seen that Webster is not infallible, but we've also got all kinds of reason to respect his demonstrated level of expertise over the years. So I heavily recommend you listen to this.

And it's NOT just me and Webster saying this....

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love, 99
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deal with it

[click image]

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Or get out yer tools:

Reversing a trend that began in the mid-1990s, big banks are imposing new fees on their least-profitable customers — those who want just a bare-bones checking account.

Those who can't maintain fat balances, or who don't use other services that would make them more lucrative to a bank, probably will need to cough up about $100 a year if they want to stay put. ...

The country's four giant banks — Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citibank — are already phasing in the charges, and large regional banks are expected to follow suit.

Wot?

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love, 99
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handy at carpentry?

[click image]

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We need you.

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love, 99
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i do not doubt it

[click image]

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Except Mubarak isn't taking it lying down. I look for him to be assassinated very soon. This repeated unleashing of thugs, whether uniformed or plain clothes, and looting and burning and terrorizing, is all about wresting his dictatorship back from the puppet masters who want to retire him. Leaving aside the part about how the puppet masters have no business using the people to accomplish their ends, now that they have, Mubarak STILL is slaughtering people to keep power.

If you drop all the craziness being whipped up and complicating things, the bald fact is that the power elite want Suleiman and they are going to get him. I believe there is a slim chance the people will be able to change that, but in case they do, the power elite have ElBaradei lined up.

Any way you slice it, it's awful, EXCEPT for the beauty of the Egyptians standing up against this level of existential terror, and despite the despicableness of those it benefits the most, Mubarak must go, for EVERYONE'S sake. He does not seem to be willing to ACTUALLY budge while he yet breathes, so they're going to have to fix that fast... unless, of course, they PROFIT from his extermination on the way out.

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No. Really.

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They will have found someone destitute willing to die to make his family rich, promising to shoot him before the police can get their hands on him, and Mubarak's declaration that he will die on Egyptian soil will come to pass.

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love, 99
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i told you so

[click image]

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Now Wikileaks has provided the proof. You might want to contemplate the implications of this for a few moments. Among other things, it makes Judy Wood and Joseph Farrell seem a lot less out there on the matter of 9/11.

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love, 99
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police state

[click image]

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Paul Craig Roberts goes on RT to help highlight the hypocrisy of the administration's shtick about not using violence on peaceful, unarmed citizens. I was going to mention it myself, but he seems to be covering it.

I would add that there has not been one massive demonstration in the United States that has not been put down by teargas and rubber bullets, etc., in decades... DECADES.

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love, 99
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food, it's about food

[click image]

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Everyone in the world has been hypnotized with the glories of democracy [code for fascism] and they think they can get FOOD if they take the power away from privileged despots. In Egypt, "the opposition" isn't actually opposed at all. They are so close to the edge of death from starvation they can be bought in their millions, and even those who are not bought to oppose their countrymen have NO choice but to fight the upheaval because it is depriving them of the almost nothing they had before.

Just contemplate for a moment the difficulty of dieting. Now multiply that by millions.

Commodity speculators are cornering the market on FOOD and holding it to drive up prices. Just like, say, the gold and silver speculators. We're being driven out of our homes and starved by people making money on money. Since we no longer have the industrial base to generate the revenue to cover our spending, those who are able have turned to speculation to keep generating income and this is increasing the abjection of those who are NOT able. And it isn't just people here who are being affected. They're all over the world. They are dying of starvation and they are rioting in the streets.

Meanwhile, we're busy sniping at each other, literally and figuratively, when we're all basically upset about the same things, but just such well-trained monkeys we think style differences are the mark of the beast. This sniping serves ONE demographic, the one creating global famine....

Right click to download large pdf of UN standard excuses re food and agriculture....

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love, 99
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already more than any day so far

[click image]

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I am seeing live footage of the scene in Tahrir Square. There are already many more people than at this time, nearly 10:30am in Cairo, on any day of the uprising. Two entrances to the square are closed off. People are pouring in. It is, of course, the start of the Egyptian weekend... so I guess this means the people who've gone to work all week are coming in fresh to liven up the poor people who have been holding the fort all week, fighting for their lives, getting almost no sleep. I try to remind myself how emotional one becomes when sleep-deprived, and thinking to myself they're lucky I'm not there. The masses would be roaring and I would be snoring at their feet. I'm much better these days at the mental posture of the revolutionary than the physical one. Could you, like, direct me to a good gym or something?

I mean, I so totally understand why the young men were dragging the codgers who were trying to fight alongside back to the center of the square. Bad enough to deal with the horses, camels, swords, rocks and molotov cocktails, without having to pluck the geezers off the pavement to do it.

Ha! They've got Slavoj Žižek on AJ right now. LOL. This oughta be good.

His opening gambit: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Unstoppable.

It falls to Tariq Ramadan, one handsome devil, to try to get a word in edgewise... they're splitting the screen so you can see him chuckling at Žižek's comedic analogies.

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11am, Cairo time... twice as many people as a half hour ago... and they're making it hard to get in. The army has set up checkpoints for the protestors to check people's IDs. Correspondent had to show her ID twelve times on the way in and was patted down a number of times to insure she was not carrying any weapons.

And Friday Prayers have not even let out yet. After that it's going to be epic. This woman is saying that it's much easier for women to get through the queues. There are men lined up "as far as the eye can see." Another woman is saying there are at least as many people waiting to get in as are in right now, and, again, prayers have not let out yet. This is going to be huge.

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12:30pm, Cairo time... On the square and the bridge leading to it is a carpet of people. You cannot see the pavement. Friday Prayers are in progress. There should be even more hundreds of thousands pouring in over the next hour.

This is The Day of Departure... in šāʾ Allāh....

They are saying that the people in the square feel safer than people in the rest of the city. Reports of thugs, paid starving trouble-makers, are roaming the streets, scaring people.

12:42pm, Cairo time... Prayers over. Pointing their fingers in the air in unison, the roaring has begun. HE'S LEAVING. HE'S LEAVING. It is spectacular! It's giving me goosebumps! WE'RE STAYING. HE'S GOING.

HUGE masses gathered also in Alexandria, prayers still going on there. Right in the middle of the human-carpeted streets.

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1:00pm, Cairo time... I'm gonna get in bed and turn my monitor so I can see if something big happens. I think the roaring will wake me back up whenever something big happens. It's amazing. They are having to use footage from a cell phone for the Alexandria images and it's working really well. So, if I put this on full screen it'll be a big blurry mess, but I can get the general drift from bed.... My bawdee is getting soooo heavy.

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love, 99
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LOL

[click image]

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Raimondo loses patience with Arianna helping Hosni with her legendarily assholish headlines.

I see the Huffington Post has another one of their over-sized screaming headlines: "Day of Departure — Will Massive March Force Mubarak's Hand?"

Yes, that's right, Arianna — you airhead — Mubarak will be "forced" to kill, jail, and repress the protesters in Tahrir Square and around the country because their march was too massive.

Why does anybody take this social-climbing limousine faux-liberal seriously? She married a gay guy — Michael Huffington came out to her before they tied the knot — so she could stay in the country, and then acted surprised when she "found out" he played for the Other Team. I say put her on a plane — albeit not before disabling her gaudy purple Blackberry — and ship her back to Greece, pronto.

She can't help herself, Justin.

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love, 99
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hurry uuuuup!

[click image]

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My nails are bitten down to my knuckles.

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love, 99
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when you leave it to a pothead

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Gott only knows what he'll come up with....

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love, 99
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thursday in egypt was relatively calm

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The most disturbing part is the number of journalists and NGO personnel being arrested. Amnesty International doesn't know what's happened to their people. This would seem to indicate two things, and you can pick. [1] They want to nail down any credible witnesses to their crimes. [2] They think these people have something to do with touching off the uprising to begin with. Both options have equal weight, and, in case you've been dead for most of your life, being arrested in Egypt often involves beatings and torture and even falling into a black hole and never emerging. So. This might also address your vexation if you are wondering why in the hell the protestors are being so tenacious.

They're dead if they don't and only maybe dead if they do.

Tomorrow, which is already today in Egypt, is going to be a very big day. The main push is not scheduled to begin until 8pm, Cairo time. That's ten hours ahead of Pacific Time and seven hours ahead of Eastern Time for all you Norteños wanting to tune in for it.

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love, 99
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why not fundamentally change?

[click image]

Michael Tsarion

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Good question.

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love, 99
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there was a christian, a capitalist and a marxist

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Bryan Rostron
Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Over the new year, it occurred to me I had only known one real Christian in my life. Thinking about this, it dawned on me that I’d also only met one absolute capitalist — and one true Marxist, one I’d trust to pull off a revolution and not shoot me afterwards.

It’s not that I’ve led a particularly sheltered life, having lived in — and reported from — several continents. In doing so, I have met some astonishing people, good and bad, and interviewed, or exposed, some very nasty capitalists.

But the real thing? The Christian I am thinking of, for example, lives not far from me outside Cape Town. She is a pastor and spends much of her time in the most forsaken areas of the Eastern Cape, setting up networks of “surrogate mothers” for AIDS orphans. She threw a party over the holiday period, having cashed in a burial policy in order to bring twenty of these rural women to Cape Town. None had ever seen the sea.

One Zulu-speaking lady, who also happened to be there, told me about the time she and her husband had tried to buy a house in a white area in order for him to be close to his work. My friend had to inspect the house and pretend that this dignified, educated black woman was her domestic. “When we finally moved in, the neighbours were terribly shocked”, recalled this now elderly black woman. “They complained — but apartheid was coming to an end, so nothing happened. In fact, we became friendly with some of them.”

Not that this qualifies as exclusively Christian. Many atheist left-wingers resorted to such stratagems to get round the grotesque distortions of apartheid. Nor is it her openness and simplicity, or the fact that she opens her home to people who have stolen from her before. What struck me as truly remarkable is her response a couple of years ago to a gang of teenage boys from the nearby township. They went on the rampage, stealing from fellow township dwellers. Then they murdered a man.

These kids, some of whom were 12 or 13, were driven out of Imizamo Yethu and informed that they would be killed instantly if they were seen in the township again. They took up residence, in mid-winter, among the dunes along the Atlantic Ocean. They had no way of supporting themselves, apart from occasional bag snatches. They became ragged and thin. No one — not the police, churches nor social services — was interested.

My friend, with her own money, would buy food and feed these boys in the dunes. “If I didn’t care for the real outcasts of society”, she said, “what sort of Christian would I be?” That’s not a question, I suspect, that the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury ask themselves.

The only capitalist, on the other hand, I met in London about 15 years ago. He was the other dinner guest of a young American banker and his wife. All three were baffled by my views. The argument got heated. The banker was at least prepared to admit exactly what level of deprivation and misery he was willing to tolerate in order to sustain his capitalist convictions. Mass starvation was over the limit. “Of course, if there’s a famine, one must intervene”, he conceded. “You can’t just leave people to starve.”

His British businessman friend, however, was intransigent. “Look, you want to give away your own money to stop people starving? That’s commendable — just so long as it’s your own choice and your personal cash”, he replied. “But nothing, absolutely nothing, should interfere with the laws of the free market.”

It’s useful to have the real argument put, shorn of all platitudes and palliatives. I soon dipped out of that dispute and sat back to enjoy the sight of a rich young American banker so hugely discomfited by the implications of his own ideology.

And the Marxist? Actually, until about a year ago, I used to say there were two that I would trust. But one, a white South African revolutionary, has proved so intransigent that he’s fallen out with almost everyone, including me and even, apparently, one of his own children. So I don’t fancy taking my chances of not being put before his firing squad.

That, again, leaves me with only one. And he’s now dead. It was a much-loved former colleague, the great investigative journalist Paul Foot. I once said to him, only half joking, that if I was confident that some of his comrades were as generous and non-sectarian as he, I’d be more inclined to sign up for the revolution.

Of course, Tribune readers will be able to provide outstanding examples of all three: Christians, capitalists, communists. But I haven’t personally met these fine folks. Maybe my luck will change in 2011. I try to keep an open mind.

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Go to first half of today's Keiser Report for refresher....

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And then you'll want to go contemplate the links here....

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love, 99
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fears unrest if he leaves now

[click image — the timeline I was asking for — I think this was taken before his last facelift....]

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I guess they've been fighting the whole time I've been in bed, but less fiercely than the night before.

WSJ — ABC News’s Christiane Amanpour, in an interview with Hosni Mubarak on Thursday, reported that the Egyptian president said he would like to leave office now, but can’t, for fear that the country would dissolve into chaos.

“I care about my country, I care about Egypt,” he said in the interview, according to the report. He added that he is troubled by the violence in Cairo of the past few days but that his government isn’t responsible for it.

So don't you feel like a right rat bastard for suggesting he's been anything but the very portrait of a paragon of responsible governance, selflessly sticking to this agonizing grind for our sakes? I could just die of shame for besmirching such a buddha.

I think the demonstrators are winding up for another huge protest tomorrow. But I'm sure it won't kick in till one or two in the afternoon, their time, because of Friday Prayers.

Much is being made of Google's new "speak to tweet" feature they've hurried along for the benefit of the protestors in Egypt. I wonder how swift they'd've been to come out with it if this were AMERICANS uprising....

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In fact, not so much is being made of how we helped Mubarak shut it all down. I'm pretty sure they'd have no trouble being swift with this here....

And, listening to this, has just convinced me that my Genghis Ponzi Yoo label should be changed to BARACKHENATEN. Apt as GPY is, Barackhenaten covers the spectrum better, includes the narcissism and sociopathic and pharaonic angles better....

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You might want to listen to JB's take on the matter. I don't think he's right because Israel will be insisting on a known-quantity, and Suleiman and to a lesser extent ElBaradei fit that bill, but mayhap they have found someone they know for sure they can control well enough and he indeed will emerge as a hero in the next day or two. The thing JB's argument has going for it is the possibility of finding someone young enough that they don't have to go through all this again in just a few years, but they could be grooming someone to "win an election" in the future, and probably more satisfactorily instead. It's key to remember that all elections can be made to come out with completely fraudulent results with astonishing ease nowadays if the populace fails in the first place to fall for all the psyops hype that works even better than thrown elections.

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love, 99
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today in tsarion

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Michael Tsarion

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In case you want a detour from al Jazeera....

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It's noon-thirty in Cairo. The police are keeping the factions separate. The square keeps filling up with more and more people... notwithstanding the pro-Mubarak forces who are trying to cut off supply lines to the square.

[Note to self: secure supply lines....]

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love, 99
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clearcutting latvia

[click image, video, 25 minutes]

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If the whole world is bankrupt, WHO is paying for all this timber? And to build what?

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love, 99
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solid machine gunfire from near the museum for two hours

[click image]

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That's the first thing I heard as I snapped al Jazeera back on just now.

I'm going to have to snap it back off pretty soon, because I can't stand listening to them sound as though any of this "Mubarak supporters" crap has any veracity whatsoever. "Not so much pro-Mubarak as they are anti-protestors and anti-al-Jazeera..." "Five people confirmed dead and fifteen injured by gunfire." "If the world cares so much, how can this be happening?"

So you can see why I might not be able to stand this very long.

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I have to ask: How easy would it be to hire "counter-protestors" in a country where most people try to live on two dollars a day? Dirt easy.

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Midnight in California... I mustered the fortitude to turn it back on and have been listening for the past couple hours. The official word is: 5 killed and 800 injured and 86 hospitalized. IDs found on the "pro-Mubarak" forces show that they are party members and police out of uniform. The battle at Liberation Square lasted fifteen or sixteen hours, and was a couple hundred men armed with sticks and bottle bombs and rocks and knives and at least one of them with a gun against a few thousand people in the square. Women and old men and children were kept in the middle of the square while young men fought off the aggressors. They say they finally managed to beat them all back and secure the ingress to the square against more, but it seems more likely that the aggressors simply went off shift... or were ordered back. The army did nothing to prevent any of it beside shoot in the air when combatants got too near.

I only broke down and sobbed once, when one of the men sworn to hold the square was recounting his experience. He said he didn't think, since they were willing to die for it, that they could lose. And they ARE willing to die for it. They ARE dying for it. People in the square are all bloodied and bandaged and limping. The rest of the time I have kept my analytical cool.

Of particular note, al Jazeera has been reporting over the last over an hour that "Secretary Clinton has told the new vice-president to hold those responsible for the violence accountable." I suppose this doesn't necessarily mean she actually told him to do it. I'm sure, if questioned, she would say she told him the United States expects Egypt to prosecute criminals, or some such, but it's telling that al Jazeera would keep reporting it to sound as though she were ordering him around. Then one must consider: Who does she think is responsible for it? Or, well, who does she want us to think she thinks is responsible for it? Everyone on the square seems pretty damn certain who is behind it and some now say they want Mubarak tried and executed for it.

I'd say it's only 50/50 whether it was Mubarak or our covert ops behind it. I wouldn't give that much weight to Mubarak except for two points: [1] he's clearly fighting the powers who are ousting him, under no illusions about that, and wanting to make them suffer more; and [2] he's clearly such a megalomaniacal narcissist, who has let an insane number of people to be damaged badly and killed behind his own pride, he could well be trying to enhance the consolation of those numbers it took to get him out.

In any case, this is being extremely well-managed. Everyone they managed to subdue from their attackers had their IDs taken from them, so there will be people to hold responsible, to prosecute, as a symbol of the glorious new "rule of law" in "democratic" Egypt.

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12:35am... Things are starting up again now. They found a pro-Mubarak guy in the crowd and a bunch of them started hitting him and dragging him out. The crowd is yelling to them to be peaceful, not hit him.

Human Rights Watch spokesman says there's no doubt the aggression was ordered by Mubarak.

ElBaradei says Mubarak will be held personally responsible if there is any more violence.

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An entirely lamentable Mubarak supporter....

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You guys... it's quarter after eleven in the morning in Cairo. All the entrances to the square have been closed off, except one. People are filling the square after their IDs are checked and they are searched for weapons... by the resistance, not cops, not army... self-policing.

Even after the epic battle that lasted into the wee hours, with all those casualties, thousands and thousands are people are filing into Tahrir Square right now. I hope someone is keeping a timeline of this. We need it as a manual for our uprising. We need to know what to do, what to expect, how to support the gorgeous young men and women putting their lives on the line.

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The new prime minister is going to make a statement soon. He's asked for cameras to follow him into a cabinet meeting. Rumors the new vice-president is talking to opposition people, despite his vow not to until the square was cleared and their vow not to until Mubarak steps down. "More than a thousand people injured." "Up to seven people dead."

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I don't know what these women are on, but, well, it's kind of uplifting, so I thought I'd throw it in....

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love, 99
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godmotherfuckingdammityoutwits!

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I have screamed and hollered and hopped up and down and bellowed and insulted and gone postal on you over the ABJECT STUPIDITY of participating in all this social media crap. I have reminded you of the horrors inhering such activity. I have BEGGED you! Just enter yer account name in the box at the link and see what pops up. Just enter ANY Twitter account name you know about and see what pops up.

GETAMOTHERFUCKINGCLUEBEFORETHEYHAULMETOTHEBIN!

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love, 99
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the situation, in poetry

[click image]

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Summed neatly. Truth from distilled delusion. The seal.

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Just to be perfectly clear: Suleiman is Plan A and ElBaradei is Plan B. They gotta have the Plan B since they had to resort to fomenting an uprising to budge Mubarak from his dynastic ideation, and it might cost them their Plan A if they can't pacify the beast as quickly and thoroughly as they hope....

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love, 99
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spectacular

[click image]

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I don't know when there's been a more deserving candidate.

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love, 99
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i have an idea

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Why not just go in and have your irises scanned and your DNA sample taken and microchip implanted right now. It will save you all kinds of agonizing. Just get it over with.

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love, 99
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