[click image, mp3, hour and a half].
GeorgeAnn Hughes and Joseph Farrell keep talking....
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love, 99
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07 March 2011
social alchemy
[click image, mp3, hour and a half].
GeorgeAnn Hughes and Joseph Farrell keep talking....
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love, 99
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i visited something like fifty 'design' blogs yesterday
[click image].
This was the only image I felt had possibilities, looked something like I could live there.
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love, 99
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while i'm dying of a toothache
[click image].
You should contemplate the beauty and power of this... and try to help restore it and enhance it.
Also, some tedious progressives are bragging about a demonstration at a BofA in DC today, and trying to start something more serious. I wouldn't mention it, because it's just another bullshit clicktivism website trying to get you to do the equivalent of an email petition, but at LEAST, for once it doesn't seem to be asking for your money. It, in fact, may be a bunch of bullshit nonprofits putting it up so they can wave it as evidence of performing their function when the IRS audits them. Pessimism. Nasty pessimism. Jaded killjoy here. Sorry.
Anyway, I may be on the horns of a serious disability... that I hope is just a popcorn hull jammed under my gum, but might be something a little more egregious... and so this is my declaration that for sure until this stops hurting me, I'm not going to be out there presenting my bank with any bills or bullhorning anyone into city hall.
No kidding, you should look at the the spectacular images at the image link and contemplate filling all state capitols and CERTAINLY Washington, DC in even greater numbers. It is my fondest wish for you to do this WITHOUT any signs or noise, to just gather in these numbers and calmly and peacefully physically remove the government, the corrupt sham government, from our property. Okay? In short, kindly stand up while I lie down.
Right, then. I'll have a nap now. If I can do it.
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love, 99
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yes, well, uhm
[click image].
I think we better first consult Russia before believing anything our media puts out about the Paradorian dictator carrying out airstrikes against his people. Too, we need to consult our better sense to wonder anymore if that is even an over-reaction to righteous protest, now don't we? Just as we need to wonder if the Western frame for the "revolutions" in the Middle East might not be just a little on the outright preposterous side, as usual. In short, we need to think for ourselves on this one, get in touch with our own inner, and far greater than we usually settle for, SENSE.
REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL
NATO’s inevitable war (Part II) — (Part I)
WHEN Gaddafi, aged just 28 and a colonel in the Libyan army, inspired by his Egyptian colleague Abdel Nasser, overthrew King Idris I in 1969, he implemented important revolutionary measures such as agrarian reform and the nationalization of oil. The growing income was dedicated to economic and social development, particularly educational and health services for the small Libyan population located in a vast desert territory with very little arable land.
An extensive and deep sea of "fossil water" existed beneath that desert. When I heard about an experimental cultivation area I had the impression that, in the future, those aquifers would be more valuable than oil.
Religious faith, preached with the fervor that characterizes Muslim nations, in part helped to compensate for the strong tribal tendency which still survives in that Arab country.
Libyan revolutionaries devised and implemented their own ideas in relation to legal and political institutions, which Cuba, as a principle, respected.
We totally abstained from expressing any opinions concerning the concepts of the Libyan leadership.
We can clearly see that the fundamental concern of the United States and NATO is not Libya, but the revolutionary wave unleashed in the Arab world, which they wish to prevent at all costs.
It is an irrefutable fact that relations between the United States and its NATO allies in recent years were excellent until the rebellion in Egypt and in Tunisia arose.
In high-level meetings between Libya and NATO leaders, none of the latter had any problems with Gaddafi. The country was a secure source of high-quality oil, gas and even potassium supplies. The problems which arose between them in the early decades had been overcome.
Strategic sectors such as oil pumping and transportation were opened up to foreign investment.
Privatizations were extended to many public enterprises. The International Monetary Fund exercised its beatific role in the implementation of those operations.
Logically, Aznar was fulsome in his praise of Gaddafi and after him, Blair, Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Zapatero and even my friend the King of Spain, paraded past the sardonic regard of the Libyan leader. They were happy.
Although it might seem that I am mocking that is not the case; I am simply asking myself why they now want to take Gaddafi before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
They are accusing him 24 hours a day of firing on unarmed citizens who were protesting. Why did they not explain to the world that the weapons and, above all, the sophisticated machinery of repression possessed by Libya, was supplied by the United States, Britain and other illustrious hosts of Gaddafi?
I strongly oppose the cynicism and lies currently being used to justify the invasion and occupation of Libya.
The last time that I visited Gaddafi was in May 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his very modest residence, where he took me to see what was left of it. It received a direct hit from the aircraft and was considerably destroyed; his little daughter three years of age died in the attack: she was murdered by Ronald Reagan. There was no prior agreement on the part of NATO, the Human Rights Committee, or the Security Council.
My previous visit had taken place in 1977, eight years after the beginning of the revolutionary process in Libya. I visited Tripoli; I took part in the General People’s Congress in Sebha; I toured the first agricultural experiments with water pumped from the vast sea of fossil waters; I visited Benghazi, I was the object of a warm reception. It was a legendary country which had been the scenario of historic battles in World War II. It did not as yet have six million inhabitants, nor were its enormous volumes of oil and fossil waters known. The former Portuguese colonies in Africa had already been liberated.
We had fought for 15 years in Angola against mercenary armies organized along tribal lines by the United States, the Mobutu government, and the well-equipped and trained racist apartheid army. This army, following U.S. instructions, as is now known, invaded Angola in 1975 in order to prevent its independence, reaching the outskirts of Luanda with its motorized forces. A number of Cuban instructors died in that brutal invasion. Resources were sent with all urgency.
Expelled from that country by Cuban internationalists and Angolan troops to the border of South African occupied Namibia, the racists were given the mission of eliminating the revolutionary process in Angola.
With the support of the United States and Israel they developed nuclear weapons. They already possessed them when the Cuban and Angolan troops defeated their land and air forces in Cuito Cuanavale and, defying the risk – using conventional tactics and means – advanced toward the border with Namibia, where the apartheid troops were attempting to resist. Twice in their history our forces have been at risk of attack by those kinds of weapons: in October of 1962 and in southern Angola, but on that second occasion, not even deploying those nuclear weapons that South Africa possessed could they have prevented the defeat which marked the end of the odious system. Those events took place under the government of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Piet Botha in South Africa.
There is no talk of that and the hundreds of thousands of lives which the imperialist adventure cost.
I regret having to recall those events when another great risk is hovering over the Arab peoples, because they are not resigned to continue being the victims of plunder and oppression.
The Revolution in the Arab world so much feared by the United States and NATO is that of those who lack all rights in the face of those who flaunt all privileges, and thus is destined to be more profound than the one unleashed in Europe in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille.
Not even Louis XIV, when he proclaimed that he was the state, possessed the privileges of King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia and far less the vast wealth that lies below the surface of that almost desert country, where yankee transnationals determine the pumping and thus the price of oil in the world.
When the Libyan crisis began, extraction in Saudi Arabia rose to one million barrels a day at minimum cost and, in consequence, by that concept alone, the income of that country and those who control it has risen to one billon dollars a day.
No one should imagine that the Saudi people are swimming in money. There are moving accounts of the living conditions of many construction workers and those in other sectors obliged to work 13 to 14 hours a day for paltry wages.
Shocked by the revolutionary wave which is shaking the prevalent system of plunder, in the wake of what took place with workers in Egypt and Tunisia, but also unemployed youth in Jordan, the occupied territories of Palestine, Yemen and even Bahrain and the Arab Emirates with higher per capita income, the upper echelons of the Saudi hierarchy has been impacted by the events.
As opposed to other times, today the Arab peoples receive almost instantaneous information on events, albeit exceptionally manipulated.
The worst thing for the status quo of the privileged sectors is that those persistent events are coinciding with a considerable increase in food prices and the devastating impact of climate change, while the United States, the largest producer of corn in the world, is wasting 40% of that product and a significant part of soy production on biofuels to feed automobiles. Lester Brown, the best informed American ecologist in the world on agricultural products, can surely give us an idea of the current food situation.
The Bolivarian president, Hugo Chávez, is making a valiant effort to find a solution without NATO intervention in Libya. The chances of his attaining that objective would improve if he can achieve the feat of creating a broad movement of opinion before and not after the intervention takes place, and the peoples do not have to see the atrocious experience of Iraq repeated in other countries.
End of Reflection.Yes.
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love, 99
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\\\\\
barackhenaten,
britain,
chavez,
fidel,
libya,
lying,
mindfuckers,
pushbutton revolutions,
russia
0
comments
boy, do i ever know what he means
[click image].
Words just DON'T cut it. They're only potent enough when delivered face-to-face and spoken in service of PERFORMING on our responsibilities. That isn't happening on the internet. Can't. There is the hint of real usefulness for this crucial aspect evidenced in, say, Wikileaks or Cryptome, or any of the sites trying to deliver REAL information, the goods, to those who will speak the important words only as the hallmark of ACTUAL performance on the manifestation of positive intent, but that is about the size of it.
The rest is theater.
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love, 99
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06 March 2011
hot off the pixels
[click image, via Phil].
NYPD footage of 9/11 attack, just out on Cryptome. I don't see anything but the worrisome color of the pyroclastic clouds just now, but I'm damn tired.
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love, 99
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better a fire in the mind than a fire in the house
[click image].
I had to rip this image from one of the many "stay-at-home wives" I visited earlier—strictly to keep up with lavender sprigs, of course—so I could put it in my image tools and save that candle from sliding off the books and onto the floor. We're talkin' one major Pisa-esque lean—maybe worse—that was making me seasick and afraid for the vintage lace.
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Here's a Michael Tsarion interview on Atlantis 3D very recently: Part One — Part Two... mp3s... one hour each....
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love, 99
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other things
[click image].
The trick to good muffins is stirring the batter just barely enough to get everything blended.
Strawberry Muffins
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 cup milk
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped strawberries
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Prepare an 8 cup muffin tin, or use paper liners.
In a small bowl, combine oil, milk, egg and vanilla. Beat lightly. In a large bowl, mix flour, salt, baking powder, cinnamon and sugar. Toss in chopped strawberries and stir to coat with flour. Pour in milk mixture and stir together only to moisten.
Don't over-mix.
Fill muffin cups. Bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 25 minutes, or until the tops bounce back from the touch. Cool 10 minutes and remove from pans..
Another woman's husband asked her what she was doing with so many butterflies. She didn't know, but aren't they cute? She took about 700 pictures of them, from every conceivable angle, and posted them all on her blog.
She cut up a DICTIONARY toward this end.
There is a definite protocol to this. You may post bright colors if you have small children. If you're a grandmother, everything in your life is a variation on white. Lavender sprigs allowed. If you live in the country you can have piles of gewgaws in any color scheme or none, but you cannot leave out bits of straw and lots of shots of you and your posse at the flea market. You call Size 14 women "skinny".
A terrifying number of them have the identical template, and an only slightly less frightening number of them have music blaring at you shortly after you've clicked in, but every last one of them has at least one instance of this and it hurts me to see so many women with nary an original thought in their heads laboring away to rejoice in this stuff. Maybe you begin to catch why I was never in the kitchen talking babies and shopping at dinner parties, but out in the living room talking about everything in the cosmos with their husbands.
But, once in a while, you run across someone with something truly amazing to impart... well.... That's not fair. Each has something, but mostly it's interchangeable. I'm nearly expert by now.... Anyway, I knit like this guy does, so I don't.
Just hopeless.
A great many of these women try hard to make their houses look like barns. I want to make a barn my house.
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love, 99
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it won't make you die; it'll just make you go backward more
[click image].
Seven. She's seven.
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love, 99
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05 March 2011
the capitulation in wisconsin
[click image].
Frightened Michael Moore so much he could not but go try to revive it.
Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore urged Wisconsin residents Saturday to fight against Republican efforts to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights, telling thousands of protesters that "Madison is only the beginning."
The crowd roared in approval as Moore implored demonstrators to keep up their struggle against Republican Gov. Scott Walker's legislation, saying they've galvanized the nation against the wealthy elite and comparing their fight to Egypt's revolt. He also thanked the 14 state Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin to block a vote on the bill, saying they'll go down in history books.
"We're going to do this together. Don't give up. Please don't give up," Moore told the protesters, who have swarmed the Capitol every day for close to three weeks.The latest arrest came Friday, when a Madison woman attempted to charge past a security checkpoint. She was charged with disorderly conduct.
Inside the building Thursday night, Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs stood in the center of the rotunda with the last remaining demonstrators around him. A hush fell over the crowd as he explained the court's order to vacate and pleaded with them to leave peacefully.
For more than three hours the protesters asked questions — even raising their hands to be recognized — and expressed their reservations about leaving. Tubbs said he didn't want to arrest anyone, but they had to leave.
Finally, they did — singing "Solidarity Forever," they filed out the door with Tubbs there shaking their hands and thanking them for their decision.
Some of those who left Thursday night returned the next day and were joined by hundreds of union members and teachers.And, given this out, those who were on the right track capitulated, ceded their sovereignty to the very people using it to take everything from them. Allow them to work for slave wages, if they're good and obedient, else fuck off and die, you grubby plebeian twerps.
Don't get me wrong! I love the people in Wisconsin, and the same would have happened anywhere in the United States. I'm not pointing my finger. I'm pointing out the problem. The capitulation was not just in Wisconsin. It was in the United States. We won't make the right thing happen. We'll only become agitated enough to dance around it, and then we will back down and salve our failure with notions like At least I tried.
NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
WE MUST BECOME UNGOVERNABLE.
We have to stop with our PATHETIC petitioning for redress. We must completely IGNORE this "governing". If we want to unionize, we don't have to ask anyone, and we don't have to heed their stupid and corrupt decrees. They try to fuck with our paychecks and benefits, we shut them down. We shut it all down when we don't FEED it. Don't protest. Don't petition. Don't ASK for squat. Don't fight. Just yank their power from them, and let them fuck off and die.
I'm giving up stumping for revolution.
All my hopes for the Second American Revolution—which was not my first choice, just the only one I thought feasible—represent wasted time. THE no-no. My reasoning was that, even though that's still reverting to the law of the jungle, not growth, or even really improvement, the indispensable benefit of it would be to break the lock of fascism and rejuvenate courage in the people. It wouldn't ultimately fix anything. Sort of like the pushbutton revolutions won't fix anything. The difference is OUR uprising would not result in MORE power for the feudal parasites, where all the rest of them we see popping up in the other hemisphere will. I was trying to be pragmatic, trying not to be so intent on perfection that I wouldn't settle for whatever might spare Sophia, Gaia, her life.
IT ISN'T GOING TO WORK.
[1] You won't do it.
[2] Nobody good enough is near enough to the forefront.
[3] You won't do it.
[4] The lying and delusion and pleas from police insure you lose any courage you muster too quickly, anyway.
[5] You won't do it.
Do you hate yourself enough yet to work on yourself instead? Or are you too hypnotized to recognize that either? It's the way to become ungovernable. It's the way a true government arises organically. It has the potential to fix EVERYTHING. But you won't go there. Just as you won't rise up, you will not face yourself. Both options are still completely open to you, but you have been rendered too muddled and confused and frightened to choose either. Nope. It feels way better to fill with certitude about some harebrained polemic and fight like rabid dogs amongst ourselves. Never mind how clearly suicidal that is, they like it and you're "safe" from them when you're doing what they like. You've grown so used to warming yourself with your own traumas in this hall of mirrors we call the world—an entire society based on a trillion tailor-made excuses not to face either them or yourself—you won't ever face the difficulty of changing the architecture of your own brain to make a true life for yourself, let alone everyone... now will you?
You won't.
EVEN when you've gone so far as to set up a blog, or a social networking site, or join a club, or hire a shrink, with the specific goal of our betterment in mind. Still excuses, all. I can't get colorful enough to make you face it. I cannot be loving enough, or friendly enough, or strong enough to shove you into making the one indispensable choice.
You won't do it.
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love, 99
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open your mind open your mind open your mind
[click image].
Not identify with the concept of open-mindedness. Actually open it. This is a trap into which everyone falls, but it's the worse in liberals. They're so sure they are at the cutting edge, so used to disparaging the stupidity of their less progressive fellows, that they are the easiest prey for mindfuckers. This well and truly IS "the age of manipulation" and easy as it is for you to see the manipulation of others, you're blind to its operation on you.
Turn OFF your TV.
And, DON'T flatter yourself that your scrupulous attention to what's going on in the world, and alternative news and information sources is helping you... except insofar as it helps you realize you are, we are, hypnotized, and wheresoever one might be closer to thinking for oneself, one is bombarded with so many disorienting inputs as to render one utterly harmless... utterly harmless to the sociopaths at the helm, that is.
I'm unhappy about the mobs attracted to doomsaying, and they've made it so awful that merely straight reporting amounts to doomsaying. ANYBODY would conclude that all this taken together spells doom... D-O-O-M. They've made it so our greater sense tells us to heed Alex Jones, but it STILL, despite his constant reminders to think for ourselves, never gets us to think for ourselves.
Don't you GET it? Everything they made you memorize in school, all those test answers requisite to a passing grade, was training you NEVER to think for yourself. What you call thinking for yourself is LUDICROUS. FUCK your murderating little ego. I love you and I'm giving it to you straight. WHAT YOU CALL THINKING FOR YOURSELF IS LUDICROUS. Only calling it that doesn't make it SO. It's so ingrained and you've been doing it so long that not even millions of people perishing horribly drops the scales from your eyes. You think reminding everyone of it IS awake and aware. You are wrong. That, too, is only what you call it... OR IT WOULD NOT HAPPEN.
You're scratching your head over 99 nutting up on the pushbutton revolutions and geopolitical chess and wars and... turning her attention to all those alternative scholars who populate the halls of Out There... probably just her California Bliss Ninny roots taking over in her meltdown... right? Well, fuck you. I'm not doing this blog for drill. I'm not doing it for popularity. I'm not doing it for money. I'm not doing it to contribute uniquely to your continued identification politics, which is to say your doom. I'm wallowing around, here, to help you out of the cell in your head, the one that the world gave you. The one that kills you, literally or figuratively, the former being the most merciful.
I'm sorry I'm not the greatest at this, but I'm what you've got. Karma splatted you here. It could be way worse.
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love, 99
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sing it!
[click images].
In contrast with what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia, Libya occupies the first spot on the Human Development Index for Africa and it has the highest life expectancy on the continent. Education and health receive special attention from the State. The cultural level of its population is without a doubt the highest. Its problems are of a different sort. The population wasn’t lacking food and essential social services. The country needed an abundant foreign labour force to carry out ambitious plans for production and social development.
For that reason, it provided jobs for hundreds of thousands of workers from Egypt, Tunisia, China and other countries. It had enormous incomes and reserves in convertible currencies deposited in the banks of the wealthy countries from which they acquired consumer goods and even sophisticated weapons that were supplied exactly by the same countries that today want to invade it in the name of human rights.
The colossal campaign of lies, unleashed by the mass media, resulted in great confusion in world public opinion. Some time will go by before we can reconstruct what has really happened in Libya, and we can separate the true facts from the false ones that have been spread..
love, 99
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bet real estate is soaring in new hampshire
[click image].
Or it would be if people were more like me.
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love, 99
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extraordinarily alone
[click image, video, forty-eight minutes].
What on earth is a porcupine doing up a tree?
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love, 99
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HEY
[click image].
Snap out of it!
More detail....
Even more detail....
A blogtalkradio interview that starts out badly but gets very interesting....
Playlist of Randy telling about his background....
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love, 99
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hawass resigns
[click image].
This will be happy news to many Egyptologists, but I think it means there isn't any Egyptologing left if Hawass is outta there. I only think this because of the incessant complaints about access being denied and crazed men reporting about middle-of-the-night exhumations of items unknown from extremely hot areas of the Giza Plateau... that sort of thing.... So I'm made even more uneasy by this news. "They" might have succeeded in covering up crucial historical bits that are a little more important to us than, say, speculating about potsherds in the Amazon Basin. I mean, of course, we have the attendant "mythology" a growing number of scholars are insisting is not myth for the Egyptian ruins. We're not just flying blind and entertaining ourselves with speculation for which they give grants on that score. And sociopaths depend on our inability to confirm it with physical evidence. So I find I'm not relieved he's gone. Funny... I was just talking of mounting dread....
Damn.
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love, 99
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04 March 2011
i was devastated
[click image].
I, of course, don't remember for certain, but I think it was the first time a movie had ever sucked me in that way. Listening to the story being read isn't exactly the same as reading it to yourself or watching the movie, but, even so, the slowly mounting dread coming from nowhere exactly is retained.
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I would be handing out One Hundred Years of Solitude.
March 5 marks the first annual World Book Night, an insanely bold initiative whereby a million books will be given away. The people handing them out will be members of the public who have chosen a particular book they love enough to recommend to strangers on the street. The tens of thousands of “givers” include Brian Eno, Tracy Chevalier and Julian Assange, who is giving out All Quiet on the Western Front; the Duchess of Cornwall, meanwhile, recommends One Day by David Nicholls. The launch will take the form of a party for 10,000 revellers tonight in Trafalgar Square. Look out for Graham Norton and Alan Bennett jostling for position on the fourth plinth..
love, 99
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propping up the governments
[click image].
Will Secretary of State Britney Spears be making a formal apology for this someday?
An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson's job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.
Investigators call the tactic letting guns "walk." In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States.
Dodson's bosses say that never happened. Now, he's risking his job to go public.
"I'm boots on the ground in Phoenix, telling you we've been doing it every day since I've been here," he said. "Here I am. Tell me I didn't do the things that I did. Tell me you didn't order me to do the things I did. Tell me it didn't happen. Now you have a name on it. You have a face to put with it. Here I am. Someone now, tell me it didn't happen."
Agent Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico.I might have been forced to work with total crap, but even handicapped I was convinced that it was a lot worse than merely a racist DHS/DoJ. It was clearly coming from the top. I did not want to spend any more migraines dealing with a bunch of academics in a snit about how we treat brown people. I can only take jackasses for so long before I start slapping them. So I bailed. They'll be citing this as racist too no doubt.
It still fries me because a bunch of wet hens had their mitts on that case, made a complete quagmire out of it, and nobody evil was even impeded for a nanosecond by it. I had no control over the material I would need to use, but a total jackass did, and was setting the terms, utterly sanguine in the justice of such an attitude. Hypnotized. Never snapping out of it. A dead man, with an email address. I didn't kill him again. I let him "live". I just got in an ice-filled not-a-tub and didn't get out for a week.
What's CBS doing on it? They are on it to hold it up next to Ruby Ridge and Waco, etc., we're supposed to freak out about it. Actually, though, we're supposed to STOP it... not just suddenly turn from the takedown of Gaddafi to make a little trip to speak with Felipe Calderón on the same day this was being released to the public... and then, pft. Has this been splashed all over Groupthink and I'm just blissfully unaware? Or what?
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love, 99
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going against my grain
[click image].
As you know, I have extremely little respect for this man, but many people out there who I do kind of respect seem to like him, and I'm forced to look at the fact that my main criterion in these matters, and not likely to be shared by that many others, is how they do or do not arc toward enlightenment. I am extremely displeased with his incessant declarations of his important expertise and status as a teacher and mythographer, etc., whatever, it seems, he most wants in relation with his interlocutors. This is a stark sign of charlatanism and can only be excused to an extent in people dealing with the weird, wanting it taken seriously. I do excuse it in Joseph Farrell and in Michael Tsarion, but that is because they do it in service of the material and not themselves, and they don't dwell on it this way. It's not an obvious ego trip, even when they're being petulant about it. I way so seriously don't get that from John Lash doing it. Still, this is a pretty interesting interview and might be of help to some people.
I'm also not happy about how hard he disses Christianity, all Abrahamic religions, even though I have little time for them, and even though I pretty much agree with a lot of what he says. I don't approve of blanketly bashing them so hard, DESPITE their vicious and grisly history... and present and maybe future. He's barely a step above the Dawkins/Hitchens, or "Ditchkins" approach to them, which is ignoble, counter-productive incitement to endless polemics. The divide and conquer shtick that so pleases the controllers and upsets the masses.
Anyway, I'm relenting for the moment to link you to a good conversation with John Lash. I think it has everything to do with Henrik Palmgren, who's nobody's fool, doing the interviewing and Lash knowing he's not dirt ignorant on the subject matter.
I just want to remind you again that anyone spending so much energy stressing their teachertude, isn't a teacher of anything you want to learn. It's nakedly apparent here, but not as obnoxious as any of the other interviews I've tried to endure. This is the first one I've actually made it all the way through without snapping it off in a snit.
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love, 99
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for insomniacs
[click image].
This, I thought, was a particularly good Michael Tsarion interview on Red Ice. So you will not go far wrong by listening to it instead of counting sheep and with steam rising off yer malfunctioning neurochemistry.
If you feel too birdbrained for that, you could watch a funny shoot-em-up or an old seriously depressing masterpiece....
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love, 99
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03 March 2011
it seems inconceivable that any of them can be left alive
[click image].
I try very hard to hang with the notion that no one, not even the space lizards, needs killing in order to straighten things out, being as obtusely against killing and harming as I have been for my entire life, and well before taking up with the ancients, but enough is too much already. The POINT is to completely and permanently disempower sociopaths. What do you imagine can accomplish that?
The whole hope of Americans finally rising up looks to maybe be trying to kick in. I'm not gonna get het-up about it... yet... but I find myself really bugged about the supplicant head space of the protests out there. Everybody on both sides is trying to retain the government's status on the hierarchy. How idiotic is that? People can say "of, by and for The People" till they're blue in the face, but that has NO effect on reality. The reality is: This is NO way of, by and for The People, in the execution by government OR in the deference to it by protestors. Maybe you should look at it from the "demonstration" angle. What you are doing is DEMONSTRATING your displeasure, ASSERTING your right to dictate to the government its imperatives. As it is, government takes its orders from a coterie of oligarchs, tells you what its mandate is, ignores even your most vivid displays of disagreement, and you continually end up following THEIR rules and not OURS. They are NOT going to permit you to be effective. You have to take their ability to dictate away from them.
ARE they going to just decide to give you back your power because you get noisy and underfoot? Or are they going to do something to placate that out of their hair and then continue as they have been all along? LOOK.
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love, 99
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yeah, no worries, world
[click image].
I think it's just another bunch of statisticians....
If things continue as they are we may be at the beginning of the sixth [mass extinction], a group of biologists and paleontologists suggest in a cautionary paper in Wednesday's edition of the journal Nature.
But they also signal that the threat is at such an early stage, with so many questions yet to be answered, that there's hope for avoiding this outcome..
love, 99
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just asking
[click image].
I don't care how many times I look at him, I cannot get "Moon Over Parador" out of my mind.
How was Libya doing under the rule of Gaddafi? How bad did the people have it? Were they oppressed as we now commonly accept as fact? Let us look at the facts for a moment.
Before the chaos erupted, Libya had a lower incarceration rate than the Czech republic. It ranked 61st. Libya had the lowest infant mortality rate of all of Africa. Libya had the highest life expectancy of all of Africa. Less than 5% of the population was undernourished. In response to the rising food prices around the world, the government of Libya abolished ALL taxes on food.
People in Libya were rich. Libya had the highest gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita of all of Africa. The government took care to ensure that everyone in the country shared in the wealth. Libya had the highest Human Development Index of any country on the continent. The wealth was distributed equally. In Libya, a lower percentage of people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands.
How does Libya get so rich? The answer is oil. The country has a lot of oil, and does not allow foreign corporations to steal the resources while the population starves, unlike countries like Nigeria, a country that is basically run by Shell..
Extra credit....
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Keiser Report from Beirut... Max talks to two-time Pulitzer prize winner Anthony Shadid of the New York Times, who very obviously won both for having memorized US foreign policy shtick, executing it flawlessly, while having an Arab name.
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AP reports and I stripped of mindfucks:
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 34-year-old car has been sold for nearly $2.5 million at an auction to raise money for a low-income housing project.
ISNA's report Tuesday doesn't identify the buyer, but quotes the individual's lawyer, Mamoud Isari, as saying the buyer plans to build a museum and exhibit the car.
The 1977 white Peugeot sedan was put up for auction in January in a move by the president to [help] fulfill a campaign promise to put a roof over the head of every Iranian..
love, 99
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you aren't stopping them
[click image].
I find myself becoming angry with friends who board airplanes, who speak of their trips without even a passing mention of the ordeal at the airport.
Newly uncovered documents show that as early as 2006, the Department of Homeland Security has been planning pilot programs to deploy mobile scanning units that can be set up at public events and in train stations, along with mobile x-ray vans capable of scanning pedestrians on city streets..
love, 99
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i don't know how i, or even if i, missed this, but i think i missed this
[click image].
Serious hunk of time involved. Just consider me linking it so I can get back to it. No worries.
[Might do you a lot of good to spend ten minutes on Part 14....]
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love, 99
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02 March 2011
!!! RED ALERT !!!
[click image].
An Army private suspected of leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive and classified documents to the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy group was charged Wednesday with aiding the enemy, a crime that can bring the death penalty or life in prison.
The Army filed 22 new charges against Pvt. 1st Class Bradley E. Manning, including causing intelligence information to be published on the Internet. The charges don't specify which documents, but the charges involve the suspected distribution by the military analyst of more than 250,000 confidential State Department cables as well as a raft of Iraq and Afghanistan war logs. Thousands of the documents have been published on the WikiLeaks website.
Although aiding the enemy is a capital offense under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Army prosecutors have notified the Manning defense team that it will not recommend the death penalty to the two-star general who is in charge of proceeding with legal action.
The Army has not ruled out charging others in the case, pending the results of an ongoing review. Army leaders have suggested that there may have been supervisory lapses that allowed the breach to occur..
love, 99
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baby steps
[click image — turn off the sound].
I love ya, but more, better, harder, faster...
On Monday afternoon, the Capitol Police in Madison, Wisconsin refused to enforce an order to clear the Capitol building of hundreds of peaceful protesters who have been occupying the site to protest Governor Scott Walker’s plan to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of public employees.
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviews State Rep. Kelda Helen Roys (D), who spent Sunday night in the Capitol building with other protesters. Roys describes what happened at four o’clock on Monday afternoon when the government gave the order to clear the protesters from the building:
And after several hours of the same sorts of scenes that we’ve been seeing all week—singing, chanting, drumming, speechifying—the Capitol police captain, Chief Tubbs, made an announcement, and he said that the protesters that had remained in the building, they were being orderly and responsible and peaceful and there was no reason to eject them from the Capitol.
Police attempted to clear the building of protesters on Sunday night, but they relented when the protesters refused to leave and allowed them to stay another night. On Monday, the police decided not to eject protesters already inside, but no additional activists would be allowed in. The governor plans to deliver his budget address on Tuesday afternoon. Walker is expected to call for spending cuts that could exceed $1 billion dollars.
Gov. Walker has threatened mass public sector layoffs if the Democratic senators do not return from Illinois by March 1. However, the Uptake.com reports that one of the absent legislators, State Sen. Jon Erpenbach, claims Walker is not telling the truth. Erpenbach says the unions have already agreed to come up with the money the governor needs to balance the budget, and therefore, he has no need to lay anyone off to bridge the gap.
Wisconsin 101
Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive describes the epic scale of the Wisconsin protests:
This is the largest sustained rally for the rights of public sector workers that this country has seen in decades — perhaps ever.
The crowds at the state Capitol have swelled from 10,000-65,000 during the first week all the way up to 100,000 on Feb. 26. Hundreds of people occupied the Capitol building with a sit-in and sleep-in for days on end, and total strangers from around the world ordered pizzas for them.
In case you’re still wondering what all of this means, Andy Kroll, Nick Baumann, and Siddhartha Mahanta of Mother Jones have joined forces to bring you this Wisconsin 101 primer.
The Republicans in the Wisconsin House passed a bill that would take away collective bargaining rights for public sector unions, restrict their ability to collect dues, and force them to undergo yearly recertification votes. But the bill cannot become law until the state Senate also passes it. Currently, 14 Democratic state senators are hiding out in Illinois to deprive the Republican majority of the quorum they need to vote on the bill. However, as Kroll notes, if only one Democrat breaks faith and returns to Madison, the Republicans will be able to pass the bill.
Nationwide solidarity
Jamilah King of Colorlines.com brings us a photo essay on the solidarity rallies held around the country over the weekend in support of the Wisconsin protesters. From San Francisco to Salt Lake City to Atlanta to New York, people took to the streets in support of the right of workers to organize. Also at Colorlines.com, historian Michael Honey draws parallels between the situation in Wisconsin and Dr. Martin Luther King’s last crusade. Shortly before his assassination, King stood with the sanitation workers of Memphis to demand collective bargaining rights and the power to collect union dues.
George Warner of Campus Progress profiles some young activists who took to the streets of Washington, D.C. to express their solidarity with the Wisconsin protesters. About 1,500 people came out to a rally in support of the protesters on Saturday.
Anonymous strikes again
In a bizarre twist, a loosely organized coalition of anarchic hackers known as “Anonymous” attacked websites linked to Koch Industries on Sunday, Jessica Pieklo reports for Care2.com. The Koch brothers are among Gov. Walker’s most generous benefactors. The hackers launched a distributed denial of service attack on the website of the Koch-funded conservative group Americans for Prosperity.
In addition to generous campaign contributions, the Koch brothers gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which in turn paid for millions of dollars worth of ads against Walker’s opponent in 2010. Walker is evidently very grateful to Koch. Last week, a writer for a Buffalo-based website got Walker on the phone by pretending to be David Koch.
Don’t look now, but...
Meanwhile, in Indiana, the state assembly reconvened on Monday to find most of the 40 Democratic members had decamped for Illinois. The legislators are apparently taking a page from the Wisconsin playbook. Indiana’s Republican governor is trying to pass legislation that would make permanent a ban on collective bargaining by public sector workers and the Democratic legislators are seeking to deny him the 2/3rds quorum required to vote on the bill..
love, 99
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ancient history
[click image, video, hour and a half].
Was a lot more sophisticated than they let on.
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love, 99
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01 March 2011
some cult sci-fi for our evening field work
[click image].
I know it can seem not scholarly, but this is part of my doctoral work and full of things to ponder about our cultural conditioning and our psychological landscape in general, but if you have to pick between watching last night's offering and this one, you should go with last night's. There were a ton of indian allegories in it that none of us should miss.
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love, 99
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oh no
[click image].
Just what we needed! More pyramid controversy. Sheesh.
I'm about to listen to THIS because, even when it ends up being too weird even for me, Sirian Walker always makes it interesting stuff.
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Oh, man, am I glad I hung with that one! It was not looking good in the first part, but I held on and there was some GREAT stuff in that interview. DO listen.
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love, 99
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chevron and ecuador
[click image].
Don't ask me how the U.S. judicial system can rule on an 8.6 billion judgment in the Ecuadorean judicial system, but it seems they have. Judge Lewis Kaplan, whose record already sucks, says that attempts to collect this judgment "might disrupt the day-to-day business of a company vital to the global economy". That's the kind of stuff fascists say... but not the kind of stuff Americans say.
In the latest twist in a hard-fought international environmental case that reportedly could win a megabillions verdict for the plaintiffs, a federal judge in New York has granted a temporary restraining order banning enforcement of any judgment that might be awarded in the future by a court in Ecuador.
The request for a TRO by Chevron was part of a civil racketeering lawsuit it recently filed against the plaintiffs and a lawyer representing them, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Chevron had argued to the U.S. court that the plaintiffs, in a claimed memo that the oil company said was tied to another law firm representing them, had shown their intent to disrupt Chevron's business worldwide to try to collect any verdict, Reuters reports.
"Helter-skelter disruption for the sake of disruption ... is not in the public interest," said Judge Lewis Kaplan as he issued the order. "The worst that can happen is that the plaintiffs are delayed in enforcing that judgment for 28 days."
Kaplan ruled from the bench, notes the Associated Press.
The ruling yesterday follows a motion by a third law firm representing the plaintiffs, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady, to withdraw for unknown reasons, according to Corporate Counsel.
As detailed in an earlier ABAJournal post, one of the law firms representing the plaintiffs, Patton Boggs, is seeking permission of a federal court in Washington, D.C., to sue Chevron and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher for alleged tortious interference with its relationship with the plaintiffs.
A New York Law Journal article provides additional details about Kaplan's ruling..
love, 99
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i need to bring something to your attention
[click image].
I am not so sure that anyone in Libya was really that unhappy.... I'm trying mightily to stay off the pushbutton revolution circuit, not fall for it and not knock myself out to sniff down every last whiff of evidence to present to you that things are NOT as they seem to those in consensus trance, those listening to the bleatings from headlines anywhere and any way they seep into any aspect of consciousness... usually functionally subliminally. I want to remind you that we are no longer a nation of people who will leap to discern this sort of thing. I want to confess to you that one of my favorite sites has so bitten into this Spreading Democracy 2.0 crap that I cannot even bear to click-in to look at the blather... from a really intelligent bunch....
Don't mistake my avoidance of losing my cookies for apathy, that's all.
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Give the money to WikiLeaks for blowing the whistle and for causing the controllers to start pushing buttons to distract us utterly from WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, before our heads stop spinning.
The celeb-studded shows were part of the extravagant lifestyle of the dictator's sons, whose splashy parties and out-of-control spending have angered their countrymen, many of whom wallow in poverty as the Gadhafi clan benefits from the country's oil riches..
love, 99
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i keep bringing it up
[click image].
And it keeps on going back down. As you may know, I have become increasingly alarmed by all the unspeakable things going ignored in favor of our coveted consensus trance.
Several dozen Canada geese along western Lake Erie's shoreline have recently died or are presumed dead while others have become so sick they cannot hold up their heads, fly, or maintain control of their motor functions.
State wildlife investigators are stumped, awaiting word on tests that a national wildlife laboratory in Wisconsin has been doing on some of the dead birds.
"They will fall out of the sky and have trouble staying upright," said Dave Sherman, a biologist at the Crane Creek Wildlife Research Station the Ohio Department of Natural Resources operates in Ottawa County.
Symptoms began manifesting themselves first with mallards about two or three weeks ago.
"Now, it's mostly geese we're seeing," he said.[via Michael Tsarion]
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love, 99
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