barack's bait shop bullshit

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AP Top News at 6:15 p.m. EDT

GRAND ISLE, La. — President Barack Obama has visited a bait shop on the Gulf coast to talk with fishing industry workers about how the disastrous oil spill is affecting their business. Aiming to connect with everyday people who are hurting in the catastrophe, Obama rode south from New Orleans to the small barrier island town of Grand Isle, La., and stepped into Camardelles Live Bait. The shop owner was there to meet him along with a shrimper, an oysterman, a marina owner and others.... The President only made it out in one piece because the Secret Service held guns to their heads.
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AND CAN YER CLAPTRAP ABOUT HIS PROGRESSIVISM.
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i sacrificed a couple days' groceries to buy this book

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The beautiful Ann El Khoury emailed me a link to a review with which I particularly ardently agree—I will only tolerate discussion of the two state solution because of Norman—and since I want to marry Norman, I took the leap. I am particularly interested in reading him on the Gandhian approach to overcoming genocidal maniacs. He has taken the trouble to wade through all of Gandhi's journals, making himself already head and shoulders above other Ghandian scholars, and I wish to have benefit of some of that.

Don't we all? Shouldn't we pay attention?

Yes.

Yes we should.
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UK expels Israeli diplomat over Dubai case
By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 47 mins ago

LONDON – Britain took the extraordinary step Tuesday of expelling an Israeli diplomat for the first time in more than 20 years, after concluding there was compelling evidence that Israel was responsible for the use of forged British passports in the plot to slay a senior Hamas operative in Dubai.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said trust between the two countries had been badly dented, demanded formal assurances it never happen again and — in an unusual step — issued travel advice to U.K. citizens warning their identity details may be at risk if they visit Israel.

Miliband told the House of Commons that the expelled diplomat, who has not been named, was removed following an investigation into the use of 12 fake U.K. passports in the Jan 20. slaying in Dubai.

"We have concluded that there are compelling reasons to believe that Israel was responsible for the misuse of the British passports," Miliband said.

Britain's Serious and Organized Crime Agency found the forged British passports were copies of authentic documents handed to Israeli officials for inspection either in Israel or other countries, Miliband said. He said the fakes were high-quality and almost certainly "made by a state intelligence service."

"The actions in this case are completely unacceptable and they must stop," Miliband said.

However, Miliband insisted Britain has drawn no conclusions over who is responsible for the killing of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, saying investigation by Dubai authorities was continuing.

Dubai authorities accuse Israel's Mossad of carrying out al-Mabhouh's killing in a luxury hotel room, and have identified at least 26 suspects in an alleged hit squad — members of which used forged European and Australian passports.

Interpol has a wanted list of 27 people in connection with the slaying. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied any involvement in al-Mabhouh's death.

Israel's ambassador to London Ron Prosor said he was "disappointed by the decision of the British government" but pledged that the two countries would retain close ties. "The relationship between Israel and the United Kingdom is of mutual importance," he said.

France and Ireland are also carrying out inquiries into the use of four forged French and six Irish passports. Ireland's foreign ministry said it would consider further action once an investigation with Irish police is completed.

Dubai police believe three Australian passports and a German one were also used in the killing.

At least 15 of the names used by the suspected killers match those of Israeli citizens who are dual nationals of Western countries. All have denied involvement.

Miliband said in the cases of the 12 British citizens, there was "no evidence to suggest that those 12 were anything other than wholly innocent victims of identity theft."

He said one victim told investigators "to go to bed a citizen and wake up as a wanted terrorist is shocking."

"The fact that this was done by a country which is a friend, with significant diplomatic, cultural, business and personal ties to the UK, only adds insult to injury," Miliband said.

Miliband had been due to attend a reception Tuesday to mark the refurbishment of the Israeli Embassy in London, but was forced to cancel in order to make his statement to Parliament.

The expulsion of an Israeli diplomat from London is the first since 1988, when attache Arie Regev was removed for "activities incompatible with diplomatic duties," a euphemism for espionage. Britain also barred a second Israeli, Jacob Barad, from returning to Britain in 1987. Both men were suspected of coordinating Mossad activity in the U.K. and of involvement in the forgery of British passports.

At the time, Shimon Peres — now Israel's president — promised Britain it would never again forge British documents.

Miliband, who said he discussed the case Monday with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, confirmed that Britain had chosen which diplomat would be expelled and said "it was not a random" choice.

But British and Israeli officials declined to confirm reports that the diplomat was Mossad's London station chief.

Arieh Eldad, a lawmaker from Israel's National Union — a hardline opposition party — called Friday for the military attache of the British Embassy in Israel to be expelled in response.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor declined to comment on whether Israel would take retaliatory action.

Diplomatic expulsions are a rare sanction against foreign governments. Britain kicked out four Russian diplomats in 2007 over the country's refusal to extradite to London a suspect in the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko.

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More from al-Jazeera....
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And, oh, silly me, I thought Tel Aviv was Israel's capitol:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is criss-crossing the Washington power grid Tuesday, striving to explain his country's position in a widening debate over its plans to construct new housing in east Jerusalem.

Netanyahu had a Capitol Hill meeting scheduled with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., a day after holding talks with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. He plans to meet later Tuesday at the White House with President Barack Obama.

Netanyahu has been trying to deflect U.S. criticism of his government's announcement of plans for 1,600 housing units in a part of Jerusalem that Palestinians claim as their own. He bluntly asserted before the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee Monday that "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It's our capital."

The plan has drawn sharp criticism from the Obama administration. Clinton told a pro-Israel audience Monday that provocative Israeli land policies in areas claimed by the Palestinians are not in Israel's long-term interests and undermine U.S. credibility as a mediator in the Mideast peace process.

Obama has remained out of the fray as Clinton and other U.S. officials have rebuked Israel for its announcement of new construction in east Jerusalem, which came while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting the country. The announcement embarrassed Biden, a staunch supporter of Israel, and led to new stress in relations between Washington and its top Middle Eastern ally.

Obama agreed to see Netanyahu on Tuesday at the White House - Obama's first meeting with the Israeli leader since the severe diplomatic breach. But the meeting will be closed to reporters, an unusual choice when hosting a close ally and a sign that suggested the rift may not be entirely healed.

Pfeh.
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Norman on Democracy Now! — Part One — Part Two

You really don't need to bother with Part One, the broadcast part. Part Two is the web special and it ROCKS. Norman rocks. It's all I can do to keep from going back up to the top of the page and pleading with him to marry me again....
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on rage

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Can't help but think Ann was moved to transfer this to audio at this moment in time because she has genuinely the first part of a clue how I'm feeling. Of course, many of us are feeling it.


About an hour....

meditation is a waste of good shopping time

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the flying capitalist pig flu and you

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norman

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ann's making a list

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It struck me as I was making my comment there that I ought to be making it here:

What made me stand up on my hind legs and start barking at my monitor was his gall to quote the Qur’an on truth, when he was clearly in the midst of doing what is called in the vernacular “dazzling ‘em with his bullshit”. Then, too, the bit about killing one being equal to killing all mankind was hard to bear from his lips, given the givens.

The one part of his speech I could not fault was the part about women’s equality. This is a weird position to find myself in because I’m pretty much of a jerk on feminism, hate whiners ruining my life and other women’s lives with their glorification of victimhood, hate male feminists making this worse, want to box heads when people speak as though women actually are somehow lesser while purporting to be speaking in favor of remedying that. If I didn’t know that there are so many women in Afghanistan who want education and freedom from the burqa, the power to determine their own lives, I might have found all kinds of fault with his assertions in that section of his speech, but I do know that. So that part trips me up.

I noted that he paid lipservice to every point the Iranians have laid down for conditions of engaging in diplomacy, without seeming to be doing that. The problem still is that he’s only said it. The problem still is that no matter what he says or how impeccably, every single time he gives a speech it is just another batch of mere words to make us waste our time analyzing in place of the action we ought to expect to be analyzing. And his action has, so far, been almost completely at variance with his words.

People go on about how much is on his plate, how much he is doing already, and it is true that he’s got his stamp now on an awful lot of stuff. Virtually indistinguishable from the last administration’s, too. I’m irked that I can’t rid myself of that last grain of hope that he’ll suddenly snap out of it, snap out of his lifelong capitulation to the politically astute moves while, clearly, staying dazzled by his own bullshit… ceding so reliably his own ideals and morals without even knowing that’s what he’s doing because he is SO good with the soaring oratory, even in his thoughts. This is called “hubris”.

People fail to recognize that hubris is not a consciously understood phenomenon in those who err with it. They are so convinced of the practical excuses for it that they completely obscure the brute fact of it from their own realization.

I wish to hell he’d just SHUT UP and start doing a good job. Islam would be won over THAT way. As long as he’s talking, NOBODY should waste their time listening.

I say this after wasting a few hours on this yesterday. I get the transcendental aspects after I’ve had a chance to sleep on it, let my REAL sense weigh in. I’m bugged that I have to be asleep to drop my own idiocy enough to get at the real, but, well, at least I do it at all….

i don't like to think of a life on the tubes without ann el khoury

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today was nothing so grand on the scale of weirdness

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It was just dismal and cold all day, although my neighbor said it was 26° here this morning, which is a thing not done in late March, dismal or not. I got up at least five times to go for a brisk walk, and each time it started to rain, threaten to rain hard, before I was twenty feet from my front door. So I turned around to come back in and wait it out, but it wouldn't materialize and I'd set off again. So. I have the power, as Old Uncle Dave would say. I should have determined to take my garbage out and bring my recycling to the public bin, unfavorite activities despite my pride whenever I just do them without whining about it. Then it would have cleared.

I was dreaming quite intensely about clarifying the efficacy of love over fear in the great leaps forward we have to make as a species on Planet Earth this morning, and in my dream I was positive I could make the distinction so clear to you that you'd never be the same again. I mean I was positive as in the greatest epiphany sense. Think of your most shattering ah-ha moment and that's the kind of positive I was.

I was just commenting over at Ann's place on the subject of creative genius, and how it is of our own minds, though we tend to think it comes from outside us or beyond us, from somewhere deeply mysterious. In fact it comes from nowhere. It comes from us. It comes from our true minds, but from the mind that exists pre-language. It is the reason language was invented, the urge to communicate understanding, thoughts, that are so native we no longer, if we ever did, realize they're not words, or shapes, or colors, or musical notes: these are what we use to try to express them. They're not images and they are not sounds and they are not text.

My dreaming of clarifying for you something so crucial was of that mind. So. I'm sunk.

through the back door and not nearly enough, but...

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... better than another poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Don't forget to sign to take away military aid to Israel... not that it will work, but it might at least help them cut loose with more guilt money....

And, yes, well, fuck Abu Mazen. There's every reason to suspect Fatah did exactly as Hamas claims, and they've done worse than bubkes to help the Palestinian people, as can always be expected of well-paid puppets.

Plus, a bonus, from Ann's little stash of great links, to help some of you get the idea....

yes, well, you don't have to stay deceived

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From my friend Ann El Khoury's new venture. You should bookmark P U L S E.

the most perfect election

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Why not listen to President Carter with me now? Lecture and Q&A....

I got this from the incomparable Ann El Khoury, who seems to be back in bidnis.

[Goddammit! This made me cry. Israel doesn't want peace. They want PALESTINE and they will screw up every single attempt at justice and peace so as to keep exterminating those who stand in their way, like a long, vicious, insatiable worm with hideously sharp teeth. I swear, if you listen to this, you almost get the feeling that they decided to go on the present extermination campaign just to spite Carter and thwart the real progress his work, and patience, and bottomless decency in this apocalyptic mess promise. I'm not fit for polite company. If I hear one person backing Israel, I will knock their block off before they know what hit them.]

the blood of children

Message from Nurit Peled-Elhanan, Sakharov Prize 2001, shared with Izzat Ghazzawi
to Mr Hans Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament;
Luisa Morgantini, Vice President of the European Parliament;
and the Sakharov Prize winners
on the occasion of the
20th Anniversary of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought

I apologize for not being able to attend such an important event.

These words are dedicated to the heroes of Gaza, the mothers and fathers and children, the teachers and doctors and nurses who are proving every day and every hour that no fortified wall can imprison the free spirit of humanity and no form of violence can subdue life.

The pogrom being carried out by the thugs of the Occupation army against the residents of the Gaza Strip is known to everyone and yet the world is impotent as always. I call upon all of us, who have won a privilege as well as duty by receiving the Sakharov prize, to arise and go to Gaza and any other city of oppression and slaughter; to defy all blockades and high walls and not to give up until all barriers are broken.

When Jewish poet Bialik wrote after the Pogrom against the Jews in Kishiniev, "Satan has not yet created Vengeance for the blood of a small child," It did not occur to him that the child would be a Palestinian child from Gaza and his slaughterers would be Jewish soldiers. And when he wrote:

Let the blood pierce
through the abyss! Let the blood seep
down into the depths of darkness, and
eat away there, in the dark, and breach
all the rotting foundations of the earth.

He did not imagine that those foundations would be the foundations of the state of Israel. That the Jewish and Democratic State of Israel would demagogically use the expression "blood on his hands" to justify its refusal to release freedom fighters, children and peace leaders from the worst of prisons, while immersing all of us in the blood of innocent babes up to our necks, up to our nostrils, so that every breath we take sends red bubbles of blood into the air of the Holy Land.

But the siege of Gaza is only one of many sieges imposed today in the world by democratic powers as well as by non-democratic ones. All those sieges are meant for one purpose: to silence the voice of freedom and justice.

My co-laureate of the Sakharov Prize, Prof. Izzat Gazzawi, who died of humiliation less than two years after receiving this prestigious award, wrote to me just before his heart surrendered, that he believed the Israeli soldiers who came to his house every night to break furniture and frighten the children wanted to silence his voice. I have vowed then as I believe we should all vow every day, to do everything within our power so that his and other such brave voices will not be silenced.

Today, when the most enlightened civilizations commit the most heinous crimes against innocent defenseless people out of greed, megalomania and pure racism we should listen once more to Bialik's cry from a hundred years ago:

And I, my heart is dead, no longer is there prayer
on my lips;
All strength is gone, and
hope is no more.
Until when,
How much longer,
Until when?

And then follow the example of people like Hu Jia, today's laureate of the Sakharov prize who is held in prison for dedicating every moment of his life to end the miseries of the family of man.

I'm really glad my friend Ann is in this world, and that her blog break is almost over....

ann el khoury goes a little nutty for the relief in gaza

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She took a short break from her break to celebrate. Three posts on the breaking of the siege. Just don't kid yourself that everything will be okay now. When someone, a bunch of someones, goes and physically prevents Israel from doing this stuff, then things might finally turn out okay.

go on, just follow the herd off the cliff

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a congregation of decent sorts

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Two and a half hours worth of seriously decent sorts to listen to. How the fuck do we get out of this stuff? You have a better way to spend your time? No.

i keep having to swab bits of my brain off my monitor

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I'm down there in the comments again, and Ann keeps putting me in the way of head explosions... bless her....

franklin lamb reporting

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It has gotten so I can usually only make it a few paragraphs into reportage having anything to do with Israel before my synapses all start quaking and hopping and looking for a door, but, again, Ann's reclaimed space is the place I go to try.

Israel was not willing to proceed with the original Bush Administration idea which was to have Bush attend the May 15 Israel anniversary celebrations following the Israeli attack meant to hit Hezbollah hard, and give Bush the credit for coming to the dangerous region. The message was to be that Bush comes to the rescue on horseback and leads the US [Cavalry] charge straight out of a B western movie where the bugle would sound and flag would be unfurled and the white hat good guys would show their stuff before riding into the sunset and back to Texas, leaving the results to the likely Obama administration to sort out.

The plan involved Israeli air strikes on South and West Beirut in support of forces it was assured would be able to surprise and resist Hezbollah and sustain a powerful offensive for 48 hours.

Also presumably disturbing to Israel was the report it received that Hezbollah had once again in all probability hacked its “secure” military intelligence communications and the fear that the information would be shared with others.

The Hezbollah rout of the militias in West Beirut plus the fear of retaliation on Tel Aviv, ruining 60th anniversary celebrations, forced cancellation of the supportive attack.

Or. If you prefer, from the minifafblog:

Happy Birthday, Israel!
We'll give you this delicious Fudgie the Whale cake and a
brand new Webkinz if you promise to stop bombing Gaza.

the killing zone (gaza)

[49 minutes]

I got this from Ann El Khoury, who is one of the best sources I know for what is really going on in the Middle East. I know people who still flip about the "maniac" Palestinians who will blow themselves up to kill "innocent" Israelis. Even if you only watch the first ten minutes of this, it should answer that. SIXTY years of this stuff! WHEN will it be over?

before the wind knocks out my electricity

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...I really want to turn you on to this post at Ann's. The discussion is getting pretty darn good, too.