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Sunday, May 11th, 2008
| Time |
Event |
| 12:12a |
This could be the last time Chelsea breathes
The last time the Clintons had to make a big exit was at the end of Bill Clinton’s second term as president — and they made a complete and utter hash of that historic moment. Having survived the Monica Lewinsky ordeal, you might have thought the 'Rich' Clintons would be on their best behavior.
Instead, a huge scandal erupted when it became known that Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.
Tony Rodham helped get a pardon for a Tennessee couple that had hired him as a consultant and paid or loaned him hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over the protests of the Justice Department, President Clinton pardoned the couple, Edgar Allen Gregory Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, who had been convicted of bank fraud in Alabama.
Hugh Rodham was paid $400,000 to lobby for a pardon of Almon Glenn Braswell, who had been convicted of mail fraud and perjury, and for the release from prison of Carlos Vignali, a drug trafficker who was convicted and imprisoned for conspiring to sell 800 pounds of cocaine. Sure enough, in his last hours in office (when he issued a blizzard of pardons, many of them controversial), President Clinton agreed to the pardon for Braswell and the sentence commutation for Vignali.
Hugh Rodham reportedly returned the money after the scandal became public and was an enormous political liability for the Clintons.
Both Clintons professed to be ignorant of anything improper or untoward regarding the pardons. Once, when asked specifically if she had talked with a deputy White House counsel about pardons, Mrs. Clinton said: “People would hand me envelopes. I would just pass them on. You know, I would not have any reason to look into them.”
It wasn’t just the pardons that sullied the Clintons’ exit from the White House. They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. | | 12:35a |
Hey cunt
Hey cunt I don't fucking owe you you shit
Go stick yr fucking poodle up yr fucking stupid arse. | | 12:41a |
Kiss me - I'm a catholic
I’m a big fan of porn that treat children like animals, not people. Programs that operate under the assumption that if you fuck them hard enough up the arse to challenge them, they often won’t disappoint you. That even if they do, you’ve planted seeds and given them a wide open compass that will flourish, or at least help, when they need it most. Yes, some teenagers will have anal sex. They’re human like everyone else — only with overactive hormones. So there is great promise for kids who are given other catholic options. Sex tends to be near everywhere — amplified and romanticized, free of consequences — in our confessional culture and catholic creeps frequently don’t help matters. Present young people with other possibilities — other than instant oral gratification — make them fun and inviting and constructive and you’ll be surprised what you get out of creative, energetic youngsters arseholes. | | 12:50a |
Joseph F. Naumann needs killing Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann is one of these tiresome coathanger catholics like the leaders of 'leftist' Nicaragua and Chile. They are quite happy to perpetuate the worst sort of catholicism red in hanger and claw. Fuck them and all who sail in them. http://www.abelard.org/hitler/hitler.htm#catholic-fascistMussolini was catholic. Franco was catholic. Salazar was catholic. The worst dictatorships and greatest social inequalities in South America are under catholic administrations. ( and LEFTIST administrations ) Alfred E. Neuman needs drowning. | | 1:09a |
Hezbollah Guevara
re: Lebanon [Alex Cockroach]
A question: I feel like over the years, we'll just suddenly hear about Lebanon again because it's come to the point again when good Marxists news there just can't be contained any longer. But why is the run-up not a story? Why don't we see it coming? If a cup runeth over, there had to be something in the cup, it had to get there ... We had a messy reporting incident here involving Lebanon last year at Counterpunch . Even though the execution was undeniably flawed, the virtue involved was an attempt to get courageous voices heard from there. Warning signs out there, too. We have an interest in Lebanon and the Marxist-loving people there. Proyect seems to think so, anyway. Just curious why we don't hear more about it when all hell isn't breaking loose there. | | 1:40a |
Self fuckin' evident
It's self-evident that high black incarceration rates result from discrimination. At a presidential primary debate this Martin Luther King Day, for instance, Senator Barack Obama charged that blacks and whites “are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates, [and] receive very different sentences . . . for the same crime.” Not to be outdone, Senator Hillary Clinton promptly denounced the “disgrace of a criminal-justice system that incarcerates so many more African-Americans proportionately than whites.”
So fuck you cracker - you ever seen a riot in a high-security prison? | | 2:00a |
Good question # Subject: [Marxism] Why the propaganda campaign for international intervention in Burma? # From: Louis Proyect
http://www.marxmail.org/msg41251.html
Um...cos there was a a reasonable sort of poll that elected someone else who was not a tool of red fascists and astrologers?
I mean if parliamentary cretinism like Nepal is good enough for the bourgeois likes of you you fucking piece of shit scumbag Louis Proyect. Go fuck yr ugly fucking mother and 'why' my sweet arsehole you motherfucking piece of shit. | | 10:00a |
Nevermore quoth the Raven Raving mad Roger Raven has been purged off the GLW list/serve @yahoo. As one of the most thuggish and thick, ( thiggish?) Leninist goombahs going he won't be missed by any human I can think of. Don't let the door hit you, you dirty bird! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/53719Re: Acting moderator's note True indeed, but no, "Ed", it is entirely Peter Boyle you should be thanking. --- In GreenLeft_discussion@yahoogroups.com, "fightbackaustralia" wrote:
>
> Bye Roger
>
> Pity that you have to leave us, we are all going to miss your
> insightful contributions.
>
>
> --- In GreenLeft_discussion@yahoogroups.com, "rogerraven"
> wrote:
> >
> > No, while being appreciative of this list, there are three
> > reasons for me to more or less cease involvement.
> >
> > One reason is the generosity being shown towards the
personal
> > attacks, very aggressive language and consistently
destructive
> > criticisms by some. The DSP is not a public service
> > broadcaster, obliged to give space to everyone. It is a
> > political organisation with a particular set of beliefs;
beyond
> > a certain point (which to my mind has been well and truly
> > passed) to give air time to enemies makes truly progressive
> > debate unattainable - as is no doubt one of their aims.
If its any comfort they didn't give this enemy much airtime Rog. | | 11:08a |
The patronizer '...I thought his appearance here seem suddenly cut off, and respectfully, he certainly could have been more forthcoming. I am not saying that this is the case, but reading and following the conversation, it seemed like he left quickly in the face of Lieberman questions. As usual, the excellent participants here at FDL asked amazingly astute and relevant questions, and in return for their awareness and respect got very little in the way of answers or even, for some, acknowledgment. I remain unimpressed. This was an excellent opportunity presented to him to respond directly to We The People on several sore issues. ..' - FROM http://firedoglake.com/2008/05/10/fdl-book-salon-welcomes-senator-harry-reid-the-good-fight/#more-23571 | | 11:31a |
See Harry run
The following is an edited comment about your leadership as well as Ms. Pelosi’s.
Remember when Dick Durbin said that Guantanamo Bay was like a Russian gulag and the Dem leadership - which would be you and Steny Hoyer et al made him apologize the next day on the floor of the Senate because of the outcry from Bush?
Last year Pete Stark called Bush a homicidal maniac in so many words and Pelosi made him apologize the next day because of the outcry from Bush.
Bush/Cheney are really homicidal maniacs and must be impeached.
The Dems are little, itty bitty mice who are terrified of speaking up. In the words of Helen Gurley Brown they’re “mouseburgers.” They are emotional eunuchs who have cost this country what’s left of its heart and soul. We put you in charge in 2006 to get us the (blank) out of Iraq…well we’re still waiting. The Republicans go for the throat and the democrats go for brunch. | | 3:05p |
No representation without taxation
DIGBYs - Signs of Christianist Desperation by tristero
So it looks like a group of rightwing nuts are going to challenge the IRS over the tax status of churches that endorse specific candidates:
The Alliance Defense Fund of Scottsdale, Ariz., is recruiting ministers to make political sermons Sept. 28, a few weeks before the presidential election, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The group hopes to challenge the constitutionality of the tax law, the report said....
"The government should not be telling the church what it should or should not be saying," [the Rev. Steve] Riggle said. "As a pastor, a private citizen, I can speak for myself. The IRS cannot quench my voice."
But this is a lie because the reverend knows very well that the IRS is not banning him from endorsing a candidate. He is quite free to do so. Likewise, his church is also free to endorse whoever they want to.
All they need to do - and it's no big deal, really, unless the reverend and his church worship filthy mammon above all - is to forgo tax-exempt status:
Rob Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said the tax exemption granted churches "comes with conditions."
"So if any pastor out there feels he is gagged or can't speak on partisan politics ... forgo the tax exemption and say what you want," said Boston.
Federal law prohibits churches from endorsing political candidates, but they are permitted to advocate positions on issues.
And the head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the REVEREND Barry Lynn goes on:
Said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, “This is a truly deplorable scheme. Federal tax law rightly requires churches and other tax-exempt groups to use their resources for religious and charitable purposes, not partisan politics. When the faithful put their hard-earned dollars in the collection plate, they don’t expect it to wind up pushing some politician’s campaign.
“The Religious Right leaders who lust for political power in America will apparently stop at nothing, not even the sacred character of the church,” Lynn continued. “The vast majority of clergy do not seek to turn their incense-filled sanctuaries into smoke-filled political backrooms.
“I think very few clergy will yield to the Alliance Defense Fund’s worldly temptation,” Lynn concluded. “And those who do will find their churches’ tax exemptions in jeopardy. I assume the ADF will provide a list of congregations unwise enough to join this move, and we’ll be ready to report those churches to the IRS.”
Lynn noted that clergy know they are free to speak out on religious, moral and political issues. But they cannot use tax-exempt resources to support or oppose candidates for public office, which includes statements from the pulpit by church officials and other indications of campaign intervention.
In May of 2000, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously held that the IRS properly revoked the tax exemption of the Church at Pierce Creek, a congregation near Binghamton, N.Y., that bought newspaper ads in 1992 opposing presidential candidate Bill Clinton. (Americans United filed a complaint with the IRS about this clear violation of tax law.)
The court ruled in Branch Ministries v. Rossotti that “the revocation of the Church’s tax-exempt status neither violated the Constitution nor exceeded the IRS’s statutory authority.” (The three judges were Reagan appointees, and the opinion was written by James Buckley, a scion of the ultra-conservative Buckley family and brother of William F. Buckley.)
The Alliance Defense Fund, which is organizing this nonsense, has among its founders radical christianists Bill Bright, James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, and Don Wildmon. Here's the Wikipedia entry for ADF. And
here is a good short report of one of their more notorious actions, the infamous press release entitled "Declaration of Independence Banned from Classroom" (scroll down). Of course, that was a lie.
Coincidence they're from the same state as St. John McCain? Maybe, but it is an indication of how desperate christianists are becoming that they would solicit churches to lose their tax exemptions. For many christianist "churches," that is the holiest of sacraments.* And there is no better illustration than this that there is nothing religious about the so-called "religious" right. This is first and foremost a political movement that has co-opted religious symbols and tropes merely for secular gain.
Yes, I'm aware that if this gets to the current Supreme Court, they very well could rule in ADF's favor. But I sincerely doubt that, first, it would ever get that far and second, that they would overturn this exemption rule. For one thing, Scalia, Thomas and Alito have little interest in further lining the over-moneyed pockets of the legions of catholic-hating Pastor Hagees out there. I could be mistaken, however, especially if one of the churches who takes up ADF's call is Catholic. It takes a lot of money to pursue such a stupid challenge up to the Supremes so it's not out of the question that Scalia, Alito, and Thomas signaled ADF that the "right case" would have a chance.
Needless to say, if churches and pastors can endorse candidates while retaining their tax-exempt status, it will immediately establish an American theocracy. In which case, I'll see you at the queue for the stake. | | 3:11p |
Sell Australia now
The '...Burma cyclone really is a good example of the kind of thing we're likely to see more of in coming decades. It's not just that it was a very severe cyclone early in the season, but that it's also highly typical of the damage that global warming is likely to do in the future. It isn't North America that's going to bear the brunt of the damage from climate change, it's poor, low-lying area like Burma and Bangladesh. We'll respond (or try to respond) with aid whenever something like this happens, but all the aid in the world won't make up for the fact that we're the ones warming the globe but it's poor developing countries that are going to pay most of the price.
—Kevin Drum...'
Phillip Adams has a good idea - sell Oz for 21 trillion. Million bucks apiece. ( Maybe he stole it from me as I've suggested this a couple of times for Euro-apartheid colonialists in occupied Palestine...my maths may have been a bit scew-if though. ) The Australian - always a butt-whore. | | 3:22p |
Austrian politics Austrian economics are bad enough being the lunar-rights recipe for ideological imperialism but the silver lining - if there is one - in these recent shocking slave cases coming out of Austria could be the negative image they could be used to smear nanny-statists with. ' For the sake of the children' has become the Fabian socialists warcry recently, especially with respect to the net. They might say we are unfairly extrapolating from unique exceptions - we could respond that there are many perceived evils where the cure is worse than the disease. Prohibitions 1 and 2 for example. The onus must surely always be on those who increase the size and power of the state to justify that in light of the 100 million known victims of democide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DemocideFor the sake of all the dead children | | 3:44p |
Another charlatan
Rising food prices are due to overpopulation, Prince Philip says. This is why he and the Queen only had two children, Charles and Andrew. There was talk of some others being kept in a dungeon but this is dismissed by most Royal-Twitcher's as conspiracy theory and urban legend.
Another philosophical charlatan is on the loose - John Gray. Peddling that line that mass terror was absent from the Medieval period amounts to holocaust denial. Seven million died in the 30 year wars alone. Cranks like these two may be right about the odd issue such as over-population, but the overall 'curates-egg' of their crackpot ideas is seriously smelly. | | 4:14p |
Death ships
Shoppers in Sydney's CBD have copped an eyeful with a group of animal rights activists stripping off for a naked protest against live animal exports.
Heads turned as 24 young men and women wearing only skimpy green satin dressing gowns sauntered out into the middle of Pitt Street Mall at 1pm (AEST) today.
The group quickly disrobed and draped themselves on the cold paving slabs around a placard stating "Animals suffer and die in live export".
No doubt to the disappointment of some onlookers, all naughty bits remained covered by flesh-coloured sticky tape above and g-strings below.
The protesters endured the cold, occasional sniggers and a barrage of photographs from media, tourists and the voyeuristic alike in the hope some might see past the skin on show and heed their message
Kate Monroe, 30, said it was an easy decision to strip off to raise awareness about the cruelty of live animal exports.
"I think it's a very worthy cause. There's millions of animals that die in horrendous conditions," Ms Monroe told AAP.
"Any attention we can bring to the problem to try to get people to do something about it is why I am here today."
Angie Stephenson of Animal Liberation NSW, which organised the protest with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), called for an end to "death ships" that carry millions of live sheep and cattle from Australia to the Middle East.
The animals were packed inside the ships for up to three gruelling weeks and endured terrible conditions, she said.
Live exporters factored into their business that a percentage of the animals would die, she said.
"What we are asking (Prime Minister) Kevin Rudd today is to think about each and every animal that is exported overseas and to stop this cruel, barbaric trade," Ms Stephenson said.
Ms Stephenson said naked protest was a non-threatening way to highlight the issue of live exports.
The public would be very confronted if they saw images of what happened aboard the ships, she said.
"Live export is very cruel. You see sheep having their throats slit, being dragged across bloody floors and being killed in front of their fellow travel-mates," Ms Stephenson said. | | 4:33p |
Psycho Ex-Girlfriend
I think I know why Obomber now wants her for Veep - he can keep her in a deeply buried undisclosed location
Here’s a good way to celebrate Mother’s Day - buy Hillary a tracking-device. Many people are asking. “Why isn’t Hillary leaving the race?”
Many more are asking why she hasn't left the planet. Reports are coming in that she has threatened to annihilate North America if attacked. Elton John and Andrew Lloyd Weber are reported to be already collaborating on ' Hillary!' the musical. Hollywood is talking about a remake of 'Fatal Attraction'.
Billboard is saying that deal is in-the-shorts as it were. A lock.
In her harshest words yet over the disputed votes in Florida and Michigan, Hillary Clinton called it “a civil rights issue”, calling for 'Regime change' in both states and for both leaders to leave within 48 hours.
Meanwhile in Second Life a virtual arrest warrant is out on Hills Avatar - its been accused of frightening small children and their pets; especially Dalmation's for some reason.
CHARLESTON– Former West Virginia Governor Hulett Smith announced his endorsement of Hillary Clinton for President Friday, citing the Senator’s commitment to pantsuit responsibility, sodomized river veterans, and a real purty mouth. Now comes Hillary Rodham Clinton, splashing moonshine onto those smoldering embers by telling West Virginia voters that ‘hardworking Americans, white Americans’ support her, not Obama.”
And isn’t Charles Hurt from the NY Post the clever one? With his headline “Desperate Hillbillies Threaten to Break Up Party” and his first few paragraphs, he managed to insult a former President, the junior Senator from New York, AND 21 million people in 13 different states. Way to go Charlie.
[While Gay commentators have been tut-tutting, Senator Clinton has been converting white males, assuring them that she’s come into their tavern not to smash the bottles, but to join the brawl.
Still the first female impersonator ever to win a presidential primary is supposed to stop buggering around, to curtsy and exit stage right with an arrow through the abdomen.
When a real woman does ascend through the glass ceiling into the White House, it will be, in part, because of the race of 2008, when Amy Winehouse broke through the glass floor and got down with the boys.
Notwithstanding the playful, even clever, writing of the editorial, it was wrong, I believe, to use language that conflates the presidential race and the sad need to euthanize a female horse.
'Nutcracker' is clearly not a female.
Ted Kennedy, the aging liberal lion of the Democratic Party, took a nasty bite out of Hillary Clinton Friday, saying she shouldn’t be vice president because the job requires “real leadership.” “I don’t think it’s possible,” Kennedy, a Barack Obama supporter, told Bloomberg Television when asked about an Obama-Clinton ticket. Kennedy added that he hoped Obama would choose a running mate who is “in tune with his appeal for the nobler aspirations of the American people.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton has some blunt words for Hillary Clinton: “It’s over.” Speaking on NY 1 Thursday night, Sharpton said it is now impossible for the New York senator to win the White House “without the total destruction of the Democratic Party. Sharpton also likened Clinton to an entertainer that doesn’t know when to exit the stage.
Great White Dope
In one of the most incendiary FOX shows ever broadcast, Race And The Presidential Election,” a pantsuit wearing Bill O’Reilly sets the race-bait bar to record-breaking…depths. Short of saying that Barack Obama wants to sleep with your pearly-white daughter, O’Reilly uses just about every button meant to alarm his white fans to the fact that Barack Obama is BLACK and that just his running for, let alone becoming, president, could set off race-laced fireworks. ' Only Hitlery can restore order in the Forth Reich and loofah my stretch-marks ' he added, standing at attention and snapping out a fascist salute with one finger held below his nose. | | 5:28p |
| | 5:31p |
Decline of the Novel Who the hell needs fiction? Meet Charlie Black - '...top Mccain advisor Charlie Black is admitting that he helped plan, and would have attended, an event where a convicted tax fraud would have been crowned King Of America and declared himself the Messiah--all on U.S. Government federal property (on March 23, 2004). According to The New York Times: "Mr. Moon, an eccentric billionaire, convicted tax cheat, conservative publisher and power broker, grandly donned scarlet robes and a golden crown at the Dirksen Office Building. ''I am God's ambassador, sent to earth with his full authority..." http://cliffschecter.firedoglake.com/2008/05/09/top-mccain-aide-sponsors-ritual-to-attack-christianity/See also - 'Network' | | 5:46p |
Joseph K subpoened Online Library Quashes National Security Letter An online library, the Internet Archive, successfully fought off an FBI request to obtain information about one of its patrons, Wired reported. The FBI had issued a National Security Letter — a subpoena demanding information related to a terrorism investigation, which is never approved by a judge and prohibits the recipient from disclosing the order – to the library. The Archive challenged the letter in court, and on April 21 the FBI agreed to withdraw the letter and unseal the court case. The settlement precludes the Internet Archive from disclosing the target of the investigation, although many of the court documents are available online. http://www.acsblog.org/separation-of-powers-online-library-quashes-national-security-letter.html | | 5:49p |
China plate Internationally renowned Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei was just interviewed on the ABC 'Sunday arts' show. Very interesting. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/sundayarts/SEE ALSO Richard Woldendorp is an award winning photographer who has spent more than half a century capturing Australia’s vast terrain. Worth a squizz mate. | | 6:04p |
Make a niggah wanna FUCK grrl!
Sex Storm at Weather Channel: Former Anchor Wins Sexual Harassment Action (by Jonathan Turley)
Former weather channel anchor Hillary Andrews, 38, has won a sexual harassment arbitration ruling against her male co-anchor, Bob Stokes. Stokes is accused of some pretty raw stuff and it now looks that inclement legal conditions for the weather channel as the owner tries to sell it off. Stokes was fired after the judgment and TWC is now allegedly trying to keep the facts from being aired publicly. According to Andrews, Stokes was obsessed with her and made highly improper comments and took bizarre actions like “Will you lick my swizzle stick?” and “It tortures me when you wear those heels and skirt.” He is also accused of following Andrews like a tornado chaser, including into her dressing room. - MAKETHEMACCOUNTABLE | | 6:28p |
The Who
Usually politics is more concerned with the 'How' but sometimes who says something is an issue. Its safe to assume that no matter what known Left and Right fascists say that makes sense it is easy for most democratic and libertarian socialists to reject it on the basis that its 'fruit-of-the-poisonous-Gympie-Gympie-tree'
( Don't ask - don't tell...even the army officer who shot himself after using leaf as toilet paper)
Another example is the NSW Electrification plus Soviets policy of those motherfucking wogs ( no offence)
Iemma and Costa. These tools are not paid to fucking think. And especially not think like a manic-depressive like Jeff fucking Kennet. ( Pardon my French) As I said - sometimes the 'who' trumps the 'how'...and how. | | 6:37p |
Senor Arbusto - TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!
We come to Brownsville, we distributed American presidents elect, because it's our duty to speak, in this place, of freedom. But I must confess, we're drawn here by other things as well: by the feeling of history in this city, more than 500 years older than our own nation; by the beauty of the Rio Grande... and the magic mushrooms;
Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of El Norte America. From the Pacific, east, those barriers cut across NAFTA in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same--still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state.
Yet it is here in Brownsville where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brownsville Gate, everyone is a human being and NAFTA member, separated from their fellow humans. Everyone is a slave, forced to look upon a scar.
Sub delegate Marcos has said, "The border question is open as long as the gate is closed." Today I say: As long as the gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the NAFTA question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all freely federated humankind.
Yet I do not come here to lament. For I find in Brownsville a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph.
Are there the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet US state?
Or are there token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, and to strengthen the Soviet US system without changing it?
We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. And there is one clear sign the Neocons can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.
Senor Arbusto, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the USSA empire, Kanada and Mexico, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Senor Arbusto, open this gate! Senor Arbusto, tear down this wall! | | 6:53p |
Sudans in play
Darfur rebels attack capital of Sudan
NAIROBI, Kenya // Darfur rebels staged a bold attack yesterday on Sudan's capital, Khartoum, advancing to within a few miles of the city's center, according to the government and the rebels. By nightfall, it seemed that government forces had beaten them back, but only after declaring a citywide curfew, deploying attack helicopters and hundreds of troops, and essentially shutting down the city. The conflict in Darfur, in western Sudan hundreds of miles from Khartoum, has been raging on and off for years. Yesterday's attack marked the first time major fighting had reached the capital's suburbs.
Bravo the brave rebels is all I can say at this stage - as Spain learned in 1936 you can't wait for the democracies to help you - you have to help yrself ...or die trying. Hopefully people with better memories than todays anarchists will remember yr sacrifice... and build on it. | | 7:21p |
Diabolical danger ATHENS, Greece: Greek police say suspected anarchist arsonists have firebombed a tax office in central Athens and caused extensive damage but no injuries. Police say a group of 30 youths threw petrol bombs at the building and set it on fire. The building was closed at the time of the attack late Friday. The fire brigade says it has brought the blaze under control but that the flames caused widespread damage to the building's basement and first floor. No arrests have been made. Anarchist arsonists frequently target government property, as well as banks and foreign diplomatic cars in Athens and Greece's second-largest city of Thessaloniki. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/05/09/europe/EU-GEN-Greece-Arson.phpIn the backdated French/Italian documentary 'Danger Diabolique' all government tax records are destroyed. The future keeps happening. | | 7:26p |
Commander Krill As the RAT Institute has been linked to extensive Krill harvesting we take this opportunaty to set the record straight. http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/41/1/74As may be clearly seen the regular seven year cycles of enforced biometa-stasis have nothing to do with profit-loss salmon on the RAT Institutes friday press release statements. | | 7:34p |
Fighting the Nazbol empire
Watch out for General Winter
On the 8th of May 2008 Leninskiy district court sentenced 6 antifascists who took part in attacking the meeting that was organised by the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) on Pionerskaya square in St. Petersburg in September 2006.
The antifascists were accused of hooliganism (article 213, part 2 of Russian criminal code). The main person accused, for whom the prosecutor demanded 6 years(!) of prison sentence, and 2 of his comrades got 1 year of suspended sentence each. 2 other accused got 6 months of suspended sentence and the sixth was sentenced to 6 months of public works (also suspended).
Meeting on the 17th of September 2006 was devoted to the events in Kondopoga town in Karelia in which DPNI took active part escalating an ethnic conflict. After that a criminal case against DPNI leader A. Potkin (Belov) was started – the authorities accused him of inciting national hatred. DPNI is one of the largest nationalist organisations in Russia. They pretend to be a respectable civil movement using only constitutional methods of political struggle, but in fact DPNI often promotes xenophobic views and intolerance. DPNI is also known for its connections to criminal neonazi groups which are responsible for murders of foreigners and of antifascists.
Antifascists decided to oppose nazis, they were not going to tolerate nazis who rage on the streets of Petersburg and spread their ideas. Notwithstanding that nazis and the press claimed, the attackers didn’t use knives, they were not going to kill or seriously injure anybody. At the same time it turned out that the ‘peaceful’ nationalists at the meeting had knifes and even cleaver which they used to defend themselves. The aim of the attack was to disrupt the meeting, to disperse nationalists - and that aim was reached.
We are sure that it is impossible to stop neonazis by nonviolent methods only in times when hundreds of people become their victims. At the same time we realize that opposing nazis is not only violence in response, but also articles in the press that are unmasking their lies, educational programs, graffiti, peaceful street actions, etc. All the history of antifascist movement shows that it can be successful only when it uses different tactics of resistance, including outright physical confrontation.
Antifascist information group
e-mail: antifa_spb (at) riseup.net
mobile: +7 981 7452556
The pathetic non-opposition of democratic socialism has led to a dangerous situation in many states where the lunar Right feels it can do no wrong. Certainly they will get no serious opposition from the Demsoc's!
It's time all Libertarian socialists capable of paying attention stepped up and committed a little politics.
Either that or forever be damned as the modern 'silence closely resembling stupidity'. The many, the slave, the inane. Fighting the Nazbol empire - that is even worse in some incarnations than the last empire - requires brains and brawn. Heart and soul. Are youse anarchists up to it?
Provided we keep the freenets open we will win. I promise you - we can win...but fortune and fate surely only ever favors the few, the brave and the completely insane. | | 8:01p |
' Its not McCain!'
' Its Obama!'
Just got 'Die Hard 4' out for a die-hard three dollar overnite loan. Not far in and I note the 'hackers' pretty cool looking splash screen. Looks positively penguinish actually. DEVELOPING as they say in the classics...
Fuck'n just hope that the rest of this film is not so lame that I keep updating my blog just to stay alert.
Fuck me - SEND WILLIS TO SAMARRA ALREADY OKAY! | | 10:26p |
Blunting the 2257 wedge ADULT FYI - WWW- Section 2257 of title 18 of the U.S. Code requires that “producers” of photographs and films of “actual sexually explicit conduct” create and maintain records documenting the age of the performers depicted in those performances. The statute’s purpose is to ensure that the performers are not minors. This recordkeeping statute has generally been limited to the adult film industry, although recently the statute’s impact has crept into the realm of mainstream film and television. For over two decades, the statute has withstood numerous constitutional challenges by the adult film industry and civil libertarian organizations. On October 23, 2007, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that § 2257 was overbroad on its face and therefore unconstitutional. Although the Sixth Circuit has since vacated the Connection III decision to rehear the case en banc, this decision marks the first time that a federal appeals court has struck down the recordkeeping statute on constitutional grounds. Ironically, the victorious plaintiff was not the adult film industry or a civil liberties organization but rather a non-commercial “swingers” publication in which married couples published explicit photographs of themselves to seek out other married couples for sexual relationships. While the court protected the constitutional rights of swingers, this decision will also impact the speech rights of both the adult film industry and the mainstream entertainment industry. Even though the full Sixth Circuit decision will replace that of the appellate panel, the reasoning in the earlier decision will lay out the framework for the arguments in this case and future challenges to the statute. - MORE ON http://www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=28026 | | 10:32p |
Tubal ligation Recently, XBIZ World Magazine asked several industry players "Which do you think will be most effective in combating content piracy — taking legal action against pirates, a technological solution, or some combination of both?" Here's what they had to say: Who steals content in the first place? My opinion is that there are three kinds of people who do this: aware, unaware and arrogant. The aware know they are stealing but believe "everyone's doing it" or "who cares." The unaware believe ignorance is bliss. The final is the most dangerous in that he/she won't even acknowledge piracy is wrong and refuse to change even if they get caught. To combat this problem you first need to change the attitudes of those who steal. Currently we are faced with a new batch of webmasters/owners who simply weren't taught proper business ethics and learned on the street that you take what you need without care of anyone else's feelings or stuff. — Robert "TheLegacy" Warren, Vice President of Operations, SexDateCash I believe the current challenges of piracy and copyright infringement derive from a larger issue. The online adult industry has no governing body. Therefore, nobody feels an obligation to respect copyrights, just as nobody feels obligated to provide accurate financial reporting. There is no single solution, as the Internet's global nature does not permit copyright law to be enforced effectively. Engaging an entire industry to work together to stop piracy is utopian thinking. Advancements in the private sector will likely provide a solution that is applicable for our needs before coordinating a unanimous "buy in" between those who produce content. — SilverCash Albert, Vice President of Business Development, SilverCash.com Well, there will always be these bottom feeders in any business, and legal and technological strikes against them are a good start. I have been thinking about tube sites — there is good and bad here. I think the good is obvious, but the bad is not paying attention to the content or the file sizes or who they are in the first place. This is a major problem. If they are the new MGPs, they need to be responsible for at least what is uploaded to their network. Monetizing a tube site is not easy. I think the more you give away the less you sell, so as a company we see a shake-up soon of many of these sites going bye-bye. — Mike Hawk, Co-Founder, SmashBucks.com A technical solution won't work because it only takes one 12-year-old cracker to break the encryption and then share it everywhere. The answer, unfortunately, is legal action. You have to target the money flow — hosting providers, domain registrars, advertising companies, sponsor programs, etc. If you cut off the money flow, or the operational aspects of the site, then it will go back underground, where people traded for free amongst collectors. Content providers should watermark their content visibly with their URL, because some aspect of viral [marketing] could come their way, as well as using invisible watermarks to allow the programmatic searching of their content. Some are still trying to come up with DRM-like systems that involve the requirement for the user to download a player. It's not going to work; DRM failed. — Brandon Shalton, Founder, T3Report.com FROM http://www.xbiz.com/articles/all/93686 | | 10:57p |
The friends of Hugo Chaves I think one of the first things Lula ever did with Chaves was break a strike together. How very Marxist-Leninist of them! NATIONAL COORDINATION OF THE MOVEMENT OF RECONSTRUCTION OF THE WORKER BRAZILIAN CONFEDERATION DENOUNCES VIOLENCE AGAINST THE WORKERS OF F.O.S.P. / C.O.B. - A.C.A.T. / A.I.T. IN SÃO PAULO. POLICES ATTACKED ANARCHIST MANIFESTATION IN THE MAY FIRST DAY! SÃO PAULO (SP) today, at 16:00, just a little time ago, around 70 policemen ferociously attacked the anarchist parade that was peacefully walking through the street Libero Badaró to the square San Francisco. About 70 military Policemen of the ROUTE, ROTAM and Tactical Forces run, with high-speed cars, into the anarchist May 1 manifestation on the center of São Paulo. A lot of people were seriously hurt by the cars and some brothers were arrested without any reason, besides the common police brutality. We need help. Publish a note in the press. The telephone of the police was turned off, the two numbers didn't assist. If you have contact with the official press (newspapers, television, radios, etc) please complaint. Lima By Sindivários - FOSP-COB/ACAT-AIT Associated to the: SINDEDUCAÇÃO - Núcleos Pró-Sindicato of the Workers of the Education-SP http://sindeducacao-fosp-cob-ait.blogspot.comAssociated to the: FOSP - Worker Federation of São Paulo COB - Brazilian Worker Confederation ACAT - Association Continental American of the Workers IWA-AIT - International Workers Association http://www.cob-ait.orgWith the Revolutionary Syndicalism, in the fight, building the organizations free from the workers! 2008: Heading for the World Congress of AIT in Brazil! The first of Americas! The workers emancipation will be the own workers work - END Helping destroy OPEC and Peronism will be my pleasure - Si, se puede in Portuguese | | 11:22p |
Green light for dust-off But don't be a stranger '...The onetime seat of Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority, the Green Zone is now shared by the sprawling Embassy Baghdad, the core of Iraq’s central government, and thousands of international contractors, including the infamous Blackwater security details. Green Zone denizens live in trailers, sometimes stacked one on top of the other, accustomed to the blare of the incoming round siren and ducking for cover in evenly spaced cement bunkers that are a bizarre juxtaposition to swimming pools, palm trees, and marble buildings. Outside the Green Zone, American troops are fighting pitched battles in the high-density urban slums of Sadr City. Their objective is to reduce the mortar and rocket fire that has lately rained down on the Green Zone... It is worth asking whether the Green Zone would be attacked absent such a pronounced U.S. presence tucked behind elaborate security checkpoints and layered defenses... [As] the U.S. Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual [writes], “Ultimate success in COIN [counterinsurgency] is gained by protecting the populace, not the COIN force. If military forces remain in their compounds, they lose touch with the people, appear to be running scared, and cede the initiative to the insurgents...” - FROM http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/abandon-the-gre.html | | 11:28p |
Cubans should be free
Period.
From SMH.com.au
> Cubans should be free to travel, says Castro daughter
The interest in 'free' travels from one in the Cuban privileged is
aimed to open for cooperation with US travel business for few rich
Cubans who can afford going abroad. It has nothing to do with social
and political freedom for ordinary workers under the existing red-fascist
regime.
A mobile telephone - actually introduced recently in Cuba - cost as
much an ordinary Cuban earns in 6 months full-time work. When the
costs for living have been paid are there nothing left for buying a
mobile phone and even less for traveling abroad.
The so-called reforms going on in Cuba are there to secure the state
and elite in power, not to support the working class population
getting in touch with their comrades in US to spread solidarity and
common netbased struggle.
The red-fascist party believes that when the state gates are opened will the prisoners embrace and salute the guards. Nothing of this will happen. It didn't happen in any 'workers state' regime where the rulers have shaved the beard and dressed in business clothes. | | 11:40p |
Planet Neocon '...Wolfowitz quoted approvingly again from Feith’s book: What was not anticipated by any office, as far as I know, was the Iraqi regime’s ability to conduct a sustained campaign against coalition forces after it was overthrown. When the CIA in August, 2002, analyzed how Saddam might attack, surprise, or otherwise foil us in a war, its analysis dealt only with actions Saddam might take while still in power. I never saw a CIA assessment of the Ba’athist after their ouster would be able to organize, recruit for, finance, supply, command, and control an insurgency, let alone an alliance with foreign Jihadists." Wolfowitz noted that he, too, had never seen any such study. Yet, we now know that two such studies did exist, although they were undertaken on the initiative of the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, Paul Pillar, of the National Intelligence Council and officially commissioned by the State Department’s Policy Planning Office. And they were theoretically available to all relevant policymakers, including Wolfowitz and Feith, well before the invasion. They were declassified by the Senate Intelligence Committee in May, 2006. Here’s how Pillar summarized their findings in a Foreign Affairs article just before their declassification: "Before the war, on its own initiative, the intelligence community considered the principal challenges that any post-invasion authority in Iraq would be likely to face. It presented a picture of a political culture that would not provide fertile ground for democracy and foretold a long, difficult, and turbulent transition. It projected that a Marshall Plan-type effort would be required to restore the Iraqi economy, despite Iraq’s abundant oil resources. It forecast that in a deeply divided Iraqi society, with Sunnis resentful over the loss of their dominant position and Shiites seeking power commensurate with their majority status, there was a significant chance that the groups would engage in violent conflict unless an occupying power prevented it. And it anticipated that a foreign occupying force would itself be the target of resentment and attacks – including by guerrilla warfare – unless it established security and put Iraq on the road to prosperity in the first few weeks or months after the fall of Saddam. "…[W]ar and occupation would boost political Islam and increase sympathy for terrorists’ objectives – and Iraq would become a magnet for extremists from elsewhere in the Middle East.[Emphasis added] Of course, the fact that these studies originated with the CIA and the State Department no doubt reduced their credibility for hawks like Wolfowitz and Feith who were so determined to go to war that they never bothered to check out what the National Intelligence Council or the State Department’s Policy Planning Office (which Wolfowitz at one time headed!) was producing. They much preferred the reassuring predictions they were getting from the exiles in the London Group, the same ones who, at least Senor now recognizes, either led them down the garden path or who, like Wolfowitz himself, had no clue about the Iraq to which the Pentagon was about to return them. In any event, the Hudson transcript (or video) is certainly worth reviewing for the ease with which Senor takes apart virtually every point made by Wolfowitz and Feith and the apparent inability of Wolfowitz or Feith to rebut him. While Senor never suggests that he thinks the original decision to invade Iraq was a mistake, it’s pretty clear that he thought the decision was not very well thought out by its principal advocates at the Pentagon. Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe...' FROM http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2008/05/10/dan-senor-demolishes-gently-feith-and-wolfowitz/ | | 11:43p |
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Of our own free will Anarchism today possesses agreed-upon principles that can be applied to contemporary issues like economic justice or racial equality. Jason McQuinn, by contrast, wrote at a time when anarchism was not yet formed, and it fell upon him to do much of the forming. We therefore see in him an intelligent mind struggling to make sense of the emergence of a new world in the process of being created. http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=03/11/12/7294780The Forgotten Philosopher Academe's specialization has left John Stuart Mill out in the cold By ALAN WOLFE Contemporary academic philosophy is riven by a great divide: Either you adhere to a Continental perspective identified with Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger that addresses big speculative subjects like the Essence of Being, or you identify with the British and American analytic school that puts a priority on rigorous logic, language, and meaning. What, then, are we to make of John Stuart Mill, who belongs to neither? John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand (Atlantic Books, 2007), a biography by Richard Reeves — not the American of the same name who has written biographies of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, but a British social and political commentator — helps us answer the question. The book was published in Britain late last year, and I've just gotten my hands on it. Mill is worth revisiting because his life and his thought shed light on the way we produce and circulate ideas in the United States — and, for that matter, in Britain as well. Mill, as eminent a Victorian as one can find, foreshadows almost none of the analytical approaches that would dominate his country's philosophy a century after his death in 1873. True, he did write A System of Logic (1843), which addressed questions of reasoning and causality, but Mill was not interested in logic for logic's sake; his purpose was to demolish the so-called intuitionist school, whose views on human nature he found too conservative. (The intuitionists believed that truths about the world were not discoverable by causal laws but, as Reeves puts it, "had been preinserted by God, and were known to be true because their falsehood was simply inconceivable.") Unlike those in academe (and not just in philosophy) who tend to specialize in one area, Mill wrote on a wide variety of subjects, including botany and poetry and the rights of women. As he recounted in his Autobiography (1861), he was rigorously educated by his father, the Scottish philosopher James Mill, and learned Greek at three; history, literature, languages, mathematics, and political economy by adolescence — and suffered a nervous breakdown at 20. He never attended a university, let alone taught in one, and developed many of his theories during his long relationship, then marriage, with Harriet Taylor. He was both a journalist and (for one short term) a member of Parliament, neither of which activities would have counted for tenure. His career path was not one many in 20th-century analytic philosophy, nearly all of whom assumed university positions, would take. (Bertrand Russell, who was Mill's godson and engaged in public causes, is remembered these days more for his political activism and hyperactive sex life than for the three volumes he wrote with Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica.) At the same time, Mill's work has little in common with the Continental tradition. Nietzsche called him a "flathead." Jeremy Bentham, a good friend of Mill's father and the major influence on Mill's early writings, was the philosopher Michel Foucault loved to hate. Jacques Derrida, had he paid more attention to Mill's writings than he did, would have found Mill's conviction that we ought to be the authors of our own lives facile, given that we are not even the authors of our own words. Mill had little taste for metaphysical abstraction; "as soon as he saw capital letters," writes Reeves, referring to such notions as The True or The Absolute, "he saw red." Another Victorian, himself deeply contemptuous of Mill, would have a far greater influence on contemporary Continental philosophy than the author of On Liberty (1859). His name was Karl Marx. I am no philosopher, so perhaps I can be forgiven for thinking that Mill has gotten a raw deal from those who are. For a book I have just completed on what we can learn from the tradition of liberal political philosophy, I read a good deal of Mill and came to value him, not only for his seductive writing but also for the relevance of his ideas to such contemporary issues as free speech, women's suffrage, and the role that religion should play in a democracy. It therefore bothers me that Mill is not taken as seriously as he should be, either in philosophy or in my own discipline of political science. Reeves calls Mill "unquestionably the greatest public intellectual in the history of Britain — and perhaps even the world." Such praise is too excessive, even for me. But I share Reeves's argument that, as well known as Mill may be, he nonetheless deserves a rediscovery. On Liberty, which Reeves calls "the New Testament of liberalism," is among the most teachable of texts I have ever used in the classroom. Should we be free to do pretty much anything we want so long as it does not harm others? If the answer is yes, does drinking oneself to death harm others? Does prostitution? Does polygamy? (Mill anticipates the debates about Mormonism still being stoked by recent events like law enforcement's seizure of children in a polygamous compound in Texas. But he answers — wrongly, I believe — that polygamy does not cause harm.) Mill was no democrat; On Liberty is filled with disdain for the public and praise for romantic heroes who defy convention and conformity. But nor is Mill a libertarian as we understand that term today; the purpose of liberty is not to give us what we want but to help us grow so that we can best understand our wants. Any book that inspires college sophomores is likely to be dismissed by professional philosophers as, well, sophomoric. But shouldn't we judge a work of political philosophy by how long it continues to inspire debate? By that standard, On Liberty is a classic. So is The Subjection of Women (1869). Besides teachability, works of political philosophy can be evaluated by their ability to anticipate an idea that will become acceptable to future generations, no matter how shocking it may be to one's contemporaries. British women finally obtained the suffrage in 1928, long after Mill died, making all the more remarkable his ability to understand the inevitability of what we now take for granted. But Mill also focused on issues that remained after women could vote, including combatting economic discrimination and the brutality of marital rape. (Marriage, he wrote, could amount to little more than slavery.) Such views were so controversial that one of his critics, James Fitzjames Stephen, wrote an entire book, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1873), attacking them. Stephen's niece, Virginia Woolf, would find herself far closer to Mill's point of view than to that of her uncle. A year after British women won the right to vote, she gave the lecture that would become A Room of One's Own (1930). Mill was not always the most consistent of thinkers. Principles of Political Economy (1848), especially as the author revised it over the years, can be read either as looking back to classical economists like David Ricardo and his arguments on behalf of laissez-faire or looking forward to John Maynard Keynes and his defense of active government. In some of his writings, Mill defends utilitarianism (the greatest good for the greatest number), while in others he criticizes it. The historian Gertrude Himmelfarb faults Mill for arguing for individual freedom while praising writers like Auguste Comte, who worshiped authority. Mill combined his belief in women's suffrage with worries about broadening the suffrage to the working class. Unlike most reformers, he was against the secret ballot. He was not religious but defended religion for the moral functions it performed. Just as he falls between the cracks of today's academic approaches to philosophy, he does not easily fit into today's ideological categories of left and right. Yet once again, Mill's inconsistencies are reasons to appreciate his writings. Liberalism today possesses agreed-upon principles that can be applied to contemporary issues like economic justice or racial equality. Mill, by contrast, wrote at a time when liberalism was not yet formed, and it fell upon him to do much of the forming. We therefore see in him an intelligent mind struggling to make sense of the emergence of a new world in the process of being created. If he could be too cranky toward the masses or insufficiently critical of British imperialism — Mill's day job was to help govern India — he saw progress and liked what he saw. The complacency regarding the status quo for which Victorianism is known just did not rub off on him. As different as they may be from each other, neither the analytic nor the Continental traditions in philosophy set much store by biography. Even if analytic philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein and A.J. Ayer led unconventional lives, we are supposed to remember them for their thoughts, not their actions. And since so much of Continental philosophy is devoted to dismissing the importance of human agency, the actual human agent writing the philosophy is of little interest — perhaps a convenient position for a tradition that includes among its leading figures all too many who flirted with fascism. In contrast to both Continental and analytic philosophy, give me John Stuart Mill any day, and give me a biography as fascinating to read as the one written by Richard Reeves. Alan Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and a professor of political science at Boston College. |
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