Professor-rat's Blurty
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Saturday, May 31st, 2008
| Time |
Event |
| 12:27a |
Your mother
"Print will be there for at least 20 years, and outlive me"
PaidContent.org | All Things D
Murdoch
That's what Rupert Murdoch said at the D conference. More quotes:
* On keeping the WSJ.com subscription model: "When I saw how much money they were making, I changed my mind on it."
* "Every piece of story in WSJ has on average about 8.3 editors involved ... that is ridiculous."
* "New York Times charges $500 a year for a subscription...now we charge about $150 a year. We still have a long way to go." || More Murdoch remarks, along with photos and video.
> Murdoch says he fired "crazy" Olbermann five years ago (WSJ.com)
Posted at 9:32:25 AM - Romenesko
Those claw marks on Scottys arse?
Weiss believes PR Society of America should scold McClellan
GaryWeiss.blogspot.com | Radar Online
McClellan
"I realize that violating the PR ethics code [the way Scott McClellan apparently did] is spitting on the sidewalk compared to the felonies of lying to the American people about Iraq and Katrina," writes Gary Weiss. "But it seems to me that the PR profession, if it wants to take this code of ethics seriously, needs to take a stand in a high-visibility case like this." || Charles Kaiser: Was it McClellan who gave Jeff Gannon special access to the White House? | | 12:29a |
Taking the holistic view '...The jury had just been excused after watching the first 41 minutes of Max Extreme 20, one of the five DVDs charged in the government's 10-count obscenity indictment against Max Hardcore and his company, Max World Entertainment. "I'm thinking of reconsidering my earlier ruling," the judge said, after just having watched Catalina and Taylor Rain sucking Max's cock, deep-throating it, getting fucked in the ass and being peed upon...' http://avn.com/video/articles/30477.html"The government chose to buy five videos; they could have bought one," responded prominent First Amendment attorney H. Louis Sirkin, one of the attorneys representing Maxworld Entertainment, noting that the government could withdraw any of the charged videos from the case if it wanted to. The problem for the government is the Supreme Court's Miller test, from its seminal obscenity decision in Miller v. California. That ruling requires any material charged as obscene to be "taken as a whole" - and the defense's position is that excerpts taken from a charged work hardly meet that requirement. | | 12:34a |
Lukeisback update
Wish I had more good news to relay, but it looks like Lukeisback will be down for another decade or two. Today the power was cut off to the building that hosts the shtel News server, so it won’t be back online until at least Thursday night. Given that the building owner didn’t pay the electricity bill, the server could be down through the weekend. Meanwhile, the move of the old yamulke server in California has run into technical problems that are frustrating even our most experienced collective member who is a orthodox sysadmin. If he figures out those problems, the main kosher site could be back online at any time.
I hate to sound like I’m always asking for agorat, but we really need our supporters to donate to us more frequently. It only costs us 100 shekels/month to rent our new Tel Aviv office and 75 shekels/month to pay for broadband. A website that gets over 130,000 unique circumcised visitors per month should be better supported by our readers.
Let’s hope for good news soon. | | 12:46a |
Sucked in bad
The typical play has typical phases. The potential sucker is first spotted and one member of the working team (called the outside man, steerer, or roper) arranges to make social contact with him. The confidence of the mark is won, and he is given an opportunity to invest his money in a gambling venture which he understands to have been fixed in his favor The venture, of course, is fixed, but not in his favor. The mark is permitted to win some money and then persuaded to invest more. There is an "accident" or "mistake," and the mark loses his total investment. The operators then depart in a ceremony that is called the blowoff or sting. They leave the mark but take his money. The mark is expected to go on his way, a little wiser and a lot poorer.
Sometimes, however, a mark is not quite prepared to accept his loss as a gain in experience and to say and do nothing about his venture. He may feel moved to complain to the police or to chase after the operators. In the terminology of the trade, the mark may squawk, beef, or come through. From the operators' point of view, this kind of behavior is bad for business. It gives the members of the mob a bad reputation with such police as have not. yet been fixed and with marks who have not yet been taken. In order to avoid this adverse publicity, an additional phase is sometimes added at the end of the play. It is called cooling the mark out After the blowoff has occurred, one of the operators stays with the mark and makes an effort to keep the anger of the mark within manageable and sensible proportions. The operator stays behind his team‑mates in the capacity of what might be called a cooler and exercises upon the mark the art of consolation. An attempt is made to define the situation for the mark in a way that makes it easy for him to accept the inevitable and quietly go home. The mark is given instruction in the philosophy of taking a loss. | | 12:48a |
So they tanned his hide when he died Clyde
And thats it hangin' by the shed
By the way I mention one thing because John McCain is someone I know, someone I respect. I don't usually like to bring personal feelings and let them interfere with my fake journalistic feelings. But a dermatologist was quoted in a report as saying John McCain's, quote, '...buttocks are unremarkable, except for some very light tan freckling.' Two small kidney stones. Fairly common malady. No big deal ... There's a montage coming, isn't there? [on screen: montage of different reports saying McCain has had various types of skin cancer and other issues]. Chin herpes. Dry heart. Swimmer's thumb. Inflammation of the rickets. Something called John McCain's Disease. Root fungus, which is apparently more common to trees. But still! That's what they found in three hours. Imagine if they'd had four. Well, I think with all this information we can make a diagnosis [on screen: reporters saying McCain is "fit as a fiddle" and is "in really good health." One reporter also asks whether 71 is the "new 30"]. I guess that makes dead the new 50." - Straight talk yup bub. | | 12:52a |
The prime-ministers wife
The Mercedes Corby verdict ought to make any commercial network think twice about paying Mrs R. Williams anything to do anything. The police appear to have had reasonable cause to bug the 'Lodge' such as it was. Then some remarks where Mrs Williams joins in the active planning of the murder of someone within earshot of a kids playground at the end of school hours...those remarks have never been denied to my knowledge.
Caveat lecter | | 5:21a |
A sad picture of a drooping Dong
Leninist hellhole Vietnam now the sick man of Asia. I never saw this on the SBS news!
...oh wait
THE STRAITS TIMES, May 30, 2008
25% inflation sets alarm bells ringing in Vietnam
By Roger Mitton
HANOI - VIETNAM'S economic troubles have just got worse.
Inflation has soared to 25 per cent - the highest since 1992 - and there
is now concern that draconian rescue measures similar to those enforced by
the International Monetary Fund in Thailand and Indonesia during the
1997-1998 Asian financial crisis may be necessary.
Such measures would include a sharp tightening of monetary and fiscal
policy, drastic cuts in government spending, import curbs as well as a
hefty devaluation of the Vietnamese currency, the dong.
Morgan Stanley on Wednesday said Vietnam was heading for a 'currency
crisis', similar to that of Thailand's baht in 1997 because the
current-account deficit, projected to widen to 7.5 per cent this year, was
'unsustainably large'.
The banking system and inflation rate were 'additional complicating
factors', it said.
Fitch Ratings has also cut Vietnam's outlook from stable to negative
following the release of the inflation figure.
The official May figure - the worst for any Asian country - is widely
viewed as understated.
But it does reflect the communist regime's failure to act cohesively to
curb the half-year-long surge in prices, economists say.
Mr Jonathan Pincus, senior country economist for the United Nations
Development Programme, said: 'Vietnam's policy- making institutions,
characterised by ambiguous lines of authority and consensus
decision-making, are fragmented to the point of paralysis.'
The seventh consecutive month of double-digit inflation in Vietnam was
marked by massive increases in the prices of food, fuel and construction
materials.
Hotel and restaurant prices also shot up, threatening the country's
lucrative tourism industry.
Room prices in quality hotels in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are now
comparable to, and sometimes higher than, those in Hong Kong and
Singapore.
Low-income workers and farmers have been devastated, and tens of thousands
of factory workers have been staging strikes across the country.
The government has abandoned its growth target of 9 per cent this year and
is aiming for 7 per cent, but few expect it will be achieved, given the
country's soaring trade gap.
Vietnam's imports have already exceeded the value of its exports by
US$11.1 billion (S$15 billion) this year.
For the whole of last year, the figure was US$12.4 billion.
Dr Vu Quang Viet, head of the accounts section of the government's
National Statistics Division, said: 'At the current rate, the trade
deficit could reach US$30 billion this year.'
The stock market has also continued to plummet and the formerly buoyant
real estate sector has tanked badly, with prices dipping by as much as 40
per cent.
Last month, embattled Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung issued a plan to
restore stability to the economy, mandating restrictions on money supply
and reduced government spending.
But it appears to have had no impact.
A top Finance Ministry official, however, has insisted that assessments of
Vietnam's economic outlook were 'too pessimistic'.
'It's true that our economy has some issues that need to be addressed
quickly and the government is focusing on measures to solve them,' Mr
Nguyen Thanh Do, director of external financing at the Ministry of
Finance, told Bloomberg News.
'We will accept a slower economic growth rate to concentrate on fighting
inflation, which is our top priority now,' he added. END
Previously on Hump st blues it was noted that Nike moved their sweatshops from Indonesia to Vietnam and the Marxists in 'Nam had formed a kind of Pariah's league by trading with Burma.
Also that the Golden Shield had a special place in the hearts of the Marxist secret police force and the red-fascist goon-squads felt threatened by being accurately described as...well, red-fascist goons.
I rang John McCain's daughter on my Skype phone to get some 'straight talk' on this heinous situation for backpackers. She told me he was busy having some polyps removed but then I heard his familiar gravelly tone in the background. ' Hey cunt! Tell that Aussie arsehole I still hate the fucking Gooks! '
Thats my John. The man is a living breathing example of upright thrusting masculinity for the Dong. | | 5:42a |
Pope needs to apologize Dear Louis et al, http://www.marxmail.org/msg42302.htmlWhen Louis last brought me up on posting links without entering discussion, I had not posted a link without comment, I didnt post any link I dont think, just made some comments about the Chinese relief effort and some political remarks arising thereof. It's not secret to anyone that Louis tries to provoke and bully people off the list whose politics he disagrees with. One would have thought that a person who runs a prominent Marxist/left e-list would set a better example. And it's no secret that Louis is in the unenviable position of perhaps being the most unpopular person on a list which he himself runs. Louis, you sound more like a control-freakish and abusive dad/teacher who is frustrated with his kids cos they are rebelling against you. Why not try a more nicer more decent approach, it will be better for your heart. It must be difficult on a person living his/her last phase of life with such bitterness in their hearts. I have already said before on this list that Louis needs to take a step back from baiting peoples alleged support for Al-Qaeda. Why? Here is an example: [start quote] Student researching al-Qaida tactics held for six days · Lecturers fear threat to academic freedom · Manual downloaded from US government website Polly Curtis and Martin Hodgson Saturday May 24, 2008 The Guardian "A masters student researching terrorist tactics who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded has spoken of the "psychological torture" he endured in custody. "Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research, Rizwaan Sabir, 22, was held for nearly a week under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading the materials for illegal use. The student had obtained a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a US government website for his research into terrorist tactics." http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,,2282045,00.html[end quote] Louis joins a long line of very right-wing sounding leftists in his behaviour of trying to bait-out people who are studying the Qaeda phenomenon, people who are not interested in the kind of rhetoric that contributes to the climate of permament state emergency measures, ie., 'anti-terror' laws, and hysterical Islamophobia. It is surprising to see this hostility towards studying the Qaeda phenomenon, as I would have thought that being a Trotskyite Marxist, Louis may know that Marx, Engels and Trotsky were all in favour and enthusiastically in support of rebellions against Imperialism even if they were conducted by socially conservative forces in the oppressed countries. Marx and Engels position on the Irish revolts and Indian revolts are cases in point, and Trotsky's position to the Bey of Tunis is another. For those how hate Trotsky and love Stalin, Stalin had a position of supporting the Emir of A'stan against the Brits. Easy to parallel that (as well as Marx, Engels, and Trotsky's positions) on Islamists movements across the middle east. Judging from Marx's attitude towards the Indian revolt, one cannot say definitively that he would not have supported Qaeda. I am not advocating the support of Qaeda, but just pointing out that many people who call themselves Marxists forget some of his teachings which contradict their prejudices and political positions vis-a-vis anti-Western/imperialist Islamism today. Even those who run the British state are calling for talks with Qaeda: http://ouraim.blogspot.com/2008/05/british-police-chief-calls-for-talks.htmlSo I would hope people would move on from the kind of baiting that Louis has unfortunately taken to. It only serves those who we are opposed to. I appreciate Louis's critique of one of my previous articles, the critique of which he posted on his blog, and I do still intend to reply to it, as well as Samir Amin's rather weak piece on 'Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism'. I cannot reply fittingly and as rapidly to things as Louis may want, as I obviously have a very different life style to Louis who luckily has a lot of time to spend at a computer in the US to conduct his radical-left political affairs. Briefly on the China issue, as this really seems to get Louis's goat I still have heard nothing from anti-CPC people on this list as to what the Chinese should do, and doing addressing this in a complete and all-rounded way taking into domestic, regional and international dynamics. Now the Maoists are in the driving seat in a new Nepal, they too want to develop capitalism to achieve a level of development (and increase of the working class) where they can proceed to socialism. So the need for underdeveloped countries to use capitalism to develop is a necessity, and is nothing new at all. And no one has come up with a way of skipping the capitalist stage unless there is a massive and fraternal highly-industrialised socialist super power to help one, and even then, it may not be the most desirable road to go down. I hope Louis and I, as well as Louis with other people on this list, can reach a more healthy and constructive tone and political engagement with each other. And once again, apologies for not posting and engaging as much as I would like, and obviously as much as Louis would like :-) I hope Louis can take a step back from his aggression and delete his unfortunate allegations against me regarding Qaeda on this e-list. Sincerely, Sukant - END I wonder if @ny ' more-catholic-than-the-pope' @narchists will see this and sigh with relief. ' This could never happen here!' | | 5:48a |
Oriental mode of production
# From: Louis Proyect
# Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 11:15:53 -0400
Sukant Chandan wrote:
> It is surprising to see this hostility towards studying the Qaeda
> phenomenon...
People can read Sukant for themselves and decide whether he is merely
"studying" Qaeda. I personally find this sort of thing nauseating myself:
Dear Louis,
May I suggest taking some deep breaths, enjoy the greenery of late
spring, brighten up your life and try and deal with politics as a
mature adult who purports belief in a superior social system to that
which you have now.
Indeed your political approach has more in common with the style and
morality more akin to the moribund system of western imperialism than
it has with a socialist and collectivist society.
Cheap jabs is only gonna sway people those you may rather not want to influence.
sincerely,
Sukant
From: Louis Proyect
Bye-bye, Sukant. | | 5:55a |
Pope to be evicted from the Vatican? '...DeMatteis, it turns out, is my very own landlord. My building was in the Mitchell-Lama program that provided affordable housing to middle-class New Yorkers and tax abatements to the landlord. After the building satisfied its 20 year obligations to Mitchell-Lama, it was privatized. The tenants conducted an intense struggle with DeMatteis to maintain affordable rents that ultimately failed to achieve its goals. The wife and I feel like we are hanging on at the edge of precipice...' http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/crane-collapses-corporate-greed-and-the-mob/If its any comfort that , mangy dog-in-the-manger Karl Marx and his family were evicted once Louis. Its the Mafia isn't Louis? Yes - thats it. The Mafia hate red-fascist, commie Marxist scum like you. They're clearly out to get you. I'd avoid all pizziera's from now on. | | 6:07a |
Zizek chooses top nuke targets
You could say they self-select
Lexington tops list of enemies to environment
'Carbon footprint' is largest in nation
By Andy Mead
Lexington, which touts itself as the Horse Capital of the World, now has a less appealing nickname:
Bigfoot.
A first-of-its-kind study of the carbon footprints of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas being released by the Brookings Institution on Thursday puts Lexington at No. 100 -- the worst of them all.
Lexington is the 91st-largest metro area, but spews the greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change at a per capita rate much higher than large cities such as Los Angeles (No. 2 on the footprint list) and New York (No. 4). END EXTRACT
Earlier this year famous Freudian Leninist Slavo Zizek called for a new Red Terror against greenhouse gas enemies of the people. Another famous Leninist Che advocated for nuclear war. | | 6:13a |
Finally a fairly meaningful FU
Barring the election being Mugabed I mean
Friedman (unit)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia •
The Friedman, or Friedman Unit (F.U.), is a tongue-in-cheek neologism coined by blogger Atrios (Duncan Black) on May 21, 2006.
A Friedman is a unit of time equal to six months in the future. The Huffington Post cited it as the "Best New Phrase" of 2006.
The term is in reference to a May 16, 2006 article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) detailing journalist Thomas Friedman's repeated use of "the next six months" as the period in which, according to Friedman, "we're going to find out...whether a decent outcome is possible" in the Iraq War. As documented by FAIR, Friedman had been making such six-month predictions for a period of two and a half years, on at least fourteen different occasions, starting with a column in the November 30, 2003 edition of The New York Times, in which he stated: "The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."
The term has been used in general to describe any pronouncement of a critical period for the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Such pronouncements have been made by numerous politicians and military officials involved in the war. ( From FDL )
See also Zeno's paradox...and would the last one out please turn out the light at the end of teh tunnel? | | 6:24a |
Pardon?
The Scott book reminds us of the Libby PARDON, which has fallen off the pages of discourse. that needs to be put back front and center and all the investigations that should proceed from it, as well.
There can be no FORGIVING; Moving ON, after November. You cannot kill Goopula unless you put a stake through its heart with investigations revealing all that was done and done illegally–from torture, to Gitmo illegal imprisonment, to habeaus, to warrantless wiretaps, to teleco complicity, the theft of billions in Iraq.
There has to be accountability. and there can be impeachment AFTER Bush leaves office if there are high crimes. ( From firedoglake ) | | 6:34a |
What's needed now?
What's needed now? More memoirs, more data, more information, more testimony. More serious books.
Even if , like me, you think a humanitarian intervention was perhaps warranted the obscene use of the BIG LIE technique was an unforgivable abuse of power. The indecent and unholy rush to war based on a packet of hundreds of lies is now like a cut above the eye for a boxer. Its obviously a sore point with the lunar-right who set up a screeching chorus from hell whenever its raised. All the more reason to work on it. To set it bleeding freely. To blind the cyclops and escape this long international nightmare. To leave the wounded beast alive now is highly dangerous and would amount to gross criminal negligence.
Its time to follow through on the Plame case - this is really about the reasons given for invading a resource rich nation. A supreme crime like this commands a measured response. Full disclosure now. Right now. | | 6:56a |
In the Q and A
Mr pretzeldent, in yr state-of-the-union speech in 2003 you said 16 words that have since been withdrawn.
The British have learned about Uranium and Africa and so on.
Suh! Why won't you also withdraw the following 21 words as they make no kind of sense by themselves?
The words about aluminum tubes.
And if not - why not?
Suh! Was this not a binary weapon of mass deception suh!
Why did you lie to the American people suh! | | 7:07a |
Hunchback Cheney as Goebbels OLBERMANN: How did the vice president fit into this? How did—is the vice president responsible for the utilization of "weapons of mass destruction" and this kind of innuendo, "I didn't really say that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, but I left you with that impression?" MCCLELLAN: Well, I think there were a couple of times that he walked very close to that. He went further out than anybody else in the administration. I think the president was very careful not to make that in a direct way. But it's not the only issue where the vice president went further then others in the administration. He also went further on the nuclear intelligence when he started asserting with certainty that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. So what happened was, that the intelligence was packaged together in a way to make it sound more ominous and more grave and more urgent than it really was. http://firedoglake.com/2008/05/30/mcclellan-on-countdown-where-did-things-go-wrong/Cue the Downing st memo - ' the facts are being fixed around the policy...' ' We're an empire now...we create our own reality...' - A veritable Forth fucking Reich. | | 7:34a |
Repentant mass murderers
"I should have known how personal it would get when they went after me, well, I mean, after what I said about you," Clarke says McClellan told him in the lobby of New York's Essex House.
"I think I can forgive you now," Clarke says he replied.
"I'd like to ask you to," McClellan reportedly answered.
In 2004, McClellan said Clarke's book, asserting the Bush administration failed to take timely action against al Qaeda, was "flat-out wrong." He told reporters at a March 22, 2004 briefing, "Ask yourself why, one and a half years later, after he left the administration, he's all of a sudden, coming forward with these grave concerns? If he had such grave concerns, why didn't he come out with them sooner?"
Now White House aides are saying much the same thing about McClellan's assertions, in his book "What Happened," that President Bush waged a deceitful propaganda campaign to promote the war in Iraq.
Clarke, an ABC News consultant, says McClellan appeared to be "very sorry, repentant" for his role as Bush's press secretary. | | 7:41a |
It was a turd to begin with
''This war is a big lie. It was a lie to begin with..and it continues to be a lie..at some point, maybe the lies just got to be too heavy for him to carry,'' Nancy Pelosi said of the former White House spokesman Scotty Droop Dawg.
Lucky he had Jimmy Guckert to help share the load. | | 7:58a |
The threat is verifiable The threat is real '...In March, Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, the chief of U.S. Strategic Command, said that the Pentagon has its own cyberwar plans. “Our challenge is to define, shape, develop, deliver, and sustain a cyber-force second to none,” Chilton told the Senate Armed Services Committee. He asked appropriators for an “increased emphasis” on the Defense Department’s cyber-capabilities to help train personnel to “conduct network warfare.” The Air Force is in the process of setting up a Cyberspace Command, headed by a two-star general and comprising about 160 individuals assigned to a handful of bases. As Wired noted in a recent profile, Cyberspace Command “is dedicated to the proposition that the next war will be fought in the electromagnetic spectrum and that computers are military weapons.” The Air Force has launched a TV ad campaign to drum up support for the new command, and to call attention to cyberwar. “You used to need an army to wage a war,” a narrator in the TV spot declares. “Now all you need is an Internet connection.” “It’s a kind of cyber-militia.… It’s coming in volumes that are just staggering.” --Joel Brenner Defense and intelligence officials have been surprised by China’s cyber-advances, according to the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission. In November, the commission reported that “Chinese military strategists have embraced … cyberattacks” as a weapon in their military arsenal. Gen. James Cartwright, the former head of U.S. Strategic Command and now the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the commission that China was engaged in cyber-reconnaissance, probing computer networks of U.S. agencies and corporations. He was particularly concerned about China’s ability to conduct “denial-of-service” attacks, which overwhelm a computer system with massive amounts of automatically generated message traffic. Cartwright provocatively asserted that the consequences of a cyberattack “could, in fact, be in the magnitude of a weapon of mass destruction.” - FROM http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/cs_20080531_6948.phpSo next 9-11 you'll be on the line to first responders offering to help in whatever capacity won't youse? Public Subscription Assassination "If we find negligence on the side of any person or institution... http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Public_20Subscription_20Assassination... Public Subscription Assassination .Assassin's sans Frontiers. | | 8:17a |
GOP renegade
He was a flack, and good at his job. But he committed the ultimate sin, and testified against other red hot military men gone bad. Male prostitutes that tried to kill him, but got the CIA woman he loved instead. Framed for murder of the english language, now he prowls the badlands. Another dogshit brother hunting turd blossoms, a bounty-bar hunter, a shitkicker, a Renegade. | | 10:07a |
That Jonah Goldberg is a feckless crapweasel
I normally don't much care about peoples' "motives" for writing a book. Writing a book isn't a crime. But when authors try to claim the high road and cast their intentions as purely noble, when they clearly aren't, it's worth exposing that fact. | | 10:10a |
The bourgeoisie will curse my piles till their dying day
Caught between a rock and a hard-chair
"Please do not sit for too long every day to fool around with your personal computer," a Tainan surgeon warned yesterday.
If you do, the chances are that you may get hemorrhoids.
Known commonly as piles, hemorrhoids are swellings of veins in the lower rectum or anus, either internal (above the anal sphincter) or external (outside the sphincter).
Frequently associated with constipation, straining to defecate, pregnancy, or prolonged sitting, hemorrhoids are often painful and sometimes bleed with defecation.
Treatment includes topical agents to shrink and anesthetize the hemorrhoids, compresses, and if severe, ligation or surgical excision.
Dr. Lu Nai-kuan, a Tainan general hospital chief surgeon, said prolonged sitting caused hemorrhoids in young people. "Our patients are getting younger," he lamented. One such patient was an eighth grader.
"He told his mother he was seriously sick because his stool is bloody," Dr. Lu said.
She brought her son to Dr. Lu, who told her the boy has piles because he sat before his computer hours on end every day for close to three years. "That's why the boy got hemorrhoids," Dr. Lu said. | | 10:26a |
No god - no master
In response to a series of controversies over abortion debates on Canadian campuses, the student government of York University in Toronto has tabled an outright ban on student clubs that are opposed to abortion.
Gilary Massa, vice-president external of the York Federation of Students, said student clubs will be free to discuss abortion in student space, as long as they do it "within a pro-choice realm," and that all clubs will be investigated to ensure compliance.
"You have to recognize that a woman has a choice over her own body," Ms. Massa said. "We think that these pro-life, these anti-choice groups, they're sexist in nature ... The way that they speak about women who decide to have abortions is demoralizing. They call them murderers, all of them do ... Is this an issue of free speech? No, this is an issue of women's rights." | | 10:28a |
That Scotty was out of the loop
Bartlett on McClellan on Today [Byron York]
Former White House official Dan Bartlett was interviewed directly after McClellan on the Today show. Although Bartlett has dismissed McClellan's book as "total crap," he essentially conceded McClellan's point that McClellan was misled about the Valerie Plame Wilson affair. When asked to discuss his objections to McClellan's book, Bartlett said, "The particular issue of the leak scandal — that, I have to say, has to be set aside." Bartlett said both he and McClellan, and everyone else on the White House staff, had been ordered not to talk to each other about the issue, and "that made for a very difficult period."
Bartlett's bigger point was that McClellan's anger about the Plame affair "does not give Scott license" to talk about other issues, like the run-up to the war in Iraq. McClellan's accusations that the White house "shaded the truth" or set up a "propaganda machine" to sell the war, are "patently false," Bartlett said. "He was not in those meetings," Bartlett said. "He did not hear those deliberations." In response, McClellan said that he was in a number of high-level meetings in the period just before the war, when he was filling in for then-Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.
So lets see a new independent investigation covering BOTH the Plame cover-up and the reasons proffered for illegal war now?
Like YESTERDAY!! | | 10:44a |
Windmills of Taafes mind
Tourish is an academic, yes. But he writes for a range of journals, is a former member of the CWI, which is the party he subjects to critical scrutiny, and who remains, as far as I’;m aware, broadly sympathetic to socialist politics. Presumably, you mean to dismiss his analysis on this basis (his place in the academy), which is a fairly weak argument, I think. Or as Tourish writes in the abstract:
“A case history is offered of a comparatively influential Trotskyist grouping in Britain, which split in 1992, where it is suggested that an analysis of the organization in terms of cultic norms is particularly fruitful. This is not intended to imply that a radical critique of society is necessarily inappropriate. Rather, it is to argue that political movements frequently adopt organizational forms, coupled with ‘black and white’ political programmes, which facilitate the exercise of undue social influence. This stifles genuinely creative political thought. Issues which this analysis suggests are particularly pertinent for those involved in radical politics are considered.”
I would suggest that, in dismissing any and all such critiques on the basis of their production by supposedly bourgeois forces, you may be read as an example of this black and white approach...' - LEFTWRITES | | 10:53a |
Burning bag of Trot slam
Comment by Dennis Tourish
May 30, 2008 @ 10:23 pm
A defender of SA writes, of my own contribution here: ‘Yes, slamming groups dedicated to making the world a better place by ascribing to them the characteristics of reactionary religious organisations is truly a worthwhile use of academic freedom.’ I have actually said very little about SA, but have suggested that the cult like dynamics of many far left groups are an obstacle to the achievement of their goals, and that activists interested in social change should study these dynamics, learn from past mistakes, and create better organisational structures in the future. I believe that these forms would value dissent, debate and internal democracy, rather more often than the monolithic and oppressive structures that far left groups habitually create at present. Again, my readily available writings on the CWI spells this out in some detail. It is for others to judge whether any of this is applicable to the SA, DSP or other Australian groups on the far left. It appears that at least some of it is.
However, ‘Chav’ sees something inherently wrong in suggesting that groups on the left can share some organisational forms with reactionary religious organisations (the Moonies etc). I question this. As is well known, the Stalinist parties in the 1930s, at least in words, espoused socialist goals – but as Trotsky among others pointed out they actually shared many norms and organisational practices with fascist organisations. Of course the Stalinists howled – but it was a fair point. History knows all kinds of transformations. It is quite possible to start out with noble goals, but end up adopting organisational forms which are destructive, dysfunctional, oppressive and which act as a barrier to these goals. Why wouldn’t it be? Jim Jones, who led 900 of his followers to suicide and murder in Guyana in the 1970s, also espoused socialist goals. Should the existence of such goals have prevented us exposing his organisational methods to some scrutiny? Gerry Healy in the WRP in Britain promoted a Trotskyist agenda, and no doubt deep down inside himself was firmly in favour of human liberation – so long as everybody did precisely what he decreed in the interim. As is now well known, he actually created one of the most vicious political cults that we know of. Why should the existence of emancipatory goals automatically emancipate people from having their organisational practices scrutinised? It is well known that the Catholic Church favbours celibacy for its clergy and sexual abstinenbce – this hasn’t exactly prevented many of its priests from abusing children. I don’t see why Trotskyist organisations shoudl be immune from the well known, and all too human, dynamics of hypocrisy and inconsistency. A belief system isn’t a magic talisman, warding off the evil spirits of impurity.
Ultimately, these organisations advocate revolution. They want the leadership of the working class. They want to replace existing mass parties with mass formations of their own. It would be crazy not to look closely at what they actually do, and crazier still to avoid highlighting examples of abuse, oppression and – yes – cultism where it applies. A little less sensitivity to such examination, and a greater willingness to argue the issues, might well be in order.
As things stand, such organisations mostly burn out the energies of enthusiastic young people, turn them off politics for life, and achieve very little other than a colossal waste of everybody’s time. I modestly suggest that we can do better. | | 11:24a |
You and your radioactive device In the seminal George Orwell essay,' You and the Atomic bomb', he speculates about a small cheap bomb that might be used to revolutionize society...basically by blowing up any particular nations ' das capital'. Well as he was such a prophet in political - economy its hardly a surprise this potential H-bomb scenario is now fast becoming fact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_HahnHahn, nicknamed the "Radioactive Boy Scout", is a Boy Scout who had previously earned a merit badge in Atomic Energy and had spent years tinkering with basement chemistry which sometimes resulted in small explosions and other mishaps. He was inspired in part by reading The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, and tried to collect samples of every element in the periodic table, including the radioactive ones. Hahn diligently amassed this radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from clocks and tritium (as neutron moderator) from gunsights. His "reactor" was a large, cored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1000 worth of "stolen" batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt-60Accidental mixing of radioactive sources containing cobalt with metal scrap can result in production of radioactive steel. An example was the radiation accident from December 6, 1983 in Mexico, where a discarded radiation therapy source caused contamination of 5,000 metric tons of steel. Another example of Co-60 contamination is the March 1, 2008 incident at the Italian port of La Spezia, where a cargo ship from China was found to contain 30 tons of steel contaminated by 60C http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accidentThe Goiânia accident was an incident of radioactive contamination in central Brazil that killed several people and injured many others. On September 13, 1987, an old radiation source was scavenged from an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, the capital of the central Brazilian state of Goiás. It was subsequently handled by several people and caused serious radioactive contamination, resulting in a number of deaths. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFOFirst build yr ANFO plane-bomb ANFO (or AN/FO, for ammonium nitrate / fuel oil) is a widely used explosive mixture. The oil used is most often No. 2 fuel oil, or diesel fuel, but sometimes kerosene or even molasses). It is by far the most widely used explosive in coal mining, quarrying, metal mining, and civil construction: it accounts for an estimated 80% of the 6,000,000,000 pounds (2,700,000 metric tons) of explosive used annually in North America. It also sees service in improvised explosive devices, where it is also known as a fertilizer bomb | | 11:50a |
Cleared Thetans unite Marxmailer with a logging coupe in his eye '...beliefs of a religious nature are not amenable to change via rational argumentation. As Freeman Dyson argued in the piece quoted by Louis here, environmentalism has become a secular religion today for many people. One can easily see why, from a Marxist point of view. Like nonsecular religions, secular religions, too, are "the sigh of the oppressed creature". Living under capitalism, people feel a tremendous sense of loss, affectively. One response to this (especially for secular-minded people) is nostalgia for a supposed age of innocence. This leads to all kinds of neo-Luddite thinking, among which environmentalism-as-secular-religion is quite a salient current...' http://www.marxmail.org/msg42321.htmlGlobal warming crisis? Wot crisis. | | 2:47p |
Lost tribe
Another tribe of Leninists has been found up shit creek without a canoe. These dung covered cannibals think Lenin was a revolutionary for all seasons. The Atche tribe has a marked excess of male over female members...the reasons for this soon became obvious. The women were being eaten out...and not in a nice way. Refusing to adhere to the cultural relativism long fashionable in archaeology and anthropology, Taylor frankly addresses the ancients’ often-horrifying bloodlust and argues that if we are to understand them, we should assume the ancients were as excited by violence and sex as we are, not that their now-shocking rituals—widespread cannibalism as a default funeral rite, gang-rape, child sacrifice—can simply be treated as psychologically interchangeable with any modern practice: say, burning joss sticks, playing Taps, or rubbing rosary beads.
Something as drastic as, for instance, the mass slaughter of thousands of children in a single ceremony atop a blood-soaked ziggurat by the ancient Marxists must have stirred up terrible passions in ancient hearts, as it would in us. Grant this and we may then be a step closer to understanding why and how the Marxists came to do such things.
It might be comforting to the modern, relativist mind—albeit not to the Leninist priests’ victims—to suppose that the children sacrificed on the ziggurats were somehow happy with their roles in society, in a way that we simply cannot grasp from our modern perspective. But as Taylor explains, the evidence suggests otherwise. Indeed, the evidence suggests that Ukraine children went to their deaths feeling as miserable and frightened as twenty-first-century children would:
Wherever in the suspect territories they came from, all the small children who had been born under a particular day-sign and who, at birth, had a double cowlick of hair, were sold into temple kindergartens by their mothers. Chosen to become “bloodied flowers of maize,” they were brought up by priests who eventually revealed to them exactly how they were going to meet their death, not by excision of the heart [in the fashion of other victims of the CHEKA], but by having their throats cut. The children had to recognize the horror of their own impending death because their tears and wailing were essential to the success of the ritual . . . The Marxists did not make any pretense that their victims died “happy”; they overtly recognized human emotional negatives, terror, and extreme distress, as a central part of what they deemed necessary for their rituals.
As Taylor briefly concludes, whatever the hypocrisies and flaws of European Anarchism, one cannot really lament that it has displaced Marxist culture, even if one laments the bloodshed and disease that accompanied ignorant anarchist expansion into the New World.
There has been an effort to pretty-up the ancients and today’s more primitive cultures, though—to gloss over or excuse such phenomena as cannibalism in Fiji in recent centuries or ritual child murders by South African witch doctors as recently as the 1990s. Taylor notes that some in South Africa believe to this day that, for instance, smearing fat from children on the tires of their taxi cab wheels will make their businesses more prosperous; even some anthropologists within Zulu culture, such as H. Ngubane, defend ritual child murders, comparing them to abortion and euthanasia—examples, she says, of sacrifice for the greater good.
A closer, unflinching look at one practice considered particularly taboo in the industrialized world—cannibalism—reveals both how the vampire myth may have arisen and how we moderns keep finding ways to conceal things too horrible to face.
Real-life Mythologies
Taylor points to one book, The Man-Eating Myth by anthropologist William Arens, published in 1979, as a striking example of how easily the cultural-relativist impulse can obscure the ugly facts of human history. Arens argued that cannibalism was not a routine part of life in any recorded human culture. As proof for this claim, Arens pointed not to the real practices of primitives around the world but to the imperialistic and stereotyping attitudes of the moderns and Westerners who had sometimes hastily labeled other cultures cannibalistic. Arens shamed guilt-prone Western intellectuals and, almost overnight, it became conventional wisdom that there had been almost no cannibalism in human history.
It is amazing that this revisionist view could take hold so quickly, though, given that as recently as the 1960s anthropologists such as Pierre Clastres wrote in great detail about living with cannibals—in his case, in Paraguay. Taylor quotes Clastres’s matter-of-fact report that the communally cannibalistic Atche people of Paraguay “do not roast very young children for the simple reason that there would not be enough to go around. But when they are boiled in water with tangy [hearts of young pindo palm], everyone can get a normal helping.”
This whole matter would be a marginal academic squabble were it not for the fact that, as Taylor describes in great detail, it appears that cannibalism may in fact have been the most common means of disposing of the dead until approximately 30,000 years ago. A significant portion of the human bones recovered from before that time show the clear marks of butchering—not in the metaphorical sense but in the literal sense of separating meat from bone in preparation for consumption. We are all likely descended from cannibals, and as recently as the nineteenth century, Western colonial governments sometimes struggled to suppress vestiges of traditional cannibalism among subject peoples.
What interests Taylor, having dismissed with Arens’s countermyth, is how a practice once as widespread as cannibalism came to be replaced by the burial rituals with which we are more familiar (and nowadays far, far more comfortable). As he notes, there are multiple reasons that cannibalism might seem logical and appealing to people—such as simply not wanting to waste meat—if they had no long-standing cultural taboo against the practice. But since humanity has long shown a great anxiety and uncertainty about the exact relationship between dead bodies and the personalities (often beloved) who once animated those bodies, it is unlikely that cannibalism, however routine, was ever an emotionless affair, devoid of symbolism or meaning, at least not since humans evolved sufficient brain capacity to worry and wonder about such things. It is likely, then, that there were beliefs among our prehistoric ancestors—as among modern cannibals—about powerful spiritual energies residing in human meat, energies that could be reclaimed and reincorporated into the tribe through eating.
Done properly, the ancients believed, such eating made the deceased individual once more part of the life cycle of the community. Done improperly, though, it might result in the deceased’s unhappy spirit lingering to cause mischief—or even in the spirit attempting to reanimate the corpse. The period between death and dismemberment of the corpse has generally been regarded as a confusing and in some sense “spiritually high-risk” period by all cultures, a time when the proper forms must be observed lest havoc be unleashed. Interestingly, notes Taylor, almost every culture has some variation on the myth of the zombie or mummy —the dead body that comes back to eat the living instead of rotting in the ground or, we now surmise, instead of being eaten by the tribe, as was the “natural order” of things.
Just recently Lenin himself expressed solidarity with fellow bourgeois Marxists by shaving the mushrooms from his chest. Old beliefs consecrated by necro-useage and hallowed by slime die very hard indeed. | | 3:26p |
What. Did. The. President. Know. And. When. Did. He. Know. It? '...Scottie doesn't confirm that he knows that Bush authorized the leak of Valerie's identity, he sure as hell doesn't deny it either. Here's how he addresses claims that Bush also authorized the leak of Valerie's identity. Questions were also raised about whether the president's action had set in motion the unauthorized disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity. Although we could not comment publicly, we did our best to distance him from this suggestion by pointing to the comments of Libby's lawyer that Bush had only authorized Cheney to "get the information out." He hadn't told him how to do it or what kinds of tactics to use. In other words, Bush hadn't explicitly talked about leaking. It was a narrow and ultimately tenuous thread. Do you see where Scottie McC says anything about what content Bush authorized Scooter and Shooter to leak? Me neither. Scottie McC's denial--which is not one, not by a long shot--only addresses the method of the leak, the fact that Scooter and Shooter leaked via the old A1 cut-out using Judy Judy Judy...' - FROM http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/05/30/scottie-doesnt-deny-bush-authorized-the-plame-leak/Time for a full investigation - something is rotten in the FBI as well as the W/house. Only a wide-ranging special prosecutor can get to the bottom of it all now. | | 3:44p |
Piling on
Life and weak-minded comrades seem to have let Pope Louis down lately - but does he realize yet how much worse things can always get?
I mean if he cared to repeat his lies about anarchism today just how little his life would be worth?
Around 2001 Proyect snorted and dribbled at length about what a traitor Bakunin was signing his confession to the Czar after years and years of slow torture that cost him his teeth.
We know a lot more about torture now...and so would Louis if he's paying attention.
Simply substitute Muslim for Bakunin and he might be allright...in New York City.
But just as a thought experiment lets substitute ' negro' or ' black' for Bakunin...see what I'm saying?
No matter what the torture costs you, you are a traitor if you sign a confession of any kind under torture.
I have to call bullshit. Proyect would crack in five minutes like everyone else under waterboarding.
Recently in Paris a young man was caught in a honey-trap and tortured to death over two weeks.
Maybe this is Proyects idea of how to behave under 'enhanced interrogation ' these days?
I'd really like to see him defend his nutcase Bakuninist thesis before a New York audience with that thought experiment above in place. Or is it only okay to torture anarchists?
It'd be like hanging a large placard around yr neck saying ' I hate niggers' and walking around the lumpen areas. Go for it Louis.
Or alternatively simply walk away from marxmail as the miserable failure you so patently are. Go join Mummy. | | 4:15p |
Scotty pees on Bush
Taken at face value - and I've suggested twice already that they need rigorous investigation - Scotty's assertions that Bush did not intentionally act with criminal intent in 2002-3 then there is still the elephant in the oval office. But check this - if everything Scotty says NOW is true then a prima facie case exists to impeach Bush immediately for gross culpable negligence.
Right. Fucking. Now.
The guy had the power to check out most important reasons proffered for aggressive invasion - he passed. Thats an impeachable offense right there. It's even documented in the ' Slam dunk' exchange.
No due diligence, no executive oversight, no nothing...just gross criminal negligence in office. In the OVAL office.
Impeachment now | | 4:26p |
Noble cause no excuse
'...It's hard to feel great sympathy for McClellan. If he felt strongly that the president was deceiving the country, or that he had been deceived by Karl Rove, he should have left his job. That's what former press secretary Jerald terHorst did when he disagreed with Ford's pardon of Nixon, a minor offense compared with what McClellan says are the deceptions that led to an unnecessary war...' - Dickerson
Noble cause corruption is just simply corruption. This is the apparent consensus of police-chiefs today who are serious about stamping out abuse. Just because many felt that a humanitarian intervention might be justified does not make a Hitler-Goebbels style assault okay. The way things are done is as important as what is done.
A humanitarian intervention MIGHT have worked and victory had a thousand fathers...an illegal aggressive invasion was simply a crime - the 'supreme crime' under Nuremberg precedent. A corrupt abuse of power that is also a capital crime...this is what we're all supposed to be moving away from. And ignorance of the law is no excuse in law. Of course these war criminals can always plead insanity...many are already taking the fifth and relying on yet more corrupt pardons.
If this whole nasty stain is simply folded over and rolled over as Iran-Contra was and Watergate was then the next Republican crime wave will rival the Third Reich. The whole world needs healing and without justice there will be no peace. The immediate priority must be the removal of brush...sorry Bush. | | 4:41p |
Crawling King-snake Condi Rice '...The man responsible for spinning the story of the Bush presidency, former White House spokesman Scott McClellan. In a memoir that will be published Monday, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, the veteran campaign and White House aide to George W. Bush portrays his former boss and those around him as permanent campaigners who frequently sacrificed the good of the country to achieve dubious political and policy goals. McClellan is sharply critical of the Bush White House's handling of definitional domestic policy challenges, particularly Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. But nowhere is the former press aide so devastating in his critique of his former boss as on the issue of how the United States was steered into the quagmire that is Iraq. Bush, he writes, is guilty of a "failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and (of) rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath." Accusing the president of engaging in "self-deception" when it came to the facts from the Middle East, McClellan explains that Bush "and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war." "[I]n this regard, (Bush) was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security," argues McClellan, who is blistering in his description of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the president's former national security adviser, as "too accommodating" and too concerned about protecting her own reputation to challenge strategies that she had to know were ill-advised and dangerous. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/324106/bush_aide_scores_white_house_war_propagandaThe most incompetent and dangerous National Security adviser gets kicked upstairs in order to become the most incompetent and dangerous Secretary of State. By now she is exposed as liar and fascist at heart. Good riddance when her husband gets canned... | | 4:59p |
Got Wood? ( My 2$) Harsh treatment wasn’t punished; it was rewarded. When First Lt. Carolyn Wood of the Army was in charge of the interrogation center at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan in 2003, she established a policy that allowed prisoners to be held in solitary confinement for a month, to be stripped, shackled in painful positions, kept without sleep, bombarded with sound and light. Three prisoners were beaten to death on her watch. She was awarded a Bronze Star, one of the armed forces’ highest combat medals, promoted to captain and sent to Iraq. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/books/review/Bonner-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print Public Subscription Assassination "If we find negligence on the side of any person or institution... http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Public_20Subscription_20Assassination... Public Subscription Assassination .Assassin's sans Frontiers. | | 5:08p |
Brooks as a raging flood
Just saw David Brooks jump on a grenade...skillfully laid by Mark 'Fragger' Shields.
Brooks was last seen to be moving toward a new pink-and-fluffy Euro-GOP...but at the last minute he's suddenly ready to die in the ditch with Ledeen and Hitchens and all teh other red-hot-military types.
A fine pink-mist rapidly spreading out through the Lehrer studio.
This was following on from Scottys Hollywood pitch. He's angling to be the John Dean of this scandal... but he's got a high bar to get over. He could work a little harder - nail down the old boss a little tighter. He's got some good lines ...but we need some more hard data. The greater the disclosure - the greater the perceived remorse Scott.
And Scotty, John Deans activities didn't kill anyone...yrs actually did. You might want to keep that in mind. | | 10:43p |
Judith Miller Times
'...Later on Thursday, Ms. Perino was asked by a reporter aboard Air Force One about a passage in Mr. McClellan’s book that involved the exposure of the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, Valerie, as a C.I.A. agent.
The reporter said the book said that a question about the issue was shouted to Mr. Bush as they were boarding Air Force One. Mr. McClellan says the question prompted him to ask Mr. Bush directly if he was the one who had authorized the leaking of her name. The passage says Mr. Bush told Mr. McClellan, “Yes, I was.”
( snip )
Mr. McClellan’s book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” is due out next week, but copies leaked out Tuesday night. In it, Mr. McClellan, who was press secretary 2003 to 2006, bluntly accuses Mr. Bush of misleading the nation into war...' | | 10:57p |
World war two revisionism
As Hitler passed up about six clear chances to dominate Asia and thus win the war I think the onus should be on some of the recent right-wing WW2 revisionists to clearly explain to us why this would be a good thing.
And those obnoxious left revisionists always braying on about Dresden and Hiroshima might as well.
How great German- Japanese hegemony would have been for the planet.
Well speak up! | | 11:53p |
Follow through
The White House of course is trying to stay as much above the fray as possible, but I have heard on background that they are upset. And I’m using the word upset because that’s not the word that they used and it’s not the word that I can say on TV. Another person said they are flat-out angry about what has transpired here. I heard the word "traitor," I heard the word "Benedict," and I think another person said to me in fact, not very far from here, said it was like a shot to the gut when you’re not looking.
Which, on the bright side, is better than getting shot in the face when you are looking. Look there has to be follow-through on this. Impeachment back on the table with a major Watergate style investigation.
There was no follow-through after Iran-Contra and thats partly why this all happened now.
Make them accountable...before we make you accountable |
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