Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Time	Event
12:08a	Felonius Monk Wonder if Obama will ' Do a Blair'...or 'Pull a Ruddy'? '...Eve Fairbanks was there: "Howard Dean may hope that the "healing will begin today," but two blocks away from the northwest Washington Marriott where the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee is meeting right now to try to figure out Florida and Michigan, the Hillary protesters are occupying an utterly alternate (and healing-free) universe: a universe in which one of the big lawn rally's speakers yells that the Democratic Party no longer is in the business of "promoting equality and fairness for all"; in which a Hillary supporter with two poodles shouts, "Howard Dean is a leftist freak!"; in which a man exhibits a sign that reads "At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen" and shows Dean whipping handcuffed people; and in which Larry Sinclair, the Minnesota man who took to YouTube to allege that Barack Obama had oral sex with him in the back of a limousine in 1999, is one of the belles of the ball. "They almost made me cry this morning when they told me to get out of there," the blond Sinclair--who's looking roly-poly and giddy in a blue-and-white striped shirt with a pack of Marlboros protruding from the breast pocket--says, referring to several nervous protest organizers who tried to evict him when he first showed up at the rally site early this morning carrying a box of "Obama's DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS: Murder, Drugs, Gay Sex" fliers. Since then, though, he goes on, "I have been totally surprised by the reception I have received!" He's not kidding. Clusters of people in Hillary shirts ask to take their photo with him, one woman covered in Clinton buttons introduces him to Greta Van Susteren, and he estimates he has handed out 500 fliers. "You could improve your credibility if you downplayed the gay sex and focused on the drugs," sagely advises one Hillary supporter with auburn hair and elegant makeup. But in this universe, Sinclair's credibility doesn't seem to be suffering too much. In fact, he's treated nearly as well as he might be at a meeting of the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy. In the thirty minutes I stand with him, only one woman expresses disgust at his fliers and his willingness to chattily discourse on whether Obama is "good in bed." (...) It's easy to sink into despair here. Standing and watching all these Democrats chat up Sinclair--who's retained Montgomery Blair Sibley as his lawyer and says the Republican National Committee has also been in touch with him--makes me want to fall to my knees, rend my garments, and start insanely screaming, "Wake up! Wake up! You'll hate a President John McCain!" But the rhetoric from the top has imparted its poison below, and the bitterest criticisms of Obama gain traction as they circulate through the virulently-pro-Hillary echo chamber. "Would you rather have a president who had an affair [Bill Clinton] or one who was a murderer [Obama]?" Jeannie, the Greensboro Democrat, asks a fellow in a floppy Tilley hat and Hillary buttons. "That's a good point," he replies." It was ugly when some Republicans seemed to seriously believe that the Clintons murdered Vince Foster and hung crack pipes from their Christmas trees. This is ugly in exactly the same way. And if I saw a story in which Obama supporters were acting like this, I'd say that was ugly too. Politics is worth being passionate about, but it's not worth losing your mind over. Still, there's hope: "Following instructions from Obama HQ, almost no Obama supporters have shown up to protest, amplifying the impression of the alternate Hillary universe. But around the edges, a few small signs of the other universe peek through, the one in which Barack Obama leads and most Democrats don't suspect him of multiple felonies. Inside the Marriott's gift shop, the sales clerk tells me that Democratic bumper stickers have been selling like crazy today. "Mostly Hillary?" I ask. "Actually, mostly Obama," she giggles." - EXTRACT FROM HILZOY @... http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ (Comment on this)
12:37a	Class struggle in the Karakorum There are several corners of Manchester that are home to sporting glamour, but Lower Kersal isn't one of them. The city racecourse used to be here, on the east bank of the Irwell, but that closed in 1963. Otherwise, there are some tidy pigeon lofts behind the Racecourse Hotel and a sprinkling of betting shops among the takeaways . Lower Kersal was once home to one of Britain's most celebrated climbers, Don Whillans, who swapped the grey streets of his childhood home for the adamantine blue of the Himalaya. The son of a grocer's assistant, he helped change mountaineering from a game for the wealthy upper-middle classes into a kind of liberation for working-class men such as him to remake their lives. He grew up in Lower Kersal, in the 1930s and 1940s, when the council estate was new and the Irwell ran black with pollution. Little more than five feet tall, he bristled with aggression, always prepared to face a challenge with his fists clenched. Blunt and straight-talking, he became a kind of high-altitude Alf Tupper, the working-class comic-strip hero known as the Tough of the Track. Whillans, like Tupper, had to scrap his way to the top. In 1970, he reached the summit of Annapurna, in Nepal, after scaling its south face on an expedition led by Chris Bonington, the first in history to struggle up a Himalayan wall of such steepness and difficulty. It was Britain's most important mountaineering achievement since John Hunt's team reached the summit of Everest in 1953. But while Hunt was elevated to the Lords and Bonington would later be knighted, Whillans received no national honours . Less than five years after his greatest triumph, he was back in the papers, this time on an assault charge. Driving home drunk from his local, he was pulled over by police. During an altercation Whillans grabbed one of the officers round the throat. It took two policemen sitting on his chest to restrain him; Whillans had another go at the station before being locked in his cell. That kind of behaviour cost him his gong but earned him the adulation of climbers . They celebrated a man who was scornful of polite convention and showed little interest in being embraced by the great and good. His sense of adventure and rebellion, his leaving a life of conformity in Lower Kersal for the picaresque world of a mountaineer, was what other climbers chose to admire most about Whillans. Yet, by the mid-1970s, he was on a tightening spiral of self-destruction, both drinking and smoking heavily, indulging the hard-bitten image he had created . In 1985, when he died of a heart attack in his sleep, his climbing career had been over for more than a decade. He was just 52. Jim Perrin stands on the bank of the Irwell looking across Whillans's childhood playground. In those days, foamy effluent from the city's factories would float downstream and the young climber would dive in for laughs. Perrin has just climbed a mountain of his own, completing the biography of Whillans, a project that took more than 20 years. Perrin grew up in Manchester just after the war, first in Fallowfield and then among the slums of Hulme. Like Whillans, he found freedom in the hills. 'My great-grandparents had worked on the land,' he says. 'Their children had moved to the city. Their way of keeping alive memories of the old way was to escape to the surrounding countryside at every brief opportunity that presented itself, by rambling among the moors on Sunday.' This urge to escape among the working classes expressed itself in the rambling clubs - usually politically oriented - that sprung up in many northern cities at the start of the 20th century. A similar urge first brought Whillans to the moors of Derbyshire and Staffordshire, even if he was too singular to bother with the communal appeal of a Sunday walk. There was, Perrin says, a gulf between climbers and ramblers . 'Climbing was dangerous boys' play. That its great figures, in the 1950s, came not only from our background but from our home streets, and that they were vernacular-speaking ragamuffins like us, had an enormous influence on young Manchester climbers .' With limited resources and rudimentary equipment, climbing was then much more dangerous than it is today. Working-class climbers were limited by time and money to weekends spent on the gritstone edges on the fringes of Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds. Not all rock is the same, and gritstone is like no other. Steep, rough and eroded by the wind, it imposes a hard vertical dance on a climber. Gritstone was the natural environment for the uncompromising Whillans. He made first ascents of a series of overhanging climbs that are still considered to be hugely demanding . He might have been an outsider at school, a short lad who learnt to fight to escape bullying, but gritstone became the arena where he could prove himself to be ahead of the pack. Later in life, as Whillans lost his physical condition, he no longer bothered with this kind of climbing. It had simply offered him a way to make his name. That was in direct contrast to his partner and, later, his rival Joe Brown, who, like Perrin, had grown up in south Manchester and who, also like Whillans, was unusually short. The two men would become the most famous duo in the history of the sport . 'Joe Brown was our absolute hero,' says Perrin now. 'To do his new climbs was our great ambition, and even the easiest of them had considerable cachet.' If anything, Brown's background was even tougher than Whillans's. The youngest of seven children, Brown was eight months old when his father died of gangrene. Like Whillans, his life became an escape to the hills from a tough upbringing. Brown still lives in the Welsh village of Llanberis, below Snowdon and the crags of the Llanberis pass, where he and Whillans found such extreme self-expression through climbing. Good-humoured and engaging, Brown was a few years older than Whillans and was already something of a legend when the Salford man first emerged. Whillans wanted to test himself against the best, so he gravitated towards Brown. They first climbed together on a bright Sunday afternoon in April 1951. Whillans was a 17-year-old apprentice plumber. Brown was a builder. Their backgrounds were markedly different from those members of the Alpine Club who dominated the sport . That first climb was a new route up a steep buttress at the Roaches, a series of gritstone crags that emerge from the Staffordshire moorland like a dragon's crest. Brown's usual partner on the rope had failed to follow his lead. Whillans, who had more or less by chance picked the same cliff , stepped forward. In front of a crowd of his peers, he tied the rope around his waist, and climbed rapidly to join Brown on a ledge . From there, Whillans took the lead for the most difficult part of the route. Their names were linked for the first time. Perrin knew both men well and believes their climbing styles reflected the differences in their characters. 'You have to be positive and aggressive to get up Don's routes. But, if you do crank yourself up to that pitch, then they cease to be particularly difficult. That's the adversarial nature of his climbs. You have to fight them.' Brown, Perrin says, was less confrontational. 'I always felt with Joe's routes that you had to be continually on your guard, because something tricky would come up. You really had to apply yourself mentally and think your way round.' Chris Bonington first climbed with Whillans in 1958. He grew up in a one-parent family and, though well spoken, was more of an outsider than his contemporaries assumed. Whillans, he says, never made an issue of his background. 'I never felt any kind of difficulty from Don over the differences between us,' he says. 'But to make anything work, you had to do it Don's way. And, at that stage, I was very much the junior partner. I was learning all the time from him. You couldn't have had a better partner on the hill.' The early 1950s might seem socially conservative now, but Brown and Whillans were, in effect, living an alternative lifestyle from the one their backgrounds suggested. But climbing had its own structure and accepted norms. A progression was firmly established , from walking, to rock climbing on smaller cliffs, to the big mountain crags of Wales, the Lake District and Scotland, and on to climbing in winter and then the Alps. For most, the Himalaya were far distant and beyond their means. Whillans developed a sixth sense about what was dangerous and what was merely risky. He and Brown formed the nucleus of a climbing club, The Rock and Ice. Anarchic, unhindered by rules and regulations, this loose assemblage of working-class men slept in road-menders' huts and hitched or begged lifts around the country. They were vertical beatniks, choosing a life that they perceived as more free than the alternative their schoolmates in Manchester had followed. Some would marry and settle down. But others, Brown and Whillans included, would find a less conventional path. In North Wales particularly, the two men established a series of climbs on cliff s such as Dinas Cromlech and Clogwyn du'r Arddu that retain a mystical quality, made even more special by their very obscurity. Brown and Whillans were heroes from outside the mainstream but, in their way, their climbs are as much part of British sporting history as Roger Bannister's sub-four minute mile or Geoff Hurst's extra-time goals in the 1966 World Cup final. The two men were certainly afforded a similar level of respect by those in the know. It seemed inevitable that they would go on to achieve similar things in the mountains . Perrin regards Brown as the greater figure, as a man and as a climber. 'I have always been impressed by the quality of Joe's mind. And I wasn't by Don's. He was more set, more rigid, less inquiring .' These differences ultimately led to their partnership being dissolved among feelings of betrayal and recrimination. But in 1953, as the nation celebrated Hunt's team climbing Everest, Brown and Whillans were on their way to the Alps for the first time, tying their tent and gear on the back of Don's Enfield motorbike for the long ride through France. The following year, they made one of the hardest rock climbs yet done in the Alps, on Aiguille de Blaitière above Chamonix. They followed that with an ascent of the Petit Dru's west face, the elegant spire that dominates the Chamonix valley. Suddenly, they were celebrities. Local guides, often dismissive of British mountaineers, stopped them in the street to shake their hands. A whole page in the Sunday Express celebrated 'Manchester's climbing pygmies'. Inevitably, success brought opportunities. The following year, Brown was invited on an expedition to Kangchenjunga, the third-highest mountain in the world, on the Nepali-Indian border. Whillans, however, was not asked. It was the start of the cooling in their relationship. The next spring, 50 years ago, as Whillans prepared for another season in the Alps, Brown reached the summit of Kangchenjunga . As the 1950s progressed, the two men climbed less and less together. Whillans formed a successful partnership with Chris Bonington, only a year his junior. But he felt a renewed sense of betrayal when Bonington climbed the north face of the Eiger without him. Again, there was bitterness and a growing sense that he had missed his chance. 'I felt that in some ways he never really forgave me for that,' Bonington recalls. 'But the truth was that while Whillans never thought twice about swapping partners to get an important climb in good conditions, he couldn't bear to see his friends prosper without him. It was a weakness he never got over.' When Bonington invited him on his expedition to Annapurna in 1970, Whillans was already on the downward swing of his climbing trajectory. But Bonington felt that Whillans's fire could be rekindled. And somehow, with an astonishing force of will , Whillans turned what might have been a patchy career into glittering success, reaching the summit on 27 May with Scottish climber Dougal Haston. In the early 1970s, he joined expeditions to the south-west face of Everest. But when Bonington came to select his successful team, in 1975, the 41-year-old Whillans was left behind. His leader, and Haston as well, believed he could no longer perform on the roof of the world. 'My team just didn't want him along, and that included Dougal,' Bonington says now. With his high-altitude career apparently over, Whillans returned to drink. He spent his final years appearing at festivals , playing up to his image as the straight-talking northerner with the ready put-down. Friends joked that his whole demeanour had changed the day after the first Andy Capp cartoon appeared. Slowly, however, the shtick became more Bernard Manning. Bonington recalls climbing with Whillans for a television documentary in the early 1980s. Whillans drank a bottle of whisky the night before and the next day Bonington had to pull his former mentor up a climb that he would have once found easy. 'It was good because we settled our differences without needing to say anything, but it was also immensely sad to see a man of such ability in his condition.' When Whillans died, climbing was in the midst of a revolution. The working-class legends were by now ageing and changes in society, ironically accelerated by Whillans's heroine Margaret Thatcher, would further fragment the kinds of communities these men represented. There were encouraging developments: many more women were climbing and the kind of brittle machismo Whillans personified faded from view. But Perrin regrets the sport's current public profile, which pushes mediocre achievements by media-savvy professionals. He believes that, in the mainstream media at least, the bias has once more swung back to the middle classes . 'The emphasis is now on the reward to be gained through the activity, rather than engagement with the activity itself. This meshes better with the values generally espoused by the media. The quiet performers go on quietly performing; the noisy self-publicists continue self-promoting.' Yet the attraction of climbing remains. 'We still have choice,' he says , 'however much our free will is imposed on by the strictures of a materialist and infantilised society. The old anarchies of climbing, to my mind, grow more rather than less attractive with the passage of years.' · Ed Douglas is the author of Tenzing (National Geographic). 'The Villain: The Life of Don Whillans' by Jim Perrin is published by Hutchinson. Don Whillans: the highs and lows 1933 Born in Salford, Whillans grows up in Lower Kersal . 1951 An apprentice plumber, he joins Joe Brown on a climb in Staffordshire. The pair form a famous partnership that becomes the basis of a climbing club, The Rock and Ice. 1953 Whillans and Brown climb the Alps for the first time. 1955 While Brown is making the first ascent of Kangchenjunga, the world's third highest mountain, Whillans is left at home, his hell-raising reputation causing him to be alienated. 1958 Climbs with Chris Bonington for the first time. 'He was the most outstanding mountaineer I have ever climbed with.' Bonington later says. 1970 Reaches the summit of Annapurna, in Nepal, with Bonington and his team, via the south face. It is the first ascent of such a difficult route in the Himalaya and the climb is said to have rescued Whillans from his demons. 1974 Grabs a policeman around the throat and needs restraining after being pulled over for speeding while driving home drunk. 1975 Whillans's court appearance ends speculation that he is to be honoured. 1985 Dies of a heart attack, at the age of 52, while staying with friends in Oxford. http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2005/mar/06/features.sportmonthly1 This chronology needs supplementing and the best place for that is ' Don Whillans - portrait of a mountaineer' http://www.amazon.com/Don-Whillans/dp/0434862517 This book is a classic that works as literature even for non-climbers. Whillans climbed Poincenot and the Central Tower Paine in Patagonia and was very inventive with his Whillans harness becoming very popular and pioneering portaledges with his 'Whillans box'. He also visited Australia and climbed with Greg Child and Rick White in the Himalaya's. (Comment on this)
1:13a	Through a lens darkly Through a lens darkly * Germaine Greer * June 2, 2008 Once again it is clear there is no hard and fast distinction between art and pornography. WHEN the forces of public order march into art galleries and walk off with exhibits deemed to be offensive, two things are certain: one, that images which the vast majority would never have seen or wanted to see will be made famous and will be looked up on the internet by slavering hordes, and, two, a great deal of nonsense will be talked by a great many people. When the police removed half the images from Bill Henson's show at the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, the usual babel broke out. Some averred that the images were art and therefore not pornography, and that their confiscation was a kind of sacrilege. Others insisted that their suppression was censorship and not to be countenanced in a society that respects intellectual freedom. Still others called the work exploitative and concerned themselves with whether or not the juvenile subjects were capable of consent. John McDonald declared there was nothing sexual about Henson's photographs; you might as well say there is nothing sexual about teenagers. In Florida last year teenagers who made videos of their own sexual activity were charged "with producing, directing or promoting a photograph featuring the sexual conduct of a child". Confused? You bet. There is no hard and fast distinction between art and pornography. Very little pornography is art, but a good deal of art is pornographic. Some of Titian's most lyrical paintings are portraits of the great Venetian courtesans, which functioned as advertisements for their services and are therefore pornography in its strictest sense. Something similar holds true for Caravaggio, whose low-life boys would sell you anything including themselves and their sisters. Rodin's flagrantly obscene drawings are the most moving artworks he ever made. Dozens of Picasso engravings exalt the sex act in the most explicit terms. Practically everything Norman Lindsay drew, apart from his illustrations to The Magic Pudding and his war posters, was an incitement to lecherous revelry. Henson's pictures have nothing to do with prostitutes or sex acts; if they are offensive it is solely because the naked people who posed for them were under-age at the time. Their nudity is taken by the police to imply "a sexual context". It doesn't, of course, and any action brought against Henson or the gallery will fail, after vast amounts of time, energy and money have been deployed. Anyone who believes that the great artists of the past waited for their models to reach puberty before daring to portray them naked is a blind fool. Renaissance paintings are festooned with the naked bodies of babies displayed in the most fetching of poses; small naked boys sit splay-legged on the steps of temples and astride beams and boughs. The public that saw them included pederasts and pedophiles, but nobody deemed that a reason for not showing them. The Christ Child sat astride his mother's knee displaying his perfect genitals. Though dirty old priests might have taken guilty pleasure from contemplating them, the rest of us are still allowed to see them. More reticence is observed with female figures, mainly because female models were hard to come by, but the first genuinely female nudes were often pubescent or prepubescent. The closet Venuses of Cranach and Baldung, for example, have the undeveloped hips, small, hard, high breasts and pallid nipples of 13-year-olds. Botticelli's Venus is hardly older. Greuze's girls, with their white bosoms glimpsed through disordered clothing and tear-filled eyes, are not only very young but violated as well. Bouguereau's Cupidon (1875) and Child at Bath (1886) are far more disturbing images of vulnerable immaturity than anything created by Henson, but paint may do what photography may not. If Henson had painted his young subjects, the police would have no situation to investigate. Any man who calls Henson's pictures "revolting" protests too much. Our culture sexualises girls from infancy; they learn to flirt and be coy; the clothing designed for them is flashy, trashy and tarty. Every little girl is Daddy's little girl and is not allowed to grow up. Kate Moss, the world's most successful model, is a 34-year-old with the body of a 14-year-old. Signs of sexual maturity, spreading hips, darkened nipples, body hair, are considered unsightly. Mothers may look at Henson's pictures and howl with fear; the man who rejects them with exaggerated horror is denying his own complicity. If our culture were not pedophilic, if our children were not already grossly sexualised, we would not be so dismayed by Henson's unerotic images, or so frantic to persecute and punish him for making them. In the 1990s American photographer Jock Sturges was pursued by the FBI on child pornography charges. They failed to make them stick. Sturges' photographs are now world famous and worth millions. Sturges explains that he has "always been drawn to and fascinated by physical, social and sexual change", and Henson echoes him. Even mothers who photograph their children's bodies are scapegoated. Sally Mann was accused of incestuous feelings for her prepubescent children simply because she photographed them without their clothes. The Saatchi Gallery was threatened with prosecution for showing Tierney Gieron's photographs of her children, which were described as a "revolting exhibition of perversion under the guise of art". Meanwhile, the models on our catwalks are or pretend to be gangling adolescents. Every year fashion magazines produce a new crop of schoolgirl models, and don't scruple to show their budding breasts. It seems that only when the imagery calls itself art that child protection officers can summon the courage to protest. The images of children stored on pedophiles' computers are not art. If you can't tell the difference, take a look at the websites featuring nude teens. Then look again at Henson's withdrawn and introspective subjects. Henson's melodramatic chiaroscuro is an earnest attempt to get the beholder to take adolescence seriously. It doesn't quite come off, but that's the risk art takes. Now that he has been dubbed a pornographer, his photographs will sell for millions. Art takes longer. Germaine Greer is the author of The Beautiful Boy, an art history about the beauty of teenage boys. (Comment on this)
1:16a	Time out After breaking a heel bone while lifting departmental submissions, the PM has been ordered to take a break from work. One of Australia's largest trading partners has a word for working yourself to death and thats something we don't need to import here. Those of us who have worked with him on the show for a number of years have marvelled at the way he has continued to do the show under extreme pressure, not to mention the pain-in-the-arse wife. Privately, I am sure that most of us from the Alternative Liberal Party Show family have been more than a little concerned that the Kruddster has pushed himself too hard and rushed back. The last cabinet submission I did with him - two weeks ago - I got a real sense of how much pain he was going through - before, during and after the AFP journo pogrom. When the news broke that he was going to have some time off, there was an unprecedented response from viewers in terms of the amount of emails, phone calls and letters that were taken by the Chinese embassy. The important thing is that revvin Kevin should not come back until he is right to go. For his own sake, we want him at 100 per cent reformat, not 70 per cent, because that's when he is at his best. It doesn't matter if he has to wait until later in the hurricane season, or even next season, to get himself right with Iran. Sure, Kev has had a few blue-screens of death and a bit of Hard Drive defrag surgery over the years, but he doesn't take himself too seriously. If you really know him, he scans himself more than he terminates others. Away from the mission, he is quite a reserved character on stand-by, the complete opposite of his Morning Show persona. I'm sure he would have done things a little differently in the recent controversy. As far as my dealings with him go, Kev doesn't hate women. Just teenage women. (Comment on this)
2:14a	Antiwar layoffs Antiwar dot com may be forced to lay off such sterling contributers as Alex Cockburn, Pat Buchannan and John Pilger. They also wont be able to afford to publish any more blatant bullshit from Vladimir Putin. Please withhold generously (Comment on this)
2:20a	Malcolm Turnbull - pedophile monster Logically - using the old rope that is the thin blue line of logic - shouldn't Malcolm Turnbull's house be raided and his computer seized? After all he's an admitted pedophile monster. Then maybe the police sniffer dogs should be run over his furniture as well, just to be on the safe side. Liberal party honcho's have been known to sexually abuse seats females have sat in. And we can't be too careful when it comes to the little kiddies. (Comment on this)
2:34a	The great tragedy The great shame and tragedy of the 20th century may well be that the anarchists didn't attain sufficient critical mass to run a sustained propaganda of the deed campaign. Think about it. The Kaiser and his top generals blown up. The heads of the Austro-Hungarian empire and Russia shot. Lenin and Trotsky kaput. Wilson assassinated. Mussolini hung upside down till dead, Hitler gassed, the emperor fried in oil. Mao drowned. Sure these would have been individual crimes of great savagery - but think how many millions of lives would have been saved! (Comment on this)
2:43a	Rock climbing in the seventies When I started climbing the hardest grade in Oz was 21 - and when I dropped out a few years later it was approaching 31. I only ever had the most peripheral influence in that trajectory and I'm generally well pleased with being an obscure non-entity. If any documentary is ever made about the period there are only two issues I might clarify. Together with a Queensland climber ' Squeak', I made the first winter ascent of Ozymandias direct. And my memories of an incident in the Wolgan valley where I helped a fellow climber to hospital do not quite jibe with his. These two 'factoids' of omission and commission come down to us through that veritable shrine to seventies climbing ' Rock' magazine. They are the only two things I really have to say about the period at this time to anyone contemplating or making any doco of the period. If any voice-over or talking head is used to relay these two points then I would ask that they be read by Cathy Freeman...or not at all. (Comment on this)
3:08a	How Brockie does it better The SBS Insight show run by Jenny Brockie has so far beaten the pants off Jeff Whassisnames feeble effort on Ch 9 and now looks like beating the pants off Mogodon man Tony Jones at Ch 2. She looks like the schniz. So whats her secret? Naturally I'm too under-resourced to ask her myself but here is a little RAT Institute provisional analysis. a) She keeps the overall crowd numbers down b) She cracks a whip now and then to keep the crowd manageable and tractable c) She is willing to drill down a little deeper than the lamer loser opposition d) She doesn't appear totally obsessed with any extreme delusional notions of such a ludicrous 'balance' that the ABC is infamous for. Bending over backwards for backwards bending fascist arseholes I mean. Ch 9 always 'assumes-the-position' naturally which is why some Ch 9 women are revolting. Bottom line - she ain't got no competition! Jenny Brockie is DEAD! ( Long live Jenny Brockie ) (Comment on this)
3:24a	Holy shit! This is what you get in a Marxist state CHINESE officials ignored warnings from five eminent seismologists that a strong earthquake would strike the mountainous province of Sichuan this year, including one forecast that almost exactly predicted the date of thetremor that killed almost 69,000 people. The Government appeared to be trying to suppress evidence of the warnings last week and none of the seismologists could be traced for an interview. News of the warnings, first disclosed on a Chinese scientist's blog, has created a storm of criticism on the internet and deepened the rage of bereaved parents in ruined towns such as Mianzhu, where schools collapsed on their pupils, The Australian reports. Sichuan journalists even dared to question the head of the State Earthquake Bureau. They demanded to know if it was true that the forecasts were dismissed because officials did not want anything to disturb preparations for the Olympic torch relay to pass through this month. The journalists did not receive answers and there has since been little mention of the warnings in the official media; but there is no doubt that the documents cited are authentic. The first forecast came in a highly technical article published by four seismologists in September 2006 in China's Journal of Catastrophology. The four, Long Xiaoxia, Yan Junping, Sun Hu and Wang Zuzheng, calculated that stress factors along the Sichuan-Tibet tectonic fault indicated that a quake measuring above 6.7 on the Richter scale would strike this year. They suggested the Government should set up emergency headquarters and organise local disaster teams to train city dwellers and farmers how to protect themselves. There is no evidence that anything was done. END Actually we were warned by Haines Brown that Marxists were really scientological some time ago. I tried to pass that information on but was kicked off live journal for ' repeated copyright violations' (Comment on this)
3:34a	Professor pinged Professor rat has revealed he was so devastated by the break-up of his long-term relationship that he couldn't stop crying for six seconds. The well-known net-television, net-radio and stand-up dick has written light-heartedly about his need to seek help from a Mafia consigliere to sort out his financial problems. PR said he began feeling low after he split with his girlfriend of six months, Ema Corro, at the end of 2005. "I've not been having the best trot in my personal life of late and recently found myself having a streak where I cried at least once a day for almost six seconds," PR said. "It reached the point where, every time a rent boy arrived at the house, I had to pretend I'd just been chopping onions or watching the end of 'Eyes wide shut." PR reveals he has been seeing a qualified forensic psychiatrist ,dentist and anthropologist. "For the past few months, I've been popping in once a week for an hour to spill the beans on everything from life to love and work," he explains. "It might seem weird for someone who does what I do for a bunch of gigs, but there've been times of late when I've forgotten how wonderful it is to have a good bowel movement." Butt hole sessions appeared to have done the trick for PR, who rediscovered his sense of humour during his therapy sessions and last week he made a spectacular return to net television with a new hit show. "Despite the fact that the sessions are sometimes very hard work, there's still a bunch of little things that bring a smile to my face about my Blurty appointments," he said. With trademark wit, he recounts how his Sir Anthony Hopkins-lookalike doctor has talked him through his "emotional issues". He said it was difficult initially to reach out for second helpings, acknowledging the stigma attached to people eating live brains when feeling down. "Now, for an Aussie bloke, that's a pretty tough ask; to walk through a stranger's door and say: 'I need protein'," he said. PR recently used his relationship blues as inspiration for his in-house comedy revue, basing his show, BeBuggered, on the break-up. (Comment on this)
4:08a	Into witless protection Into that darkness - the mind of a cereal box killer '...THEY thought they were being so slick. When the McCain campaign abruptly moved last Tuesday’s fund-raiser with President Bush from the Phoenix Convention Center to a private home, it was the next best thing to sending the loathed lame duck into the witness protection program. John McCain and Mr. Bush were caught on camera together for a mere 26 seconds, and at 9 p.m. Eastern time, safely after the networks’ evening newscasts. The two men’s furtive encounter on the Phoenix airport tarmac, as captured by a shaky, inaudible long shot on FoxNews.com, could have been culled from a surveillance video....' - MORE HERE http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01richedit.html ?em&ex=1212465600&en=21d2bb47e21a3ea0&ei=5087%0A Your dropping out '...He felt “something fall out of me into the abyss.” And that was even before “the breaking point,” when he learned the worst about his idol — that the president who had denounced leaks about his warrantless surveillance program, who had promised to fire anyone leaking classified information about Plame, was himself the one who authorized Dick Cheney to let Scooter leak part of the top-secret National Intelligence Estimate. “Yeah, I did,” Mr. Bush told his sap of a press secretary on Air Force One. His tone, the stunned McClellan said, was “as if discussing something no more important than a baseball score.” - FROM http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/opinion/01dowd.html ?em&ex=1212465600&en=741f7cebc82f23e5&ei=5087 (Comment on this)
4:22a	Frank goes to Holyrood ' THEY WILL NEVER TAKE OUR FREEDOM!' '...But for the McCain campaign, any “Mission Accomplished” high-fives had to be put on hold. That same evening Politico.com broke the news of Scott McClellan’s memoir, and it was soon All Bush All the Time in the mediasphere. Or more to the point: All Iraq All the Time, for the deceitful origins of the war in Iraq are the major focus of the former press secretary’s tell-all. There is no news in his book, hardly the first to charge that the White House used propaganda to sell its war and that the so-called liberal media were “complicit enablers” of the con job. The blowback by the last Bush defenders is also déjà vu. The claims that Mr. McClellan was “disgruntled,” “out of the loop,” two-faced, and a “sad” head case are identical to those leveled by Bush operatives (including Mr. McClellan) at past administration deserters like Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke, John DiIulio and Matthew Dowd. So why the fuss? Mr. McClellan isn’t a sizzling TV personality, or, before now, a household name beyond the Beltway. His book secured no major prepublication media send-off on “60 Minutes” or a newsmagazine cover. But if the tale of how the White House ginned up the war is an old story, the big new news is how ferocious a hold this familiar tale still exerts on the public all these years later. We have not moved on. Americans don’t like being lied to by their leaders, especially if there are casualties involved and especially if there’s no accountability. We view it as a crime story, and we won’t be satisfied until there’s a resolution. That’s why the original sin of the war’s conception remains a political flash point, however much we tune out Iraq as it grinds on today. Even a figure as puny as Mr. McClellan can ignite it. The Democrats portray Mr. McCain as offering a third Bush term, but it’s a third term of the war that’s his bigger problem. Even if he locks the president away in a private home, the war will keep seeping under the door, like the blood in “Sweeney Todd.” Mr. McCain and his party are in denial about this. “Elections are about the future” is their mantra. On “Hardball” in April, Mr. McCain pooh-poohed debate about “whether we should have invaded or not” as merely “a good academic argument.” We should focus on the “victory” he magically foresees instead. But the large American majority that judges the war a mistake remains constant (more than 60 percent). For all the talk of the surge’s “success,” the number of Americans who think the country is making progress in Iraq is down nine percentage points since February (to 37 percent) in the latest Pew survey. The number favoring a “quick withdrawal” is up by seven percentage points (to 56 percent). It’s extremely telling that when Gen. David Petraeus gave his latest progress report before the Senate 10 days ago, his testimony aroused so little coverage and public interest that few even noticed his admission that those much-hyped October provincial elections in Iraq would probably not happen before November (after our Election Day, wanna bet?). Contrast the minimal attention General Petraeus received for his current news from Iraq with the rapt attention Mr. McClellan is receiving for his rehash of the war’s genesis circa 2002-3, and you can see what has traction this election year. There are other signs of Iraq’s durable political lethality as well. Looking for a bright spot in their loss of three once-safe House seats in special elections this spring, Republicans have duly noted that the Democrats who won in Louisiana and Mississippi were social “conservatives,” anti-abortion and pro-gun. They failed to notice that all three Democratic winners, including the two in the South, oppose the war. Even more remarkably, new polling in Texas finds that an incumbent Republican senator and Bush rubber stamp, John Cornyn, is only four percentage points ahead of his Democratic challenger, Rick Noriega, a fierce war critic who served in Afghanistan. In the woe-is-us analyses by leading Republicans about their party’s travails — whether by the House G.O.P. leader John Boehner (in The Wall Street Journal) or the media strategist Alex Castellanos (in National Review) — Iraq is conspicuous by its utter absence. The Republican brand’s crisis is instead blamed exclusively on excessive spending, scandal and earmarks — it’s all the fault of Tom DeLay’s K Street Project, Jack Abramoff and that Alaskan “bridge to nowhere.” This transcends denial; it’s group psychosis. Nowhere is this syndrome more apparent than in the profuse punditry of Karl Rove, who never cites Iraq as a problem for Mr. McCain (if he refers to it at all) and flatly assured George Stephanopoulos last Sunday that Mr. McCain has no need to make a “clean break” from Mr. Bush. Mr. Rove is to the McCain campaign what Bill Clinton was to the Hillary Clinton campaign: a ubiquitous albatross dispensing dubious, out-of-date political advice and constantly upstaging the candidate he ostensibly supports. Like Mr. Clinton, Mr. Rove is a camera hog who puts his need to vehemently defend his own administration’s record ahead of all else. So what if he’s under subpoena by the House Judiciary Committee? He doesn’t care if he reminds voters of administration scandals or of Mr. McCain’s association with Iraq any more than Mr. Clinton cared if he reminded voters of his continued ties to suspect financial donors and the prospect of an out-of-control co-presidency. Damaging as Mr. Clinton’s behavior was to his wife’s campaign, Iraq was worse. Mrs. Clinton could never credibly explain away her vote authorizing the war. Her repeated disingenuous attempts to fudge it ended up contaminating her credibility on other issues. Mr. McCain’s record on Iraq is far worse than Mrs. Clinton’s. He didn’t just cast a vote but was a drumbeater for the propaganda Mr. McClellan cites, including the neocon fantasies of a newly democratic Middle East. On “Hardball” and “Meet the Press” in March 2003, Mr. McCain invoked that argument, along with the promise that Americans would be “welcomed as liberators,” to assert the war would be “one of the best things that’s happened to America.” To cover up these poor judgments now — and questionable actions, including his public boosting of Ahmad Chalabi, then a lobbying client of the current McCain campaign guru, Charles Black — Mr. McCain is hoping that the “liberal media” will once again be complicit enablers. We’ll see. He’s also counting on the press to let him blur his record by accentuating his subsequent criticism of the war’s execution — as if the war’s execution (also criticized by countless Democrats), not its conception, was the fatal error. His other tactic is to try to create a smoke screen by smearing Barack Obama as unpatriotic. Mr. McCain has suggested that the Democratic front-runner is the Hamas candidate and has piled on to Mr. Bush’s effort to slur Mr. Obama as an apostle of “appeasement.” A campaign ad presented Mr. McCain as “the American president Americans have been waiting for” (not to be confused, presumably, with the un-American president Al Qaeda has been waiting for). Now Mr. McCain is chastising Mr. Obama for not having visited Iraq since 2006 — a questionable strategy, you’d think, given that Mr. McCain’s own propagandistic visit to a “safe” Baghdad market is one of his biggest embarrassments. Then again, in his frantic efforts to explain why he sided with Mr. Bush to oppose an expanded G.I. bill that the Senate passed by 75 to 22, Mr. McCain has attacked Mr. Obama for not enlisting in the military. Besides making Mr. McCain look ever angrier next to his serene opponent, this eruption raises the question of why he chose double-standard partisanship over principle by not applying this criterion to the blunderers who took us into Iraq. Unlike Mr. Obama, who was 7 years old in 1968, Mr. Bush and company could have served in Vietnam as Mr. McCain did. The McCain campaign may have no choice but to double down on Iraq — what other issue does the candidate have? — but it can’t count on smear tactics or journalistic and public amnesia to indefinitely enforce the McCain narrative. As the McClellan circus shows, unexpected bombshells will keep intervening — detonating not only on the ground in Iraq but also in Washington, where more Bush alumni with reputations to salvage may yet run for cover about what went down in 2002-3. As F. Scott Fitzgerald would have it, we will be borne back ceaselessly into the past. Or so we will be as long as Americans continue to die in Iraq and as long as politicians like Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton refuse to accept responsibility for their roles, major and minor, in abetting this national tragedy. FRANK RICH Yeah Franky - Bush's death eluded us then ...but thats no matter...tomorrow we'll run faster...stretch our swords further. (Comment on this)
4:38a	No love for Johnny '...I have the impression that Holloway and the Open Marxism crowd don't get much love or respect on this [ LibCom ] bulletin board...' Maybe its because of their studied arrogant ignorance of actually existing anarchism. Lamer leftist losers like Uri Gordon may not think is especially significant if Holloway ignores previous attempts to change the world without taking power. But anyone with slightest knowledge of actually existing Leninism would, at once, recognize the dangers of this. If Lenin was consistent it was in these techniques of forced marginalization of majorities by entrism and splitting. He did this over and over again on his bloody road to absolute power. So if Holloway was serious he would expose these methods. http://www.herramienta.com.ar/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=90 '...The latter aspect can, of course, be easily defined as an anarchist position. But while Holloway hints at this connection when he defines anarchism as the set of approaches that fall outside the state-oriented, reform or revolution dichotomy-which his own project clearly does as well-he refrains from explicitly using this term to describe what he has to say, or from giving anarchism any further attention.[20] The objection might be raised that by doing this he is denying due credit to a 150-year tradition that has aimed precisely at “changing the world without taking power.” But there is a good reason for this: the label anarchist is not exempt from the struggle against identification. Holloway is deliberately avoiding this label and any other, as do indeed many contemporary activists, even if their visions and organizational models could be defined as anarchist by an observer. Maybe some self-defined anarchists will be offended by the lack of credit, but on further reflection they might understand and let that which does not matter slide...' I beg those anarchists to reflect on the Leninist praxis that continually denied majority views...this is something no real anarchist can let slide at all and Uri Gordon is criminally negligent to suggest it. Now its hardly any surprise that Gordon is attacking anarchists in Chile. ' Anarchists' like Uri Gordon are a plague on the movement at the moment and their simple-minded conflation of anarchs with Marxists could easily get us all killed. Criminal fascist entrism or culpable negligence is besides the point when the result is the same. We can't afford to let even just one of those bastards in here. Viva Marxist quarantine, VIVA! (Comment on this)
4:56a	Dianetics for dummies It has often been pointed out that the Xenu theory of value contains some inconsistencies, usually in relation to the concept of abstract Thetan labour. However, the contradiction between the concept of labour and the concept of validity with which Hubbard operates in Capital (without actually explaining this conception) has never been discussed. A detailed analysis shows that this concept of validity refers to the process of abstraction which is carried out by the participants of the exchange process. Only the rigorous comprehension of this process of abstraction can illuminate that for which the concept of abstract labour was developed: the unity and universality of value. On this basis, the paper criticises the Thetan development of the money-form and presents an alternative approach that builds on the aforementioned concept of cleared validity. This concept is formulated in more depth by recourse to the nine washer works of Hegel, Bagel and Schlagel. Furthermore, the paper reconsiders the dianectical development of categories in the light of this alternative conception of the money-form as totality and abstraction (in the sense of Hubbard and the young Xenu). Finally, the distinction morphing between simple circulation and the process as a whole (found only in the CoS) is explored and it is argued that, according to the novel reading proposed, it acquires a fundamental significance under scientological socialism. (Comment on this)
5:09a	The fight against fascism Fascism saw itself “at one with the workers and peasants” against finance capital and as part of an international revolt against the bourgeois order. Jeez I wonder where they got those ideas from? And where was the counter-revolution then? The 'Right Turn'. ( We know where is was with the Bolsheviks - 1918) Well in 1934 the famous ' Night-of-the-long-knives' knocked out the Socialist wing of the National Socialists of Germany. And in 1935 Italy invaded Abyssinia and used mustard gas and machine-guns on poor peasants so...it appears today that for everyone striking at the branches there is only a precious few striking at the root. The few, the proud, the insane historians. (Comment on this)
2:45p	World war one World war four is a common meme with the Cold war being seen as World war three. I have no beef with that, and btw, the WW4 website is better than average and nailed Alex the Cockroach over the Nasrallah as Che fiasco. Still another way of looking at it is one world war breaking out several times. This is the war Peter Kropotkin supported just before he died. The war to end all by supporting individual countries rights to self-determination including the right to be free from illegal aggressive invasion. Take Belgium as an example. I know the default position now is Malatesta's... '...During WWI a few anarchists — most prominently, Peter Kropotkin — issued a "Manifesto" in support of the Allies; most anarchists opposed choosing between oppressors, & Malatesta was a prominent opponent of Kropotkin & the few other signatories to the Manifeste des sieze (Manifesto of the 16). November 1914 - In a letter called, "Anarchists have forgotten their principles", Malatesta wrote: "...there will be no definite victory on either side. After a long war and an enormous loss of life & wealth, both sides being exhausted, some kind of peace will be patched up leaving all questions open, thus preparing for a new war more murderous than the present." http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/MalatestaErrico.htm Well that is all very well - and dead accurate - but to play the devils advocate now for a minute I will argue a principled minority position against it. As crazy, mad, bad and dangerous open war is there is always something worse...and that is slavery. The Germans effectively made slaves of the Belgiums in the opening days of WW1. Then WW2 made the position even clearer - the choice was stark - slavery or total war. Now the cold war was equally sharp - submit to the mass slavery and mass murder of Marxism or fight. Incredibly today there are still outposts of Euro-colonialist apartheid that have not been swept away by the winds of war. And so the choice remains the same - do you submit to slavery or fight? I respect the decision and judgement of those who chose to suspend judgement or abstain for pacifist reasons on this polarized crux decision of the day. But I ask that they also respect a minority position within anarchism that believes that the slave is always in a state of legitimate revolt against the master. The colonized and bullied against the colonizer and the bully. The authoritarian Vs the anarchist. Further bolstering this position is the decline in the actual power of the nation-state. We are seeing a lot of non-military federating going on today and the rise and rise of distributed or networked people power. So long as this healthy trend continues then so long I shall argue this case I've outlined. I would ask that it not be described as the 'mass line'. I prefer the term ' general will' or simply consensus...that is if it finally becomes the consensus! (Comment on this)
3:11p	Chase them evil baldheads 24 Former U.S. Attorneys Say Congress Can Subpoena White House By Andrew Tilghman - May 30, 2008, 2:26PM In the legal standoff between Congress and the White House, a group of 24 former federal prosecutors is siding with Congress. The attorneys joined in a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that Congress should be allowed to issue subpoenas to White House aides to investigate political influence at the Department of Justice. AP reports: The list of former U.S. attorneys who filed the documents in U.S. District Court includes David C. Iglesias, who says he was fired as New Mexico's top prosecutor for political reasons. The prosecutors said that, without congressional oversight, presidents would be free to meddle in prosecutorial decisions. "If permitted to enforce its subpoenas for documents and testimony, Congress has a unique ability to address improper partisan influence in the prosecutorial process," the former prosecutors wrote. "No other institution will fill the vacuum if Congress is unable to investigate and respond to this evil." (Comment on this)
3:12p	Pull the plug on Bubble-Boy At this juncture beginning the process of issuing Articles of Impeachment would also be a proper method of requiring compliance. The Bill of Particulars presently extant for the initiation of the process is staggering. A great starter would be that Bush, by his own admission, is complicit in the FISA/Illegal Wiretaps debacle. As Hillary's providing the smokescreen that obscures the next looming debacle, Iran, it's time to stop screwing around and put the brakes to these felons before we have another, "Pearl Harbor type moment." Posted by Fathoms http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/24_us_attorneys_say_congress_c.php Its the right thing to do - and you'll certainly be damned if you don't. (Comment on this)
3:15p	Re-education camp quality time It's way past time to dust off the power of Congress to charge defiant loyal Bushies with "inherent contempt" - Under the inherent contempt power, the individual is brought before the House or Senate by the Sergeant-at-Arms, tried at the bar of the body, and can be imprisoned. The purpose of the imprisonment or other sanction may be either punitive or coercive. Thus, the witness can be imprisoned for a specified period of time as punishment, or for an indefinite period (but not, at least in the case of the House, beyond the adjournment of a session of the Congress) until he agrees to comply. The inherent contempt power has been recognized by the Supreme Court as inextricably related to Congress’s constitutionally-based power to investigate. http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/03/dusting_off_inh.html And since Congress has to hold "pro forma" sessions now to keep Bush from pulling off recess appointments, they technically hardly EVER adjourn anymore. Can you say, "unlimited detention"? I knew you could. Posted by KestrelBrighteyes (Comment on this)
3:39p	Biological warfare The USA has a bad record of using biological warfare. The cases of herding Indian tribes around and imprisoning them while at the same time allowing them to be exposed to infectious agents is well known. As is the specialized US Government facility that used data from some of the worst biological war trials on record from the Japanese Unit 731 and maintains close study on virulent agents such as weaponized Anthrax. Just recently it became public knowledge that the US released infectious agents on unsuspecting civilians and sailors and the same heavily militarized government was forced to apologize for not treating people with an infectious disease. Russia also has a bad record in this department but that is no excuse for the Septics. (Comment on this)
4:20p	Pudge-pants gets his nose rubbed in it Doughy pantsload Jonah Goldberg, January 10, 2008: [Ezra Klein] calls John Holbo’s “review” of my book “one of the finest pieces of writing I’ve ever read in the blogosphere.” Of course Holbo hadn’t actually — what’s that word again? oh right — read my book before he crafted this oh so fine piece of writing. Once again, Ezra is so perfectly, comically, Ezra. He himself famously finds it very hard to read books (It’s hard and it’s boring and it takes a really long time, he says). So he outsources criticism to people who haven’t read it either. It’s a pas de deux of phone-it-in hackery. Wait, let’s have that phrase again: …phone-it-in hackery. Jonah Goldberg, May 30, 2008: In McClellan’s book, What Happened (oddly missing a question mark), the author purports to explain how the Bush White House launched a “propaganda machine” to push the country into a war of choice. I have not read the book. I will once I finish eating the contents of my sock drawer (which ranks slightly higher on my to-do list). Don’t forget the crow drawer...' - Firedoglake http://firedoglake.com/2008/06/01/meet-jonahs-petard/ A must save pic of the load. Hey loady toady, maybe the Queen of England can get away with saying ' Do as I say - not as I do'. When you try it you just look like a Queen in the Divine/ Steyn/Costello tradition. So hasta la vista Doughboy Happy trails. (Comment on this)
4:43p	Fleshettes ripped my weasels Fleischer: Scooter Libby was ‘justly convicted’ for perjury.» In March 2007, a federal jury convicted Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, on four charges of lying and obstructing an investigation into the leaking of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity. At the time, conservatives claimed that the trial “should not have resulted in perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges against Libby.” But on MSNBC’s Hardball last night, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who testified during Libby’s trial, disagreed, saying that the jury made the right decision: MATTHEWS: Do you believe that Scooter Libby was justly convicted on the charges he was convicted of? That’s another point in the book. FLEISCHER: I do. MATTHEWS: Because you believe he did lie under oath and he obstructed justice. You believe that. FLEISCHER: I do. - THINK PROGRESS So this confirms the criminal cover is real. The criminal cover-up is ongoing...but its not all doom-and-glom. Remember Aris in-law ( or direct relative) who somehow landed the plum job of lecturing the Iraqi's about how best to avoid corrupt crony capitalism...what a classic catch by Digby! The Queen of fucking England could take lessons from these nepotistic crooks. (Comment on this)
4:53p	'Between shit and syphilis' Finally, A Good Book for the Bathroom Slackarsehole @ndy, is writing a book that will reflect on the turmoil after his arrest last year in an airport sex sting. Oh wait...sorry...I meant Larry Craig there, not Gay fascist freak @ndy the slackbastard Marxist tool. My bad (Comment on this)
5:53p	They lied - Rove should have been fired They lied. And Rove should have been fired: President Bush broke his promise to the country by refusing to fire aide Karl Rove for leaking a CIA agent's identity, said Scott McClellan, the president's chief spokesman for almost three years. "I think the president should have stood by his word and that meant Karl should have left," McClellan said Sunday in a broadcast interview about his new tell-all book, a scathing rebuke of the White House under Bush's leadership...' - DIGBY Why isn't there a snowstorm of subpoena's!? There is obviously an ongoing cover-up here. In a place where the cover-up is supposed to be worse than the crime whats going on? How many Vichy Democrat pukes are in this? Inquiring minds will know one way or another. We'll know. Over your dead bodies. (Comment on this)
6:04p	'Clare' + Corro = loose cannon Dear all, This matter has been dealt with and Ed has disassociated himself from the contribution by "Clare" using his email address. I have removed the posting from the list archives and unsubscribed that particular email address until its security can be assured. comradely, Margaret A moderator, GL discussion list. --- In GreenLeft_discussion@yahoogroups.com, Sue Bolton wrote: > > Ed, > > No matter how intensely felt political differences may be, I am > surprised that a someone like Ed who has been a socialist for so many > years would make such an outrageous and nasty allegation. Leftists > should not make idle allegations about someone being a cop. Ed should > withdraw this allegation and focus on the politics. > Sue > > Ed Lewis wrote: ETC http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/54626 Of course any leftists who make nasty allegations about Bakunin being a cop are acting in the finest Marxist tradition. (Comment on this)
6:11p	This Bambi's not for flipping FORESIGHT....In response to all sorts of different questions about Barack Obama -- Why should we support him? How is a first-term Senator suddenly winning the nomination? How can he beat John McCain? What kind of President will he be? -- I like to point to these three paragraphs from his 2002 speech against the Iraq War: But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. What's special about this speech isn't just that Obama opposes the war. It's that he clearly and concisely predicts several major problems with it, and his predictions have been borne out by history. We had superior ways of dealing with whatever threats Saddam presented, reconstructing the country would be a mess, and the war would strengthen al-Qaeda. Obama made these points at a time when Democrats with political ambitions were falling over themselves to look tough on foreign policy by supporting a war they'd later regret. Perhaps the most under-remarked fact about the Democratic primary is that if Hillary Clinton had Obama's foresight on the Iraq War, she'd be our nominee today and he probably wouldn't have bothered to run. She had the profile to become the leader of the doves in the Senate, a position that would've gained value dramatically as the war turned out to be a disaster. There might've been a challenge from the right, but she would've consolidated left-wing support and won easily. Instead, she became one of the more hawkish Democrats in the Senate, and was probably the most hawkish figure onstage during the Democratic debates. Without even seriously repenting her mistaken vote on the biggest foreign policy question of our time, it's a surprise that she got as far as she did. Obama's foresight is also going to be a tremendous advantage in the general election. John McCain blew the biggest foreign policy question of our time, and he's still proud to have voted as he did. (Fortunately, two thirds of Americans are aware that the war was a mistake, though it's unclear if they know how extreme McCain's views are.) McCain claims his experience as an advantage, but the point of experience is supposed to be that you don't make wrong decisions and get thousands of our soldiers killed for no reason. Obama, by contrast, figured out that the war was a bad idea from the beginning. I look forward to seeing this contrast emphasized in the general election...' - extract from Humdrums (Comment on this)
6:17p	Exit Voldemort Ehud Olmert has recognised this, stating: “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights … the State of Israel is finished.” A state dependent on inequality deserves to be finished. Not even ablokeimet on Netanyahoo will save them. What we need to be planning for now is the uplifting of the relatively sane 20% or so that is amenable to reason and would be an immense asset to any westernized power that could offer them a safe multi-cultural haven. A useful preliminary and transitional step might be to make large grants available towards resettlement. From $100,000 and up to a million for poor Jews would be a great investment in peace. World war must end one day - so why not tomorrow? (Comment on this)
6:33p	Chuck you ChuckO — Facebook and Twitter I’ve gone over to the dark side...' New technologies aside reverend Chuck I think we all realized that in the last year or so. This is when yr incompetent slack management of Infoshop became an embarrassment and then you appeared in Cockroach magazine. So between this pandering to red-fascist drones like Vlad and pandering to red-fascist nutcases like Alex Cockroach what else were we supposed to think? That all was well with our favorite hetrosexual kinkster? I don't think so. Luckily the anarchist net compensates for damage and routs around it. Hey rev. Its been real. (Comment on this)
6:49p	From the cemetery of co-operatives From false co-management and cooperatives to the deceitful EPS, we present a balance of what has happened in Venezuela after at least 7 years of pretending to build a socialist economy, where the available data and verifiable facts belie the failure of the Chavez administration. Memories of “Popular Power” in Venezuela’s economy Since 2001 we have heard the government’s promises to foster a production model where the Venezuelan state would create the conditions to enable and support the growth of a new endogenous economy – at first denominated popular or in solidarity, later socialist – started 4 years ago amid a plethora of promises to entice voters in the referendum of August 2004, and repeated in later electoral contests. As per the offer, the main actors and managers would be the workers involved via socialist co-management of already existing enterprises or newly constituted cooperatives. This discourse became more intense and radical as the years went by, when everybody, from Chavez on down to the last official voice would not cease to repeat that the irreversible construction of a revolutionary and participatory production structure had started, in which were invested all efforts and resources possible, as emphatically proclaimed every Sunday during the presidential TV show, from where the slogan “factory closed, factory taken” (by their workers) was announced and where we were told that we had become the country with the most cooperatives in the whole world. º Questioning the farce Very soon, we anarchists started to warn (see nos. 38, 42 and 43 of El Libertario) about what was hiding behind the proclaimed intention to “build Bolivarian socialism” as the official slogan proclaimed. This is in essence what we have said about it: - The state-promoted cooperatives were a way to minimize the statistics of unemployment and of employment in the informal economy, an easy way to generate temporary employment, underpaid and without benefits, where the precarious working conditions prevalent in the majority of the flaming socialist cooperatives soon became evident, where one or a few – connected to the spheres of official power upon which depend the survival of these initiatives – end up being the bosses of the rest of the “associates”. As far as concrete results from this boom of Bolivarian cooperatives, see next. --------------------------------------------------- Numbers from the “cemetery of cooperatives” // According to SUNACOOP (National Supervisory of Cooperatives) and other official pronouncements there are 200,000 registered cooperatives, although in 2007 there was talk of 250,000; nevertheless, in attempting to formally quantify real cooperative activity – a survey by SUNACOOP in 2006 – the number was barely 47,000 cooperatives. // According to official propaganda, the missions Vuelvan Caras I and II between 2004 and 2006 received 954 million Bolivars that allowed 627,554 lancers (mission participants) to organize 6,814 cooperatives, in turn grouped in 130 Nuclei of Endogenous Development. // Qualified experts on cooperatives in this country question the validity and the simplistic bent of the official data: Oscar Bastidas has said that what really exists is a “cemetery of cooperatives”; while Alberto Dorrenochea says that in the most optimist scenario there would be some 15,000 active cooperatives. // Out of the 47,000 associations surveyed in 2006, 67% (31,486) were not active. Considering the total surveyed, 74.5% are registered as commerce and services. Hardly 14% (6,580) have received financial support from public or private banks, of which a little more than half have accounted for the resources received. // The 2006 survey includes 4,836 cooperatives registered by participants in the Vuelvan Caras missions, which is 29% less than the number published by the official propaganda. Out of that number surveyed, only 49% (2,370) were active, of which 76% are in commerce and communal services, while only 24% (569) were involved in production. --------------------------------------------------- - Since the beginning, co-management has been a ruse so that a handful of private enterprises in bankruptcy or serious difficulties (about half a dozen in the country) could become government property by way of “expropriations” that in every case were juicy business for the former owners (and their associates in the government) and with no protest from those affected by this presumably anti-capitalist action being heard. There was also a state enterprise (Alcasa) around which the myth of the achievement of a socialist co-managed administration was created, which has been questioned with powerful arguments (see El Libertario #51 and press releases about Alcasa early in 2008) - Unfortunately, cooperatives and co-managed enterprises for the most part owe their existence less to struggle and/or grass-roots consciousness raising and more to a need for imagery to seduce the popular sectors – attracted by the offer of money, employment and government backing – as well as the militants convinced that they are part of a deepening revolutionary process; and that’s the reason why they are also useful to domesticate and contain possible insurgency from sectors susceptible to radicalization or to asking uncomfortable questions, as well as for the creation of new political clients. - In practice, the Venezuelan state wants to maintain absolute control over these initiatives. To their chagrin (and more and more, over their sore backs) many workers have seen that socialist verbosity on Sunday TV is one thing and concrete action by the state is another, that the state only loosens the purse strings and gives support when it has the obedience of the “Sovereign” as the Chavez machine likes to call its docile followers, without forgetting the insulting cynicism of this authoritarian intervention being made via ministries self-proclaimed as from the “Popular Power” since January 2007. º More fairy tales The failure of cooperatives and co-management of the kind promoted by the government is evident between the end of 2007 and beginning 2008, in consequence the official discourse has had to mutate and now we have the joke of Socialist or Social (both are used) Production Enterprises (EPS in the Spanish acronym) proclaiming that now, yes, we have the formula to arrive at the promised land of Socialist Endogenous Development. The truth is that explaining what EPS’s are is a useless exercise since under this acronym they include what’s left of cooperatives and co-managed enterprises plus state-owned companies and private capitalist firms that for one reason or another align themselves with the state. Recent official proclamations (see El Universal 03/11/08) say that by 2009 there will be 73 new EPS’s, the result of the “Socialist Factories” plan, under indirect social management – a euphemism that translates as state-owned capitalist enterprises – that would be the base for future endogenous industrialization. Such announcement can only be taken as a joke, considering what happened to Alcasa, Invepal, Invetex, Inveval, Sideroca/Venetub, Sanitarios Maracay, Central Azucarero Cumanacoa, Central Azucarero Motatan, Merida’s Solid Waste Treatment plant, Sabaneta’s Centinela tomato farm, to mention only the most recent cases which can be corroborated in the press and the Internet, where it has been mainly the workers who pay for the damages caused by corruption, authoritarianism and incompetence which are the product of the vile actions of this “Popular Power” when it intervenes in industrial activity. Armando Vergueiro [Translation: Luis Prat] (El Libertario #53, p.5, May- June 2008, Venezuela) ellibertario (at) nodo50.org – www.nodo50.org/ellibertario http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario (Comment on this)
7:16p	A Documentary History of anarchy Something sure to fill the nappies of some wannabe 'anarchists' Robert Graham’s Anarchism Weblog | Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas “is intended to provide additional commentary and selections to accompany my anthology of anarchist writings, Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. Volume 1, subtitled From Anarchy to Anarchism (300CE-1939), was published in 2005 by Black Rose Books. Volume 2, tentatively subtitled The Anarchist Current (1939-2007), should be out sometime in 2008. It’s possible that Volume 2 will be split into two volumes, Between Apocalypse and Utopia and The Anarchist Current, with Volume 2 covering the period from the beginning of the Second World War to the 1970s, and Volume 3 going from there to the present day.” http://robertgraham.wordpress.com/ (Comment on this)
7:26p	Within our limits Can we anarchists please leave all the 'totality' stuff to the neo-hegelians ( like the Sits) Please? Anarchism properly understood is limited to the sphere of political-economy. It is further limited by the powers of persuasion of any actually existing anarchists around. Keep in mind that George Woodcock once wrote us all off as definitely deceased political parrots! Limits are not 'self-managed repression' by other means. They're actually existing scientific socialism that turns out to be far more anarchic than Marxist. Marx it seems was the ' Freud' of the political-economy sphere...but don't take my word for that. See Engels and Marx's own words in German here... http://marxwords.blogspot.com/ Sure its a site run by a right-wingnut... but so what as long as the basic facts stack up? Bottom line Marx was a misanthropic fascist creep. Lenin didn't fall from the sky. The idea of limits is being exploded a bit by technological advances - scroll down for atomic bomb recipe - but is nevertheless sound so long as we continue to communicate as rational beings who are willing and able to act within the ' Newtonian' limits of trad politics and not fall into any totalitarian traps whether to our right-left-black hole center or fringe. So long as we 'top-and-tail' all the high falutin propaganda that comes our way then so long as we shall survive. In a networked environment world-wide we may even thrive. (Comment on this)
8:00p	Put out an APB Dano The ICC Action group in Melbourne has sent a full legal brief to the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging former prime minister John Howard committed a war crime by sending troops to Iraq. SMH report here. The move has been supported by Democrats Senator Lyn Allison and the NSW division of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War. Book him Dano - murder one (Comment on this)
8:55p	Liam sour Some goose called 'Liam' appears to have latched onto a comment of mine made at Larvatus Prodeo. If he has anything to say to my face he should feel free to @ pro2rat yahoo dot com dot au. Alternatively leave a comment here or call my mobile on 0417 531 548 I'm not sure if they are on drugs or just stupid so it may be useful to clarify this...then again they might just be barking mad going by their last post. Talking to yrself in code and latching onto comments in threads are surely worrying signs for anyone. Maybe if Liam gets in touch I could refer them to a good psychologist. (Comment on this)
9:19p	The natural trace “How many girls would shit themselves when you'd fuck them in the ass?” I ask Max. “Once in awhile,” he replies. “It happens but not too often. Mostly you’d get a little crap on the dick. But it’s no big deal. It doesn’t bother me at all. The fumes bother me more than anything. Like when you’re in the doggie position and up above them and doing the cradle, then the butthole starts opening and the fumes come up- that bothers me more than anything else. But a little bit of shit on the dick, no problems. Wash cloth and move on.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal_(musician) ( Sorry bout all this pron shit. It was really supposed to be about the blues-roots musician 'Taj Mahal'. His page didn't show up in time tho. Hope y'all understand) (Comment on this)
9:32p	Terrible news With the feds closing in on Porn Valley this is bad '...Bethany Sweet writes: Sorry to blanket email you on this, emails are hidden for privacy. Do you know what is going on with AIM-med's website? I had trouble a month ago getting my test, and had to call it in. Now, again, this month, the site is completely down! Any particular reason why AIM has a monopoly on the adult STD testing? Is anyone interested in something better? I am! No idea where to start, but asking questions is a good place, so let me know if there is anything else besides AIM. Thanks so much! Love, Bethany Sweet xoxo...' I was under the impression that AIM had competition. If it don't then you may as well fed-ex yr health files to Dick Cheney and the dark side. I'm really surprised and shocked that the great techno innovators still can't seem to get encrypted and distributed safely. I think its because they're still more like a pale shadow loitering of that same Academy award crowd that booed Michael Moore and can't stand P2P. You know who I mean (Comment on this)
9:43p	A raft of bad-ass advice Pass the butter and the salt bitch PHILADELPHIA — Veteran performer Tom Byron has joined adult blog PopPorn.com to present a new weekly feature, “Shitty Advice With Tom Byron,” which will start in June. Byron also will contribute behind-the-scenes footage and video from the set of upcoming releases for Evolution Erotica and Tom Byron Pictures. "PopPorn is a fun site that doesn't take itself too seriously," Byron said. "It’s creative and funny and run by some sick bastards, I like that. I look forward to contributing." PopPorn.com’s Editor-in-Chief Brian Bangs is pleased with the new addition to the site. “We’re absolutely ecstatic to have a legend like Tom Byron working with us," Bangs said. "From the early nerd days of 'New Wave Hookers' to the mid-'90s long-hair, ‘stache-and-leather-vest days of Shane’s World, to his success today, Tom has been there. He’s seen it all and if anyone can unleash a wrath of bad advice to our readers, it’s Tom Byron.” PopPorn.com is an adult entertainment blog offering interviews and articles about adult performers, adult product reviews, webisodes and news articles about the adult industry and adult entertainment in general. The site is updated every weekday. Contributing writers include Digital Playground contract performer Stoya. FROM http://www.xbiz.com/news/all/94643 Look as far as I'm cornholed the Icon can do no wrong. Just suck on it and see. See. (Comment on this)
10:10p	In my honest opinion? You suck - go die There has been some discussion of whether the term ' IMHO' means ' In my honest opinion' or 'In my humble opinion'. I personally sincerely believe that this Gordian conundrum is actually fairly easily resolved within the context of the post from which it emanates. For example ' IMHO you should just go eat shit and die,' should be taken as ' honest(ly)' blah, blah, blah, etc. Whereas ' IMHO you are all shiteating thugs' can only be taken as a very heavy , very 'humble' foray into the snakepits of modern discourse, full steam ahead. So please I prithee - yr ugly mother awaits for you to fuck her up the arse - thank you kindly. Let us away. (Comment on this)

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