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Thursday, June 5th, 2008

    Time Event
    12:10a
    Instruments of torture
    CHIEF Commissioner Christine Nixon plans to scrap a discipline system that senior police claim shields corrupt officers and protects incompetent ones.
    In an email sent yesterday to all police, Ms Nixon said: "Ultimately what we want is a fast, effective and fair discipline system."
    The head of the ethical standards department, Assistant Commissioner Luke Cornelius, said the present court-martial style process was a "19th century Breaker Morant system" that was inefficient, inflexible and unjust.
    He said it took up to three years to deal with police charged with sackable offences. "In the real world, if you are caught with your hand in the till, you are given your marching orders, but if a police officer is caught ripping off drugs, it can take years to deal with," he told The Age.
    He said under the new system police who faced the sack would be given a three-month deadline to respond.
    Senior police expect it to be operating by early next year.
    Mr Cornelius said the existing process unfairly punished police who made mistakes and made it difficult to weed out the corrupt ones.
    Under the proposed process, police with behaviour or performance problems would be identified and given supervised guidelines to reach acceptable standards.
    Under the existing, all-in-one system they faced punishment, including transfer, demotion, admonishment and fines. "In these cases we want to put away the instruments of torture," he said.
    "We should have a system that forgives honest mistakes. We want to work with these people and not crucify them."
    He said the existing, legalistic system made it difficult to sack police suspected of serious corruption. There were about 60 police suspended (40 on full pay) while six were sacked in the past financial year. Many chose to resign while under investigation or before their final hearings.
    "We want a system that reflects community expectations," he said. "One which can deal effectively, quickly and fairly with people who should not be in the job."
    Ms Nixon told police in the email: "We want a disciplinary system that is based on forgiveness and rehabilitation for members who make honest mistakes. But we also believe there is a need for a system that allows dismissal of members who are corrupt, involved in the commission of criminal offences or have lost the community's confidence.
    "Under the proposed changes there would be two ways that we would deal with disciplinary matters. Most matters would be dealt with as performance issues. However, the most serious cases could ultimately lead to dismissal."
    She invited feedback from police and said the legal changes to the Police Regulation Act were expected to be made this year.
    An Office of Police Integrity review last year found the system to be flawed. "Those who may have done nothing wrong are punished by lengthy delays associated with resolving matters and wrongdoers can manipulate the system using avoidance tactics or escape punishment because the system is wrongly balanced in their favour."
    Police Association secretary Paul Mullett said the system should be controlled by an independent body to remove any perceptions of bias. "It should be based on natural justice and procedural fairness, with a built-in appeal system. It should be open and transparent where the public would be free to attend."
    12:20a
    Is this a Jain thing?
    Can't a man worship rats with smallpox anymore?
    Deepak Chopra has something to say about Hindu opposition to comedian Mike Myers' new movie: Get over it.
    The best-selling author and spiritual teacher is defending The Love Guru, a comedy in which Myers plays an aspiring self-help guru who aims to achieve Chopra's level of popularity.
    Chopra posted an essay online in response to those in the Hindu community who say The Love Guru is offensive and mocks important tenets of their faith.
    "The premature outcry against the movie is itself religious propaganda," Chopra writes, noting that the protesters based their views on the film's two and a half-minute trailer. "As viewers will find out when the movie is released, no one is more thoroughly skewered in it than I am - you could even say that I am made to seem preposterous."
    Chopra, who makes a cameo appearance in the film, said he and Myers have been friends for 15 years. The two appeared together last year in an episode of Iconoclasts, a series of short documentaries on the Sundance Channel, and Myers wrote the foreword to Chopra's latest book, Why is God Laughing? - which explores the relationship between comedy and spirituality.
    Chopra inadvertently inspired The Love Guru. During a period of depression, Myers discovered Chopra's books and videos and began imitating his accent, Chopra said. Myers tried out his new character in New York comedy clubs and began to write the film.
    "The teachings in this comedy are fictional and non-denominational," Myers said in a statement. "They are based on a made up system called D.R.A.M.A. D.R.A.M.A. is Distraction, Regression, Adjustment, Maturity and Action. It's a mythical creation. It's like The Force in Star Wars."
    The comedian sought Chopra's blessing on the concept and script before moving forward with the movie, Chopra said.
    "He said, 'Listen, it's kind of a satire. It's a lampoon'," Chopra said, recalling Myers' words. "He said on the surface it's like that, but on a deeper level, it's a tribute."
    Myers "has the most profound understanding of Eastern wisdom, traditions and spirituality," Chopra said. "In the end, the movie is about self-esteem and love. It is about, in fact, love being the ultimate truth. He goes about it in a very silly, humorous way, but that's his style."
    Rajan Zed, a self-described Hindu leader who has led protests against The Love Guru, says the film "appears to be lampooning Hinduism and Hindus" and uses sacred terms frivolously.
    "People are not very well-versed in Hinduism, so this might be their only exposure," he said in March. "They will have an image in their minds of stereotypes. They will think most of us are like that."
    But Chopra, who cites various spiritual influences but does not consider himself religious "in the traditional sense," said the film is all in fun and could increase awareness of Hindu culture. He called Zed's efforts "a cry for importance" and "a sign of deep insecurity."

    'I sense a great disturbance in the force'
    12:32a
    Fire play
    Death anniversary of youngest martial law victim
    Created: 03.06.2008 15:19
    Today marks the 26th death anniversary of Emil Emil Barchanski, one of the youngest victims of martial law in Communist Poland.
    The week-long celebrations will be taking place in Mikolaj Rej Secondary School in Warsaw, which Barchanski attended.
    The boy was an active member of the opposition movement and gained widespread popularity after he doused a statue of Feliks Dzierzynski - the Polish founder of the Soviet Cheka, forrunner to the KGB - with paint, and later set it on fire. He was arrested by the communist secret services and forced to give false testimony, in which he incriminated his friends.
    Barchanski retracted the testimony during the trial and recounted the questioning methods in detail.
    He went missing in unexplained circumstances 3 June 1982 near the Vistula river, in which his body was found three days later. MORE ON
    http://www.polskieradio.pl/thenews/news/?id=83928
    12:51a
    Afghan anal sex slur
    SHANDY Beer class entertainer Emo Corro will receive an apology for the allegation that she blows dogs for a living. Clearly no self-respecting canine of any species could crack a fat within 300 meters of Corro the defense department ruled yesterday.
    The inebriated claims that Corro was even capable of enjoying buggery with a Bashi-bazouk bloodhound were scoffed at by respected radio host David ' good soldier' Riley on DSP TV. These were then read into the defense brief. Damages of 2c were awarded to Corro who was the ordered to pay court costs of 2 thousand dollars. Previously Corro was in the news for sharing a cell ( and possible lesbian lover secrets) with the infamous killer Valmae Beck. Corro had no comment today for the assembled media today apart from throwing them the finger and then mooning them through a police car window.
    1:25a
    The wicked witch of the west
    It's long been known that few senior officials have the ear of the President like his secretary of state and former national security adviser. But former presidential press secretary Scott McClellan put a finer point on it in little noticed but exceptional criticisms of Rice in his new memoir, What Happened, published this week:
    My later experiences with Condi led me to believe she was more interested in figuring out where the president stood and just carrying out his wishes while expending only cursory effort in helping him understand all the considerations and potential consequences.

    McClellan marveled at her ability to remain at the center of the Iraq-policy decision makers since the administration's earliest days, yet rarely receive much criticism about the handling of the war.

    Over time, however, I was stuck by how deft she is at protecting her reputation. No matter what went wrong, she was somehow able to keep her hands clean, even when the problems related to matters under her direct purview, including the WMD rationale for war in Iraq, the decision to invade Iraq, the sixteen words in the State of the Union address, and postwar planning and implementation of the strategy in Iraq.

    Although she had been the presidents top foreign policy advisor and coordinator of his national security team, she has largely allowed responsibility for all these matters to fall on people like former CIA Director George Tenant, Paul Bremer and Don Rumsfeld.

    But it was her relationship with the President that was the controlling influence on her own decision-making, McClellan asserts:

    In private she complimented and reinforced Bush's instincts rather than challenging and questioning them. As far as I could tell from internal meeting and discussions, Condi invariably fell in line with the president's thinking.

    As a result, McClellan suggests historians may not be kind to Rice.

    If, as president Bush likes to say, results really do matter, then history will likely judge her harshly as the person responsible for overseeing a number of the defining -- and, at least in the short term, ill-fated -- policies of the Bush administration...'

    Rice blamed Stephen Hadley for the 16 words - who she gonna blame the 21 words AFTER the 16 words?

    SHE was on TV in 2002 boosting loopy tubes into low earth orbit - I saw the lying fuckn' bitch myself.
    1:31a
    My friendly net-comand advice to the O-Bomber
    Leave Condi to last - Of course cut down the dead meat that is her boss and his boss by all means ...and then just leave her hanging there...slowly twisting in the wind with a meat hook up her arsehole.
    Never attack her directly as you cut Bush and Cheneys throats to the bone and bleed them out.
    She'll keep. Believe me she'll keep.
    Let her stew in in the poisons created by her own foul bowels.
    I want her alive, do you hear me...alive...and after MONTHs of torture. No merciful fortnights for this one. MONTHS. Hear me. Thats a fucking order.
    You kill her quick - I kill yr fucking daughters quick.
    And Michelle slow. Time remember bro...time of yr life.
    2:06a
    Boss of bosses
    This is pretty funny. You got Chaz in a dressing gown that somehow looks like a leather jacket screwing his maid worse than Herr Karl Marx. You gotta guy from ' Midnight run'. Another one from ' Scarface'.
    Neil aka Anthony Quinn. FBI guys outa central casting. Young Frankenstein John Gotti...I swear...this is some funny shit. DEVELOPING...
    2:36a
    Wiseguys
    '...Gravano soon became discontented with Castellano's distance from the more violent elements of the family; despite his rise in stature, he always considered himself a hoodlum at heart. He would eventually become close to John Gotti, a Queens based Gambino captain who was a protegé of underboss Aniello Dellacroce, and who had despised Castellano. Gotti had reached out to Gravano, Frank DeCicco, Joseph Armone, and Frank LoCascio. They formed the "Fist of Five," which plotted the murder of their boss. Gravano and DeCicco, after some vacillation, agreed to back the move--but secretly agreed that if Gotti stepped out of line, they would kill him. Had this happened, DeCicco would have become boss with Gravano as his underboss.
    On December 16, 1985, Castellano and Thomas Bilotti were gunned down in midtown Manhattan outside of Sparks Steakhouse, while Gotti and Gravano watched from across the street. Gotti was installed as the new boss of the family, and Gravano's importance quickly rose. Aurello had used him as acting captain of his crew for some time, and shortly after Gotti's installation, Gravano formally took over the crew.

    Gotti named DeCicco his Underboss, but just months after Castellano's murder, DeCicco was killed in a car bomb attack orchestrated by Vincent "Chin" Gigante, the boss of the Genovese crime family, in an assassination-plot that also included Lucchese crime family leaders Vittorio "Vic" Amuso and Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso who agreed to have Gotti killed. Gigante ordered the bombing because the Castellano hit had been carried out without the consent of the Commission, the Five Families of New York. It was a standing Mafia law that a boss could only be killed with the express consent of the Commission, which Gotti had not sought. The car bomb was actually intended to kill Gotti, but killed DeCicco by mistake. The hit took place outside of Castellano's former social club, which was then operated by captain James "Jimmy Brown" Failla, who along with captain Daniel "Danny" Marino, were two of Castellano's closest associates before his death. Allegedly, both Marino and Failla had been involved in the assassination plot. Ironically, Gigante had been the trigger man on the last unsanctioned hit on a New York don--Vito Genovese's unsuccessful attempt to kill Frank Costello, in 1957...' WIKI
    10:41a
    Don't just dabble
    Garn activist be a smarty - come n' join the revolutionary party!

    Her mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy; to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself.
    That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved using doublethink
    10:45a
    Another doomsday device
    ANIMAL POX VIRUS RESEARCH AT THE RAT INSTITUTE

    The final solution to the greenhouse gas emmission problem is under full production at the RAT Institute.
    Wealthy republicans are invited to book RAT submarine tours now as berths are going fast.
    Passengers will each visit several undersea vents where shrimp and seaweeds will be harvested.
    Each tour will last at least two years in the case of the biological solution and four years for the nuclear winter option. The price remains the same for both being 1 trillion dollars in gold, precious metals and stones and your arms, legs and torso's removed as room on board is understanderbly limited.
    10:57a
    Brain dead bloodsucking freaks
    John McCain declared today that he's voted for every investigation of Hurricane Katrina. The only problem? He voted twice against Democratic proposals to investigate the levee failures.

    McCain Gets Troop Level Wrong in Attack - TALKING POINTS MEMO

    MISSING IN ACTION...two frontline fascists have gone MIA. No one is looking for the notorious blackshirt Michael Ledeen and his red-fascist friend Christopher Hitchens, the Lord Haw Haw of this war. Not even the life insurance industry is looking. Not even the friendly neighborhood funeral franchise ' Whispering Glades'. Bloodsucking neocon freaks like this go missing everyday. Sometimes the the remains are identified through dental records.
    11:43a
    DANGER! - Vichys at work
    Pathetic, Corrupt, Spineless Democratic Leadership
    by dday
    I congratulate Barack Obama on his primary win and think he has the opportunity to bring forward meaningful change in America. In fact, he can start today. He can go to the well of the Senate and demand that the party he now leads not authorize new powers to spy on Americans and immunize corporations who broke the law with their illegal spying in the first place.
    The House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat disclosed late Tuesday that he is ready to accept a Republican-brokered deal to rewrite the nation's electronic surveillance laws, signaling that a long-running congressional impasse could soon be coming to an end.
    House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes told CongressDaily that he is "fine" with language offered by Senate Intelligence ranking member Christopher (Kit) Bond and other Republicans to overhaul the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
    Notably, the GOP language, which was offered a day before the recent congressional recess, would leave it up to the secret FISA court to grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have helped the Bush administration conduct electronic surveillance on the communications of U.S. citizens without warrants [...]
    "It's about finding middle ground and we have middle ground," Reyes said of the compromise offered by Republicans. "It's not going to please everyone but let's get on with it."
    Reyes said he believes enough Democrats will support the proposal to pass it in the House.
    Barack Obama could put an end to this today if he wanted. He could tell his colleagues in the House and the Senate that they should not work so hard to codify into law what his opponent is calling for - the ability for an executive to secretly spy on Americans.
    If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.
    Monday, McCain adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin, speaking for the campaign, disavowed those statements, and for the first time cast McCain's views on warrantless wiretapping as identical to Bush's.
    "[N]either the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001. [...]
    We do not know what lies ahead in our nation’s fight against radical Islamic extremists, but John McCain will do everything he can to protect Americans from such threats, including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution."
    The Article II citation is key, since it refers to President Bush's longstanding arguments that the president has nearly unlimited powers during a time of war. The administration's analysis went so far as to say the Fourth Amendment did not apply inside the United States in the fight against terrorism, in one legal opinion from 2001.
    This really is identical to George Bush's position and now the Democrats in the House are signaling their willingness to go along with it. Obama positions himself as a new kind of Democrat who wants to change Washington and has a background as a Constitutional scholar. There is no other issue which both shows the rot of the Democratic leadership and their disinclination to enforce or even recognize the Constitution than this one.
    Senator Obama has the power to end this. I'm sorry to not give him a honeymoon after the primary victory but events on the ground are moving quickly. There are a few decent elements in the compromise bill, like exclusivity for the FISA Court and an IG report on the legality of the current surveillance program, but it's not nearly good enough. This is another in a long series of caves, and an excellent opportunity for Obama to show his leadership skills and where he stands on civil liberties and Constitutional issues. We know that McCain is a mirror of Bush on that score.
    Senator Obama, you are the party's leader. Do something about this. Today.
    dday ( @ DIGBYS )
    11:54a
    New jackboots and panties
    Hit me with yr swagger stick - hit me! hit me! hit me!

    Panties on the Head

    Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), in hearings today with DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine on the Justice Department role in torture:
    I do see here things that seem to be fraternity boy pranks and hazing pranks that I do not -- they might be unacceptable, but they certainly don't fit into the category of torture, which is the word that's been bandied around here.
    As TPMmuckraker's Kate Klonick reports, Rohrabacher managed to use some variation of the phrase "panties on the head" eight times in his 13-minute statement.

    --David Kurtz - TALKING POINTS MEMO

    I should savor some of these scandals while they last - no one does kink better than conservatives.
    11:59a
    Marx was an epigone of Hegel
    And Hegel was a epigone of Plato. This is why all the neo-Hegelian political ideas suck. Two words - Leo Strauss. Marx claimed to have turned Hegel 'right side up'. But a pile of shit is the same either way.
    From an early age Marx was possessed of the idea that Doomsday was around the corner. Johnson notes that Marx's poetry includes expressions of "savagery . . . intense pessimism about the human condition, hatred, a fascination with corruption and violence, suicide pacts and pacts with the devil.'
    In Marx's personal life, violence was never far from the surface. He was verbally abusive, and arguments were common within his family. According to an Encyclopedia Britannica account on Marx, his father even expressed fears that Jenny von Westphalen was "destined to become a sacrifice to the demon that possessed his son."
    Marx did have a nasty skin disease (hidradenitis suppurativa) which would probably have made most people pretty grumpy. I hope the maid didn't catch it. Karl Marx was the foremost hater and most incessant whiner in the history of Western Civilization. He was a spoiled, overeducated brat who never grew up; he just grew more shrill as he grew older. His lifelong hatred and whining have led to the deaths (so far) of perhaps a hundred million people, depending on how many people perished under Mao’s tyranny. We will probably never know. A destructive spirit whose heart was filled with hatred rather than love of mankind . . . extraordinarily sly, shifty and taciturn. Marx was very jealous of his authority as leader of the Party; against his political rivals and opponents he was vindictive and implacable; he does not rest until he has beaten them down; his overriding characteristic was boundless ambition and thirst for power. Despite the communist egalitarianism which he preached he is the absolute ruler of his party; admittedly he does everything himself but he is also the only one to give orders and he tolerates no opposition.
    "Where did Hegel get his ideas from?"
    It is getting too far away from the main purpose of this blog to attempt to answer that in any detail but if a one-word answer is possible the answer is "Plato". Plato's Republic with its ideal of a polity ruled by "philosopher kings" has always had a lot of appeal to Leftists -- who mentally elect themselves as the philosopher kings concerned -- so it should be no surprise that Hegel liked Plato too.

    Pelczynski:

    In Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy (the Haldane-Simson translation in three volumes published 1892-6) Hegel gives Plato’s Republic twenty-six pages of print, compared with the less than four that he gives to Aristotle’s Politics. He regarded Aristotle’s main political work as a common-sense but pedantic and largely empirical treatise, while the Republic seemed to him a work of true genius and a most profound theory expressing the essence of Greek society and culture (PhR, Preface). The fundamental presupposition of the Republic and ancient Greek political life generally (Hegel argues) was the absolute priority of the community over the individual. Hegel refers to it usually as the ‘substantiality’ of the polis or ‘the substantial character of ethical life’ in Greece. The ancient Greek thought of himself as a political animal by nature. He saw himself as a son of his city, a member of an ongoing and historical community and not as an independent individual, facing other similar individuals in an atomistic state of nature or some rather loosely structured society which they had voluntarily established. A Greek citizen was so wholly immersed in the politics and ethos of his city that he cared little for himself. He guided his actions not by his self-interest or some private conception of happiness and virtue, but by the traditional ideals of his city, which he accepted without questioning.’ One could say that he had no individuality in the full sense of the word; he was merely an instrument, a member of an organism, which acted through him in pursuit of its own universal ends.
    Hegel:

    We are accustomed to take our start from the fiction of a condition of nature, which is truly no condition of mind, of rational will, but of animals among themselves: wherefore Hobbes has justly remarked that the true state of nature is a war of every man against his neighbour . . . The fiction of a state of nature starts from the individuality of the person, his free will, and his relation to other persons according to this free will. What has been called natural law is law in and for the individual, and the condition of society and the state has been looked upon as the means of the individual person, who is the fundamental end. Plato, in direct contrast with this lays as his foundation the substantial, the universal, and he does this in such a way that the individual as such has this very universal as his end, and the subject has his will, activity, life and enjoyment in the state, so that it becomes his second nature, his habits and his customs. This ethical substance which constitutes the spirit, life and being of individuality, and which is its foundation, systematises itself into a living, organic whole, and at the same time it differentiates itself into its members, whose activity brings the whole into existence.
    12:18p
    The last apartheid state
    Maybe that Euro-colony squatting in occupied Palestine is not the worlds only apartheid state. Certainly its the worst...and it has 150 nukes! Now when I call this brutal Apartheid state out for what it is that does not imply any lame call for ' one man- one vote' or any of that statist nonsense. It's important to label things for what they are and see things for what they are. It's terribly, terribly psychologically important to do this because no Euro-colony relying on force should have survived the last century. The wars of the 20th century are mainly all anti-colonialist wars. The winds of change that swept across Africa are now whipping up a gale in the Middle East. If there was an election held tomorrow all the Apartheid colons would be voted-off-the-island.
    Clearly the UN will never arrange such a vote so politics-by-other-means becomes necessary. This is not all armed struggle all the time either. The-force-more-powerful is still doing useful work. ( Even as I advised all anarchists to leave the theater of operations several years ago) And Apartheid in SA was finally defeated when the bullys realized they had been successfully framed as the 'baddies' and effectively surrended to the broadbased coalition that surrounded them. Diversity of tactics won then and it will win again. When the occupiers sustain a serious injury and are bleeding heavily and at the same time are offered most generous compensations and transportations then we will see some progress on the ground.
    All this talk about state solutions is a cheap shell game for lamers to weak to recognize realities.
    12:57p
    Worlds greatest crowd designers
    Since the Nuremberg rallies anyway

    Design?

    The McCain people are telling the AP they had McCain speak before a tiny audience "by design."

    From the AP ...

    In a symbolic move, Obama spoke in the same hall where McCain will accept the Republican nomination at his party's convention in September. Campaign officials, citing the local fire marshal, put the crowd at 17,000 inside the eXcel Energy Center, plus another 15,000 outside.

    McCain addressed a smaller crowd by design, an estimated 600 in his audience and another 600 outside.

    I'm not sure who sounds sillier, the McCain camp for saying that or the AP for buying it.

    --Josh Marshall

    Also reported that the Phase 2 report has finally run out of Friedman Units - due out tomorrow. A day that will, no doubt, go down in Vichy infamy.
    1:01p
    Bardot solidarity
    B. Bardot has expressed solidarity with all the poor animals brutally slaughtered without being stunned first.
    The least we can do is express ( limited to this issue ) solidarity and support with her.
    Not being able to protest Halal throat cutting is political correctness going mad again.
    Fuck the fascist French state and all who sail in her.
    Lets pass the hat around so she can keep speaking up.
    And pass the virtual hat around for assassination politics too - you know it makes sense. ( My 2 centimes)
    1:18p
    Afford every scream
    Crime every Montane
    My old mate Murray came in and we had a chat about Don who just fallen for an Amazon. He's crossed the Rubicon even if she's beyond the Pale and Somme of the rellies are all in de-Nile. ( I need some help with one...Austen-Tayshus reading this? Help! Have Merced! )
    1:45p
    A dunce cap for the idiot in the corner
    '...a cap and trade system for carbon emissions, which McCain supports, but apparently does not understand:

    "Russert: Senator McCain, you are in favor of mandatory caps.

    McCain: No, I'm in favor of cap-and-trade. And Joe Lieberman and I, one of my favorite Democrats and I, have proposed that -- and we did the same thing with acid rain. They're doing it in Europe now, although not very well.

    And all we are saying is, "Look, if you can reduce your greenhouse gas emissions, you earn a credit. If somebody else is going to increase theirs, you can sell it to them." And, meanwhile, we have a gradual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions."

    To paraphrase David Roberts, I wonder: why does McCain think they call it cap and trade? Also: why does he think that anyone would care about having enough credits if they did not have -- have -- to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions or else use credits to offset them? That's what a cap and trade system is.

    Bring those debates on.
    —Hilzoy
    1:50p
    Unbearable
    A polar bear swam 300km to Iceland just now. Police immediately shot Mark Steyn...sorry, the bear.
    2:09p
    Other side of the pond
    A while ago Johann Hari wrote a brilliant article...

    The Strange, Unexplored Overlap Between Homosexuality and Fascism

    If there was any serious fault with this excellent piece it was in its limitation to UK and Europe. Reading the recent New Yorker piece on Roger Stone reminded me of Roy Cohn and many others sharing his log cabin sexual politics on that side of the pond. There is definitely a largish book there! But in the interim perhaps Johann could be persuaded to write another article, ' The Strange, Unexplored Overlap Between Homosexuality and Fascism 2'.
    I'd be willing to chip in for the airfare and expenses. Alternatively I'll butcher...sorry...deconstruct his original myself.
    2:37p
    The coathanger brander branded
    The president of Yale University, Richard Levin recently asserted that religious Americans who support pro-life restrictions on international family planning aid are as doctrinaire and exclusionary as Saudi extremists.
    He might have been talking about Americas first Saudi-American president - the one who was once a mascot at Yale.
    2:52p
    Funeral in Berlin
    Obama and McCain are both seeking unity and change and both of them are extolling how they want to move past the old partisanship of Washington. Well, if they really want to put their money where their mouths are, I have a solution. How about each one of them naming the other as their Vice-Presidential nominee? They can tour the country together (as McCain has suggested) and debate, politely and in a non-partisan, non rancorous way and we the people (idiots that we are) will choose which one of these “betters” we want at the top of the ticket and which one we want going to funerals in Europe for the next four years.
    3:03p
    Humanitarian hawk here
    The New Republic backs up my call ( among others) for some measured humanitarian hawkishness:

    '...This is, put simply, an unacceptable abdication of our moral responsibilities. Even though our standing in the world has been severely diminished by Iraq, we should at least be debating intervention in Burma. There are, no doubt, many logistical complications and unintended consequences that would follow from such a policy. But there are also reasons why it should be a live option. The goal of such an intervention need not be regime change; it should simply be to make sure that a vulnerable population receives the supplies it desperately needs. Of course, if violating the sovereignty of a murderous regime happens to undermine that regime's legitimacy, then that would not be such a terrible result. But this does not necessarily have to be our goal...'

    Got muscles? Hey, use it or lose it.
    3:08p
    Ms Thanatogenous requests
    The stiff pleasures of yr dead company @ whispering glades east crypt. Let all the poisons that are in the mud hatch out.

    '...Kathryn Jean Lopez]

    Jonah, I do think it's a great thing that a man named Barack Obama can be a viable presidential candidate. But I also think Clarence Thomas rocks the house...'

    Old king log sez , 'An if the coffin lids rockin' don't bother knockin'
    3:32p
    Voldemort wants to go out with a bang
    Just. Please. Save. Scabbers

    Tel Aviv /Washington - Israeli Premier Ehud Olmert will ask President George W Bush Wednesday to step up US and international action against Iran and prepare for a possible military strike against its nuclear facilities, the Yediot Ahronot daily reported. I think this is what Turd Blossom calls a ' Twofer'. Definitely a win-win when the outlaw justice posse is closing in.
    3:45p
    A staunch revolutionary Leninist for our times
    NEW Soviet man, Ox-for-the-people-to-ride and impeccable Marxist-Leninist, Robert Mugabe, has been accused of using food as a weapon to starve opposition supporters in the run-up to a second round of presidential elections.
    The accusations came after the government ordered some international aid agencies to stop feeding hundreds of thousands of people. Mugabe blamed white imperialist armies from 24 countries for the famine even as he sold wheat to Sweden. This was to provide an industrial base for his predominantly Kulak/peasant soviet republic, he said. ' Get behind the fist'.
    4:18p
    Founding fathers philosophy
    '...Proudhon was a forerunner of market socialism, a position Marx sometimes embraced as a transitional form of economy .
    Where?
    According to Engels, niether he nor Marx "ever doubted that, in the course of transition to a wholly communist economy, widespread use would have to be made of co-operative management as an intermediate stage. Only it will mean so organising things that society, i.e. initially the State, retains ownership of the means of production and thus prevents the particular interests of the co-operatives from taking precedence over those of society as a whole." [Marx-Engels Collected Works, vol. 47, p. 389]
    For a useful summary of Marx on this matter, I would recommend Bruno Jossa's "Marx, Marxism and the cooperative movement" (Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 29, No. 1). It is available on line, although access may be restricted.
    The key difference between this position and Proudhon's was that the latter argued that an argo-industrial federation would be organised to "supervise" the individual co-operatives that make it up (this would be linked to a federation of communes as well).
    So the Marxist solution is statist, in that the democratic republic owns the means of production and controls the co-operatives. In the "classical anarchist" solution, the workers themselves own the means of production and control it themselves...' - Libcom extract
    4:25p
    Tiananmen Square man
    http://leftthought.blogspot.com/2008/06/tiananmen-square.html

    '...What most people don't know about the protests was that the students weren't alone, but that their was a reform minded wing of the Chinese Communist Party that supported them, with the actual Premier of China, Zhao Ziyang, sympathetic to them. This group could be seen as kind of like Gorbachev's group...'

    Gorby nearly went under a tank as almost did Yeltsin - twas a damn close run thing!

    WIRE STORY - The most senior Chinese official jailed for sympathizing with the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests has urged the leadership to come clean on why the pro-democracy movement was crushed.
    The demonstrations that drew more than a million people on to Beijing's streets ended in a military crackdown on June 4 of that year. Now a fading memory -- or no memory at all for young people -- the massacre is still taboo in the Chinese media.
    But Bao Tong, once the top aide to purged Communist Party chief Zhao Ziyang, argued that China has been praised for its transparency in handling the devastating May 12 earthquake and should also reveal the rifts in the leadership that led to the massacre.
    "Through this quake ... they have tasted the benefits of openness and should know that openness is better than being closed," Bao told Reuters in an interview at his Beijing home.
    "June 4 of 19 years ago was a man-made disaster, but like natural disasters it should be made known to the people of the entire country and the whole world," said Bao, who was jailed for seven years and remains an outspoken critic of the government.
    The square bustled with tourists and police, uniformed and plain-clothed, with no signs of protest on Wednesday.
    "You think today is still a sensitive day?" one woman selling souvenirs on the square said. "That was a long time ago. It was a period of chaos that the government handled well."
    But plainclothes and ordinary police manhandled veteran dissident Liu Xiaobo as he tried to leave his home to visit his father-in-law, Liu's wife Liu Xia told Reuters.
    "They grabbed him by the neck and arm and dragged him away," she said by telephone, sobbing intermittently. Liu Xiaobo was later released.
    CANDLELIGHT CEREMONY
    In Hong Kong, thousands of people filled more than three soccer field in a public park to take part in a solemn annual candlelight ceremony for the Tiananmen victims on Wednesday night, braving light rain in the former British colony.
    In addition to remembering those killed in 1989 and calling on the Communist Party to rethink its decision that the crackdown was justified, organizers offered condolences for the victims of the earthquake.

    They called for investigations into all the schools that collapsed and punishment for corrupt officials.
    In Washington, hundreds of Chinese pro-democracy activists gathered on a lawn near the U.S. Capitol Building for speeches by some 1989 activists and a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
    "We remember with sadness and outrage how the Chinese government unleashed an army on its own defenseless people," the California Democrat told the rally, whose organizers had erected a plastic replica of the Goddess of Democracy that the 1989 movement had built in Tiananman Square.
    Zhao was ousted as Party chief in 1989 for opposing then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's decision to send in the People's Liberation Army to crush the pro-democracy movement.
    Zhao died in 2005 after more than 15 years under house arrest. He was replaced in 1989 by Jiang Zemin, who in turn retired in 2002 to make way for incumbent President Hu Jintao.
    Plainclothes police turned back a Reuters reporter at Zhao's home, saying his widow was resting and daughter was out of town.
    Despite efforts of dissidents and families of victims to keep memories of Tiananmen alive, the virtual silence on that period within China means few people know much about the movement.
    Asked on Tuesday about the anniversary, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said the government had given a verdict on 1989 long ago and the issue was an internal one.
    But in Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack disagreed.
    "The time for the Chinese government to provide the fullest possible public accounting of the thousands killed, detained or missing in the massacre that followed the protests is long overdue," McCormack said in statement released by his office.
    Wang Dan, a student leader in 1989 now exiled in the United States, said the earthquake and the coming Olympic Games were the "most important events in modern China" since those protests.
    In an opinion piece issued by Global Viewpoint, Wang wrote that Beijing could use this time to "let go of old wounds and offer an Olympic amnesty to all political prisoners."
    Bao has remained outspoken about 1989 and he also urged the leadership under Hu to disavow Deng's "greatest mistake."
    "In the end, debts will have to be repaid ... the earlier they are repaid, the more timely, the more thorough, the more it will be in command, the more dignity and the more face it'll have," said Bao, who is under round-the-clock police surveillance. (For a related video double click on: http:/www.reuters.com
    4:31p
    On top of old baldy
    Prince Charles called for urgent action to combat back-of-the-head deforestation as part of an effort to fight off the effects of climate change, in a comment piece published Thursday. The climate really changed downunder sniffed the ex-timbertop ponce. 'We all used to get loved so much they'd even send us in to bathe in their very own warm fresh sewage...then the natives got restless...daddy and I were both pelted with food items and some Chinese looking chappie took a shot at me. You could say we were ' throne out'
    4:43p
    Space toilet seat left up
    Stop having sex, it's not on TV

    ANDREW Moody writes in relation to abortion (Letters, 4/6) that we shouldn't legalise anything that we're not prepared to watch on TV. If we take his argument to its logical extreme, it is obvious that his objection to abortion is not, as he claims, based in conscience, but is merely one of squeamishness.
    Following Mr Moody's logic, we should all stop having sex, become vegetarians, cease all bowel motions, and refuse to change babies' nappies or clean the toilet (because you won't see any of that on TV)!
    Are we prepared to watch the stories of women denied access to lawful abortion? Would a young woman bleeding to death as a result of a botched backyard abortion be gripping viewing? Or a mature woman struggling to care for her kids on her own because her third child's disability has crippled the family budget and caused her husband and friends to abandon her? What about a screaming "crack baby" separated from her imprisoned mother? Abortion is at best unpleasant, but that doesn't mean it's always wrong.

    Nicki Mollard, Carnegie

    '...I don't recall seeing too many people sitting on a toilet on TV. There's a challenge for you. Gary S.

    Discreet charm of the bougeois astronaut?

    Cosmonaut fixes faulty loo ( pic)
    Toilet fix brings relief at the orbiting outpost.
    http://www.theage.com.au/world/cosmonaut-fixes-faulty-station-toilet-20080605-2m19.html

    Looks roomier than the average head in a yacht.
    4:53p
    Cop threatens lawyer with a brick
    A committal hearing into an alleged kidnapping of a Gold Coast man whose ears were severed has begun with a fiery outburst from the police officer in charge of the case.
    David Holmes, 38, had his ears cut off in November last year, after he was allegedly abducted from his Currumbin home by a group of bikies over a reported $40,000 drug deal gone bad.
    He was later found by picknickers at Springbrook National Park.
    Four men charged over the alleged attack today appeared before Southport Magistrates Court, where they face various charges including kidnapping, torture and committing acts with intention to maim.
    The men are Benjamin James Dehnen, 31, of Kingscliff, Aaron Drew Scheers, 24, of Tweed Heads, James Desmond Murphy and Raymond Kenneth Brookes, 30, of Pottsville.
    Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Reid, who oversaw the police investigation, was the first witness to give evidence at the committal hearing yesterday.
    Snr Sgt Reid was being questioned by the lawyer for Brookes over an alleged confession the detective had obtained, when the court erupted into a slanging match.
    After heated arguments between the two, lawyer Bill Potts accused the detective of using the unsworn confession as evidence against Brookes.
    "It's a brick, isn't it?" Mr Potts asked, referring to police slang for a confession that has not been properly verified.
    "How dare you insult me in that way," Snr Sgt Reid responded.

    "You are lucky you have the court to support you because you wouldn't get away with that if you were outside, my friend."

    Magistrate Mike O'Driscoll called an immediate adjournment and later barred media and members of the public from attending the remainder of the day's hearing.
    The hearing continues. ( If you have yr ears to the ground that is )
    4:57p
    No vested interests anymore - just us
    INFORMED COMMENT - '...I think it is more significant that Obama is the first major party candidate for president who got where he is through the current iteration of the World Wide Web, which includes the blogging world, distributed information networks, social networking, and video sites such as YouTube (i.e. Web 2.0). That is, the Iowa breakthrough was iconic of Obama's success, because youth, progressivism, metro-racialism and independent politics are all tightly interwoven with Web 2.0.
    Ironically, Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992 was the first to use email extensively to shape the news cycle and contact supporters, but Hillary Clinton's people did not seem as good (or maybe as interested) in being on the vanguard of communications technology.
    Among the more important capabilities bestowed by the Web 2.0 has been a new model of grassroots fundraising...'

    http://www.juancole.com/2008/06/first-web-20-president.html#comments

    '...Obama is relevant, Clinton is irrelevant and McCain is irrational...'

    Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
    5:25p
    Maximum crackdown
    FUCKING FEDERALS FUCK!
    TAMPA -- Jurors deliberating in the obscenity trial of a Hollywood filmmaker asked a judge to clarify the meanings of several words and phrases in their jury instructions today, including "morbid and degraded," "unhealthy interest in sex," and "candid interest in sex."
    U.S. District Judge Susan C. Bucklew declined their request to use a dictionary and told them to rely on their common sense. Soon after the judge's response, jurors decided to return Thursday to continue deliberations after spending more than four hours today discussing the case.
    Jurors began deliberations just after 1 p.m. [ET] today in the trial of Paul F. Little of Altadena, Calif., and his company, MaxWorld Entertainment Inc.
    They must now decide whether the films produced Little and MaxWorld -- which include graphic scenes of urinating, vomiting and humiliating women -- violate local community standards.
    In their questions to the judge, jurors also wanted further explanation on an instruction to consider whether Little's films were intended for the average person of the community as a whole or members of a deviant sexual group. And if the had to consider the interests of both groups in their deliberations.
    The judge told them it was one or the other.
    Defense attorneys called on jurors to consider the nearly six-dozen adult-oriented businesses across the Tampa Bay region, and infer what that says about the community, when searching for a verdict.
    The New York Yankees' spring training facility sits across the street from an adult bookstore in Tampa, MaxWorld attorney Louis Sirkin told jurors. The surrounding area, known as Drew Park, contains dozens more.
    If everything placed into the public arena was "pretty and what was acceptable, we wouldn't need the First Amendment," Sirkin said during closing arguments. "You decide what you want to view and what you don't want to view in private as long as it's consensual."
    Edward McAndrew, [pictured] a Justice Department attorney prosecuting the case, said just because something is available in a community doesn't mean it's accepted by that community. He said the sights and sounds of Little's films "bludgeon the senses," and told jurors that no one would blame them from running for the exit when the films began playing in open court had the law not required that they stay and watch.
    "You probably had never seen anything like that before. You know what you saw, and you know how it made you feel," McAndrew said. "These videos aren't only offensive, they assault your senses."

    Prosecutors charged Little and MaxWorld with five counts of using a computer server to sell or distribute obscene matter and five counts of using the U.S. mail to deliver obscene matter.
    Little performs in his films as Max Hardcore, whose Web site was housed about a block from the federal courthouse in downtown Tampa for more than three years.
    "The government brought the case here because we couldn't find a closer courthouse," said McAndrew, which was the first time a Justice Department official explicitly stated why they elected to prosecute Little in Tampa.
    The defense says prosecutors have charged the wrong defendants.
    They say Little never knew his Max Hardcore site was hosted in Tampa, and prosecutors never produced any evidence to prove that he did.
    Defense attorneys have also said that Little sold his Max Hardcore films to California-based adult film distributor Jaded Video, which then sold the videos to an undercover federal agent and shipped them to a Tampa post office box.
    The government granted immunity to the president of Jaded Video in exchange for his testimony at trial.
    Since the trial began last week, jurors have had to sit through about 8-1/2 hours of pornography produced by and starring Little as Max Hardcore. If he's convicted of the charges, he could face substantial prison time. - ADULT FYI
    5:38p
    Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalissimo_Francisco_Franco_is_still_dead

    I wish they'd stop trying to make politics all light , frothy, amusing and positive. Its really much more like that final message you get in Doom one...or Hunter S. Thomson's description of the music recording industry...or graphic illustrated genocide reports from the 20th century...or youknowwho's website. ..it's trench warfare...its room 101... its hell I tell you, HELL!
    6:39p
    Frankenfurters farm
    Special Broadcasting Service :: Dateline - presented by George ...

    ... Read more... Wednesday, 25th July,2001 FRANKENSTEIN`S FARM. The world`s first major
    report into genetic engineering will be handed down this Friday. ...

    news.sbs.com.au/dateline/archive/2001/7 - 50k - Cached

    Monsters Of She Male Cock 5

    http://www.adultasiananime.com/adult-uncensored-sexxx-videos-73969-.aspx
    6:43p
    A little-death tax
    Rubber ducky com'on
    Las Vegas (AdAge.com) -- Sex sells, but will it advertise?
    In Nevada, where legal brothels have operated since the late 19th century, business is suddenly a bit slow. George Flint, director of the Nevada Brothel Owners' Association, said revenue at the 25 legal bordellos for which he lobbies is down 25% to 45%, depending on the location.
    "We used to say Nevada was immune from recession," Mr. Flint said. "Not anymore."
    One culprit, he said, is diesel. U.S. retail diesel-fuel prices jumped 16.6¢ in the past week to a record high of $4.50 a gallon, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. In rural southern Nevada towns such as Indian Springs, diesel has hit $5.25 a gallon, Mr. Flint said, which means that fueling an 18-wheeler can now cost an independent trucker more than $1,000.
    "An awful lot of our customers are truckers," he said. "It's the disposable income factor: Money for new wristwatches and gettin' laid just isn't there."
    Discretion is the other issue. A law dating to the 1970s forbade Nevada's legal brothels to advertise outside the immediate areas in which they were located. That meant that despite the millions of tourists pouring into Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada's legal brothels, those customers' wallets were going untapped.
    That law was struck down in federal court last July, when an American Civil Liberties Union challenge was filed on behalf of several brothels and local newspapers arguing the First Amendment protected commercial free speech too. But many legal-brothel owners are worried their freedom to advertise will enrage community leaders and push the Legislature to ban legal brothels. "Several of the people who run brothels thought it would be this horrible thing that would happen," said the ACLU lawyer Allen Lichtenstein, who persuaded the federal court to reverse the ban. "But from the government, the silence is deafening."
    The politicians' quietude might be owed to the fact that Nevada is now facing a $1 billion budget shortfall. Legal brothels' annual revenue is estimated by Mr. Flint to be $35 million to $50 million, with an overall economic impact of $400 million on the state economy. (The average rural brothel customer spends $175 per visit, while urban brothels see $600 per customer, he said.)
    Gaming revenue in the state is down too. MGM Mirage's stock price has been slashed in half, sliding from $99.75 last October to $50. And at Harrah's Las Vegas casinos such as Caesars Palace, Rio and Bally's, gaming revenue among VIP and avid-use customers are down 5% and down 8% so far this year among retail and unrated customers, said Harrah's spokesman Gary Thompson.
    Mr. Flint said Nevada's previous governor, Kenny Guinn, torpedoed an effort to place a $2-per-customer levy on brothels because "he didn't want to have a 'sex tax' as his legacy." But in addition to the corporate taxes they do pay, a "sex tax" is actually something Mr. Flint said many brothels would welcome, because it would legitimize them in the eyes of the Legislature and the public.
    But Ben Kieckhefer, a spokesman for Gov. Jim Gibbons, said: "The governor believes increasing the tax burden on individuals and businesses that are already struggling to stay afloat during an economic downturn is the wrong way to address the state's budget shortfall. ... This would include a tax increase on brothels or any other industry."
    "We're second-class citizens," said Jeff Arnold, owner of Donna's Ranch in Battle Mountain. "It's foolish to put up billboards that only irritate more than they attract."
    So despite his newfound freedom to do so, Mr. Arnold hasn't purchased any outdoor advertising and criticized a move by Wild Horse Adult Spa and Mustang Ranch general manager Susan Austin. She purchased eight billboards along various highways in and around the city of Sparks that declare, "The party's at the Wild Horse!"
    "We do have a moral responsibility to the wider world," said Ms. Austin, a former prostitute turned madam, adding, "I wouldn't want my children to see something inappropriate. But these [billboard ads] are just little cartoon horses."
    But while they are not advertising as Ms. Austin has done, many legal owners are marketing nonetheless, with offers such as casino-style VIP programs that "comp" frequent customers and offer barbecues for truckers and other passersby. Explained Mr. Flint: "'Get your card punched, and the 10th visit is free.' Or free buffets, so you can come and have a nice roast beef dinner with the girls."
    Added Mr. Johnson: "We market Donna's as a home away from home for truckers. There's always free chili, ham and beans, and corn bread. And they respond to it. We'll hold a barbecue, and they're the ones who are flipping the burgers."
    Mr. Arnold acknowledged that aside from what he jokingly describes as his "Subway sub club card" program, his strategy has been one of sponsorship marketing rather than overt advertising. His second Donna's Ranch, in Wells, is the major sponsor of the town's car show and is the secondary sponsor of its senior pro rodeo. Others, such as Dennis Hoff's Moonlight Bunny Ranch, have gotten free exposure via Hollywood: Mr. Hoff's brothel has been featured on HBO's reality series "Cathouse" since 2005.

    But unlike many of Mr. Flint's members, Mr. Arnold doesn't favor a sin tax on Nevada's bordellos. "If the state has fallen short, they need to cut back," he said. "We're getting nailed." - ADULT FYI

    There's a story in the Age today ' Fear and loathing in Las Vegas' - its got the Steadman splatter right but the pic is of James Packer. Haven't read it yet.
    6:57p
    Speech school
    Church actually seems a reasonable sort of place to hone a public speaking skill. Take Peter Costello - please.
    Yeah - no Barry O has had a good education. Theres a book on MLK that talks about how preachers unpack a sermon with increasing call and response leading to well defined peak and then a brief wind-down to the wallet opening time. Another thing is practise - Clinton improved her delivery even if she was not allowed to improve the content. Here's some vintage MLK from that book...

    " AGGRESSIVE non-violence, MASSIVE non-violence and non-violent SABOTAGE " this post 67 King also spoke of the new campaigns " DISRUPTIVE DIMENSIONS."
    Only such campaigns would be "POWERFUL" and "DRAMATIC" enough to bring essential change.

    " Non-violence must be adapted to urban conditions and urban moods. Non-violent protest must now mature to a new level, to correspond to heightened black impatience and stiffened white resistance. This high level is MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. There must be more than a statement to the larger society, there must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key point...to dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer lasting, costly to the larger society, but not wantonly destructive. It is a device of of social action that is more difficult for a government to quell by superior force...it is militant and defiant not destructive."

    Round this time MLK also said he wanted to "go for broke", was willing to accept longer jail time and said..." In a sense you could say we were engaged in the class struggle," and also called for ..." a redistribution of economic power. We are now making demands that will cost the nation something...you are messing with folk then. Your messing with the captains of industry...and this all means that we're in dangerous waters because it really means that we're saying something's wrong with capitalism...there must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism." ( My emphasis')
    7:26p
    Sex and the seedy
    The FAME Awards - Anal Starlet
    The 2008 FAME Awards have entered the final stage of voting. Fans who want to help pick the most popular porn stars in the world have until June 4th to vote. Go to www.TheFAMEAwards.com to vote.
    Anal Starlet: Now it’s time for the girls who take it in the ass. Most girls in porn take it between the cheeks these days so we have some of the best of the best on this list. Interestingly enough only one name shows up on both the oral and anal lists. Not surprisingly, it is Jenna Haze. Any doubt that she is set to go down as one of the very best this industry has to offer? Annette Schwarz didn’t show up on the list for her oral skills, but she is here so that’s pretty good. There are some ass queens here and they also happen to be great anal performers. Brianna Love and Flower Tucci fit that bill quite nicely. Courtney Cummz and Hillary Scott are all purpose sluts who look great and give up the A quite nicely. I love seeing Mia Rose’s name here. She seems to have vanished, but is so fucking hot. This is a very strong field and picking one would be pretty tough. I’m going to give Jenna my vote just barely over Hillary this year...' - MORE HERE

    http://www.rogreviews.com/news/read_article.asp?sku=4350
    7:51p
    Oh Barry!
    "You remember a guy named Al Gore? Does that name ring a bell? He was vice president with Bubba for like two terms, eight years. And then he went out and produced that film, the documentary. He had the book and the film 'An Inconvenient Truth,' you know, about the environment and climate change. Won an Academy Award. Won the Nobel Peace Prize. They're turning that, some people in Italy, are turning 'The Inconvenient Truth' into an opera. Are you like me? The first time you saw that movie, you said to yourself, boy, this would be great, if only had it songs? I mean, wow." --David Letterman

    "And former White House press spokesman Scott McClellan has written a book highly critical of the Bush administration. And while in Utah, President Bush told an audience he has not read McClellan's book. He doesn't plan to read it. It's nothing to do with McClellan, just general principle. It's a book. It's got big words, and not a lot of pictures." --Jay Leno

    "In his new book, President Bush's former press secretary said that Bush has a lack of inquisitiveness. Yeah. When he heard this, Bush said, 'I don't know what he's saying, and I don't care.'" --Conan O'Brien

    "Speaking of President Bush, yesterday -- this is true -- during a speech, President Bush said that his economic stimulus package is working, because when people use extra money to buy a machine, that creates jobs at 'the machine-making place.' Yeah. Then Bush introduced his new speech writer, a 6-year-old boy named Timmy." --Conan O'Brien

    And Dick Cheney has apologized to the people of West Virginia for making a joke about inbreeding at their expense. But see, I don't think Cheney gets it. In fact, today, while trying to apologize, he said he felt as stupid as a guy from Kentucky" --Jay Leno

    "Our vice president, our old friend, Dick Cheney got in some trouble, made a joke. Did you hear about this? Made a joke about West Virginia, but he apologized. He did apologize for the joke he made about West Virginia. Nothing yet on the Iraqi war." --David Letterman

    "Hot today here in New York City. Hot also in Washington. It was so hot today that Dick Cheney waterboarded himself." --David Letterman

    John McCain's wife, Cindy McCain, has been taking high-speed driving lessons at the Bob Bondurant Driving School in Phoenix. High-speed driving. Well, that's important. When you're married to a guy as old as McCain, you have to know how to drive an ambulance." --Jay Leno

    "And John McCain, as you know, has released all his medical records. All indications are McCain is in very good health. But of course, they're still waiting for that report from the coroner." --Jay Leno

    "No, they say McCain does take some medication, including Ambien to help him sleep. But they said he could eliminate the sleeping pills if he picks Mitt Romney as vice president." --Jay Leno

    No, McCain's doctor said Senator McCain is decades younger than his age. But then, so is President Bush, who is, what, in his early 60s? But he has the mind of a 12-year-old." --Jay Leno

    "Sad news from the world of fashion, famous designer Yves Saint Laurent passed away, were you aware of that? Yup. And today Hillary Clinton, out of respect, wore her pantsuit at half-mast." --David Letterman

    "Hillary now says that she is winning the popular vote. And Al Gore said yeah, well, a lot of good that does." --David Letterman

    "And over the weekend, Barack Obama left his church. And after, he said to Hillary, 'O.K., now it's your turn to quit something.'" --Jay Leno

    "No, Barack Obama says he's now looking for a new church, preferably one where the religious order has to take a vow of silence." --Jay Leno

    Here we go yo from Jackie O to the Big O to Barry O yo.
    8:30p
    Death row
    Marxist leader, Robert Mugabe, was sentenced to death by the country’s Supreme Court for ...oh wait...no that was Marxist leader Mengistu Haile Mariam...all these Marxist Leaders look alike to me.
    9:25p
    Communist rules
    'Rules of the Communist League (Art. 42): Removed and expelled members, like suspect individuals in general, are to be watched in the interest of the League, and prevented from doing harm. Intrigues of such individuals are at once to be reported to the community concerned.'

    Well I just heard @ndy was banned from a bulletin board service...and he sounds very upset.
    He could easily self-harm... or even harm someone else. Perhaps an intervention is in order comrades?
    The bourgeois government is investing more in mental health... but often help is sought too late.

    Should I write to Zizek? Some Lacan could be just what the doctor ordered!
    9:35p
    Grand narratives and anarchism
    Popular as these are I would argue anarchism is not a grand narrative. Tempting as it is to deconstruct some aspects of modern anarchist praxis, the essence of the idea - note the singular - that was transmitted with the aid of a certain amount of sign language by Fanelli to the Spanish comrades, was obviously less a grand narrative than a reasonably singular, measured notion that doubled as a practical tool for immediate concrete use.
    As a set of ideas, of which federations are the core, anarchism can't avoid being an ideology. However an ideology is not generally thought of as a narrative. The story of how a set of ideas win friends and influence people is something else again and if well written may be classed as a narrative. Even if some of the people and events described are often less than grand.
    Over time some extensions and additions have been made to the anarchist Yurt. However many, if not most anarchists remain suspicious of broad applications that claim to influence more than the core that is a response to political-economy. This may be easily seen by way of contrast with utopian socialism.
    It is often useful to break down things or deconstruct them in order to understand them better as spectacular advances in scientific understanding have demonstrated. And deconstruction has some runs on the board in helping break down 'Western' Marxism. Its plain many Marxists don't like post-modernism for this very reason. Now PoMo has pretty much been thrown in the dumpster by academics then maybe its time we freegans dived in and saw what is recoverable.
    I don't think Godwin, Stirner and Proudhon were grandiose at all. And as for Bakunin...he might be described as the exception that proves the rule but I would avoid that cop-out. I would say that Bakunin represented the heroic, the Herculean and the Promethean grandiosity that all good and useful and enjoyable narratives can use safely. Natural leaders arise from time to time - like Makhno and Durruti - and we would be churlish and foolish to exile them while our numbers remain relatively small.
    10:44p
    Liquidationism again
    Its always the same
    The President of the low-lying atoll nation of Israe...Kiribati says his country may already be doomed because of climate change.
    Anote Tong says communities have already been resettled and crops destroyed by seawater in some parts of the country, made up of 33 coral atolls straddling the equator.
    Although scientists are still debating the extent of rising sea levels and their cause, Mr Tong told a news conference marking World Environment Day that changes were obvious in his country of 92,000 people.
    “I am not a scientist but what I know is that things are happening we did not experience in the past,” the President said.
    “We may be beyond redemption, we may be at the point of no return where the emissions in the atmosphere will carry on to contribute to climate change to produce a sea-level change that in time our small low-lying islands will be submerged.
    “Villages that have been there over the decades, maybe a century, and now they have to be relocated.
    “Where they have been living over the past few decades is no longer there, it is being eroded.”
    At international meetings others had argued that measures to combat climate change would hurt their countries' economic development.
    “In frustration, I said, 'No, it's not an issue of economic growth, it's an issue of human survival'.”
    Under the worst-case scenario, Kiribati would be submerged by the end of this century and its people would have to be resettled in other countries, Mr Tong said. ' Maybe we could swap places on a sort of 'dollar-for-dollar' basis with all your unwanted skeptics and deniers?'
    10:55p
    Australias foulest police
    Keelty denies investigator was friend
    AUSTRALIAN Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty has again rejected claims he was friends with charged investigator Mark Standen. Wronged cop waits for apology from AFP NEWS.com.au
    VETERAN Australian Federal Police officer Gerry Fletcher has waited a long time
    for vindication. - PAGE NOT FOUND 404
    Dozens of men - including community leaders, a police officer, a teacher and a youth worker - were arrested over child pornography and abuse offences after the nation's biggest anti-pedophile investigation.
    An Australian Federal Police officer charged with child pornography offences has had his sentencing adjourned.
    Michael Edward Hatch appeared in the ACT Magistrates Court this morning on one charge of using the internet to access child pornography and one charge of possessing child pornography.
    He is one of 90 men facing child pornography charges as part of the biggest Australian investigation into online paedophiles.
    Operation Centurion is a joint investigation between Australian Federal Police and state forces and for the past six months has been looking at paedophile communities online and how they trade images of child pornography on the internet.
    Hatch will be sentenced tomorrow afternoon.
    11:20p
    Uncle Ho
    Ho was the rebellious son of a minor official in the colonial government of French Indochina, which included what is now Vietnam. In 1911, aged 21, he made his way to Paris, where he underwent an apprenticeship in proletarian labour, working in one low-paid job after another and using his spare time for study and politics. He could not get through Das Kapital — Vietnamese revolutionaries were never much steeped in Marx — but in Lenin’s Theses on the National and Colonial Questions (1920) Ho found the manifesto he needed.
    Lenin stressed the failure of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, specifically the one affirming a people’s right to self-determination. It was as-if Lenin was affirming Ho’s personal experience, for Ho had gone to Versailles in 1919, in a borrowed dinner suit, to present the US president with a petition and a list of demands on behalf of the Vietnamese people. Not surprisingly, on the perimeter of a great throng of dignitaries, he was met with some incomprehension and turned away. He now believed, rightly, that the big powers were redesigning the map of the world to suit themselves. The experience only confirmed what he knew from his years in Paris: that talk of liberte counted for little against the rate of return on colonial investments and assumptions of white or European supremacy.
    It is in this context that we should weigh up Ho’s attachment to Moscow, in order to understand-him, as it were, from the inside.
    The great powers had just spent four years laying waste to one another, and for what? Certainly not for the good of oppressed and brutalised humanity in the Asian colonies. Against this, what might be said (or thought) of the new Soviet Union?
    The revolution seemed a beacon, bright and alluring, beyond the pointless carnage of the Western Front. Lenin declared that the colonial and national question was a component part of Bolshevik revolutionary strategy and that the revolutionary path would lead to global liberation. Radical scholars such as Ho could believe it. Russian universalism began with the freeing of the serfs in 1861.
    Surely 1917 was stage two, the liberation of the proletariat? Next on the agenda, the oppressed peoples of the colonies, “the native peoples” who were treated everywhere, even in Paris, with contempt.
    The sequence here has a certain persuasive logic: the Vietnamese revolutionaries knew they had to find a focal point in the international order, an anchorage for a small nation, outside of Western imperialism.
    Moscow it had to be, the “third Rome”. Marxism was the mantra that linked them to that ideal and Leninism was the road map. Certainly Ho was convinced. By 1929 he was working for the Comintern, an undercover man, briefly in Hong Kong to lay the foundations for a communist party in Indochina. The legend was on his way.
    Pierre Brocheux’s concise biography covers the two main phases of Ho’s life. First, his perilous undercover work around Europe and Asia between 1911 and 1941, studying, agitating, living on the razor’s edge, shifting in and out of focus, fashioning a quite enchanting persona and slipping from one identity to another like some elusive figure in a John le Carre novel. Another biographer reckoned that Ho used 147 aliases.
    And this is only half the story, for then there is Ho’s return to Vietnam and his role as a leading figure in the national liberation struggle until his death in 1969. Throughout these phases of ‘an extraordinary life, Brocheux pursues Ho’s political thought and character and is able to convey some sense of the mystique that eventually made Uncle Ho the venerated one, the embodiment of national aspirations in the long and horrifically costly struggles against the French and the Americans.
    For me the mystique around Ho is the most interesting question of all, and if it is possible to distil this mystique into a simple gist then here it is: in a nationalist movement driven to violent resistance, organised on the strictest clandestine lines and requiring rigid conformity, Ho remained an irrepressible, many-sided, ascetic, heroic and charismatic individual.
    He seems never to have changed in any fundamental way but only to have developed the unusual qualities of intellect and personality that were evident from his earliest years as a radical and, as it happened, a founding member of the French Communist Party.
    Ho’s life, as Brocheux sets it out, is a useful corrective to commentators who think the label Stalinist is the end of the matter, no further explanation required. This sort of labelling is an evasion of inquiry and an ignorance of being-in-context that casts the communist world as a monolith in which no one survived in the upper echelons unless they joined the forces of evil.
    What were the qualities that set Ho apart?
    Try, for starters, a lack of dogmatism, a refusal to wipe the cultural slate clean and a desire to bridge the gap between past and present. As Ho’s letters, journal articles and books from the 1920s attest, he discerned affinities between his Asian philosophical background and the new ideas he encountered in Paris.
    He saw similarities between Confucian thought and European liberal and socialist thought, notably that “men are brothers across the four oceans” and that social order might be guaranteed by an equitable division of land. It was Confucius, Ho insisted, who advocated internationalism and preached the equality of wealth. It was Confucian, he argued, to put the interests of the people first, the nation second “and those of the king are of no consequence”.
    While Lenin informed the practical side of the revolution, Ho’s model for human relationships was the ancient Chinese sage, the idea of the philosopher and political theorist deeply pained by the agony of his countrymen.
    Ho cultivated the ideal of an altruist or noble soul, of saint and revolutionary. As Brocheux explains, he was neither the strategist bent over a geological survey map (though he did seem to have a profound sense for timing), nor was he the general moving his forces about like a chessmaster.
    He was more the scholar-philosopher:
    He led the war of resistance by drawing on his philosophy of human relations, by preferring face-to-face encounters, direct dialogue, correspondence in verse (indeed, he wrote a history of his country in verse), and by reciting proverbs rather than presenting arguments based on the rules of (the) Marxist dialectic.
    Necessity landed Ho and his cause (national independence) in the Leninist mould, but at the interpersonal level he broke the mould. He much preferred to counsel than to dictate, to sway than to flay.
    A Confucian upbringing and observations of human behaviour in two worlds (Europe and Asia), led Ho to the hard-headed realisation that mouthing revolutionary principles did not make men virtuous. His natural inclination to find common ground among all classes adversely affected by foreign domination was repeatedly raised by comrades at home and abroad as his “rightist tendencies”. No less a monster than Stalin tried to pin him down in this regard.
    When they met in Moscow in 1950, Stalin pointed to two chairs and said to Ho: “This chair represents the peasantry and that one the landlords. Where do you sit?” Ho replied that he could sit on both chairs at once.
    Despite frail health throughout his life, he preferred to walk (vast distances), followed a frugal diet and, saint-like, believed that suffering teaches maturity. He would persistently urge his compatriots to combat individualism, greed, waste and bureaucracy, reminding them of that most un-Marxist dictum: “The enemy is within our own hearts.” He shared a common cause with Mao Zedong and yet there was something of Mahatma Gandhi in him. He was as much the international revolutionary as Che Guevara and yet, in his heart, he was more like Nelson Mandela.
    Ho cultivated the role of humble exemplar, of guide and guru to the nation. His political appeal, in this respect, has powerful spiritual overtones.
    Brocheux provides a much restated “fact’ that seems to fit nicely. We are told that the name his subject finally chose for himself — Ho Chi Minh — means “well of light”.
    In the West, at least, this has become part of the legend; almost any English source will give you some version of this supposedly inspirational meaning. Thus, according to Ho’s Wikipedia entry, the name is Vietnamese and it means “enlightened will”.
    I was alerted to this misconception while researching this piece. I received advice from an eminent Vietnamese scholar in Australia and an expert at Hanoi University.
    The first advised that the name meant nothing. The second confirmed this, providing another aetiology altogether: Chi Minh was the name of a governor in a southern Chinese province. For someone working undercover, this name might offer protection, facilitating movement across borders.
    Similarly, Ho has no known historical or symbolic meaning. It’s just a name. On the other hand, no one working undercover is going to adopt a tag like “well of light”.
    The most comprehensive biography of Ho, William J. Duiker’s Ho Chi Minh: A Life (2000) gets it right: the name Ho Chi Minh was a pseudonym adopted from Chinese. So how could such a misconception flourish? Certainly “well of light” can be forcibly extracted from the Vietnamese by means of poor translation but that only restates the error.
    I suspect the answer is simple enough: “well of light” comes out of a desire to impose romantic meaning. It tallies with the legend. The life, the man himself, seems to fit so nicely with some sort of profound meaning associated with leadership and inspiration.
    What strikes the reader again and again is evidence of a man who seemed not only open to compromise, ready to grasp any possibility for a peaceful way forward to national independence
    for Vietnam, but also someone all too ready to find that possibility in the character of his enemy. “No one is better qualified than the French to hear cries for liberty,” he observed.
    When he announced the creation of an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, he echoed the sentiments of the US Declaration of Independence: “All men are born equal: the creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness.”
    The folly of the French and the Americans in this period was as self-evident as the truths Ho paraphrased.
    It is significant that while Stalin hated Ho, Nikita Khrushchev was captivated by his charm, writing in his memoirs: “I have met many people in the course of my political career, but none has made such a particular impression on me. Believers often talk of the apostles. Well, through his way of living and his influence over his peers, Ho Chi Minh was exactly comparable to these ‘holy apostles’. An apostle of the revolution. Nobody could resist him, so strong was his conviction that communism was the best thing for his people and for all people.”
    Graham Greene also succumbed, with one careful qualification: “I was reminded of a Mister Chips, wise, kind, just (if one could accept the school rules as just), prepared to inflict sharp punishment without undue remorse.”
    Somehow the image of the frail, selfless (saintly) scholar-philosopher at the head of a just war of resistance against colonial oppression was, by the ’60s, irresistible to radicals in Europe, the US and Australia. But Uncle Ho had, by that time, been a focal point of inspiration in his own land for a quarter of a century or more.
    Explaining his appeal to his own people, his unrivalled prestige, is more challenging and on this Brocheux’s account is a little disappointing.
    What is missing is an ethnographic chapter on the significance of the emperor in Vietnamese history, on that centre of obligation that was loyalty to the emperor and the consequences for national focus when the French gutted imperial authority at the turn of the 19th century.
    The Vietnamese have (or had) a saying: “The emperor is in the country like the father is in the family.” But when the emperor was no longer in the country, there was a vacuum to be filled.
    Replacing the “father in the family” was a new notion of the people as the basis for political legitimacy. Modern Vietnamese terms for the nation all include a reference to the people. In this context, “Uncle” suggests something humbler, gentler and more egalitarian than the stricter notion of father or king as embodied in the emperor.
    Through the resistance movement loyalty to the people became loyalty to the country and Uncle Ho the embodiment of the people, the epitome of revolutionary qualities.
    Simplicity and saintliness combined with implacable determination to be free of the invader. One of the emperor’s main duties, after all, was to defend the nation. The old hierarchy of obligations was replaced, perhaps, by the new, in which love of the emperor was transferred to love of Uncle Ho, a new kind of spiritual helmsman.
    After Ho’s death in 1969 the iconography acquired all the trappings that have become familiar as the 20th-century cult of personality: the statues, the gigantic public images, the embalmed body on display, the hagiography of the life, the rites and teachings that celebrate his memory, and so on.
    Perhaps the greatest irony is that at precisely the time Uncle Ho was becoming a Marxist icon among Western radicals (in the ’60s), he was being sidelined in his own party for those rightist tendencies (his temporising patriotism) that hardliners insisted was a personal and political defect.
    Le Duan, secretary-general of the party in 1960, told a close associate: “I am better than Uncle Ho. He opens his mouth and follows the code of Confucian morality, speaking of human dignity, loyalty, good conduct, wisdom and faithfulness. But what is all that? Outdated moralism. As for me, I support the collective power of the workers.”
    And so, while the hardliners marginalised the increasingly frail old Uncle Ho, his whispy Confucius beard getting thinner and thinner, they still made hay with his mystique.
    Ho had requested his ashes be put into urns and placed at the four cardinal points of the country. The party had his body embalmed and laid out in an oppressive mausoleum for respectful pilgrims and curious tourists to peer at.
    Brocheux draws his richly informed yet succinct biography to a close with an account of Ho’s afterlife, how he has been used by the state since his death. - Peter Cochrane ( The Austrian )
    11:32p
    Black belts in purging
    WIKIPEDIA - '...Marxism was also introduced into Vietnam with the emergence of three separate Communist parties (Indochinese Communist Party, Annamese Communist Party, Indochinese Communist Union) and later a Trotskyist movement led by Tạ Thu Thâu. The Comintern sent Nguyễn Ái Quốc to coordinate the unification of the parties into the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1930, in Hongkong, with Trần Phú as the first Secretary General. Later, the party changed its name to Indochinese Communist Party as Comintern, under Stalin, did not favor nationalistic sentiments...'

    Stalin ordered the party to concentrate on the urban proletariat - not the peasants. Ho quietly played down this Marxist emphasis. pr.

    '...After the end of World War II, Ta Thu Thau reconstituted the 'La Lutte' or Struggle group and became the foremost leader of Vietnamese Trotskyism, but in the events of the August Revolution of 1945, and under the impact of the re-establishment of French colonial rule and repression from the communist led Vietminh, his political current lost any significant influence. Ta Thu Thau, along with other prominent trotskyists and nationalists, was assassinated by the Viet Minh in 1945...'

    '...In August 1945, the Japanese surrendered to the Allies, creating a power vacuum in Vietnam. The Việt Minh launched the "August Revolution" across the country to seize government offices. Emperor Bảo Ðại abdicated on August 25, 1945, ending the Nguyễn Dynasty. On September 2, 1945 Hồ Chí Minh declared Vietnam independent under the new name of Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and held the position of Chairman (Chủ Tịch).
    In southern Vietnam, British forces landed in Saigon to disarm the Japanese, followed by French troops trying to re-establish their rule. In the north, Chiang Kai-shek's army entered Vietnam, also to disarm the Japanese, followed by the forces of the non-Communist Vietnamese parties, such as Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng and Việt Nam Cách Mạng Đồng Minh Hội. In 1946, Vietnam had its first National Assembly election, which drafted the first constitution, yet its situation was very precarious: the French tried to regain power by force; some Cochin-Chinese politicians formed a seceding government of Cochin-China (Nam Kỳ Quốc); the non-Communist and Communist forces were killing each other. Stalinists purged Trotskyists. Religious sects and resistance groups formed their own militias. The Communists eventually suppressed all non-Communist parties but failed to secure a peace deal with France.
    In 1947, full scale war broke out between Viet Minh and France. Realizing that colonialism was coming to an end worldwide, France fashioned a semi-independent State of Vietnam, within the French Union, with Bảo Đại as Head of State. Meanwhile, as the Communists under Mao Zedong took over China, Viet Minh began to receive military aid from China. Beside supplying materials, Chinese cadres also pressured the Vietnamese Communist Party, then under First Secretary Trường Chinh, to emulate their brand of revolution, unleashing a purge of "bourgeois and feudal" elements from the Viet Minh ranks, carrying out a ruthless and bloody land reform campaign (Cải Cách Ruộng Đất), and denouncing "bourgeois and feudal" tendencies in arts and literature. Many true patriots and devoted Communist revolutionaries in the Viet Minh suffered mistreatment or were even executed during these movements. Many others became disenchanted and left the Viet Minh...'
    11:45p
    Hegelian nonsense
    There's a poor argument made here by Paula Cerni against those she calls the 'four formidable horsemen' of atheism - Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. She writes:

    [A]lthough truth is a worthy cause, the New Atheists' strategy rests on a misguided approach to religion. Religion involves practices as well as beliefs. The New Atheists begin from the beliefs and take them to inform the practices. They therefore aim their fire at the mightiest of all false beliefs, the belief in God Almighty.
    The scientific, materialist approach should begin from the practices. Practices inform beliefs, since beliefs that matter are always practical. But practices are never false - they occur and in that sense they are true; they are real and in that sense they are rational. They are taken up by living agents in historical settings.

    The argument is plainly fallacious. Cerni elides real with true and rational, but doesn't explain why. Any real practice is - tautologically - real, but in so far as it implies or secretes certain beliefs, those may, but also may not be, true or rational. If I leave a twenty pound note on my garden wall every Saturday evening with a letter attached to it saying 'This money is mine', I might believe that the letter will deter everyone from taking the money, but that belief will almost certainly be false and my practice, real as may be, won't be altogether rational unless I want the money taken...' - Extract from

    http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/06/judging-practices.html

    Taking Hegels, ' all that is real is rational', business as an absolute reminds me somehow of those holy temple rats in parts of India.
    And a temple was being built for the god-dess of Smallpox ...just as that disease was finally tamed by a slightly better form of rationalism. The 'All that is falsifiable is real' of scientific philosophy at the time.

    But then as Marxism is Hegel ' turned right side up' all that is real to a Marxist must be IRRATIONAL.
    As , indeed it is, when we subject actually existing Marxism to the Marxist method itself.
    A reactionary petit-bourgeois philosophy, financed by a capitalist exploiter full of sound and fury signifying ...nothing much.

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