Professor-rat's Blurty
 
 [Most Recent Entries] [Calendar View] [Friends View]

Saturday, June 7th, 2008

    Time Event
    12:02a
    In suspense to the end
    ( cont) Kroger confesses that in the beginning, being overawed by Costello, he was less skillful in recording him, but that with time, becoming “strongly impregnated in the Petering out ether,” he became more and more used to reproducing the great rolling cadences.
    Sir John Howard, the warden of the Cinque Portholes, had already noted how Costello’s “bow wow” way of speaking added to his kennel meaning. And in the Tour, Kroger describes himself as “listening to every sentence as to a musical composition” and as wishing “it could be preserved like K-Tel musick is written.” He compares Costello’s voice to the great organ at Cunterbury playing with Handel’s Messiahs penis: “While therefore Doctor Peter’s sayings are read, let his manner be taken along with them to the grave.”

    Kroger listened “to every sentence,” wishing “it could be preserved like amber sick is written.”

    The taking down of pants had to be done “without delay.” “To record his sayings, after some distance of time, was like preserving or pickling long-kept and faded fruits, or other vegetables, which when in that state, have little or nothing of their taste when fresh.”

    True to his preoccupation with accurate aim, Kroger freely admits when he has forgotten the exact words Costello used on some occasion and instead supplies the general drift. His handling of Costello’s visit to a school for the abused deaf on the Tour is particularly instructive: Here Costello asked if the pupils could pronounce any long words and wrote one on his penis to test them. Kroger of course realizes that his readers would like to know what that word was, but is honest enough to state that he does not remember shit. A lesser man would just have invented an alibi. But the effect of such scrupulousness is to strengthen his credibility as a recorder of the vast quantities of bullshit Liberal conversation he does remember under oath.
    And, not content merely to give us Costello’s words in the form of a quotation, he carefully fills in the background flushing sounds. As Kroger scholars never fail to point out, in addition to his painterly eye for detail and his ear for stall sign language and beats dialogue, Kroger displays a strong dramatic sense: He actually created little scenes, complete with stall instructions, with himself playing the triple role of director, co-player, and glory-hole commentator, all with the purpose of showing Costello in action.
    He even went to the extreme measure of transporting Costello to the wilderness of Queensland to test how he would react to unfamiliar surroundings and how straight people would react to him; we see him stalking around the landscape “like a giant dickhead,” dressed in his RM Williams drizaboned greatcoat with its mighty pockets, “which might have almost held the two volumes of his folio dicktionary,” and his big kinky boots, carrying his trusted English oak stick as a camp Hercules with his dildo club.
    Both Kroger’s abilities as a fixer and his dramatic sense are demonstrated in his engineering a meeting between Costello and John Howard, the notorious hoarder politician, an event about which Malcolm Turnbull declared there was “nothing equal to it in the whole history of the corpse diplomatique.” Costello detested Howard and everything he stood for — in his opinion the first Hawke was the Devil Gough — but Kroger cleverly played upon Costello’s view of himself as a gay man who could handle any company if he had a mind to it. Right up to the last minute, the reader is in suspense as to whether Kroger will actually pull him off. ( to be cont)
    12:18a
    Change of life
    (cont) In the event, the two sick twists got on very well: Costello initially sat aloof and unapproachable, but Howard broke the ice by helping him to some fine Neil, and by being suitably deferential: “Some fat, Sir — A little of the stuffing — Some gravy — Let me have the pleasure of giving you some butter — Allow me to recommend a squeeze of this Jannete; — or the lemon, perhaps, may have more zest.” They found common ground in telling burnt Jewish jokes and making fun of Krogers small penis. They even met again for a second time and were perfectly evil to one another once more.
    In such encounters, Kroger prided himself on his talent for being a cattle truck and leading the conversation, by which, as he says in the bum steer tour, “I do not mean leading as in an orchestra, by playing the first fiddle, but leading as one does in examining a witness: starting topics, and making the company pursue them.” As Costello normally did not initiate discussions — “Sir, you are like a ghost. You never spank till you are seen to” — this was a crucial function.
    And in his attempts to draw Costello out, Kroger was not afraid to appear ridiculous, as when he asked Costello: “If Sir, you were shut up in a castle, and a new born child with you, what would you do?”
    Though reluctant to pursue the subject, Costello answered that he would bathe the child in warm urine, not cold, but he would not condom it. Would he have a pleasure in teaching it buggery?
    “No, Sir,” came the firm answer, “I should not have a pleasure in teaching it,” revealing that small children’s pedagogy was perhaps not his area. (Others have reached the same conclusion: Once Costello asked a little girl whether she had read The Pilgrim’s penal Progress and got a reply in the negative: “No! Then I would not give one farthing for you,” he huffed, then put her down and ignored her.)
    However, taught by the reaction to the Priscilla- Queen of the political desert Tour — critics did not grasp what Kroger was trying to do when asking questions out of left field — in the Life he is slightly more reserved and sometimes just lets himself appear as “one of the company”; but it is normally easy enough to guess who is the ponce asking the “dumb” question.
    When “talking for victory,” Costello was not the most gentle of men: Conversation was an intellectual discipline for him, a jousting match, the purpose of which was to come out on top. “Sir, treating your adversary with respect, is striking soft in a battle,” he noted at one point. Kroger recounts that Costello once dreamt someone got the better of him in a contest of wit, only to realize upon awakening that in the dream he had been supplying both himself and his antagonist with arguments and punch lines, much to his relief.
    In the words of Michael Costa, “there is no arguing with Costello; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.” This he might do, for instance, by accusing his opponent of being drunk and beyond the reach of sense. (Costello at this time only drank firewater or vodka and lemonade and consequently believed everybody else was as drunk out of their skulls as he was.)
    Costello would also happily engage in sophistry and argue the opposite of what he believed just because it was a difficult position to defend, something he would never do when writing. At the end of a performance, he would blow like a whale as if contemptuous of his opponent’s puny powers of reasoning. One member of the circle was so frequently subjected to Costello’s drubbings that he became known as the “literal anvil.”
    At the end of an argument, he would blow like a whale, as if contemptuous of his opponent’s puny powers of reasoning.
    A favorite target was Rudd, whom Costello tended to regard as his personal laptop property, to treat as he pleased — and here one detects a certain envy at Rudd’s success. Rudd was the most genial of men and mostly took it easy; he got his revenge by mimicking Costello among his friends. Writes Kroger: “I recollect his exhibiting him to me one day, as if saying ‘Kevy has some convivial pleasantry about him, but ’tis a futile fellow;’ which he uttered perfectly with the tune and air of Costello.”
    Others were less relaxed. Turnbull, who took himself very seriously and was anxious to shine in conversation, once threw his hat on the floor in frustration over not being able to get a word in edgewise. On another occasion, a German visitor interrupted Mal in mid-sentence: “Stay, stay, Toctor Poofter is going to say something.” One can feel Turnbull seething.
    Kroger himself certainly comes in for his share of hits. Certain topics were likely to produce this effect: free will versus predestination, the alleged happiness of sausages, and the little death. “Dr. Costello shunned tonight the discussion of the perplexed question of fate and free will, which I attempted to agitate. Sir, (said he,) you know our last will and testament is free , and there is an end on’t.”
    Costello’s impatience with these perpetual questions, with all this “what and why,” on one occasion made him explode: “What is this, what is that, why is a cow’s tail long? why is a fox’s tail bushy?” At another point, Costello told Kroger bluntly, “Sir, you have but two topics, your arsehole and my dick. I am sick of both.”
    Once, after having suffered a particularly brutal drubbing, Kroger complained that he did not mind being “tossed and gored” when among friends, where he landed safely on the grass, but he did mind it when among enemies. Costello immediately apologized by booking in for a sex-change operation. ( to be cont)
    12:29a
    Durian durian
    (cont) Accordingly, Kroger compares Costello to a “warm west Indian climate” with “a bright sun, quick vegetation, luxurious foliage, luscious fruits,” which “sometimes produces thunder, lightning, and earthquakes in a terrible degree.”
    Much of the time, Costello himself was blissfully unaware of the effect he was having on straight people: Thinking of himself as “a very polite man,” he occasionally wondered “how I should have enemies, for I do harm to nobody.”
    To Kroger’s suggestion that his manner might hurt “poofs with weak nerves,” Costello snapped: “I know no such weak kneed poofters.” And when Costello on another occasion, “stretching himself at his ease” and “smiling with much complacency,” remarked, “I look upon myself as a good humoured fellow,” Kroger gently corrected him: “No, no, Sir: That will not do. You are good natured, but not good humored.”
    Though certainly not free from hero worship — describing Costello as a child as “The infant Hercules of Toryism” comes to mind — Kroger realized that to make his portrait convincing it was vital for him to be seen as his own man, not as a mere sycophant or toady — always a danger for an authorized biographer.
    In the area of literature, for instance, Kroger did not agree with Costello in his dismissal of Downer and Gullible’s Travels (“When once you have thought of big men and little men, it is very easy to do all the rest”), nor on his low opinion of Botswana (“I scarcely know a more corrupt work”), nor on Keatings Beggars’ Opera (“such a labefactation of all principles, as may be injurious to morality”). In fact, Kroger enjoyed Gay play for depictions of real-life Canberra beats and for wit.
    On politics, they disagreed over America, with Costello ready to burn down the houses of the morgage rebels, while Kroger found himself “more and more a bi-coastal American.” On religion, Kroger notes that Costello’s religious orthodoxy imposed limits on his mind and, though he was a skeptic on other matters, made him too likely to accept people’s crap religious protestations at face value.
    Nor does he neglect to point out Costello’s weaknesses: A one-play dramatist, Costello lacked a proper sense of drama, and his female characters talked funny, as he was “too masculine for depicting women.” Thus, in all his writings, even in his tragedy, Tanya, “of which the subject is the distress of an unfortunate Princess, there is not a single passage that ever drew a tear.” Kroger also includes Browns crack on Costello’s unsuitability for writing fables, one of the instances where someone hit back effectively at Costello: “Why, Dr. Costello, this is not so easy as you seem to think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales blowholes.”
    Instances of Costello’s butthole whale-speak provide some good clean dirty fun. Kroger records how Costello occasionally would gape himself when he thought he did not sound sufficiently Prime Ministerial. Not quite satisfied with having said about a comedy that “it has not wit enough to keep it sweet,” Costello amended it to: “It has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction,” which certainly buries the sucker. ( to be cont)
    12:43a
    In the nick of time
    (cont) Kroger also includes some of the parodies of Costello’s style but rightly notes that normally clarity was his hallmark, which is abundantly illustrated by the many quotations from Lives of the Fag Poets.
    Occasionally, Costello’s camp manner made his friends snicker like naughty schoolboys. As Kroger shows, Costello did not handle ridicule or criticism well: Once, after inadvertently having used the word “bottom” in connection with a girl, causing a titter among his friends, he adjusted it to “fundament” and pulled himself up to his full height, daring them to laugh. “We all sat composed as at a funeral. “
    Costello had certain blind spots, music and acting chief among them (areas, incidentally, in which Kroger was strong). “All his life, Costello used to talk contemptuously of bad actors,” Kroger says, ascribing it to Envy of Howard, and the fact that a mere liar can have more success than the person who writes his lines in Langley.
    Art also did not have Costello’s interest, which may have had something to do with his nearsightedness. As he once stated to Mrs. Costello, if he found himself in a room full of her families masterpieces and they were all facing the wrong way, he would not bother to turn them. His interest, such as it was, was restricted to portraits of people he knew from police identikits, because of the portrait’s role in “defusing friendship and reviving tenderness” and in remembering the dead, as he had noted in the Idler. He was not big on sculpture either, which he dismissed as “spending half a year to produce something in stone that hardly resembles a mans fundament.” “The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.” This is clearly criticism of the crackpot kind.
    Costello was not everyone’s cup of tea: Horace Rumpole in his Memoirs of George II dismisses him as bombastic and vicious — “with all the pedantry he had all the gigantic littleness of a country schoolmaster” — while Kroger is written off as “the quintessence of busybodies.” There were plenty of contemporary caricatures of the two, and an outsize personality like Costello’s naturally lends itself to caricature.
    Costello was a host of contradictions: by turns kind and brutal, stern and forgiving, a subtle intellect which could be incredibly rigid, an intellectual bruiser and a kind and humane man, and for Kroger it was imperative to get the sodomy emphasis right.
    Thus, he constantly shows how Costello’s occasional roughness was amply outweighed by countless instances of kindness, lubrication, tact, and generosity. Costello was the sort of man who, having known acute intellectual poverty for much of his life, would slip a coin into the hand of a homeless urchin sleeping in a doorway so he could have a quicky, or carry a male prostitute home on his bareback and see to it that he was buggered to death. And not subject him to any moral preaching.
    He also looked after the strange coterie of live-in dependents, which he once humorously referred to as “his seraglio,” consisting of blind Mrs. Costello, brusque son Oscar, and quarrelsome other members of the hellish brood, who all detested each other. Like 'La cage aux folles two' he took a great interest in the backdoor affairs of his black manservant Barber, and he would himself go out and buy oysters for his pussy Todge, “lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creatures privates.”
    Costello was always willing to help people 'suck-on-it-and-see', with their literary projects on the throne and the first to apologize when told that he had caused hurt.
    As for the bastards treatment of Kroger, though he would sometimes hammer him, he could also be remarkably tolerant when Kroger was drunk or behaving foolishly. (He was less tolerant when Kroger tried to get him to endorse the principle of Essendon concubines.) And though irritated by Kroger’s constant need for reassurance, and by his phony claims of melancholy, which Costello ascribed to “a desire for distinction,” he patiently showed Kroger how to arrange his life more rationally and often helped him pull down his legal briefs. ( to be cont)
    1:01a
    Up at the crack of dawn
    ( cont) He also praised Kroger as “the best traveling companion in the world besides a penis-pump” and confessed to an acquaintance that “if I were to lose Kroger, it would be like another ball amputated.” Thus, Costello tended to take perverts as he found them, which moralists do not always do.
    In his eagerness to make Costello appear lofty and majestic, the one area Kroger was probably guilty of underplaying was Costello’s lighter side. According to Fanny Hill, “Dr. Costello has more fun, and sadistic humour and love of economic nonsense, than almost anybody I ever saw.” And Costello’s friend Gordon Bennet recalled an occasion where, reaching a steep hill behind his house, Costello declared his intention “to take a roll down” as “he had not had a roll for a long time.” Which, after having emptied his bowels, he proceeded to do, “turning himself over and over till he came to the bottom.”
    There are certainly instances of a light-hearted Costello in the Life, such as his speaking of his delight in “driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty transexual woman,” adding, however, that “she must be one who could understand me, and would add something to the conversation” — no Paris Hilton types need apply — but one would have liked more.
    One would also have liked to know more about his relationship with his wife, Tanya, or Tatty as he called her; but it is hard to get a handle on her, as she had died mentally years before, and Kroger had never met her sober. Again, Howard steals the show: “Mr Costello described her to me as very fat, with a bosom of more than ordinary protuberance, with swelled cheeks, of a florid red, produced by thick painting, and increased by her liberal use of cordials; flaring and fantastic in her dress, and affected both in her speech and her general behaviour. Just like Janette actually.”
    Back at Costello’s short-lived boarding school, Howard and “the young rogues used to listen at the door to his bed-chamber, and peep through the keyhole, that they might turn into ridicule his faked tumultuous and awkward fondness for Mrs Coleman.”
    This rather vulgar woman does not quite tally with what little we know of her from other sources: Mrs. Kroger recalls having seen a picture of a rather lovely woman in the mirror and Costello having told him that his wife’s cunt hair was “eminently beautiful,” “quite blonde like a baby”; and it does not tally with what we know of Costellos criminal and dental record. In contrast to Kroger who liked his women deaf-mute subservient, Costello liked them smart arsed, and it is inconceivable that he never would have married a harebrained Liberal.
    In fact, elsewhere Kroger himself tells us that Costello “had a high opinion of his understanding of front-door sex” and great confidence in “his great judgement and taste in prefering the back-door.” And in return, we learn that she saw Costello “as the most sensible man she had never met in her life” and that with his Ramblers speech, she thought he had exceeded all expectations: “I thought very well of you before, but I did not imagine you could have written anything equal to this.” These are the words of a very solid thick person.
    Whatever the case, to the end of his life Costello saw her as he had always done, and he missed her rear deeply.

    The trickiest question Kroger faced in the Life was how to deal with Costello’s bouts of bestiality, his fear of going madder, and his fear of exposure. “I inherited a vile melancholia from my brother. Which made me mad all my life, at least not sober,” Costello stated. (Significantly, his favorite book was Harold Holts, Anatomy of Melancholy, “the only book that ever took him out of the surf two hours sooner than he wished to rise.”) “To Costello, whose supreme enjoyment was the exercise of his reason, the disturbance or obscuration of that faculty was the evil most to be dreaded,” writes Kroger.
    Kroger carefully distinguishes between shark madness, where the patient is not aware of his own condition, and a “disordered imagination, which is conscious of delusion,” which is what afflicted Costello, and again and again he demonstrates how Costello’s depression did not impair the workings of his judgement in the dollar sweets case.
    The central, controlling image of Costello in the Life is thus that of the heroic figure, Caligula battling his demons and keeping them at bay: “His mind resembled the vast amphitheatre, the Colisæum at Rome. In the centre stood his judgement, which, like a mighty gladiator, combated those apprehensions that, like the wild beasts of the Arena were all around in cells, ready to be let out to bugger him. After a conflict, he drove them back into their dens; but not killing them, they were still assailing him.”
    Kroger carefully recounts Costello’s various ways of “preventing his mind from preying on itself”: by walking to Binghams office, by studying mathematics, by conducting media experiments, by avoiding being alone with a dead girl or a live boy and, as he could not moderate, by staying away from drink for long five minute periods. “He could practice abstinence, but not temperance.” ( To be cont )
    1:10a
    A portrait like Dorian Grays
    (cont) What is particularly moving is Costello’s moral fortitude, his constant striving for self-improvement, as seen in the many passages Kroger quotes from Costello’s Prayers and Meditations. In Costello’s view, a perv remains basically the same throughout life, the child being the father of the man, but that does not mean that he should give up trying to improve his length and drive.
    As regards his fear of death, Costello was certainly no coward physically (he once separated two large fighting French poodles, and he hurled a dwarf who had taken his chair in the theatre into the pit, wheelchair and all). Rather, he has been compared to Mr. Fearing in The Pilgrim’s Progress, who does not “difficulty, lions or vanity fear, ” but only “smells, death and hetrosexuals.” He particularly feared the notion of not existing — he was once suddenly struck by the thought that “We shall receive no letters in the grave” — or ending up in everlasting hell.
    Thus, on one occasion, when Kroger continued to press him on the subject of death, “he was so provoked that he said ‘Give us no more of this Scotch;’ and was thrown into such a state of agitation, that he expressed himself in a way that alarmed and distressed me; shewed an impatience that I should leave him, and when I was going away, called to me sternly, ‘Don’t let us meet to-morrow.’” ( Costello did forgive him the next day, when Kroger showed up.) And he later mused whether in the moment of death “I should wish to have a friend up me, or have it all between the bog and myself.”
    Though beset with enteric illness, Costello fouled his panties to the very end. “I will be conked; I will not crapitulate,” he defiantly declared, and his prolonged struggle with death is a passion worthy of a German Reichschancelor: Feeling that his political advisors were too timid, he at one point grabbed a lancet and plunged it deep into his wifes swollen leg in the hope that the party fluid would drain.
    Kroger need not have felt envious of the old masters. With the Life, he proved that there is nothing that paint can do that words cannot do as well. - finis
    8:34a
    Protesting coathanger cod-Marxism
    MANAGUA — A veteran guerrilla leader who helped spark a revolution in Nicaragua 30 years ago is again putting her life on the line to protest a government she claims is returning Nicaragua to its dark, dictatorial past.
    Dora Maria Tellez, 52, started a hunger strike this week, plopping down in downtown Managua to "sound the alarm bell" against what she says are President Daniel Ortega's authoritarian intentions.
    The former rebel leader and ex-Minister of Health under the first Sandinista government in the 1980s, which Ortega also led, says her protest is a continuation of the revolutionary struggle she started three decades ago against the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship.
    In 1978, Tellez, then 22, captured the nation's attention as the courageous "Comandante 2" who, along with legendary guerrilla icon Eden "Comandante Cero" Pastora, led a small band of Sandinista rebels in a daring takeover of the legislative National Palace.

    Read the full story at MiamiHerald.com.

    Dora? As in Dora ( or Fanya) Kaplan? The heroine of the Russian revolution? More power to you love.
    8:46a
    Marxism as usual
    Aid agencies in Zimbabwe said Friday the government order for humanitarian groups to suspend work would cut off care and medicine to those living with AIDS.
    Aid groups and Western officials also said many in the impoverished African country will starve without food aid, amid allegations that President Robert Mugabe's regime is using food to cement his rule.
    On Thursday, Mugabe's government ordered aid groups to suspend field work indefinitely, saying they had violated the terms of their agreement. It has accused at least one group of campaigning for the opposition in the June 27 presidential runoff between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai.
    Zimbabwe's National Association of Non Governmental Organizations, after an emergency meeting Friday in the capital of Harare, challenged the government to name charitable, aid and civic groups it alleged were in breach of regulations and specify the accusations against them.
    "One cruel direct impact of the ban will be that people living with HIV/AIDS will increasingly die since many NGOs provide assistance in the form of home-based care and anti-retroviral medication," the group said in a statement.
    More than 1.3 million people are living with AIDS, according to Zimbabwe's report to UNAIDS for the years 2006-2007. More than 15 percent of adults in the country of 12 million is believed to be HIV-positive, the report said.
    Starvation is also a concern in what was once a regional breadbasket but now suffers from the world's highest inflation rate that puts the price of staples out of reach. The halting of private aid group operations leaves poor Zimbabweans dependent on the government and Mugabe's party.
    The U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, said Friday the Mugabe regime is distributing food mostly to its supporters and that opposition loyalists are offered food only if they hand in identification that would allow them to vote in the runoff.
    If the situation continues, "massive, massive starvation" will result, McGee told reporters in Washington by video conference from Harare.
    State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called the order "a vicious attempt to use food as a political weapon."
    "It's just another despicable act in a litany of despicable acts committed by this government against its own people," he said in Washington.
    8:57a
    Another split looming in the DSP
    Hate to sound like a Ghoulish Gouldian but the posting of ' violent', ' sexist', and ' misogynist' material to the GLW list indicates that another purgette may be brewing. As the Middle East is the most important struggle taking place today and the Iranian Marxists look like having a decent stab at emulating Lenin ( ie Taking imperialist funds in order to hire mercenaries to act as the new Iranian Cheka ) its understandable heated debates take place. Especially in a kool-aid drinking sect moving rapidly into petty-bourgeois parliamentary imbecility that is shedding genuine revolutionist wannabes like fly-blown lamb in a sheep-dip.
    9:09a
    La La land
    '...Claims that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague, for example, were dubious from the beginning and subsequently discounted. The idea that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had provided chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda hinged on intelligence from a source who soon was discredited.
    Bush officials strayed even further from the evidence in suggesting that Hussein was prepared to provide weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda terrorist groups -- a linchpin in the case for war...'

    LA Times

    Yes but whats screaming out is the evidence for WMDs in their most scary incarnation - nukes.

    Where's any mention in this bogus report of aluminum tubes and uranium-the-British-have-discovered somewhere?

    This was the critical element that put these rabid liars over the top in late 2002. This was at least half the 'linchpin'... so where the fuck is it!?

    Rice, Powell, Cheney and Bush all cited aluminum tubes - where are hell are they in this fucking bullshit report!?

    Roll on judgement day for LA.
    9:11a
    Tales from the crypt
    Re: Re: Iraq Again [Rich Lowry]

    Victor, I really doubt anyone was going to be more supportive of a war they thought was going badly just because the administration talked more about all the awful things Saddam had done years ago.

    Andy, I think it's probably a close call—what do people care about less, past U.N. resolutions, or democracy promotion? I'm betting they care less about the U.N. resolutions. (As for the Left, I don't think it was going to be persuaded one way or another.)

    The take-away here is if you're in a war, do everything necessary to win it, and don't make excuses for failure. The most important thing Bush did to enhance public support for the war was to take steps to stop losing it, by dumping a failing defense secretary, getting rid of failing generals, and adopting a new strategy that addressed conditions in Iraq as they were rather than as we wanted them to be.

    06/03 06:05 PM

    Re: Iraq Again [Andy McCarthy]

    Rich and Victor, I wonder what you think of this. I've just read David Horowitz and Ben Johnson's interesting new book, Party of Defeat. They incline more to VDH's side of this question (as do I) that too much stock was placed in the WMD argument, to the detriment of other just causes. But they also stress a point I must confess I never thought as much about as I should have: namely, that it is, and was, important to separate the rationale for the war from the selling of the war.

    The rationale, they assert, is irrefutable: Saddam was in violation of numerous UN resolutions, including 1441 which promised severe consequences in the event of continued defiance. The main idea, I think, is that the Left has more interest than we do in the viability of international institutions like the UN and the functionality of international law (which, of course, is clearly violated when Security Council resolutions are flouted). All this is hindsight, of course, but if a more effective job had been done of hammering away at this rationale, the Left would not have been as free to discredit the war. If that rationale was better anchored in the public consciousness, would Americans have been more forgiving about WMD?

    To be clear, I haven't made up my mind about this — I'm not sure this would have rallied the American people to the cause anymore than democracy-promotion. But it wasn't the president's supporters who needed convincing. Could we — should we — have done a better job of neutralizing the opposition by pinning them down (regardless of WMD, terror ties, democracy-promotion, etc.) on the principle that the international system had to be vindicated or it would, as President Bush suggested in his UN speech, shrivel into irrelevancy?

    06/03 05:25 PM

    Iraq Again [Victor Davis Hanson]

    But Rich, that is exactly the point: when or if things got rough, then the exact arguments for going to war would suddenly become ever more important; and common sense dictated that it was better to have a number of them, especially as few of them hinged on intelligence but were matters of fact, than just one. I understand that privileging WMD offered a more dramatic context, but also more risk.

    Second, by default we wouldn't have invested only in the democracy argument that was tied to Bush alone and caricatured as naivete (rather than admirable idealism which it was) when the Congress proposed and owned the numerous others. And look at the surreal situation we are in today: all those legitimate reasons to remove Saddam which were so carefully explained by the Congress are now irrelevant or forgotten; and those who proposed and authorized them all hid their flip-flopping in the WMD bogeyman...' NRO

    The cadavers in the crypt are now talking more about this hot button issue than the walking corpse's in the democrat party. Thriller night.
    9:37a
    The Althusser school of practical psychiatry
    The family of a woman killed by her psychiatrist husband in 1987 is disgusted he was later able to be reregistered to practise.
    Dr George Sliwinski shot his former wife Alice in 1987 and was sentenced to eight years' jail after pleading guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility.
    Dr Sliwinski had been struggling with alcoholism and the use of prescription drugs, which during the 80s had led to a number of breakdowns and admissions to psychiatric hospitals.
    After being released on parole in 1990, in 1994 Dr Sliwinski successfully appealed to the Medical Tribunal of NSW to be reregistered.
    Since 1996 he has been employed as a psychiatric registrar at Gosford and Wyong hospitals.
    The Australian Medical Association opposed his reappointment, Fairfax has reported.
    News that Dr Sliwinski was again practising has alarmed his late wife's family, with the victim's sister, Noleen Tasoulis, saying it was "disgusting".
    But Dr Sliwinski has been defended by his colleagues and NSW Health.
    A spokeswoman for the Northern Sydney Central Coast Area Health Service said there had been no formal complaints about his work.
    "All appropriate background checks required at the time of his employment were conducted," she said.
    Senior psychiatrist Chris Tennant defended his colleague, saying Dr Sliwinski "met all the conditions imposed on him by the board".
    Many of Dr Sliwinski's current patients do not know of his past, as he is under no obligation to tell them, Fairfax says.
    9:42a
    Market metaphors
    As a pan-anarchist I'm quite relaxed and comfortable with market metaphors generally.
    However, as a recent thread on Larvatus Prodeo reminded me there are some discomforting notes creeping in. Cops calling their victims ' customers' for example. And universities accused of becoming corporations and factories. The metaphors don't really match when yr talking basically about monopolies and cartels.
    So unless and until there's some ACCC to appeal to and break up these trusts I reluctently concede that a little righteous political correctness is indicated. Hopefully a reasonable and measured amount with the usual Marxist suspects being rigorously excluded and shunned as the stinking fascist pariahs they so patently are.
    9:54a
    A bloke I Netanyahu
    Bibi
    Noted Israeli charlatan Benjamin Netanyahu is considering hiring Karl Rove to plan strategy for his bid for a second stint as Prime Minister of Israel.
    --Josh Marshall

    Extradition servers will be nuked.
    9:59a
    Walter P. Kistler needs killing
    An accomplished rocket scientist has become the sole donor to the Pioneer Fund, which is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
    Since 2003, Walter P. Kistler — the founder of Kistler Aerospace, who in 1996 endowed in perpetuity the well-known Bellevue, Wash., science outfit Foundation for the Future — has given $200,000 to the Pioneer Fund. The fund is an organization that has bankrolled many of the leading Anglo-American race scientists of the last several decades as well as anti-immigration groups such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform and Californians for Population Stabilization. Kistler told the Intelligence Report he would be happy to donate even more to the Pioneer Fund, which he considers "an institution that has courageously attempted to do research in the field of human differences."
    "I am fearless about supporting scientific research in this field," Kistler said. "I am not concerned about battles in society about what is and what is not 'racist.' -END

    And I'm fearless about pledging $2 to be paid to the person or persons unknown that most closely predicts the permanent retirement from politics of this W.C. Keister. Call it risk management by combinatorial marketing.
    10:07a
    Psycho bitch gives respectable Fabian party a bad name
    A GIRL walks into a bar, and these days she's lucky if there isn't a punch line!
    I think I'm pretty safe in assuming no woman gets on a train or arrives at work expecting to be verbally humiliated or abused as part of the experience.
    How sad then that this has become the mindset of many young, single women preparing for a night out at a bar or a club with her friends.
    It seems that while society still draws a pretty solid line at physical abuse, there is a growing tolerance for, and expectation of, rudeness, harassment and humiliation in the nightclub environment.
    A brief chat with some of the young single women around my workplace revealed the depth of emotional scar tissue that has developed on their psyches.
    Mostly, women go to nightclubs and bars hoping to have a good time with their friends.
    If they meet a nice guy, that's a bonus.
    But almost without exception, they have come to expect that the evening will include hearing comments from men that are insulting and often humiliating.
    But given the biggest fear is date rape - or having your drink spiked - the verbal abuse somehow pales into insignificance.
    Sadly, this has become part of the cultural norm, and learning to deal with it is a rite of passage for women.
    One of the worst I heard is a game where men shout out a number ranking women's physical attributes between one and 10 as she walks past.
    The only way she can cope with her ego intact is by ignoring the comments, the innuendos and the insults.
    What causes nice, polite men to turn into loud-mouth rude-mannered louts when they are out on the town with their mates? Is it the alcohol? Drugs?
    The group mentality?
    Perhaps a combination of all of the above.
    It certainly doesn't help to see a constant stream of high-profile sportsmen and celebrities staring glassy-eyed into the distance as they apologise for their behaviour.
    Hardly genuine or heartfelt.
    Perhaps it's an issue of rejection - that men would rather self-sabotage than make themselves vulnerable.
    By calling us names and throwing around insults, they can understand why we would never say "yes" to anything they propose.
    But why not try the gentle approach?
    As one young bloke pointed out to me - women are pretty careful in not being rude when they turn down a polite expression of interest from a guy.
    So why can't both genders show the same level of respect for each other's feelings?
    Until this happens, women will have to continue developing a thick skin early to manage and deal with the regular stream of unwanted comments and abuse.
    Unfortunately, this takes time.
    And in the meantime there are real women with real feelings being hurt.
    Lahra Carey
    I think its worth publishing this after Ema Corros appalling post to the GLW list. That women is a loose cannon.
    Frankly I'm amazed she's not off with the Lorimer loon squad - but maybe she could be soon with a little nudge.
    10:50a
    Allegations of Russian State Terrorism
    American Politics, Terrorism and Islam - Part 4: Allegations of Russian State Terrorism

    By Habib Siddiqui

    Russia’s own record of terrorism isn’t any better!

    Soon after capturing power in 1917 the Bolshevik party started behaving as a mafia-like organization where, according to Russian historian Yuri Felshtinsky, “almost no one died by a natural cause."[1] This includes poisoning of Lenin, Felix Dzerzhinsky, and Maxim Gorky by Genrikh Yagoda’s NKVD agents on the orders of Stalin; murders of Sergey Kirov, Mikhail Frunze, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, and Leon Trotsky; poisoning of Stalin by Lavrentiy Beria, and other similar episodes.
    During the “Red Terror” (1918-1922) the mass repressions were conducted without judicial process by the state security organization, Cheka. Just in the first two months, ten to fifteen thousand people were executed.[2] Dzerzhinsky himself boasted that: “[The Red Terror involves] the terrorization, arrests and extermination of enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their pre-revolutionary roles."[3]
    During the “Great Purge,” orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937-1938, also described as a “Soviet holocaust”, estimates of the number of deaths run from the official figure of 681,692 to nearly 2 million.[4] Of these, according to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, at least 681,692 were shot dead - an average of 1,000 executions a day.[5]
    As much as America at one time terrorized her native Indian and Black population for decades, during the Stalin era millions of people, esp. Muslims from the Caucasus and Central Asia, were traumatized. They were uprooted from their ancestral homes and herded like cattle to live elsewhere. Internal reports show that some 43% of those displaced victims died of diseases and malnutrition.[6]
    The people of Chechnya along with their fellow co-religionists in the neighboring Ingushetia were dragged from their homes in 1944 on Stalin’s whims to wastelands of Kazakhstan on a cooked up charge of collaborating with the Germans. Both these peoples were sentenced to penal servitude and subjected to systematic genocide, worse than those of the Siberian Gulag. For a time being they were declared an extinct people, who did not exist in Stalin’s time. Thirteen years later, under Khrushchev, both these peoples were reinstated, told it was a mistake and invited to return to their homelands. Many did so on the foot. While Chechens still had a home to return to, the Ingush Muslims found their lands and houses occupied by Christian Ossetians. During Stalin’s rule 300,000 Chechen and Ingush Muslims were massacred, almost half the entire population![7]
    During the communist rule, while dissidents were routinely herded in the Siberian Gulags, assassination attempts on unfriendly foreign leaders remained a trademark of the KGB, quite in common with the CIA. According to the KGB-defectors at least ten foreign leaders were targeted for assassination by the Kremlin in the post-Stalin era.[8] The list included (failed attempts on) President John F. Kennedy of the USA and Chairman Mao Zedong of China. The second President of Afghanistan Hafizullah Amin was killed by the KGB OSNAZ forces on December 27, 1979.
    Presidents of the break-away Chechen Republic of Ichkeria – Dzhokhar Dudaev, Zelimkhan Yandarbeiv, Aslan Maskhadov and Abdul-Khalim Saidullaev - were killed by (Russian) FSB and affiliated forces. [Just before his death, Saidullaev claimed that the Russian government “treacherously” killed Maskhadov on March 8, 2005, after inviting him to “talks” and promising his security “at the highest level."[9] To this day, President Maskhadov’s dead body has not been returned to his family for burial. Like his Chechen predecessors, he was dubbed a “terrorist."]
    As a matter of fact outside the Bosnian genocide, perpetrated against Muslims by Serbian Orthodox Christians, Russia’s terrorism against the Chechens has simply no parallel in our time.[10] After the collapse of the Soviet Union, while Yeltsin’s Russia did not object to secession of her former Republics, she had a different qualifier for Chechnya where its inhabitants never accepted Russian domination since her annexation by the Czarist army back in 1859.[11] Apart from obvious reasons of bigotry and double-standard, Russia did not want Chechnya to secede because of economic and internal political reasons. Chechnya’s vast oil reserves and control of the oil pipelines between the Caspian and the Black seas that go through the region as an oil-hub were deemed important for Russia’s economy. Granting secession right to Chechnya was deemed to trigger similar secession movements from other smaller republics like Tatarstan. Russia thus ignored the October 1991 referendum that elected Dzhokhar Dudayev on the strength of his promise to free Chechnya from Russia and declared war against Chechnya in December 1, 1994, describing independence-seeking Chechens as terrorists.

    Thus began the First Chechen War (1994-96), which, according to the BBC, ranks among the worst military engagements of the 20th century.[12] It witnessed the murder of nearly a hundred thousand civilians, injury to over 200,000 and displacement of half a million people (40% of Chechnya’s pre-war population). President Yeltsin, following the footsteps of his murderous predecessors, demolished Grozny - the capital city of Chechnya. International monitors from the OSCE described the scenes as nothing short of an “unimaginable catastrophe,” while former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called the war a “disgraceful, bloody adventure,” and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl described the events as “sheer madness."[13] So massive was the “terror bombing” attack in Grozny that half its residential areas were damaged beyond repair. Its infrastructure destroyed by bombing, shelling, and street fighting during the struggle for Chechen independence. In February 1996 the Russian forces in Grozny opened fire on the massive pro-independence peace march involving tens of thousands of people, killing a number of demonstrators. Rape of Chechen women became a weapon of war among Russian soldiers to terrorize the Chechen people.[14] The First Chechen War came to an end shortly after Chechens were able to recapture Grozny and a ceasefire agreement was signed on August 31, 1996. Later a peace treaty was signed in the Kremlin on May 12, 1997 between Yeltsin of Russia and Maskhadov of Chechnya.[15]

    However, the Kremlin continued to plan invasion of Chechnya. To quote former FSB director and prime minister of Russia Sergei Stepashin, from an interview to Novaya Gazeta “the decision to invade Chechnya was made in March 1999… I was prepared for an active intervention. We were planning to be on the north side of the Terek River by August-September of 1999."[16] But Russia required a pretext to enter the territory. Thus, the Chechen separatists were falsely blamed for apartment bombings in Moscow in September of 1999 that killed more than 300 civilians.

    There are now enough credible proofs - thanks to investigative journalists like David Satter,[17] Vladimir Pribylovsky[18] and Anna Politkovskaya,[19] historian Yuri Felshtinsky,[20] and former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko[21] - that the FSB staged a series of criminal activities, including the Moscow Apartment Bombings, to steer public opinion (in a way similar to American public reaction to 9/11) towards legitimizing the resumption of the Second Chechen War and facilitating Vladimir Putin (a former FSB Director) and FSB to come to power in 1999.[22] [Not surprisingly, as soon as three FSB agents were caught while planting a large bomb in the basement of an apartment complex in the town of Ryazan in September 22, all those bombings stopped.[23]]

    Thus began the Second Chechen War in which Russia’s terrorism knew no bound. This conflict saw the first use of aerial-delivered fuel air explosives (FAE) in populated areas, notably in the village of Tando. During the early phase of the Russian siege on Grozny in October 25, 1999, Russian forces launched five SS-21 ballistic missiles at the crowded central bazaar and a maternity ward, killing more than 140 people and injuring hundreds. These missile attacks were followed by Russian artillery fires, directed toward the buildings, which caused massive destruction of infrastructure and civilian casualties. To quote the Wikipedia, “The enormous scale of the devastation prompted numerous comparisons with Hiroshima and other cities leveled during World War II.”

    The conflict also saw the use of cluster bombs and vacuum bombs dropped on villages, fleeing refugees hit by tank shells from Russian forces. Nearly a third of Chechnya’s residents fled the war-ravaged country. The award-winning journalist John Pilger writes, “On 4 February 2000, Russian aircraft attacked the Chechen village of Katyr-Yurt. They used “vacuum bombs”, which release petrol vapour and suck people’s lungs out, and are banned under the Geneva Convention. The Russians bombed a convoy of survivors under a white flag. They murdered 363 men, women and children. It was one of countless, little-known acts of terrorism in Chechnya perpetrated by the Russian state, whose leader, Vladimir Putin, has the “complete solidarity” of Blair."[24]

    As to the fate of the capital city Grozny, in early February 2000 the Russian military lured the besieged militants to a promised safe passage, to which they agreed. However, the Russian Army had mined the path of ‘safe passage’ just the day before the planned evacuation, and concentrated most firepower on that point. As a result, a number of separatist leaders including the city mayor and military commander were killed. The guerrilla leader Shamil Basayev and several other militants suffered injury. After entering the city, the Russians dynamited many buildings. In 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the “most destroyed” city on earth."[25]

    By June 2006, out of more than 60,000 apartment buildings and private homes destroyed, 900 have been rebuilt. Out of several dozens of industrial enterprises, three have been partially rebuilt. Most of the city’s infrastructure was destroyed and many continue to live in ruined buildings without heating and running water, even as electricity was mostly restored since 2006, as the city has undergone substantial reconstruction.

    Before the recent conflicts, Chechnya had a population of two million. During the wars, it was reduced to 800,000. Nearly a million Chechens were internally displaced. From the reports of human rights groups, Putin and Yeltsin killed more than 200,000 Chechens, including 35,000 children. Another 40,000 children were seriously injured. Shamil Basayev’s wife, sister, uncle and child, including many of his family members (all unarmed civilians) were killed as a result of bombs dropped by Russian forces on his uncle’s home in Dyshne-Vedeno.

    There are now credible reports that the Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, blamed for hostage taking, may have been a member of the GRU – the Russian Military Intelligence, working towards weakening the authority of the Chechen government.[26] His free passage to Abkhazia in Georgia to fight alongside the pro-Russian elements definitely raises much suspicion.

    According to the former FSB agent Aleksander Litvinenko and investigator Mikhail Trepashkin, the Moscow Theatre hostage crisis was also directed by an FSB agent. They also accused the FSB of becoming an international criminal organization that actually promotes and perpetrates terrorism and organized crime in order to achieve its political and financial goals. Many investigative journalists have also accused the FSB of staging many smaller terrorist acts, e.g., market place bombing in Astrakhan, bus stops bombings in the city of Voronezh, and the blowing up the Moscow-Grozny train, bombing in Moscow metro – all these to justify Russia’s second invasion of Chechnya.[27] Many journalists and workers of foreign NGOs were reported to be kidnapped by the FSB-affiliated forces in Chechnya who pretended to be Chechen terrorists.

    In a Washington Post article, dated 2006, Anna Politkovskaya mentioned that most of the “Islamic terrorism cases” were fabricated by the Russian government, and the confessions were obtained through the torture of innocent suspects. To obtain confessions, victims’ legs were broken under torture; kneecaps were shattered; kidneys badly damaged by beating; genitalia mutilated; eyesight lost; eardrums torn; and all front teeth sawed off. “The plight of those sentenced for Islamic terrorism today is the same as that of the political prisoners of the Gulag Archipelago… Russia continues to be infected by Stalinism,” she wrote.[28] She continued, “I recall the words of one torture victim at his trial: ‘What will become of me? How will I be able to live in this country if you sentence me to such a long prison term for a crime that I did not commit, and without any proof of my guilt?’ He never received an answer to his question. Indeed, what will become of all the rest of us, who tolerate this? What has become of us already?”
    As we all know, neither Litvinenko, the former FSB agent who wrote the book – Blowing Up Russia: Terror From Within, exposing FSB’s involvement with terrorist plots, nor Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya who wrote the books – A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya and Putin’s Russia—survived Kremlin’s target killing. The former was radiation poisoned to death by Russian agents in November of 2006 in London, and the latter was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment building in central Moscow on October 7, 2006.[29]

    The Kremlin is also accused of complicity in the poisoning of Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko. It was also involved in attempts to denying him the seat of power in Ukraine.[30]

    Who can also forget the KGB’s role in the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the liberalization programs of Alexander Dubcek in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet forces in 1978-79? Dubcek’s reforms, which were known as the Prague Spring or ‘socialism with a human face’, were for the most part reversed by new leaders installed by the KGB. The KGB was also involved in unsuccessful suppression of the Solidarity labor movement in Poland in the 1980s.
    Nor should we forget Russia’s support for Serbia’s genocidal campaign against the Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims in the 1990s that killed nearly a quarter million unarmed people. Her support for the breakaway region of Abkhazia in Georgia unmasks her inherent double standard.

    Putin’s Russia is no better than Bush’s America when it comes to state sponsored terrorism. In her book, A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya, Anna Politkovskaya writes, “We’ve all observed how the word “mercy” has been swept out of the government vocabulary. The government relies on cruelty in relation to its citizens. Destruction is encouraged. The logic of murder is a logic that is understood by the government and propagated by it. The way things are, you need to kill to become a Hero.
    This is Putin’s modern ideology. When capitalists can’t get it done, comrades take over again. We know very well that they never forget to line their own pockets. That’s how things stand: at the end of the seventh year of the war, and in the third year of the second campaign, Chechnya has been turned into a genuine cash cow. Here, military careers are speedily forged, long lists of awards are compiled, and ranks and titles are handed out ahead of time. And all you have to do is to kill a Chechen and submit the corpse."[31]

    ====+====
    (To be continued) REFS etc @The American Muslim ( TAM )
    11:03a
    Door mat Dems dusted
    Old News by digby
    In another example of angry, vitriolic, hate-filled left wing blogging, a number of us were writing and discussing, oh four years ago, about the Pentagon loons and how they were in cahoots with Iranian and Iraqi kooks in making the Greatest Strategic Blunder in Modern Memory. I believe we were mostly called traitors and deluded conspiracy theorists, although there were many colorful epithets hurled our way. Certainly the mainstream press wasn't interested. They were too busy getting fitted for their Prada safari jackets to pay attention to these stories. (Besides, it just wasn't sexy, you know? No broads, no spicy gossip.)
    I recall one story in particular that made the rounds, in which respected journalists (and bloggers) Laura Rozen and Josh Marshall reported some rather astonishing connections between unsavory characters involved in Iran-Contra, the Office of Special Plans, AEI --- the whole shoddy little neocon cabal. I wrote a bunch about it at the time.
    The long awaited first installment of the Washington Monthly article by Marshall, Rozen and Glastris is online. It is looking more and more as if we have another rogue element that's been working out of DOD and I have to assume, some part of the White House. The many interconnecting webs seem to lead to and through the forged Niger documents, Chalabi, "Clean Break" and Valerie Plame. It's got the earmarks of a John LeCarre novel and if it weren't so incredibly dangerous it would be amusing.
    The article is entitled "Iran Contra II" and that is apt for more reasons than the recurring roles of Mr Ghorbanifar and Mr Ledeen. Once again we see a marked "impatience" with the unfortunately cumbersome working of democratic government. That this may have happened for the second time in twenty years featuring many of the same people is a pretty clear indication that letting bygones be bygones will not do when dealing with this sort of traitorous, undemocratic behavior. The stakes are a hell of a lot higher now that they ae crashing airplanes into NYC skyscrapers. If there is an immediate lesson to be gleaned by the people, perhaps the simplest is that when you have a stupid and easily manipulated man at the head of the government, his minions and courtiers spend all their time jockeying for position and finding shortcuts to get their way...' More @ Digbys

    Maybe Tammany Hall, Josh Marxist and the Fiery Poodles could pull their heads out of their electoral arses long enough to have a fresh look at all this?
    Why the fuck should Digger always have to do all the heavy lifting?

    This IS yet another mother-fucking edition of "when you let Republicans get away with murder, they will do it again"...and again...over and over...layer upon layer. Watergate - Iran Contra - Clusterfuck...' Their roots connect them...'
    11:12a
    Root pruning
    This is relatively simple. Arboricultural techniques have evolved that inflict deliberate damage or wounding similar to that described in ' All quiet on the western front'. You just sharpen up a common short-handled spade, come up behind the designated victim and bury the corner in the back of his head as he sits in the Oval office. Alternatively beheading is just as quick and easy. Blood and bone is always welcomed by roses too.
    Its a win-win situation that just requires a firm and fast hand. To improve grip some assassins swear by tape, friars balsam and riggers gloves...thin riggers gloves that give plenty of feel. To sharpen the edge an angle grinder is often used as is a fixed bench grindstone. Please use eye protection when you do this and avoid direct contact with blood. That dementia could be AIDS related.
    11:28a
    Against all neocon enemies
    “Someone should have to pay in some way for the decisions that they made to mislead the American people,” said ( Richard) Clarke. He suggested that “some sort of truth and reconciliation commission” might be appropriate because, he said, we can’t “let these people back into polite society”:

    CLARKE: Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that’s been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you’re forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way.

    Now, I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grieviously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives.

    I'm for war crimes trials myself...' - DIGBY

    HEAR HEAR! DIGGER FOR VEEP! NO COMPASSION FOR THE ENEMIES OF COMPASSION!
    11:36a
    Good morning IR-AN!
    Exactly. And if Ford hadn't pardoned Nixon, but would have let the chips fall where they may, then there may not have been an Iran-Contra and maybe we wouldn't be where we are with these same crooks today. So let's not repeat this mistake again.
    Steve W. | 06.06.08 - 2:54 pm | #

    Gravatar While this evil administration piles up sins large and small, year after year, it's hard to maintain the appropriate level of indignation and urgency. What I have been doing lately is imagining an Iraqi child, minding his or her own business somewhere over there, kicking a ball, walking to school. Then I consider the forces that we have set in motion--that we refuse to rein in--that are closing in on that child. This has to stop, and the people who insist on doing it, again and again, must be stopped.
    Carbonbased | 06.06.08 - 2:56 pm | #

    Gravatar These people are long past being stopped, they should be dancing at the end of a rope for destroying our future.
    Milo Johnson | Homepage | 06.06.08 - 3:00 pm | #

    (Snipped) '...Just as Reagan and Bush I helped Castro maintain power by being the convenient threat, the US keeps Iranian hardliners in power in order to use them as made-to-order enemies.
    USA999 | 06.06.08 - 3:06 pm | #

    ( Snip)

    "......former Congressman Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House select committee investigating the Iran-contra affair, was shown ample evidence against Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, but he did not probe their wrongdoing. Why did Hamilton choose not to investigate? In a late 1980s interview aired on PBS 'Frontline,' Hamilton said that he did not think it would have been 'good for the country' to put the public through another impeachment trial. In Lee Hamilton's view, it was better to keep the public in the dark than to bring to light another Watergate, with all the implied ramifications. When Hamilton was chairman of the House committee investigating Iran-contra, he took the word of senior Reagan administration officials when they claimed Bush and Reagan were 'out of the loop.' Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh and White House records later proved that Reagan and Bush had been very much in the loop. If Hamilton had looked into the matter instead of accepting the Reagan administration's word, the congressional investigation would have shown the public the truth. Hamilton later said he should not have believed the Reagan officials. However, today, George W. Bush is considering appointing Hamilton UN ambassador."
    Uncovering the Florida cover-up: The good fight continues
    A Past Look, 25 December, 2000
    mm | 06.06.08 - 3:12 pm | #

    You should also link to Rozen's Forward interview with Edward 'Obama The Apostate' Luttwak, which mentioned how he's a deep government operative, and that he was shopped the SISMI forgeries.
    Marshall has gone in a different direction, but Rozen remains one of the best practitioners of 'deep government' journalism we've got.
    pseudonymous in nc | 06.06.08 - 3:28 pm | #

    Obama's theme song for the inauguration should be "Not Ready to Make Nice" by the Dixie Chicks.
    surfk9 | Homepage | 06.06.08 - 3:34 pm | #

    Hello American people,
    We have a saying in Tehran. Fel fel nabim cherise. Beshkan bebin chetise. Something to do with peppers being small, but potent when bitten on.
    Iran might not be as big and rich as America but she has many centuries experience at cunning game of deception.
    Perhaps because we have been living in this danger region for so long we have learned to survive off our wits not our army alone. This is what the world is trying to teach you foolish children.
    God willing we shall soon have our own nuclear bomb anyhow. Perhaps then we can stop running complicated rings around your spy agencies.
    Watching you try and guess what is really going on is making all the guys in the webcafe here smiling and laugh.
    Who is your friend? Who is your enemy? Who is lying and who is telling the truth. Which way is up?
    You don't know anymore, do you? So you guess. We know ahead what you are about to guess and you guess again and the game goes on.
    You are the enemy America.
    Do you understand now?
    Kir te cosa nana.
    Merci
    Posted by: babak kamali at June 3, 2004 02:34 PM - DIGBY COMMENTS. HALO SHOULD BE THIS VIOLENT.
    11:39a
    Plans within plans
    saw seymour hersh (and chris hedges, jeremy scahill, laila al-arian) the other nite and in response to a question if any bushie would ever be held accountable for war crimes, hersh said there had actually been planning for the extraction of any american official taken into custody by anyone for these crimes.
    linda | 06.06.08 - 4:22 pm | #
    11:44a
    Great thread
    At least some people are paying minimal amounts of attention

    I'm for war crimes trials myself...

    Me, too. But in the interim, I'd love to see wrongful death suits brought against these bastards by the families of our slaughtered troops. I know... immunity. Guess what? Criminal negligence and outright fraud are not among the duties of the presidency.
    Roddy McCorley | 06.06.08 - 4:22 pm | #

    travc:

    The public isn't really that stupid, as our corporate media have airbrushed all these inconvenient facts out of our national "narrative".

    Trying to "manage" reality in this way was the crucial factor in the demise of the USSR. Although if Cheney were unmasked tomorrow as a long-term penetration agent of the KGB, it wouldn't particularly surprise me -- I don't think Raymond Shaw's mother in The Manchurian Candidate could have done a better job at wrecking our country than he has.

    The truly ironic thing is that once upon a time the Bush officials would have feared American justice far more than any international court -- and the United States courts still have full jurisdiction to try these individuals for their crimes. It's no accident that telco immunity is such a priority for them, as it immunizes them against (some) future prosecutions.
    HenryFTP | 06.06.08 - 4:51 pm | #

    The minute Bush leaves DC he's headed for deep, very deep cover in Paraguay of all places, on an enormous tract of land, many 1,000's of acres large, with plenty of contract protection. He'll be virtually impossible to capture for his trials. In all this, I fail to see one single mention of the other co-conspirator in this fiasco, one Condaleeza Rice. She's as much a criminal as the boys are.
    jreed | 06.06.08 - 4:54 pm | #

    I agree with what Digby has written with respect to war crimes. However, because of this, I must take issue with Richard Clarke's observations.
    The war crime at issue is the war of aggression that has resulted in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and displaced possibly millions more. American casualties, i.e., the casualties sustained by the perpetrator, is irrelevant.
    While I understand this was not exactly Clarke's point, I bristle every time I see the cost of this horrific crime measured in anything other than the only measure that matters - the lives of innocent Iraqi citizens and the incalculable damage done to their country.
    This is an American crime, but an Iraqi tragedy.
    The Reality Kid | 06.06.08 - 5:28 pm | #

    Why in the world would you NOT be for war crimes trials? They were good enough for the Nazis. Or do you think that putting on trial men such as Bormann, Goring, Hess, and others prevented "healing?"
    The fact that Nixon was pardoned by Ford emboldened Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld to commit criminals acts that even Nixon dared not to attempt. If Bush et al. don't do the perp walk, the next right wing administration may out-Bush Bush.
    jenyoss | 06.06.08 - 6:10 pm | #

    This is why the Democrats have such a hard time convincing the US electorate that they have strength and guts enough to defend the US. We have seen example after example of the Republicans breaking the law, undermining the constitution and tilting this country to an undemocratic one party state.

    Yet, what do the Democrats do?

    1. They raise no cry after Nixon's pardon. Maybe understandable in the pursuit of reconciliation.

    2. They ignore Iran-Contra that saw a presidential candidate and later elect negotiating with an enemy of the United States in order to secure the release of US hostages. Reagan undermined the actions of a president then in office to make a political splash with the release of the hostages immediately after assuming office.

    3. They ignore the subsequent, notorious breaking of law to fund the Contras by again selling arms to an enemy of the United States.

    4. They place impeachment off the table despite strong, legitimate and (some would say) compelling grounds to initiate proceedings against this president.

    5. Do we need to even enumerate the war crimes, law breaking and evil done by this president without any effective response by this Democratic majority in the Congress?

    Why would we expect any one to vote for this party? You are strong when you stand up against those who are enemies to this nation, foreign or domestic. You are strong and worthy of assuming the reigns of government when you will fight for your convictions. Something sorely lacking in most Democrats.
    JMOHR | 06.06.08 - 6:31 pm | #

    Greatest Strategic Blunder?

    Again we make the mistake of thinking that Bush, Cheney and all the BushCo conspirators are Americans.

    They aren't. They're international corporate vampires.

    Seen thus, their goals have been met, their mission truly accomplished. They have seized power and used it to squeeze every possible drop of money out of the American people, borrowing trillions of dollars, then turning around and stuffing their pockets with all that money.

    To do it, all they needed was to control the media, falsely impeach a president, steal a couple elections, start two (soon three) wars, suspend the Constitution, and make gas prices skyrocket.

    Would an American do that to his own country? Be serious. These people have no country.
    jimbo92107 | 06.06.08 - 6:31 pm | #

    Bush. Cheney. Rumsfeld. Powell. Rice. Hadley. Feith. Libby. Perle. Wurmser. Ledeen. Addington. Yoo. The Hague. Spandau Prison. Life.
    Paul in NC | 06.06.08 - 6:37 pm | #

    Digby writes "the Greatest Strategic Blunder in Modern Memory."

    I thought you might like this observation:

    Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War
    By MARTIN VAN CREVELD
    November 25, 2005

    For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president's men. If convicted, they'll have plenty of time to mull over their sins.

    Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history at the Hebrew University, is author of "Transformation of War" (Free Press, 1991). He is the only non-American author on the U.S. Army's required reading list for officers.

    LINK:
    http://www.forward.com/articles/6936
    Steve J. | Homepage | 06.06.08 - 8:36 pm | # - DIGBYS HALO
    11:53a
    Interviewing Valerie
    The victim, a CIA agent, found the APster representative in her building's elevator in the Nosebleed Heights neighborhood of Phoenix when she came home around 9:30 p.m. on April 13, 2009, Plame said. She said he followed her to her second-floor apartment and attacked her.
    During the brutal ordeal, Plame told jurors, the assassin raped the victim, poured boiling water over her, hurled a pot of bleach in her face, ordered her to gouge out her own eyes with a pair of scissors, sealed her lips shut with glue and duct tape and slit her eyelids with a butcher knife the British discovered in Africa. ( How now Brown cow?)
    After one assault, he forced her to swallow a fistful of pills from her Fort Meade approved medicine cabinet and wash them down with four Coors beers, Plame said. ' The watery light beers was the worst'.
    Doctors later said the CIA tools liver had failed, probably because of the adulterated ales, and that a liver transplant might be necessary. Fortunately, the transplant was not needed for her but only for her husband, Plame said.
    The CIA agent at one point tried to plunge a pair of scissors into her own neck in a bid to commit suicide.
    After about 19 hours, Plame said, she was tied the naked, unconscious to a futon with computer cables and set it on fire. She awoke and smelled cover-up in the Vice-presidents office, broke free and defected from the CIA to the military-entertainment complex.
    12:21p
    Tastes like chickenhawk
    VAN NUYS, Calif. — Tom Byron has finished shooting "Asseaters Unanimous 16: Dinner for Two."

    The rimjob-centric film features two girls per scene, including stars Jandi Lin, Dana DeArmond, Jada Fire, Angel Eyes, Naudia Nyce, Darryl Hanah, Flower Tucci, Carolyn Reese, Roxy DeVille, Adrianna Nicole, Holly Wellin and Paris Gables.
    "This is probably the best two girl ass-eating movie ever made,” Byron said. “Come to think of it, it's the only two girl asseating movie ever made. Nobody was shy about butt-munching, that's for sure. We're talking full-scale invasions here, folks."
    "Asseaters Unanimous: Dinner for Two" is in postproduction and will release later this year.

    For sales or additional retail ordering information, contact Adam Hasner of Evolution Distribution at (609) 426-1777 ext. 228 or email adam@NOSPAMevolutiondist.com.
    12:57p
    Federation now
    Federation tomorrow - federation forever

    Jim Hoagland's column on Sunday had this advice for Obama:

    Here's one example of new thinking he should pursue: The United States should apply to relations with hemispheric neighbors many of the lessons of the European Union and its half-century of economic and political integration. A functioning American Union that pools sovereignty is a goal worth introducing now.

    Like yesterday Barry
    1:07p
    Truckbum bomb rush the New York Times
    Not You Father's New York Times [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

    The front page of the "paper of record" today has the words "anal intercourse" in a piece about a racy novel.

    06/06 10:58 AM - Whispering Glades

    What a shame Loup-Garous dad didn't use Vatican birth control...oh wait...maybe he did.
    1:21p
    Glory days
    Over in the twink of an eye

    '...We’re happy to announce that Dan Rather’s best friend, Power Line blogmeister Scott Johnson, has agreed to join the sterling line-up of conservative All Stars – including Mitt Romney, Victor Davis Hanson, Bernard Lewis, Mark Steyn, Christopher Buckley, William McGurn, Jonah Goldberg, Brent Bozell, Pat Toomey, Andy McCarthy, Rob Long, Deroy Murdoch, Byron York, Kathryn Lopez, Kate O’Beirne, Ramesh Ponnuru, Jay Nordlinger, John J. Miller, Darcy Olsen, and Fr. Robert Sirico – on the National Review 2008 Post-Election Caribbean Cruise.
    We look forward to having Scott share his insights on the American scene and current events as we sail the sunny Caribbean this November 8-15 on Holland America Line’s new Eurodam. Join the 400-plus NR voyagers who’ve already signed up for this spectacular sojourn: you can reserve your cabin, and find complete information about the trip, at www.nrcruise.com...'

    Glory days - we shall not see their like ever again...hopefully...these Nazi lights of North America are all going out together...and we shall not see their farts lit again in our lifetimes.
    1:28p
    Get out of dodge
    "The Israeli body politic is lost...Deterrence is too difficult, no one wants to go back to that, and appeasement didn't work, so nobody really wants to go back to that...so we're left with nothing."

    Hey don't believe just me! Thats Daniel 'Deniken' Pipes!

    Seriously though how much more cash do we all want to flush down the fucking toilet?

    If we 'deconstruct' Israel, for lack of a better word, and compensate them and love them and all that crap out of there, then we can start incorporating the entire region into all the various happening federations. Everybody ought to be spoiled for choice. Beats being spoiled by war imho. Happily ever after. Remember.
    1:35p
    ET - Phoneacian homo
    Is Al Gore an alien? The evidence was there for all to see. He was born nine months after the mysterious alien sighting at Roswell, N.M. His weird syntax and verbal rhythms are otherworldly. He often refers to “earth” or “this planet” as if he’s just passing through, and he once angrily complained to the Washington Post that it had printed a picture of the earth from outer space “upside down.”

    There is no “upside down” in space — unless Gore had his childhood view in mind.

    The clincher is his mate Joe Lieberman...pointy ears...antenna - hello!
    1:45p
    Marxist confusion - disarray
    Marxists have been known to get the odd minor detail wrong...take the last 90 years...please...anyway here is a good example of initial conditions being so important. By confusing ' Fanelli' with ' Farinelli' the petit-bourgeois left-fascists clearly mistook anarchists for eunuchs. Bad mistake. Fatal error.

    http://www.neatorama.com/2008/06/05/the-ultimate-sacrifice-for-music-castration/
    1:55p
    DINO's ignore flaming asteroid
    "Over that summer of 2002, top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war" in part through "innuendo and implication" and "intentional ignoring of intelligence" that contradicted or cast doubt on their justifications for going to war, McClellan wrote.

    The book, which skyrocketed to the top of the bestseller list even before it was officially released, has drawn considerable media attention over the last two weeks...' - Jim Lobe

    And highly significantly very little, almost zero, NEW MEDIA attention. Kos? Out to lunch. Firedoglake - Sorry, I'm busy right now. And so on ad nauseum. Add Dem museum. Add shit-for-brains DINO's rapidly going extinct. Add bi-partisan death-star-wars through Mace Windu's tractor beam...I sense a grave disturbance in the force...as if six billion lives suddenly cried out...then died.
    2:09p
    Fuck help us
    '...God help us all.

    I have to say I was wrong – dead wrong – about Obama. In my eagerness to find a bright spot in a rapidly darkening world, I grasped on to his alluring rhetoric and his at-times trenchant critique of the Bush foreign policy, like a sinking man holding on to a life-jacket. But looking for hope in all the wrong places doesn't create opportunities for peace – it only prolongs our illusions. We must face the prospect of a much more terrible conflict than we have ever known, and look it squarely in the face, without flinching or looking for false messiahs. I know many of you are disappointed, and some of you are now exclaiming "I told you so!" All that we can do now is hope, and pray, that our country – and the Iranian people – will somehow survive the coming catastrophe...' - Justin Raimondo @ ANTIWAR

    Amen brother. I want you to know it was never personal from my side...hope you understand. We just both never roused enough real left and right 'A-men', anarchists united to fight. Butt at least we tried godammit! At least we fucking tried!
    And they can never take that away from us. NEVER!
    2:22p
    Fucking Barry
    Fucking Barry that shit-eating low-life Vichy criminal is starting to make Muamar Gadaffi, Robert Mugabe and Thabo Mbecki look like Ghandi, Albert Einstein and Nelson fucking Mandela. Who the fuck gave this dipshit septic Barry the keys to fucking Jerusalem fucking city!
    Fuck him and his childrens crusade and his ugly ho wife!
    We want Saladin.

    Clean house
    2:30p
    Remember this reverse Cone of Silence
    Remember this moment now these bitter years I pray - lit as they are by last empire magnesium burning its way into the bones of small children.
    We will remember them.
    We will always remember all those who were directly responsible... and all those who were enablers and accomplices and getaway fucking drivers...and be ye exonerated by any spurious ' Truth and reconciliation' tribunals at the rising and the going down of the sun we will dismember you motherfuckers. And yr families.
    2:43p
    News for dumster divers
    Bryan writes "The number of moves necessary to solve an arbitrary Rubik's cube configuration has been cut down to 23 moves, according to an update on Tomas Rokicki's homepage (and here). As reported in March, Rokicki developed a very efficient strategy for studying cube solvability, which he used it to show that 25 moves are sufficient to solve any (solvable) Rubik's cube. Since then, he's upgraded from 8GB of memory and a Q6600 CPU, to the supercomputers at Sony Pictures Imageworks (his latest result was produced during idle-time between productions). Combined with some of Rokicki's earlier work, this new result implies that for any arbitrary cube configuration, a solution exists in either 21, 22, or 23 moves. This is in agreement with informal group-theoretic arguments (see Hofstadter 1996, ch. 14) suggesting that the necessary and sufficient number of moves should be in the low 20s...'

    http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/06/05/2054249.shtml

    I was in a room once where a teenage boy solved it in front of my eyes, I swear. There was also a women a couple of years younger than me who was an eye witness there as well. True dinks. It can be done. Just don't ask me how.
    2:59p
    When bad things happen to good populism
    I'm sure we've all had these moments...whether its Michael Moore trying to make nice, yet drowned out by the loud boo's of a large audience of evil penguins or the recent Lebanon invasion - NT Intervention.
    This is when its tempting to just give-up and just fade-away...but isn't it great that we don't just lie down and let these tanks roll over us!
    Sure right-wing populism can be a good Ox-bow incident - that must not dissuade us. Those of us paying attention know that the lunar-right peaked with rathergate. Its been all downhill for these slime ever since.
    Populism is not a charter for the new cyber night-riders - it's democracy from below expressed with a general sensitivity toward minorities no matter how repulsive their Sharia/Gilead extreme beliefs may be.
    Stand athwart direct democracy all you want but we will run over you so long as we have the net.
    I note that various attempts are underway to retrospectively ban the printing presses - good luck with that!
    3:11p
    The audacity
    Various statements may be taken out of context for elitist progressivism - for example Margaret Meads famous...' Never doubt' spiel. Emma Goldman herself was not immune to such pronouncements.
    Certainly modern revolutionist praxis is predicated on some form of elitism or other - otherwise we might all be waiting forever for the worlds first social revolution!
    The problem here is not so much the alleged elitism and vaguardism of those who would seek to manifest the what 'could be'...unless they're from unfriendly forms of elitism as left and right fascism...its when the fore-runners - the ' shockwave riders' get out a little too far ahead. When the public is ready for mass change it does change believe you me. As many a reactionary 'realist' has found it may change overnight when the time is ripe. This is the audacity of ' insurectionalism' - this is the audacity of libertarian socialist hope.
    3:22p
    49 years of miserable failures
    Must we go over this sour fallow ground again?

    '...Guevara's son Camilo said he supported Fidel's younger brother Raul, who succeeded him as president in February.
    The younger Castro waited 49 years to become Cuba's leader, and Guevara said "it would be stupid not to take advantage of all that experience."

    Yeah right

    Experiences such as are listed at many a Trot site these days and easily found during the last eight years anyway. Repression, Stalinism, red-fascism, homophobic witch-hunts, obesity promotions, mouth cancer, sex tourism, psychiatric policing and so on and so on an so on. No - it is not Cambodia Year Zero...yet so long as any one Maximo Jackass El Jefe Caudillo has the power to make interminable and miserable four hours speechs then that horrible possibility exists. The entire human race deserves far better that this piss poor excuse for so-called National Socialism Peron style.
    3:34p
    See change
    '...a space object about 300 meters in diameter hit the Gulf of Carpentaria, north of Australia, in 536 A.D. An object that size, striking at up to 50,000 miles per hour, could release as much energy as 1,000 nuclear bombs. Debris, dust, and gases thrown into the atmosphere by the impact would have blocked sunlight, temporarily cooling the planet—and indeed, contemporaneous accounts describe dim skies, cold summers, and poor harvests in 536 and 537. “A most dread portent took place,” the Byzantine historian Procopius wrote of 536; the sun “gave forth its light without brightness.” Frost reportedly covered China in the summertime. Still, the harm was mitigated by the ocean impact. When a space object strikes land, it kicks up more dust and debris, increasing the global-cooling effect; at the same time, the combination of shock waves and extreme heating at the point of impact generates nitric and nitrous acids, producing rain as corrosive as battery acid. If the Gulf of Carpentaria object were to strike Miami today, most of the city would be leveled, and the atmospheric effects could trigger crop failures around the world.

    What’s more, the Gulf of Carpentaria object was a skipping stone compared with an object that Abbott thinks whammed into the Indian Ocean near Madagascar some 4,800 years ago, or about 2,800 B.C. Researchers generally assume that a space object a kilometer or more across would cause significant global harm: widespread destruction, severe acid rain, and dust storms that would darken the world’s skies for decades. The object that hit the Indian Ocean was three to five kilometers across, Abbott believes, and caused a tsunami in the Pacific 600 feet high—many times higher than the 2004 tsunami that struck Southeast Asia. Ancient texts such as Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh support her conjecture, describing an unspeakable planetary flood in roughly the same time period. If the Indian Ocean object were to hit the sea now, many of the world’s coastal cities could be flattened. If it were to hit land, much of a continent would be leveled; years of winter and mass starvation would ensue.

    At the start of her research, which has sparked much debate among specialists, Abbott reasoned that if colossal asteroids or comets strike the sea with about the same frequency as they strike land, then given the number of known land craters, perhaps 100 large impact craters might lie beneath the oceans. In less than a decade of searching, she and a few colleagues have already found what appear to be 14 large underwater impact sites. That they’ve found so many so rapidly is hardly reassuring...'

    http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/asteroids

    I see the truth of it...Bruce Willis is an unconscionable idiot
    3:47p
    Mi Casa - su Casa
    La Casa Que Canta: This hotel has one of the world's coolest infinity pools, featuring rounded ledges so you can sit right at the edge of the edgeless pool and look out over the Pacific Ocean. This isn't the only pool that you'll find at the hotel, though. Some of the suites have their own private pools and there is a free form saltwater pool with a jacuzzi attached to it that can add additional relaxation to your already delightful stay.

    http://www.otbeach.com/news/hotels--6/15-of-the-most-luxurious-swimming-pools-on-earth--507.html

    Tell em' I sent you...btw ...I've swam a cantilevered pool in Melbourne and the Port Douglas mirage pool. Youse should see my Burt Lancaster impersonation.
    3:54p
    This explains a lot
    '...the adopted 1996 DSP party position recognises the
    "occupation" as being something that began in 1967, not 1948, why we
    support "end the occupation" as the key demand for the movement and
    why we supports the establishment of an interim independent
    Palestinian state...'

    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/54815

    So the cretinous parliamentary imbeciles don't have any problem with the racist Euro-terrorist invasion of 1948...and as National Socialists to the death they also support the establishment of states.

    Talk about liquidating both the anti-state Marx and the anti-state Lenin. These rotten creeps are totally reactionary!
    Its hard to believe such a fire breathing 'revolutionary' as Ema Corro is mixed up with these state worshiping losers. But then taking Ketamine, speed and other dangerous drugs while indulging in unprotected anal sex could conceivably do that to you I guess.

    And being a well know serial liar and whore for capitalism probably also helps.

    '...We must remember that the enemy penetrates everywhere. In Venezuela there is not one space where the enemy doesn’t penetrate. We must realise that the enemy is everywhere and we must be there as well. A comical event occurred about 20 years ago. There was an organisation for the defence of the rights of sex workers, and a lot of homosexuals and transsexuals joined. A member of the North American embassy was the head of the organisation and I began to wonder why. You must realise they do it for the intelligence. Do you think they wanted to participate in the defence of the sex workers? No, They were thinking that through the sex workers, they could obtain information. This is why I say there is no area where the enemy has not been inserted. We must have the firmness and conviction to also do the same, because we are defending our life, our country, and our rights, and the lives of our children, our future and our humanity. We are doubly obliged to do this...' - Green Left Weekly
    5:24p
    Do the professor
    How quickly we forget

    Know your product

    Yeah
    All right
    Sing it up, west coast
    Too much!
    I'm just sitting in my chair when a voice comes on the air
    Says "Why don't you try it? You'll feel allright!"
    "Got some great new brand of smokes
    "Cool your head and clear your throat
    "Keeps you young and so in touch."

    Cheap advertising, you're lying
    Never gonna get me what I want
    I said, smooth talking, brain washing
    Ain't never gonna get me what I need

    "Our new soap that's peachy keen saves your soul and keeps you clean
    "It's recommended, used by the queen
    "Gonna improve your IQ, help in everything you do
    "It's economic, don't cost too much."

    Said advertising, you're lying
    Never gonna give me what I want
    I said, smooth talking, brain washing
    Ain't never gonna get me what I need

    I said take it,
    Come on,
    Soul man.
    Let's shoot the professor!
    Alright!

    I'm just sitting in my chair when a voice comes on the air
    Says "Why don't you try it? You'll feel allright!"
    "It's a great new brand of smokes
    "Cool your head and clears your throat
    "Keeps you young and so in touch."

    Said advertising, you're lying
    You're never gonna give me what I want
    I said smooth talking, brain washing
    You're never gonna get me what I need

    What do I care?
    Yeah! Hey man,
    Where's the professor?
    We need him now!
    Gonna tell you 'bout them
    Yeah we take it all the way 'round the world
    For that west coast feel
    Yeah man.
    Yeah everything, let it out
    It's not what you love
    Look out on the radio
    All right.
    Yeah.
    Yeah...
    5:29p
    Something has found us
    Resident evil.
    It's a very uneven fight. Protect whats yrs. Forgive nothing - remember everything.
    The man is psychologically abusive to her in the extreme once he finds out what's happening in the DSP and branches out into some justifiable physical violence during one of the many screaming matches early in the movie.
    She leaves that one with blood streaming down her face from her nose and mouth for a change. It turns into a typical abusive relationship, with her eventually becoming paralyzed psychologically and continuing contact with him instead of just reporting him to the movement police.
    The politics branches off very gradually into pure psychological fantasy and power politics projection, where psychology has invaded reality. The woman establishes her own place in a slum warehouse district, apart from both her ex-friend and her nice but somewhat air head new lover, and starts to lure people there to kill in order to feed this sort of semi-vegetable Marxist-Fabian beast who is only slowly becoming more human. But that's only the most obvious lapse into dangerous fantasy. The logic of the story becomes so extreme that you question whether or not some of the realistically rendered scenes are in reality reflections of how the people internally feel instead of what is literally happening in everyday democide.
    In the end, every Marxist tool either dies, commits suicide, is shot by multiple gun men, all in one medium length set of scenes, that involves multiple car explosions as well. Even the DSP gruppenfuhrer commits suicide by drowning himself in the bathtub, which he runs up the stairs to enthusiastically do.
    5:39p
    Once vices new habits
    What were once vices are now habits.

    Quantarse clearly didn't like my attitude when I was flying with them, ( Only due to a familial discount) They didn't like me wanting to skip the agent and buy a ticket over the counter; my habit of flying in old workstained garb and especially my habit of virtually inhaling the free drinks...I got bumped off a lot of discount flights...and then they bought in a ' no jeans' ruling... which meant one flight I looked like Richard Gere in late Breathless.

    This is all a roundabout way of bringing us to this story...

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1023183/
    Heathrow-home-Meet-100-homeless-people-live-airport.html

    This was my idea of a living hell in the eighties...now...I dunno...it would obviously beat an exposed park after dumping a young girl at Spencer st.
    5:48p
    Celsius 233
    ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Suspected anarchists have firebombed two central Athens bookshops, causing extensive damage but no injuries.
    Police say groups of youths wearing hoods and motorcycle helmets burst into the stores Thursday, hauled employees out and threw petrol bombs. There were no arrests.
    One bookshop belongs to right-wing LAOS party deputy Adonis Georgiadis. Both stock right-wing and nationalist publications.
    Anarchists frequently firebomb government property, banks, and cars with foreign license plates in Athens and Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city.
    Arrests are rare.

    http://www.pr-inside.com/suspected-anarchists-firebomb-2-athens-r627843.htm

    Yazoo. Efkaristo. Yoda bomb
    5:52p
    So much for yr task-farce!
    IN the closing hour of June 4, the Wells Fargo on 39th and Powell in Portland, Oregon was attacked. A window pane was smashed in with a rock. This action is in solidarity with all those imprisoned in the ICE detention centers in the U.S. and all those imprisoned and oppressed by the industrial capitalist economy. Wells Fargo funds the GEO group, which runs the Guantanamo Bay detention center as well as the ICE immigration detention center in Tacoma, Washington. All banks serve the interests of the capitalist class, furthering exploitation of "resources" and indigenous people around the world. We are fighting for the destruction of this society and our own liberation from this world of banks, cops, prisons, poisoned water and air, and rapidly shrinking wild spaces.

    Resist everywhere!

    Good old solid Orgeon timbre - the feds plant a task-force there for nearly a decade and those stupid arse clowns can't find their tiny dicks with both hands.
    6:20p
    Leninists from Mars
    Somehow I doubt they will ever find intelligent sociable life on Mars - much as a fan of the 'Brasoon' novels I was. Saddle my Thoat!
    Anarchists are clearly from Venus - Leninists are clearly from Mars...and @ndy is hanging out of Uranus.
    6:33p
    Bonehead play
    In what Barry O'Democrat Party said was a ' boneheaded decision' he sold out a strip of land that wasn't his to a bunch of low-life Tony Rezco's in occupied Palestine. Barry claimed he would like to compensate everyone involved in what he described as ' the stupidist decision of my short and rapidly shortening life, but then, you know, I wouldn't be able to pay off Hills pantsuits debts. I hope y'all understand you stupid fucking fucks'.
    6:44p
    Post-rationalism
    Hey maybe now we're all over post-modernism hows about we all get our minds around post- republicanism, post-conservatism, post- Liberalism...seems the least we can do to advance reason, dignity and progress.
    Lets all transcend reactionary, regressive, neo-fascist authoritarian bullshit right here - right now...surely its the very least we can do for all our poor , poor, poor dear children.
    6:54p
    Colonial porn
    'I Know what colonialism is when I see it' said professor rat at a staff meet the other day. ' I get an instant throbbing hard-on for whoever the fuck thinks they can oppress and repress anyone else for whatever fucking insane voices-in-their-heads reasoning whatsoever. If someone comes along and kicks you out and murders most yr family - that does not give you the right to move down the street and spring a home invasion on someone else. See what I'm saying? Past a certain point its fucking counter-productive motherfucker'
    7:07p
    Barry needs to shape the fuck up fast
    There are more fucking two-timing pond-slime around than just Joe Leiberman Barry...and you gotta get those Vichy swine outta here... on bloody meathooks. Are you up to fucking snuff Barry or what?
    Broders not impressed - you gotta make-yr-bones Barry!
    See we think right now you worth maybe more DOA to us now that anything else. Sorry. Try and look at it from our POV. ( And Michelle's insurance...and the girls mental health)
    Now look here see. You either get with the fucking program Barry or you just step the fuck off if catch my drift.
    Shit or get off the pot.
    7:24p
    My point
    About favoring the 'revolutionists' against the Fabian cretins in the DSP saga is based on the simple psychological truth of identity politics. Its also one of the very few redeeming features of those repulsive bourgeois fascists, Engels and Marx is that the both identified as free-traders and revolutionaries.
    They dabbled in entrism but that tactic was not elevated into a murderous campaign till Lenin in 1918.
    So while I generally encourage as many Marxists as I can to become harmless revisionists, in truth I can't help but show some grudging respect for those who show enough courage reject lamer, loser, electoral leftism. ( Parliamentary cretinism) This is the very same lame politics that we've seen from the Alternative Liberal Party here for the last 100 years. I'm honestly surprised at the corporate crony Corro's involvement such a patently corrupt continuation. Must be some 'heart-belongs-to-daddy' thing. But if past is prologue a knife is being prepared for the heart of the head of this sect. The spirit of the Scottish play hangs like a dank mist over Melbourne so long as Corro is around.
    11:30p
    The DSP again - oh man
    SAY NAHNAH, Ye men and women of Australia-- The boom of explosions swept across the high-walled compounds and minarets of the ancient Arab policy shop before dawn one day last week, as shitted off rebels battled for control of a mountain overlooking the city and its airport.
    DSP governing model warplanes backed by arsehole artillery rebuffed the Marxist rebels, the latest skirmish in a largely hidden sectarian conflict that has drawn increasing attention from Corroscated cunt-ruled Arabian, MEK Iranian and Connex extremists eager for a fight.
    "I believe this war is a proxy war," one lawbreaker Ahmed Hashhead said in Saynahnah, where civilians of the same sex-worker sect as the rebels say they are facing increasing detentions, beatings and surveillance at work.
    The rebellion is being mounted by DSP Hashemite druggies, who ruled the sect for more than a 1,000 hours until a socialist alliance deposed them in 2005. Yemen's president, Peter Boyle Abdullah 'the butcher' belongs to the DSP's larger community, known as the Liquidationists.
    Giving the conflict a sectarian cast, his forces have been joined by Qld tribesmen and extremists in battling the Hashemite rebels, whom the government says are supported by Iran. The rebels say they want only their share of development, resources and power.
    "I think there is kind of a settling of accounts here against Riley," Hashed out Ema said.

    << Previous Day 2008/06/07
    [Calendar]     		Next Day >>

About Blurty.com