And continuing… 27 September 2007
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, Viva La Revolucion!.trackback
A man gestures to the Burmese military after a crowd of thousands was fired upon. [REUTERS]
Riot police arriving at the scene of the protests on Thursday. [REUTERS]
Ngwe Kyar Yan Monastery after it was raided in the early hours of Thursday morning. Hundreds of monks were dragged away by the troops. [DPA]
The protestors fled after soldiers marched through the streets with loudspeakers ordering people to go home or risk being shot. One man lies injured after the police charge the crowd. [REUTERS]
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Quick snip from one of the stories at spiegel.de:
As the protests enter their 10th day, the military regime seems to be ignoring international pleas for restraint and is instead continuing its crackdown on the protestors. In the early hours of Thursday morning, troops raided a number of monasteries and dragged away hundreds of monks. Just a few hours later, images of the blood-spattered floor of the monasteries were posted on Internet news sites across the world.
Ko Htike’s blog’s traffic has increased tenfold over the past few days. The Burmese national, who lives in London, has turned his literary blog into a political forum. “I have around 10 people inside in different locations … They are walking along with the march and as soon as they get any images or news they pop into internet cafes and send it to me,” he told BBC News on Wednesday. Ko Htike said that the bloggers usually use chat rooms like Yahoo Messenger to communicate.
This snippet too…
According to the press freedom non-governmental organization Reporters without Borders, the ousting of former Prime Minister Khin Nyunt in October 2004 saw a marked reduction in the regime’s monitoring of the Internet. “He was a military intelligence guy … . After he was removed, they no longer have much knowledge in this area,” Vincent Brossel, the organization’s Asia director, told BBC News.
Brossel told AP that the junta was now trying to stem the flow of information by slowing down Internet connections, blocking mobile phone services and closing Internet cafes. But the opposition is now using satellite phones, which can bypass censors and firewalls to get the message out.
Burma’s state-run media has blamed “saboteurs” for causing the protests. “Saboteurs from inside and outside the nation and some foreign radio stations, who are jealous of national peace and development, have been making instigative acts through lies to cause internal instability and civil commotion,” said The New Light of Myanmar, a mouthpiece for the regime, on Thursday.
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And… I noticed that catnip posted this, near the end of the previous thread:
liberalcatnip | liberalcatnip.blogspot.com |
Via the BBC: Eyewitness: Rangoon protests
Sep 27, 11:10 AM
Beats dead as door nails Democrats, all in a line in NH prattling lies to a worn out or gullible or disinterested or agreeing public.
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UPDATE, 12:01 pm
Just noticed that Pepe Escobar is up at Asia Times with a Roving Eye on Burma… (in fact the place is loaded with articles over yesterday and today):
Few can fail to be intensely moved by the exhilarating images of the “crimson revolution” – thousands of monks chanting “democracy, democracy” or reciting the Metta Sutta – the Buddha sermon on loving kindness, while civilian demonstrators, on a practical level, also call for the release of hundreds of political prisoners and a reduction in the price of fuel (raised 500% last month, the root cause of the protests).
The Asian Human Rights Commission has reported how the monks, in a pre-rally ceremony on Monday, have solemnly refused to accept donations from anyone junta-connected, people they have dubbed “pitiless soldier kings”. This very serious act amounts to nothing less than a Buddhist form of excommunication.
But fear now looms. The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi – lovingly referred to all over the country as The Lady – has been transferred from her lakeside home on University Avenue in Yangon to sinister Insein prison, according to a Reuters report. The junta has imposed a dusk-till-dawn curfew in Yangon and Mandalay.
A bit of a close look at Bush’s concern for Burma:
Myanmar has been in effect off the radar of the international community for years. Why this new, sudden, Bush administration interest in regime change in Myanmar? If the US and the West are so obsessed with “human rights”, why not put pressure on the ghastly practices of the House of Saud? Or the barely disguised repression under the glitz in Persian Gulf petromonarchies? Or the bloody Islam Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan?
A vast drug-money-laundering operation, plus full Asian cooperation – to the tune of billions of dollars – helped the Myanmar junta to build its new capital, Naypyidaw, in the middle of the jungle, almost 350 kilometers north of Yangon, in essence using slave labor. The 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member, has been very lenient, to say the least, with the unsavory generals, in the name of a policy of “non-interference”. Thailand – for complex historical reasons – would rather co-exist with a weak neighbor. India coddles the generals to get natural-gas deals – like a recent agreement to invest US$150 million in gas exploitation in the west of the country.
Enter the dragon
But Myanmar is above all a key strategic pawn for China. Not only as a captive market for civilian goods in addition to weapons, but as a pawn to keep India in check and assure China of key strategic access to the Indian Ocean. Just like Britain – which twice invaded Burma, as Myanmar was known until 1989 – China’s utmost interest is natural resources. Oil and gas, of course, but also gems and timber: the once-pristine forests at the Myanmar-China border have been practically wiped out. According to the rights group Global Witness, Myanmar exported no less than $350 million in timber to China in 2005 alone, and the bulk of it was illegal.
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I was going to blog this a couple of weeks ago. Wish I had since it has exploded.
One piece I read at the first of the month discussed heavily how the monks had always been force for change. And how the government was forced to tolerate them because violence against them would case a full scale uprising. The people it was said have more alliegience to the monks than the government. Will be interesting to see how the crack down plays out.
Revisionist…
you are prolific enough with wide ranging interests.. you should have your own blog. Plus you have technical abilities…
Drop the odd piece you want to x post at PFF … but really. Think about it.
Just saw this at spiegel.de… a round up of the German press, looking at Burma. They point right at China.
lol…. i had a blog back when the blog explosion occured around 04. it became a chore to keep up with and stopped being fun. then you have to go pimp your shit. I am a newsman at heart. I find blogging to be mainly opinion. And I studied journalism when they taught you to keep your opinions out of your reporting!
really, all i do is see stories on my RSS reader. Its just a matter of picking what is newsworthy or brewing. All Huffpo or Raw or even antiwar do is just post stuff off the wire. Especially huffpo. Its just a matter of featuring the right stories.
antiwar does a really good job of pulling info off the feeds as does buzzflash.
last thing the world needs is another fucking blog
My latest: Burma, Bush and Oil
Quite ironic that when I visited dkos today, the Chevron ad was up yet again.
Silber has a piece up… in essence on empire, narcissism and paternalism.
And a fine turn of the shiv for the enablers of the Democrats, along the way…
Nice long snips from Nir Rosen’s new book, from Chris Floyd posts… another treasure trove of a post…
8)
I crossposted it to pff as well for those who want to comment there.
catnip has good links assembled at her post on Burma, as well as what she excerpts… (btw… 8) )
PS… catnip is FPed in PeederLand…
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it became a chore to keep up with and stopped being fun.
oh I understand all that you said, Rev…
8)
Rev…are you for hire setting up a blog. Soapbox? Or anyone else here. Non-political one.
RE Sibler. I went to a couple of partisan sites this morning. They seem to have forgotten there was a debate last night.
And truthfully, last nite’s debate was really chock full of great moments.
Only thing I have seen are a couple of apologist postings at huffpo.
Seriously, the point was not that Hillary and the others were mislead by the Bill question, it was the fact she probably doesnt pay any attention to her husband. Mcat pointed out the fair outing. Hillary just doesnt give a shit what bill does and didnt watch him on MTP
mattes – the software is pretty user friendly. you just pick a style and go to town. When I was doing it the choices were Blogger and Blogspot then WP. It took about 10 minutes to set up on blogger. Which was mostly setting the coloe scheme Now a few years later, lots of software has plugins for blogging too. Word, FP, and even some graphix programs. Atrios hasnt evolved any from that period.
Most of the Kids use Drupal right now.
Rev
I thought the NH fair outing ws very revealing, reading thru the lines in a couple reports. They both just wandered off and seemed dismissive of one anotehr.
What a shock! LOL.
What i was going to blog about regarding Burma was about the monks. I blurbed it here about 3 weeks ago.
I was shocked that the monks were being violent. Attacking shops and other property. I had always pictured Buhddists monks as meditating pacifists. Their aggressiveness is what originally piqued my interest not the politics
PS… catnip is FPed in PeederLand…
Yet no one’s giving me any cheesecake. Je suis desolÉ .
rev,
Did that info about the monks being violent come from Burmese gov’t sources, as The Guardian reported or was there some other source?
It was a few weeks back. They were attacking shops and other property. It was vandelism not assualt on people. The government was just letting them get away with it. The events have been unfolding for about a month.
That pic I did last week about buhdy was the burmese monks marching
catnip, I heard you were trying to eat healthier. I stuffed a really nice Caesar salad in your mailbox.
Poor dk whiner at PFF has proclaimed me a liar, and plans on FPing my egregious assaults on his non-existent character. Yeesh. Like there’s more than seven or eight people on PFF who even know me, or would care if they did know.
My heart, she is breaking like a fresh saltine, mes amis… :/
I should have read more of that Guardian article:
yeah thats it!!!!… i forgot about the hostages. it just seemed odd behavior for monks to me. There is more in dpeth coverage of that stuff if you do a little googling. it was news in most of the rest of the world
They… smashed a shop ?!
Time to call for the death penalty. I mean, you see that at least once a week on American blogs and newsgroups. Some alleged anarchist allegedly looks the wrong way at a window or wall and everyone starts screaming about the Holy Property Rights of the Holy Monied People and how hanging is too good for those wielding so much as a single spray can or rock. Etc etc.
it just seemed odd behavior for monks to me.
Well (not that I’m justifying what they did), the article states they were “young” monks (noviates, maybe?) and buddhists aren’t perfect anyway – no matter what the age.
Marauding Monks. Monks on a Maraud…
different at least.
I stuffed a really nice Caesar salad in your mailbox.
I checked. I think the mailman took it because I saw him dropping romaine down the street. But thanks anyway! I love caesar salad.
Maraud should be the name of an SUV, if it hasn’t yet been used.
Oh, and I curse Canada’s plague of light-fingered postal employees. Shameful. Simply shameful.
I think the biggest SUV should be called DOOM: The vehicle that is killing the planet!
Rob Reiner endorses Hilarius the First.
God, these people have no shame. None.
‘Buddhas do not observe precepts’
Gee. Hollywood loves a sanctimonious violence fetishist who dresses in overpriced, tacky crap and twitters about villages raising children whenever she is cornered about any serious manner.
Who could be surprised ? It’s a match made in heaven…
The Edwardians are cheering for Johnny’s latest “principled” decision to accept federal matching funds for the primary. So principled that he waited until three days before the end of the 3rd Qtr to announce it. Looks as if all his netroots support is failing to translate into bucks. So, that’s it for the mill worker’s son (the image of “Norma Rae” when the reality was that daddy wasn’t on the floor and wasn’t a friend of Norma’s)
Is Hillary passing out those little pills from Stepford?
Just moving this forward from the previous thread:
ugh the taste of Frontline must be awful.
I have to say it worked with Baby… I had been going back and forth between flea powder and flea foam (actually too strong for her respiratory system) and Frontline does the trick.
IOZ says he’ll be back – in october…
8)
Frontline does the trick
Frontline works like magic. It also removes paint if a drop is left on a heated windowsill. I use it sparingly, every couple of months.
there is plenty of examples of Buddhists being every bit as violent as any other group of people. Warrior monks in China and Japan through the years and the treatment of muslims by the Buddhists in Thailand come to mind. During the Samurai period in Japan there were very fierce private armies of Buddhist warrior monks in Japan, and many of the “Boxers” of the Boxer Rebellion in China were monks of Shaolin, which grew out of Buddhism and Taoism.
Of course, I learned all of this from western sources, so it may be only partially accurate.
Mychal Bell has been released on bail.
I looked up the Metta Sutra that someone mentioned upthread:
Well, plainly they were asking for a beating.
It Godwins Itself
pathetic:
cites of bush quotes from the leaked transcript of the conversation between George W. Bush, Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, and Condoleeza Rice held at Crawford before the Iraq War.
the twice elected leader of the united states. “good cop bad cop”, “thinks he’s Mr arab”, “keep on playing games”.
the democratic party leadership at the national level does his bidding everytime he sticks up a threat, and/or prior to their holiday.
juan cole says
DEMOCRATS? IMPEACH?
here’s what democrats are doing today to stop the war.
Democrats Blast Limbaugh For Saying That Antiwar Troops Are “Phony Soldiers”
just the thing to save our listing ship of state, donks fighting another battle in the potemkin media war.
THAT GODDANG AD! THAT FRICKING LIMBAUGH!
do donks think meaningless crap like this makes their prize pigs look like they’re engaged in some sort of struggle?
maroons.
Cindy
wow.
allen keyes is a flaming queen.
if the pbs debate is delayed out west yall need to catch the front end of it.
Got this thru Silber’s latest:
Time for a Mass Resignation From the Democratic Party – Quit the Party! – By DAVE LINDORFF
You have to do more than quite … you have to not vote for their nominee next time, no matter what they promise, and you have to refuse to choose the lesser of two lessers for every other office as well. It’s more than just sending an electronic message to quit the vote.
Withhold the vote.
oops … “more than QUIT”.
Myanmar: This Is What Courage Really Looks Like
Evil Catholic propaganda
I’m all linkaholic tonight.
My sister, who sends me tons of her cast-off (though definitely not worn much) clothing, sent me a pair of black cordouroy pants and the label on the inside declared them “Marisa-cut”
Is my butt in trouble or what?
The Autumn People
‘The irony of my life’
This country is run by shits.
The Conspiracy Against The People
Daniel Ellsberg:
This Executive Branch, under specifically Bush and Cheney, despite opposition from most of the rest of the branch, even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war against Iran which even by imperialist standards, standards in other words which were accepted not only by nearly everyone in the Executive Branch but most of the leaders in Congress. The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our right to control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and many other places. That is consensual in our establishment. …
But even by those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that quietly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it’s not only aggression and a violation of international law, a supreme international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane in terms of the consequences.
Does that make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn’t, it doesn’t even make it unlikely.
That is because two things come together that with the acceptance for various reasons of the Congress – Democrats and Republicans – and the public and the media, we have freed the White House – the president and the vice president – from virtually any restraint by Congress, courts, media, public, whatever.
And on the other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power are crazy. Not entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.
*snip*
Let me simplify this and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9/11. That’s the next coup, that completes the first.
The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution, … what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world – in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/092607a.html
The rock star
http://www.pbase.com/srogouski/image/86319040
Mitm #51 thanks for posting the Louis Auchincloss interview. Read a couple of his books years ago (and enjoyed reading about real money). Not surprising that he would dismiss the Bushes. For all their pedigree, they are a classless, gauche clan. Louis is related in some way to the very wealthy Hugh D. Auchincloss clan. Jr. was married to Gore Vidal’s mother for a few years and later to Jacqueline Kennedy’s mother. He’s right that his Yale classmates screwed up this country, but at least his crowd was smart and didn’t make as big a mess of things as the Bushes. (My ex-father-in-law, now deceased, worked his way through Yale playing bridge against the Bundy brothers. So, Bill Bundy lost more often than a single football game while at Groton.)
Youngest crowd I ever saw. About 10,000 people, 90% under 25.
Half the people around me weren’t even alive when a non Bush non Clinton was president.
Obama gave a rather intelligent but at the same time formulaic speech.
He never mentioned Lieberman Cornyn. But he did defend the idea of meeting with Hugo Chavez or Ahmadinejad.
To me he seemed fake and his speech seemed like junk politics. To the 20 year old kids around me he seemed like a welcome relief from the hard edged Nazis Bush and Cheney.
To me he seemed fake and his speech seemed like junk politics — HCfM
yup, that is why I call him Adware…
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Interesting thread to the RigInt link Madman posted upthread (at comment 50). Esp “iridescent cuttlefish” and “Mark”…
Obama had a band opening up for his speech.
http://www.pbase.com/srogouski/image/86317259
Three non threatening white guys playing that kind of horrible music you hear on the clear channel stations (hey there deliha yada yada yada yada yada). They had a christian rock quality.
A far cry from Nader, Rage Against the Machine and Patti Smith in 2000,
dark, dark times … and sometimes stuff like RigInt at least ask some questions.
So much that was whispered and snickered at when I was growing up in the ’60s and 70s has turned out true.
when you consider that in many southeast asian countries, most young men become monks for a couple of years as a form of basic education and familial accumulation of merit, it isn’t all that surprising that a bunch of youn g men in the late teens and early 20s are out there kicking ass, monastic vows or no. they’re human beings, and the status that buddhism holds in such societies (analogous to students in pre-1989 china) probably puts them in a mindset where they’re rather fearless and feel like they have to stand up for the nation.
buddhist monks have kicked ass historically from time to time, especially in medieval japan, where they not only burnt down and desecrated each other’s tenmples periodically, but also fought pitched battles with armed samurai, albeit usually using their symbolic legitimacy and threat of curses/karmic retribution to restrain the level of violence somewhat.
i hope they win this. i suspect that bush’s interest here is more along the reasoning of “if these protests can get the junta out of power and a democratic government in power, we can drop the sanctions those bleeding hearts foisted upon us, and get down to the business of getting oil corps’ back in the bidding for those natural gas fields.”
no matter. i’m on the side of any people that can wrest a better deal for themselves. fuck all the juntas.
AP report, Friday morning: Access to internet cut in Myanmar.
BBC News: Junta tightens media screw.
Local residents thwart monastery raids (from Democratic Voice of Burma in Oslo):
Local residents thwart monastery raids (from Democratic Voice of Burma in Oslo):
Story from Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma in spam: Local residents thwart monastery raids.
Democratic Voice of Burma front page.
A Japanese photojournalist was murdered by Burmese troops while photographing an anti-government protest.
And more troops for Pharoah’s Legions:
WASHINGTON — The Army’s top official called Thursday for the acceleration of a multiyear expansion of the country’s biggest fighting force, a move that probably would require radical new approaches for keeping soldiers in uniform.
Army Secretary Pete Geren said the planned expansion from its official size of 482,000 to 547,000, announced by President Bush in December as the first post-Cold War increase in U.S. forces, should be completed in four years rather than five to alleviate the strain on troops from frequent combat tours.
Defense officials planning for the increase have voiced concern over recent loosening of standards for new enlistees because of the heavy pressure to meet recruiting goals.
The new Army plan would attempt to build the larger force in a shorter time by instead moving aggressively to retain personnel.
The military has begun to consider options beyond the traditional cash bonuses and college scholarships to entice soldiers to continue service. New approaches under consideration include the promise of graduate school for young officers and the offer of educational benefits for career soldiers’ children.
The new approaches reflect the continuing fallout of the 4 1/2-year-old Iraq war. Prolonged and repeated deployments have created new stresses on troops, which have forced the Army to reevaluate how it provides for soldiers and their families.
From today’s Los Angeles Times
Let us not forget another factor in the equation: Thanks to the ruinous policies of the Bushistas and Cheneyists, the ranks of the unemployed or unemployable will soon swell, and those folks can be harvested for cannon fodder.
Black Americans, for the most part, will not join the new Army. Black recruitment is down by nearly 50%, which means the new recruits will be poor white folk from rural areas. Rural CHRISTIAN areas.
More and more, the new military will be less and less like America as a whole, and constitute a separate society unto itself. The soldiers will see themselves as not only apart from, but increasingly hostile to, the coddled civilians who send them on three and four tours of duty in the killing zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, and their resentment will grow. The ingredients for a military coup, if not the recipe.
The new Army of God is at hand. And which Pharoah will despatch them, Serena Joy or The Commander? It doesn’t really matter at this point, because American foreign policy has already been set on the track of perpetual imperial wars, and only the ruin of the American economy (which will come sooner or later) can de-rail it.
Fun Fact: Patti Smith was the only “big name” from ’00 who was still with Nader in ’04.
Hey, why is it that every time I poke my head up at PFF, Mr. Stomach Flu shows up and wants to be my friend ? Is it my breath ? My loud Hawaiian shirts ? Would somebody please take the scotch and the happy pills away from his wife so she can be alert and functioning enough to come and fetch him home ?
Blecch.
Through the Arthur Silber link provided above, I ended up reading this long Nir Rosen article. Some of its concluding paragraphs seem to me worth quoting:
BTW, I notice that Juan Cole thinks that one reason the Bush administration allowed the extraordinary orgy of pillage and looting that took place after our troops arrived in Baghdad was to ensure that all evidence of Reagan and Bush I administration complicity in providing Saddam with chemical weapons was destroyed. At this point, I think I’ve come around to the idea that far from being accidental, allowing virtually all traces of modern life in Iraq to be destroyed was a deliberate part of this loathsome administration’s policy.
A smidge of good news via the Portland Boregonian:
This fifteen year b.s. has hopefully ended for good this time.
At this point, I think I’ve come around to the idea that far from being accidental, allowing virtually all traces of modern life in Iraq to be destroyed was a deliberate part of this loathsome administration’s policy.
I think everything was intentional. All of it.
Several years ago I read a long long piece at Media Transparency, the project that cursor.org maintains, that the plan was to leave Afghanistan “empty space” – and just last night via a link at Rigint (will post in a few minutes) read that it was planned (via a meeting in Rome soon after invasion) Afhganistan should have Sharia law, not democracy. This makes sense, that the plan ws for fundamentalism and continuing repression, i mean.
Within just a few months of the invasion of Afganistan, I read in the tired old NYT that refining of opium inside Afhganistan, something that had not been done on any widespread or organised manner previously, NOW was happening.
Fisk reported during the initial invasion that he observed trucks and men arrived at the baghdad library, that it ws systematic. We only protected the Oil Ministry. We knew what would happen, it had happened before (Panama) and it was good cover for us. He had a recent column of the enormous money and organisation behind the looting and the willful destruction of the many antiquity sites inside Iraq. Clearly a global business in looting… we opened the door but the world is very pleased.
If we manage to destroy/disperse the professional class of Iraq (we have) kill as many as possible (we have) create internal and external diaspora (we have) turn it too into a largely lawless land (we have) I think it was the plan. Chaos, destruction. And breaking up what might have been a formidable opponent of Israel for years to come.
I think Bush’s regime and wars and a debauched Roman senate just ripped the mask off America. For anyone missing how very lethal we are.
I notice the government is using both Feinstein and Laura to send messages about Burma. both have taped messages about how we are watching, and exhorting for democracy for Burma.
A Japanese photojournalist was murdered by Burmese troops while photographing an anti-government protest.
If you look at the last photo in the post above, the Japanese journalist mentioned in Shadowthief’s comment above, he is lying on the roadway, in the right hand side of the photo.
Well, Cheez, Golly and Gee Whiz. If Mr. Journalist had only obeyed the Godly cops in every particular, I’m sure that he would still be alive.
The other day we were out drinking w/one of mr_xeno’s childhood pals, who repeated the obey-the-law-and-all-will-be-fine mantra– straight on the heels of the funny story of how he elluded a speed trap while mildly intoxicated, then called all his friends to alert them, too.
IOW, he was smart enough to screw the law without them catching on. Subversive defiance of authority is a-okay if you don’t get caught. Open defiance, or getting caught, and it’s into the lake of clubs and pepper spray with ya’.
Going home in a few hours, and happy about it. Not to say that Pittsburgh has any more kind-hearted fools than PDX. Only that I get homesick a week away from home no matter where I’ve been vacationing.
I wondered if that was him… but the Kossian take would be he deserved it. He should have been respecting the authority figures and not involved in a rude protest.
Here is the link to the article I mentioned, that Sharia law was planned, by international conference of interested parties, for Afghanistan.
[got the link from a "Mark" comment at Rigint, following Madman's link somewhere upthread]
I mean, we all know “democracy” is the sham.
One of the worst things I have ever listened to, was Bush at the UN thsi week.
If we manage to destroy/disperse the professional class of Iraq (we have) kill as many as possible (we have) create internal and external diaspora (we have) turn it too into a largely lawless land (we have) I think it was the plan. Chaos, destruction. And breaking up what might have been a formidable opponent of Israel for years to come.
Yes, I believe it was the neo-con intention to destroy their culture and replace it with some conservative wet-dream Ayn Rand would have been pleased with, complete with a slave class. What’s a few million dead people and beggaring this country in the face of that fantasy?
They really are fascists.
raimondo has a new anti dem screed up
colleen,
They really are fascists.
Actually, that’s much too kind and modern a characterization. Their psychology seems much more like something out of the ancient world, whether that of Rome (“Carthago delenda est”), Ghengis Khan, or Tamburlane.
I don’t know. I think I’ve experienced one too many episodes of cop/army-fetishism this week. Plus one too many episodes of justifying murder with the assertion that “those people aren’t like us,” etc.
I think I’m going to start leaning heavily on mr_xeno to reconsider our citizenship in this festering pile of a country. I really really fucking hate the fact that these are “my people.” They make me nauseous every time they open their fucking traps. >:
the hill is promoting webb for VP…. and then P
109#
Have one cat…..and two visitors. All jealous of each other, so there will be no licking!!
Fun Fact: Patti Smith was the only “big name” from ‘00 who was still with Nader in ‘04.
Didn’t Michael Moore apologize for supporting Nader in 2004?
Of course that still doesn’t take anything away from the fact that Moore is the most effective propagandist the left has by a gargantuan margin.
HC #81 – Don’t think Moore supported Nader in 2004. Moore reported that towards the end of the 2000 election when it was clear that it was going to be really close, he tried to get the Nader folks to throw their support to Gore in the FL, but they wouldn’t budge. iirc many Green/Nader people in 2004 engaged in vote trading. A Kerry voter in TX would swap with a Nader voter in OH. An interesting stratgy but don’t think it got very far.
new thread:
LINK
Moore endorsed Clark in the primaries in ’04, so I assume he endorsed the Dem nom.
I LOVED the vote trading… I would come home from work (worked til June of 00) and would drop in at the bulletin boards and web sites organised for the vote swapping. Loved reading them.
Ooops. I mean he apologize in 2004 for endorsing Nader in 2000.
I never approved of vote trading. I don’t have much faith in the honor system, if I ever did before that. Why would I believe a total stranger when they promised to vote the way I wanted them to ?
Moore just makes me roll my eyes. They all did, in ’04. I wonder where their apology is for supporting Kerry and his taser fetish. Fuckers.
The next Lefty candidate would do well to simply avoid any public alliances with celebrity big names, or intellectual big names. Clearly they are a lot of spineless wind-twisters who cannot be trusted for anything like a sustained movement. Oh, unless it’s a sustained movement to lick the boots of some DLC scumbag.
Shit, Moore would have done better to run himself rather than jumping on to the military fetish bandwagon. What a joke.
Oh, and as to Moore begging Nader to drop out at the end of the ’00 game: The former denies anything of the sort in his book Stupid White Men. He’s full of “rah-rah-stick-it-to-’em-Ralph-for-the-kids” rhetoric. In that book. I suppose after 911 he changed his mind and jumped on the guilt bandwagon. But I honestly wonder who’s telling the truth on that score.
He should stick to movies, and stay out the business of endorsing candidates. :/