Orange 11 April 2012
Posted by marisacat in Europe, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.82 comments
Brussels, Belgium: A pedestrian crosses a street painted yellow near Madou metro station. The street around the station will be transformed into a pedestrian area | Francois Lenoir/Reuters
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Spring 19 March 2012
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, France, Paris.66 comments
Paris, France: young women sit in the sun on the Pont des Arts with its fence covered with padlocks left by lovers over the River Seine as unusually warm temperatures hit the French capital | Benoit Tessier/Reuters
has sprung…. 😉
Hi 14 March 2012
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Total fucking lunatics, UK, WAR!.78 comments
The wave from the balcony | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Definitely not high, 😆
Tho if any one of them did not want, desperately at the end of the day, to go somewhere and ingest, smoke, drink something altering, then even nuttier than they all appear to be…
Carnevale 20 February 2012
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, Europe, France, The Battle for New Orleans.75 comments
Nice, France: the King of Nice represented during the city’s carnival | Frederic Nebinger/Getty Images
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I have on Treme, Season 1 for the umpteenth time… as Mardi Gras rolls around again…
Riot 11 February 2012
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Europe, Greece, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, WAR!.41 comments
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Clashes between riot police and protesters have become a regular sight in Athens since the financial crisis began | Dimitri Messinis/AP
Laugh 30 January 2012
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Australia, Germany, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.100 comments
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard is bundled out of a restaurant by security service agents after it was surrounded by furious Aboriginal rights protesters in Canberra. Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott were stranded in The Lobby restaurant as dozens of demonstrators from a protest against Australia Day, which marks the arrival of British settlers in 1788, converged on the hotel… | LUKAS COCH/AFP/Getty Images
I saw the vid of this, it was hilarious. They hustled her to her limo, she lost a shoe in the process and finally they stuffed her in, butt first.
More of that please.
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THIS I had not seen. What a scream, and so perfect.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel strokes a golden goose that was given to her by Carnival Prince Frank I and Princess Petra I of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern at the Chancellery in Berlin | ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images
Screw ’em all.
Saga 19 January 2012
Posted by marisacat in Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Italy, Total fucking lunatics.78 comments
Giglio, Italy: The Costa Concordia cruise ship | AGF s.r.l./Rex Features
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NOW there is a report surfacing, I think from the blonde the captain was seen with, he ordered dinner after the crash.
It boggles the mind.
Flight 27 November 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Divertissements, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, UK.55 comments
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Starlings in the dusk skies above Gretna Green morph into the distinctive shape of a dolphin which is being chased across the sky by a whale with its mouth open
Picture: North News
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Politics 11 November 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Italy, WAR!.71 comments
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A ferocious great white shark looks like it is having a laugh as it smiles for the camera. Dyer Island, Cape Province, South Africa. [Mike Parry/Minden/solent]
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A post at Counterpunch yesterday had a little story on Smedley Butler I had never heard before (the article is on Cain and Il Duce, snicker!)…
and it goes well with the open-mouthed great white:
[B]utler was a very colorful and entertaining public speaker who used obscenities and didn’t mince words; if he felt someone needed to be raked over the coals, he was unafraid to do it. When he was the commander at Quantico Marine base, he introduced Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams, a man he did not like, to some of his officers by saying, “Gentlemen, I want you to meet the Secretary of the goddamn Navy.”
It was in such a frame of mind that Butler took on Benito Mussolini. It was 1931, and Butler was giving a breakfast speech on “how to prevent war” to a gathering at the Philadelphia Contemporary Club. In the speech, he told about an unnamed journalist who had interviewed Mussolini while riding with him in a speeding Fiat touring car. When a peasant child dashed into the street, the car plowed right over him.
“My friend screamed,” Butler told his audience. “Mussolini put a hand on my friend’s knee. ‘It was only one life,’ he told my friend. ‘What is one life in the affairs of a State?’”
Smelling gossipy blood, the US press ran the story heavily, and Il Duce was furious; he denied the story categorically. Herbert Hoover’s Secretary of the State Henry Stimson sympathized with Mussolini and defended him. General Butler was ordered to publicly apologize to Mussolini. When he refused, he was court-martialed. In the end, the raw and eloquent Butler went public and won the day, humiliating Stimson and Hoover and keeping his rank and position in the Marine Corps. [See Maverick Marine: General Smedley Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History by Hans Schmidt for a wonderful account of Butler’s life.]
The anonymous journalist Butler cited riding with Mussolini turned out to be Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr., the magnate’s son who traveled the world as a journalist during a time when the US business class was keen on people like Mussolini.
The New York Times and Time magazine both supported Mussolini’s side of the story and editorialized that Butler and the US government owed him an apology. The New York Tribune wrote this: “The Fascisti movement is – in essentials – a reaction against degeneration through Socialistic internationalism. It is rough in its methods, but the aims which it professes are tonic.”
Colliers magazine published stories that emphasized the post-WWI chaos in Italy and Il Duce’s strong-man charms that “represented the triumph of law and order over anarchy and radicalism. …‘Normalcy’ was the catchword of the times, for Italy as well as for America.” [John Higgins, Mussolini and Fascism: The View From America.]
Vanderbilt insisted on remaining anonymous during the Butler episode in 1931, but in a 1943 book – after Mussolini became an official “bad guy” in the US capitalist pantheon – Vanderbilt ‘fessed-up and recounted the tale, supporting Butler’s story. What Mussolini actually said was apparently a bit different from the words Butler had put in his mouth. Here’s Vanderbilt’s version:
I heard a shriek and saw a group of children waving flags. I turned my head quickly. There was a shapeless little form lying in the road back of us.
“Look, Your Excellency,” I shouted.
“Never look back, my friend. Always forward,” he answered without turning his head, and we roared on into the night.
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Have a laugh, I just read this about the departure of Berlusconi…
Former European Commissioner Mario Monti, who is expected to replace the billionaire media magnate, was welcomed with applause when he took his place in the upper house after being appointed a Senator for life by President Giorgio Napolitano. …
Freedom 6 November 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, California / Pacific Coast, Greece, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Occupy Wall Street, UK, Viva La Revolucion!.45 comments
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A placard between tents at the encampment [Dan Kitwood/Getty Images]
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I hardly ever drop in on the NYT anymore… but I did follow a link in the previous thread and so saw a guest op/ed from Sarah Shourd, one of the three hikers held in Iran… When she, Bauer and Fattal came to Occupy Oakland about two weeks ago, they mentioned they support also the hunger strike that had spread thru Cali prisons over solitary confinement… and I DO see signs at OOcc about prisons, prisoners and incarceration….
[A]fter two months with next to no human contact, my mind began to slip. Some days, I heard phantom footsteps coming down the hall. I spent large portions of my days crouched down on all fours by a small slit in the door, listening. In the periphery of my vision, I began to see flashing lights, only to jerk my head around to find that nothing was there. More than once, I beat at the walls until my knuckles bled and cried myself into a state of exhaustion. At one point, I heard someone screaming, and it wasn’t until I felt the hands of one of the friendlier guards on my face, trying to revive me, that I realized the screams were my own.
Of the 14 and a half months, or 9,840 hours, I was held as a political hostage at Evin prison in Tehran, I spent 9,495 of them in solitary confinement. When I was released just over a year ago, I was shocked to find out that the United Nations Convention Against Torture, one of the few conventions the United States has ratified, does not mention solitary confinement. I learned that there are untold numbers of prisoners around the world in solitary, including an estimated 20,000 to 25,000 in the United States. According to the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture, Juan Méndez, the practice appears to be “growing and diversifying in its use and severity.”
Amy Fettig at the American Civil Liberties Union told me: “In the U.S. we use solitary as a routine prison administrative practice. It’s not something that’s used as a last recourse, as it should be.” Last summer, prisoners at Pelican Bay prison in California went on a hunger strike to end the practice of isolating some prisoners for more than 22 hours a day. The strike spread until thousands of prisoners were participating. Only when officials agreed to review the use of solitary confinement did the prisoners accept food. . . . . .
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No shock really… even a nominally Leftischer party must fall.
Agreement reached on Greek unity government
Greece’s two main political parties reached an agreement Sunday evening to form a unity government, giving Europe a steadier partner as it works to avert a larger financial crisis on the continent.
Prime Minister George Papandreou will resign after the new government is formed, officials said, although the timing, and his successor, remained unclear.
Read more at:
WashPo, Washing the Nooz Daily What else is new.
I’ll say it again, shut down the Port of Piraeus.
🙄
Marisacat 