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.
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. …
Gladio 15 October 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Europe, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Italy, Occupy Wall Street, WAR!.49 comments
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Italian police fired tear gas and water cannons as protesters in Rome turned a demonstration against corporate greed into a riot Saturday, smashing shop and bank windows, torching cars and hurling bottles [Image: AP]
And, down in comments:
Murloc on Oct 15, 4:20 PM said:
apparently there were black blocs infiltrated in the manifestation who turned the manifestation violent, and leftist groups and other pacific demonstrators helped the police to capture them.So much for your anti-left propaganda. Those round shields are so silly though, it almost looks like 300.
Read more: Business Insider
Operation Gladio (Italian: Organizzazione Gladio) is the codename for a clandestine NATO “stay-behind” operation in Italy after World War II. Its purpose was to continue anti-communist actions in the event of a shift to a Communist party led government. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, “Operation Gladio” is used as an informal name for all stay-behind organizations, sometimes called “Super NATO”. The name Gladio is the Italian form of gladius, a type of Roman shortsword.[1]
Operating in many NATO and even some neutral countries,[2] Gladio was part of a series of national operations first coordinated by the Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU), founded in 1948. After the creation of NATO in 1949, the CCWU was integrated into the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC), founded in 1951 and overseen by SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe), transferred to Belgium after France’s official withdrawal from NATO’s Military Committee in 1966 — which was not followed by the dissolution of the French stay-behind paramilitary movements. […]
Carnivale 21 February 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Italy, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011.69 comments
Carnival season kicks off in Venice, Nice and Viareggio:
A float depicting US President Barack Obama with his hat topped off by a man dressed as Osama Bin Laden, and entitled Barack-Adabra and the Great Circus of the Fleas, is seen at the Carnival parade in Viareggio, Italy [AP]
Don’t worry …they REALLY smacked Silvio around:
A huge paper mache float depicting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi entitled Rexpubblica is seen at the Viareggio Carnival [EPA]
At least Obby got to keep his skin.
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Another Libya site: http://revolution2.moonfruit.com/
DOA 16 February 2011
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Italy.63 comments
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi arrives at his residence at Palazzo Grazioli, in Rome. He faced a potentially fatal challenge to his power when a judge ordered him tried on prostitution and abuse of power charges. Berlusconi is going on trial April 6 in Milan on charges that he paid for sex with a 17-year-old Moroccan girl and then tried to cover it up. [AP]
It is almost hilarioius, if anyone told me that was him in his coffin, I’d believe it. All drained and pumped back up……..
I noticed that Angry A had a reference to a NYT report, calling a MILLION women on the streets of Italy as “signs of discontent” with Silvio.
😉
More/Merrier 13 February 2011
Posted by marisacat in Europe, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Italy, Total fucking lunatics.60 comments
A demonstrator holds a pan cover with a picture of a caged Berlusconi during a protest against Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, in Rome, Saturday, Feb.12, 2011. Protestors are demanding Berlusconi’s resignation following allegations he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl and used his office to cover it up. Italian prosecutors want to put Italian Premier Berlusconi on trial over the allegations. Berlusconi has dismissed the allegations as a smear campaign. “I’m not worried in the slightest,” Berlusconi said of the prostitution case. “I am a wealthy gentleman who can spend the rest of his life building hospitals for children like I’ve always wanted to.” (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)
The more that get pushed out, for whatever reason, the better (I could care less who Silvio poked or prodded)…
😉
Can’t someone surface with a pic of Little Mr Cameron, over there in England, with his vital part in a keyhole… or something?
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Hail Mary… 17 October 2010
Posted by marisacat in Australia, Culture of Death, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Italy, Total fucking lunatics.64 comments
A cheer broke out in the crowd when MacKillop’s name was announced by Pope Benedict XVI [AFP]
Hail Mary… and then some. FIRST the Church tosses a saint at Australia… then gives her a name that sounds like the title of some parochial school based porn and discipline movie:
St Mary MacKillop of the Cross.
Then, it seems, the story is she was first vilified (“briefly” ex-communicated) in her life for exposing an instance of abuse, then lauded.
Now sainted.
There seems to have been a great mass writhing of the Australian faithful in St Peter’s Square…
One hundred and one years after her death, the Pope completed the recognition of her saintly status by declaring MacKillop and the five other clergy members being canonised should be “definitively declared saints and included in the book of saints (and) devoutly honoured . . . in all the church”.
The most senior cardinal assisting him in the ceremony, the Archbishop of Montreal, Jean-Claude Turcotte, gave a response in which he became the first person to formally use MacKillop’s new title, Saint Mary of the Cross.
Sister Maria Casey, the official advocate of MacKillop’s cause, knelt before the Pope and he held her hands as she thanked him for the elevation of MacKillop.
The gospel reading in the mass was read twice, once in Greek and once in Latin, to signify the Pope’s decision applies to the universal church as it covers both its eastern and western wings.
Also, according to the Australian (isn’t that a Murdoch paper, iirc it is), Rudd has moved publicly to laud the Church for its stance (would that be “bend over”?) on abuse AND there is a move on to make SMMotC the patron saint of …….. the abused!
KEVIN Rudd launched a vigorous defence of the Catholic Church’s response to child abuse last night.
And Mr Rudd said the canonisation of Mary MacKillop should prompt Australians to a fairer appreciation of the church’s contribution to their nation’s history.
Addressing a press conference after an audience with the Pope, the Foreign Minister said while many people criticised the church it was time to more openly acknowledge its positive contributions.
Asked about the church’s response to clergy abusing children he said it had taken action and “I would like to acknowledge the enormous work which the church has done and other Christian churches in dealing with this blight on all of human kind”.
He is in Rome not only for the announce of her coming canonisation but apparently the Vatican is mounting a big show on Australian indigenous peoples. A two-fer.
We know how much they care. About the little brown people.
One atheist writing in the Sydney Morning Herald notes that she, Saint Mary MacKillop of the Cross, is already the patron saint of quack cancer cures, her mandatory two miracles having to do with curing cancer.
Only second to the general whitewashing the Church receives:
Asked what the federal government planned to do on the issue of clerical child abuse, Mr Rudd said it was important to acknowledge the pain of victims but “the church over some time now has established its own process within Australia for dealing with this”.
“And the church in doing so has dealt with many cases from the past, and where there have been imperfections in the process they have also sought to improve those processes.”
We are so blessed…….
(O Canada! … Don’t feel left out Canada! I read some monk is about to receive the nod… )
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In other fantastical fib-laden slobber news, I see Ob and Snob were together in Ohio.
“I know there are times when probably it’s hard to recapture that sense of possibility,” Obama said, recalling the night of his election victory.
“It’s hard sometimes to say, ‘Yes we can.’
You sit thinking, ‘You know, maybe. I don’t know.’ It’s not as inspiring a slogan.”
Yes we cannot?
They so need to be pelted with foodstuffs made from transfats, pesticide riddled vegetables and tobacco smoke.
Tender morsels 18 September 2010
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Italy, UK.41 comments
Choirboys attend a mass lead …
Choirboys attend a mass lead by Britain’s Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Pope Benedict XVI, unseen, at Westminster Abbey, in London Friday,Sept. 17, 2010. Pope Benedict XVI is on the second day of the first-ever state visit by a Pope to Britain.… Read more »
(AP Photo/Max Rossi, Pool)
😆
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gah. 23 August 2010
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Italy.69 comments
Birds under a roof in Solda, Italy [Giuseppe Cacace/AFP/Getty Images]
People thrash back and forth about what Obby “should do”, “must do”, “has to do”. Get over it! He’s doing what he’s doing.
Which is pretty much The Plan…
However wretched the execution. Not that it matters if we agree, disagree or dislike the roll out.
Dean Baker in The Arena at Politico:
There are very few people interested in ideology. However, President Obama does have to lay out a path forward and when it comes to the economy, it is very difficult to see what it is. The economy is essentially dead in the water. It is creating few, if any jobs, and the unemployment rate is almost certain to drift upward through the rest of the 2010. And, there is no obvious reason to expect things to look much better in 2011. (Two really bad unemployment reports in the next two months are not going to help the Dems’ prospects in November.)
President Obama has to have a story about how his policies will make things better for ordinary workers. He doesn’t have a plausible one at the moment. Everyone knows that he supported the rescue of Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Wall Street gang in their hour of need. If he expects to regain his popularity he has to be prepared to stick his neck out for the rest of the country. There may not be a workable program that can get through a Senate filibuster, but at the moment, he is not even publicly pushing one.
Don’t make me laught too hard. He’s not pushing one privately either.
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Still in the news, still god’s awful emissary… 25 March 2010
Posted by marisacat in Abortion Rights, Italy, Sex / Reproductive Health, Viva La Revolucion!.46 comments
If it is not the Dutch, then it is the Irish…. if not the Irish then it is the South Germans – in the old stomping grounds. If not Germany, then Florence and Roma. If not in the parishes then in the choirs… if not in the choirs… then among the deaf children of Wisconsin.
Is there no gay beach resort Benny and Ganswein can retire to? Gay mountain resort?
Gather up the lacey underskirts, the jewels, the custom made Versace clothing (Ganswein, overseen personally by Donatella)… the nifty red slip ons… the bon mots from Bono.. and, you know, get the hell out of [un]Holy Dodge.
One would think. How hard can it be? No one is asking the High Holy Boyos to take a vow of [gasp choke] poverty……….
Marisacat 