Pillage 1 December 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Viva La Revolucion!.85 comments
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A protester walks past a policeman with a poster from the British embassy in Tehran | Reuters
Oh it just says so much. Not that I care what the native fellows do to the foreign interlopers… I don’t care.
Carry on…
Options 25 November 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Afghanistan War, AFRICOM, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Iraq War, Israel/AIPAC, Moscow, NORCOM, Pakistan, Total fucking lunatics, WAR!.83 comments
Don’t worry! It can’t be the twilight of the American Empire, we still have options for war…. that table, the one reserved for war options, is loaded to the gills!!! We never empty that table…
You want Northern War? Southern War (always tasty! and a bonifide Reagan favorite!)? War in the East?! War in the West ??? Or, best for last… multidirectional war: Iran and China!!
We have options.
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Snicker Snax…. a second cartoon in the gallery also dealt with sabre rattling at China, employing a wicked satire of Slob. YUM.
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.
🙄
Hey 13 October 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Israel/AIPAC, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, Occupy Wall Street, Total fucking lunatics, WAR!.86 comments
President Barack Obama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak are welcomed by local school children during a rainy state arrival ceremony, Thursday, Oct. 13, 2011, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Enjoy it now…
I sent this around after I scammed it from SMBIVA… it is very cheering!! And so is the thread! Few are buying the really really REALLY bad script that Mullen and Holder and Slob cobbled together (Three Stooges, of a no humor variety… ?).
5 stooges? Panetta and Petraeus too? How many fascists in DC does it take to tell a dumb fuck of a lie? (Too many, but it’s a tough job!)
AND one person I sent the NYT post at The Lede to wrote back:
It’s so over. The only thing that can stop it now is a picture of Mittens hanging out of his magic underwear with anyone but Ann.
Here’s hoping… all I ask is that the R low-ball the Flotus ”job”. Give us all a rest from the mania. I feel we are safe, Ann Romney has enough children and g-children.
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Oh FFS… no energy to read it now, but I just noticed this headline:
Saudi Claims Alleged Iranian Plotter Also Orchestrated Bahrain Unrest
from an earlier post at The Lede. This is getting super dooper insulting. It’s bad enough to be on a dog leash with Israel, but with the Saudis too!, at the same time!, is too much!!
What… 30 August 2010
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, Afghanistan War, AFRICOM, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Iraq War, Israel/AIPAC, NORCOM, Pakistan, WAR!.45 comments
Phoenix, US: Inmates spend their day under tents at the section that houses undocumented immigrants at the jail in Maricopa County [Darren Hauck/EPA]
What is that they have been saying?
The end to combat in Iraq?
Something like that, weeks of video clips of pulling out men (women too I am sure) and materiel… Tens of thousands of texters and video gamers, I guess they want us to think, left to control and command… and many more tens of thousands of contract paramilitaries left to do the job…
As if we have retreated to base, ceased house to house, ceased night patrols, ceased clear and hold, much less opened the prisons and released the political prisoners and the innocents, relinquished control of the air – it is we who control the air space over Iraq – we have stopped none of that anywhere in the world, including at “home”, tho Homeland is more accurate.
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Oh For Fuck’s Sake… why not just dispatch Barbara to the WH with the Holy Walker Bush Oil of Office and she can annoint Obby as a younger brother to adopted son Bill C?
It smacks of obeisance to the Lord of Texas…
President Obama plans to call former President Bush on Tuesday when he visits Texas to speak to troops, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Obama will address soldiers at Fort Bliss, Texas, before he returns to the Oval Office to speak on the formal end of the U.S. military’s “combat mission” in Iraq.
“I don’t believe there are plans to see him, but my sense is, it will be one of the calls he makes tomorrow,” Gibbs told reporters Monday when asked if Obama will speak with Bush.
She can say something so Barbara, so Bushian … like, ”we’ve always liked Negroes. er … Africans. Well… we like some Americans, I know that. More oil Barry?”
AND I see that Simpson survived comparing all of us to nursing calves. No surprise…
Heckuva job Obby.
I even caught the last few mins of his remarks today, and I sure missed the pounding action (maybe below camera view the podium reached out and grabbed him… ). The quote sounded more like a beg to me:
Pounding the lectern, Obama continued:
“Holding this bill hostage is directly detrimental to our economic growth. So I ask Senate Republicans to drop the blockade.”
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Moving right along… 13 June 2010
Posted by marisacat in Afghanistan War, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Iraq War, Israel/AIPAC, Pakistan, Riyadh, Turkey, WAR!.55 comments
A diver feeds a turtle at an aquarium in Hefei, Anhui province, China [REUTERS]
An Iranian relief convoy is getting closer to leaving for Gaza:
Iran aid ships for Gaza awaiting ministry nod
(AFP) – 3 hours agoTEHRAN — An Iranian Red Crescent official said in a report on Sunday that two aid ships organised by the humanitarian group were ready and awaiting foreign ministry approval to leave for Gaza.
“We are ready but are awaiting permission from the foreign ministry given the political, military and security conditions in the region,” Mojtaba Majd, a senior Red Crescent official, was quoted as telling Mehr news agency.
Separately the Red Crescent said that of the two ships, the one carrying foodstuffs and medicines was expected to leave this week.
Majd said more than 100,000 Iranians have registered to go to Gaza as volunteers on the second ship, but added only those “who have some expertise” would be sent to the Palestinian territory. snip
And the CSM helpfully tells us why…
[A]nalysts say that Iran’s reaction – including Ahmadinejad’s repeated reminders that the Islamic Republic has championed the Palestinian cause since the 1979 Islamic revolution – is designed to recapture from Turkey part of its self-declared role as the regional bastion of militant resistance that fights for the oppressed.
“The Iranians are trying to say, ‘We can still talk the talk,’ ” says Meir Javedanfar, an Iran specialist in Israel. “This is Iran trying to say that it’s still in charge of the Palestinian issue, to milk the international backlash against Israel after the flotilla incident.”
snip
And, so the article says, too many children in Gaza being named for Tayyip Erdogan… too few for Mahmoud A.
This from the previous thead…
Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.
In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.
To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.
“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”
Sources in Saudi Arabia say it is common knowledge within defence circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two governments, they share a mutual loathing of the regime in Tehran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through and see nothing,” said one. ….
I guess we will know when the sabre rattling ends and the shooting war begins…
And the wars go on… 14 April 2010
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, Afghanistan War, AFRICOM, Border Issues, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Democrats, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Iraq War, Israel/AIPAC, Mexico, Pakistan, Somalia, South America, Venezuela - Chavez, WAR!.58 comments
A bird perches on razor-wire at the US army’s Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi, Iraq [Ben Curtis/AP]
I don’t see them ever ending. Simply expanding, moving, shifting.
Why would they ever end? They never have, in the past. Vietnam seems an anomaly frankly.
Must really piss us off to be shut out of Iran. Bolivia. Venezuela…and so on…
Where there is a will there is a way…
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hmm A little more than “smoke rising” 15 February 2010
Posted by marisacat in 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Israel/AIPAC, WAR!.47 comments
Mohammed Salem, a Reuters photographer based in the Gaza Strip, won the second prize in the Spot News Singles category of the World Press Photo of the Year 2009 with this picture of smoke rising during Israel’s offensive in Gaza January 8, 2009. [UK Independent]
A little more than “rising smoke” …in this pic. A spectacular picture of White Phosphorous over Gaza. The duality seems to play off the rising minarets.
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Speaking of aggression.. Spiegel has a short interview with Hans Blix on Iran:
hmm for some reason, either my system or Spiegel isn’t cooperating with “highlight”, to cut and paste…. but he states that Iran perceives a threat from the US, rather than Israel. The offshore missiles, our carriers, and the possible covert ops inside Iran. Blix also says Iran won’t just sit there and not respond to an attack.
Well, why would Iran not respond? I would assume we are counting on it…….
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Theirs dead, ours orphaned 17 October 2009
Posted by marisacat in Afghanistan War, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Iraq War, Israel/AIPAC, The Battle for New Orleans, U.S. Senate, WAR!.28 comments
Two young kestrels and a barn owl share a nesting box in Boston, Lincs, after both mothers picked the wooden box as the ideal site to bring up young [MASONS NEWS SERVICE]
Or, so I posted once long ago at Orange Mess. Here is a dicey wrinkle. Seems ”ours” are attempting suicide. I would think “theirs” are suiciding… and by that I don’t mean our heinous tellings of suicide bombers, every telling of which is supposed to spur on the wars, as we react in horror to their atrocities.
And he’ll go on giving speeches. Emphatically promising. I think when he announces the troop increase to Afghanistan, he should be a little honest and tell us, we are “staying the course”.
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UPDATE, 12:05 pm on the Pacific Ocean
hmm I read the AP report yesterday on Obama in New Orleans… and this comment did leap out. Google helpfully framed it for me, all blockquoted and linked. Thanks Google. Perhaps they noticed as well.
…response to a question from Bordenave about the former Charity hospital, which once provided indigent care and was a main training hospital, Obama replied that he wished he “could just write a check” but “we’ve got to go through procedures.”
more by Barack Obama – 19 hours ago – The Associated Press (134 occurrences)
Here, however, is worse. Tho not shocking, Obama never ”got” what happened in New Orleans. Long ago, in his brief time in the US senate, he took his lead on New Orleans from Clinton and Bush 1… As I recall, he even flew into New Orleans once on AF1 with Bush 2. He also said that nothing about the aftermath was about race (in a speech later removed from his senate web site).
It was always about race, and everything else too.
This criticism is from Ambinder of The Atlantic, who, if accidentally poked will, like Chatty Cathy, begin to recite Democratic apologia, lies and promises.
Seems Peace Prize really bombed in NOLA.
Rethink 1: Obama Doesn’t Get Katrina?
It wasn’t so much the brief duration of President Obama’s trip to New Orleans that riled the Katrina-smarties — the folks who’ve spent the past several years obsessing, healthily, about the destruction of an American city. It was that, when he spoke there, he got his facts wrong. And he got his facts wrong to such an extent that he convinced folks like Harry Shearer that Obama has no idea what really happened during Katrina.
How could this possibly be? Everyone knows that happened during Hurricane Katrina. It hit New Orleans, causing massive flooding, and the government’s anemic response compounded the disaster.
Shearer quotes Obama:
“Katrina may have swept through this city, but it did not destroy this community, and that is because of you, the people of New Orleans. It has now been just over 4 years since that terrible storm struck your shores. And the days after it did, this nation and all the world were witness to the fact that the damage from Katrina was not caused just by a disaster of nature but also by a breakdown of government. That the government wasn’t adequately prepared and we didn’t adequately respond.
Shearer responds:
The government wasn’t adequately prepared and we didn’t adequately respond” echoes Obama’s campaign rhetoric about the aftermath of the disaster; his other remarks display a glaring, and for such an intellectually voracious and insightful man, quite possibly knowing ignorance of how we got here.
Typically, having mis- or non-diagnosed the problem, he came with no solution, no pledge (aside from the vaporous “build stronger” without reference to build what, how, by whom) to take the steps only the federal government, under strong leadership from a committed chief executive, can take to prevent the disaster from recurring.
Staying the course.
And the manufacturing consent beat goes on… 5 September 2009
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, 2010 Mid Terms, 2012 Re Election, Afghanistan War, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Iran, Iraq War, Israel/AIPAC, Riyadh.41 comments
A nine-month-old three-legged cheetah named Lucky pops her head out of the window of her keeper’s car in Namibia [CATERS]
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Oh my:
James Zogby: “Recent manifestations of rage…are indicators of a dangerous unraveling of some individuals and of the fabric of our very democracy.” (via Open Mic at Politico)
Hand wring hand wring. Furrowed brows… Weep openly for “the fabric of our very democracy”.
But I recall that Zogby voted for Bush in 2000 AND exhorted his US based ME followers to do so as well (and they did). PATCO anyone? Within two years, Americans and legal residents of ME descent were forced to register, by country of national origin, with the local feds. 16 year old sons were taken from mothers – that happened right here in SF, where at least we had coalitions of attorneys to help…
AND Angry Arab has long stated that Zogby is funded by one of the S Arabian princes.. there being so many I cannot remember which one.
I recall that the other Zogby, John the pollster, would address audiences in 2004 and tailor his responses as to who would win (Kerry v Bush) depending on the audience. Several times I heard a shrill giggle from him, most notably after placating Dem audiences that Kerry would win. Why people bought it, I will never know.
Line up the snooker punches for the snookered.
Marisacat 