Memento mori 28 May 2012
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Culture of Death, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, Total fucking lunatics, WAR!.89 comments
A man strolls past a red flamboyant tree on a street in Hai Phong, Vietnam. Red flamboyant is the symbol of Hai Phong, which is also named ‘The city of the red flamboyant’. According to tradition, summer has arrived when flamboyant flowers bloom. | Luong Thai Linh/EPA
“Red flamboyant” beats “rockets red glare…” And it beats most of what is in MSM today for Memorial Day. Such dreck on view. So supportive of war, loaded with knee jerk obeisance to the military….
Is it Slob who is muttering “time for Syria” ? I guess so: Commander-in-Chief. And all that.
Long term, I don’t think we survive ‘war forever – forever war’.
Land Day 1 April 2012
Posted by marisacat in Israel/AIPAC, Total fucking lunatics, WAR!.83 comments
Israeli border police officers use pepper spray as they detain an injured Palestinian protester outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem | Ammar Awad/Reuters
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Barrier 17 March 2012
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, WAR!.59 comments
Israel: Palestinian workers cross a section of a separation barrier between the settlement of Modiin Elite and the West Bank village of Harbeta | Oded Balilty/AP
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.
Wintering 20 November 2011
Posted by marisacat in Egypt, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, la vie en rose, Occupy Wall Street, Pan Arab Revolt - 2011.73 comments
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Flamingos gather on the coast of Nea Kios, in Nafplio, southern Greece. Flamingos use this particular wetland as a resting place during their migration south in the winter [Evangelos Bougiotis/EPA]
Angry Arab pops up with this today:
Israeli solidarity with the Egyptian (nude) Blogger
I don’t want to send that message directly to them so I will send it here. I read that a few Israeli women stripped nude in solidarity with the Egyptian blogger who stripped nude. Why do Israelis intrude into our lives? Why do you get into areas in which you are clearly uninvited and in which you are clearly unwelcome? You are such a bothersome presence. Arabs have made it very clear that they (unlike the tyrants that you like) don’t like you and don’t want you in their midst. It is none of your business what Arabs do and don’t do. Spare us your act of solidarity when you are racists who everyday in your live you take advantage of the racist system that Zionist set up for you. We don’t need your silly and fake solidarity. You are not invited to our lives and our activities. You are such an unwanted presence. Take your solidarity and go away. And stop intruding on every aspect of our lives. After we liberate Palestine, and when you are forced to live in a system based on equality (after we subject you to the same military rule that you imposed on the Arabs inside Israel), you may engage in solidarity but even then it won’t be wanted. You really are without dignity when you know full well that Arabs don’t want to do anything with you, and you keep acting like you are invited to our parties, uprisings, lives and events.Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 7:26 AM
Oh No. Whooops. NO. As far as I am concerned, and not knowing preciselyWHO the women are on the Israeli side, but they may most certainly stripe nude if they wish, in sympathy, support, solidarity, identification, whatever is the motivation, with the Eqyptian blogger. Who is herself responding to repression of women under the conservative Salafi rules… and in fact in other posts Angry Arab writes of the increasing conservative Orthodox religious, on the Jewish side!, imposing separation of the sexes on public buses (women to the rear of the bus) and elsewhere.
Perhaps the Israeli women are thinking, oh I don’t know, BROADLY.
I think it is bad business to tell women what to do, what they may or may not do, to lecture them.
Everybody is allowed personal autonomy, I don’t care how politicised a situation or a country is…. if it practicises apartheid or not.
He seems a tad obsessed:
I disagree with Sara and other other feminist comrades at Nasawiyya who I so admire and support. It seems to me that there are so many other issues that women have to worry about in our region (and beyond) to be distracted by this sensational act by one person. If the issue is about sexual liberation and challenging the taboos of religion and state, I am all for it. But this is too shallow an act (and may even echo too many other Western shallow acts) to be taken seriously as a feminist act. Yes, of course, we need to denounce the various reactionary and right-wing voices of condemnation. But the pictures were also circulated for cheap titillation, which I guess is fine if people want to do that. But the feminist movement has other more important priorities to be reduced (or caricatured) by the exhibitionism of one woman (or man). Comrade Khodor (a progressive Lebanese) wrote a letter to `Alya’. I keep wanting to avoid this issue which is filling the pages in Arabic and English but I feel it keeps following me. There are so many other important issues. I am more worried about the status of Tunisian women after the victory of An-Nahdar: and about Western endorsement of misogynistic regime in the GCC countries. These are more serious threats to women and their freedoms, it seems to me.Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 8:26 AM
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!!
Future 10 September 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, DC Politics, Egypt, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, Lie Down Fall Down Dems, Total fucking lunatics, WAR!.61 comments
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Israeli embassy under attack in Cairo – in pictures – Egyptian protesters storm the Israeli embassy in Cairo – Riot police take position [Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters]
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Catch this from Meacham…. if you can read the running slop wthout vomiting, that is:
JON MEACHAM homily for an Evensong in Commemoration of 9/11, to be delivered tomorrow afternoon at Saint Thomas Church, on Fifth Avenue:
“A day like September 11 reminds us of the essential fragility of all things. … We reacted as a great people, a people imbued with a moral sensibility and a passion for liberty and for order. … You and I can argue about the details of the American response, … about the tactics and the wars. But the power and the glory of this republic lie precisely there, in the freedom to argue and to grumble-and, ultimately, in the freedom to hope that our arguments, conducted within history, can shape history. …
“The terrorists who brought war to this island a decade ago believed they were agents of God. They were not. They were-they are-agents of evil, driven by a will to power. It was the most extreme expression imaginable of the most ancient sin of all: the sin of pride, of believing you are not a subject of God’s but a god yourself. This is the perversion that cost us Eden … So it was that the terrorists of 9/11 were 21st-century serpents-lineal descendants of that first spineless snake who slithered through the garden. … Love and remembrance: such is the legacy of September 11 and its aftermath. It is the same legacy, in fact, as Good Friday — a day of death that ultimately affirmed life.”
More than a little transference? I’d say…
Yes I so wanted to grow up to be an unwilling volunteer for the recycling side of the garbage collection (about what most “green” hype is these days… ) and I SO WANTED TO grow up and be alive in the United States of the Full Partner of Israel.
Yes indeedy.
Winning the Future 12 August 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, NORCOM, WAR!.42 comments
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A photograph provided by Israeli Aircraft Industries shows their newly-developed vertical take-off drone, or unmanned aircraft, called the Ghost, ahead of its presentation next week in the AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America exhibit in Washington DC. The unit, which is electrical and silent, weighs just four kilograms (nine pounds) and can hover for 30 minutes. It can provide real-time intelligence for ground troops operating in urban areas, or can be used for homeland security purposes. Picture: EPA / ISI
They plan on taking really good care of us all.
Future 31 July 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, Afghanistan War, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, Total fucking lunatics, WAR!.63 comments
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Helmand, Afghanistan: US marines walk past a Russian tank left over from the war between the Soviet Union and Afghan mujahideen Photograph: David Goldman/AP
… might as well drink.
For the moment, I am drowning myself in Barry Lyndon. Seems as good a drowning pool as any…..
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Rome 20 May 2011
Posted by marisacat in 2012 Re Election, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, Israel/AIPAC, Total fucking lunatics, WAR!.58 comments
A Palestinian youth is detained by Israeli border police during clashes in the Shufat refugee camp, on the outskirts of Jerusalem [Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images]
From a gallery of pictures of the protests, at The Guardian…
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And, here’s hoping…
They are extraordinary scenes. Film shot on mobile phones captured the moment on Sunday when at least 1,000 Palestinian refugees marched across no-man’s land to one of the most heavily protected borders in the world, the one separating Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Waving Palestinian flags, the marchers braved a minefield, then tore down a series of fences, allowing more than 100 to run into Israeli-controlled territory. As they embraced Druze villagers on the other side, voices could be heard saying: “This is what liberation looks like.”
Unlike previous years, this Nakba Day was not simply a commemoration of the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians in 1948, when their homeland was forcibly reinvented as the Jewish state. It briefly reminded Palestinians that, despite their long-enforced dispersion, they still have the potential to forge a common struggle against Israel.
As Israel violently cracked down on last Sunday’s protests on many fronts — in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and on the borders with Syria and Lebanon — it looked less like a military superpower and more like the proverbial boy with his finger in the dam. . . . . .
This at the end:
[T]he protesters in Syria and Lebanon showed that they will not be pushed to the margins of the Palestinian Arab Spring. That message will not be lost on either Hamas or Fatah as they begin negotiations to develop a shared strategy over the next few months.
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Israel is in a diplomatic and strategic dead-end. Last weekend it may have got its first taste of the likely future.
Marisacat 