Home Front: Politix |
How the Democrats betrayed the Jews |
2023-11-03 |
[Unherd] I grew up in a tiny Jewish enclave on Chicago’s South Side. When I first saw New York, in the Sixties, I was awed as by no subsequent marvel of nature: stretching north from Columbus Circle, up the West Side, was a Jewish metropolis. New York, in my lifetime, had always been a Jewish city: the rhythms, the accent, the humour always felt to me like home. Because they were home. The populace, of whatever ethnicity, was formed or noodged by Yiddishkeit, much as the Chicago of my youth was by the culture of the Irish and the Poles. One of that very, very small cohort of sane voices in the heart of darkness. The New York Times and The New Yorker were run by Jews; they were both our Rialto and our Bible. New York Theatre, in my lifetime, had always been Jewish. The playwrights were Miller, Odets, Elmer Rice, Ben Hecht, Sidney Kingsley; and, later, Arthur Laurents, Lillian Hellman, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, Wallace Shawn, and myself. We New York Jews have always voted for the Democrats, as their policies appealed to the immigrants and the first generation (my parents). A Fair Shake, a safety net, and unionism were manna to the newly arrived — in spite of (in both their and my lifetime) quotas and antisemitic discrimination. The immigrant Jews did well here, and voted for Franklin Roosevelt. And we are voting for him still. His Advisor on Jewish Affairs (jude-suss, or "house-Jew") was Rabbi Stephen Wise, the "dean" of the American Rabbinate. He referred to FDR as "Boss", and brought home to his community Roosevelt’s assurance of aid to the dying Jews of Europe. Yet Roosevelt’s aid stopped with his assurances, and tens of thousands of Jews died because of his restrictive immigration policies, and millions in Europe because of his refusal to interdict the Holocaust. Still, today, Jews vote Democratic: electing Presidents who refused to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister (Obama and Biden) in times of "peace", who gave and give aid to the terrorist state of Iran in exchange for some semi-specified "deal". American "Aid" to Iran pays for the equipment and ordnance, which is, at this moment, eradicating Jews. Why do Jews vote Democratic? Partly from tradition — conservatives have heard a Liberal Jew, when asked to defend or explain various absurd or inconsistent Democratic positions, shrug and joke: "I’m a Congenital Democrat." I understand, for I was one, too. But there is no more cosy mystery in the antisemitism of the Democratic Party; Representatives are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists and pro-Palestinians, calling for the end of the state of Israel — that is, for the death of the Jews. And Democrat Representatives repeat and refuse to retract the libel that Israel bombed a hospital, in spite of absolute proof to the contrary, and will not call out the unutterable atrocities of Hamas. The writing is on the wall. In blood. Moses was instructed to have the Jews smear blood on their doorposts to identify themselves, and, so, avert the wrath of the Angel of Death. Mythologically, the blood can be said to be their own: the message, that if they chose to stay in Egypt, their blood would not mark the doorpost, but would wash the floor. |
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-Lurid Crime Tales- |
Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor Caught in Scandal |
2023-05-04 |
[PJMedia] In recent weeks, Democrats have ramped up criticism of conservative Supreme Court justices like Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, alleging corruption and using that as a pretext for congressional oversight of the court. However, these accusations are baseless and lack legal or ethical standing. Justice Thomas was accused of not reporting free travel expenses received from a friend that he was not even required to report and a minor technical error in income reporting. Justice Gorsuch was accused of selling land to an executive of a law firm that had business before the Supreme Court, but he actually sold the property just after being confirmed, and the buyer had no business before the court at the time. While these incidents were much ado about nothing, the same Democrats who were calling for DOJ investigations and impeachments will no doubt sing a different tune over the revelation that liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor took $3.6 million from Penguin Random House publishing when the company did have business before the court, and declined to recuse herself. In addition to the $3.6 million advance (which Penguin Random House lost money on), the Daily Wire found that Sotomayor received payments from the company annually from 2017 to 2021, totaling over $500,000. In 2013, she voted in a decision regarding a case involving Random House despite then-fellow Justice Stephen Breyer recusing himself after receiving money from the publisher. In 2020, Sotomayor received a $10,586 check from Penguin Random House on the same day a lawsuit against the publisher appeared before the Supreme Court. The Court voted not to hear the case in February 2020, and Sotomayor received her largest-ever payment from the publisher in May of that year. While the media has been busy attacking conservative justices for supposed financial misconduct, including failure to disclose free travel, it turns out that Justice Sotomayor herself failed to disclose six trips funded by outside groups in 2016—without being targeted by the media or enduring the wrath of outraged Democrats. If Democrats want to prove their attacks on Thomas and Gorsuch are sincere, and that the need for congressional oversight of the Supreme Court is genuine, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) should be calling for the impeachment of Sotomayor, as she did for Thomas. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) should be calling for the Department of Justice to investigate Sotomayor, as he did for Thomas. Related: Clarence Thomas: 2023-04-18 Dem Rep. Porter: 'Congress Absolutely Can and Should Police the Supreme Court' Clarence Thomas: 2023-03-02 Democrat Congressman Mocks God During Congressional Hearing — Makes Social Media Gaffe Afterward Clarence Thomas: 2023-03-01 In US Supreme Court, Twitter accused of 'blindness' to terror Related: Neil Gorsuch: 2023-04-15 SCOTUS Rules 9-0 Against Administrative State Neil Gorsuch: 2023-03-28 SCOTUS Declines To Hear Case Of Trial Lawyer Who Bribed Judge To Bilk US Oil Company For Billions Neil Gorsuch: 2023-01-05 VDH - Did Someone or Something Seize Control of the United States? Related: Sonia Sotomayor: 2023-03-01 In US Supreme Court, Twitter accused of 'blindness' to terror Sonia Sotomayor: 2022-12-27 BREAKING: Supreme Court Keeps Immigration Rule Title 42 in Place Indefinitely 5-4 Ruling Sonia Sotomayor: 2022-10-12 Texas murderer who ate his own eyeball will stay on death row: SCOTUS Related: Random House: 2023-03-02 Publisher scraps book from 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams after 'racist rant' Random House: 2022-01-11 If Norman Mailer can be cancelled, no one is safe Random House: 2021-12-09 Prominent critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi paid nearly $45,000 by University of Wisconsin |
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-Great Cultural Revolution |
If Norman Mailer can be cancelled, no one is safe |
2022-01-11 |
By Tim Black [SpikedOnline] Norman Mailer (1923-2007) was a giant of 20th-century American literature. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, responsible for such classics as The Naked and the Dead. And he pioneered a new style of journalism, which revelled in and foregrounded the subjective experience and feelings of the writer. Yet none of that seems to matter to his long-time publisher, Penguin Random House, which has effectively just cancelled him. Mailer was no stranger to controversy and criticism when alive, of course. The great historian and social critic, Christopher Lasch, saw an archetypally modern narcissism at work in Mailer’s self-revelatory prose. And feminists damned him for his opposition to contraception and his posturing machismo, a charge that acquired a darker resonance after he stabbed his wife Adele Morales with a penknife for mocking his masculinity. (Morales survived and Mailer served three years on probation.) Yet none of his contemporaries would have dreamed of calling for Mailer’s cancellation. For good or ill, he was a truly significant cultural figure. He was a writer who not only bore witness to his age but helped shape it, too, co-founding the Village Voice in 1955, and capturing the ‘hip’, ‘beat’ and aggressively countercultural spirit of his time. He may have irked some, and he may have inspired others. But both his critics and his champions were united in recognising his importance. Read the rest at the link |
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Government Corruption |
The Forever Wars are coming home |
2021-09-10 |
The book is about the 1967 anti-war protest at the Pentagon and, more broadly, the factionalizing unrest of that period and how Vietnam fueled it. It also explores how the quiet or mostly quiet acquiescence to horrors abroad, horrors carried out by U.S. troops in the name of an entire democratic nation, degrades a society. At one point, the narrator imagines himself encountering "Grandmother, the church-goer, orange hair burning bright" at a slot machine in Las Vegas. "Madame, we are burning children in Vietnam," he tells her. "Boy, you just go get yourself lost," she replies. "Grandma's about ready for a kiss from the jackpot." The book turns its lens on the left as well, even on the anti-war protesters marching on the Pentagon. In its violent climax, as soldiers bludgeon young demonstrators in the night, Mailer cites an account that appeared afterward in the Washington Free Press, a newspaper founded by campus radicals. It was by Thorne Dreyer, then 22, who went on to a prolific career as a writer and activist. As the beatings commenced, Dreyer wrote, "I began to resent the ‘super-militants' who created so much pressure to stay. Because that was nothing but goddamn bourgeois politics. … People have to come to terms with what violence means. It's not something to groove on and cleanse your soul with." I see a desire for violence as catharsis in many protesters on the left and right today and in the people cheering them on from their living rooms. It's an effect, I think, of the two full decades of war that Americans will mark on this year's September 11 anniversary, with the drone strikes and commando raids of the so-called war on terror carrying on in the background even as American soldiers leave Afghanistan and end their combat mission in Iraq. War, especially interminable war, does this to a nation. It makes people want to claim the sanctity of combat for themselves and to inject the stakes of conflict into their lives. The protesters at the Pentagon were there to stand against the violence of Vietnam, but some of them wanted a piece of that violence for themselves. They were jealous of the soldiers in that way; the war had infected them too. The difference with the post-9/11 wars is that there's no draft and there have been no corresponding liberal armies in the streets, at least not any focused on the nation's foreign conflicts. People crave the trappings of war more as they understand it less, and these modern wars, to a degree that would probably shock the people of Mailer's generation, have been absent from our collective political consciousness. At the same time, all of us still know, in some perhaps unacknowledged part of our minds, that we each own a piece of the sublime suffering that has unfolded for 20 years on the frontiers of the American empire, the incinerated children and demolished cities, the service members coming home to die by suicide. Even those who never served have been grooving on the violence of the war on terror for years as armchair militants. Many Americans, like me, have never known adult life without it, growing up against the backdrop of terrorist threats, removing shoes at airports, invasion, occupation, Guantánamo Bay ‐ stakes we understand to be so terrible that the only answers are drone bombs, surveillance, civilian casualties. We've learned to put our morals on hold and ask forgiveness later as we assent to whatever it takes to extinguish the threat. We've become accustomed to labeling people as insurgents and terrorists, too, and to all the moral permissiveness these terms imply, moving us well beyond the orange-haired grandmother's passive assent. And inevitably, it has all bent back on us. These wars have seeped into our lives and discourse in ways that color how we see not only the wider world but also our neighbors ‐ Muslims at first, then our political opponents. They've made Americans more war-like, opening our minds to ideas like collateral damage and unbounded conflict that are now taking hold in our politics. |
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Home Front: Culture Wars |
What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? |
2017-11-26 |
Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, William Burroughs, Richard Wagner, Sid Vicious, V. S. Naipaul, John Galliano, Norman Mailer, Ezra Pound, Caravaggio, Floyd Mayweather, though if we start listing athletes we’ll never stop. And what about the women? The list immediately becomes much more difficult and tentative: Anne Sexton? Joan Crawford? Sylvia Plath? Does self-harm count? Okay, well, it’s back to the men I guess: Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Lead Belly, Miles Davis, Phil Spector. They did or said something awful, and made something great. The awful thing disrupts the great work; we can’t watch or listen to or read the great work without remembering the awful thing. Flooded with knowledge of the maker’s monstrousness, we turn away, overcome by disgust. Or … we don’t. We continue watching, separating or trying to separate the artist from the art. Either way: disruption. They are monster geniuses, and I don’t know what to do about them. We’ve all been thinking about monsters in the Trump era. For me, it began a few years ago. I was researching Roman Polanski for a book I was writing and found myself awed by his monstrousness. It was monumental, like the Grand Canyon. And yet. When I watched his movies, their beauty was another kind of monument, impervious to my knowledge of his iniquities. I had exhaustively read about his rape of thirteen-year-old Samantha Gailey; I feel sure no detail on record remained unfamiliar to me. Despite this knowledge, I was still able to consume his work. Eager to. The more I researched Polanski, the more I became drawn to his films, and I watched them again and again—especially the major ones: Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown. Like all works of genius, they invited repetition. I ate them. They became part of me, the way something loved does. I wasn’t supposed to love this work, or this man. He’s the object of boycotts and lawsuits and outrage. In the public’s mind, man and work seem to be the same thing. But are they? Ought we try to separate the art from the artist, the maker from the made? Do we undergo a willful forgetting when we want to listen to, say, Wagner’s Ring cycle? (Forgetting is easier for some than others; Wagner’s work has rarely been performed in Israel.) Or do we believe genius gets special dispensation, a behavioral hall pass? And how does our answer change from situation to situation? Certain pieces of art seem to have been rendered unconsumable by their maker’s transgressions—how can one watch The Cosby Show after the rape allegations against Bill Cosby? I mean, obviously it’s technically doable, but are we even watching the show? Or are we taking in the spectacle of our own lost innocence? And is it simply a matter of pragmatics? Do we withhold our support if the person is alive and therefore might benefit financially from our consumption of their work? Do we vote with our wallets? If so, is it okay to stream, say, a Roman Polanski movie for free? Can we, um, watch it at a friend’s house? More at the link |
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-Lurid Crime Tales- |
Man pardoned by former Mississippi governor involved in shooting |
2013-01-14 |
![]() "This here town ain't big enough fer both of us, Wayne!" The pardoned man, Wayne Harris, 56, of Slate Spring, Mississippi, was recovering at a medical center on Friday after receiving two gunshot wounds in his legs during an altercation that resulted in 51-year-old Chris McGonagill's death. "He's dead, Jim!" The two men were at a cookout on McGonagill's property with three other men when a fight erupted, said Calhoun County Sheriff Greg Pollan. "Gimme some o' that there barbecue, Wayne!" "It hain't done yet, Chris!" "I say hit's done! Now gimme the barbecue, yew varmint!" "Smile when yew say that, Chris!" McGonagill and Harris fired shots at each other, "Go fer yer guns, Wayne!" [BANG! BANG! BANGETY BANG!] McGonagill using a 9mm pistol and Harris shooting a .22-caliber rifle, Wait a minute! Who the hell brings a .22 rifle to a gunfight? Pollan said. The sheriff said alcohol was a potential contributing factor in the incident. No! Re-e-e-e-e-ally? McGonagill died early on Friday "Rosebud!" from multiple gunshot wounds throughout his body, said Lafayette County Coroner Rocky Kennedy. "Lookidat, Bob! Eighteen rounds, right through his brisket!" It was unclear on Friday whether Harris had fired in self defense or if he would be charged with a crime, the sheriff said. One of his party guests was waving a 9mm, and he had a .22 rifle? It sounds like he was trying to do himself in if he started it, unless they were shooting it out at 100 yards. "Charges are pending based on what we find out from the interviews," Pollan said. "You get anything from the party guests yet, Stan?" "None of 'em's sobered up yet, Chief!" "We can wait. Is the barbecue done yet?" The deadly incident happened one year to the day after Harris was pardoned by Barbour for a 2001 marijuana-sale conviction. "That's because I invited all my friends to the anniversary party for my pardon!" Harris had been out of prison since March 2002, according to the Mississippi Department of Corrections. He was able to legally own a rifle after completing a rehabilitation course in 2007, according a circuit court employee in Calhoun County. So it's not like it was an illicit firearm. It wasn't even an "assault rifle" unless you define a Western Auto .22 long with an 18-round capacity as an "assault rifle." Barbour sparked an uproar when he issued some 200 pardons in January 2012 as he completed eight years in office. Among them were five inmates in prison and five others who had worked at the governor's mansion doing odd jobs, four of whom were serving life sentences for murder. Presumably he became acquainted with them in the course of his term as governor and their term as handymen. If Norman Mailer could do it, why couldn't he? |
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Home Front: Culture Wars |
Death of the Cool |
2011-09-19 |
Back when I was a kid, I desperately wanted to be cool. I endlessly played my Miles Davis Birth of the Cool LP and devoured Norman Mailer, Alan Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti not to mention Kerouac whom I saw when I was fifteen reading from The Subterraneans at Hunter College auditorium while swigging from a bottle of Scotch he had brought with him. (I thought that was cool.) Being cool was everything to me then. And to most of my friends. We started as boy beatniks and morphed into hippies (of sorts) as the times rolled and then turned into yuppies, going upscale, but the values were the same. Many of us pretended to be Marxists, but at heart we knew we were liberals, just like mom and dad. Or most of our moms and dads. But whatever our politics, play or otherwise, we were big time cultural rebels. Thought we were anyway. Sex, drugs and rock and roll. All of that is so over. Just as it reached its apogee, with Stevie Wonder boogieing in the White House and the values of the Sixties spread through the upper echelons of our government, filled with more czars than the Hermitage ever dreamed of with a president who palled around with Bill Ayers, for crissakes, cool is now dead. Maybe not officially dead (how could that be?) but dead enough. In fact, not only is it dead, its decomposed. |
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Fifth Column | |
Gore Vidal Questions McCain's Time in Prison Camp (doubts it happened!) | |
2008-06-14 | |
![]() Asked what he thinks of McCain, Vidal calls him a "disaster," then tells Deborah Solomon, "Who started this rumor that he was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?" This is an amazing example of outright, upfront, bare-knuckle goebbelism from one of the media culture's foremost icons.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, Vidal's heroes themselves (the Stalinist butchers in Hanoi) saw McCain as quite a prize and made much of him in their propaganda. Were they lying, too? Why would you doubt him? Solomon wonders. "Hes a graduate of Annapolis," Vidal explains. "I know a lot of the Annapolis breed. Remember, Im West Point, where I was born. My father went there." Vidal's only reference to McCain's opponent is a fleeting reference to "the United States of America, as Mr. Obama likes to call it." At least he is not supporting Obama. The B*H campaign probably pays him not to. Asked how he felt when he heard about the passing earlier this year of his conservative nemesis, William F. Buckley, Vidal says, "I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred." Hell will be a duller place when this g**d****d q***r (Buckley's term) finally croaks. Vidal refuses to explain again how he is related to Al Gore, claiming that even he has forgotten. The Goracle probably paid him to forget. He is apparently a distant cousin. Vidal's mother's maiden name was Gore. (Incredible as it seems, this wretched piece of fossilized catamite dung did have a mother.) On other subjects, Vidal says he has no interest in the gay marriage debate, suggests there was "no sex" in his 50-year relationship with one man, and calls Italo Calvino the greatest writer in his lifetime while dissing Norman Mailer and Philip Roth. Unfortunately, Mailer died last November and is therefore finally unable to get drunk and kick Vidal's ass. | |
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Home Front Economy |
U.S. Desperately Needs More Domestic Oil |
2008-05-12 |
In the early 1960s the law of supply and demand greatly irked Cuba's minister of the economy Ernesto Che Guevara. No problemo! he decided one fine morning. I'll simply abolish it by creating a new man, with these insufferable Cubans as my Guinea Pigs. The world's intelligentsia applauded deliriously as 14,000 Cubans were murdered by firing squad, 77,000 drowned or were ripped apart by sharks attempting to flee Guevara's whim, and half a million were herded into political prisons and forced labor camps at bayonet point. (All of this out of a Cuban population of 6.5 million meaning that Castro and Che's political incarceration rate topped Stalin's.) And wouldn't you know it? After years of this glorious effort, cheered by everyone from Jean Paul Sartre to George Mc Govern and from Norman Mailer to Michael Moore, that doggone law of supply and demand held firm, while Cuba's per capita income (surpassing half of Europe's in the 1950s) plummeted to nudge Haiti's. For fear of oil spills, as of 2008, the U.S. federal government and various states ban drilling in thousands upon thousands of square miles off the U.S. coast. These areas, primarily on the outer Continental Shelf, hold an estimated 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This leaves America's energy needs increasingly at the mercy of foreign autocrats, despots, and maniacs. All the while worldwide demand for oil ratchets ever and ever upward. At times you'd swear that Che Guevara's bloody lesson (not to mention Lenin, Mao, and Pol Pot's) has yet to sink in. Barack Obama, for instance, recently proposed a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Such "hope" that more federal looting of oil producers will lower prices is not "audacious", it is simply idiotic. And that's only part of the idiocy. For those who favor evidence over dogma, a lesson in the environmental perils of offshore oil drilling presents itself every bit as starkly, though much less murderously. To wit: Of the roughly 3,700 offshore oil productions platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, roughly 3,200 lie off the Louisiana coast. Yet Louisiana produces one-third of America's commercial fisheries and no major oil spill has ever soiled its coast. On the other hand, Florida ,which zealously prohibits offshore oil drilling, had its gorgeous Emerald Coast panhandle beaches soiled by an ugly oil spill in 1976. This spill, as almost all oil spills, resulted from the transportation of oil not from the extraction of oil. Assuming such as Hugo Chavez deign to keep selling us oil, we'll need increasingly more and we'll need to keep transporting it stateside typically to refineries in Louisiana and Texas. This path takes those tankers (as the one in 1976) smack in front of Florida's panhandle beaches. Recall the Valdez, the Cadiz, the Argo Merchant. These were all tanker spills. The production of oil is relatively clean and safe. Again, it's the transportation that presents the greatest risk. And even these spills (though hyped hysterically as environmental catastrophes) always play out as minor blips, those pictures of oil soaked seagulls notwithstanding. To the horror and anguish of professional greenies, Alaska's Prince William Sound recovered completely. More birds get fried by landing on power lines and smashed to pulp against picture windows in one week than perished from three decades of oil spills. But forget cheaper oil and less pollution for a second. All fishermen and scuba divers out there should plead with their states to open up offshore oil drilling posthaste. I refer to the fabulous fishing the explosion of marine life that accompanies the erection of offshore oil platforms. "Environmentalists" wake up in the middle of the night sweating and whimpering about offshore oil platforms only because they've never seen what's under them. This proliferation of marine life around the platforms turned on its head every "environmental expert" opinion of its day. The original plan, mandated by federal environmental "experts" back in the late '40s, was to remove the big, ugly, polluting, environmentally hazardous contraptions as soon as they stopped producing. Fine, said the oil companies. About 15 years ago some wells played out off Louisiana and the oil companies tried to comply. Their ears are still ringing from the clamor fishermen put up. Turns out those platforms are going nowhere, and by popular demand of those with a bigger stake in the marine environment than any "environmentalist." Every "environmental" superstition against these structures was turned on its head. Marine life had exploded around these huge artificial reefs: A study by LSU's Sea Grant college shows that 85 percent of Louisiana fishing trips involve fishing around these platforms. The same study shows that there's 50 times more marine life around an oil production platform than in the surrounding mud bottoms. An environmental study (by apparently honest scientists) revealed that urban runoff and treated sewage dump 12 times the amount of petroleum into the Gulf than those thousands of oil production platforms. And oil seeping naturally through the ocean floor into the Gulf, where it dissipates over time, accounts for 7 times the amount spilled by rigs and pipelines in any given year. The Flower Garden coral reefs lie off the Louisiana-Texas border. Unlike any of the Florida Keys reefs, they're surrounded by dozens of offshore oil platforms. These have been pumping away for the past 50 years. Yet according to G.P. Schmahl, a federal biologist who worked for decades in both places, "The Flower Gardens are much healthier, more pristine than anything in the Florida Keys. It was a surprise to me," he admits. "And I think it's a surprise to most people." "A key measure of the health of a reef is the amount of area taken up by coral," according to a report by Steve Gittings, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's science coordinator for marine sanctuaries. "Louisiana's Flower Garden boasts nearly 50 percent coral cover. In the Florida Keys it can run as little as 5 percent." Mark Ferrulo, a Florida "environmental activist" uses the very example of Louisiana for his anti-offshore drilling campaign, calling Louisiana's coast "the nation's toilet." Florida's fishing fleet must love fishing in toilets, and her restaurants serving what's in them. Most of the red snapper you eat in Florida restaurants are caught around Louisiana's oil platforms. We see the Florida-registered boats tied up to them constantly. Sometimes us locals can barely squeeze in. America desperately needs more domestic oil. In the process of producing it, we'd also get a cheaper tab for broiled red snapper with crabmeat/shrimp topping. Humberto Fontova is the author of "Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who idolize Him." Visit www.hfontova.com. |
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Home Front: Politix |
Back to the Pentagon |
2007-03-17 |
A bit of WaPo retrospective At home, the war had reached a turning point. For the first time, a majority of Americans believed the conflict was a mistake. U.S. involvement was nonetheless escalating. Many previous demonstrations had been held, but growing frustration with the political system prompted antiwar leaders to select a new target: the Pentagon. The 1967 march on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War became a touchstone event in American history, one that pitted U.S. citizens against "the true and high church of the military-industrial complex," as marcher and author Norman Mailer put it. Tomorrow, according to organizers, tens of thousands of demonstrators protesting the war in Iraq will march on the Pentagon in what they are billing as "the 40th anniversary of the historic 1967 march to the Pentagon." Tomorrow's march, which was scheduled to take place around the fourth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war -- March 20 -- comes as the Bush administration sends 26,000 additional troops to deal with the violence there. Buses, vans and caravans from across the United States are coming, organizers say, with veterans, soldiers and military family members marching in the first rank of the demonstration. Heading across the Arlington Memorial Bridge to the Pentagon north parking lot, the demonstrators will follow literally in the steps of the earlier protesters. A counter-demonstration in support of the war is also planned for tomorrow. And where do I go for that? "The 1967 march wasn't the biggest, but in some ways it's the most historically significant because of the target," said Brian Becker, national coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition, the main sponsor of tomorrow's protest. "It represented a shift in public opinion." In tying their protest to the Oct. 21, 1967, march, organizers say they are capitalizing on a similar climate among angry voters who believe the results of November elections have been ignored. Ramsey Clark, who as attorney general for President Lyndon Johnson helped oversee the administration's preparations for the march, said that day shifted the ground under the government. "From that moment, I got the feeling that we'd reached a turning point in the commitment of many people to ending the war in Vietnam," Clark said in an interview this week. Whether today's feelings match those of 40 years ago is another question. Clark will be among the speakers tomorrow. "I can't tell you that we have the depth of passion or breadth of commitment today that we had then," Clark said. The 1967 march still raises emotions at both ends of the political spectrum. On the left, it is remembered as a time when peaceful marchers were confronted by bayonet-wielding soldiers and beaten. On the right, the march is recalled as a disgraceful event during which military police were subjected to terrible abuse from protesters. History shows that both views hold elements of truth. Soldiers manning the line in front of the Pentagon Mall entrance were taunted with vicious slurs and pelted with garbage and fish. Some defenseless protesters sitting peacefully were clubbed and hauled off. Yet a more complex picture emerges in interviews with demonstrators, Army officers and Pentagon officials responsible for defending the building, as well as research papers in Army archives. Some of the interviews were conducted for a forthcoming book on the history of the Pentagon. Ironically, Pentagon officials were so preoccupied with presenting a tolerant image that they kept thousands of soldiers hidden inside the building. During the critical early stages of the confrontation, a thin line of MPs outside the building was overrun, and the commander couldn't get reinforcements in place quickly. A subsequent Army report concluded that the low-profile strategy backfired and "may have developed an air of confidence on the part of demonstrators and encouraged violence." Some protest leaders say they were trying to provoke a confrontation with soldiers in the hopes of escalating the situation. Each side miscalculated, contributing to a bitter confrontation that left a legacy of division. By that day in October 1967, two years after ground troops were committed to Vietnam, more than 13,000 Americans had been killed and 86,000 wounded. The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam -- an umbrella organization of peace groups and radical organizations -- vowed to shut down the Pentagon with the greatest antiwar protest in history. Among their number was Abbie Hoffman, co-founder of the yippies, who announced plans to levitate the Pentagon 300 feet, using the psychic energy of thousands of protesters. I'm sorry I missed that! In addition to 2,400 troops positioned in and around the Pentagon, a brigade from the 82nd Airborne was flown in from Fort Bragg, N.C., and held at Andrews Air Force Base in reserve. More than 12,000 soldiers, National Guard troops, federal marshals and civilian police officers were standing by in the region. At the order of then-Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, commanders were operating under restrictions that kept much of the force under wraps. "It was a concern that events would get out of hand, and there would be violence on one side or the other that would lead to continued violence," McNamara recalled in an interview last year. So under McNamara's guidance, things got out of hand. The march unfolded on a gorgeous autumn Saturday, with 50,000 demonstrators at the Lincoln Memorial. Although in the popular imagination marchers from that era are often recalled as bands of hippies, a large cross section of Americans participated. The majority of the crowd was young and many wore ties, but large numbers of middle-age and older demonstrators were included in the ranks. Despite claims by organizers of 100,000 or more marchers, counts made by intelligence agencies put the figure of those who continued to the Pentagon at closer to 35,000. Army intelligence later concluded that the protest included "probably fewer than 500 violent demonstrators; however these violent types were backed by from 2,000 to 2,500 ardent sympathizers." Indeed, much of the protest was peaceful, and the majority of marchers were far removed from any violence. Hoffman, dressed in an Uncle Sam hat and by his own admission tripping on acid, went about his efforts to raise the building by leading protesters in chants. Shortly before 4 p.m., as the main body of demonstrators arrived on the Pentagon grounds, several hundred radicals raced toward the building. "Our specific goal was to create a confrontation -- a nonviolent one, because they were military and we were not -- and make a physical effort to get into the Pentagon," Walter Teague, a leader of the group, recalled in an interview. Army documents show that the operational commander immediately asked for reinforcements from inside the building but had to wait 20 minutes while the request was reviewed by the Justice Department. By then, it was too late. The plaza in front of the Pentagon's Mall entrance was in chaos. "Our kids were standing there and having all kinds of things thrown at them, to include feces," said Phil Entrekin, then an Army captain commanding a cavalry troop that reinforced the MPs. In the ensuing melee, several thousand protesters occupied the Mall plaza. Spotting an opening in the Army defense, 30 demonstrators made a break for a Pentagon doorway at 5:30 p.m. The vanguard made it inside before being roughly ejected by troops. I think we ought to get some cold steel and start using some gas," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Harold K. Johnson urged, Army records show. McNamara, after surveying the situation from the Pentagon roof, refused. "Let boredom, hunger and cold take their course," he said. Nonetheless, late that night, soldiers and federal marshals began clearing the plaza, and many protesters were roughed up in ugly scenes of violence. Four dozen protesters, soldiers and marshals were injured; 683 people were arrested. Forty years later, the chances of a similar confrontation appear slim. No soldiers will be deployed to defend the Pentagon this time. The building will be adequately protected by the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, a Pentagon spokeswoman said. Nor are many protesters likely to get close to the Pentagon in the heightened security atmosphere of post-Sept. 11. Protest leaders, learning lessons from the 1967 march, said they are taking pains to show no disrespect to soldiers this weekend. And the Pentagon is not likely to rise in the air. Said Amelia McDonald, a protest organizer, "We're not trying to levitate it." |
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Afghan Army Battles | ||
2006-03-22 | ||
(Hat Tip to 4th Rail) An Afghan army officer says government troops have killed at least 15 suspected Don't shoot!! Don't shoot!! We are from the UN and we're here to help you!!! The Afghan commander says his soldiers attacked the insurgents late Tuesday near the border town of Spin Boldak, in Kandahar province. I am sure they were just lost. You know crossing those mountains can get pretty confusing.
Mullah Shien. Is he any kin to Cindy Shien? Just asking. The Afghan officer said at least four insurgents ran back across the border during the fighting. Mommy, mommy. Those bad men are shooting at us!! Afghanistan is urging Pakistan to do more to fight Taleban militants. The Kabul government's top diplomat, Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, speaking in Washington earlier this week, said Taleban training camps in Pakistan's tribal areas are a source of "instability and terror," posing a threat to the entire region. Nah. Yah got that that wrong there Minister Abdullah Abdullah (not to be confused with Rosanna Rosanna Danna). Pakistan and the ISI are doing everything in their power to prevent Taleban from setting up shop in Pakistan. You got the wrong GPS coordinates plugged in.
I wonder how many they would have killed if they claimed to be Christian converts? With the warmer summer months approaching, insurgents from Afghanistan's ousted Taleban regime have vowed to increase their attacks on foreign forces and the western-backed government in Kabul. Ahh, Spring. The sound of gunfire...the spell of Poppies and chordite!! It has to be Afghanistan! American-led forces overthrew the hard-line Islamist Taleban regime in Afghanistan more than four years ago, after the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. Taleban-controlled Afghanistan had been the base of operations for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network. Ahhh...you've been watching too much Fox, and reading too many right-wing blogs. AQ ain't no threat. That's what Norman Mailer said. Insurgents' continuing attacks against foreign forces in Afghanistan and the Kabul government have killed more than 1500 people during the past year - the highest death toll since 2001. Can't be. Muslims don't kill muslims. Says so right in their Qoran. | ||
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Home Front: Culture Wars |
HUFFPO EMERGENCY BUSH BASH BLOG APPLICATION |
2005-09-08 |
FOR THE VICTIMS OF ALL DISASTERS EVERYWHERE! EFL RTWT - Hilarious! Do you often find yourself fantasizing about becoming a Huffpost blogger? Do you love to read other blogs, digest their info, and then expel pre-chewed nut-bag assumptions into a concerned and earnest post? If so, you might be perfect for this blog! So... how do you get the job? Just tick the boxes! SECTION ONE: WHO ARE YOU? Are you famous? Do you know someone famous? have you ever brushed up against someone famous? Was it Warren Beatty? Did you think he'd be firmer? Is your husband famous? (check one of the following) - Yes I am Rebecca Pidgeon. - Yes I am Laurie David - Yes, I am Shiva Rose - No, but my wife is rich AND famous, I am Brad Hall - Other lady of leisure:____________________ Where did you spend your summer vacation? - French Riviera - Camp Casey - Deepak Chopra's Seducing the Spirit Retreat - working as Sean Penn's personal photographer Which of the following countries have you threatened to move to (check all that apply): - France - Canada - Monaco has no taxes, right? -Can you work the phrase "tipping point" into a sentence, without actually reading the book, "The Tipping Point," or even understanding what this tipping point thing is? Can you pretend to know something without knowing anything? Do you have a black and white picture of yourself, with your chin resting comfortably on your fist? When you stare at this picture, do you get a warm fuzzy feeling, not unlike urinating down your leg? have you ever written any poetry? -it doesnât rhyme, does it? -are you a man? -if so, when you tell people youâre a poet, do they immediately realize theyâre going to have to pay for dinner? Have you ever claimed that you are a fiscal Republican? Just so you can spout lefty crap at parties? You still go home alone, don't you? Do you own a Che Guevara sweatshirt? Did you wear it to a Dave Matthews concert last year? Did you get beaten up by a group of pissed-off Cubans? SECTION 2: DISASTER THINKING -Do you believe that no one can voice support of the IRAQ war UNLESS they are willing to serve in it? -YET when it came to the flood, you readily assumed an expertise in crisis management within hours of the disaster? -And only so you could heave blame at Bush like a monkey flinging his own feces? Do you always try to relate large-scale tragedies to your own life? -Do you say things like, âWow, I was just in New Orleans." -"I had a connecting flight there." -"I bought some beads in terminal 2." -"I rented the Big Easy once. It was good." -do you see "looting" as a function of poverty? - brought on by Bush's policies? -do you think you and a looter might get along over a beer? -as you both agree over the point you just made about poverty? -do you press charges after he stabs you? Do you assume all poor people loot when faced with crisis? -Even though most, if not all, poor people hate looters? -Even though most, if not all, poor people HATE YOU MORE- for excusing looters? do you really believe Bush doesnât care about poor, black people? -But, then, who really seemed to RELISH the tragedy more? -Bush? -or The Huffington Post? -When was the last time you used the word 'deconstruction?' -Did it feel good? -How will post-modernism help those in need right now on the Gulf Coast? -Don't you think hicks who can do construction are more valuable to society than you? -Does this shocking juxtaposition explain everything at the HuffPo? Randall Robinson says people were eating corpses in New Orleans. -is this an example of what Bush calls "soft bigotry of lowered expectations?" -Do you think Randall's desire to demonize Bush exposed his own delusional fantasies? -Do you think Randall's pants were on when he wrote that fantasy? (NOTE:We are not implying that cannibalism is bad. Here at the Huffpo, we love ancient, spiritual cultures. And you can't get much more ancient or spiritual than the Anasazi tribe, and they used cannibalism in religious ceremonies as a method to get followers to pay tribute and build monuments. What these folks were doing was a religious, healing process. In a pot.) Do you believe people are too afraid to discuss the "taboo" of race? Yet you can discuss it for hours, insert it into any topic, from natural disasters to footwear? Do you feel compelled to let blacks know immediately where you stand on the topic of race? Do you feel compelled to tell blacks how much you admire Spike Jonze? Do you realize the next day that you meant Spike Lee? Is there anything racist about the fact that Oprah Winfrey talks black to black people, and then talks differently to white people? -And what's up with Steadman, anyway? -He's really taking care of himself! SECTION THREE: YOUR BELIEFS! When a crime is committed, do you blame the criminal? Or do you find a root cause? Do you try to find a root cause for everything? How about when your girlfriend dumped you? What do you think her root cause was? Was it your obsession with root causes? or just your small root? A man wants to date his sister. Does this offend you? -yes, it does. Iâm fairly tolerant of many things, but not incest. -No, not at all. Centuries from now we'll look back at this time with embarrassment - a time when we thought incest was "wrong." Healthy examples of this lifestyle abound: certain hill-tribes in Cambodia let siblings have sex, and the Indian Kukis are pretty much up for anything! And lets face it: Screwing your sibling guarantees a sex partner who knows you better than anyone. PLUS: NO PROM-NIGHT WORRIES ABOUT MEETING HER FATHER. WARNING! Does any of this information, so far, cause your brain to absolutely disconnect and move on to another task? Quick: eat a banana or something! MOVING ON: If you had to kill one of the following, which would it be: - your unborn baby - a puppy or kitten - a republican - your assistant - your Pilates instructor - your private jet pilot (who has signed a non-disclosure agreement not to divulge you have a private jet) do you think peace is a "process?" do you think war is evil, no matter what? do you think you'd have to be stupid to be in the military? Do you think white soldiers are rednecks? - and black soldiers are victims of limited opportunity brought on by a racist society? Do you like to tell people youâre a pacifist? -and that you'd never fight under any circumstance? -Mind if I stop by your house and take your plasma? (TV and blood platelets) Do you like conspiracies? Does reading about them make you feel smart? Does obvious truth make you uncomfortable? When a conspiracy is exposed as a lie, do you think that's part of THE conspiracy? Do you think people can read your thoughts? Are you receiving radio transmissions from your dental fillings? Are they telling you that you're Norman Mailer? Are they correct? Do you believe in âshadowâ governments? Can you do âshadowâ puppets? -Do you think conservatives are stiff, humorless and mean? -have you ever sat through a Tim Robbins play? -Do you hate authority? -until you need a cop? -do you try to have an opinion, even when you really have none? -do you think googling replaces thinking? Go and RTWT - I'm surprised he doesn't get Huffed off the blog - the Commenters were in a froth as well :-) |
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