Amen, lizard.
A small anodyne.

Posted by: catlady | Nov 26 2008 21:26 utc | 3

lizard, have you published?
you have a fantastic gift/curse of perception,
and an exquisite flow of words/information
please publish, and let us know more!
lambent1

Posted by: lambent1 | Nov 26 2008 23:09 utc | 5

Attack in Mumbai, India, against western tourist hotels army troops moving in to rescue hostages, hotels on fire, scores killed. I guess the big Wall Street bailout didn’t “trickle down” so much as “piss down their backs”.

Posted by: Yellow Tiber | Nov 27 2008 1:26 utc | 7

President-Elect Obama strongly condemns today’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and his thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and the people of India. These coordinated attacks on innocent civilians demonstrate the grave and urgent threat of terrorism. The United States must continue to strengthen our partnerships with India and nations around the world to root out and destroy terrorist networks. We stand with the people of India, whose democracy will prove far more resilient than the hateful ideology that led to these attacks.

Posted by: Yellow Tiber | Nov 27 2008 1:58 utc | 9

@3, 4, &5: thank you.
it’s nice to see and contribute a little poetic expression here; it compliments the precise observations b provides and subsequent quality posts.
we determined destiny/in a way/that isn’t described/in big books which we’d torn/into tiny fragment/because words wore/us down here/amongst the annalls that told us/all we needed/to know
that fragment really resonates, r’giap. even though we’re from a different generation/country our struggle is the same.
for example, here is a poem from a man stuck in the legal limbo of Gitmo:

THEY FIGHT FOR PEACE
Peace, they say.
Peace of mind?
Peace on earth?
Peace of what kind?
I see them talking, arguing, fighting–
What kind of peace are they looking for?
Why do they kill? What are they planning?
Is it just talk? Why do they argue?
Is it so simple to kill? Is this their plan?
Yes, of course!
They talk, they argue, they kill–
They fight for peace.

*
as for being published, no, I’m not, but that’s my fault. i haven’t established a small journal presence to convince a prospective publisher i’m worth the risk of publishing the book sized manuscript i’ve spent the last four years writing.

Posted by: Lizard | Nov 27 2008 3:40 utc | 11

Funny the papers here which have been reporting it since about 8.00pm wednesday GMT initially put the attacks down to Assamese separatists, but it could just as easily have been Gorkhaland separatists, Sikh separatists or any of the myriad other nationalist movements within India known to have used violence against citizens and tourist spots.
The phone call from a previously unknown ‘muslim terror group’ is as convenient as it is unlikely to be genuine.
Me – I reckon the Mumbai attacks are probably the work of pissed off Thai fishermen angry the indian navy sunk a Thai fishing boat off the coast of Somalia last week as a piece of propaganda for the amerikan war against the Somali people. At least 14 completely innocent Thai fishermen died when the Indian warship sunk the fishing boat on the fallacious grounds it was a “Somali pirate mothership” – whatever that may be.
On the other hand, the hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri citizens rounded up at gunpoint and made to vote for their oppressor/invader last week could have become sufficiently angry to have done such a thing.
The least likely group to have committed these crimes are IMO indian muslims, who know full well that a provocation far less than this gets the hindu thugs going through muslim ghettos torching, raping, and looting while the police stand by and applaud.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 27 2008 4:11 utc | 13

US convoy rams Russian diplomats off road in Baghdad

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 27 2008 5:13 utc | 15

the irony of the agressive acts of the indian navy in sinking that thai fishing boat off the somali coast is that it (probably) stopped one case of illegal fishing in those waters

Posted by: b real | Nov 27 2008 6:03 utc | 17

@breal but of course that was why the Somalian Coastguard boarded the boat in the firstplace. I didn’t put it together but if you remember one of the original interviews with the putative pirates, the leader said that patrolling to stop illegal fishing was one of their main tasks.
Except the Somalians prolly woulda just taken the boat not killed all the crew.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 27 2008 9:46 utc | 19

Thanksgiving. Not because of the manufactured celebration of genocide, but, just that I can still feel, today in spite of the matrix that would rather I /we not feel.
The older I get the more I am grateful for another day of breath, even if it is often bated breath. Having said that, it is also A Good Day To Die.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 27 2008 16:58 utc | 21

Floyd : Anonymous testimony now allowed in US courts

Another step in the war on terrorism, as GW put it in December 2001…
Kangaroo Country: “Terror” Verdict Against Charity a Bitter Fruit of Bipartisan Policy
Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque
If the Holy Land Foundation “terrorism” case had been held in Russia, we would now be enduring a flood of thundering commentary from every leading orifice of the corporate media, denouncing yet another travesty of justice in the sham democracy controlled by the Kremlin. Yet a decorous editorial silence covers the convictions of five charity officials whose only crime was helping needy and oppressed people through agencies used by international charities such as the Red Cross, and by the United States government itself. As Alternet.com [sic] reports:
On Monday afternoon, a jury in Dallas, Texas found five Palestinian men guilty of more than 100 charges in the nation’s largest terrorism financing trial since 9/11…
Edward Abington, the former number two intelligence official at the State Department (and ex-US consul in Jerusalem), told jurors he was never told that the Palestinian charity committees supported by Holy Land were part of Hamas in the daily intelligence briefings he received. In fact, these same charities, or “zakat committees,” still receive donations from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the International Red Cross.
This was the second trial against Holy Land. Last year, the government’s case ended in embarrassment and defeat when jurors returned after 19 days of deliberations with no guilty verdicts. At least one of the defendants would have been completely acquitted had a juror not changed her mind at the eleventh hour, backing out of her decision to acquit when the judge polled the panel about their votes. Another juror later said she refused to discuss the evidence during deliberations, simply explaining that she relied on her “feelings.”
The stark differences between the two juries became apparent at the conclusion of the second trial. “Twelve good American citizens in the first trial didn’t convict anyone of anything,” Linda Moreno, one of the defense attorneys on the case, told the Associated Press. “And 12 good American citizens in the second trial convicted everyone of everything. If you can make sense of that explain it to me.”
…Over fervent objections from the defense, the judge in the Holy Land trial allowed the prosecution to present testimony from an anonymous Israeli intelligence agent. This bizarre episode marked the first time in American legal history that testimony has been allowed from an expert witness with no identity. If the witness, who was introduced to the jury simply as “Avi,” lied or committed perjury, he faces no consequences. He is officially non-existent, after all.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 27 2008 23:29 utc | 23

Front page Asia Times Online: Thailand crashes and burns

The brazen occupation of Bangkok’s international airport by anti-government protesters takes Thailand’s political conflict to a point of no return. The relatively peaceful crisis is now on the brink of all-out violence. And the longer the government refuses calls for it to step down, the greater the chance of the military making a move. – Shawn W Crispin

below the Mumbai attack’s of course…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 28 2008 0:48 utc | 25

a farmer in colorado, who decided to clean up what was left in his fields after harvest by opening up to the public, got a little bit of a surprise. he expected a couple thousand people to show up. instead, 40,000 people came.
yeah, we’re in trouble.

Posted by: Lizard | Nov 28 2008 4:56 utc | 27

In re DWBob, a Midwest family values Turkey-Day poll:
Mumbai? (SFX: crickets chirping) Thailand?
Somali’s, … don’t they have funny teeth? (SFX: Ed McMahon guffaw))
Hope Hillary becomes SecState! (SFX: world’s tiniest violin)
What do you mean free trade isn’t fair? Look how it’s helped (sic) the Chinese!
Think Obama will be fair and intelligent. (side discussion Lincoln:Kennedy sim’s)
These economic slowdowns usually take a couple years to work out.
Bailout? … Would you like some more mashed potatoes?
If it weren’t for immigration crackdowns, the Republicans would have won.

Posted by: Derrick Utler | Nov 28 2008 8:07 utc | 29

Also see, 1992 Pandora’s Box: A Fable From The Age Of Science
Pandora’s Box, subtitled A fable from the age of science, is a six part 1992 BBC documentary television series written and produced by Adam Curtis, which examines the consequences of political and technocratic rationalism. Curtis’ later series The Century of the Self and The Trap had similar themes. The title sequence made extensive use of clips from the short film Design for Dreaming, as well as other similar archive footage.
Enjoy, download, share, torrent before some killjoy comes along.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 29 2008 5:46 utc | 31

Tangentially related?
Vatican to keep Hitler’s Pope papers secret

ARCHIVAL material pertaining to the pontificate of Pius XII – the man known as “Hitler’s Pope” – will not be disclosed to the public within the next six or seven years, the Vatican has announced.
In response to a request by Rabbi David Rosen, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Department for Interreligious Affairs, who was received last weekend at the Vatican by Pope Benedict XVI, the Reverend Federico Lombardi said that while requests to make the wartime archive available were “understandable” it would take “six or seven years” to prepare the 16 million documents.
But Rabbi Rosen added that Benedict XVI would give “serious consideration” to his request not to proceed with the beatification of Pius XII, the penultimate step to canonisation, until the archives have been opened.
The papacy of Pius XII from 1939 to 1958 was extremely controversial and continues to plague the Vatican today.
The charge is that, in the view of historians of the Holocaust and in the words of one book on the subject, he turned a blind eye to murder by failing to speak out against or trying to prevent the Nazis exterminating millions of Jews, communists, homosexuals and gypsies.
Some Jewish human rights groups go further and say that Pius XII was anti-Semitic and the Roman Catholic church was complicit in the rounding up of victims.
Hitler’s Pope also enjoyed close relations with the Ustase regime in Croatia, a Nazi puppet state established after the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, and its leader Ante Pavelic.
He was responsible for the murder of more than 500,000 Serbs, many at the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp.
The accusation against the Pope is that, again, he did nothing to stop the killing.
Despite these allegations Benedict XVI, who as Joseph Ratzinger joined the Hitler Youth in 1941, last month marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Pius XII with a pontifical mass commemorating his papacy.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 29 2008 6:12 utc | 33

worrying developments in the destabilisation of th bolivarian revolution

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 30 2008 16:22 utc | 35

“Polish Jew gave his life defining, fighting genocide!”
“The New Terror isn’t Iraq, it’s fundamentalist Pakistan!”
“Pakistan Al Qaeda responsible for Mumbai terror attacks.”
““I don’t think it was by accident that Al Qaeda decided
to test our new president,” Hillary Clinton said today.
“Credit companies pull $2T spending. DoD only game in town!”
“Here is a bright shiny object. You are feeling very sleepy.”
“Go start a little war. Let’s roll! Shekinah for shalom!

Posted by: Yellow Tiber | Dec 2 2008 6:36 utc | 37