OT 09-03
So Britain is also bankrupt?
Open Thread ...
Posted by b on January 21, 2009 at 18:30 UTC | Permalink
Economic Forecasts Predict Canada Will Miss The Recession
BMO's Cooper Tells Analysts Recession Will Not Hit Canada (http://www.economicnews.ca/cepnews/wire/article/100380)
Canada is entering a recession, decides Bank of Canada
By Eric Beauchesne, Canwest News ServiceDecember 9, 2008
The Canadian economy is going down hard and so are interest rates, and to what are their lowest levels in half a century, and for one key rate for consumers and businesses, the lowest level ever.
I don't think that Canada is bankrupt, but you sure as hell wouldn't know what's going on after talking with any of our financial "experts".
Posted by: edwin | Jan 21 2009 19:46 utc | 2
aren't we all bankrupt?
yesterday in nz herald, "even as house prices are at 'histrical' low, people are still not buying. and banks ain't helping"
then they go on about affordability in housing prices here in nz. Most 'affordable' is Southland, middle of nothingness in the south island. sheep country, stunningly beautiful, but no way for people to make a living other than farming/tourism.
The houses there are very cheap compared to Auckland, so i could put my nest egg there and buy, but i could still not 'afford' the house, due to my inability of making an income.
Why do people consider affordable only in form of buying price, and not in form of upkeep. I read somewhere that most people that lost houses during the great depression did not loose them because they did not pay their mortgage, they lost their houses because they could not afford the upkeep, maintenance i.e. Rates, Taxes and such.
i continue to rent and buy with cash, i like the flexibility that comes with it, i sleep better that way.
Posted by: sabine | Jan 21 2009 20:26 utc | 3
i continue to rent and buy with cash, i like the flexibility that comes with it, i sleep better that way.
Yep - may have been wrong, but I kept it that way all my live and slept well.
I'm sure you're right the financial sector in UK has been too big, and it will go down the drain.
In between time I thought this story about how far things have gone in Iceland tells us how other countries may go.
Our currency has lost more than half its value, rampant inflation has already eaten up most people's savings, property values have dropped by more than a third and unemployment is reaching levels never seen before in the life of our young republic. The fault is clearly shared between the business elite and the government, which failed to regulate the newly privatised financial sector, allowing a few incompetent and egotistical business tycoons to gamble with the nation's fortune. And yet neither the government nor the bankers – who, by the way, seem to have disappeared into the cold thin air – see anything wrong with their own behaviour.
Posted by: Alex | Jan 21 2009 20:52 utc | 5
come">http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=520">come on down for your freedom medals - john pilger(h/t copeland)
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 21 2009 21:17 utc | 6
In this country, we have certain constitutional protections. One of the most important of these is the presumption of innocence. But as I’ve posted repeatedly in the past, this no longer exists in drunk driving cases. See, for example, Whatever Happened to the Presumption of Innocence? and If You Can’t Prove It, Make the Defendant Disprove It. And for those who think this is limited to DUIs, keep in mind that we are a nation of legal precedent — that if the Constitution is ignored in drunk driving cases today, it can be ignored in free speech cases tomorrow.
From the very excellent DUI Blog.
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 21 2009 21:24 utc | 7
Planning, mostly run by women, does the words and pictures; making and announcing plans (such as the Metro Strategy) that never hit the ground. Public Works, by contrast, has no strategic capacity, no cerebellum, but just builds things - roads, tunnels, bridges and rail lines. This, you will be unsurprised to learn, is generally a boy thing.So our cities are shaped not by planners but by ad hoc resource allocation decisions; a bridge to this marginal electorate, a tunnel to that donor developer.
Sydney Morning Herald via CityofSound.
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 21 2009 21:37 utc | 8
the contemptible creature livni leading the europeans at the eu in thei babitual dance of betrayal to the palestinians
like apartheid south africa - they are completely fucking stupid. so fucking stupid. they talk about the facts on the ground being changed
well, they have changed allright in way the state of israel & its complicit crew cannot comprehend
they have lost the war & their brutality on show for many decades has become too much for the mass of people. & like woseto you cannot turn the clock back - it is going to be a terrible terrible time for the palestinian as it was for south africans after soweto
after soweto the 'leaders' of apartheid south africa went mad - weekafter week of bloody murder & that is exacly the path that israel will take especially with that brutal buffoon netanyahu at is head but the liberation of the palestinan people is a certainty as the liveration of south africa was inevitable
now, i finally comprehend - perhaps i am too slow - what ahmadinijad said - & it is a correct assertion. the world could not live with south africa as the world cannot live with israel - something very fundamental needs to be altered
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 21 2009 21:42 utc | 9
the contemptible creature livni leading the europeans at the eu in thei babitual dance of betrayal to the palestinians
like apartheid south africa - they are completely fucking stupid. so fucking stupid. they talk about the facts on the ground being changed
well, they have changed allright in way the state of israel & its complicit crew cannot comprehend
they have lost the war & their brutality on show for many decades has become too much for the mass of people. & like woseto you cannot turn the clock back - it is going to be a terrible terrible time for the palestinian as it was for south africans after soweto
after soweto the 'leaders' of apartheid south africa went mad - weekafter week of bloody murder & that is exacly the path that israel will take especially with that brutal buffoon netanyahu at is head but the liberation of the palestinan people is a certainty as the liveration of south africa was inevitable
now, i finally comprehend - perhaps i am too slow - what ahmadinijad said - & it is a correct assertion. the world could not live with south africa as the world cannot live with israel - something very fundamental needs to be altered
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 21 2009 21:43 utc | 10
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 21 2009 22:14 utc | 11
Pilger:
In France, 80 organisations are working to bring war crimes indictments against Israel’s leaders.
h/t giap
Responding to a question regarding the chances of winning the lawsuit, especially since it is prosecuting figures in a country that does not recognize the international court, [Jill] Devier said that this issue makes the case more difficult, but added that several Israeli officials have dual citizenships, and could be prosecuted in the countries of their second citizenship.
"..more difficult." Such optimism is so very refreshing.
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 21 2009 22:28 utc | 12
Someone much wiser than I once wrote:
Also, to be honest, over the past few months I've noticed a definite deterioration in the quality of the conversation here at the bar. Trolls I can usually give the bum's rush pretty quickly - at least most of the time. But I'm seeing more and more stuff on the threads that strikes me as marginal at best - people who seem to get their main kick out of insulting or picking fights with the other patrons; people who don't have anything particularly intelligent to say, and aren't very articulate about saying it; people who don't seem to have anything better to do with their time than to cut and paste long passages from mainstream media stories, or the unabridged lyrics of old rock 'n roll songs; people who appear to be mentally unbalanced, and not always in a good way.
I fear I'm becoming one of these people, and I don't want to be. As a *very* long time reader, I may come across in many of my comments as "hey I own the place, too", when I realize indeed, it is quite the opposite. Many of the heads that visit this blog are astonishingly bright, and I think my casual relationship ("I post on days when I have the time" yada yada..)has been a bit less than respectful of people's time.
For the time being, I'll be content to share links in the OT threads (which i hope b will keep in plentiful supply) that I think MoA readers will appreciate, and take a step back from the "Post" button while my keyboard's still aflame.
h/t to Malooga (who's post b frontpaged the other day) for a great post that made me reconsider how/why I post here.
(raises glass)
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 21 2009 22:56 utc | 13
oh dear,
NY unemployment benefit system out of money
“I think we went insolvent about two hours into 2009,” said M. Patricia Smith, the state’s labor commissioner. “We’re seeing 50 percent more claimants each week than a year ago.”
and this is what i am afraid of, misery, pure misery worldwide.
and this is why i believe that Obama can't bring much change.
there simply is no more money, and one needs money to fix a leaking roof, and when the unwashed masses go hungry and cold they get restless. And then what?
good grief, sometimes i am afraid of the news, just scared witless.
Posted by: sabine | Jan 21 2009 22:59 utc | 14
Drunkasarule
stupid racist insinuation in the name. Certainly not Irish.
Ireland is in the Euro and is very sound . They have problems with land bought at too high a price. The one who supplies land stopped making it long ago. It will rise again.
USA toxic paper is not a feature.
Sterling will fail in the near future when North sea Gas runs low as they have nothing to sell. It will try to join the Euro.
Posted by: watcher | Jan 21 2009 23:26 utc | 15
In France, 80 organisations are working to bring war crimes indictments against Israel’s leaders.
jeremiah, check out my #61 link @the last gaza thread, 'we will not go down'.
Posted by: annie | Jan 21 2009 23:41 utc | 16
"And then what?"
Obama declares martial law, the entire apparatus is in place.
Rather than associating Obama with hope or (positive) change, think of him as the Official Decommissioner of our society, the same way our excess military bases were decommissioned some years ago and turned into something else or left vacant.
Posted by: James Crow | Jan 21 2009 23:43 utc | 17
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will move quickly to name a Middle East envoy and is strongly considering former Sen. George Mitchell for the job, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
Lol!
Posted by: Thrasyboulos | Jan 21 2009 23:44 utc | 18
james crow
it is not me that associates Obama with hope and/or change, but it does scare me that so many believe that slogans and buzzwords can bring change/hope.
the reality is so grim, and the 'leaders' so useless, maybe the masses need slogan and buzzwords to be kept in place.
Collective mass denial, yes we can!!!!
It does scare me, as i will be one of the many thrown under the bus.
Posted by: sabine | Jan 22 2009 0:06 utc | 19
RUSSIA RE-ENTERS THE GWOT BUSINESS
After a long bad-blood relationship with Afghanistan following its ten-year invasion and occupation, the former Soviet state of Russia has announced full support for the struggling nation under a pledge to assist the National Army of Afghanistan to develop into a cohesive fighting force against the Taliban.
An official communique sent by Russian President Demitri Medodiv to his Afghan counter-part President Hamid Karzai, assured Karzai of full military support in Afghanistan, the presidential press office said in a report released to the media.
The Russian president expressed his country's desire for a renewed relationship between the two countries in his letter responding to a request for assistance sent by Hamid Karzai in November. Medodiv said military support is vital for ensuring security in both counties, inalluded to the rearmament and weapons training deal.
This is the first time that Russia has agreed to help Afghanistan since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, when violence emerged between the two countries. Afghans still consider the occupation a terrible bloodbath, yet at the same time, a victory for Afghan nationalism in their US-aided defeat of the former superpower.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates refused comment on the news, other than to say that talks were underway with Russia to provide a northern transit route for convoy resupply to the coalition occupation forces in Afghanistan, which will benefit the same Northern Alliance warlords who helped the US defeat the Taliban previously, and are now actively involved in the opium trade.
When a reporter asked if the Russians were going to take over training and arming the Afghan National Army, Gates gruffly brushed aside the question, saying, "That's Defense's profit ...err, umm, program priority."
The Defense Secretary has pleaded with Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert to approve the US training and arming a "terrorist" nation, in order to not let an "enormous arms supply deal" fall into the hands of the "former Communists". However, the Israeli leader has apparently already been in discussions with Moscow on how to trans-ship surplus arms Israel purchased using US grants-in-aid assistance, through Moscow to Kabul, as "US made", and cash in for a second time on the US arms supply contract.
There is apparently no restriction on Israel selling the US its own weapons back, nor any requirement that the arms or ammunition actually work, as long as they are going to supply an indigent third-world nation, and not the industrial superpower.
The Chinese Ambassador in Kabul was seen wandering the dusty streets late this evening, asking anonymous passersby if they had seen his Chinese copper mine, and would whomever was shooting lasers into the Chinese embassy, please stop doing so.
Pakistan Wazir-e-Azam Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani was reportedly seen marching back and forth along the northeast frontier with Afghanistan, where he seized a rifle from a Pakistani army soldier and shot wildly in the direction of Osama's hideout.
Rug traders in the Kabul souk report an increase in business from bored US soldiers looking for a way to jazz up Bagram's tent city. Trade in bootleg CD's was brisk!
المزيد من الشاي من فضلك
Posted by: Jackobal Traidz | Jan 22 2009 0:26 utc | 20
this film 'memories of rain' is really really an extraordinary document. knowing a little something about the underground - it is the only documentary that deals with everything that that entails including the necessity of becoming the opposite of what you really are
it is an important, important work
(however i have been trying to watch through babelgum & it is a disaster to try & view - stops every 12 minutes - trying but i do not know how i might view it otherwise)
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 22 2009 0:40 utc | 22
what an extraordinary film
it is like having a part of your life explained to you
& the resonance with what is happening in occupied palestine
the murderousness of the state of israel is exactly the same as apartheid south africa
watching this film & remembering when inkatha was used against the anc - the last breath of apartheid - how bloody it was & how removed were the racist scum from their own acts & the filth of the policy, the filth is exactly the same that comes out of the mouths of a livni, an omert, a negev
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 22 2009 1:34 utc | 23
The next phase in our development? Or, "And the band played on"...
Al-Qaeda cell killed by Black Death 'was developing biological weapons'
An al-Qaeda cell killed by the Black Death may have been developing biological weapons when it was infected, it has been reported.Last Updated: 6:10PM GMT 20 Jan 2009
The group of 40 terrorists were reported to have been killed by the plague at a training camp in Algeria earlier this month.
It was initially believed that they could have caught the disease through fleas on rats attracted by poor living conditions in their forest hideout.
But there are now claims the cell was developing the disease as a weapon to use against western cities.
Experts said that the group was developing chemical and biological weapons.
Dr Igor Khrupinov, a biological weapons expert at Georgia University, told The Sun: "Al-Qaeda is known to experiment with biological weapons. And this group has direct communication with other cells around the world.
"Contagious diseases, like ebola and anthrax, occur in northern Africa. It makes sense that people are trying to use them against Western governments."
Dr Khrupinov, who was once a weapons adviser to the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, added: "Instead of using bombs, people with infectious diseases could be walking through cities."
It was reported last year that up to 100 potential terrorists had attempted to become postgraduate students in Britain in an attempt to use laboratories.
Ian Kearns, from the Institute for Public Policy Research, told the newspaper: "The biological weapons threat is not going away. We're not ready for it."
Also, IT WOULD BE EASY FOR TERRORISTS TO ... Ah, just shaddup already
For most of the duration of the Bush administration, there's been a cottage industry in the peddling of fear. One of the most popular lead-ins to it was and is the proclamation that "It's easy for terrorists to [fill in the blank].".Experts, security seminars, newspaper articles, Powerpoint slide presentations, books and pieces in glossy magazines serviced the meme relentlessly, despite a complete absence of proof that terrorists might find exotic methods of inflicting death to be easy.
It was easy to be a chemical terrorist. It was easy for terrorists to get their hands on anthrax or smallpox. It was easy for terrorists to cause mass death through botulism.
Then it turned out it was easy for Ft. Detrick to harbor the most infamous bioterrorist in the world, a perfect place from which to impede the FBI's investigation of the anthrax mailings. And that the only botulism cases caused by the administration of botox were brought about by a defrocked cosmetic surgeon and toxin bought from a California-based research lab meant to serve the US biodefense industry.
"It's a good game," I wrote once. "It needs to take no account of what terrorists are actually doing, no knowledge of what tough to get human intelligence sources and materials may show, or historically -- what preferences, capabilities, experiences and limitations terrorists carry with them. It can assume that there are more terrorists expertly trained in many degrees and methods of mayhem and working themselves into place than there are actual terrorists. For the anti-terrorism effort, it is only necessary to assign a simple universality to fragility and vulnerability and degrees of omniscience and unlimited resources to the adversary. It is easy, so to speak, to think of things that are easy for terrorists to do."
Often the news of what terrorists were alleged to be capable of was simply stupefying
From "Rebuilding America's Defenses" - The September 2000 PNAC Report:
"Advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool." P.60
Project for the New American Century is a neo-conservative think-tank that promotes an ideology of total U.S. world domination through the use of force. The group embraces and disseminates an ideology of faith in force, U.S. supremacy, and rejection of the rule of law in international affairs.The group's core ideas are expressed in a September 2000 report produced for Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, and Lewis Libby entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century. The Sunday Herald referred to the report as a "blueprint for U.S. world domination."
Any questions?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 22 2009 1:58 utc | 24
U$@24
I guess I don't have a monopoly on weird, and I had so hoped :)
The Plague scare reeks of something funny. I originally found it on the RSOE EDIS website and now it has started to filter into the mainstream press. I can only imagine what is really going on, but one thing the RSOE article mentioned was how easy to treat with modern antibiotics the disease is. I wonder why they chose to mention this?
Remember these "Oops!" moments?
Enough to make me lose sleep at night.
And something I've always expected is starting to be proven...
I thought it was weird the HIV virus was blamed for so many AIDS cases, yet I've known quite a few people with HIV that never showed any symptoms of AIDS. I wonder how many lives have been changed because people wrongly believed they were going to die?
If you want longer, better written scary bug books read Michael Crichton.
And remember the truth is always stranger than the fiction.
Posted by: David | Jan 22 2009 2:30 utc | 25
I'm not sure most people grasp the sheer scale of the current crisis. This may help.
John Robb paints us a picture.
Any questions?
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 22 2009 3:49 utc | 26
Agree with you David re HIV ≠ AIDS.
A good place to start looking for those that are interested is 'Rethinking AIDS' since this is a non-partisan, non-profit grouping of concerned scientists.
http://rethinkingaids.com.93.seekdotnet.com/Content/AboutRA/tabid/59/Default.aspx
[Disclosure : I am a signatory]
Posted by: | Jan 22 2009 3:51 utc | 27
I am indeed irish and drunk as a rule is a line out of a famous irish song - the irish rover
I'm an Irish bear as it happens and your analysis is simplistic and tries to deflect attention from a supergiant speculative property bubble that is bursting spectacularly
Try this for size: http://www.thepropertypin.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=17670
Posted by: drunkasarule | Jan 22 2009 4:44 utc | 28
CIA Director Hayden talks about torture. "Yeah, we did it, but our motives were pure..."
Posted by: Obelix | Jan 22 2009 4:49 utc | 29
rgiap 23) the past is a lie where dreams die
Posted by: Georg Was Never Here | Jan 22 2009 5:16 utc | 30
It seems the israeli plan to hide their crimes by keeping the media out of Gaza hasn't suceeded in concealing all the psychopathic behaviour of the IDF.
This BBC story here concealed under the seemingly innocuous headline "Father finds out child survived" details a hooror story that has just been shown on the main evening news here in NZ.
During the horror of Gaza last week, an israeli tank pulled up outside a house on Northern Gaza and thru a loadspeaker demanded all occupants come out. Three young girls came out of the house along with their grandmother who was holding a tick with an improvised white flag attached. The children were standing in a line while one IDF asshole dismounted from the tank and shot the girls one by one with an automatic rifle. Two of the children died on the spot the third who seems about 9 or 10 was wounded, shot in the spine she will never walk again.
GranMa who was shot in the arm said the other soldiers sat eating chocolate and crisps, laughing while the psychopath slowly murdered the little girls.
Of course maybe the children being killed was deliberate not just the accidental slaughter of a serial killer armed by the state which the israelis would like the most cynical to believe, but a serious planned attempt to restrict Palestinian population growth.
Whatever the real reason was, unless an independent investigation is forced upon the israeli pricks doing this we all know what the outcome of an investigation will be. Despite the many witnesses to the contrary who have told the same story unaware of the others corroboration, the murdering israeli soldiers will claim they were being shot at. israel will announce the result and refuse to resile from it even if a video of the horror is produced.
israeli racism towards arabs has become so bad that israelis will refuse to believe whatever a palestinian says, no matter how much evidence is produced, no matter how irrational the israeli 'excuse' sounds. The murdering fools can't see that others won't believe a word of their lies and that more and more people are coming to regard israel as a nation of mendacious murderers.
So they stay eating and laughing while under fire? yeah we're the brave IDF. Yeah right, assholes. . .
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 22 2009 6:04 utc | 31
powerful Pilger piece r'giap.
thanks for sharing that and for your consistently humane and poetic thoughts.
Posted by: ran | Jan 22 2009 6:06 utc | 32
there is so much more tragedy debs, the counting has just begun. i remember reading about that family @ the guardian link a few days ago. they just shot them.
Posted by: annie | Jan 22 2009 6:29 utc | 33
Obama had to repeat his pledge because he didn't spell it out correcly the first time.
That's a big crack in the myth of the savior of the econonmy.
People's iconic figurehead is now dented.
They'll have to stop getting high on Obamajiruana.
The crisis can now truly unfold...
Posted by: Stephane | Jan 22 2009 8:08 utc | 34
The PackBot is only one of the many new unmanned systems operating in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today. When U.S. forces went into Iraq in 2003, they had zero robotic units on the ground. By the end of 2004, the number was up to 150. By the end of 2005 it was 2,400, and it more than doubled the next year. By the end of 2008, it was projected to reach as high as 12,000. And these weapons are just the first generation. Already in the prototype stage are varieties of unmanned weapons and exotic technologies, from automated machine guns and robotic stretcher bearers to tiny but lethal robots the size of insects, which look like they are straight out of the wildest science fiction. Pentagon planners are having to figure out not only how to use machines such as the PackBot in the wars of today, but also how they should plan for battlefields in the near future that will be, as one officer put it, “largely robotic.”...
And they are changing the experience of war itself. This is leading some of the first generation of soldiers working with robots to worry that war waged by remote control will come to seem too easy, too tempting. More than a century ago, General Robert E. Lee famously observed, “It is good that we find war so horrible, or else we would become fond of it.” He didn’t contemplate a time when a pilot could “go to war” by commuting to work each morning in his Toyota to a cubicle where he could shoot missiles at an enemy thousands of miles away and then make it home in time for his kid’s soccer practice.
As our weapons are designed to have ever more autonomy, deeper questions arise. Can the new armaments reliably separate friend from foe? What laws and ethical codes apply? What are we saying when we send out unmanned machines to fight for us? What is the “message” that those on the other side receive? Ultimately, how will humans remain masters of weapons that are immeasurably faster and more “intelligent” than they are?
Note: I bolded the second paragraph because i thought it was an interesting turn of phrase to lay the responsibility for friend/foe identity on "new armaments" as opposed to the actual planners who call the shots.
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 22 2009 8:17 utc | 35
Seems my son, trying to attend the big Obama Day Celebration, got caught in the http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Inauguration/story?id=6700635&page=1>purple tunnel of doom boondoggle instead. He's interviewed by ABC here, and told me tonight up to 30,000 young and old Obama faithful (purple ticket holders from all around the country) were stuck in in a freeway tunnel (there's a metaphor for ya!) in teens low teens freezing temps. for 5 hours, no police presence no toilets, no emergency capacity, and ended up missing the whole shabang.
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 22 2009 8:35 utc | 36
Thanks to Uncle $cam and David @ 24 and 25. One can only wonder if something along these lines is going to be "surfaced" to further some nefarious agenda.
In the last months of the W administration one frequently read of insiders who were waiting until January 20 to "tell all" (or at least blow some whistles). If indeed such exposés are forthcoming it might put the question of prosecution on the front burner (but I am not holding my breath while waiting). Any links in this regard would be highly welcome.
A further question to those interested: Does anyone have access to the information
hinted at in this link regarding the attack on the USS Liberty from W. Madsen's site? The usual grain of salt would be needed in evalutating the contents, but the question is, to me, still of great interest, and a continuing scandal.
Posted by: Hannah K. O'Luthon | Jan 22 2009 10:03 utc | 37
One small triumph for democracy versus hereditary aristocracy.
Posted by: Hannah K. O'Luthon | Jan 22 2009 10:16 utc | 38
A partial (self)-response to a point raised in 37:
New revelations from Tice. Not much that wasn't already conjectured by anyone with a minimally functional paranoia gland, but perhaps this is a trickle that will become a stream and then a river of revelations.
Posted by: Hannah K. O'Luthon | Jan 22 2009 11:00 utc | 39
Of all the bullshit conspiracy theories which make me want smash the perpetrators heads against a wall for being so stupid, the worst one, far worse than all the 911 'arabs are too dumb to have done it' racism is HIV doesn't cause AIDS.
There is a weird sort of homophobia attached to that just as the 911 myths are rooted in racism.
Like many others I lost a mob of good friends in the 80's. They died from aids compounded with the sort of luddite ignorance and prejudice that boasts hiv doesn't cause aids. It must be just a coincidence that everyone to die from an AIDS related illness had an HIV infection eh?
I had hoped that HIV didn't always become AIDS just the same as many others. I have one friend left from a vector that began at the gay olympics in LA in 1984. Two hops and it was outta the gay community into the general community. Anyway a very close friend of mine I've known her since I was 12 or 13 who got diagnosed early 1985 has been living her life ever since . Her partner died with most of the others back in the 80's but my friend hung in right thru the 90's well into this century with her count never going anywhere near an AIDS diagnosis thanks to mobs of different remedies retro-virals and a belated decision to live the quiet life.
She came back to this country just before Xmas which was a bit of a surprise because she had been here just a few months ago to celebrate her 50th.
This time was to say goodbye. Some time in the 6 or 7 months between the last time I saw her and then her white cell count had dropped through the floor well beyond what it takes to be called AIDS if anyone still uses that terminology apart from the gutter press and silly conspiracy theorists. None of the retrovirals work anymore, the opportunistic infections are making her life such a misery I guess she would almost welcome the end but shes not gonna admit that or give up.
My friend worked a volunteer for hundreds of others back when the epidemic was at its worst amongst our generation and she knows exactly what is coming, just as she knows every fucker she saw who died pasty thin with horrible splotches from head to toe and a mouth full of the furry fungus that grows on stale catshit, carried the HIV infection.
If I thought she still had enough of a sense of humour to laugh at or to pity the ignorance on display here I would email her this link.
Fucking idiots
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 22 2009 11:03 utc | 40
Debs id dead @ 40
The controversy as to whether HIV has anything to do with AIDS is not anti-gay in the least, and it is not a conspiracy theory. It's called science. That is how science works : someone thinks they have discovered something and it seems to be correct. Then there are just too many anomalies, the hypothesis is altered, and new discoveries are made. And so on.
Generally this proceeds quietly without much fuss, unless the science challenges a powerful orthodoxy, a blight that goes back at least as far as Gallileo versus the church. Virtually no scientific theory has stood the test of time and remained unchallenged or unchanged.
But with AIDS - probably because of the gay connection in part - everything has been stood on its head : see here for example. Gallo who claimed to have made the discovery has been shown to be a crook who has made millions from it, and Montagnier who did discover HIV (and won this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine) has stated publicly that HIV alone does not cause AIDS.
The HIV thesis - that this is the causative agent for AIDS - has been an unmitigated disaster driven by money, money, phoney reputations, big pharma, and more money. So much so that the pushers of this theory (many of them paid) have managed to turn it into a religion, with disciples and followers, very few who of whom know anything at all about science.
And this religious zeal has set back the chances of a real cure, despite the billions of dollars spent on AIDS research. Actually, that is wrong. I mean spent on HIV research : anyone that does not buy the HIV = AIDS theory does not get funded. And what has it led to? The use of retroviral drugs that were discovered over 20 years ago, tested for cancer treatment, then discarded because they were toxic and didn't work. So there they sat on big pharma shelves until the big HIV opportunity came along.
Where are the big new discoveries,after the expenditure of billions of dollars and the sacrifice of tens of thousands of monkeys in vaccine research? I am unaware of a single disease-causing virus for which a vaccine has not been quickly developed when money is applied to the problem.
Posted by: Fred | Jan 22 2009 12:25 utc | 41
Fred@41Thanks!
And Deb is dead-"It must be just a coincidence that everyone to die from an AIDS related illness had an HIV infection eh?"
It also must just be a coincidence that everyone who has HIV doesn't die of AIDS or associated illnesses, eh?
I lived in San Francisco, I had a number of gay friends, one the worst thing that could happened to any of them was getting diagnosed as being HIV positive. Many of the people I knew who were HIV, never, ever got sick. They live life as normal as I do – yet they do it with a huge weight on their shoulders of living under a death sentence. As you can imagine from your friend's plight, society already gives gays enough grief for their sexuality, and blames them for "starting" AIDS; the diagnosis of HIV, if it truly isn't the pre-curser to AIDS is still be debilitating because of how effective the human mind is at creating illness (and also cures) when it "believes" the body is sick.
I'll admit to wearing a tinfoil hat – take my comments with a grain of salt or teaspoon of sugar or what ever makes you feel better about what I write. Or don't read them. My intention is not to incite hate but to just give you my wacky two cents worth about the world we live in and life in general. These threads are a valuable tool for me.
It helps my writing to write: it helps my thinking to read other's opinions; it helps my soul know there are other humans trying to figure "IT" out, without sinking to a level of a bunch of silly name calling.
And I don't believe the official story about 9-11, not because I think Arabs are "too stupid" but because I think my government is the only entity big enough, and corrupt enough, to have been party to such a tragedy. As the detectives always say, "just follow the money."
And Debs, I'm sorry about your friend, that's really sad:(
Posted by: David | Jan 22 2009 13:41 utc | 42
Yes David @42
That is truly another disastrous consequence of the HIV thesis (religion). It does not fulfill Koch's postulates : in particular, if you inject HIV into monkeys they do not get AIDS, or anything like it (just flu-like symptoms). OK the HIV disciples say, but would you inject yourself with it ? As a matter of fact I would, - and many have, and some can be found on U Tube if they have not been removed.
But when these volunteers don't develop AIDS, the answer of course is ah, but just wait, you will even if it takes 20 years "incubation". You can't win, and meantime you are stuck with the "stigma" of being HIV-positive which big pharma has ensured will affect your insurance policies and even travel to some places.
Posted by: Fred | Jan 22 2009 14:29 utc | 43
re @35
As our weapons are designed to have ever more autonomy, deeper questions arise. Can the new armaments reliably separate friend from foe? What laws and ethical codes apply?
i pointed out the following back in november
Researchers Debate Utility of Autonomous Armed Robots
When the Navy’s John Canning sat down at a table full of Pentagon lawyers in 2003 to ask what possible legal roadblocks there might be to sending autonomous armed robots into combat, he was surprised when they told him that doing so would be problematic.Why? he asked.
“Because they could kill people,” he was told bluntly.
Of course they could, he thought. War is hell after all. Enemies die in combat.
No, really, he asked. These were judge advocate general attorneys, but they were combat veterans. One was a Marine.
He asked again, but their answer was the same.
...
Back in 2003, when Canning sat down with the lawyers, little of the legal, treaty and policy implications of moving down this path had been worked out.
“Legal issues must be addressed right up front. We’re going to be wasting our time if we don’t,” said Canning, who is chief engineer at the platform integration division, engagement systems department at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division.
...
The Defense Department released in 2007 the “Unmanned Systems Safety Guide for DoD Acquisition.”
Autonomous armed robots are “allowed for in this document. It’s buried there, but it is there,” said Canning, who worked on the team that created the guide.
After consulting with lawyers, one basic tenet has been agreed upon.
“Let machines target other machines. Let men target men,” he said. In other words, autonomous armed robots would target the “bow and arrow, not the archer,” he said.
...
In this “only target machines” scenario, an armed robot would aim at an enemy’s rifle, not his between the eyes.
...
“People may still die, but it will be a secondary consequence,” Canning said.
Posted by: b real | Jan 22 2009 15:49 utc | 44
b real@44
That reads like a Monty Python script, except I guess it's real, which makes it really scary.
“People may still die, but it will be a secondary consequence,” Canning said.
I'm sure for the person or people dying it will feel like a first consequence. But as long as these machines only kill in the name of g_d it'll be OK!
Posted by: David | Jan 22 2009 16:04 utc | 45
Another good reason to invade Iran: they gassed Italians!
Posted by: L'Akratique | Jan 22 2009 16:05 utc | 46
Hey Bernhard Paul Craig Roberts has publicy catch your purpose about CDS. Do you think that this position will gain enough steam to prevent the worst scenarios??
Posted by: C.A. | Jan 22 2009 16:22 utc | 47
Hey Bernhard Paul Craig Roberts has publicy catch your purpose about CDS. Do you think that this position will gain enough steam to prevent the worst scenarios??
Posted by: C.A. | Jan 22 2009 16:25 utc | 48
For Israel the issue now is not just guns but also butter as Israel cannot revitalize its moribund economy nor recoup its spent WMDs thrown at Gaza the way German weapons were thrown at a surrounded and strangled Warsaw Ghetto. Some Israelis have chosen to do onto the Palestinians what the Germans did onto the Jews-- that makes them "Zionazis"! In fact, their lebensraum policy-- not HAMAS trash-can rockets-- that produced thousands of empty houses at US taxpayers' expense for non-existent olims. Sharon's command that by 2020 all Jews must make the Great Aliyah to Israel or they will be damned because "they will lose their Jewish souls," was fell on deaf Diaspora ears. Today 78% of all the "settlers' homes" built are empty because there are no settlers; these edifices are merely "facts on the ground" for Greater Israel expansionism. HAMAS, an Egyptian Muslim Fundamentalist group, was brought to Gaza by Sharon in hope that it would destroy the PLO, a Palestinian secular nationalist leader recognized as representative of the Palestinians by the world. BUT THERE IS ONE ISRAELI GOAL THAT EXPLAINS EVERY BULLET, MISSILE OR PHOSPHOROUS BOMB THROWN BY THE IDF: TO KILL THE PALESTINIANS THAT WILL NOT LEAVE WITH A BRUTAL "IRON WALL." Now here's the problem with that. The Israel the Zionazis built is a 60 years old expanding fetus of a state living off an engorged American $ placenta. But the US is now broke, so the placenta will shrivel. Livni hoped to create an anti-Semitic backfire to Stampede Diaspora Jews to Israel with all their assets. But most World Jewry deems Israel a nice place to visit but they wouldn't want to live there. So, no more money from a broke US...no more olims for the Great Aliyah. The future looks bleak for Israel as a nation unless Iran gets its puny A-bomb and the Arabs run to Israel’s nuclear umbrella for deterrent security. And, as we lose our addiction to Arab oil, Arab leaders will realize that their nations can't live as one crop (oil) banana republics without violent revolutions. If Israel creates a common economy with the Palestinians in a two-states format, the Palestinians will serve as Israel's brokers for integration of Israel into the region. It can then lead its neighbors to high-tech modernization, thus becoming what the Founding Fathers of Zionism had originally hoped for: that Israel become "a light onto the [Arab] nations." That requires that Israel be ruled by decedents of the Progressives who originated that idea and saw the poison of "lebensraum Zionazism"-- their term, not mine--for what it is. Learning to speak Arabic will do more for Israel's security that learning to fly a bomber. The placenta is shriveled and the garbage spewed by that hefty trash bag, Abe Foxman, will never rein gorge it again. A few years ago, at a Zionist Conference, he apologized for not focusing on Zionism because his so-called 'Anti-Defamation League" was too busy fighting "assimilation" by cursing groups like Jews for Jesus as anti-Semites. Well, 50% and growing of Jews are so assimilated that Israel is no more to them than a Holy Land to visit. The Diaspora is very loyal to its homelands in Europe and America, not to the Great Aliyah. The Diaspora will not be stampeded by a call to form a Fifth Column for the Zionazis. So Israel must invariably become an integrated leader of the Arabs, its long lost cousins, into modernity for the sake of Jews and Muslims alike. Bush and Sharon made that inevitable by rendering any other solution untenable; and political opportunism by Olmert, Livni and Barak has only made them a footnote in a shameful bloody Zionazi history, discrediting lebensraum's immoral means and ends. I pray the anti-Semitism that these three tried to provoke in order to force a Great Aliyah in fear is as dead as the Zionazi dream of a Jewish state from the Nile to the Euphrates.
Posted by: DE Teodoru | Jan 22 2009 17:05 utc | 49
@b real - any idea what to expect from these folks?
Sources tell The Cable that retired ambassador Johnnie Carson, a long time Africa hand and foreign service officer who has recently served as the national intelligence officer for Africa, is going to be named assistant secretary of state for Africa. Michelle Gavin, a former Senate foreign policy advisor to Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) and the successor to Obama foreign policy advisor Denis McDonough as legislative director to Sen. Ken Salazar (D-CO), will be named to an NSC slot on Africa.
Many of the people I knew who were HIV, never, ever got sick.
i knew a person who lived w/HIV for 10 years w/minimal illness. then i called one day to invite him to a party and found out he'd died of aids quickly a few weeks before. there was a time that would never have happened because word spread so fast when someone in the gay community i was intimately connected with passed.
but that group i partied w/ (SF hunga dunga/greenleaf) are all for the most part long gone. dead. all of them. the acid/orgie/parites and the days of harvey in the castro, my generation of gay people from SF, at least the ones i knew, they are all dead. dead. i have my photos. group photos. me and sarah and her daughter layla are the only ones still alive. every other face dead. gone just dead. anyone can go to the SF library and check out the Annemarie Madison Papers to read their letters and journals and see the photos. steve and lizzie and joel and raymond, butch..richard, oh well no sense naming them all. the christmas parties and pool parties up in sonoma, gone w/my youth.
we must have hung w/different crowds in SF david, cuz all my gay friends from that era are long gone. dead. i'm not dishing your experience of knowing lots of people who had HIV and never got AIDS, but i would have to say it is completely divorced from my personal experience. i went to more funerals than to care to remember. i suppose it is normal for people to look back on their youthful past and remember how young and beautiful and wonderful everyone was. i feel really lucky to have lived and loved then, but its such a fucking bummer all my friends from those days are gone. we had about 15 good years together and i will always cherish the memories of how we met and gravitated to eachother. i was very very lucky.
anyway, sorry for the musings. i guess that's part of what OT threads are for.
Posted by: annie | Jan 22 2009 18:28 utc | 51
@ b #50
i don't have anything on them at this time - will look into it later today
in a hurry to get somewhere now, but just wanted to drop off this link
Somalia presidential election to held in Djibouti, US pressure
The US ambassador in Kenya Michael Rannerbeger has revealed that he had pushed the acting president of Somalia and parliament speaker Aden Mohamed Nor ‘Madobe’ to change his mind from holding the presidential election in Baidoa town, southwest of Somalia.Speaking to a group of Somali lawmakers in Nairobi , Mr. Rannerbeger, the US ambassador in Nairobi said the house speaker accepted to divert the occasion of presidential election into Djibouti .
“the ambassador told us that he had talked with Aden Madobe and persuaded him to allow that the election should be held in Djibouti and I said to Rennerbeger if we could get a place that we can cast freely our vote we are ready to go,” Ismael Mohamed Hurre Buba, member of parliament told Waagacusub media.
Mr. Buba said Rannerbeger’s meeting with the MPs ended successfully. “The US government also raised important issues relating to building up the coming Somalia government” added Buba. “The new government of Barrack Obama promised to help Somali’s unity government to establish its security,”
In a telephone contact with Waagacusub Media, Mr. Aden Madobe, the acting president of Somalia declined to talk about his current political change but confirmed the meeting with the US ambassador.
”first, we are going to form the broadened parliament and then move to the other national tasks,” he said.Somalia is going to have a unity government as Washington is planning to make prime minister Nor Adde as the country’s president, reliable sources said.
Sheik Sharif Ahmed, the leader of Allaince of re-liberation of Somalia who is unpleasant with the candidacy of Nor Adde is due to announce his candidacy as president of Somalia next week.
Up eleven political figures have declared their candidacy as six of them are from Majerteen of Darod clan and it is yet unknown who will be the president of Somalia at the end of January.
The Djiboutian government has already decorated the location in which the election will be held on 26 January with the US government is calling for timing presidential election to fill the gab vacated by former president Abdulahi Yusuf Ahmed.
Posted by: b real | Jan 22 2009 18:55 utc | 52
I read years ago that private debt in Britain outweighed private income: in other words, the nation was living off its credit cards.
And I remember a time when almost every third ad on British Television was from a company either offering quick, easy credit or offering debt consolidation loans.
And after new Year's there was always a spate of ads offering detox cures and preparations...somehow there seems to be a connection related to their behavio(u)r.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 22 2009 19:20 utc | 53
@51 Annie,
My experience here in SF is similar to yours. I lost many friends, acquaintances and co-workers. My mother died from complications from hepatitis from a blood transfusion she received after a car accident in 1980. She was fine for 20 years.
Very few people who get shot die from lead poisoning from the bullet.
Posted by: biklett | Jan 22 2009 19:43 utc | 54
i want to again sing the praises of the film memories of rain
never have i seen a film that reflected my own experiences & its proper problematic
the film is like battle of algiers because even though it doesn't feel in the least pedagogic - it is indeed instructional. at a level deep in our hearts
it also goes to the heart of my absence of interest in obama because i have known state power all my life & i am quite sure the renseignement generaux ici are quite familiar with my communications tho i imagine that a community artist/teacher, to them is small potatoes
i understand enough of my marxism to tell me that we are all in our different countries going to pass theough a period of even more overt & covert repression
i am certain, that once again i will feel in one way or other the fascists boot. as will, you. so too, our community. that is not romanticism - quite the contrary - power, especially in our time cannot live with any form of resistance & if i am not dealt with then my brother or my sister down the line will be
for the last month it is my palestinian brothers & sisters who have felt that boot & frankly my brothers & sister, including myself even though we fight in all our ways against power, are the beneficiaries
i had an argument yesterday with my colleague - who being a cultivated men & politcally rigorous - cannot findi it in his heart to defend hamas - for me hamas is a tool in the hand of the palestinian people & not the other way around & i asked him to be aware of the seas of murder that create armed struggle & that the nature of that armed struggle has a character often determined by your enemies. i wanted to make clear to him - that if the people applies gandhi's lessons there would be further bloodbaths & it is important that the so called israeli peace movement dissapeared up its own ass
to defeat the us empire in vietnam it took a great deal of work on every front both in vietnam & internationally - but the connection made the defeat of the us inevitable. the courage of the youth, the student & workers dismantled the dictatorship in greece that u s imperialism created. apartheid south africa was defeated at home & abroad as israel shall be defeated
the wondrous & multiple people of all latin america have taken their destiny in their own hands & i will not judge their delicate & clumsy movements towards their liberation. it is in their hands & we ought to support them at every turn
the aspect of writing here may be small but it a truism to say that we live in times every bit as dark as the times of galileo, of vico, of bruno & journalism has been degrade to a point where it is of no use whatsoever. none at all. research, yes. connections, yes. creating card & maps of our proper oppression. yes. there are people who are writing, reporting or transcribing the truth(s) of their struggle & yes they are useful. more than useful, necessary
resistance is built brick by brick & that is what we are doing here - building
i imagine it is the error that some of my sisters make. they think that i or a malooga or a debs are destroyers but in fact in our crude & perhaps inefficient ways are trying to build. to make the problems of our own practice a geography that others can use - because the illussions of chjange have to filtered through very real changes of practice.
pagan idolatory as oppossed to human understanding is not the answer.
in my heart i see the falling to kindom come of us imperialism. it will be a violent & volatile time & this or that politician do not have a great deal of space to manouver - their manouverability is based on the practical will of the people & the capacities of those people to engage & fight power
it is in this sense, that the film memories of raincame as a gift to me
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 22 2009 19:59 utc | 55
& just as i write the us administration has appointed richard holbrooke & george mitchell. that is the deat of good intentions just there.
i say this to you annie, george mitchell will prolong the suffering of the palestinian people in such a way that it will become unbearable for them & unsustainable for us
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 22 2009 20:10 utc | 56
and so it beginns
In a time of jubilation for a large percentage of the country, Graf is stunned by the apparent hatred to which she has been subjected."I can't even make out the rooms," she said. "It's like everything collapsed into the basement. It looks like a bomb went off."
Graf's home burned down early Jan. 18 in what authorities are calling a "suspicious fire." Most shocking to Graf, and to some of the citizens of the county, state and nation at large, was graffiti the apparent arsonist left on scene.
Spray painted on the fence around the home it said, "Beware [expletive deleted] your black boy will die
rememberinggiab, when the times come and they will, the destruction of what is now will most hurt women and children most, in every war, in every revolution, in every recession/depression it is us who suffer the most, no job, no money, no homes, no bodily safety, and so on.
Man fight, man will still find some work, man are safer in their physical integrity. I don't say they will not suffer, but it will not be the same.
Leave me my pagan idolatry, it's better than nothing at all. My goddess name is kali, om kali the most beautiful, om kali the most bountiful, om kali the most destructive.
I prefer her to the virgin, who in my eyes was nothing but a raped little 12-14 year old desert girl, making up a good story so as to not be stoned for adultery.
As long as men make policy, let us women decide how we will survive these policy's. As for the few quota females in politics, they might as well sport attachable penises.
We all have to hold on to something, somehow.
Posted by: sabine | Jan 22 2009 20:18 utc | 58
b
on mithchell - you are quite wrong - as a legislator he has served as a tool of aipac. i do not trust him in the least
& obama's speech at their appointement. disgraceful. the trials of gaza dissapeared under that eloquent tounge & 3 israeli deaths are equal to 1,550 palestinain deaths
i had no illussion but i am dissapointed
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 22 2009 20:29 utc | 60
annie, I watched "Tales of the City" while I lived there but that show was SF during a different time. Sad it ended like it did... I've always wondered if there wasn't some religious nut case in the shadows...
My days in SF were of a later time, mid '90's and most of my friends were between 20 and 25. Strange days.
There was plenty of kookiness to be had for anyone looking for it, I still recall a story in the SF Bay Guardian about a woman who decided she was gay and so became a lesbian. She said she never felt right as a lesbian, so she got a sex change and became a man. Up to this point it's a pretty straight (sorry for the choice of words) foreword and understandable story about someone with a mixed-up sexuality.
It gets weird (to me) when after she becomes a he, he no longer feels comfortable having sex with women and it is at this point in his/her story we find out that she (are you still with me?) must have really been a gay man trapped in a woman's body. And so she/he went through a sex change to become a man to have gay sex with other men. And this was one of four or five people interviewed for this story. I guess this isn't as unusual as I'd think. But then until the internet I never knew such a thing as "plushies" existed either.
Sorry for the Vanity Fair post, not intentional to fill the thread with what some might consider fluff. But I can never remember San Francisco enough. There is a magic in being amongst all the varied and unique denizens of those hills and streets; where most everyone is willing to accept you for who you are and only asks the same in return.
San Francisco is what gives me hope that it's possible for people to get along, regardless of their differences. Not being an international traveler, San Francisco is the closest to what I imagine Beirut or Paris or another multi-cultural city was/is like. I could get lost in alleyways in China Town and forget I was in america. Go to up to Russian Hill or Japan Town or hop over the Golden Gate and up to B-- or just watch storms come in at Seal Beach. I could go on and on but I'm sure annie feels crowded enough as it is.
Posted by: David | Jan 22 2009 20:59 utc | 61
In 1982, AIPAC focused much of its horsepower on bringing about my defeat. I was the lobby’s number one target that year and an examination of its expenditures would surely show outlays aimed at “influencing” my bid for re-election far exceeding the $1,000 legal limit. During the same year, AIPAC weighed in heavily in Maine, helping to pull off the upset victory of George Mitchell over Representative David Emory. Mitchell had never before won an election. In a post-election call Mitchell thanked AIPAC’s Dine for his critical support and said, “I will remember you.”
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 22 2009 20:59 utc | 62
remembereringgiap
As you say, we must first change our beliefs before we can change.
It is destructive to remove old ways of thinking. Concrete thoughts become like tall concrete walls – too high to climb and too thick to easily bust through. But, by continuing to voice our opposition to government actions that we know are wrong, we help other people to also find their voice to speak-out. If enough people are willing to say "no" even if each does so in a whisper, those whispers collectively become a roar that our leaders would ignore at their peril.
Posted by: David | Jan 22 2009 21:20 utc | 63
obama today equates the deaths of 3 israelis for all those of martyrised gaza - then repeats a bushism in relation to hamas & then to add insult to injury announces two men who have their hands thick not only with their relation to aipac but to hoodlums of the old school like john negroponte
that combined with the almost certain election of the likudniks & netanyahu in the house of horror does not augar well for the people of palestine
is it necessary for the world to burn down before the palestinians can receive justice
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 22 2009 23:29 utc | 65
But last night he said: 'It will be the policy of my administration to actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians as well as between Israel and its neighbours.'
He condemned Hamas for launching 'thousands of rockets' against Israeli civilians and reiterated America's support for Israel. But he also called on the Israelis to
open their borders to Gaza and allow relief workers to get aid to Palestinians.
'A future without hope for Palestinians is intolerable,' he added.
nothing about the slaughter.
Posted by: | Jan 22 2009 23:52 utc | 66
Annie and Biklett it is good to see that some people can still remember what happened in those awful times without deflecting the memories through filters of prejudice and ignorance.
I should learn to refrain from posting until the anger subsides and believe it or not generally do, but recent events I outlined which brought back those bad memories, make the platitudes and rationalisations of those so removed from the decimation as to be able to rationalise away reality, are now as they were then, like salt in a wound.
But my anger didn't just stem from my the stupidity inherent in the statement aids isn't caused by HIV infection or the equally asinine "it was weird the HIV virus was blamed for so many AIDS cases", many of those friends who died back then have no one to speak for them other the few of us left who remember. I'm not gonna drum up the awful sights and scenes again, but the reality of those times was so many of our friends died with no one other than their friends, there was no family around for many. The way the disease cut a swathe through the community meant that really it was only those few of us who were lucky or whose habits were a little different that can still speak for all those amazing people who did die of aids related illness, and who were all found to be HIV positive.
Maybe some would have settled down into some corporate gig and got fat, old and conservative, but I sometimes think that the chances of the world not turning to shit would have been greater if so many smart and creative people living out of the mainstream, hadn't been killed as a result of HIV infection.
There is a flaw in the logic of someone who believes deductions can be made backwards in the way this statement infers: "All people who died of an aids related infection also had an HIV infection; but because not everyone who has an HIV infection has contracted an 'aids related' illness that means HIV doesn't cause aids."
If I could be bothered I would search out the name for that type of fallacious reasoning prolly best left up to the philosophy students.
There was a time around the turn of the century (about the time health authorities put the razor to HIV funding - coincidence?) when some peeps, even a few in the health business thought that HIV need not cause an inevitable immune system failure. Unfortunately that has turned out to be a false hope for many. The long term prognosis has not been so rosy. My friend is but one of many who for whatever reason managed to stave off an immune system failure for decades only to find nothing is permanent in this life.
As for the notion that telling people they had HIV is what made them sick, that would explain why so many died undiagnosed eh?
@ David If you lived in and around gay people in the 80's you must have had friends who didn't get a diagnosis because "they didn't want to die" that is they shared your point of view that knowing they were infected with HIV would make them sicker. I know I had a few friends who made that choice, yet they still died of an aids related illness.
Of course the illness has been exploited by big pharma. All illnesses prevalent in the 'first world' are, but that doesn't mean the disease is as false as a viagra commercial it just means that pharma jumped on the bandwagon.
I'm not gonna get into some silly I know more dead friends than you or any of the other games that insensitive idiot bourgeoisie played back in the day, but I was involved in initiating harm reduction programs(much derided by the next generation of health careerists but that is true of all treatment models)in Australia. This was at a time when the Hawke led government was the first government anywhere to actually look at ways of preventing HIV infection. They also initiated programs to treat those who got infected long before the Reaganites in amerika would listen.
Back then big pharma wasn't anywhere to be sighted. All there were was a few dedicated health researchers determined to find out what was causing the illnesses and some health care professionals from the gay community who realised they needed to go back to school and hit the books hard.
These were the people who pushed for research the result of which was HIV destroys the immune system.
Remember when Gallo the crook, who realised amerikan pharmaceutical corporations could make a killing outta an "aids cure", stole a sample of the isolated HIV from a laboratory in France?
Gallo only did that after spending a great deal of time and millions of dollars trying to disprove HIV was the cause. He wanted the cause to be his pet research so he could get back on amerkian pharma's sweetest tit. He failed to prove the link was flawed because he couldn't disprove a truth, so in the end he stole the first isolated sample to claim the virus as intellectual property.
It is very difficult to find any contemporaneous accounts of that criminality now because all this occurred before the internet was everyman's tool. This link here gives a reasonably accurate timeline and objectively details the pharma/corporate rort to make HIV 'cures' amerikan.
Those who live in a police state without adequate health care for all shouldn't divert their anger from private insurers who demand a blood test to ascertain HIV status before writing a policy, away from the causes of that reprehensible state of affairs onto myths.
The repercussions from amerikans allowing themselves to be used and abused in this manner are sad but they don't obscure the simple reality that HIV infection causes destruction of the immune system. In most people quite quickly, in a few others, slower.
Maybe some people are lucky enough to have an innate defense against HIV, but that doesn't change the fact that for the vast majority of humans (not monkeys or apes because HIV, human immunodeficiency virus doesn't effect other species, they have their own nasties which do the same which are harmless to humans) an untreated HIV infection will lead to a breakdown of the person's immune system sooner rather than later. Saying that HIV doesn't cause aids seems plain silly. The sort of tendentious wordplay that politicians (I never had sex with that woman) indulge in.
If only it were just silly. I realise the cyclical nature of much human behaviour along with the inconvenience of 'safe sex' for those who feel so distant from the issues that mainstream media has claimed the causes of aids related infection to be, would probably guarantee a backlash over having to get all dressed up to play anyhow, but those who broadcast mis-truths like 'HIV doesn't cause aids' are enabling kids to rationalise away safety in favour of instant gratification and are at least partially responsible for every aids related death amongst adolescents.
As for the idjits who claim to be injecting themselves with the virus, words can't describe their stupidity or their mendacity adequately. I imagine they are performing some sort of conjuring trick, if not the same fate will befall them as befell a particularly foolish right wing minister of conservation from the NT when I lived there a decade or so back.
There is a big uranium mine outside of Jabiru which is on the edge of North Australia's tropical wetlands. The federal government whose office of the supervising scientist had a laboratory monitoring the effect of the mine on the delicate ecosystem, was always in conflict with the right wing state government, The NT dept of Mines or the NT dept of Conservation.
The office of the supervising scientist became so frustrated with what was happening they leaked to the media that water from behind the tailings dam at the mine was over topping after monsoon storms and leaking into the surrounding river systems.
The silly Country Liberal Party minister called a press conference out at the mine where he was filmed dipping a glass into the water behind the tailings dam then drinking the water.
The fellow was dead of some particularly aggressive cancer within 12 months.
You can't will away illness. I've seen that pervasive myth make some people's final days a misery. Their bodies are overwhelmed by some virulent disease, usually cancerous but instead of coming to terms with what is happening to them and trying to enjoy the last scraps of life, the crystal gazers, homeopaths and other assorted bottom feeders have them convinced the thing can be beat if only they 'believe' enough. Or drink enough distilled water. Or fly to whatever distant land still allows their particular quackery. So the sick human dies believing that it was all his/her fault for being 'too weak', too stupid, or too poor. The last sucks the most because to many die from curable disease out of poverty as it is, the creeps who impoverish the sick with their illogical and inexplicably expensive illusions are about as low as a human can sink. It could be argued that not even big pharma stoops that low.
Exactly the same shit different plate that the xtian faith healers serve up to their indoctrinated. The placebo effect has it's limits.
@ David you appear to be a reasonable person with a realistic view on many of the world's iniquities, but one of the primary reasons we humanists have difficulty in persuading our fellow humans of the justness of our cause, of the mendacity of the elite, is that we have been heard to repeat so many silly, easily refutable conspiracies that contradict realities other humans know to be true.
Not everything is a conspiracy in the way we imagine, much of the worst shit that goes down, that too many consider part of the elite meisterplan is in fact just the inevitable result of greed motivating the stupid.
I don't want to crank up all the 911 fantasies again, but I suggest you go to Counterpunch and read up on physicist Manuel Garcia Jr's excellent series of three articles entitled the Physics of 911.
I am typepadded out. I am not allowed to put any more links into this post, but if typepad will let me I will include links to Garcia's articles in a later post.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 23 2009 0:42 utc | 68
The Physics of 911
Part 1 of this excellent series, which includes links to the other two of Garcia's articles in the series, can be found here
There is also an article by Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn which contextualises Garcia's pieces whilst debunking many of the myths around 911 called The 9/11 Conspiracists and the Decline of the Anmerican Left (sic)
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 23 2009 0:52 utc | 69
Debs thanks for the links,
If you would care to read a response to Garcia, it's at this link:
Regarding the AIDS/HIV debate, I think we can both agree that when people started dying and have continued to die without enough real research money being spread around to enough researchers, it is yet another sad modern tragedy that may have been very different with a better government response.
I didn't live in sf in the '80's, but in the mid '90's, and times were very different. There were a lot of overweight gay men as it was a way to prove they hadn't yet been infected. There were kooks going around trying to infect others (at least this was what my friends told me) and a rash of other weird human responses to the horrors of so much death. I saw plenty from the far sidelines too, enough so that I can understand your anger at how fucked up the system really is. The machine doesn't give a damn about anything that can't feed it money.
I wish there were more benevolent freaks in the world an fewer stuffed shirts. I too feel as Debs does that there was a generation of people that might have changed the world, but died. I don't know and I know it isn't nice to think, but isn't it unfortunate that being a greedy, self-centered prick isn't life threatening in a more direct and drastic way then heart disease.
Debs, rest those fingers, you can shout at me later, if you still want to :)
Posted by: David | Jan 23 2009 1:33 utc | 70
66 was me.
debs, i here you.
"All people who died of an aids related infection also had an HIV infection; but because not everyone who has an HIV infection has contracted an 'aids related' illness that means HIV doesn't cause aids."
i am totally not understanding the upside of this statement. i'm not a scientist. HIV Without treatment, about 9 out of every 10 persons with HIV will progress to AIDS after 10-15 years. Many progress much sooner....A strong immune defense reduces the number of viral particles in the blood stream, marking the start of the infection's clinical latency stage. Clinical latency can vary between two weeks and 20 years.
that is fact. hiv1 progresses to aids whether it causes it or not. hiv cause the depletion of CD4+ T cell count, once they are depleted to a certain level..you've got aids. hiv/aids prevention should be mandatory in all societies and communicating hiv doesn't cause aids isn't helpful in the least, in the wrong minds that message will be deadly. the fact that that some people, thru treatment or a bodies ability to keep up their T cell count may never reach the depletion levels for the progression of aids to develope..isn't useful for the prevention of the disease except to scientists who would seek to sustain those levels of t cells indefinitely.
it is very frustrating having this message out there that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. HIV creates the environment for the body to become infected with AIDS. because some peoples bodies have a resistance to the strain is immaterial in terms of prevention.
There were a lot of overweight gay men as it was a way to prove they hadn't yet been infected. There were kooks going around trying to infect others (at least this was what my friends told me)
david, it is hard for me to wrap my mind this, especially in SF. anyone who wants to prove they don't have the disease can get tested. people who are overweight can most certainly carry the virus.
Posted by: annie | Jan 23 2009 2:30 utc | 71
r'giap - i plan to watch that film this w/e when i can give it my full attention
Posted by: b real | Jan 23 2009 3:33 utc | 72
annie, Deb is dead and Fred-Regarding HIV and AIDS.
First let me apologize for creating an atmosphere of angst for annie and Debs, it wasn't my intention to piss anyone off when I originally posted regarding HIV, it was more of an afterthought to what I'd written regarding scary little bugs and government. Unfortunately, my mental attachment to the disease ended when I left San Francisco too many years ago and I haven't paid any real attention to any new information. Stupid Dave!
I'll admit after reading up on the latest "official" information that I've been ignorantly ignoring a lot of recent research, and by doing so I've limited my point of view to a time-period ten years older than present knowledge. Thankfully Debs and annie were able to voice their opinions and I was able to hear.
That said, and before I start laying out what I found out about HIV and AIDS, I want to say (briefly) that I get as offended by what I view as ignorant remarks regarding 9-11 as you do about the subject of HIV/AIDS. Anyone who thinks the ever-changing and modified NIST report has anything to do with fact, should probably go and get injected with HIV...
Then again you may not want to try that injection thing - Fred I'm speaking to you man, read this first...
Link to HIV/AIDS understanding
This is really long and fascinating reading, I'll copy a couple of interesting pieces from the beast and post below.
In the interest of discourse, this is the website where I found the above link:
I didn't agree with some of the statements (I'm just too damn contrary, I guess) but it did link me to the site with better information.
I find this part interesting:
Early Events in HIV Infection
Once it enters the body, HIV infects a large number of CD4+ cells and replicates rapidly. During this acute or primary phase of infection, the blood contains many viral particles that spread throughout the body, seeding various organs, particularly the lymphoid organs.Two to 4 weeks after exposure to the virus, up to 70 percent of HIV-infected people suffer flu-like symptoms related to the acute infection. Their immune system fights back with killer T cells (CD8+ T cells) and B-cell-produced antibodies , which dramatically reduce HIV levels. A person's CD4+ T cell count may rebound somewhat and even approach its original level. A person may then remain free of HIV-related symptoms for years despite continuous replication of HIV in the lymphoid organs that had been seeded during the acute phase of infection.
One reason that HIV is unique is the fact that despite the body's aggressive immune responses, which are sufficient to clear most viral infections, some HIV invariably escapes. This is due in large part to the high rate of mutations that occur during the process of HIV replication. Even when the virus does not avoid the immune system by mutating, the body's best soldiers in the fight against HIV-certain subsets of killer T cells that recognize HIV-may be depleted or become dysfunctional.
In addition, early in the course of HIV infection, people may lose HIV-specific CD4+ T cell responses that normally slow the replication of viruses. Such responses include the secretion of interferons and other antiviral factors, and the orchestration of CD8+ T cells.
Finally, the virus may hide within the chromosomes of an infected cell and be shielded from surveillance by the immune system. Such cells can be considered as a latent reservoir of the virus. Because the antiviral agents currently in our therapeutic arsenal attack actively replicating virus, they are not effective against hidden, inactive viral DNA (so-called provirus). New strategies to purge this latent reservoir of HIV have become one of the major goals for current research efforts.
Course of HIV Infection
Among people enrolled in large epidemiologic studies in Western countries, the median time from infection with HIV to the development of AIDS-related symptoms has been approximately 10 to 12 years in the absence of antiretroviral therapy. Researchers, however, have observed a wide variation in disease progression. Approximately 10 percent of HIV-infected people in these studies have progressed to AIDS within the first 2 to 3 years following infection, while up to 5 percent of individuals in the studies have stable CD4+ T cell counts and no symptoms even after 12 or more years.
How's that for a tick, tick, ticking time bomb? The way the virus lurks has been the cause of why so many people (like me) remain confused about the link between AIDS/HIV. Reading up on it is pretty creepy, there seems to be so much new information it's too bad I didn't find it sooner.
In the course of reading the report I found I needed to quickly grab my shiny sombrero because lurking in the text of the report was this strange fact:
Recent research has shown that most infecting strains of HIV use a co-receptor molecule called CCR5, in addition to the CD4 molecule, to enter certain of its target cells. HIV-infected people with a specific mutation in one of their two copies of the gene for this receptor may have a slower disease course than people with two normal copies of the gene. Rare individuals with two mutant copies of the CCR5 gene appear, in most cases, to be completely protected from HIV infection. Mutations in the gene for other HIV co-receptors also may influence the rate of disease progression
Now, is it just me and my sombrero, or does this reek of the science lab?
Posted by: David | Jan 23 2009 10:39 utc | 73
Oh dear....HIV and AIDS...I agree with Debs that what I would call ‘counter scientific arguments’ about the link between the two border on the criminal, because they impact prevention, treatment and research negatively. Thabo Mbeki, for ex. is responsible for countless deaths. I’m sorry but the posts that deny the relationship are nonsense, pseudo-scientific claptrap, with some correct facts mixed in.
Is it it so hard to understand that the clinical manifestations, life course and prognosis of those infected with HIV will vary greatly, according to gazillion factors (time infected, HIV type, constitution, life style, treatment, geographic location, suicidal ideation, diet, etc. etc.)? I too know someone infected in 1985 and well and alive today, so what? Anti-retroviral drugs have ‘cured’ him.
Perinatal HIV has disappeared in the US due to these drugs.
The etiological process (causation) is rock solid, beyond any doubt. HIV is the sole cause of ‘AIDS’ (we will do without a precise definition.) I won’t post about this again, and send the skeptics to do their homework. Today!
It is true: that the side effects of the drugs can be horrendous and some patients prefer not to take them, or cheat, or take drug holidays. Research shows that this ain’t a good idea - those who follow drug regimens properly live longer and do better, even if some ppl feel better for a while off certain drugs. That is statistical, and does NOT mean that one or another individual may experience a progression different from the norm, such as in ‘being well’ (or even becoming sero-negative) for years without medication. It is also so that some doctors are unsympathetic and/or incompetent. They may not handle their patients well or commit errors, etc. Different issue.
One should not compare 9/11 conspiracy theories with AIDS conspiracy theory. The first concerns - in the main - means, method, motive; the putative perpetrators of a violent crime. Alternative explanations of the events, scenarios that differ from the official version, seem to me to be legitimate or at least interesting because the official version is slim, contradictory, and raises more questions than it answers. And it is one *event*: events are open to interpretation, as they are pinned on human agency and volition - motive. By contrast, the cause of AIDS is attested to scientifically in thousands of scientific papers - this is material science, human motive is absent.
Posted by: Tangerine | Jan 23 2009 10:53 utc | 74
The posts about the black death and AlQ intruiged me. I looked up the Algerian press.
The meme ‘the plague is killing the terrorists’ is an old one, see link 1 from 2003, it is jingly in French as both are called ‘la peste’. The article links terrorism, corrupt Gvmt, laissez faire, and disastrous hygiene (garbage collection, water purification, etc.)
There was an outbreak of bubonic plague or Black Death in Oran in 2003. Yersina pestis orientalis is endemic in the region - Tunisia, Lybia, etc. and every year (or few years) some cases are reported to the WHO. There are a lot of scientific articles/presentations about it.
The articles about 40 terrorist deaths from the plague are all recent, from 19 or 20 jan, and seem to come from the International press, the Sun, the Telegraph, WaPo - uptakes. I only skimmed. Some articles turn it into a Gvmt. (not terrorist) plot to kill Algerians!
The report of the deaths may be partly or completely true, though I saw no official confirmation and the number 40 is just a number. One commentator relates the death of an acquaintance who fled home and how terrified everyone was... the symptoms match exactly. Nothing to do with biological weapons, I think. The ‘terrorist’ meme appears to arise because the first victim found dead near a road was a member of ALQIM.
http://www.algeria-watch.org/fr/article/analyse/terrorisme_peste.htm>link 1, french
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol12no12/06-0522.htm>scientific paper, eng.
Posted by: Tangerine | Jan 23 2009 11:07 utc | 75
biklett, your post resonated thru out my dreams last night. sorry about your mom.
Posted by: annie | Jan 23 2009 18:06 utc | 76
Recently, long after that encounter, I came upon a fascinating study of Jewish thinking on nuclear retaliation—all this nuclear doctrine leads you ultimately to theological questions. In particular there was a fascinating passage in a paper written by Warner D. Farr, a colonel in the U.S. Army.Farr had made a careful study of the theological literature on the Last Resort question of retaliation when deterrence fails.
"In Jewish law," he wrote, "it is asserted, 'there are two types of war, one obligatory and mandatory (milkhemet mitzvah) and the one authorized but optional (milkhemet reshut).' ... Interpretation of Jewish law concerning nuclear weapons does not permit their use for mutual assured destruction. However, it does allow possession and threatening their use, even if actual use is not justifiable under the law." (Italics mine.)
Threat, yes? Use, no? Who knew the Talmudists had parsed nuclear war so closely. The footnote to this assertion refers to a paper by a scholar named Michael J. Broyde called "Fighting the War and the Peace: Battlefield Ethics, Peace Talks, Treaties, and Pacifism in the Jewish Tradition."
Here's the relevant section on deterrence and retaliation and the Decision of Last Resort:
The use of nuclear weapons as a weapon of mass destruction is very problematic in Jewish law. In a situation of Mutually Assured Destruction if weapons are used, it is clear that the Jewish tradition would prohibit the actual use of such weapons if such weapons were to cause the large scale destruction of human life on the earth as it currently exists. The Talmud explicitly prohibits the waging of war in a situation where the casualty rate exceeds a sixth of the population. Lord Jakobovits, in an article written more than thirty years ago, summarized the Jewish law on this topic in his eloquent manner:
"In view of this vital limitation of the law of self-defense, it would appear that a defensive war likely to endanger the survival of the attacking and the defending nations alike, if not indeed the entire human race, can never be justified. On this assumption, then, that the choice posed by a threatened nuclear attack would be either complete destruction or surrender, only the second may be morally vindicated."
However, one caveat is needed: It is permissible to threaten to adopt a military strategy that it is in fact prohibited to use, in order to deter a war. While one injustice cannot ever justify another injustice, sometimes threatening to do a wrong can prevent the initial wrong from occurring. Just because one cannot pull the nuclear trigger does not mean one cannot own a nuclear gun. [Italics mine.]
It is important to understand the logical syllogism which permits this conduct. It is prohibited—because of the prohibition to lie—to threaten to use a weapon that is prohibited to actually use. However, it can be clearly demonstrated that lying to save the life of an innocent person is permissible. Thus, this lie becomes legally justifiable to save one's own life too. An example proves this point: If a person desired to kill an innocent person and one cannot prevent that act by killing the potential murderer, one could threaten this person by saying "if you kill this innocent person, I will kill your children." While, of course, one could not carry out the threat in response to the murder ...
Found at Slate.
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 23 2009 19:51 utc | 77
Bush Declares State of Emergency for Inauguration By Sheryl Gay StolbergIt’s true, President Bush sounded alarms about Barack Obama during the campaign season. On Tuesday, Mr. Bush went one step further: He declared Mr. Obama’s inauguration an actual emergency.
The declaration, though, was not a political statement about Republicans being run out of town. Rather, it was a bureaucratic move intended to provide additional federal money to help the District of Columbia cope with the massive crowds that are expected to turn out for the swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 20 that will make Mr. Obama the nation’s first black president.
Additional money, my ass. it was so they could arrest anybody without the burden of, y'know...investigatin' 'n' stuff.
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 23 2009 20:09 utc | 78
Sorkin sums up the inbred insecurity of this landscape simply enough by saying: “What makes the new War on Terror more singular – more sinister – is that the convergence of unsettling fear, shadowy demonized foe, hyper-technology of ubiquitous reach, and the communal power of the corporate state, has truly globalized the condition of fear. If every space is susceptible to attack and every person a potential attacker, then the only recourse is to watch everyone and fortify every place. If every communication is potentially a fragment of conspiracy, then all must be recorded. Walking the streets nowadays, with troops at the subway entrance, barricades around buildings, cameras staring from lampposts, metal detectors and card swipes at the office door, cops profude, newsstands billboarding alerts from every corner, involuntary anxiety at the sight of handbags and kerchiefs, it feels – more and more – like the battle for freedom is being lost.”
via the excellent Subtopia.
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 23 2009 20:13 utc | 79
obama sends in the drones - didn't take long http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5575883.ece
Posted by: drunkasarule | Jan 23 2009 20:22 utc | 80
from drunkasarule "link":
missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed.Security officials said the strikes, which saw up to five missiles slam into houses in separate villages, killed seven "foreigners" - a term that usually means al-Qaeda - but locals also said that three children lost their lives.
good wars, bad wars
dumb wars, smart wars
change - NO WE DON'T!
hope - NOT FOR YOU!
riverbend wrote once:"take your dumb soldiers and your smart weapon and go home"
i often wonder what has happened to her. she made it to syria, and since no word.
Posted by: sabine | Jan 23 2009 21:25 utc | 81
yep. and it sure didn't take long for obama to become an official child killer.
Posted by: b real | Jan 23 2009 21:27 utc | 82
breal
hope you have a better platform for the film - babelgum was infuriating - it stopped all the time
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 23 2009 21:42 utc | 83
yep, turns out Mr. Changiness is just another in a long and distinctly undistinguished line of blood-soaked mass murderers who believe we have the right, nay the responsibility to play judge, jury and executioner anywhere in the world we want.
show of hands: anyone surprised?
fuck him.
Posted by: ran | Jan 23 2009 22:58 utc | 84
&">http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4136">& in latin america - it seems u s policy will not change at all
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 24 2009 3:02 utc | 85
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 24 2009 3:06 utc | 86
the demonic dershowitz at it again - this apologist for torture dives even further into degradation - i won't even link to shit like that
he just need norman finklestein to slap him down again - to prove what a fraud this caricature of a man really is
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 24 2009 3:14 utc | 87
59 min vid interview w/ International lawyer Phillipe Sands
Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes international lawyer Philippe Sands for a discussion of Bush administration policies regarding international law. Sands analyzes the evolution of international law from the Atlantic Charter to the present drawing on research in his two books, "Lawless World," and "Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values." He concludes that war crimes may have been committed after 911 and that key players in the administration are subject to charges not only in the court of world opinion but also in tribunals invoking universal jurisdiction.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 24 2009 3:28 utc | 88
Good link, Lizard: many thanks.
The Greeks, right now, seem to have assumed the humanity the rest of the world has abandoned.
Posted by: Tantalus | Jan 24 2009 5:10 utc | 90
lizard, good read, heart warming indeed.
the write up from Jesus rivas (thx rgiab), is very good as well, and i think the answer is known, the american people will not resist, and and Obama can't resist the corporations.
compared to the greek, the us americans don't know hardship, don't know war in their own country and sofar have never had a totalitarian regime that went mayhem on them - this is reserved for countries far far away.
as such, they still believe that by changing one pres against another, all will be well - give the man some time. for obama it is quite simple, give a little bit, 'close' gitmo - but no mention of all other black sides, shuffle a bit more healthcare to the needy - if he finds the money somewhere, stop the global gag rule on abortion and allow for some more sex ed, maybe adjust no child left behind regulations etc. but real change of attitude, of how not only to view the world but to interact with the world, seeing all people as equal and disowning us american exeptionalism will not come.
the moment he tries he is dead. simple really.
there might be change when the US puplic wakes up to the fact that they might have elected (purple finger) the pres, but the corporations and lobbys for various interest groups own him. maybe when that realization sinks in it could get messy, but i don't hold my breath.
In the beginning of pres. bush II term, a lot of people moaned about the dems caving and not opposing. I never understood why the same people would not go to the offices/houses and other places where these dem senators/congresspeople worked/lived to bring the demonstration right there. How would i have enjoyed seeing shoes thrown at liebermann, clinton and others in the run up to the iraq war. I proposed it on other sites, i was told to stop trolling, i was told that it is not in the nature of US american, that people could not do that because they would loose their jobs etc. so why would they now oppose obama or any other politician that is happy to sell out to the highest bidder.
sorry for the long post, but who really expects much of either the president or his people?
And yes i know, there are us americans that are deeply disturbed by what happened and continue to happens, unfortunately for the US and the world they are not in the majority.
Posted by: sabine | Jan 24 2009 6:18 utc | 91
The Messiah's hands are already stained with sacrificial blood.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/01/24/US_launches_airstrikes_at_Pakistan/UPI-87971232778924/>14 Holy Sacrificies in Pakistan
And more to come ... much more.
Posted by: ThePaper | Jan 24 2009 7:26 utc | 92
"... only natural to experience a twinge of anxiety while celebrating at the edge of an abyss"
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 24 2009 7:42 utc | 93
hugo chavez is submitting a column in a number of journals in venezuela - it is an important gesture - i quote it in full
Chávez's Lines
My strongest hits as a baseball player always went to the right field.
Now, on the playing field of politics and revolution, these hits that begin today will go toward every field with the same force as my hits.
Only, now they go with the force of ideas, of convictions, and of passion for the homeland.
I am, in essence, a soldier. And as such, I was shaped in the school of commitment and obedience to legitimate power that orients the collective force in pursuit of tactical objectives and strategic goals.
The circumstances and conditions that marked my life converted me early on into a revolutionary soldier. From that point on, I recognized as legitimate and superior the sovereign power of the Venezuelan people, to which I am now absolutely subordinated. And I will be for the rest of my days.
I say this today amidst events that mark the beginning of 2009, as the political battle that was unleashed in our homeland two centuries ago intensifies. Some, the majority of us, want national independence; others, the minority, want to convert Venezuela once again into a colony, into an imperial subordinate, a sub-republic.
There are no other paths to achieving Venezuelan independence than national revolution.
There are no other paths toward the great homeland than this path toward socialism on which we have already embarked; our Bolivarian Socialism, Socialist Democracy!
The other path, on which the Yankee-following colonialists want to take us, would condemn our country to handicap, to insignificance, and the historical tomb; it is the path of capitalism and its political expression, "bourgeois democracy."
We, the independence fighters, carry an oath; that which our leader, Simón Bolívar, took on the Sacred Mount on August 15th, 1805. We, the patriots, have a project, we bear a flag.
They, the colonialists, have no oath, have no project, have no flag. Or better said, as we have seen in several of the Yankee-followers' activities, their flag is reversed, turned upside down, with seven stars and not eight as our Bolívar commanded in Angostura. That says it all: they represent what is contrary to the homeland, they are the anti-flag, they are the anti-Venezuela, they are anti-Bolívar. They are the negation. They are the no-homeland.
And I want to express this in my lines, especially now, when we are in full campaign headed into the referendum on February 15th.
February, February once again! I have felt for years now that my life is powerfully linked to this month, the month of the festivities of the savannah and the gusts of dry season wind: February 27th, February 4th, February 2nd!
And now: February 15th.
Twenty years after the Caracazo[1] that bred me, seventeen years after the Bolivarian Military Rebellion[2] that gave birth to me, and ten years after my inauguration that brought me here, I once again place my life and my entire future in the hands of the people and their sovereign decision. This revolutionary soldier will do as the people command.
If the majority says no, then I will leave in another February, that of 2013.
On the other hand, if the majority of you, Venezuelan men and women, support the amendment with a ‘Yes' vote, then it is possible that I could continue in front of the wheel beyond 2013.
But this is not what is truly most important. Here and now, what is essential is that if the ‘No' wins, a colony will be imposed, the anti-homeland. And if the ‘Yes' wins, independence and homeland will prevail.
That is why I repeat to you, men and women, Venezuelan youth:
Those who want a homeland, come with me!
Those who come with me, you will have a homeland!
Introduction and Translation by James Suggett
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 24 2009 19:16 utc | 94
Charles Tilly - War Making and State Making as Organized Crime.
Full text available.
Via John Robb.
Posted by: Jeremiah | Jan 24 2009 19:19 utc | 95
via dk
Levin Says He Now Supports Lynn for Pentagon No. 2
Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin today said he is satisfied with steps promised to avoid conflicts of interest if Raytheon Co. executive William J. Lynn is confirmed as deputy secretary of defense.Levin, a Michigan Democrat whose committee has jurisdiction over the nomination, said in a statement that he supports Lynn and seeks “prompt” action on his nomination by the U.S. Senate.
Lynn is senior vice president in Washington for Raytheon, responsible for overseeing government lobbying for the nation’s fourth-largest defense contractor. He was a registered lobbyist until March 2008. The Pentagon role would include reviewing major weapons programs and setting defense-spending priorities.
Levin yesterday asked the White House to explain why Lynn was granted a waiver from new ethics rules issued by President Barack Obama that ban lobbyists who join his administration for two years from working on issues they were previously involved with.
Posted by: sabine | Jan 24 2009 19:26 utc | 97
my american friends here are really going to have to explain to me - why i shouldn't see the 'developments' in this administration especially over gaza - with dark foreboding
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 24 2009 19:28 utc | 99
The comments to this entry are closed.
Ireland is FOOKED too.
Posted by: drunkasarule | Jan 21 2009 19:11 utc | 1