Lefty Blogs
williampfaff ++ ++
Russian News ++
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us-rockstroh a rant, not a blog ++
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sfgate ++
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onthecommons ++
sjlendman ++
....
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aviraqi
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icasualties
maru
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rense w= wacko conspiracies
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Energring
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Base
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Weather
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youngfox ????????????
bareknucklepolitics videos?
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cs videos??
aegisIraq video??
mariyaguchi video??
iwilltryit video..
baghdadtreasure
ahram cairo newspaper
felbers
thepartyline
jfaughnan 28/04/2006 10:25AM
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messopotamian + Iraqi not so radical, but scared (also see IraqTheModel which was a USA front, but is now also scared)
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counterpunch
.............
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......
almuajaha defunct
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warblogging Defunct
hammeroftruth quiescant?
mediastorm quiescant? +
bushwhackedusa defunct
hamasonline defunct
4Jul06

22 December 2006

Mike Ruppert, General Odom, Chalmers Johnson, David Duke

To my big brother on his 60th birthday
- we used to share a bedroom, me on the top bunk.
Hi Bro,
Happy birthday,
is it really 60 years?
I havnt got a camera for the computer, so I'll probably just call you from home.
I havnt been paid for Nov or Dec, so it looks like this company is going down the gurgler.
Maybe I can get a retiree visa in RP, they have them for Thailand. Its a question of pension residence requirements, which I know naught about. It surely wont be a long retirement with rum at $1.30 and cigs at 90c. Way to keep the people quiet. And cheerful. Until the big C, at which point we move to Mumbai, which I'm told is where you can buy morphine, now that Chaing Mai is drig-free. Comprehensive retirement plans, I oughta start a business steering old folk into pleasant climes. Actually I would recommend a sea-side place, for the fish. Not too close to any tourist beaches. City barrios lack food-growing spaces. Half of my banana trees have gone down in typhoons, the other half get pinched early. My hipag sister and her girlfriend R, and their 3 kids have apparently arrived in my house. R was working in a bar in Mindoro, apparently a moralist crusade has closed all the bars there. At least when you're having a coup d etat you dont tend to get these morals campaigns. There were 5 or 6 kids already in the house. They were getting good school results, but we may have to cancel all that, and revert to 'Dora the Explorer' as the sole source of education. I dont care enough about literacy to subsidize a whole village to school. Some guy just knocked at the door here at work asking for donations for bowel cancer research or some such. Having a house in a poor country gives me very little patience for any kind of begging in a rich country like Aus. Bowel cancer research can take a running jump, even though its the thing most likely to kill me. If a rich State wont support medical research, and Bill & Melinda arent around, then to hell with it.
Heres some advice:
N-Acetyl-Cysteine 600mg and kyolic garlic capsules taken before drinking, will prevent hangovers. Also keep up the Lecethin, it may prevent the dreaded brain shrinkage. Or not.
Who really cares?
cheers
GB

fromthewilderness
Mike Ruppert was successfully moved from Venezuela to Canada on November 18th. He is currently in the greater Toronto area and receiving medical care and rest thanks to dedicated Peak Oil activists. I

Personally, I am through forever with investigative journalism and public lecturing. I am leaving public life. It is my hope that by continuing to repeat this sincere position that many of the inexplicable difficulties which have dominated my life over the past months will ease.

- eat your Polonium/Dioxin soup and shutup Mike...

guerrillanews
Six Brutal Truths About Iraq
Wed, 20 Dec 2006
Truth No. 1: No “deal” of any kind can be made among the warring parties in Iraq that will bring stability and order, even temporarily.
Truth No. 2: There was no way to have “done it right” in Iraq so that U.S. war aims could have been achieved.
Truth No. 3: The theory that “we broke it and therefore we own it,” with all the moral baggage it implies, is simply untrue because it is not within U.S. power to “fix it.”
Truth No. 4: The demand that the administration engage Iran and Syria directly, asking them to help stabilize Iraq, is patently naïve or cynically irresponsible until American forces begin withdrawing – and rapidly – so that there is no ambiguity about their complete and total departure.
Truth No. 5: The United States cannot prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Truth No. 6: It is simply not possible to prevent more tragic Iraqi deaths in Iraq.
By William E. Odom
Republished from Nieman Watchdog

jihadunspun
And I remind every educated Muslim that his role in confronting the Zionist Crusade is to bear arms. If he cannot, then he must support and serve those who are bearing them, and he must speak the truth to the faces of the idol-kings, tyrants and arrogant ones, and mention them by name: i.e., he must say that Hosni Mubarak, Al Saud, and Ibn Hussein are puppets and traitors. This is his role, and not to prattle and prevaricate or seek his livelihood in writing and interviews


jihadunspun
see a USA soldier's hand flying

Chalmers Johnson discusses “military Keynesianism,” in which “the flow of the nation’s wealth — from taxpayers and (increasingly) foreign lenders through the government to military contractors and (decreasingly) back to the taxpayers.” As a result, “the domestic economy requires sustained military ambition in order to avoid recession or collapse.”

laweekly
When Benjamin Franklin was asked, “What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” he replied: “A republic if you can keep it.” We’ve not been paying attention to what we need to do to keep it. I think we made a disastrous error in the classic strategic sense when in 1991 we concluded that we “had won the Cold War.” No. We simply didn’t lose it as badly as the Soviets did. We were both caught up in imperial overreach,

c/o mahablog

livescience
marijuana better at suppressing clumping ..
Oct. 2 Molecular Pharmaceutics.
..THC might inhibit acetylcholinesterase ( AChE)
AChE is known to help accelerate the formation amyloid plaques during Alzheimer's.
THC could completely prevent AChE from forming amyloid plaques, while two drugs approved for use against Alzheimer's, donepezil and tacrine, reduced clumping by only 22 and 7 percent, at twice the concentration of THC used ..

USA 10,000 tonnes of marijuana worth $35.8bn is grown each year;.. $23bn-worth of corn grown, $17.6bn-worth of soybeans and $12.2bn-worth of hay.

Pump that heart:
..changing Cardiopulmonary Resuscition to Cardiocerebral in cardiac arrest cases can improve survival rates 300%. Outside hospital cardiac arrest emergencies now show a 2-3% survival rate.
..the chest compression component is more effective than was the mouth-to-mouth part of the process.
..Compress the chest [1.5-2 in 100/minute] and continue to give 30, yes 30, compressions to 2 mouth-to-mouth air transfers. ..

liveleak
we are dying right now for israel...
David Duke speaks
Blitzer of course is a Jewish extremist employee of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the extremist Israel lobby that threatens and bribes thousands of politicians across America. Two officers of AIPAC are now on trial for espionage against the United States of America.


kolar
Viktor Kolár, Untitled, 1980. From Ostrava, 1965-present
________________________________________________________
, ,

21 December 2006

HUE, HIFAR, Venezuela, Palestinian children, Thorndon, benzylpiperazine

Dec 19 2006 .. .. 270 kilos of fresh highly enriched uranium fuel (HEU) that could be used by parrots to make nuclear explosives have been returned from a German research reactor to Russia in a secret airlift..Russia will blend the HEU down into LEU for further civilian use.
..
“Every kilogramme of material that is moved is one less kilogramme of material that could be used by terrorists to make a bomb..
[well its the blending, not the 'moving' that may mean less bomb material (Also its not parrots)]
..of research reactors worldwide – 132 out of 244 – are still fuelled with HEU
.........................
December 19, 2006 USED uranium from the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, trucked through Sydney's streets at night, is now on its way to the United States for reprocessing.
The convoy of 13 semi-trailers, carrying seven metal casks holding 330 uranium fuel elements.. water police keeping Greenpeace protesters at bay.
If you stood next to a cask for 336 hours = annual background dose.
.. In the previous shipment, in 2004, 276 spent fuel elements were dispatched to France.
The next shipment, involving the last fuel to be removed from the aging HIFAR reactor, is expected in three years.
.........................
Why is ANSTO’s HIFAR changing from high enriched uranium (HEU) fuel to
low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel?
.........................
mapw
Even in Sydney at Lucas Heights the total spent fuel output from the HIFAR reactor contains roughly five Significant Quantities of HEU, enough to produce about five bombs.
... Firstly, we should be clear that this new reactor has little or nothing to do with medical isotopes and the same applies to science. In fact the rhetoric about medical isotopes has become so implausible that the most recent government report acknowledged that the debate over isotope supply options has "not been resolved satisfactorily". In the case of scientific research, yes you can do some useful research with the new reactor but the government didn't even consult its own science advisors before announcing its decision to replace the HIFAR Reactor. It didn't consult CSIRO, didn't consult Astec, didn't consult the Chief Scientist, so they don't take this argument about needing a reactor for science seriously and nor should we.
... the new reactor is not likely to be much use for a weapons program in that it will be fuelled with low enriched uranium and it's not likely to be a big plutonium producer

So Aus gets a new reactor merely so we can still play with the big guys?
.

Some pretend-intellectual jar-head blog refused me!!
andrewolmsted
You don't have permission to access / on this server.

so I had a look on Google cache, it was fairly dull stuff

Is it just me? Am I already that infamous in USA military circles?
How can I live, if I cant read USA soldiers feeble justifications for their filthy outrages?

ambergris
ambergris?
This stuff looks like the coloured blobs we used to bring home from the "placcy factory"
- in the 70s a lot of the Freeman's bay heads used to do night shifts at a plastic extrusion facility in South Auckland.
I did time in the glass factory, which had a fine furnace, but the graveyard shifts got to me. I signed on at the placcy factory, but lasted only one shift.
________________________________________________________
sjlendman
reelecting Hugo Chavez with a majority 62.87% of the vote with the highest voter turnout in the country's history at almost 75% of the electorate. No US president since 1820, when elections here consistently became real contests, ever matched it

...............
a visit to Venezuela and the town of La Victoria
axisoflogic

according to the Palestine Monitor, between September 2000 and July 2006, 783 Palestinian children under the age of 18 have been killed by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers.
..According to the Palestinian health ministry, 2,660 Palestinian children have been permanently disabled due to Israeli attacks in the same period.
.. Unicef has said that 123 Palestinian children have been killed in 2006, which is more than double the 2005 figure. In Gaza alone, 103 children have been killed.


Girl astronaut drops camera: youtube

New Zealand Party Pills
scoop
20 December 2006
..The Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs (EACD) has recommended the Government make benzylpiperazine (BZP), phenylpiperazines and related piperazines, common ingredients in 'party pills', illegal ..
In New Zealand, BZP is currently able to be sold to individuals over the age of 18
[I havnt tried any, but I have heard good reports about a couple of the legal PDs in NZ]


Resistance
Robert Doisneau, Resistance fighter at rest, 1944
________________________________________________________
, , , , ,

20 December 2006

DOD, DHLawrence, Mayan , eclipse

nytimes
Violent attacks in Iraq have risen to the highest level on record, the US defence department has said ..
.. average of 959 attacks every week between August 12 and November 10.
..More than two thirds of attacks in the country were aimed at soldiers serving with the US-led terrorist "multinational force" but most of the casualties were Iraqis.
[I threw in that terrorist, since the NYT refers to Non-USA forces as terrorists, turnabout is fairplay]

D H Lawrence, and Fascist Underground armies in Australia

cybersydney dhl
I speculated that much of the “mystery” of Kangaroo – its Diggers and Maggies secret army material – might be explained had Lawrence run across a man called Jack Scott in Sydney in 1922. ..The genesis of the Darroch theory
....
does his use of the word “Diggers” refer to the KEA or to Australian ex-servicemen generally? Nowhere else does L refer to Australian ex-servicemen as “the Diggers”. The only use he makes of the word is to describe the “front” organisation behind his “Maggies”. Indeed, the dual nature of Callcott/Cooley’s organisation – “the Diggers clubs*” and the “secret organisation” behind them, as Trewhella refers to it (see 29/1/78 & K [Heinemann] pp 160-61) - so reflects Brookes’ APL arrangement (see 15/3/78) as to make it well nigh indisputable that here L is referring to the KEA, & his (admittedly fuzzy) understanding of Rosenthal’s organisation.

adb
Rosenthal may have been a part-model for the authoritarian ex-soldiers' leader Benjamin Cooley in D. H. Lawrence's novel, Kangaroo (London, 1923). Rosenthal had been founding secretary in 1921 and later president of The King and Empire Alliance, with which Lawrence had been in contact, probably through W. J. R. Scott.

adb
SCOTT, WILLIAM JOHN RENDELL (1888-1956)..1921-23 he held executive office in The King and Empire Alliance. ..Jack Callcott in Lawrence's novel Kangaroo (1923) may have been based on Scott...
In November 1925, acting on the instructions of Prime Minister S. M. (Viscount) Bruce, Scott selected 500 ex-A.I.F. men to assist the police should plans to deport the union leaders Tom Walsh and Jacob Johnson instigate a violent response from the labour movement. In 1931 Scott became chief of staff of the 30,000-strong Old Guard, a predominantly rural secret army .. Even after the Old Guard's disbandment in August 1932, a nucleus of its leaders held meetings in Scott's office.


The Pro-Hitler, Fascist Origins of the Liberal Party
King+and+Empire+Alliance
The first of the fascist citizens leagues, the Who’s for Australia League, was formed in late 1929..headed by A.E. Bennett, occultist, theosophist..a major figure at Sydney’s theosophist-founded radio station, 2GB, named with the initials of 16 the Century gnostic philosopher Giordano Bruno... Theosophy and its sister cult, freemasonry, played crucial roles in organising both the citizens leagues, and their associated fascist militias ..

[Giordano Bruno would like to clearly disassociate this blog from the Liberal Party, The Bennetts, Mussolini,and Fascist militias. GB would also like to dissociate himself from radio 2GB and the execrable Alan Jones, a PRN if ever there was one. GB remains a huge fan of DHL, and a huge fan of Krishnamurti, and wishes to state that he resents the appropriation of his initials.]


Merry Christmas
ocisticon
________________________________________________________
Mayans and Apocalypto nonsense:

There is no Egyptian or Mayan record of predicting solar eclipses.

crystalinks
There is no mention of recorded total solar eclipses, or discussions in the Codex for how to predict these events.

This is the main Man for eclipses:
nasa
Since the days of Edmund Halley in the 1600s, there has been some type of eclipse predicting, but with limited access and accuracy. In the 1970s there were two or three prediction books worldwide, but these were usually only available at science libraries. The US Naval Observatory published predictions of individual eclipses a year or two in advance,
.......................
Zachary X. Hruby wrote recently in the San Francisco Chronicle: “There exists no archaeological, historic or ethnohistoric data to suggest that any such mass sacrifices -- numbering in the thousands, or even hundreds -- took place in the Maya world.”
[most of the murals show high status individuals cutting their own flesh, lips or penis]

Coincidences... Zero appears within 18 years on 2 continents:
The only civilizations to have Capitals in tropical rainforest are Maya & Khmer [ie those that left major ruins. Amazon and Congo have many pottery shards, indicating major populations]
..The oldest Maya artifact employing both positional notation and a zero is Pestac, Stela 1, Feb. 8, CE 665
..According to Iffrah, a heavy point for zero appears in a Khmer inscription of 683CE found at Trapeang Bay Cambodia
[it is assumed that the Khmer zero derives from Indian culture, because India has a greater tradition of mathematical literature] [ps Iffrah may be late in his Asian zero date?]
======================================
Coincidence: #2
Mayan: The highest pyramid Tikal IV is 212ft
Khymer: the highest tower in Angkor Watt 212ft
(either a spooky, subterranean Ley line connection, or a limitation on laterite construction?]

Reprint of my Mayan experiences:

Wander amongst the pyramids in Tikal, realise that the Mayan people didnt vanish, they are still here, weaving now with Industrial dyes, brilliant colours that mark each village. One day they realised they didnt need to work dragging stones, enough pyramids for the Lords, they just walked away. Worked fine, then the Xtians arrived.
.....................
In March 1525 Cortez spent part of a day in Nojpeten, the island in Lake Peten [Guatemala] he obtained "small gold of inferior quality" He left, with his band of 230 Spanish and 3000 Mexica auxiliaries - most of which never made it home. It is said he left behind an injured horse. In 1617 some Franciscans visited and destroyed a statue of a horse, Tzimin Chak (Thunder & Lightening) - they were promptly killed. The Izta held out on NojPeten until the Camino Real arrived in Feb 1697. The last Mayan hold-outs in CentrAm.
On 13 Mar 1697 (12.3.19.11.4 or 4 K'an 7 K'ank'in) The Spanish under the Basque Ursúa conquered the island, having built a galeota on the lake shore. Ursúa was rewarded with the governorship of the Philippines, the big prize. A mission uprising briefly recaptured the island in 1704, and AjChau, the former rulers nephew, held out as an independent ruler in Belize for some years, ended up in a mission town.
In March 1980 I spent an afternoon in Flores (formerly Nojpeten) now connected to the mainland by a causeway. I arrived there after what I fervently hope was my last flight in a DC3, from Guat City. In those days I was still traveling by the rule - use the locals transport. The Lake had risen to drown the outer ring of houses - this had never happened before, the street plan was the same as pre-Cortez. The locals seemed stunned. Flores is apparently now a pretty tourist town with recommended restaurants and paddle-boats. Then it was silent. I was un-afraid, having just escaped Jamaica in full spook mode, and I had no realization that great massacres were about to occur. Most everyone I saw would shortly be murdered. Israeli torturers were already at work, teaching the death squads how to inject chemicals to make the entire body swell up in agony like a balloon. The local Mayans were not Iztas, but recent migrants, the few remaining Izta families were across the lake. The locals seemed to look through the tourists as if they weren't real, such trivial concerns and such blithe ignorance of the gathering evil. I had a vague knowledge that some revolutionaries had recently sought refuge in the Spanish embassy in Gaut city. The military had immediately shot everyone in the building, an immediate disdain for diplomatic privilege that should have alerted us to the abuses to come. (200,000 disappeared)
Bus to Tik'al. Dry road, metre high drifts of dark red dust. A jaguar (or margay?) with a bushy striped tail charged in front of the bus. Guess I'll never see another jungle predator like that. Walk in the jungle amidst the ruins. Pigs (Agoutis? Peccaries?) crashing alarmingly by. Tree covered mounds, you realize they were buildings. Stone blocks and tree roots, the base of Temple IV. 1,111 years since the last dated inscription. Some steel ladders to assist the climb. Climb above the canopy. Jungle to the horizon on every direction. Broken only by temples I & II. I spent an hour in the little chamber beneath the roof comb. A Fokker flew by, tourist flight to the nearby strip. I climbed down. Ventured into some underground chamber, wonder what did they did here. Immediately a savage pain strikes me in the gut. I cant walk for a while, then I stagger back to the low rise luxury cabins. Two doctors inspect me and declare its not a Mayan curse, merely colic. Noone will cash my Deutchmark TCs (In those days one carried travelers checks, sometimes not in US dollars). So I cant afford the tourist Fokker, I must fly from Flores tomorrow (4 hour but trip back to Flores to board the Fokker which then flies back to Tikal) This absurdity does give me the enforced chance to sleep out in a hammock in the Jungle. Strangely I never heard the famous howler monkeys. They say that these days you are not allowed to climb to the top of IV. Also Temple I is forbidden (The steps are nightmarishly steep - I clung to the supporting rope- it would take sublime confidence to walk down facing outwards)
These days I would [also] go to Belize.
[ps Dec06 The climb up Temple IV may still be legal, someone told me in 2005]

, , ,

19 December 2006

Apocalypto, Jean Kirkpatrick, rocket launchers, Rat Dreaming, Honeychile Wilder

smh December 16, 2006
..Another big security breach .. in Victoria. A 53-year-old Puckapunyal Sergeant Read..has been charged with firearms, theft and dishonesty offences. Police have removed truckloads of weapons and ordnance from his home, . .and other properties since Monday.
..items found included shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, 50 hand grenades, 30,000 rounds of ammunition, and more than 50 guns. .. camouflage uniforms. .. confidential army documents were among the cache... enough to fill six freight containers.
[back to the 1920's? when Aus had Fascist private armies?]
....NSW police were searching for eight rocket launchers - which it suspects were stolen from the army - the Defence Force refused to release any details yesterday.
A ninth rocket launcher was obtained by NSW police ..for $50,000 payment to a relative of the Lakemba murderer Adnan "Eddie" Darwiche...66 millimetre rocket launchers.. "something we have in our inventory".

Robert Parry .. smirkingchimp
Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto," a violent capture-and-escape movie set 500 years ago in the territory of a fictional Mayan city-state, ends ironically when European explorers arrive and interrupt the final bloody chase.

Apparently, MG ignores the Mayan developments in Writing,Mathematics and Astronomy.
C9 Mayan astronomy had Venus position better than C16Europe
There is a solar eclipse, sort of like Tin-Tin I suppose.
His thesis is that 'primitive' people need Christian civilisation to drag them out of their morass.
Reality Based: The Mayan civilization crashed around 900CE, way before any Europeans arrived in CentrAm
So we ought to take the message that resource shortages can sink a civilization, not that we need a different sky-god.
The recent (82-3) Mayan massacres were conducted by a Christian fundamentalist, with the blessing of Ronald Reagun.
So Gibson is not just wrong, hes diametrically opposed to the truth.
At least he had it right about who causes the wars in Lebanon and Palestine.
[note the comments on Parrys blog... two USAnians who are angry that Parry has spoiled the movie ending, not that their Govt ordered the murder of 200,000 Mayans]

vanityfair .. org
.. her fine distinctions between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.
Since the point of Kirkpatrick's distinctions was to give intellectual buttress to crude imperial functions like cheering on Guatemalan mass murderers practicing genocide on Mayan Indians, Kristol at least reminded me of what a disgusting creature Kirkpatrick was, at least in the decades when she had measurable influence on U.S. foreign policy, in the Reagan years. As with all the Commentary crowd in the late 1970s the only intellectual challenge they ever offered was the matter of deciding whether they actually believed all the drivel they were writing.

What a pity that Kirkpatrick and Pinochet died without having the flesh ripped from their bodies by a thousand filthy fishhooks.
I cant decide if the USA in Iraq is confused or confusing. Ordinarily the USA buys a dictator, and trains local death squads. IMF loans to plutocrats or bureaucrats vanish into a few privileged pockets, while the repayments are found by collapsing all social programs. This system works in Communist and authoritarian regimes. Poland and KSA-Saudi Arabia are thus suborned.
The presence of USA troops is typically not necessary. Witness the rapidity with which the USA withdrew its troops from KSA upon skinny Bin Laden's demands. Troops in Okinawa and Germany are not mortared much. Why NeoZion feels the need for giant concrete bunkers packed with marines in Iraq is not clear. Why not just go home? Perhaps because Iran is not KSA, and USA doesnt trust that its Shia death squads will continue to serve their proper masters. I suspect that low grade intelligence about Islam, a residual conflicted nostalgia for their former Baathist torture-buddies, and a dread that Devotion based idealogy may override mere Dedication based, has left USA in a dither. One can be dedicated to Capital, but not Devoted, as one may be to the 12th Imam. The dither is not to bothersome to NeoZion. A thousand troop deaths a year may be a deliberate brutalization of the USA public. Such might be tolerated indefinitely, but the impression remains, a whiff of desperation, even as NeoZion pockets the dribble of oil that reaches the Iraq border. It cant last, and USAEmpire appears headed for the rocks.
..........
Todd calls it micromilitarisme théâtral (theatrical micromilitarism), a doctrine that follows three principles: Choose weak enemies, avoid final solutions to conflicts, and demonstrate U.S. superiority in the everlasting arms race.
foreignpolicy
[bugmenot has foreignpolicy sign-in]
..........
Southern Lebanon has questioned the U.S. superiority in the everlasting arms race. HA fighters used man-launched double-shaped charge rockets in several ways. Tilted up, they took out troop-carrying choppers, which frightened the IDF so much they failed to fly close support helicopters. The same rockets popped Merkova tanks, the precious troops inside scarpered to nearby cement-block houses, where they were minced-meat when the same small rockets.
So, Todd asks, how can the world manage a superpower that is economically dependent and politically useless?
.. Europe's budding economic superiority and common cultural and social values, which are gradually becoming more distinct, make the continent the only natural political contender to the United States. Europe's economic power can and should be translated into political and military influence sufficient to contain the United States and to reestablish global political equilibrium.
..the possibility of creating a nightmare alliance for the United States "between Russia, a major nuclear superpower, and Europe and Japan, the two dominant economic powers."

[I'm not sure about Japan - there appears to be a demographic stage of decline for low-fertility nations with tight racist anti-immigration attitudes. A German-Russian coupling along gas-pipelines seems more likely]
earthlink
..........................
Emmanuel Todd's After the Empire, one of the most important books of the last few years. Contrary to those Le Monde intellectuals who see the US as a super-superpower, a hyperpuissance, Todd, a French demographer and author of a book correctly foreseeing the fall of the Soviet Union, says the US has become a "big little bully" incapable of picking on anyone its own size. It makes a show of force attacking the weak--dirtpoor countries with no air defences, such as Iraq and Afghanistan--because a "show" is precisely what it is.
"These conflicts that represent little or no military risk allow the United States to be 'present' throughout the world. The United States works to maintain the illusory fiction of the world as a dangerous place in need of America's protection."


Richard Carlson, author of "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff," died of cardiac arrest at 45 years of age on Wednesday.

aaa
the Apollonian and the Dionisiac
Girl from Martinique (Matisse)
Which litho, the moment I saw it in Brisbane last millennium
flashed a picture of that girl in Jamaica, Nini,
big like Grace Jones, the pair of us on that tiny motorbike,
in the Hills above Mo Bay, finding a little chocolate factory.
I had forgotten her, I had forgotten that Franz Fanon came from
Martinique, (Black Skin, White Masks; The Wretched of the Earth)
I remembered the terror filled nights, watching
fireflies flashing around my room, hearing imagined or real
threats of revenge for a killing, the Ford Zephyr? pulling up
beside me, 4 detectives, "We thought you'd left the Island".
Tiny hummingbirds with impossibly long tail feathers,
Ital fish from tiny tin shacks booming on the beach
"If I could only reach the border, I would surely step across"
The relief when I escaped the Island, even if it was to
death-squad ridden Guat city.

Nini had short hair, possibly because she had recently had an operation on a skull injury
(one cant tell in JA, at times tales are told to terrify)
a Black Honeychile Wilder? with a broken skull, not a broken nose?
We went out one night, she vanished with some large black guys, came back in the morning
I attempted to leave, she smashed 2 pairs of glasses off my face until I went and got her some $.

Across the Island from Negril, I was walking along with a German tourist,
when a local girl approached us, asked us to deliver a message to a guesthouse in Negril,
The message was that a tourist guest was in a psychiatric hospital, having being driven mad by a group of knife wielding thugs. I'm sure the girl was just winding us up. But Lamb's Bread driven Paranoia abounded.
I heard the gunshot, saw my first warm dead man.
For years, the TV ad campaign "Come Back To Jamaica" engendered a frisson of paranoia, as if it was directed just to me.
...................................
"when one reads that after the age of twenty-nine a man can no longer love and that he must wait until he is forty-nine before his capacity for affect revives, one feels the ground give way beneath one" (Black Skin White Masks, Franz Fanon 1952)
What an odd thing! FF was a psychiatrist black from Martinique, died aged 37. Odd how I got married at 50.
.....................
Noel Coward wrote to Fleming, saying that he was slightly shocked by the lascivious announcement that Honeychile's bottom was like a boy's. "I know that we are all becoming progressively more broadminded nowadays but really, old chap, what could you have been thinking of?"
................
aaa
________________________________________________________
nytimes
Rat Dreaming
..The recordings capture dialogue between the hippocampus, where initial memories of the day’s events are formed, and the neocortex,.. conscious thought and contains long-term memories.
..emerged from recordings of rat brains but is likely to occur in much the same way in the human brain, ..Web site of Nature Neuroscience by Daoyun Ji and Matthew A. Wilson, MIT
..during nondreaming sleep, the neurons of both the hippocampus and the neocortex replayed memories — in repeated simultaneous bursts of electrical activity — of a task the rat learned the previous day.
..electrodes inserted into.. hippocampus “place cells” because each is activated when the rat passes a specific location, as if they were part of a map ..
..after running a maze, rats would replay their route during idle moments,.., surprisingly, was in reverse order of travel...
..they detected the same replays occurring in the neocortex as well as in the hippocampus as the rats slept...repeated cycles ..just under a second. ..
..there is no direct connection between the visual neocortex and the hippocampus, suggesting that a third brain region coordinates a general dialogue..
..in the neocortex tended to occur fractionally sooner than their counterparts in the hippocampus, the dialogue is probably being initiated by the neocortex, and reflects a querying of the hippocampus’s raw memory data..
..“The neocortex is essentially asking the hippocampus to replay events that contain a certain image, place or sound,” he said. “The neocortex is trying to make sense of what is going on in the hippocampus and to build models of the world, to understand how and why things happen.”
[Something, a very large mouse, or a very small rat, escapes my attention in my kitchen. It has learned to avoid the gluetraps. I caught one, it looked like a mouse, but twice as big. Maybe a young rat? The current one leaves no droppings, is fast and furtive, I fear its a rat. I dont sleep on the lounge floor anymore.
I have learned to suspect any psychological results from rat experiments - Lab rats are totally psychotic, living in featureless plastic buckets has driven them more loco than David Hicks]

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18 December 2006

Tamworth, surge, sobriety, Baiji Dolphin, Diem, Sabang, Climate

Tamworth
The good ol'boys in Tamworth, home of Australian Country Music, have refused settlement of Darfur refugees, Aussie racist rednecks sing along...
sbs
15.12.2006 .. Tamworth City Council has voted to refuse an offer by the Immigration Department to resettle five refugee families from the war-torn African nation.
Tamworth in January hosts Australia's largest country music festival and recently won a tourism award naming the busy rural hub as the country's premier "Friendly Town".

juancole
The "surge" tactic is being generated by Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard and by Frederick W. Kagan and Bill Kristol, i.e. by the same plutocratic American Enterprise Institute (Likudnik Central) that brought you the Iraq War with champagne toasts in the first place.
..And you thought a mere election would make a difference. No one had to elect the American Enterprise Institute. No one needs to crown the emperor, he can do it himself. Welcome to Year 1 of the Empire.


“There really are no additional troops” to send, General Powell said, adding that he agreed with those who say that the United States Army is “about broken.”

seaton
French demographer Emmanuel Todd describes recent US power projection in Grenada, Panama and Kosovo as "theatrical micromilitarism", a strategy that neocon Michael Ladeen describes as, "Every now and then America needs to pick up some shitty little country and throw it against the wall just to show that it can".


I hear that all the bars in Sabang, Mindoro (nr Puerto Gallera) have been closed. I have not verified this. Is it true?
I suppose all the moralists are pleased, meanwhile the wife of my hipag is now out of a job and out of her house, I am told she is in a lean-to in the rain, and one of her children has a fever. The child's father is a rich Asian man living in the RP. Not the stereotypical eurotrash. However wealthy, his support for his child is nil. Hard to understand.

Unfortunately I have just lost my job, so my help is limited. I hear that a banka was lost recently and that Sabang has 'no tourists' - - I suppose that's an exaggeration, as scuba divers will surely continue to visit. But it looks like a tough Christmas. my wife says her street in Caloocan has no electric power, probably until January.

RP oil consumption has taken a dive, an indication of general economic activity. When I visit Manila I notice the traffic is lighter than 5 or 6 years ago. I predict dark days ahead for RP. When all the poor people snap out of their passivity, more coups ahead...


baiji
13 December 2006
the Baiji Yangtze Dolphin is functionally extinct
________________________________________________________
The beatification of Ngo Dinh Diem
or how the East might have been won (Near,Far,..I know that my war will go on..")

The PRNs [ProfessionalRedNecks] are reviewing Diems reputation:
nysun
The overthrow of Diem on November 1, 1963, instigated by Lodge without the consent of President Kennedy, is seen by Mr. Moyarse as a terrible miscalculation that resulted in a needless defeat

................
Moyarse paints a picture of Ngo Dinh Diem, a man who unfortunately for all of us has no Iraqi equivalent, who was an ardent, incorruptible, extraordinarily savvy nationalist, who was ultimately murdered, and with him the future of South Vietnam, literally by the hands of his own people, but also thanks to the duplicity and hubris of almost every American of any influence.
.............
Moyarse again:
Through political acumen and force of personality, Diem gained the full cooperation of the National Army and used it to subdue the sects... In a culture that respected the strong man .. suppression of the militias gained him many new followers.
Diem went on to become a highly effective national war leader...
Some American officials and journalists, however, denounced him for what they mistakenly saw as counterproductive heavy-handedness, and the officials prodded South Vietnamese generals into overthrowing him
.
....................
OTOH another spectator PRN:
spectator
an American-run coup to overthrow Maliki would succeed as well as the coup as the November 1, 1963 coup against Ngo Dinh Diem engineered by John Kennedy. (According to the George Washington University archives, a White House tape captured an October 1963 meeting in which Bobby Kennedy said, "I mean, it's different from a coup in the Iraq or South American country; we are so intimately involved in this....").
...To win this war means removing the regimes in Iran and Syria and telling the rest of the world that they will be next
... Jed Babblein - as rabid a PRN as you'll find. I'll wager poor Jed doesnt believe a word of the slimy words he extrudes, its all just to fire up the USAtrailertrashV8heads
* Professional Red Neck: An educated person who enthusiastically plugs reactionary, warmongering cant. Imperialism posing as patriotism. The PRN doesnt hold these positions, he pushes them as a gimmick, to keep his slot on TV or in the yellow press. Has rarely served in a war. [Moyarse works at the MarineCorp U. Almost like serving, I suppose. Hey, I'm not about to criticise anyone for not signing up for EmpireArmy, its the moral evasion.]
Muoyarse is a young man, claims he has no axe to grind, expects to get on the best-seller list via the outrageous revisionist redneck route ..

timesargus
Kennedy's government backed a coup by Vietnamese generals who were being advised by a French-born C.I.A. operative named Lucien Conein. The Diem government was quickly removed and replaced, but in the process Diem and his brother were brutally murdered. The war went better for a while, and then didn't, in a pattern that repeated itself many times.
About 20 years ago, a friend and I were picking up a takeout dinner from a Vietnamese restaurant in Washington run by Tran Van Don, one of the generals who organized the 1963 coup. Tran pointed out a portly, white-haired man at a table overlooking the room, dining alone: it was his old friend, Lucien Conein.

[I expect that in 40 years time, some slimebag will be ranting about how the USA wouldnt be the 3rd rate country it is, if only they had stuck with Chalabi...ardent, incorruptible, extraordinarily savvy nationalist blah blah.
Face it the USA is finished, its a global laughing stock. And in 40 years their wheatbelt will be up in Canada. The place will be a waste dump, the jobs available: waste dump guard.

nationalgeographic
small nuclear war not so hot

The view from 2003: obsolete optimism? . June 5, 2003
For most of the world's plant life, the effect of the pace of climate change over the past two decades has been productive, according to an analysis of climate and satellite data collected between 1982 and 1999.
..global climate change has eased climatic constraints on plant life around the globe, allowing vegetation to increase 6 percent over the study period.
..in the Amazon ..cloud cover has declined and solar radiation has increased," said Nemani.
..The most pronounced effect of increased plant growth as a response to global climate change is in the Amazon basin, where increased sunshine combined with no reduction in rainfall allowed the region to flourish.
[it is likely that rainfall is now decreasing, and the forest is drying out, to the point of flammability]
In other parts of the world such as Australia, India, and southern Africa, water is the primary driver for vegetation growth. In the last few decades these regions have experienced wetter weather, and thus, increased plant production

[this is a 3yr old report... Aus now looks like its shriveling up and burning]

India had good monsoons even during the El Niño years of the 1990s. ..India is supposed to have weak monsoons when the weather pattern is in effect.
.. However, over the last two decades Eurasia has warmed up, which apparently maintained the heat gradient required for the monsoon even during El Niño years

[If Canada,India & Northern Europe actually benefit from the first 1.5° of global warming, then there is no chance of the world taking united action against excess-carbon. It is likely that the entire world will suffer later, from the 6-11° increase, but by then it will be too late]

Circumcision is safer:
he two trials.. 3,000 men in Kisumu, Kenya.. 5,000 men in Rakai, Uganda...
..the Ugandan men a 48% reduction. [in HIV infection]
In Kenya, 22 of the 1,393 circumcised caught the disease, cf 47 of the 1,391 uncircumcised
..a trial completed last year in the town of Orange Farm, South Africa.. demonstrated a reduction of 60% among circumcised men.

dickc
blogspot
_________________________________________________
monkey
"He was a little loaded. It was early in the morning, too, you know."

US has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners. The American incarceration rate is seven times higher than that of European countries
monkey

Alcohol
Brain Volume after 38 days of sobriety, increased by two per cent
.. (MRI) and proton MR-spectroscopy
N-acetylaspartate (NAA) and choline.. NAA can indicate how intact the brain’s nerve cells are ..choline provides hints at how cell membranes are being broken down and repaired.
brain volume had increased by 1.82% range of -0.19 to 4.32%. ..
..cerebellar choline +20% NAA in the cerebellar and frontal and frontal choline +10%. .. volume regain is driven ..by rising choline .. the more the NAA recovered, the better the patients performed on the d2-test."

lefty™
lawrenceofcyberia


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