Christine Fair of RAND disputes heavy-rotation American corporate media allegations that the Mumbai attacks are the work of the Pakistan military, intelligence or Pakistan terrorists trained by groups fighting India over Kashmir :
…she pointed to India’s domestic problems, and long tensions between Hindus, who make up about 80 percent of India’s population of 1.13 billion, and Muslims, who make up 13.4 percent.“There are a lot of very, very angry Muslims in India,” Ms. Fair said. “The economic disparities are startling and India has been very slow to publicly embrace its rising Muslim problem…This is a major domestic political challenge for India.
“The public political face of India says, ‘Our Muslims have not been radicalized,’ she said. “But the Indian intelligence apparatus knows that’s not true. India’s Muslim communities are being sucked into the global landscape of Islamist jihad.”
“Indians will have a strong incentive to link this to Al Qaeda,” she said. “But this is a domestic issue. This is not India’s 9/11.”
In all major, well-coordinated terror attacks, where it is obvious that some or all of the terrorists involved have had military training, and access to military-grade explosives and weaponry, the first and most important question to be asked is not simply ‘Who did it?’ but ‘Who benefits?’
The incentive for India to blame Pakistan is, of course, to delay the day they have to finally confront the terrorism and terrorists within its own borders. That is terrorism perpetuated by both Muslims and Hindus, usually against each other.
At least 10 people have been arrested in connection with several bomb blasts in the Muslim-dominated town of Malegaon in the western state of Maharashtra in September, which left six people dead. But reports suggest that police believe the cell may also have carried out a number of previous attacks, including last year’s notorious bombing of a cross-border train en route to Pakistan, which killed 68 people. Among the alleged members of the cell are a serving army officer and a Hindu monk.
Bomb attacks are not uncommon in India – there has been a flurry in recent months – but police usually blame them on Muslim extremists, often said to have links to militant groups based in either Pakistan or Bangladesh. As a result, the recent cracking of the alleged Hindu cell has forced India to face some difficult issues. A country that prides itself on purported religious and cultural toleration – an ambition that in reality often falls short – has been made to ask itself how this cell could operate for so long. India’s military, which prides itself on its professionalism, has been forced to order an embarrassing inquiry.
While some commentators have expressed surprise about the discovery of the alleged cell, others have pointed out that there has been growing concern about the possible threat from Hindu extremists. In the summer, two members of a right-wing Hindu group were killed while putting together a bomb, and two other suspected members of the same group died in similar circumstances in 2006.
Meanwhile, senior right-wing leaders have made no secret of their wish that Hindus should form suicide squads to protect themselves against Muslim extremists. Bal Thackeray, leader of a group called the Shiv Sena, which has been responsible for communal and regional violence in Mumbai, wrote recently in the party’s magazine: “The threat of Islamic terror in India is rising. It is time to counter the same with Hindu terror. Hindu suicide squads should be readied to ensure the existence of Hindu society and to protect the nation.”
At least one of the Mumbai terrorists is said to have made demands, by phone, for the release of prisoners, ‘our brothers’ or similar words, held by Indian authorities. The immediate assumption, the well-trained assumption, is to fill in the gaps and assume the terrorist was talking about releasing suspected Muslim terrorists. But was he, in fact, demanding the release of the alleged Hindu terrorists?
The miasma of conflicting reports and claims (was it ten terrorists, or were there 26?) surrounding the Mumbai attacks is sticky and thick, and now the last Westerners have escaped the hotels, it will quickly fade from the evening news and even ‘official story’ shattering news, should it arrive, on who did it, why, who trained them, will be of little interest to many, particularly if, or when, it turns out that whatever Al Qaeda is supposed to be today was not responsible for the three days of mayhem.
The Indian government has to make sure that Pakistan wears responsibility for the attacks, it has to follow the Western media narrative already in play, even if behind the scenes India’s leaders tell the Pakistanis, “Look, we know you guys didn’t do it, but our people will want our blood if we say Muslims born in India did it.”
And how to blame the violent tenets of religion only for the motivation to such bloodshed and death if it turns out that fanatical Hindus were involved in the Mumbai massacres?
There’s something truly gruesome about the feeding frenzy of media around the attacks. We needed to know what happened, and what was still happening, but we were educated once again that the possible death of someone from the US you’ve never met or heard of is far more important than the confirmed deaths of more than 180 Indians who’ve you’ve also never met or heard of. Why is a missing American or Brit of more immediate media importance than the locals? Because it has to be about ‘us’ and not them. It has to fit The Narrative of the War On Terror, and that is an angry, militant Islamic war against innocent Westerners. Oh yes, Fox News and the Rupert Murdoch newspapers tell us, Indians were killed, but it was Middle Class White People From The West the terrorists were really after.
An Australian man trapped in his hotel room for two days, giving ‘Live From Terror Hotel’ phone reports, soaks up fat chunks of coverage, and yet what did we hear of the dozens slaughtered in the train station while local police refused to open fire and kill the killers? Little. Which is, or was, the bigger story? There were no Americans, Brits or Australians at the train station (no white ones, anyway) amongst all those so callously gunned down. They are just more of the anonymously dead of the ‘War On Terror’.
We see people who look like us on the news, wearing our kind of clothes, flowing through airports safe and well and Back Home, where everything is safe and well, while hundreds of families prepare for funerals and endure the endless stall of time in hospital casualty waiting rooms, but we see little or nothing of them. Which is why we no longer need or even think of turning to the evening news to find out what’s going on, and therein is the very reason why the media institutions are dying. It’s not that kind of world anymore, the power to shape the narratives of and for this day and age are fading fast. The dead of India are not, and should not be, anonymous to us.
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When I first read this story a few days ago, I thought ‘Stoner Surfer Invents Time Machine, Gets Trapped In Past”, and almost instantly watched a trailer for this yet unmade movie on the mind screen :
Researchers say they have located the world’s oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly “cultivated for psychoactive purposes,” rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.
The large cache was contained in a leather basket and in a wooden bowl, and was likely meant to be used by the shaman in the afterlife.
The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man…
How pissed off would he have been to reach the afterlife and only then learn that his shy-kilo stash didn’t cross over with him?
This most excellent story does not, however, answer the most nagging question : whether or not researchers tried to put the flame to this ancient gear, though they acknowledge it was subject to “a battery of tests”. I wonder if any of it, you know, went missing?
There are a lot of very, very wealthy cannabis connisuers in this world, what do you think (if it were legally possible to do so) this 789 grams of the world’s rarest gear would fetch at auction? $20 million? $50 million?
There were seeds in the stash, but none germinated, or so the researchers claim. While the cannabis was still green, it had lost its recognisable, sweet odour. But researchers said they believed it to be “relatively high” in THC. This shaman of ancient China was smoking, eating or drinking potent gear.
Curiously, the Xinjiang region in China is said to be “an original source of many cannabis strains worldwide.”
So, back to the mind movie. The time traveler, who knows about growing, tending and cultivating supreme gear, being a true conniseur, finds himself back in ancient China, unable to get back home to the 21st century. If I’m stuck here, he figures, I’m not tolerating this low potency local brew, I’m going to breed me some killer cannabis and make the most of it.
He’s a shaman, so he only has to hand out his cannabis cake and tea and balm to the sick, and come up with a few tripped-out stories, awesome visions, poignant observations and life-bettering philosophies a few times a month to earn his keep. He tends his crops, he heals some of the sick, he teaches of all the society-altering uses of this remarkable plant and he gets on with it. When he dies, those who knew him decide to not only bag up some of his best crop to go into his tomb for use in the afterlife, they also prepare a fresh bowl. It’s what he would have wanted.
Remnants of cannabis have been found in ancient Egypt and other sites, and the substance has been referred to by authors such as the Greek historian Herodotus. But the tomb stash is the oldest so far that could be thoroughly tested for its properties.
“This materially is unequivocally cannabis, and no material has previously had this degree of analysis possible,” Russo said in an interview from Missoula, Mont.”It was common practice in burials to provide materials needed for the afterlife. No hemp or seeds were provided for fabric or food. Rather, cannabis as medicine or for visionary purposes was supplied.”
The substance has been found in two of the 500 Gushi tombs excavated so far in northwestern China, indicating that cannabis was either restricted for use by a few individuals or was administered as a medicine to others through shamans, Russo said.
“It certainly does indicate that cannabis has been used by man for a variety of purposes for thousands of years.”
The stoner surfer time traveler flourished in his new digs in ancient China, and while replicating a Playstation was impossible, he still had his toys :
The tomb also contained bridles, archery equipment and a harp, confirming the man’s high social standing.
When there are no guitars, and no electricity to power those guitars, a harp just might, that is might, suffice.
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Don’t watch this new, fear-soaked ad for Fox News as a passive observer. Look at how they are use a storm of shock images, and an intense, shreiking soundtrack, to try and scare the shit out of their regular viewers. It’s a total mindfuck and pretty creepy stuff. There are literally hundreds of subliminal images and sounds within this frantic ad. It’s like being assaulted with a strobe light.
So it looks like all those tens of thousands of hours of dousing War On Terror prisoners with visual and aural torture has provided plenty of ideas about how to really grab someone’s attention. Whoever put this together knew exactly what they were doing. Fuck knows what effect this visual terrorism has on someone sitting in a dark room bathed in the glow of a massive flat-screen with the surround sound pounding. Can’t imagine it would be healthy.
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Tonight was the end of The Shield. There are a lot of things that can be said about the episode, far too many, but it’s too soon to say many of them I think. It would be unfair to comment as I think those that missed the episode will be looking forward to Tivo or a rerun that is sure to happen this weekend.
What I will say is the ending is unlike what you might expect, and far more conclusive than say the end of the Sopranos.
Beyond that I want to reflect on the series in general. It has been a tour de force in drama and an example of what can be done on cable television. It has expanded the formerly rote cop drama into something far more powerful and watchable. And that has to do with the reality the program brought to us.
For once we got a cop show that had a precinct that reflected the neighborhood in which it was situated. Unlike even Law & Order, which is diverse, but isolated as well with its focus on a handful of stars. Because this show had several major characters that were of color, police officers and not just primarily the criminals, and at levels of authority.
Perhaps for the first time, if ever on television, we were introduced to police officers that were White and corrupt. We saw a side of the police force that was real, if only a small portion in the real world. And I would bet that there are some in the nation that never bothered to watch the show just because they could not believe in a dishonest police, especially when they are White.
But honestly it wasn’t the race of any person on the show that mattered. It’s important because before this program there was the constant quota system of Hollywood, 1 person of color – normally a secondary character – and 1 woman. But after this show started there seemed to be a plethora of shows on cable that recognized that the world is populated by more than an overabundance of White men. So that is one thing that kept me coming back.
And the show hit on issues that no one touched before in a meaningful way. A gay Black cop, an Hispanic cop that has ambitions for political gain, a Black woman detective seeking the recognition of her years of work, a female cop that wanted to be taken seriously just for her abilities. And that was just in the first season. And only scratching the complexities of the characters at that.
That’s why we all tuned in week after week. Because the raw and honest interaction made sense. There was no quick answers, no ultimate resolutions at the end of a weekly hour-long episode. There were no absolute lines of right and wrong. And only in a place so real could a guy like Mackey thrive.
Well maybe not thrive. Because he is never off his guard. Never safe and happy. Never without a need to look over his back, or to make sure that he has everyone fearing for their private secrets he might expose. And all of that ate away at the man who had the plan.
Vic Mackey is real. He exists in police departments across the nation. And he is a hero, at times. Mostly because it serves his need. Mostly because it give him the freedom to move in the shadows and cracks that always exist in a job that deals with the worst of any society.
I liked this show because it was never safe. Cops got killed. People were betrayed. Tragedies happened at horrible times. And Near perfect plans blew up in people’s faces. It was more of a reality program than American Idol or Survivor, or any of those silly shows ever could be in their best moments.
Am I sad to see the program end? Yes. Do I think Vic Mackey needs to be in jail? It depends on the day and what he has just done. Because he is as much a cure as a poison to the community. Though his need to survive his own machinations makes him ever so much more lethal.
I will miss the honesty, and complexity of this program. I will miss seeing Michael Chiklis weave his emotions and intensity. I will miss the gray that seems to fail to be reflected in all the shows about the legal system supposedly based in reality. But if you missed the season end of the show I suggest you get a copy. Because it’s worth every minute. And the ending is just what I would expect, though I never expected it beforehand.
So in addition to the Wanna Ride? selection of mousepads, coffee mugs, t-shirts, Teddy bears, sweats, thongs, and other items I present the new Cowboy line.
The new Cowboy line is a strong statement of self. It looks good in t-shirts, steins, pet water bowls, calendars, hats, hooded sweatshirts, and over a dozen other items. And the design is another original from HB Designs made exclusively for M V Consulting, Inc. So you can be sure this is a unique gift for anyone on your Holiday lists, or yourself.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are even more unique clothing designs being worked on as we speak, covering thoughts from the sexy to the flirty to just funny. And each unique clothing design will be available on dozens of styles of clothing, and a huge assortment of other products like boxer shorts, kitchen aprons, keepsake boxes, throw pillows, coffee mugs, gift cards, 2009 calendars, coaster tiles, and more.
Out of the hundreds of items available, there is definitely something for everyone including yourself. And they all can be purchased from the warmth and ease of your home and/or office. So just click here and take a look at what is available.
Keep an eye out for our model photos that will be coming soon. This way you can see real people in the various clothing designs at our online store.
Sincerely,
Michael Vass
President – M V Consulting, Inc.
info@vassconsult.com
** If you wish to submit a design or clothing idea please contact us.
And we are always interested in new models – male or female, of every race and age – for our photo shoots. If you wish to be considered please send a photo with your contact information to us here.
Greetings, I’m not in a bloggerable state of mind right now, off doing other things for a few more days, so postings should return to something close to in-normal normality by the weekend. I probably should have told you, my dedicated readers, this about a week ago, seeing as many of you have been checking in daily and finding nothing, NOTHING! except a near week old post.
So, sorry about that. I’m sure you haven’t missed me that much, right? And there’s always three years of archives to bounce around in if you’re truly bored, or you can read American Sniper, in the links, a poem that seems more true today than when I wrote it a couple of years ago.
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M V Consulting, Inc. has been busy over the last year seeking out artists and graphic designers that can capture the essence of the slogans and ideas emblazoned on the clothing and goods sold at the company’s online store. To that end the company is pleased to present the first in a new line of T-shirts, hoodies, maternity wear, sweats, mugs, mousepads, tile coasters, cooking aprons, teddy bears and more.
The Wanna Ride line of clothing and goods are the first line from HB Designs made exclusively for M V Consulting, Inc. This line exemplifies the sexy, flirty, vibrant nature of many of the ladies that are visitors to the sites of the company. There is no doubt that while wearing this attention will be gained, and you will stand out in any crowd.
And the company has not forgotten about the men out there.
M V Consulting, Inc. sees no colors and as such we offer a version featuring Black, Latina, and White women.
And shortly we will be including another line featuring men as well – we think of you everyone.
So please do let us know what you think of the new product line. Visit our online store and check out what’s available. And purchase as much as you want.
If you have specific ideas, or improvements we can make, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Michael Vass
President – M V Consulting, Inc.
info@vassconsult.com
** Several items available in different colors. All items above are front or back only designs for clothing. Plus sizes are also available at the online store. **
If in 3 years Osama Bin Laden publishes a book about his attack on the Twin Towers, and his work with Al Quida, would you buy it?
Simple question. I think that most Americans agree that they would not. So why then would anyone buy Bill Ayers book Fugitive Days?
Bill Ayers is releasing the book again after all the media attention generated by the Presidential election.
This media attention is being capitalized on as Ayers has his old book, and a new one, coming out. And in the old book, Fugitive Days, he has added a new portion that discusses his relationship with President Obama.
Now let’s look at what the book actually discusses
…Ayers takes the reader through the townhouse destruction three times in the course of his memoir. His narrative opens with the explosion—or more accurately, his hearing about the explosion in a telephone call placed to a phone booth in a desert location. The second time he relates the explosion in the chronological context of his memoir. A third time he re-imagines the explosion and so reinterprets its significance. The whole point of his memoir, plausibly, is just to set the stage for that final re-imagination.”
So this book is the revisioning of fact, when fact is addressed at all. There is no remorse or apology. There is just the attempt to justify, and promote the ideals of a terrorist. And profit from that re-making of history.
The first try did not sell as well as Ayers hoped I imagine, as the book came out in 2001. It’s hard to justify bombing America when thousands of Americans are dead from a terrorist act. But Ayers is counting on the fact that the MTV generation is too busy to remember just 7 years ago.
I remember. And I understand what Ayers was trying to do in the 1970’s. He wanted to destroy the nation. And he thought his actions were not enough.
So I ask you, would you buy a book by an admitted terrorist who has no remorse? Would you help promote the ideals of a terrorist, and provide them profit? Because if so, you would buy a book by Bill Ayers. And that is no different than shaking Osama Bin Laden’s hand and handing him a check over the ruins of the Twin Towers.
If you disagree I’d like to hear why.
But no matter what, I suggest that all my readers, all your friends and co-workers, all Americans boycott the books of Ayers. If you support that I’d really like to hear your comments as well.
The Media, who needs them? Obama doesn’t. He’s got the net, three million devoted digital Obama disciples and the e-mail, MySpace, text messaging and Facebook addresses and numbers of tens of millions more Americans.
Obama aides and allies are preparing a major expansion of the White House communications operation, enabling them to reach out directly to the supporters they have collected over 21 months without having to go through the mainstream media.
“He’s going to be the first president to be connected in this way, directly, with millions of Americans….”
The nucleus of that effort is an e-mail database of more than 10 million supporters. The list is considered so valuable that the Obama camp briefly offered it as collateral during a cash-flow crunch late in the campaign, though it wound up never needing the loan, senior aides said. At least 3.1 million people on the list donated money to Obama.
Millions more made up the volunteer corps that organized his enormous rallies, registered millions of voters and held countless gatherings to plug the senator to friends and neighbors. On Election Day, they served as the backbone of Obama’s get-out-the-vote operation, reaching voters by phone and at the front door, serving coffee at polling stations and babysitting so parents could stand in line at voting precincts.
After Obama declared victory, his campaign sent a text message announcing that his supporters hadn’t heard the last from the president-elect. Obama conveyed a similar message to his staff in a campaignwide conference call Wednesday, signaling that his election was the beginning, and not the culmination, of a political movement.
Over the weekend before the election, Obama backers knocked on the doors of more than eight million voters, in less than 48 hours. Eight million. It’s a stunning number of door knocks, and indicative of an election winning level of state by state, block to block, community organisation (yeah, no-one laughs dismissively about ‘community organisers’ now, do they?) rarely if even seen before in American history.
Obama has the makings of a civilian army of information and propaganda distributors. But it’s all so much better than getting a positive story on the evening news, or winning the praise of Katie Couric, because The News about Obama can come directly from nice people talking pleasantly on front door steps and in supermarket carparks, in person. Obama disciples want to do this. They are waiting for their next missions.
“Help you with that bag, ma’am? Just the two bags is it? Do you know what I did last weekend? I went to Washington and I was in a private meeting with President Obama and a few dozen other community organisers like me. You know what The President said? What he said right to me? Let me tell you about it…”
In past years, such lists were considered useful tools for political campaigns but not particularly helpful for governing. But Peter Greenberger, manager of political advertising for Google, said such information could be a boon for Obama in building public support for policy proposals.
The White House could “geo-target” ads so they appear online in congressional districts where members remain undecided. Obama could use Internet ads to solicit signatures for petitions, or he could place display and video ads contextually — so they would appear on the screen next to news coverage of his proposals.
Well, the mainstream media hopes that Obama will still be buying ads in their pages and program breaks in three or four years time. He well may be, but the ObamaNet, if it maintains and then gains momentum, may show that an ad in the Washington Post or the New York Times is a ridiculously wasteful use of taxpayers money.
Imagine the supposedly beloved and influential columnists of the New York Times and Washington Post in a few years. Who will bother to read their words? They will write their snappy, witty opinions on new Obama information that his tens of millions of followers heard hours before, straight from Obama himself, so why will they care what some opinionist thinks about this, by then, old news?
Obama will eventually be able to reach almost every American who daily goes online, more than 80 million Americans today, and probably close to 120 million by the next US presidential election, if there is one.
Obama will reach The People through their internet-connected TVs, on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, through their cell phones, and eventually on the ‘Voice Of God’ wireless connection to the brain, so Obama can say “hello, believer” right there inside your head, with no news anchors or confidence chipping fiery roundtables of professional opinionists, no ads clouding up The Message, no filters of any kind, “Hello, believer, today is another great day to be alive and to be an American. What will you do today to help and make positive change in your community?”
It’s kinda scary, sad and hysterically funny that the mainstream media that helped elect Obama has found out, literally within a few days of the big win, and the news must come to them as a grinding lingering state of shock, perhaps more like a series of concussive punches, as they more fully begin to understand that the true scope of Obama’s direct digital connection with so much of the American people, so many young online Americans, means yes, most certainly, that he Does Not Need Them Anymore.
The front page of The Washington Post online today contains what actually reads like a plea to readers to buy a “Special Commemorative Edition” on President Obama, or just the November 5 front page.
Newspaper sales are plunging, ad revenue fades, interest and readership is tugged away by blogs and alternative media and social news-sharing. 2009 is going to be devastating for much of the mainstream American media, so many people have now moved on from that morning or evening newspaper fix. Yes, mainstream media giants saw The Change coming and tried to dominate online, to keep that readership and power and influence, and they failed, and so Obama Wins memorial dinner plates from the New York Times will surely be next.
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Barack Obama gets a letter from a girl in Missouri, offering advice on what dog he should get for his daughters, and he replies with a cascade of advice “to make your life better.”
Some excerpts of the letter the now President Obama (the January innauguration is the celebration, Obama is already be in power) put his name to only days before he won the
election :
“I am impressed with your interest in politics, especially at your young age. I appreciate your idea to make a law requiring people to recycle and to ban unnecessary wars.”
“Look out for other people, even when it does not directly benefit you; strive to make a difference everywhere you go; and get back up every time you are knocked down.”
“Creating change and making the world better is not always easy, and you will probably find in your life that it is more comfortable to ignore injustices that don’t affect you directly. Don’t take that comfortable road. Challenge yourself to make a difference.”
“If you don’t already know what it means, I want you to look up the word ‘empathy’ in the dictionary. I believe we don’t have enough empathy in our world today, and it is up to your generation to change that.”
“I hope you will always be an active participant in the world around you, and that you will seize every opportunity to make the world better.”
“Seeing young people like you who care about making things better inspires me and gives me great hope about the future of our country.”
Are these the eyes of a calculating, cynical liar who spins guff he doesn’t believe to kids?
No. These are the eyes of a kind man, who believes in empathy and a lot less misery for the American people. But how long will Obama stay this person, this true believer in the power of empathy to transform a city, a country, a world? How long can he hold onto that belief system when the gore-caked realities of the world hits him every morning in security and intelligence briefings? How long before his eyes become cold?
Philip K Dick’s long quest to answer the questions that haunted him most of his life : What Is Human? What Does It Mean To Be Human? ended with the simple realisation (and one he’d had many decades before his death in 1982) that to be a Human, you must feel Empathy, for other humans. You must be Kind. If you do not feel Empathy, and if you cannot make exceptions for the chaotic nature of human emotions, then you are not Human.
I’ve been dipping in and out of a couple of years of Obama speeches. He talks about empathy a lot. And a lot of other key Philip K Dick themes and ideas about humanness a mind like Obama’s could have easily soaked up. Did Obama discover Philip K Dick when he went searching for novels and stories about black American presidents? A black American president was a popular character in science fiction in the 1950s and 1960s, and Dick also wrote about this, then almost unimaginable, then still far future reality.
Even parts of that letter from Obama above read like some of the letters Philip K Dick sent to his daughters and step-daughters, and to young fans who wrote to him.
The idea of an American president in the 21st century locked into a war on terrorists, deploying flying killer robots, planning for wars in space, who also happens to be a Philip K Dick fan is…well, very Philip K Dick-ish.
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“In a few months’ time I’ll be the oldest man ever to have lived in Britain. How have I lived so long? I never worried. In the Twenties there were millions of men out of work. You couldn’t get a job anywhere. I wasn’t worried. I’m not worried now.”
“Superstition’s not for me. And I’m not much for medicine either. I know my mind and my body better than anyone else.”
He remembers when you could run into the King of England whilst riding your bike :
I was cycling along Rotten Row one day when I saw George V come along on his horse. I took my cap off, and the King tipped his riding crop. And I said, ‘Give me a job, sir, I’ll do anything for you.’ But it was lost in the clatter of the hooves.”
And a story straight out of the memories of Grandpa Simpson :
People drive fast today. When I was born the speed limit was two miles an hour. They’d only just repealed the law where a man had to walk in front of every motor car waving a flag.
He was 15 years old when the Titanic sank, and didn’t know until he saw the front page of a newspaper. He thinks the finest food in the world is jellied eels, he claims the “occasional cigarette” never did him any harm, and he tells this incredibly horrific story from his youth :
I spent a night in a shellhole in Flanders. It stank. So did I when I fell into it. Arms and legs, dead rats, dead everything. Rotten flesh. Human guts. I couldn’t get a bath for three or four months afterwards.
What a war.
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The FBI tracked about 108,000 potential terrorism threats or suspicious incidents from mid-2004 to November 2007, but most were found groundless, a Justice Department review found on Friday.The department’s office of inspector general gave the figure in an audit of the FBI’s terrorism case-tracking system, called Guardian, launched in 2002 after the September 11 attacks.
“The FBI determined that the overwhelming majority of the threat information documented in Guardian had no nexus to terrorism. However, as a result of information reported in Guardian the FBI initiated over 600 criminal and terrorism-related investigations from October 2006 to December 2007,” the inspector general’s report said.
The report did not discuss the result of the investigations.
Because there were few actual convictions, and the convictions that did result were mostly minor infractions of laws that didn’t even exist six years ago?
The apparatus to fight widespread terrorism is in place, budgets are locked in, a massive and relatively new worldwide industry of state, federal and commercial entities soaking up tens of billions of dollars of public funds every year. But where are all the terrorists to fight?
What happens if they run out of crazed Islamic bombers and jihadic virologists to pinpoint, surveil and track, if that peak hasn’t already been reached?
How do you keep such a massive world industry alive when true terrorists aiming to explode themselves in American, British or European cities appear to be so few in number?
Do you start winding back budgets, closing down departments and laying off staff?
Fuck no.
You just change the definition of the population slice you are targeting, and are promising to deliver “to justice”. Terrorist becomes Extremist, and then Extremist becomes Radical. And then Radical becomes some old woman in England who doesn’t remember, or doesn’t care, what night is the legally defined night to put out her rubbish bin and soon discovers the local council is using anti-terror laws to keep her under surveillance.
Even the anti-terrorism industry has to deliver results, to justify their massive existence. They have to deliver convictions, so if it’s not a bomb-making, freedom hating, religion crazed fucknut, then it will have to be people repulsed by cruelty to animals and land-rapers. And if not ‘enviro-terrorists’ then it will have to be the local anti-war group that has started to take a warming interest in the corruption of their local government, or the parents group opposed to the forced vaccination of their children, or the online discussion group of former scientists who are preparing to expose the intelligence-fogging downside of dosing drinking water with toxic chemicals.
Terrorism in the future will be whatever it needs to be to keep the anti-terror industry, their budgets and the new laws alive.
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A writer for Salon forces himself to sit through five solid hours of Fox News on election night. A mostly sorry affair all round he reports, but he does notice some interesting drug ads :
Before Brit Hume informed Fox viewers just past 11 p.m. Eastern, in the dispassionate tones of a physician delivering a grave prognosis, that Barack Obama had been elected president, we got several iterations of a 60-second ad for Plavix, a pharmaceutical “proven to help protect against future heart attack or stroke.” This was followed, at least once, by a commercial for another drug (I didn’t catch its name) that may relieve symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder. Along with heart failure and difficulty breathing, we also had some unintentional humor on the road to President-elect Obama’s victory address. Much earlier in the evening we were told that Fox’s Election Night coverage was brought to us by “Crest — Whitening Expressions!”
Is it even possible to find out if, or how many, Fox News viewers died of heart attacks or strokes on election night?
Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, is losing billions as as his media empire stumbles hard over plunging ad revenues. He will be cutting and slashing his way through his entire media empire, and a cable news channel with sinking ratings, and caked in neon proclaiming “We Really, Really Liked Bush!” will be thoroughly cut and slashed until it’s a shadow of its former self.
It really is the end of an hysterical, bitter era for Fox News. They lied to their audience. They said the Karl Rove dream of an eternal Republican Majority would never die. And it just did, for a generation, perhaps longer.
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This startling image from a newspaper in India, is one of many tens of thousands of newspaper front pages around the world yesterday hailing the election of Barack Obama to the White House with an excitement and palpable relief not seen on the world stage since the end of World War II.
Some of the remarkable front pages from around the world.
Italy
Iran
Can you judge the character of a man by looking at the back of his head?
France :
Newspapers in China, Italy, Lebanon, and across the Middle East, used images of Obama and his family :
CNN anchors are busted claiming they were looking at holograms of guests during election coverage, when there was no holograms at all in the studio alongside them. Mega fake :
CNN’s US election night stunt, in which reporter Jessica Yellin and rapper will.i.am appeared on set as three-dimensional “holograms”, was little more than smoke and mirrors, physics experts say.
In what was billed as a world-first, Yellin appeared to be beamed from Chicago into the network’s New York studio for an interview with anchor Wolf Blitzer. But, in fact, Blitzer was looking at little more than a red mark on the floor.
Blitzer was happy to play along with the fakery : “Jessica, you’re a terrific hologram…”we can have a more intimate conversation”.
A second “hologram” interview was aired between another anchor, Anderson Cooper, and will.i.am, who, like Yellin, was in Chicago for President-elect Barack Obama’s election night celebrations.
“It looks exactly like in Star Trek when they would beam people down, that’s what it looks like right here,” Cooper said.
He wasn’t looking at anything but empty, unhologramed air.
…the so-called holograms were simply 2D images superimposed onto the TV broadcast.
Faking holograms in a TV studio is reality-melting enough of a concept, but who gives a shit about holograms on TV? What’s the point? Why should you care whether a guest is ‘live in the studio’ or just a hologram projected into the studio space where the guest would be sitting in a flesh reality?
Holograms only matter if they’re in the same room, or venue, as you, standing there, in living realistic light, talking, when the real human is somewhere else, in another time.
CNN is becoming The Spinal Tap of television news.
Even worse, the quality of the fakery on the CNN NotAHollogram was completely shithouse.
This is what a real hologram looks like. Obviously Prince Charles has superior holotech :
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“I congratulate you on being able to attract the majority of votes of the participants of the election…
“You know the opportunities bestowed upon people by God are short-lived. I hope you make the most of the chance of service and leave a good name by preferring people’s real interests and justice to the insatiable demands of a selfish and indecent minority.”
Most Americans seem ready for the return of diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States. The smearers of Obama will probably find much ammunition when it becomes clear he will meet face to face with Ahmadinejad, probably by the end of 2009.
I wonder if we’ll ever learn the truth about those interesting rumours on a Ahmadinejad and Obama meeting in Hawaii just days before Obama won the presidency?
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The neoconservative Right has been doing exactly this for a long time — playing frivolous games with the “anti-semitism” accusation, casually tossing it at anyone who utters any criticism of Israel or who advocates some even-handed approach to Israel’s conflicts with its various enemies.
Klein really became the first person in a venue as establishment-serving as Time Magazine to explicitly criticize neocons for their Israel-centric fixations and, much more importantly, for their disgusting exploitation of “anti-semitism” accusations against anyone and everyone who disagrees with their views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and, more generally, on the Middle East.
Herein lies the great irony of the neocons’ reckless and manipulative politicization of the “anti-semitism” accusation. It was once cliché that “anti-semitism” was the most radioactive accusation that could be made against someone, the Nuclear Bomb of political discourse. A central purpose of the ADL was to prevent the accusation and related issues from becoming “trivialized.” But the anti-semitism accusation has now become so overused, so blatantly exploited, and so recklessly tossed about that it has largely lost its sting. And nobody has done more to trivialize actual anti-semitism than the neocons and other assorted right-wing polemicists who indiscriminately use it as a club to beat anyone over the head who deviates from their dictates when it comes to Israel and other Middle Eastern policy issues — from Jimmy Carter when he published his book on the Israel-Palestinian conflict to Jim Baker when the Iraq Study Group report was released. And it’s perfectly natural that one of the most transparent abuses of the charge — the McCain camp’s attack on Khalidi — came on CNN yesterday from McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb, a protegeé of Bill Kristol on loan from The Weekly Standard.The anti-semitism accusation is not just manipulative; it itself is bigotry of the highest order.
…this episode illustrates what neocons have been doing for years and, more significantly, signals that the efficacy of this tactic is finally coming to an end. Open debates about U.S. policy towards Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are vital, and people should be able to engage in those debates and be able to take legitimate positions, as Professor Khalidi has plainly done, without hordes of right-wing manipulators swarming on them with anti-semitism accusations.
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There is no doubt that while wearing this attention will be gained, and you will stand out in any crowd.
