Well, here I am in DC. I’m not so good at sleeping in strange places, and I’m not real big on starting new things and meeting new people, so right now I’m pretty beat, and caught between wanting to get this day started already, and jumping back under the covers (or better yet, packing up my shit and heading back to Syracuse). Not much chance of posting anything during the day, I don’t think, but, for anyone who cares, I’ll let y’all known how things went when I get back tonight.
Mornin’. Sorry this is a little late. Still trying to get my shit together.
Morning. :joe:
glad you made it there safely, PJ, and that your first day goes smoothly.
Thanks, FK. Have you heard from Mr. yet, re: the CBS crew?
Oh, boy, Katie Couric used to work at Channel 4 here, so they’re having a Katie-fest. Whoodie freakin’ doo.
PJ, don’t sweat it. Fecal integration is important to us all.
Haven’t heard from his since yesterday. Sounds like they did everything they were suppose to do but what can you do about a suicide bomber if you don’t see them first? They’re wondering if the bomber was following/watching the convoy, but hard to tell with all the crowded streets. It’s all more real after seeing Baghdad ER…is that a good thing?
Will you have a free pass to the museum? I think all the different museums could keep you busy during your off times.
The memorials there are beautiful at night time. Have you been to the Supreme Court? I know you’re working, but if you can get there and haven’t been, it’s wonderful to see (or is it that just me?). You can look for the reliefs that have all the sages of equal size but that the christo-fascists say only has Moses with the ten commandments.
Good morning sheeple. Working on fecal integration here too. 😀
I went to the Supreme Court years ago, but reckon I’ll be checking it out again. The museums are free (though they’re thinking about charging at the SI, from what I just saw on the news). Most of them close early, though. What I really need to tdo is get myself oriented here – I have no sense of what’s where. Right now, I just want to get on the metro going the right direction, for starters. After a few days, I should be all set.
Yeah, Baghdad ER. There were a tremendous number of deer roadkills on the way down, and it reminded me of that. Just terrible. Tell Mr. to stay with Laura in the Green Zone.
i wish…
good luck on the metro, pj, and hope you got that mug figured out.
is this a guy thing?
(man, having trouble typing this a.m., need more coffee….)
See y’all later.
Gotta get cleaned up to go out (no work tomorrow! :nixon:)
Morning evening all :yinyang:
PJ, congrats on making it to DC. Once you get oriented I bet you enjoy yourself.
FK, does Fox news have journalists :sammy: who are embedded in the military in Iraq?
Do you think they have a spy that relays the journalists schedule to the insurgents? Like the bombing of the mess hall at Mosul? Until they figure out who is leaking that information it seems stupid to have the journalists go out again. Come to think of it, going out seems stupid period. IMHO
isi: That should have been ….does Fox news have journalists ?? (long pause) who are embedded in the military in Iraq?
Morning :sheep:le
Hoping to win a Congressional majority in November, some optimistic Democratic lawmakers have taken to referring to Representative Nancy Pelosi as “speaker,” as in speaker of the House. So have some optimistic Republicans.
Representative Nancy Pelosi has become more visible as the prospect of a Democratic Congressional majority gains credibility.
“She ought to be a big component of the fall campaign,” said Ed Rogers, a Republican strategist and lobbyist. “There are some Democrats who make really good bad guys.”
Ms. Pelosi, the California Democrat and House minority leader, lends herself to easy caricature by Republicans. She is an unapologetic liberal, with a voting record to match (the Republican National Committee chairman, Ken Mehlman, said she was neither a “New Democrat” nor an “Old Democrat” but a “prehistoric Democrat”). She is wealthy (married to an investment banker, she has assets listed at more than $16 million). She represents San Francisco, which Republicans love to invoke as a hotbed of counterculture decadence and extremism.
“Is America ready for Nancy Pelosi’s Contract With San Francisco?” asked Representative Ric Keller, Republican of Florida, posing a question that, one imagines, could form the basis of many Republican advertisements this fall.
more
http://tinyurl.com/l8tj9
is it wrong to call Nancy Ploser ?? I wouldn’t describe her as a leader.. I think she is identified as like the 27th most progressive person in the house.
The problem with an all volunteer army is that elite units like the Marines and the Special Forces get a large number of wing nuts as recruits. Given the opportunity these people would probably settle a traffic dispute with automatic weapons. Add in a temperature of 120 degrees F and a lot of stress.. Mount St. Helens might be less volatile.
Mount St. Helens shoots steam, ash plume into air
Associated Press
VANCOUVER, Wash. — Mount St. Helens shot a steam and ash plume at least 16,000 feet into the air Monday after a large rockfall from the lava dome in the volcano’s crater, scientists said.
Pilots reported the plume rose between 16,000 and 20,000 feet in the air, scientists at the Cascades Volcano Observatory said.
The rockfall coincided with a magnitude 3.1 earthquake shortly after 9 a.m. Monday at the mountain, scientists said. Such events are expected during growth of the lava dome, they said.
“There is no evidence of an explosion associated with this event,” the observatory said in a statement.
Clouds obscured the crater at the time.
“We don’t know how much steam and how much ash,” Cynthia Gardner, scientist in charge at the observatory, told The Columbian. “These are very short-lived events.”
Lava has continued to push into the crater — most recently forming a sheer rock fin — since the 8,364-foot mountain reawakened with a drumfire of low-level seismic activity in September 2004.
The crater was formed by the volcano’s deadly May 18, 1980, eruption that killed 57 people and blasted about 1,300 feet off the then-9,677-foot peak.
:omg::omg:
In the early part of the last century following the San Francisco earth quake scientists made the observation that the Serra Nevada and the Cascade mountains were young mountains and that was why the area surrounding them was unstable.. It is now realized that they are not only young but perhaps adolence mountains which have not stopped happening as of yet.. I would bet people would still want to live there even in they had known that in 1906.
Good Morning :joe:
Here’s an antidote for your marine propaganda, fred:
During Operation Desert Storm 90,000 marines attacked Iraqi forces alongside over 500,000 U.S. Army and coalition troops. Yet the marines garnered 75 percent of the newsprint and TV coverage. This was not an accident.
The Commanding General of the marines in Iraq, Gen. Walt Boomer, was the former Director of Public Affairs for the Corps. He issued the following order to marine units in the theater:
“CMC [Commandant of the Marine Corps, then General A. M. Gray] desires maximum media coverage of USMC … The news media are the tools through which we can tell Americans about the dedication, motivation, and sacrifices of their marines. Commanders should include public affairs requirements in their operational planning to ensure that the accomplishments of our marines are reported to the public.”
During the war marine officers used military communications systems to transmit stories for reporters in the field, and even assigned personnel to carry press dispatches to rear areas. The marine commander also had his own entourage of reporters complete with satellite uplinks, and used them to good effect. He received far more air time than his Army counterparts.
Over grown naval infantry.
The Marine Corps is the Navy’s police force and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin’s.
Harry S. Truman
My small amount of exposure to the Marines was that the Navy thought of them as their ground fighting units and otherwise completely ignored them when it came to upgrading their equipment. I have noticed that their troop transport helicopters are still the same design and maybe even the same equipment they had in Vietnam.. Their amphibious assault vehicles date back to the Korean war and their trucks and tanks are mostly all early 60’s models. Their two helicopter assault ships were built in the latter part of WWII. Its like they get the army hand downs or surplus. There support is supposedly provided by the Naval sea based units so I don’t know what they use when they are 500 miles from the nearest ocean. They are trained to be the first in Shock and Awe component so they may be very confused in their peace keeping role..
An Open Letter to Bono
Why Are You Financing a Video Game on Invading Venezuela?
By SCOTT MICHAEL PEREY
It is extremely disheartening to discover your good name closely associated with a business that seeks to profit from a pathological culture of ill-will and military perversion and, more specifically, in tandem with a very pointed and insidious work of propaganda that reads straight out of the playbooks of George Bush, the Republican Party, and the Project for the New American Century.
Without promoting its title, let me describe the story line for a soon-to-be-released video game of the (sadly) popular “kill and destroy” variety: as protagonist, you play by “no rules” and even have access to “mini-nukes” as you lead an invasion of Venezuela to “profit from chaos” as a “power hungry tyrant messes with Venezuela’s oil supply,” to quote directly from the video game’s website. As the leader of the madness and destruction that ensues, you, the game player, more or less represent the Halliburton criminals and their ilk: “Dirty deeds, done for exhorbitant fees,” as your line of work is described further.
I won’t name the game itself, but I will mention that the company releasing it is called Pandemic, which has very recently been absorbed into a corporate entity called Bioware/Pandemic Studios, which was created by a $300 million dollar investment from the venture capital group Elevation Partners, a new private equity firm which boasts none other than you, Mr. Bono, as a managing director and co-founder. In fact, Bioware/Pandemic was your new group’s very first investment.
I’m not out to trash them–any more than any other branch of the service. Anyway, there is an interesting story of how the USMC grew beyond what they had been (ala Smedley Butler’s Marines as police force) to being a branch of the military with a mission virtually identical to the Army’s.
Here is an interesting article on the subject of Army vs. Marine Corps:
http://thepopulist.typepad.com/essays/2005/08/never_faithful_.html
How about this..
Mega-church minister linked to paramilitary video game
http://tinyurl.com/rjla9
At New Life church in Colo Spgs they raise their right arm and zieg heil ( say the pledge of allegiance to) the flag on Sunday Morning ( so I have heard)
The Air Force has been hijacked by religious fanatics, or so it seems. At least the Air Force Academy.
New Life has an Air Force academy ministry.. It used to be that they let the cadets go into town on Sunday or they could attend services at the Chapel on the academy grounds.. Now the protestant part of that on campus ministry has been taken over by New Life ministries and they are giving the other religions a hard time.
GOOD MORNING, FELLOW BLOGGERINSPIRATIONALISTI!!!
HOW THE HELL ARE YOU ALL!
I CAN’T NAME YOU ALL BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE THAT MUCH TIME.
BTW, I’VE BEEN WELL ENOUGH. HOW ARE ALL OF YOU?
Using the military for any thing other than support for national emergencies and fighting an actual aggressor is a big error. They are not trained to be police. They are trained to kill people and break things so one should only use their combat units ( which comprise usually less than 20% of the total force) for combat.
GOOD MORNING BENNO.. I are fine.. I think.. maybe.. Ewww its a Monday on a Tuesday.. Ewwww.
Man, Bono sucks…
How not to win the war in Iran:
If you wanted to invade Iraq and not win the war this is what you would do:
Big danger when you expand the role of military, like you said, Fred. Good morning everyone
Rhodes has been proposing that the wars Bushco is waging are only intended to keep oil prices high and hence make their buddies extremely rich..
I think they might well get the oil supplies suspended and that would not be good.
I have a cousin who was constantly ministered to in the Air Force (Jewish)…they made life really uncomfortable for him. And this was years ago. I’ve been told it’s gotten much worse….I really can’t imagine.
GOOD MORNING Susan what’s happening in NY this morning ??
Hey Bascombe! :fist::jesus:
Good morning Fred, Krista, whoever else is logged on…it’s hot and humid again. (Reading news) I don’t think anything is going to be built on the Ground Zero site in the city, or if it is, it won’t be in my lifetime. They’re still fighting about what’s supposed to go there. I’m not even sure how I feel about something be built there. Still reading all of the blog posts.
If it is ever proven that 911 was a LIHOP or MIHOP operation they could build a large granite monument under which the remains of the Bush admin and his congress would reside.
Comment by fred — May 30, 2006 @ 10:21 am
————————————–
I’d recommend a Stalinist purge of the Bushistas from the History books.
But that’s just me.
In that circumstance I would go along with that! (large granite monument) …:mad:
the best thing they did was the light memorial (this was a few months after 9/11 I think). They had two beams of light beamed up into the sky (from the ground) in the shape of the towers. They only had it up for a week or so, but it could be seen for miles. I don’t know why, but it really leant a spiritual aspect to the whole whole loss. If they set it up permanently it would be much cheaper than everything else that is in the works. It could also be accompanied by a small memorial centering on the victims and avoding politics, because in this city nobody is every going to agree on the politics.
Comment by Kristapea — May 30, 2006 @ 10:14 am
Hey bakatcha, SuperKP!
Bascome, I’d settle for the history books just to tell the truth about Bush and company. But as a teacher who sometimes had to actually review these books, I know how slim the chances of that are 🙁
Yeah 200 years from now historians would note that for some reason 20 years of US history simply vanished..How do you get the Europeans to go along with that plan ?? At the moment I get the impression that they would just prefer that the US vanish and who knows what they might be doing to hasten that thought along.
Blast from the past:
May 30 2005
Dan and Brendan Show!
Comment by Susan Joy — May 30, 2006 @ 10:18 am
—————————
Recovery in the spirit fomr the ravages of 9/11 are spoiled by greed, narcissicism and self-pity.
As a life-long, yet former New Yorker, I feel for ya!
Comment by Susan Joy — May 30, 2006 @ 10:18 am
—————————
Recovery in the spirit FROM the ravages of 9/11 are spoiled by greed, narcissicism and self-pity.
As a life-long, yet former New Yorker, I feel for ya!
Comment by Susan Joy — May 30, 2006 @ 10:18 am
—————————
Recovery in the spirit from the ravages of 9/11 are spoiled by greed, narcissism and self-pity.
As a life-long, yet former New Yorker, I feel for ya!
And even if you could eliminate all records of the Bush administration, the sad legacy they left us, which will take years to correct (and that’s even if it’s possible with the government set up the way it currently is) will remain….and that includes not only the national debt, but the environmental, social, cultural,oh, so many different things
FYI On this blog you can click on edit_this and eventually you can edit what you just posted. ( it might take two tries) It is not necessary to create another message.
With the current democratic leadership it doesn’t appear that they are going to try to reverse anything Bushco has done..or punish Bushco for the crimes they have committed. If they don’t get out of the WTO and NAFTA the US will eventually go into default ( which is probably what the thugs and the DLC dems want to happen). That would mean all social programs would have to be canceled .. a 20 year return to the 1500’s
Comment by fred — May 30, 2006 @ 10:45 am
————————-
I fear THAT more than anything else. At least Nixon is an obvious stain on American History.
The Bushista Neo-Con Cabal is a blight on the world nad on World History. The Russians and Chinese are the only ones to at least verbally confront the Corporo-Fascist American Dictatorship.
It unfortunately may have to be done from outside of the US because we are a nation that has been cowered from within.
Hi, Bascobe. Long time no see.
I don’t want to sound too picky or anything, but there have been a couple postings that demand comment.
First, special forces personnel are all volunters. One cannot be drafted into special forces. If you were a special force would you trust a draftee beside you in a fight?
Second, there haven’t been 90,000 active duty marines in uniform since the end of WWII. The current number is in the 40,000 range. That is two full divisions, a couple battalion-sized strike forces and embassy guards. Even counting reservists you might reach the 60,000 mark but I seriously doubt it.
:neutral:See, I think I made it out of that strange situation alright. Basically I just got hit on the top of my head once and dropped like a fly (with something made out of Kevlar- not brass- at least that’s what I was told, I think). When I came to, I got up pretty fast and started to run, but ran off of the path and into some trees, tripped and scraped up my arms and my face.:smack: Anyway, that’s about what happened, or at least all that I remember. Oh, dig this– I just asked this guy for a lift and I guess that’s why he popped me. Crazy! I wasn’t mouthing off or anything. I think that this group planned on beating up somebody that night and since I was an outsider, it made their operation easier. Anyway…what’s new?
Hey, ISI! How was the Wedding?
Alaska,the poster state for climate concerns.
Check this out, Travis
Marriage was successful after
a long mass :yawn:
Good food!
Travis, sounds like you need to get the heck out of Alaska and head to Washington!
isi: That chart from USATODAY weather was pretty conclusive and scary.
“The Wind That Takes the Barley” Takes Cannes
Ken Loach’s History Lesson
By HARRY BROWNE
“Our film is a little step in the British confronting their imperialist history. Maybe if we tell the truth about the past we can tell the truth about the present.”
The leftist British director Ken Loach has been nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes many times. On Sunday we finally found out that he makes a great victory speech, as he drove home the link between the British occupation of Ireland and today’s occupation of Iraq. More importantly, as we already knew, he makes great films, and ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’ is perhaps his very best.
The greatness of this tale of the Irish War of Independence and ensuing Civil War has little to do with parallels to the present day. Viewers may eventually find themselves talking with each other about how occupying armies behave, about the right to resistance, about the relationship between religion and political violence, and about how all this relates to present-day Iraq and Afghanistan. But the movie gets us to that point by treating its immediate subject matter with unstinting care and integrity, and for two hours the audience is nowhere except Cork, 1920-22. The texture of life, language, love and loss are all here, with almost breathtaking, unglamorous ‘reality’. The director’s famous method, whereby actors are shown only their own lines, and those only briefly, helps lend this verisimilitude. Loach’s Cork-born star, Cillian Murphy, emerges quietly but definitively as the finest screen actor Ireland has ever produced, and also as part of an ensemble of otherwise little-known performers bringing fully realised individuals to life…
http://www.counterpunch.org
The DLC and Israel
Zionist Democrats
By MICHAEL CARMICHAEL
Last week the newly elected Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, visited Washington to meet with George Bush in order to endorse America’s plan to attack Iran in his address to Congress. In his strident appeal to Congress, Olmert sought nothing less than to incite war between America and Iran. Prior to his stroke, Ariel Sharon was engaged in fomenting wars between America and Iraq, and he had promised his circle of admirers that he would move Iran into the cross hairs of America at the first opportunity. Olmert is Sharon’s political heir, and he has inherited a legacy of incitement and fomentation of wars in the Middle East between America and Islamic nations that are militarily weak and rich in oil.
To coincide with Olmert’s visit, the Democratic Leadership Council published a statement celebrating “Zionism” and condemning Islam. If their publication had not come from a man who purports to be a leader of the political opposition to the deeply unpopular right-wing Republican regime one might be inclined to surmise that it had been issued by the so-called Israel Lobby.
In what was meant to be a moving personal account of his fifth trip to Israel, Al From, the founding father and CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), defined Zionism as, “a good idea filled with hope.” On his journey, Mr. From visited the summit of Mount Hadar where he experienced a moving vision of Israeli ‘hope’ locked in conflict with Palestinian ‘anger.’
Inspired by this romanticized contrast of a black and white rendering of good versus evil, Mr. From witnessed what he described as the, “booms of Palestinian rockets and the Israeli retaliation.” From his lofty summit, Mr. From failed to see the mounds of corpses mounting upwards in Israel and Palestine, where four Palestinians are killed for every one Israeli…
http://www.counterpunch.org/carmichael05302006.html
Yeah, this year’s summer started rather cool, but then there was a spike in temperature- starting in the low to mid 50s, then totally skipping the 60s and hit the mid-70s – which is very unusual for the end of May. So there was a week of record temperatures- hitting in some parts of Anchortown into the 80s!:eek: Um, so this temperature spike in Alaska allowed the snow to melt increasingly faster than usual and raised the level of river-water. Combined with ice-jams, this increase made everyone pretty nervous about flooding. Oh, and the fire season has started pretty early, too. There’s already been smoke hitting Anchortown from a fire from Point Mackenzie (somewhere near near here, I dunno) Pretty crazy.
Yup, I’m hittin’ the trail outta here in, like, 2 weeks. It may take me a month or so to get hooked-up with the net, though.:doh:
The Threats to Sustainable Democracy
The Four Fundamentalisms
By ROBERT JENSEN
The most important words anyone said to me in the weeks immediately after September 11, 2001, came from my friend James Koplin. While acknowledging the significance of that day, he said, simply: “I was in a profound state of grief about the world before 9/11, and nothing that happened on that day has significantly changed what the world looks like to me.”
Because Jim is a bit older and considerably smarter than I, it took me some time to catch up to him, but eventually I recognized his insight. He was warning me that even we lefties — trained to keep an eye on systems and structures of power rather than obsessing about individual politicians and single events — were missing the point if we accepted the conventional wisdom that 9/11 “changed everything,” as the saying went then. He was right, and today I want to talk about four fundamentalisms loose in the world and the long-term crisis to which they point.
Before we head there, a note on the short-term crisis: I have been involved in U.S. organizing against the so-called “war on terror,” which has provided cover for the attempts to expand and deepen U.S. control over the strategically crucial resources of Central Asia and the Middle East, part of a global strategy that the Bush administration openly acknowledges is aimed at unchallengeable U.S domination of the world. For U.S. planners, that “world” includes not only the land and seas — and, of course, the resources beneath them — but space above as well. It is our world to arrange and dispose of as they see fit, in support of our “blessed lifestyle.” Other nations can have a place in that world as long as they are willing to assume the role that the United States determines appropriate. The vision of U.S. policymakers is of a world very ordered, by them.
This description of U.S. policy is no caricature. Anyone who doubts my summary can simply read the National Security Strategy document released in 2002 and the 2006 update(http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/) and review post-World War II U.S. history. Read and review, but only if you don’t mind waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat of fear. But as scary as these paranoid, power-mad policymakers’ delusions may be, Jim was talking about a feeling beyond that fear — a grief that is much broader and goes much deeper…http://www.counterpunch.org/jensen05302006.html
Post WWll reference:http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/interventions.htm
If it is ever proven that 911 was a LIHOP or MIHOP operation they could build a large granite monument under which the remains of the Bush admin and his congress would reside.
Comment by fred — May 30, 2006 @ 10:21 am
Better yet, let’s make it an IHOP operation, and bury all these idiots underneath a giant stack of concrete pancakes. I’ll bring the syrup.:growl:
(Sorry, but someone had to be the smartass, and it might as well be me.)
We need to go beyond Bush. We should recognize the seriousness of the threat that this particular gang of thieves and thugs poses and resist their policies, but not mistake them for the core of the problem.
R. Jensen
In capitalism, (1) property, including capital assets, is owned and controlled by private persons; (2) people sell their labor for money wages, and (3) goods and services are allocated by markets. In contemporary market fundamentalism, also referred to as neoliberalism, it’s assumed that most extensive use of markets possible will unleash maximal competition, resulting in the greatest good — and all this is inherently just, no matter what the results. The reigning ideology of so-called “free trade” seeks to impose this neoliberalism everywhere on the globe. In this fundamentalism, it is an article of faith that the “invisible hand” of the market always provides the preferred result, no matter how awful the consequences may be for real people…
[The] assertions that government intervention into markets is inherently illegitimate are just silly.
Adding to the absurdity of all this is the hypocrisy of the market fundamentalists, who are quick to call on government to bail them out when things go sour (in recent U.S history, the savings-and-loan and auto industries are the most outrageous examples). And then there’s the reality of how some government programs — most notably the military and space departments — act as conduits for the transfer of public money to private corporations under the guise of “national defense” and the “exploration of space.” And then there’s the problem of market failure — the inability of private markets to provide some goods or provide other goods at the most desirable levels — of which economists are well aware.
R. Jensen
Hey, I’ve never been to an IHOP! or a Starbucks.
or Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Applebees or a Sizzler. Um, there’s more…
:rofl2:Well, sorry about that. Later, sheeple.
HardBall Briefing:
Tonight on Hardball, it’s a special report on the Haditha investigation. NBC
News’ Mike Boettcher will report from Baghdad with the latest from there
ZNet | Europe
The Contest For Memory
Both France And Britain Are Struggling To Come To Terms With The Bloody Record Of Their Empires.
by Naima Bouteldja and Stuart Hodkinson; The Guardian; May 30, 2006
In a political gesture that marks the beginning of a long-overdue apology for its role in what is arguably Europe’s greatest collective crime, France has this month held its first national day of remembrance for the victims of slavery. The official commemoration stems from the historic events of May 23 1998, when 45,000 people, mostly descendants of enslaved Africans born in the Caribbean, silently marched on the Place de la Nation in Paris to mark the 150th anniversary of France’s 1848 abolition of slavery.
Ever since, France has experienced an outpouring of public debate about her colonial past. This period has been painful and divisive, not least because of the discrimination that still afflicts migrants and their descendants from the former French empire.
To its credit, the French government has contributed to a “policy of memory” through its plans to open museums and spaces dedicated to the history of immigration in Paris, Marseille and Lyon. However, many of these initiatives would be more welcome if this policy didn’t also include an insidious attempt to rehabilitate France’s bloody colonial past as a largely heroic passage in the nation’s history to which its people owe their gratitude – a process that has gone much further than the more tentative steps in the same direction in Britain.
Nowhere has this policy been more pronounced than in relation to Algeria. In February last year, the French parliament voted to compensate and honour those responsible for administering and controlling its former colony. Incredibly, this included members of the Secret Armed Organisation (OAS), a clandestine far-right organisation responsible for terror attacks in France and Algeria in the early 60s. The same legislation required school programmes “to recognise the positive role of the French presence overseas, especially in north Africa, and give an eminent place … to the sacrifices of fighters for the French army raised in these territories”. It was later repealed following widespread public opposition.
Far from making amends for its colonial past, some of the government’s recent actions – such as the state of emergency during November’s riots in the French suburbs – represent an alarming continuity with practices used against colonised populations. Fortunately, France’s attempts to rewrite its past have aroused fierce opposition – last week, for example, thousands marched in Paris to commemorate the Setif and Guelma massacres in Algeria in
1945 in which up to 45,000 Algerians were slaughtered by French troops. This struggle against collective amnesia is starting to penetrate public institutions. Throughout 2006 socialist-run council districts of Paris are organising events to critically mark the 75th anniversary of the International Colonial Exposition.
Of course, France’s soul-searching about its colonial record has significance on this side of the Channel. Next year marks the bicentenary of Britain’s abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. While Britain has an edge over France in colonial and postcolonial education, the paucity of informed public debate about the British empire remains striking.
For instance, amid the outpouring of nostalgia that has greeted the demolition and farcical rebuild of Wembley stadium, few commentators have pointed out its colonial origins as the Empire Stadium. Built to host and for ever symbolise the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, Wembley’s imperial architecture was part of a grand but desperate plan by the British ruling class “to strengthen the bonds that bind the Mother Country to her Sister States and Daughter Nations” at a time when the empire was beginning to crumble.
Just as in France, those seeking remembrance and reparations for Britain’s colonial past will first have to overcome government and mainstream media spin. African organisations have complained at their exclusion from the government’s advisory group on the 2007 bicentenary commemorations, chaired by John Prescott.
Thanks to Gordon Brown’s January speech to the Fabian Society on “The Future of Britishness”, we now know why. Using William Wilberforce as its central focus, New Labour plans to whitewash 2007 as a celebration of how “Britain led the world in abolishing the slave trade” – rather than explore the centuries of enslavement and exploitation imposed by the British empire on nearly a quarter of the world’s people.
• Naima Bouteldja naima.bouteldja@gma is a researcher for the Transnational Institute, Stuart Hodkinson S.N.Hodkinson@leeds.ac.uk a research fellow at Leeds University.
yep, he was on hardball and there’s a story tonight on nightly that he is IN but it’s not his story and I think he’ll be on tmms soon! think the haditha piece was more about it than anything investigative…
isi, i know they have had folks at the Palestine Hotel – some have reported on the “great” food and the wide choices of food in the green zone (like the soldiers never get sick of it, um huh) …don’t know whether they go out on embeds, i’ll ask.
Glad the marriage went off – how was stillwater? (don’t think you saw my post previous day)
i love karen armstrong’s writings and there’s an interview with her in Salon (to be aired on npr later): Going beyond God
****
i read in the NYT today that benedict-lieberman has the support of “liberal special interest” groups. Anyone know which ones? I had heard something about state chapter of NARAL, but for the life of me can’t imagine that. Was than an accurate statement in the NYT?
Hey everybody
Yeah, Karen Armstrong is pretty good…I learned a lot from “A History of God.” I keep meaning to pick up her her book on women and the priesthood
Geez, everywhere you go around here, it’s just like ya se on the teevee. Even the brewpub I stopped at after work had 30 foot ceilings and marble columns (not the mention the beermaids (who I didn’t actually notice, but the guy next to me said they were kinda cute).
My mission now is to find a grocery store.
Hey, bascombe, nice to see you today. I hope you make it a daily habit.
well, pj has already found a brewpub – he’ll be juuuust fine!
susan, did you read Spiral Staircase? very good.
Kevin : :spank::spank::doh::omg:
Well, despite the fact that the map has pretty much no correlation to the actual streets, the grocery store was easy to find. As an added bonus, they sell boxes of wine. Now, just 67 more days to go.
PJ, how was your first day at the Smithsonian?
FK, Stillwater was fine. Much larger with about any chain store you could imagine. The campus is still beautiful and T. Boone Pickens gave goo gobs of money to redo the stadium. You know, where the sooners have kicked our ass more times then I want to remember. And, of course the wind was sweepin’ down the plain. It was good to be back.
:rofl2:
**
Isi, once an Okie ALWAYS an Okie! I asked hubby about the faux embeds; he said he’s sure they’ve done a few but that the peacock network does far more of them than other network because they try to keep two correspondents there. One person can go out and one can stay and do live and other stories. none of the others really do that; they just keep one. So if that one person is out, no one can do the live. did that answer your question?
hey everyone! So, PJ you made it through your first day! I was thinking of you because they were reporting the heat…seems like tomorrow is gonna dip to the 70’s tomorrow here…so strange!
Good news…Will is holding on and feeling better and better. It looks like he may be coming home on Thursday…Im so happy!…hes so happy!
Ill be glad not to make that drive over and over and over…its pretty far.
Oh, and the season premiere of Rescue Me is on FX at 10PM EST…I love Rescue Me and Dennis Leary.
Hey Melina … I’m so glad to know Will is better and coming home soon
Sexton or Saxton? Which one will it be?:omg:
Anybody have any advice on a good budget PC? Laptop or desktop. Anything under 1000. I was looking at the Dell E1505 laptop, but, um, I dunno (I remember the runaround phone support story. Oh, and the defective batteries or something).
PJ, whats the name of the stats program that you use? I want a good stats program…
Well, later.:yawn:
Hey Travisdem- Glad you are OK after getting knocked around last night.
I only know Mac’s and there will be an Apple store close to where you are staying. Lots of free places for WiFi in Seattle.
I am in and out of town- currently in Eugene.
Do you have a gmail account yet?
Pj must be settled in with his box-o-wine
:40:
Hey, yeah, I have a gmail acoount. But, uh, I’m not very good at writing consitently…It’s cool when people send me stuff, but generally I don’t really write that many e-mails. I dunno.:doh: Here’s the address travisdem04
Oh, I’m taking a road trip to Metolius in July. Um, is there anything that you can think of that might be cool to see in Oregon while I’m there? (Yeah, this is directed to anyone else that’s in or has been in Ore, too.)
I love the Oregon Coast.
But where you will be near the mountains will be great too.
:yawn:
Gotta go…
Thanks Bluefox. I’ll check out the coffee house when I get down there.:bow: