Ah, Memorial Day weekend is upon us. For those who enjoy watching things go around in a circle, there’s the Indianapolis 500, of course, but the real event of the weekend is the (hopefully) total domination of Central New York in the world of Lacrosse. Not that most (all) of you really give a crap, but Onondaga Community College (one of my alma maters – or at least a place where I picked up a few credits) already won the JUCO National Championship by crushing Suffolk 30 – 6. Tomorrow, Syracuse returns to the final four after a one year absence (it was the first time in 22 years they weren’t in it). Unfortunately, they have to play undefeated and undisputed #1 Virginia, but after a tough start, SU has won nine straight, so here’s hoping they can make it to the national championship game on Monday. On Sunday afternoon, Cortland (a name Twilight Zone fans will no doubt recognize) takes on Salisbury for the Division III championship, after which LeMoyne takes on Dowling (whoever that is) for the Division II championship, and hopefully on Memorial Day, Syracuse can bring home national championship #10 while I’m somewhere in between Syracuse and DC. I wonder if I’ll be able to get that on the radio? Well, I guess I’d better get to packing, and take the dog for our second to last walk. Enjoy your Saturday.
First, and thank you.
yeah, they call Manderin, Putongwa in HK.
(if this makes no sense, it’s a continuation from yesterday)
..:omg:
Number 2 :nixon: Yay
Congrats to KK for beating me there :alc:
yes, we see you Nicki. Oh ok, he’s number two. Drat.
Jamaican reggae pioneer Desmond Dekker, famed for the genre’s first worldwide hit with “Israelites,” has died of a heart attack at his home in England, the Jamaica Observer reported Friday. He was 64.
The newspaper said the singer/songwriter, born Desmond Dacres, died Wednesday.
Get up in the morning slaving for bread sir
So that every mouth can be fed
Oooh, oooh mi Israelites.
Mi wife an’ ma kids them a pack up an’ a leave me
“Darling” she said “I was yours to be seen”
Oooh, oooh mi Israelites
Who am I workin’ for?
Cho! Shirt dem a tear-up trousers a go
I don’t wan’ to end up like Bonny and Clyde
Oooh, oooh mi Israelites
After a storm there must be a calm
You catch me in your farm, you sound your alarm
Oooh, oooh mi Israelit
Damn, sunburn hurts!:smack:Especially when pressurized water hits the back of your scorched neck when taking a shower. Grrr!:mad: Hmm:ear:My ears are kinda crispy, too. Yup, yup. Mm-hmm.. That’s about all I’ve got at the moment.:yawn:
60’s tune, I remember that from Kasey Kasem’s old countdown reviews and specials
60’s!!!:omg: Wait…how old are you, sheeple?
That is the first time I read the lyrics.
the only part of the song I recall is the “oohh ohh an Israelite” chorus…
Sunburn? Awww…yeah, I expect that around mid June if I ever decide to go outside…right now I’m pale as a Goth chick (but without the music)
Synthesized Blondie!
No CIA!
No KKK!
No Fascist USA!
:omg:
Are you a Bat Caver?
I love when he gets worked up đ đ
Where is Smedley Butler?
who me? No, I like sunlight every day or so. I just burn easily.
when who gets worked up?:doh:
Did you know that Smedley Butler was a Republican. After retiring from the military, he ran for senator from his home state.
Only come out at night.
It happens…people go through periods where they become mentally disturbed…I was NEVER so disturbed that I was Republican, however…
ReMax! The jingle pushes my positive button.
Doesn’t that suggest how much the republican party has changed. The Progressive Movement, for instance, was largely led by Republican reformers.
I’m a little lost, so i think i’m gonna bail from this hay ride. or some such, somethin’. later, sheeple:bow:
Don’t you remember the Bat Caver chic from the late 1980s?
1965 was an interesting year for hit singles.
good day Travis… sorry if I confused you, I get hyper sometimes…
Bat Caver? Yegads, no
I was into a lot of 80’s music but not a lot of fads…I did collect Garbage Pail Kids, am I still cool?
Oh no. Just looked that up. I am NOT Goth. Don’t like the music at all. Don’t like the attitude. Not me.
Depeche Mode had one or two good songs, but ehhhhh….the rest…
Excu-u-u-use me!
sorree
did I say something wrong?
Man, look at that fog outside, it looks like the world is in a cloud…
Hey, I just thought of a cool game. How ’bout if we start posting real, whole paragraphs for each post. I know I’ve been slacking in this department, but I think it’ll be fun and may change the dynamics of the blog back to what it once was. I’ll start tomorrow. Does that Sound cool? Hmm? :ear:
travis – yeah.good idea.
I feel you
Your sun it shines
I feel you
Within my mind
You take me there
You take me where
The kingdom comes
You take me to
And lead me through
Babylon
I’ll try to post more political topics and more in-depth posts. My mind is kind of tired right now, though
Meslier was also much admired by 19th century American free-thinkers — extracts from Meslier’s Testament were published here in 1833 under the title “Common Sense,” and again in 1878 as a book entitled Superstition in all the Ages, a version republished many times (both taken, unfortunately, from the bowdlerized Voltaire edition, which had excised much of Meslierâs revolutionary politics). Marx much admired Meslier, and quoted him. And when the Bolsheviks came to power, and a stele to the “Heroes of Liberty” was erected on Red Square, Meslier’s name was inscribed next to that of Spartacus. The rediscovery of Meslier began with the May 1968 student-worker rebellion in France, which adapted many of Meslier’s revolutionary formulations to its own purposes.
I thought I read that “Common Sense” was at least partly plagiarized from something else, but I didn’t remember what…that makes sense now.
Morning!
KK, …….. Not much, You? :nod:
and another nod to cresttwo:
hope ISI has a safe journey; didn’t get a chance to wish her safe travels.
======
there is so much posturing in DC right now, I don’t know who is doing what. my gawd.
And what is up with these damn Dems who not only voted for Hayden but this guy
:rant1:
that guy who wrote the GQ article that Maron interviewed said the verdict was out on Obama. Dude, I DON’T THINK SO.
ok, now that I’m all riled up, I’ll go walk the dogs and try to get the blood pressure down.
Trav, keep putting organic Aloe Vera on your skin; you’ll feel better sooner rather than later.
Hi everyone-
Very tired today…it poured like hell last night and Im afraid to look at the basement, and Will was not doing so well last night…it may be the end of this coming week before I can bring him home and he is not happy at all about that…I miss him.
I was reading a Salon piece (by Tim Grieve, of course) about the Clintons and how the war stuff is so much more important and interesting than their sex lives and it linked into this piece about Clinton’s “dustup” with Saperstein…as told here
with the really great part being the letter that Saperstin wrote to Clinton, which he shared with the Washington post…very interesting stuff there and I wish I had the energy to put the whole thing on RIPCoco, but its also probably better not to lifet from Salon (where I dont give a crap about lifting from the NYTimes for some reason…;-)
Kat…Ive been thinking for a long time that we need a big turnover in the Dems who have been in office for a while…and Obama too….but I guess we have to wait till the next term because we have to work with what we have now. I guess that doesnt stop us from letting them know what we think….
Who knew that Hillary was gonna go so far to center right? Who knew that these votes were gonna go this way? Who is paying these people off?…or who has something on them?
Oh I guess Ill look at Dowd and them maybe put that and this Saperstein up on RIPCoco.
Im switching servers with my page and hopefully will be happier witht he Bluehost…thanks PJ. Ill let you know what I think. I already fot a prompt email reply fromt hem as opposed to my current server, who I cant reach as all…and seems to have reset my password so I cant get into my page at all….and their main page is “under construction” for around a year now….so nice to have someone actually answer an email fro one of these companies…and theyre cheaper!
Good Morning all you li’l Seditionists :joe:
Hey Melina, sorry to hear Will took a turn that might require a longer stay. I HOPE you are letting your battery recharge a bit with him there. The fretting alone must be incredibly exhausting. :gate:
I can almost understand letting certain rethug nominees through for some cabinet posts. But when vote to put these neo-cons on the Federal Bench I just get infuriated. These guys have a twisted sense of the Constitution that is out of the mainstream. And they’ll be with us for their lifetimes. What the hell are these dems thinking? I want to give them a piece of my mind (saying this in the Franken voice.)
Callie the donkey is nursing a sore hoof. Got some medicine for her so hope it gives her some relief. IT IS HOTTER THAN HELL HERE. Well…maybe Baghdad is hotter. :billcat:
The Palestinians Must Pay a Price for Their Choice”
Surrender vs. the Right to Exist
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
Former CIA analyst
Noting that he had been raised with the deep conviction that the Jewish people would never have to relinquish any part of the “land of our forefathers,” Ehud Olmert told Congress in his address to a joint session on May 24, “I believed, and to this day still believe, in our people’s eternal and historic right to this entire land.” He did then concede that dreams alone cannot bring peace and will not preserve Israel as a “secure democratic Jewish state.” But what stands out in this little-noted statement of Jewish attachment to the land is its affirmation of a supreme Jewish right to all of Palestine, never mind who else may live there. In the context of any hope for a just and equitable peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, this is a deal-breaker par excellence.
In light of this official Israeli view that the Jewish people have “an eternal and historic right to this entire land,” one is startled by the hypocrisy of the demand — enunciated universally by Israel, the U.S., the EU, and most of the rest of the international community — that the Palestinians must recognize Israel’s “right to exist” before anyone will even speak to them, before they can be admitted to civilized company in the world. Does this demand that Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist mean that they must recognize Israel’s “right to the entire land” as defined by Olmert? And if that is the case, how could the Palestinians possibly be assured, even if Israel were magnanimously to grant them a “state” or a “Bantustan” in a part of that “entire land,” that Israel would not at some future date take it back, since Jews have “an eternal and historic right” to it? Why should anyone believe that any Israeli concession of land would be permanent?
Olmert’s assertion of this all-encompassing Jewish “right” is certainly not a new feature of Israeli and Zionist dogma. The notion has underlain Zionism from the beginning, hidden sometimes behind a leftist veneer of accommodation to the reality of the Palestinian presence in this sacred Jewish land, but never very far beneath the surface. The Zionist belief in Jewish supremacy has never truly been hidden. I ran into this in crude form a few years ago. Shortly after the Palestinian intifada began in 2000, an acquaintance — no friend, but an irritating bigot who always argues Israel’s case openly on the basis that Jewish interests are superior to Palestinian interests — wrote me an email in which he concluded that, because there is “simply not enough room in Palestine for both Jews and Palestinians,” the Palestinians should “go back to Jordan, where they came from” and leave Palestine to the Jews, who own it and so badly need a homeland. (The erroneous notion that Palestinians came from Jordan is a conscience-clearing artifact of the Zionist imagination, designed to “prove” that Palestinians did not originally come from Palestine, are simply interlopers in a Jewish land, and therefore will not be hurt or inconvenienced by “going back” where they came from.) I told him he was factually wrong and completely immoral — which I’m sure did nothing to burden his conscience, but which did serve, blessedly, to end our correspondence…
http://www.counterpunch.org
morning kristapea and late risers (or west coasters)!
OK, well I put some of this stuff up on RIPCoco, but also , of more interest to some of you here, I put up Dowd, which is pretty great and it all seems to run together lately. As far as my own blogging, I cant tell if it makes any sense because I always end up with more questions than I started with, and also I havent slept much this past week so feel like Im really losing my mind….I guess Im saying that it probably makes no sense at all, and if thats true, forgive me….comments are welcomed, btw….
Well, Kat,hate to say it but its 104 today in baghdad today and looks like the 5 day forecast is 108 every day. Does Mr have a/c most of the time he is inside or do they still turn off the electricity all the time? Did he get one of those sharper image neck a/c things that you wear around like a geek?…Thats what I would have…though it might look like some concealed something like a bomb necklace or something…better safe than sorry!
I also saw a neckercheif thingy that you wet and it holds the cold next to your neck…though, at 108, maybe you stop fighting it and adjust at a point. I would be literally dead! I cant even take the humidity here today, and fear that your heatwave might be moving this way…eeekkkk!
This Iraq thing…globalism in general…. is ruining my spell check..because once youve added all of these strange words and names, whats left of gobbeldygook?
This Palestinian disappearance can be accomplished in one of several ways, by Israeli calculation. First, they could be induced to leave Palestine altogether; Israel has been working since its creation on some version of this option — outright expulsion, as occurred in 1948, or inducing a “voluntary” exit by making life insupportable, as is occurring today — as the best way to relieve itself of the Palestinian “problem.” Or, as a second option, the Palestinians could be forced into submission; this has been the fate of the 20 percent of Israel’s population that is Palestinian, and it was the fate of West Bank-Gaza Palestinians during the first 20 years of the occupation when they were quiescent under Israeli control. This option is no longer feasible from Israel’s standpoint, however, since there are now or soon will be more Palestinians than Jews in Palestine, which makes the job of forcing submission too unseemly for a state claiming to be democratic. Or, as a third option, the Palestinians could be lulled into a political submissiveness that leads them, out of desperation, to accede to every Israeli condition; this is what Yasir Arafat did by signing on to the Oslo agreement and recognizing Israel’s “right” to exist, thus giving away all the Palestinians’ negotiating cards without securing in return any Israeli agreement to do more than conduct negotiations.
The Politics of Colorado Tom Tancredo:
http://www.counterpunch.org/barry05272006.html
In Colorado it is usually safe to generalize that our Reich wing nuts are pretty much driven by a great deal of general stupidity.. Tancredo is such an example thinking for instance that we can defeat a tactic ( terrorism) with the army. The Reich wingers in general do not even think about the underlying problems that has make 90% of the world hate our guts since 2003.
The problem is they have shown themselves to be almost without exception untrainable in some other thought pattern..so explain what do you do to neutralize them ??.. My premise is conservatives are very much like cockroaches.. it will take extraordinary effort to get rid of them permanently.
I can see a lot of parallels between the plight of the palestinians in today’s context with Israel and that of the American indian era 1870 or so. There leaders see that any major resistance to the Israeli occupation of their lands will result in the destruction of there people so they “live” with this overwhelming force hanging over them. Having an Islamist state with the ability and perhaps the will to destroy Israel will probably make Israel back off especially if the US is neutered in some way. If that does not happen then the Eurasian powers will probably move to back the Palestinians and we will be back to the cold war with the US being dependent on the enemy for our oil supplies. It would be a mush better deal for everyone if we would just lose a war with one of these Islamists states and make an international fool ( more so than we currently are) out of our selves.
Getting home from the night out. Just a good read on the blog.
Night.:yinyang:
Night KK
This is one of those what if kind of things.. Lets hope it makes for good fiction.
In about two weeks ( on 6-06-06) it is suggested that Bushco will begin the October surprise by launching a combined naval and air force led air attack on IRAN. Lets suppose the following happens.
On day one
10 land based B2 bombers flying out of Texas take off headed for IRAN. Aircraft on US navy aircraft carriers in the gulf of Hormuz are brought on deck and fitted with bombs. This operation is detected by picket boats in the gulf of Hormuz and fishing trawlers in the Gulf of Mexico (yes there still are fishing trawlers flying the hammer and cycle in the Gulf of Mexico) and this info is relayed to Moscow and Beijing. The Russian central command notifies ten SS28 batteries in the southern part of Russia along the border with ex Soviet Georgia to get prepared to launch their SS28 ICBM’s not at the US but at our fleet in the Indian ocean and in the Gulf of Hormuz.
Fifty soviet Mig28’and an areal refueling tanker are also put on alert. Chinese guided missile cruisers operating in the Indian ocean go to battle stations.
Beijing and Moscow both send the US state department messages that they are aware of what is going on and that we should abort the operation immediately. They go unanswered.. the B2’s are now 6 hours from IRAN.
Day 2
The Chinese guided missile cruisers ( at battle stations meaning their missiles are armed) that were operating in the Indian ocean enter the gulf of Hormuz and being shadowing our aircraft carriers. The Russian refueling tanker takes off followed in two hours by 25 of the Mig28’s. The Iranian air defense is notified by the Russians of the approaching B2’s. The Iranian air force puts 25 French built fighter aircraft on alert and turns off its radars to keep them invisible. . The Russians and the Chinese send another round of messages to Washington. Russian spy satellites monitor the movement of the B2’s and our navy ships and relay their position to Tehran. The CD sirens in Tehran and else where in IRAN are activated.
Some where over the northern part of Africa the B2’s now three hours from IRAN get company as the 25 Russian Mig28’s show up and start flying in formation with them. Nasty hand gestures are sent from plane to plane.. The Russians order their SS28 launchers to begin to move so as to be harder to find.. This time Washington sends Beijing and Moscow nasty grams and get some back in return. Fighter air craft from two aircraft carriers are dispatched to start dealing with Iranian air defenses.. the Chinese cruisers shoot them down. Silo doors in the Ukraine , Western China and Southern Russia and the Ukraine are seen by US spy satellites as they are opened. A similar site is seen by deer hunters on the great planes and a Russian spy satellite. The perimeter defense ships with our aircraft carriers shoot at the Chinese navy cruisers slightly damaging one. The Iranian shore batteries fire high speed anti ship missiles at the US ships setting two on fire. The Russian fighter planes break away from the B2’s and air to air missiles are fired.. Three B2’s and all but 5 Mig28’s are lost.
The Iranian air force launches its fighter aircraft to intercept the B2’s now less than 200 miles away.
Day 3
The Chinese navy destroyers continue radar jamming operations and conduct hit and run attacks on the US navy perimeter guarding ships in the Gulf. The messages exchanged between Beijing, Moscow and Washington get nastier. The Iranian air force fighters make contact with the B2’s two more B2’s are lost. The Iranians lose five aircraft. Another 25 Russian mig 28’s take off.. Two more US warships are heavily damaged by anti ship missiles launched by the Iranians.
Beijing and Moscow both send a delegation to the White house to discuss the situation. Bush has them arrested. Putin and HU hold a phone conference..and then convene their respective legislative bodies.
With 5 B2’s still en route to IRAN the Navy once again attempts a launch of fighter aircraft and it is met with the same response from the Chinese, two of fifteen planes make the coast of IRAN where they are shot down by surface to air missiles. The Chinese navy commander radios the US admiral in charge of the task force a suggestion that he surrender. Iranian surface to air batteries fire on the B2’s using visual triangulation , two more B2’s are lost The navy once again attempts to launch fighter aircraft. This time They all make the coast of IRAN only to be shot sown by Iranian surface to air missiles. The remaining B2’s divert of bases in the Indian ocean. The Chinese war ships begin to fire anti ship missiles at the US navy escort ships leaving one carrier with only two operational escorts and 10 fighter planes.. An anti ship missile fired from the Iranian main land blows up on the hanger deck of the carrier 1`500 men are killed and the ship begins to take on water and burn out of control. The Iranian’s, Chinese and the Russians all ask for the US naval admiral to surrender or be destroyed. He does not respond..
Day 4
The news of the catastrophe makes the front page of the NYT.. Bush comes on TV and tells the American people that we can not be defeated and that we will fight to the death. The Russian ss28 batteries roaming the roads in the southern part of Russia all stop and raise their ICBM’s in response. A second Iranian anti ship missile hits the burning Aircraft carrier, The ship explodes and sinks in less than an hour. The second aircraft carrier and its escorts retreat only to find two burning and sinking supertankers blocking the exit from the gulf of Hormuz.. Putin and HU ask the task force commander to surrender or they will launch a single SS28 and blow him and his task force and a good portion of Saudi Arabia and Omen off the face of the earth. He does.
Now what happens next is only open for conjecture. Attempting to attach either Russia or China will result in 280 million BBQ ed Americans.. What do you suppose Bush does next … to be continued.
Where is everybody?
nobody’s here
So, assuming that 280 million of us aren’t BBQed before then…
anyone up for some protesting in September 2008?
http://tinyurl.com/laxz5
Presumably brother Jeb will be throwing his (considerable) weight around to make this happen. I would think, though, that Minneapolis might have a better shot, to help Norm Coleman in his run against Franken. None of the other three states have a Senate seat up for grabs next year.
Although the weather here in September is a lot nicer than in Minnesota, as long as the hurricanes stay away.
And if I start cleaning my place now, I might actually be done by the time the convention comes around!:jason:
Well at least NY isn’t getting them again…I don’t think I could take Bloomberg closing the city down and all of the crap that came with it last year đ But I do feel sorry for you if you get them…
PJ, Have a SAFE trip to DC tomorrow. Are you driving there? Do you have your new outfits packed and ready to go? Did you make a tape for Siggy so he can hear your voice while you’re gone?
*****
Kev, if i’m still in this neo-con death cult zone, I’ll head your way so start that construction!
***
Nickrose: I saw on the other blog that you’re hurting. Hope your tooth gets fixed. Those things can take a while to heal up once you eventually get it fixed, I’m told.
Got the bunting hanging over the front porch for Memorial Day…
I’ll leave you with this gem about Benedict-Lieberman:
:rant1:
Lieberman Supports Anti-Choice License Plates For Connecticut
Kevin, You all have PROBLEMS down there:
Nope, not leaving until Monday morning, so nothing’s packed yet (plus I’m a guy, so I don’t have “outfits,” just clothes; still need to either do laundry, or buy more underwear). I expect to call Siggy on the computer when I can. I’m hoping to remember to bring my webcam so we can videoconference. Siggy go to go and visit his cousins in the country today. My sister has about 70 very beautiful acres, with lots of places to sniff and explore. He’s pretty zonked out right now.
Yeah PJ…have a safe trip on MOnday….Hope you get there and set up and all pretty easily. Let us know if you need any help at all with things on the blog…though I figure that since youre in computer work you wont have too much trouble keeping us running here;-)
Hope youre not too lonely without even a dog…maybe you need a bird or something to keep you company!
I miss my kid so much but at least Ive got all of these dogs laying all over me and keeping things interesting!
Do you think youll get back to visit every couple of weeks?…does the train run all the way up there from DC?
Yeah, I’ll miss the dog. Yep, we’ve got trains and everything up here in Syracuse (they just have to switch from horses to the diesel locomotive at Albany), but I’ll be driving down to DC, and back up to visit. It’s cheaper – I can get to DC on less than a tank of gas. I hope to at least make it back for the 4th of July weekend, which’ll be about the halfway point. For the first time, I’ll be away from my wife on our anniversary, though, so that kinda sucks. Not that I was gonna do anything for it. đ
I’m supposed to have Internet access in my room, so I should be all set (let’s put it this way – if I have no dog, no family, and no Internet, I’ll just have to shoot myself).
Mike Malloy rerun. He doesn’t bore me though, I can keep listening to him…good evening lurking sheeple…
No one here (except me).:omg:
Allen Ginsberg’s Silly Liberal Side
“Howl,” 50 Years Later
By LENNI BRENNER
I don’t remember the exact dates of my many encounters with Allen Ginsberg. But it would be hard for anyone to forget where we first met.
I had run into a buddy, “Spade Charlie” Hameal. His woman, a white, owned the Cafe East, on Manhattan’s 6th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues. It was a good-sized place, but hardly in business. Charlie wanted to sell marijuana from the kitchen without his gal knowing about it. Her bulb wasn’t lit, and it was doable, if she had no reason to go into it. So I joined him as crime-partner and dishwasher.
Months later in 1958, we closed around 3 a.m. and went across 6th to The $ Sign, a tiny all-night cafe. Owner Barron Buckholst descended from the Barrons of Wall Street and the money behind O’Sullivan’s heels. Peyote was still legal. He bought it by the freight car from the Southwest and sold retail, discreetly.
A customer came in. U.S. customs had impounded Ginsberg’s poem Howl for obscenity in March 1957. When the feds dropped charges, the San Francisco police juvenile division sued publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti for selling lewd material. The ACLU won the case in October. Ginsberg’s picture was everywhere. We asked his name. “Allen.”
We chatted for about two hours, beginning with his experiences after the publicity started. As Charlie’s specialty was reciting Baudelaire in French and English, we got deep into poetry. But I particularly remember Barron’s “I think people are gay to be chic” and Allan’s low, sad “no one sucks cock to be chic”. (We leave Barron here. A tad later he killed himself by shoving a pencil up his nose.)
Sometime after it was published, I heard Allen read his Kaddish called that after the Jewish prayer for the dead. He wasn’t a great voice. But he didn’t have to be. The poem, listened to or read, automatically impresses anyone with the least interest in people. Later Charlie Foster, arguably the greatest poetry reciter of his day, privately read Howl to me. Inspired by his deep voiced rendition, I’ve read it in public to thunderous applause. But the credit belongs to Charlie. . .
http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner05272006.html
Lay Convicted, Bush Walks
by Greg Palast; May 27, 2006
Don’t kid yourself. If you think the conviction of Ken Lay means that George Bush is serious about going after corporate bad guys, think again.
First, Lay got away with murder — or at least grand larceny. Like Al Capone convicted of failing to file his taxes, Ken Lay, though found guilty of stock fraud, is totally off the hook for his BIG crime: taking down California and Texas consumers for billions through fraud on the power markets.
Lay, co-convict Jeff Skilling and Enron did not act alone. They connived with half a dozen other power companies and a dozen investment banks to manipulate both the stock market and the electricity market. And though their co-conspirators have now paid $3 billion to settle civil claims, the executives of these other corporations and banks get a walk on criminal charges.
Furthermore, to protect our President’s boardroom buddies from any further discomforts, the Bush Justice Department, just days ago, indicted Milberg, Weiss, the law firm that nailed Enron’s finance industry partners-in-crime. The timing of the bust of this, the top corporation-battling law firm, smacks of political prosecution — and a signal to Big Business that it’s business as usual.
Lay and Skilling have to pay up their ill-gotten gains to Enron’s stockholders, but what about the $9-plus billion owe electricity consumers? The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Bush’s electricity cops, have slapped Enron and its gang of power pirates on the wrist. Could that have something to do with the fact that Ken Lay, in secret chats with Dick Cheney, selected the Commission’s chairmen?
Team Bush had to throw the public a bone — so they threw us Lay and Skilling — for the crime, note, not of ripping off the public, but ripping off stockholders, the owner class.
This limited conviction, and the announcement of only one more indictment — of the crime-busters at Milberg-Weiss — is Team Bush’s “all clear!” signal for the sharks to jump back into the power pool.
That leaves one question: if Bush’s Justice Department let Ken and company keep the California loot, what about that state’s own government? If you want to know how Californian’s $9 billion went bye-bye, read on …
WHEN AHNOLD GOT LAY’D
As far as learning was concerned, Marx was, and still is incomparably more advanced than I. I knew nothing at that time of political economy, I had not yet rid myself of my metaphysical aberrations, and my socialism was only instinctive. Although younger than I, he was already an atheist, a conscious materialist, and an informed socialist. It was precisely at this time that he was elaborating the foundations of his system as it stands today. We saw each other often. I greatly respected him for his learning and for his passionate devotion- thought it was always mingled with vanity- to the cause of the proletariat. I eagerly sought his conversation, which was always instructive and witty when it was not inspired by petty hate, which alas! was only too often the case. There was never any frank intimacy between us- our temperaments did not permit it. He called me a sentimental idealist, and he was right; I called him vain, perfidious, and cunning, and I also was right.
:jesus:
MARRIAGE AND LOVE
    THE popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests not on actual facts, but on superstition.
    Marriage and love have nothing in common; they are as far apart as the poles; are, in fact, antagonistic to each other. No doubt some marriages have been the result of love. Not, however, because love could assert itself only in marriage; much rather is it because few people can completely outgrow a convention. There are to-day large numbers of men and women to whom marriage is naught but a farce, but who submit to it for the sake of public opinion. At any rate, while it is true that some marriages are based on love, and while it is equally true that in some cases love continues in married life, I maintain that it does so regardless of marriage, and not because of it.
    On the other hand, it is utterly false that love results from marriage. On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable. Certainly the growing-used to each other is far away from the spontaneity, the intensity, and beauty of love, without which the intimacy of marriage must prove degrading to both the woman and the man.
    Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting. Its returns are insignificantly small compared with the investments. In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, how ever, woman’s premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, “until death doth part.” Moreover, the marriage insurance condemns her to life-long dependency, to parasitism, to complete uselessness, individual as well as social. Man, too, pays his toll, but as his sphere is wider, marriage does not limit him as much as woman. He feels his chains more in an economic sense.
    Thus Dante’s motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: “Ye who enter here leave all hope behind.”
Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.
The workers necessarily strive after a fundamental transformation of society, the result of which must be the abolition of classes, equally in economic as in political respects: after a system of society in which all men will enter the world under special conditions, will be able to unfold and develop themselves, work and enjoy the good things of life. These are the demands of justice.
But how can we from the abyss of ignorance, of misery and slavery, in which the workers on the land and in the cities are sunk, arrive at that paradise, the realization of justice and manhood? For this the workers have one means: the Association of Councils.
Through the Association they brace themselves up, they mutually improve each other and, through their own efforts, make an end of that dangerous ignorance which is the main support of their slavery. By means of the Association, they learn to help, and mutually support one another. Thereby they will recall, finally, a power which will prove more powerful than all confederated bourgeois capital and political powers put together.
The Council must become the Association in the mind of every worker. It must become the password of every political and agitation organization of the workers, the password of every group, in every industry throughout all lands. Undoubtedly the Council; is the weightiest and most hopeful sign of the proletarian struggle an infallible omen of the coming complete emancipation of the workers.
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (4 October 1891 â 5 June 1915) was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving.
Henri Gaudier was born in St. Jean de Braye near Orléans. In 1910 he moved to London to become an artist, even though he had no formal training. With him came Sophie Brzeska, a Polish writer twice his age that he had met at the Bibliotheque St. Genevieve in Paris, and began an intense symbiotic relationship with her, annexing her surname although they never married.
Gaudier-Brzeska fell in with the Vorticism movement of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis, becoming a founding member of the London Group. He advocated that sculpture should leave behind the highly finished, polished style of ancient Greece and embrace a more earthy direct carving, in which the tool marks are left visible on the final work as a fingerprint of the artist. From his original admiration for the work of Rodin, he also drew from primitive ethnic sculpture arriving at the Victoria and Albert Museum and British Museum. His drawings also show the influence of Cubism.
At the start of the First World War, Gaudier-Brzeska enlisted with the French army…
BLAST was the short-lived journal of the Vorticist movement. It had two editions, the first published on 2 July 1914, and the second a year later.
BLAST was edited and largely written by Wyndham Lewis with contributions from other Vorticists. The first edition was printed in folio format, with the oblique title BLAST splashed across its bright pink soft cover. Inside, Lewis used a range of bold typographic innovations and tricks to engage the reader.
The opening 20 pages of Blast 1 contain the Vorticist manifesto, written by Lewis with assistance from Ezra Pound and signed by Lewis, Edward Wadsworth, Pound, William Roberts, Helen Saunders, Lawrence Atkinson, Jessica Dismorr and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. David Bomberg and Jacob Epstein chose not to sign the manifesto, although their work was featured.
:joe: