“A PALESTINIAN democracy activist who has campaigned for non-violent resistance to Israeli occupation said today he would run for president to succeed Yasser Arafat.
Mustafa Barghouthi, a physician educated in Russia and the US, will challenge frontrunner Mahmoud Abbas.”
via Sunday Mail
Lawrence of Cyberia has much more.
“Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.”
Have you ever wondered why all of John Wayne’s movies have been shown ad nauseam, heralded as classics and masterpieces (and some of them are), but only 5 of the 21 copyrighted talkies featuring Will Rogers have been re-issued? Lary May’s, The Big Tomorrow : Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way, answers that question.
Will Rogers: Serious Side Explored
May charged that following Rogers’ death a “large scale whitewashing….distorting Rogers’ memory” succeeded in denying future generations the reasons why an entertainer had risen to be arguably “the most noted public man of the day.”
Into World War II years and afterwards, May wrote, Hollywood generally adopted films that, again, held out traditional Anglo-Saxon instead of American perspectives. May contrasted Will Rogers with John Wayne, who arrived in the later era. Both were major stars linked to the “myth” of the West.
According to May, Rogers “embodied the ideal of a hybrid, hyphenated American. In film after film he operated in an autonomous civic sphere with others to transform society and peacefully negotiate across barriers.”
On the other hand Wayne “evoked the image of the pure Anglo-Saxon hero…who protected established institutions and used violence to conquer enemies.”
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
We Want Your Soul
your cell phone, your wallet
your time, your ideas
no bar code, no party
no ID, no beers
your bankcard, your licence
your thoughts, your fears
no SIM card, no disco
no photo? not here!
your blood, your sweat
your passions, your regrets
your profits, your time off
your fashions, your sex
your pills, your grass
your tits, your ass
your laughs, your balls
we want it all
we want your soul
your cash, your house
your phone, your life
we want your soul
tell us your habits
your fads, your fears
give us your address
your shoe size, your years
your digits, your plans
your number, your eyes
your schedule, your desktop
your details, your life
show us, your children
your photos, your home
here! take credit
take insurance, take a loan
get a job, get a pension
get a hair cut, get a suit
play the lottery, play football
play the field, snort some toot
we’ll show you shrinks
we’ll show you spooks
we’ll buy you drinks
throw away your books
we’ll sell you crap
we’ll charge you tax
wanna buy big guns?
we’ll front the cash
we want your soul
your cash, your house
your phone, your life
we want your soul
your thoughts, your emotions
your love, your dreams
your chequebook
your essence, your sweat
your screams
your security, your sobriety
your innocence, your society
your self, your place
your distance, your space
Bill Hicks: “go back to bed America your government is in control again. here, watch this! shut up! you are free to do as we tell you”
here’s boy bands, here’s makkers
here’s Britney, here’s cola
here’s pizza, here’s tv
here’s some rock and some rolla
watch commercials, more commercials
watch Jerry, not Oprah
buy a better life, from the comfort of your sofa
here’s popcorn
here’s magazines
here’s milkshakes
here’s blue jeans
here’s padded bras
here’s armpit wax
here’s football shirts
here’s baseball caps
here’s live talk shows
here’s video games
here’s cola light
here’s ten more lanes
here’s filter tips
here’s collagen lips
here’s all night malls
here’s plastic hips
we want your soul
your cash, your house
your phone, your life
we want your soul
Bill Hicks: “go back to bed America your government is in control again here
here’s American gladiators watch this shut up here’s fifty-six channels of it watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom here you go America you are free to do as we tell you you are free to do as we tell you”
no hippies, no strays
no drop outs, no gays
no lefties, no loonies
no opinions, no way
no thinkers, no teachers
no facts, no freaks
no skaters, no tweakers
no truth, no sleep
here’s popcorn
here’s magazines
here’s milkshakes
here’s blue jeans
here’s padded bras
here’s armpit wax
here’s football shirts
here’s baseball caps
here’s very very very very very very very very very very very very long infomercials
(hear it on the PEACE NOT WAR: Jukebox)
6,000 people may have died in Fallujah
Aid finally reaches Fallujah civilians : A spokesman said that the organisation fears that more than 6,000 people may have died in the U.S. Offensive and that thousands of families are in bad need of assistance.
via Information Clearing House
The Republic of T has a new address and a picture of George trying to shove his way past Bill Clinton, at the opening of Clinton’s library, in a childish bid to be the first through the door. T. also links to a piece by Sidney Blumenthal about George’s and Karl’s behaviour at the event that reads like fiction.
Rove’s comment, especially:
Offstage, beforehand, Rove and Bush had had their library tours. According to two eyewitnesses, Rove had shown keen interest in everything he saw, and asked questions, including about costs, obviously thinking about a future George W Bush library and legacy. “You’re not such a scary guy,” joked his guide. “Yes, I am,” Rove replied. Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly: “I change constitutions, I put churches in schools …” Thus he identified himself as more than the ruthless campaign tactician; he was also the invisible hand of power, pervasive and expansive, designing to alter the fundamental American compact.
Another piece sure to make it into a realist’s time capsule on the reign of George II:
Why `Weenie’ may start with a capital Dubya
Continue reading ‘Bush Push’
Certain posts within the blogosphere radiate much longer and brighter than the initial protagonist’s opinion that spurred them. “The Dutch, Ledeen & an unrepentant Nazi,” written by h. in response to this Ledeen rant, and followed by this and this, and now today, this, are such gems.
Especially relevant considering Pakistan’s decision to ban the Nov. 22 issue of Newsweek for “desecrating the Koran” in an article “about murdered Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh and pictures of a woman with Koranic verses inscribed on her body.”
You might consider it a cop-out on my part not to be adding my two-cents at this point. But h. is a formidable instructor and a seeker who lit-the-fire here and tends it carefully, and like a tramp whose found a refuge from the bitter cold tracks, I’m still contemplating the sparks in the embers.
What Palestinians should do now
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 18 November 2004
At a minimum, fair elections require international intervention to protect the Palestinians from the occupier and ensure all candidates have fair access to PA-controlled media and are free from intimidation whether by Israel or the PA. The danger is that snap elections in the West Bank and Gaza, under Israel’s crushing rule, will offer no fair opportunity for new Palestinian leaders with new strategies to emerge. Elections must provide a genuine contest and not be mere plebiscites confirming the post-Arafat appointments of failed old guard figures like PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and their backers who control the PA apparatus with money and guns. Ominously, The New York Times reports that Israel, under American pressure, has already released $40 million in blocked PA funds to “strengthen the position” of the old guard.
In the best case, from Israel’s perspective, the old guard confirmed in place by flawed elections would continue to offer disastrous concessions as they did throughout the Oslo period. And at worst, they would simply become new scapegoats to whom Israel and the US will deliver impossible demands and then heap blame when they are inevitably unfulfilled. Palestinian leaders must no longer accept this assigned role.
Palestinians should also demand elections in the diaspora as well the occupied territories. Arguably Arafat’s greatest mistake is that after signing the Oslo accords, he abandoned the PLO’s base in exile. Millions of Palestinians were disenfranchised and the negotiating position of the Palestinian leadership severely weakened because it could not claim that it had to refer any agreement back to its people.
Assistance from the United Nations and host countries would be essential to successful diaspora elections. The recent Afghan election, in which 740,000 refugees in Pakistan voted, proves it can be done. Currently, almost four million Palestine refugees are registered with UNRWA. All exiled Palestinians should have the right to vote and be elected to a Palestinian national assembly with the sole authority to approve any future peace agreement.
ei: Palestinian Elections (9 January 2005)
Barghouthi Drops Palestinian Election Bid
Fri Nov 26, 4:42 PM ET
By Mohammed Assadi
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouthi will not run in the Palestinian presidential election, an official said on Friday, following pressure from the ruling Fatah faction to support Mahmoud Abbas.
Fatah leaders had feared that Barghouthi, a popular leading member of the group founded by Yasser Arafat, could split the group if he had decided to go ahead with plans to run in the Jan. 9 poll.
Cabinet minister and group member Qaddoura Fares, who visited him earlier in prison, said the 45-year-old former lawmaker had called on his followers to endorse Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to succeed Arafat.
“In order to maintain the unity of the movement … (Barghouthi) is calling upon the sons of the movement and his supporters to support the movement’s nominee Mahmoud Abbas,” Fares told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Continue reading ‘Marwan Barghouti Drops Election Bid’
by William S. Burroughs
(hear Burroughs read his poem)
“To John Dillinger and I hope he is still alive.
Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1986.”
Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.
Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.
Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.
Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.
Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.
Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and falsify until
the bare lies shine through.
Thanks for the KKK.
For nigger-killin’ lawmen,
feelin’ their notches.
For decent church-goin’ women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.
Thanks for “Kill a Queer for
Christ” stickers.
Thanks for laboratory AIDS.
Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.
Thanks for a country where
nobody’s allowed to mind his
own business.
Thanks for a nation of finks.
Yes, thanks for all the
memories– all right let’s see
your arms!
You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.
Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.
Share a story before the meal and contemplate these words before each swallow.
via Tom Paine:
-from George Washington’s 1789 proclamation establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Two-hundred fifteen years later, we submit the preemptive war against Iraq as one of the gravest transgressions committed in the name of the nation.
via Institute for Public Accuracy:
Author of the two-volume book “American Indian History,” Robert Venables said today: “Hallmark Cards is not likely to promote the fact that the first thing the Pilgrims did when they landed in what is now Massachusetts was loot Indian graves. The original Thanksgiving held great potential for cooperation, but the children of that first Thanksgiving slaughtered each other as the Pilgrims demanded more and more Indian land. The white children of the first celebration sold the Indian children of the first Thanksgiving into slavery in Virginia, the Caribbean, Spain and Morocco…. If you want to see what globalization does if it’s carried out by right-wing corporate forces, consider that after 1492 half the globe — the entire Western Hemisphere — was forced to accept a Western standard of religion, politics and economics. As for the United States, it broke all its treaties — at least 395 of them — with Indian nations.”
Venables teaches a course on American Indians at Cornell University.
Israelis fired on girl ‘having identified her as a 10-year-old’, military tape shows
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
24 November 2004
In the recorded exchanges someone in the operations room asks: “Are we talking about a girl under the age of 10?” The observation post, housed in a watchtower, replies: “It’s a little girl. She’s running defensively eastwards, a girl of about 10. She’s behind the embankment, scared to death.”
Not until four minutes later was it reported that the girl had been hit and had fallen. The observation post reports: “Receive, I think that one of the positions took her out.” … Operations room: “What, she fell?” Observation post: “She’s not moving right now.”
The tape records the commander as telling his men, after firing at the girl with an automatic weapon and declaring he has “confirmed” the killing: “Anyone who’s mobile, moving in the zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, needs to be killed.”
[...]
The army admitted shortly after the shooting near the Girit outpost that it had been a mistake. The girl was carrying a bag which the army said that the soldiers had thought contained explosives, but which was found to contain schoolbooks. Although the family is at a loss to explain why she had wandered into a dangerous prohibited zone, they say she was on her way to school at the time.
The soldiers said that the commander had fired two shots at the girl from close range as she lay on the ground before withdrawing, turning and “emptying his magazine” by firing some 10 bullets at her body.
This account is broadly confirmed by the terms of the indictment issued this week. Although the family’s Israeli lawyer believes – and Palestinian witnesses said last month – that she was wounded but alive when the commander fired his first two shots, he has not been charged with manslaughter, apparently on the grounds that there is no evidence that the two bullets killed the girl.
Updated 11/16/05:
Not guilty. The Israeli captain who put 17 bullets into a Palestinian schoolgirl
Officer ignored warnings that teenager was terrified
Defence says ‘confirming the kill’ standard practice
Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Wednesday November 16, 2005
The Guardian
An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday.
The soldier, who has only been identified as “Captain R”, was charged with relatively minor offences for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah refugee camp in Gaza a year ago.
The manner of Iman’s killing, and the revelation of a tape recording in which the captain is warned that she was just a child who was “scared to death”, made the shooting one of the most controversial since the Palestinian intifada erupted five years ago even though hundreds of other children have also died.
After the verdict, Iman’s father, Samir al-Hams, said the army never intended to hold the soldier accountable.
“They did not charge him with Iman’s murder, only with small offences, and now they say he is innocent of those even though he shot my daughter so many times,” he said. “This was the cold-blooded murder of a girl. The soldier murdered her once and the court has murdered her again. What is the message? They are telling their soldiers to kill Palestinian children.”
Continue reading ‘“…even if it’s a three-year-old.”’
Sure, it’s damned embarrassing that you lost the White House to the most awful president that I can recall in my lifetime. How do you lose a race to a brazen liar who misled our nation into pre-emptively striking a third-world country that posed no threat to our shores, an incorrigible lout who claims to hear godly voices, a mealy mouthpiece for the corporate elite that intends to take us into even more unjust wars that will not only shake the foundations beneath our economic house-of-cards but bequeath our grandchildren an intractable debt?
Buck up! At least you won’t have to scramble to make excuses for a President John Kerry when he did exactly the same!
Katha Pollit cautions readers not to “explain Kerry’s loss with Harry Truman’s quip that voters will always choose the real Republican over the fake Republican.”
Au contraire!
In the very same issue of The Nation that Ms. Pollit’s Mourn appears, there is a piece by John Nichols called Hammered.
In it, Nichols gives readers a run-down of those Democrats who did manage to win their races, and they certainly weren’t Republican-lite.
House Republicans went into the 2004 election cycle with a 227-205 advantage over the Democrats; they’re likely to finish it with a 233-199 advantage. That’s not a big shift, but it does represent a dramatic victory for DeLay, the GOP majority leader, who redrew the political map of Texas in order to increase his grip on the House. Of five Democratic incumbents who had their districts drawn out from under them, four lost. Only Representative Chet Edwards, who in one of the nicer bits of electoral irony represents George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, won re-election. The one other bit of good news was that the Democratic incumbent whom DeLay really wanted to beat, progressive Lloyd Doggett, outsmarted the man they call The Hammer by moving into a new district and building a coalition of working-class Latinos and Austin-area liberals who gave him an easy win–and status as the Lone Star antithesis of DeLay.
A few other races also went against DeLay’s plan. Georgia Democrat Cynthia McKinney fought her way back from a 2002 defeat and promises to be a welcome thorn in the side of both Republican and Democratic leaders. Colorado Democrat John Salazar, a rancher who ran on the all-but-forgotten theme that Republican policies are bad for rural America, won a GOP seat. The senior Republican in the House, Phil Crane of Illinois, got beaten by Democrat Melissa Bean, whose campaign focused on the need to protect the environment from the right-wing wrecking crew in Congress. Bean will join a number of new women in the House, including such progressives as Pennsylvania’s Allyson Schwartz and Florida’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both of whom emphasized the need for real healthcare reform.
Isn’t it obvious? Stick with the Pollits of the world who would have you go even more to the right and lose all of your seats in Congress, or turn your eyes to those ideals on the left, and win on truth, courage, and conviction.
And you won’t have to hold your nose to do it!
On the other hand, if you think going right seems like a logical thing to do, your guys are in total control! Just switch parties!
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to continue my search for a November 3rd group that was going to organise in order to promote spectacular alternatives to this insanity. Where are they hiding? Are they depressed, too?
I hope they’re not hanging out with this fellow of a think tank I’ve come to trust as a real “Institute for the Rest of Us”, who is promoting Barack “Oh Bomb Iran”, as a “progressive” champion.
Institute for Middle East Understanding LINKS International
FREE GAZA
International Solidarity Movement
WOMBLES
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