November 11, 2008 archive

Docudharma Times Tuesday November 11

People Are Just People

And Sometimes They Are Hero’s

But They Are Still Just People    




Tuesday’s Headlines:

ALCU urges Obama to quickly close Guantanamo camps

Not such a hero after all

Doors open on a hidden corner of forbidden City

Palestinian couple evicted from home of 50 years as Jerusalem settlers move in

Girl of 13 becomes youngest suicide bomber in day of carnage

Bullfighters ‘hired Colombian assassins to kill rivals’ horses’

Russian nuclear death sub ‘was due for delivery to India’

From my rooftop: What Obama victory means to Africa

Cairo slide buried womans past, present and future

Obama Asks Bush to Provide Help for Automakers



By JACKIE CALMES

Published: November 10, 2008


WASHINGTON – The struggling auto industry was thrust into the middle of a political standoff between the White House and Democrats on Monday as President-elect Barack Obama urged President Bush in a meeting at the White House to support immediate emergency aid.

Mr. Bush indicated at the meeting that he might support some aid and a broader economic stimulus package if Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats dropped their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia, a measure for which Mr. Bush has long fought, people familiar with the discussion said.

Obama to Explore New Approach in Afghanistan War



By Karen DeYoung

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, November 11, 2008; Page A01


The incoming Obama administration plans to explore a more regional strategy to the war in Afghanistan — including possible talks with Iran — and looks favorably on the nascent dialogue between the Afghan government and “reconcilable” elements of the Taliban, according to Obama national security advisers.

President-elect Barack Obama also intends to renew the U.S. commitment to the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a priority the president-elect believes President Bush has played down after years of failing to apprehend the al-Qaeda leader. Critical of Bush during the campaign for what he said was the president’s extreme focus on Iraq at the expense of Afghanistan, Obama also intends to move ahead with a planned deployment of thousands of additional U.S. troops there.  

 

USA

Fannie, AIG Struggling After Federal Takeover

Firms Report Massive Losses, Cite Shortcomings of Rescue

By Zachary A. Goldfarb

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, November 11, 2008; Page A01

Two months after the government began taking over ailing financial companies, the two largest efforts have failed to go as planned, with the firms complaining that federal officials set overly strict terms and took other unhelpful rescue measures.

Fannie Mae yesterday reported a $29 billion loss for the three months ended Sept. 30 and warned that the mission it was given by the government, to help revive the mortgage market, could be compromised unless the Treasury Department takes new steps to support the company

Layoffs mount, economic crisis deepens in the US

Original article, by Tom Eley, via World Socialist Web Site:

Monday brought a number of fresh indications-including mass layoffs, bankruptcies and negative labor market data-that the US is entering a deep economic crisis.

Memorials

Today, as many know or should know, is Veterans Day, or actually many who observe call it what it was intended to be called, Armistice Day.

On this day in a U.S. occupation of anothers country, that seems so long ago but isn’t, and which I served ’70-’71, the following happened:

November 11, 1972

The U.S. Army turned over its massive military base at Long Binh to the South Vietnamese army, symbolizing the end of direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. The last American forces, however, did not leave until 1975.

**********

April 29 – Corporal Charles McMahon, Jr., and Lance Corporal Darwin Judge, USMC, are the last US military personnel killed in Vietnam. They are struck during a rocket attack at the US Embassy in Saigon, during the final North Vietnamese attack on the government.

April 30 – At 7:53 a.m., 11 US Marines (the last of 865 Marines assigned to guard the US Embassy) carrying the American flag, are airlifted from the US Embassy rooftop helipad. Three hours later the Vietnam war finally ends when North Vietnamese tanks break into the Presidential Palace.

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

State of the Onion IV

Art Link

Coming Out

Layers of Being

Like the layers

of an onion

I peel away

the layers

of who I am

boy student

athlete man

draft-dodging

longhaired hippie freak

Like the layers

of an onion

each new layer

of myself

reveals nuance

taoist husband

father soldier

socialist  teacher

commie pinko pacifist

Like the layers

of an onion

peeling further

uncovers

a richer me

woe-man poet

tranny activist

lesbian artist

gay homo dyke queer

Like the layers

of an onion

is the truth of

the being

of the human

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–November 4, 2005

‘Charlie Don’t Surf!’ McNamara, Kurtz, and the Only Real Freedom

It’s a quiet time now, as we wait for the transition  to happen and our new President to let us know what duties and obligations we citizens have in terms of helping out. A good time for some intellectual recreation with some things other than the day’s  political news for a change. Hope you enjoy …

What was Indochina? What did it mean? And what visual images suggest themselves? For me, I have never been able to shake the image in Coppola’s film “Apocalypse Now” of the American Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall) who tells his staff that a seaside village with wonderful surfing conditions is to be bombed flat  so that he and his staff can get a bit of surfing in before dinner. When one of his offers warns him that Charlie controls that village, Kilgore screams: “Charlie don’t surf!” It is self-evident and rational that he has a RIGHT to that beach because he can make better use of it. Kilgore’s proclamation is the paradigmatic image of one type of rationality, the type of rationality that manufactures sensible alibis for horrific acts. The rationale he manufactures to justify his right to a particular stretch of beach is really no more or less dubious than the alibis that our first protagonist, Robert McNamara, offered during the American misadventure in Indochina. Our other protagonist, Coppola’s fictional Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, faces the same conditions as does McNamara, but Kurtz’s refusal to tolerate what he calls “the stench of lies” drives him insane and then kills him.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Re-Flex Praying to the Beat

5 Days. 5 Protests.

Since the passage of Prop 8 on Tuesday, thousands of people have been protesting in California every single day of the week.  

Here are my photos from protests around the Los Angeles area…

Antiwar.com’s quarterly fundraiser begins today!

Originally from Antiwar.com:

They say it better than I can.

Manufacturing Monday: Week of 11.10.08

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to another installment of Manufacturing Monday. Today we are going to cover something that has been in the news lately, General Motors.  Well to be exact, the potential bankruptcy of GM, and what it could mean to you.  For many, this is a non-issue, who cares about another car company and a failing one at that?  But indeed, it may just be that a collapse of GM could be worse than that of Lehman Brothers and AIG.  Of course we’ll cover, as always, the economic indicators for the past week and what they also mean.  So without further adieu, the Numbers!

28,000 Seconds.

So, you’ve walked streets and knocked on doors and phone-banked and given money and put yourself on the line, emotionally and physically, in a campaign that seemed to last forever, but which, in the end, reminded you (and me) that sometimes all that’s required to manifest the unlikely (or even the unbelievable) is for you (and me) to bring it about ourselves.

We won.

We won nationally and locally.

We won the narrative and substance.

We won the denotative, the connotative and the illustrative.

In short, we kicked their cynical, bloated, entitled back-sides.

Which means we’ve earned ourselves a well-deserved break!

Not. So. Much.

What we’ve earned… is the right to DO MORE.

In the greatest act of blogging hubris ever expressed by a writer of seemingly nonstop asshattery, this diary challenges each of YOU, starting with the YOU that is ME, to give 28,000 seconds a month to community service until the midterm elections.

Simpler… this blog challenges the you that is also me to finish what we’ve started.

Open Thread & DD “Ripple” Awards!

I hereby announce the Docudharma Ripple Award, which means … well I’m not sure, but it’s an award, for Pete’s sake, so who cares!

More seriously, on a purely subjective note, these two comments were the result of the conversations we’ve all had on the blog, the ripples of ideas which flow from this site every day, I’m just catching two of them.

They come from my Friday Night at 8 essay Core and speak to the notion of centrism, left, right, middle, all that jazz.

First one is from NLinStPaul:

I remember a while ago

looking for a post by Madman in the Marketplace where he articulated that compromise (or the center) is the place you reach AFTER you’ve made effective arguments from opposing sides. It is NOT the place you start from. But I haven’t been able to find it.

That thought keeps surfacing for me when I hear all this talk about finding the “middle.” We haven’t even clearly defined all the positions yet!!!

And the second is from RUkind:

It’s like center is the new meme,

Same as the old meme. I think it’s more about clinging to the present or some vision of a recent past or embracing change and seeing where it takes us.

This country was founded by people seeking change from the old ways of post-feudal Europe. Once they got a foothold on the coast it was the Cumberland Gap and on to the Northwest Territories (Great Lakes region). Feeling too settled down? Across the Mississippi, up the MIssouri and then over the Rockies.

Same thing has been going on always here. People just keep coming seeking change. Even when you’re born here you’re likely to live in several places during your life.

Some people thrive on change, some people fear it. Change in your surroundings, your neighbors or even who you are. Like the song says, “You can’t go back and you can’t stand still.”

I don’t think left-center-right are the proper adjectives any more. I’d say change/status quo are the basic definitions and from there the direction of the change becomes a secondary attribute.

Just thinkin’.  Satya.

Congratulations!  Now all we need is a prize of some kind!

Open thread is now open for bidness!

GBCW and Elder Care in these “free” United States

 

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