 Muse in the Morning |
by hurting those who seek happiness
will never find happiness
–M. K. Gandhi, from his poem, Violence
Phenomena XXIX: helping
 Beyond the End
|
June 25, 2009 archive
Jun 25 2009
Muse in the Morning
by hurting those who seek happiness
will never find happiness
Jun 25 2009
Hypocrisy on Iran
Gotta love it that the corporate media is so unified in their outrage over the Iran situation.
Where was their outrage when Israel massacred 1400 civilians in Gaza?
This piece by Margaret Kimberley sums it up in a sad and devastating way:
In December 2008 Israel began what can only be described as a massacre in Gaza. More than 1,400 Gazans were killed so that Israel might inflict collective punishment on a civilian population, a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. They were not even allowed to flee and save their lives, instead even hospitals and ambulances were targets in Israel’s efforts to kill as many Gazans as possible.“The corporate media are quite selective when they decide who deserves our sympathy.”
Just as they prevented civilians from fleeing, the Israeli government did not permit the world’s news organizations to enter Gaza. The American media conducted incomplete coverage of the crisis without even pointing out that the Israeli government prevented them from doing their jobs. They didn’t exhort their readers and viewers to remind Israel that “the world is watching” them. There was no campaign to use Twitter as a tool to protest the killings and defend the Gazans right to live.
The United States Congress did not pass resolutions condemning the Israeli government. Neither Democrats nor Republicans exhorted then president elect Obama to speak out on behalf of the Gazans. Editorial pages did not criticize his silence and tacit approval of a truly horrific human rights violation.
In contrast, congress rushed to condemn the Iranian government, allegedly on behalf of the Iranian people. Their hypocrisy is breath taking. During the presidential campaign, Senator John McCain composed his only little ditty, “Bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran” in a horrendous disregard for human life. Now he attacks Obama for not speaking out against the government of Iran.
“The U.S. Congress’s hypocrisy is breath taking.”
Throughout 2006 and 2007 both houses of Congress passed resolutions which condemned Iran as a terrorist state and were meant to begin the process of authorizing war. Many of these same house members now claim to care, by a 405 to 1 vote margin, about the people they previously had been willing to kill.
It’s no accident why. It’s not random. The U.S. government has been funding covert operations within Iran to help destabilize Iran’s government.
Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush last year to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing Iran’s leadership. This according to a new article by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker magazine.The operations were set out in a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which, by law, must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from supporting dissident groups to spying on Iran’s nuclear program.
According to Hersh, US Special Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq since last year. These have included seizing members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of so-called “high-value targets” who may be captured or killed.
So this major media orgasm over the protests in Iran are the culmination of what the Covert Ops people hope is a successful overthrow of the Iranian government.
That is why it’s getting so much coverage, and getting things like a 405 – 1 vote of approval by the United States Congress.
Anybody remember the way we tend to treat other protestors?
Anger Mounts After U.S. Troops Kill 13 Iraqi Protesters
Yeah, how dare they protest an illegal invasion of their country? Fuckers.
And do you think anyone in America read about this sort of thing?
“That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him,” one soldier told Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin pre-military academy …
Where was all the grand twittering then?
And even though in Gaza entire villages were literally wiped off the map, our American “leaders” didn’t say a word. Their support for the war criminals of Israel was unwavering, the reality of the crimes by the Mouthpiece Media kept hidden.
As Margaret Kimberley says:
The corporate media behave in a fashion that requires us to question everything they present to us as fact.
Ain’t that the truth.
Jun 25 2009
Matisyahu!
I don’t know what to tell you guys, but I think Matisyahu may be keeping me sane… so indulge me… ya motherfuckers!
Jun 25 2009
A Weak American President
The newest smear. All because Iran is in revolution mode. IRAN is in revolution mode. And I say good for them. But here in America, our president is assailed as being weak because he won’t yell at them. After yelling there must be force or something to back it up, I would think. Or if you yell you should at least be yelling from a position of strength.
A Weak American President
Anne Bayefsky, 06.23.09, 07:38 PM EDT
And when asked again, “If you do accept the election of Ahmadinejad … without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn’t that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working to achieve?” He answered: “We can’t say definitively what exactly happened at polling places.”
And asked again: “Why won’t you spell out the consequences that the Iranian people…” He answered: “Because I think that we don’t know yet how this thing is going to play out.”
And yet again: “Shouldn’t the present regime know that there are consequences?” He answered: “We don’t yet know how this is going to play out.”
The president of America is as weak as one says he is these days. Being cautious on Iran is being weak. Where do these critics come from. Do they not know the America they knew changed a few years back? All that bravado has run its course and our country to hell. Why, i was just watching National Lampoon’s vacation. The one to Wally World, and I saw the family and the car trip and the community and I thought, wow, that America is gone.
Anyway, as a citizen of America, who finds themselves deeply caring for Iran. Something I had not been privy to doing in the past about Iran because of all of the bravado of the United States and its policies toward that nation. I couldn’t even see the people and their plight. All I knew is Iran was bad news where America was concerned.
I like the view I have of Iran now. I am in awe of the Iranian people and their fighting spirit. The women, the youth. But I ask myself, because of this writer from Forbes, how can america help? I look to my president and I see him speak on his position and I think and feel, yeah, you are right Mr. President. At the same time, I feel that if the Iranian people wanted our help they would ask for it. I have not heard them ask for it. Have I missed this asking?
This Iranian government has told us in deeds, as well as in words, exactly what path it has chosen. President Obama has told us his path also: pandering to Islamic radicals and empty posturing. Ironically, the rest of the world claimed they wanted a weak American president whose foreign policy would read “apologize, capitulate and stand down.” Now that they have what they asked for, real human rights victims are being forced to pay the piper.
I don’t know about this world claim of hers. I used to read where the world wanted a ‘better’ president, for communications purposes. They also wanted a strong America, but I never heard of this want of a weak American president. Maybe she forgot to report this.
Meanwhile, back in america, the country where the American president is really responsible for, I have to say, I feel the people and this country are weak and have been deliberately weakened. The infrastructure is weak. Job outlook is weak. The economy is weak. Medical coverage is weak. The congress is acting weak. In a nutshell, America is like Iran. Americans may need to take to the streets.
So, Forbes writer, I think you may want to recognize that America itself is weak. Not just the president. Your article is weak. You are weak. That’s why you write articles. Go do something yourself. You writing in a financial magazine. Your constituents are the ones who make the world weak with their neverending greed.
Jun 25 2009
Gas Prices by Goldman Sachs
Not only are your tax dollars, and those of your children and grandchildren, going to the banks, but so is some of that money you spend at the gas station. Goldman Sachs, among others, is now involved in making sure you are squeezed at the pump so they can get more bonuses and buy more yachts. Good for the yacht makers I suppose, but not for the majority of Americans just trying to get by.
In an article by Jim Hightower, he places the blame on the same old derivative and credit swap games that helped get us into this financial mess in the first place.
“What’s going on here is not the “magic of the marketplace,” but some hocus-pocus by brand-name dealers. What might surprise you, though, is that the wheeler-dealers now jacking up our pump prices don’t operate under the BPExxonMobilShellChevron brands – but the logos of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street traders that have been placing vast, unregulated, secretive bets on the future price of oil. They’re playing an electronic casino game in a global “dark market” of exotic derivatives and credit swaps.”
So if I understand this correctly, the US is in a financial crisis largely created by the practices of Wall Street and Big Banks; the government, or we the taxpayers, bailed them out with trillions of dollars, and now they continue to do the same damn thing. Not only that, but what they’re doing is affecting your weekly budget as we speak.
“If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it’s because this is the same game that Wall Street played with subprime mortgages, leading to the present crash of our economy. And, yes, these are the exact same banksters that you and I are presently bailing out with our trillions of tax dollars.”
Oh, I know five months isn’t nearly enough time for Obama and Geithner to clean up the messes made by Bush. But it sure looks like they’ve had enough time to allow the creation of new ways to fleece the middle and lower classes.
They won’t give California five billion or so to help with keeping needed services available to those less fortunate. But they can give trillions to banks and allow them to continue their games. And now it is having a direct daily effect on everyone. Disgusting and criminal.
Crossposted at Daily Kos
Jun 25 2009
Let us Temper Anger with Mercy 20090624
I am not a fan of Governor Sanford. His politics are pretty much antithetic to me, and to most of us in this community. I also think that he would be a horrible President, but that is my own thought.
The developments today are extremely sad on many levels. We have seen a person with a career completely destroyed, although of his own making. But I can not condemn a man for love.
Jun 25 2009
Torture Accountability Action Day! June 25, 2009!
h/t David Swanson
A large coalition of human rights groups has planned rallies and marches in major U.S. cities, including a rally in Washington, D.C.’s John Marshall Park at 11 a.m. followed by a noon march to the Justice Department where some participants will risk arrest in nonviolent protest if a special prosecutor for torture is not appointed. Torture Accountability
For those who are not able to go to Washington, D.C., rallies are also planned for San Francisco, CA; Pasadena, CA; Thousand Oaks, CA; Boston, MA; Salt Lake City, UT; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; Las Vegas, NV; Honolulu, HI; Tampa, FL; Philadelphia, PA; and Anchorage, AK, with details available online: Events Across the U.S. Hopefully, some of you will be able to attend one of these very important rallies.
Of interest, in San Francisco and Pasadena, citizens will submit a formal judicial misconduct complaint against 9th Circuit Court Judge, Jay Bybee, former Assistant Attorney General. I can only think of this as a positive move in this maze of affiliates of considered, acted upon, carried out TORTURE!
Keep going!
Jun 25 2009
The state of The State of South Carolina
Well, I called it. Governor Sanford of South Carolina was having an affair. But, that wasn’t the only bombshell dropped in this story as it was also reported that The State newspaper (based in Columbia, SC) knew about the affair since December of 2008, and, didn’t say a word about it!
The state of The State of South Carolina…
Jun 25 2009
Joan Baez – To The People Of Iran
To the People of Iran: In you the world sees the power of nonviolence. We hear it in the roar of your silence and see it in your eyes as you sit down peacefully in the face of terror. We are moved by your courage and inspired by your sacrifices.
I am fortunate to be alive to witness this movement. I send you my prayers, love, and support.
Jun 25 2009
Pony Party w/Pics & Caption This!
Totally stolen:
moar funny pictures
Pony Party is an open thread. Please do not rec the party. But please follow it down to the bottom, where there’s a li’l tribute to Buenos Aires & by extension, Mark Sanford.
LOLOLOLOL.