October 2, 2009 archive

Dystopia 15: Surprise

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another!

ANATOLE FRANCE

Nazi Is As Nazi Does

cross-posted from GOS

This essay is one my hubby (who is out of town performing at a festival this weekend) and I put together about our notorious local City Council race and a situation getting way too much WingNut attention. I am posting it where he says it should be posted. I’m posting it here too because this is where I hang out!

________

Carl Mumpower: a Danger to the Citizens He Claims to Serve

You’d think a fairly routine City Council race in a smallish city (~75,000 not counting tourists) in the sticks of Southern Appalachia would be off the radar screens of just about everybody else in the country. But alas, not so. One of the incumbents, a certain Carl Mumpower, has been busy making a claim for WingNut fame and fortune by egging on militia-style death threats against local schoolchildren and teachers. Mumpower is a hero of Teabaggers and hate-radio bloviators like Rush Limbaugh. So of course his more colorful antics this time around are getting national attention.

The latest is about a YouTube video showing a one-minute clip of students at a local elementary school participating in a 26-minute performance last February about famous Americans, and celebrating the election of the nation’s first African-American President. While that program fully accorded with the North Carolina educational curriculum per teaching about civic leadership, American heroes, good citizenship, diverse cultures and such, the clip has led to some nasty charges and ramifications.

According to the Asheville Citizen-Times area resident Loren Lanter posted the clip to YouTube in late September, where it was picked up by national media and Rush Limbaugh as evidence of indoctrination in public schools. Limbaugh’s old buddy Carl could of course be counted upon to exploit the situation to his dubious advantage. Mumpower announced:

“…That is ritual behavior and that’s how you plug things into kids’ heads. I’ll come right out and say it. That’s exactly how the Hitler youth were programmed prior to World War II.”

Some late thoughts on democracy

This is a thought-piece about whether democracy is worth anything at all in this era.  I start with reflection upon a short paragraph from Ellen Meiksins Wood’s Democracy Against Capitalism, which suggests that elites both before and after capitalism have had a social basis for their assertions of privilege.  The current assertion of privilege is substantiated by “money,” “property,” and “capitalism,” all of which are said to limit the sphere of democratic decisionmaking.  But since “money,” “property,” and “capitalism” are the business of society, one must then question whether or not there is really anything left for democracy to decide, and whether people will actually get enough power to make democracy decide anything of substance.

(Crossposted at Big Orange)

Wild Wild Left Radio # 37 Breaking the Chene (y)

Join WWL cohosts Diane Gee and Michael Gottlieb tonight as we ponder this new administration’s seeming lockstep with the worst of Cheney’s policies:

Saber rattling Iran, as was done with Iraq, in blatantly lies to cover expansionism of our military footprint.

The intentional blocking of the Goldstone report, and capitulation to Israel’s imaginary yet permanent “security crisis.” (Yes, they claim this report would hurt Israel’s right to defend itself, WTF, over?)

The ever expanding war theater in Afghanistan, our new Vietnam.

We will also be discussing Cheney himself, as retired Generals start to openly criticize his Gitmo and Torture policies, and quietly are beginning to leak how unfeasible our strategy is in Afghanistan.

Cheney’s teflon coat is wearing more as the FBI has been ordered to release their interview with regards to the Plame case.

Our big question for the evening…. is ANYTHING changing at all, or has the Dark Lord’s influence started to crumble?

See you there! As always, respectful questions and commentary are welcomed.

Join Gottlieb and Diane tonight at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for an interesting hour of Political Reporting and Commentary.

WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.

The call in number is 646-929-1264

Listen to The Wild Wild Left on internet talk radio

The live chat link will go live around 5:15.

CHAT LINK:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/F…

Four at Four

  1. The CS Monitor reportys U.S. job losses worse than expected. “In September, the Labor Department reported Friday that the economy lost a net total of 263,000 jobs, up from a downwardly revised 201,000 in August… The unemployment rate inched up to 9.8 percent from 9.7 percent.”

    McClatchy adds the Unemployment rate is at the highest level in 26 years. “The jobs report was sure to call the Obama administration’s economic stimulus efforts into question, since government hiring fell by 53,000 jobs… Labor Secretary Hilda Solis tried to put a positive spin on the report, noting that jobs are disappearing at a slower pace than they were earlier in the year.”

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the “alternative” U-6 unemployment rate is now 17.0 percent.

Four at Four continues with climate change threatening national parks, the Southeast’s drought, and businesses using bicycles.

Obama MUST FIRE Robert Gates!!!

Probably the single biggest mistake that President Obama made, was losing a great deal of control over the direction of the ongoing (corrupt) U.S. Foreign Wars, Occupations, and general Policy, by bringing back the outgoing (Bush-Cheney appointee) Robert Gates — whose policies the public clearly rejected in the 2006 and 2008 Elections.

An article has been reported today that goes into more details about the internal struggle going on now within the Administration, and the tragic consequences for having left things in the hands of Robert Gates.


Obama In Secret Russia Visit Warns Putin, “I May Not Make It

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

Reports circulating in the Kremlin today are detailing an extraordinary ‘secret’ meeting held between Prime Minister Putin and President Obama at the request of the American leader that took place on Air Force One upon its landing at the Russian military airstrip at Pulkovo I in Saint Petersburg during a stopover while in route to Copenhagen, Denmark.

According to these reports, Obama stated to Putin that the US Government was in “total disarray” after what the American President called a “putsch” made against him by high-ranking members of the US Military during a ‘fractious‘ meeting in the White House of the United States top Military, Intelligence and National Security officers over the future course of the war in Afghanistan.

Most distressing to Obama was his chief and longest serving, National Security Advisor, US Naval Intelligence Officer Mark Lippert, being forced out of the White House by the Bush appointed US Defense Secretary, and former CIA Director, Robert Gates who ‘ordered’ Lippert out of the White House and back to active duty.

Obama further reported to Putin that Gates told him, “in no uncertain terms” that the President had “no power whatsoever” over US Military decisions regarding Afghanistan whereupon Gates then ‘leaked’ to the US propaganda media his intention to massively increase America’s troop levels in the Afghan war zone.

Even worse for Obama, who is already struggling with a collapsing economy, Gates further undermined the President by ordering 6,600 armored war trucks at a cost estimated to be in excess of $8 billion the US Military intends to pour into Afghanistan during the coming year at the expense of his Nations people already struggling under their Nations massive war debts.

When queried by Putin as to his ability to regain control of those factions opposing him Obama in these reports is quoted as saying, “I may not make it“.

Further troubling evidence of the disarray the US Government now finds itself in as Obama wages this titanic battle against the right-wing fascist forces seeking to destroy him can be seen in the actions of the powerful US Senator Jim DeMint who is openly defying the White House by traveling to the Central American Nation of Honduras to give his support to the CIA backed coup leader, Roberto Micheletti, who recently overthrew that countries legitimate President Manuel Zelaya and put his Nation under martial law.

link

Big Picture Doom and Gloom……..Towards a New Way

Simulposted at Daily Kos

Sit down and hold on…but don’t panic or despair! I am about to throw the ice water of gloom and doom all over you. If you are not in the mood, allow me to redirect you …here.

BUT

Doom and Gloom is not reason for despair! Perhaps. Perhaps…it is the beginning of something new. Change, after all, is not like turning on a flashlight and changing darkness into light. REAL change (as most of us have suspected all along) will take the building of a new kind of light. A very very new kind of very very powerful light. And that will take time. And a distinct lack of despair.

On to the ice water.

(Note, this is complex, so please read closely and don’t jump to conclusions….stick with me through the end, or bail right now!)

Fuck it. Let’s dance.

Enough with the Doom and Gloom around here.

Let’s dance!!!

Maybe that one wasn’t your speed? Hmmm.

Or we can go the other way.

Whatchoo got?

As Soon As I Find A Time Machine

I’m moving back to 1972 and I’m going to go get drunk and find a girl who’s out to get drunk and find a boy. Things are too weird and there is something not right about this century, and nobody seems to know how to have fun anymore. 😉

Jeepster

It’s a lie factory. They make lies. Factory-made lies. Lies from a factory. A factory of lies.

How many ways can we think of to say it and say it and say it?

The shot rang around the blogosphere this morning, everyone has heard it. It’s quoted on a rec list diary at Daily Kos.

GRAYSON: My response is WHATEVER. America is sick of you, Republican Party. You are a LIE FACTORY – that’s all you ever do. Why don’t you work together with the Democrats to solve America’s problems instead of making stuff up?

It is good to see that Dem leadership is going to stand with Grayson on his “Die quickly” line and reject the fake outrage from the other side. However, I can’t help but feel like we will let an opportunity to go on offense slip away. Again.

<!–break–>

Swine flu – what you don’t know CAN and WILL KILL you

A well-loved and highly respected woman in the SCA out in California fell ill at an event held on Labor Day weekend. She was hospitalized on the 15th. The diagnosis, a WEEK later, was H1N1 – swine flu.

They took her off life support yesterday. She’s gone.

Her lung collapsed and her kidneys completely failed within a month. This was a woman who fought in the SCA, both heavy list and fencing. She had been knighted for her skill and recently was awarded another peerage for her service. Just as a note for people unfamiliar with the SCA; those who receive knighthoods for heavy list fighting, male or female, are not exactly known for their weak constitutions. They have proven themselves capable of moving with superior speed and skill while wearing suits of armor that can weigh up to 120 pounds. She was healthy and strong a month ago. Today she’s dead.

I strongly urge you to read the full blog which describes this poor lady’s symptoms as they developed. My suspicion is that what actually killed her was IGNORANCE. First of all, why did it take them a FULL WEEK to come back with a diagnosis of swine flu? Doctors and hospitals KNOW this shit is coming. They should be prepared.

Secondly, note in the blog that they state that she had a reaction to “a codeine medication”. This was probably Tylenol with Codeine. On this note, read the second link.

Treating H1N1 as ordinary flu, especially with certain drugs, can make the problem worse. This is what happened in 1918, when antibiotics were nonexistent and aspirin was a new treatment for fever. What killed most of the people who died from the 1918 flu was not the flu itself – it was treating them with ASPIRIN.

The purpose of a fever is to heat the body so much that viruses and bacteria will die. By treating the fever without attacking the invasive virus/bacteria, you nullify the body’s natural defenses, the infection runs wild, and PEOPLE DIE.

The reason I can speak with a certain amount of authority about the H1N1 swine flu and it’s effects is that I am very familiar with them. While stationed at my first and only duty station in Germany, I was frequently very sick with either bronchitis or bronchial pneumonia. I was never prone to either of these until I was stationed overseas, and originally thought that it was because I was allergic to something there. However, the problem followed me home and from 1992 until 2003 I continued to get bronchitis and bronchial pneumonia regularly. This was because even after I left the Air Force, I continued in civilian life to get a flu shot every fall.

While in the Air Force, every November I was injected with a mandatory annual flu shot, which I was told was to work against “Russian Type A Flu”. Googling this will get you many hits on H1N1 – it’s the same biological weapon that came out of Fort Dix in 1976, although (of course) it was being blamed on the Russians in our neck of the woods.

For the entire duration of my assignment in Germany and for many years after that, I could never simply catch a cold. Anything that even remotely resembled a cold would blossom into sinusitis or bronchitis, and if I ignored this into bronchial pneumonia, within the week. It got to the point later in my civilian life that if I got a stuffy nose, I’d wait exactly three days and then make the appointment, because I knew by the fourth day I was going to be coughing stuff up and the doctor would give me antibiotics.

I have documented elsewhere the incident in November of 1989 where I came down with bronchial pneumonia while assigned a garbage detail. After two days of trying to tough out outdoor duty in the dead of a viciously cold German winter, I finally broke down and reported to sick call. I was treated like a malingerer and ignored for so long that the fever broke over the three and a half hours that I sat shivering and sweating in the waiting room. When I finally was seen by a doctor, he snorted in disgust because now there was no fever, and ordered me to pick up a prescription at the window. The prescription was for aspirin.

My own disgusted reaction, which was to crush the paper in my hand and throw it across the room, probably saved my life.

When I reported to sick call the following day I was treated quickly with professionalism and compassion and given antibiotics, which solved the problem.

When I was outprocessing the Air Force, I was handed my medical charts by a doctor and noticed a new stamp on my file that said “MK-ULTRA”. It was next to the other compartmentalizations on my clearance, and I recognized the term from having seen it on the system I administered. I asked what it was, and the doctor looked embarrassed and said “Um, it’s something that shouldn’t be there. I’ll take it off.” He refused to tell me what it was. I knew what my other compartmentalizations meant, so the fact that I hadn’t been told about this and the doctor’s cageyness caused the incident to stay in my memory. I later found out that MK-ULTRA was the project name for unauthorized experimentation that has been done on members of the US military since the 1950s.

In 2003 I stopped taking the annual flu shot, and I also stopped getting bronchitis and pneumonia on a regular basis.

I make a habit of eating a wedge of stilton cheese at least once a month. I like stilton, for me it’s a “comfort food”, but after catching the bronchial foo that was going around the CodePink house in DC a few summers ago I discovered that it could also save me a copay and prescription fee. I had come down with the foo on a Friday and was not going to have access to my doctor until Monday. I ate a wedge of stilton and the stuff was completely gone by Monday. Stilton’s unique flavor, as I discovered by happy accident, is provided by a helpful little critter called penicillum roqueforti. 🙂

A word to the wise… if you get the flu this season, do not treat the fever. Let it run it’s course unless things get dangerous (in which case a doctor should already be involved, of course), and keep the presence of natural antibiotics in your diet high throughout the flu season. If you are not allergic to penicillin and don’t mind the flavor, a wedge of stilton (or roquefort, or bleu) a month will keep the doctor away. Honey is also good, especially manuka – highly antibacterial. Antibacterials won’t do anything to combat the virus, of course, but it will help a great deal to avert secondary infections.

Pass this on to those you care about.

The Georgia Guide Stones: A Future Lament



Photobucket



The Georgia Guidestones, a huge granite monument to the future, was built 30 years ago next year. Who built the monument is a mystery, though there is speculation it is NWO, Illuminati, Freemason, Rosicrucian Scientologists, but the reason it was built could not be clearer – to guide surviving humans from a collapsed previous civilization in the reconstruction of a new, successful society.

Load more