December 10, 2009 archive

The bloviators walked all over the ceremony, the king’s speech, world class entertainent, etc.

Christiane Amapour, David Gergen, and Craphole Crowley’s opinions exceed world opinion.

Regardless, Obama is going balls to the wall “War is Peace!”

Fuck you, Bro’.

As probably everyone has heard by now, the Swiss sovereign voted by about 57% of the popular vote and the assent of 22 of the 26 full and half-cantons (States) to write into our Constitution that the construction of new minarets is banned, and this despite opposition to this People’s Party-supported initiative from the government, from parliament, from all parties (except the People’s Party and the fringe Protestant Democratic Party), the unions, the churches, industry, banking – pretty much every establishmentarian institution.

I’m not happy about the ban – it was a pointless affront to a section of our population.  Swiss zoning laws are arbitrary and byzantine enough to stop virtually anything if the local population put their mind to it, so the ban was not necessary.  True, a minaret is not essential for a mosque, but it’s only the conservative fringe like the Wahhabis who are actually opposed to it.  The call of the muezzin is banned anyway (not consistent with noise regulations- and it would be drowned out by church bells).

The vote was in some elements misdirected, but in others it spoke to legitimate concerns.  Popular votes are a rum thing, and you’re only given the option of voting “yes” or “no”, there is no possibility of a nuanced response.  But I certainly don’t think it is any “crisis of democracy”, or “failure” of anything except the failure of the political elites to deal with the issues that led to the “yes” vote.  

I’m still fucked up about this shit. I know it will come back.

Tonight I rock, tonight I get out of it, into y’all.

But tomorrow it will come back. teh pain.

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

AP – A huge demonstration started today with actions being held around the world in a month long campaign to bring knowledge to the world.  Internationally thousands of students and people filled the libraries of their towns and schools in order to check out the maximum allowed amount of books and media to bring them home, scan them, and upload them for free download on the internet.  

Many armed with only portable and pocket-sized HD video cameras taped their own personal tours of museums all over the world in order to allow millions to view them on YouTube and other video sites.  The demonstration was peaceful with no arrests reported.  Demonstrators explained that what they were doing was “liberating the humanities” while police and workers at the institutions targeted were powerless to stop them.

“We have no reason to arrest anyone since what they’re doing isn’t illegal at all and even if what they do with the materials afterward might be illegal, we have no proof that they’re going to commit any crimes” said one officer outside one of the libraries.  

Many of the museums targeted had online virtual tours posted on their websites, but that didn’t stop demonstrators from making their own “custom” tours of the premises.  There were some requests by security to not use flash photography with some of the exhibits which were rules that the demonstrators had no problems abiding by.  “We’re not here to start a fight, we’re here to show there’s no reason for conflict” said one demonstrator we talked to.  While the publishing companies are nearly powerless to try and prosecute so many who will be taking part in the action, the museum authorities saw no reason why this should be seen as a “demonstration” at all.  “To call something a ‘demonstration’ is to suggest that there is something that is being opposed although no one here is opposed to what these people are doing and in fact many of our staff have helped with the effort” said a curator at the premises.  In fact, many were welcomed seeing how generous they were with donations as they walked into the museums.  

Some public officials have spoken out against the group taking books and media out of the library in order to make them available to the entire world.  They believe the purpose of these groups sponsoring the event is to make publishing industries cave to the demands of those who believe all literature should be made freely available despite income.  As strong as the words were from many officials, they were powerless to stop the demonstrators from pulling off their actions.  There have been suggestions that those who orchestrated this month-long campaign could be charged with “enabling and promoting copyright infringement” by making calls for these types of actions.  However, no formal charges hav

Go get’em, Rachel. She rocks in this take down of Richard Cohen and his homophobic “research” that is being used to support an death penalty law in Uganda

Chalk One up for Science, as if Science, were subject to Popular Vote …

(If that were true, guess who would of won in 2000?)

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell interviews Al Gore



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21…

MITCHELL: Palin calls it “junk science.” She says, “The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won’t change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worst.”

What’s your response to that?

It’s no secret that the far right loathes anyone and everyone to the left of Adolf Hitler.  Just try to get into one of Sarah Palin’s Nuremberg-style rallies; you’ll find plenty of evidence for that statement.  But a certain branch of liberalism is hated even by unapologetic left-wingers.

In a 1996 column by Adolph Reed, reproduced this week on CommonDreams.org, the progressive writer summarized the reason for his hatred in one paragraph:

during the ’80s liberal opinion gradually accommodated to Reaganism by sliding rightward. Two rhetorical justifications emerged for this adaptation. The Democratic Leadership Council called for a new centrism, jettisoning egalitarian politics and the constituencies identified with it. Additionally, an excesses-of-the-’60s-as-fall-from-grace fable propelled this slide and justified the smug dismissal of those of us who didn’t want to go along. This new liberalism curtly demanded that we grow up and accept the realpolitik; Reaganism was all our fault for going too far anyway.

That evaluation is echoed this week by self-professed socialist and TruthDig.com writer Chris Hedges, who writes:

They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama-as if he reads them-asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.

Robert Scheer blasts Obama for wearing the mask of a reformer while continuing business as usual.  Glenn Greenwald reports on the creepy, cult-like devotion of Obama’s remaining supporters, exposing them for the false leftists they are.

Can one really begrudge these guys their bitterness?  John Conyers can bitch all he wants about everything from witnesses thumbing their noses at subpoenas to continual waffling by Obamacrats, but at the end of the day he still cannot be counted upon to actually follow through on his frustrated-sounding rhetoric.  The tired old man who had the power to start impeachment proceedings against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for two years and refused sure as hell isn’t going to start playing hardball with Hopey McChangerton now.

The same holds true for the rest of the so-called liberals, who have proven as dangerous to America and the rest of the world as any right-wing, fascist Republican.  These are the same people who regularly denounce anyone to their left as “purists,” as though not selling one’s principles for access to power is somehow a bad thing.  These are the same people who promote half measures as the only reasonable things to push for, proceed to accept less and less when told no by the powerful, and then lecture us on the left for calling them on it as though we’re made up of children who can’t handle the grim realities of political activism.

Small wonder they earn the scorn of genuine left-wingers.  Perhaps it is time for all of us who haven’t thrown away our principles to look upon these pseudo-liberals for what they are: shameless phonies masking their true right-wing ideology.