ATHENS – A Greek anarchist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for posting more than a dozen parcel bombs to European leaders and embassies, police said, in a campaign that caused alarm but no major injuries.
Two members of the radical Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei who were arrested as the rigged parcels were sent out early this month confirmed their involvement in a letter sent to the Indymedia website, police said.
November 23, 2010 archive
Nov 23 2010
Christmas Presents Come Early To European Leaders: Explosive Materials (Deluxe Edition)
Nov 23 2010
Entice the Rich and Scrap the Cap
Cross-posted at DailyKos.
Doing away with the cap on Social Security tax would allow the Social Security trust fund to continue in the black indefinitely and the nation would never need to confront the fact that this peoples’ trust is the one debt elected officials don’t want to pay. It could also raise benefits and there might even be enough left over to lower instead of raise the retirement age.
But with the direction of the national debate, getting high income Americans to pay on a larger portion or their entire income is a pipe dream. I would like to point out a diary written by fake consultant, Social Security: If The Rich Paid Taxes Like You And Me…Problem Solved.
A diary not about the more sensible but unobtainable goal of getting the rich to pay in support of the rest of the nation. Instead of removing the tax cap to support the middle class, remove the cap and increase the benefit schedule. This does not shore up Social Security as much but it could get another class of people interested, people with influence.
Nov 23 2010
The Whore
(This will be somewhat graphic or horrifying for those of tender sensibilities… it is in fact a nightmare that I share with many women who may find themselves with nothing left to trade in some future collapse. Its a very dark piece.)
It had been my dream home for years, on a hill overlooking a lake on either side. I had it toured once in the better days with a builder’s show. At more than 8,000 square feet, its enormous logs still made the spacious rooms feel homey. Every bedroom had a private deck, its views of the gentle slopes to the lake to the east shown through hand polished knotty pine spindles made of branches and twigs. The kitchen was a dream, its gleaming marble and Hobart equipment ready to serve any culinary palate, replete with a counter top that not only had special sliding windows to the outdoors, but would rotate completely, windows and all to present a buffet to the deck at the press of a button. The engineering in spinning a slab that size amazed me.
Once I saw the flier taped to his homestead sign, saying that new crew of house cleaners would be hired, I raced at the opportunity. It would make the grueling day a little less painful to handle things of such beauty, I had thought. My enthusiasm for the place landed me the job and I was so grateful.
Nov 23 2010
well there it is
Chris Hedges yesterday… just go read the whole thing. Jeebuz.
There is no hope left for achieving significant reform or restoring our democracy through established mechanisms of power. The electoral process has been hijacked by corporations. The judiciary has been corrupted and bought. The press shuts out the most important voices in the country and feeds us the banal and the absurd. Universities prostitute themselves for corporate dollars. Labor unions are marginal and ineffectual forces. The economy is in the hands of corporate swindlers and speculators. And the public, enchanted by electronic hallucinations, remains passive and supine. We have no tools left within the power structure in our fight to halt unchecked corporate pillage.
…
All reform movements, from the battle for universal health care to the struggle for alternative energy and sane environmental controls to financial regulation to an end to our permanent war economy, have run into this new, terrifying configuration of power. They have confronted an awful truth. We do not count. And they have been helpless to respond as those who are most skilled in the manipulation of hate lead a confused populace to call for their own enslavement.
Nov 23 2010
Idiots at Pentagon Can’t Even Recognize Taliban Commanders!
Idiots at the Pentagon who constantly claim to recognize “suspected insurgents” through the tiny cameras in Predator drones as they destroy whole villages in Afghanistan…
Idiots at the Pentagon who hire Blackwater assassins to murder “suspected insurgents” all over Pakistan and Afghanistan …
Those same idiots can’t even recognize the second-ranking commander of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour!
For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.
But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.
“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”
Nov 23 2010
Jan Schakowsky on the PBS NewsHour
Posted last night at DailyKos and Stars Hollow Gazette.
It was so good to see a bit of reality from an elected official. Last week Chris Bowers presented Jan Schakowsky’s deficit reduction plan and last night she spoke up on the TV.
You can find the transcript here. The interview is really worth viewing and really worth passing around. A proposal that says we don’t have to go after the middle and lower classes and should go after the rich coming from an elected official was refreshing.
But will anybody else ever hear Rep. Jan Schakowsky?
Nov 23 2010
Docudharma Times Tuesday November 23
North and South Korea Exchange Dozens of Artillery Shells
By MARK McDONALD
Published: November 23, 2010
SEOUL, South Korea – North and South Korea exchanged artillery fire on Tuesday after dozens of shells fired from the North struck a South Korean island near the countries’ disputed western sea border, South Korean military officials said.
The South Korean military immediately went to “crisis status,” said a Defense Ministry official. There were widespread media reports that Seoul had scrambled F-16 fighter jets but the official declined to confirm whether the planes were in the air.The South Korean broadcaster YTN reported that one marine had been killed and three others seriously wounded in the shelling on the island, in addition to two civilian casualties. TV footage showed large plumes of black smoke spiraling from the island.
Nov 23 2010
Muse in the Morning
 Muse in the Morning |
Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.
| The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
–Friedrich Nietzsche |
 Ornamental |
Nov 23 2010
‘Artillery fire’ on Korea border
‘Artillery fire’ on Korea border
North Korea has fired several artillery shells across its western maritime border, prompting return fire from South Korea, reports say.
Nov 23 2010
I Want You….To Watch This
(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)
I want you to watch this and realize this is the point in which you realize you lost your freedom. I want you to watch this and realize this is fascism, it’s here. Perverted sick people hired by a government who wants them to get dirty on the public, and I want you to think about what you are going to do about it.
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