|
| |
Archives
|
Saturday November 13 2004
|
A Man and his People
by Uri Avnery
|
Wherever he may be buried when he passes away, the day will come when his remains will be reinterred by a free Palestinian government in the holy shrines in Jerusalem.
| |
[more]
Yasser Arafat, 1929-2004
|
For nearly five decades, Yasser Arafat was a larger-than-life figure for those who admired him as well as those who hated and feared him, or, to be more precise, for those who hated and feared the Palestinian view of history, justice, and politics. Since the late 1960s, Arafat was the icon of the Palestinian cause. Like Che Guevara, Arafat's image on a poster, a T-shirt, or a television screen could convey rich and complex meanings and sentiments across wide and diverse social landscapes. With his trademark black-and-white checkered kuffiyah draped carefully over his shoulder so as to assume the proportions and shape of the map of Palestine, appearances by Arafat were almost always electrifying political events.
| |
[more]
Arafat leaves a troubled legacy but no doubt that there is a Palestinian people
by Helena Cobban
|
But at least Arafat and his colleagues achieved this: Back in 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir voiced a judgment shared by many in the West when she said, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people." But today, few people doubt that the Palestinian nation exists, and neither Israel nor its supporters can ignore the Palestinians' claim to establish a sovereign state in a portion of historic Palestine.
| |
[more]
photography
William Greiner
Photographs
[more]
thanks to coincidences
iraq
I will just leave you with these comments by Riverbend, an Iraqi woman living in Baghdad. She always describes things better than any of the western news media.
Rule of Iraq Assassins Must End...
by Riverbend
|
I'm not feeling well- it's a combination of the change of weather and the decline in the situation. Eid is less than a week away but no one is feeling at all festive. We're all worried about the situation in Falloojeh and surrounding regions. We've ceased worrying about the explosions in Baghdad and are now concerned with the people who have left their homes and valuables and are living off of the charity of others.
Allawi declared a "State of Emergency" a couple of days ago... A state of emergency *now* - because previous to this week, we Iraqis were living in an American made Utopia, as the world is well aware. So what does an "Emergency State" signify for Iraqis? Basically, it means we are now *officially* more prone to being detained, raided, and just generally abused by our new Iraqi forces and American ones. Today they declared a curfew on Baghdad after 10 p.m. but it hasn't really made an impact because people have stopped leaving their houses after dark anyway.
The last few days have been tense and heart-rending. Most of us are really worried about Falloojeh. Really worried about Falloojeh and all the innocents dying and dead in that city. There were several explosions in Baghdad these last few days and hardly any of them were covered by the press. All this chaos has somehow become uncomfortably normal. Two years ago I never would have dreamed of living like this- now this lifestyle has become the norm and I can barely remembering having lived any other way.
[...]
Dozens of civilians have died these last few days in Ramadi, Falloojeh, and Samarra. We are hearing about complete families being killed under the rain of bombs being dropped by American forces. The phone lines in those areas seem to be cut off. We've been trying to call some relatives in Ramadi for the last two days, but it's next to impossible. We keep getting that dreadful busy tone and there's just no real way of knowing what is going on in there. There is talk of the use of cluster bombs and other forbidden weaponry.[...]
Meanwhile, Rumsfeld is making his asinine remarks again,
[...]
There are a couple of things I agree with. The first is the following:
"Over time you'll find that the process of tipping will take place, that more and more of the Iraqis will be angry about the fact that their innocent people are being killed..."
He's right. It is going to have a decisive affect on Iraqi opinion- but just not the way he thinks. There was a time when pro-occupation Iraqis were able to say, "Let's give them a chance..." That time is over. Whenever someone says that lately, at best, they get a lot of nasty looks... often it's worse. A fight breaks out and a lot of yelling ensues... how can one condone occupation? How can one condone genocide? What about the mass graves of Falloojeh? Leaving Islam aside, how does one agree to allow the murder of fellow-Iraqis by the strongest military in the world?
The second thing Rumsfeld said made me think he was reading my mind:
"Rule of Iraq assassins must end..." I couldn't agree more: Get out Americans.
| |
[more]
One of Those Weeks...
|
These last few days have been explosive- literally.
The sounds seem to be coming from everywhere. I've gotten tired of running upstairs and out on to the roof to find out where it's coming from. It feels like the first days of the war sometimes- planes, explosions, bullets, smoke... roads cut off.
We haven't attempted to leave the house but an uncle who was supposed to visit called to say he wouldn't be able to come because so many roads were blocked. Many people were told not to go to work and students stopped going to college yesterday. It's one of those weeks. Some areas in Baghdad seem to be cut off by armed gangs.
Eid is in a couple of days and that means there's Eid cleaning to do. The water was cut off all day today and the electricity was gone too. This seems to be happening all over Baghdad- we heard about the same situation in several areas. Can someone say 'collective punishment'?! WE didn't kidnap your relatives Allawi... it was Zarqawi, remember?!
| |
[more]
Murder...
|
People in Falloojeh are being murdered. The stories coming back are horrifying. People being shot in cold blood in the streets and being buried under tons of concrete and iron... where is the world? Bury Arafat and hurry up and pay attention to what's happening in Iraq.
They say the people have nothing to eat. No produce is going into the city and the water has been cut off for days and days. Do you know what it's like to have no clean water??? People are drinking contaminated water and coming down with diarrhoea and other diseases. There are corpses in the street because no one can risk leaving their home to bury people. Families are burying children and parents in the gardens of their homes. WHERE IS EVERYONE???
| |
[more]
photography
Arnaud Frich Photagraphies
[more]
thanks to RangeFinderForum.com
oil
$80 Oil, Here We Come!!!
|
In January of this year, I put together an article that appeared in the February issue that laid out the case for and against $50 oil. While the arguments against $50 oil have been thoroughly discredited, most market observers still do not understand that the price of oil will continue to head much higher. In this issue, I will examine several of the reasons why the price of oil will not significantly pull back from today’s levels and is likely to reach the $80 mark within the next 24 months.
| |
[more]
thanks to The Mike Runge Peak Oil Archive
photography
Xavier Ribas
[more]
thanks to Street Photography mailing list
james kuntsler
There is a lot to chew on in this site. Interest comments on American space and place.
James Howard Kunstler
|
James Howard Kunstler says he wrote The Geography of Nowhere, "Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work. A land full of places that are not worth caring about will soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending."
| |
[more]
thanks to RangeFinderForum.com
Cargo Karma
We Got What We Asked For
|
The era we are entering is going to be a humdinger and it is natural to doubt that we are prepared for it. In this election year, none of the candidates is addressing the awful questions arising out of the global oil peak, including how we are going to feed ourselves when our oil- and gas-based agriculture grinds to a halt, as it surely will. There ought to be no question that we will have to reconstruct local networks of economic interdependency in the very near future -- that is if we want to continue as a civilized society.
Jobs are not prizes handed out by a government. They are roles in a social matrix. A big box store is not a social matrix. It is a parasitical economic swarm organism like a cloud of locusts that descends on a locality and picks it clean.
As the oil markets collapse, Wal-Mart and its kindred swarm organisms will not be able to continue their operations, which depend on both the price and supply of gasoline remaining very cheap and utterly dependable forever. Old Sam's "warehouse on wheels" won't be worth running up and down the subsidized interstate highways. Old Sam's customers will not be able to pretend they have purchasing power anymore. Old Sam's suppliers in China may find their government maneuvering strategically with the US to secure the remaining oil in Arabia. And that kind of international friction generally makes for poor trade relations.
As these things come to pass in succession, the parking lots will empty and the lights will go out in the big boxes. Maybe then the public will begin to notice that something has happened to our country.
| |
[more]
photography
Willard Stewart
Photographs for the WAP & HABS
[more]
thanks to Life In The Present
prescription drugs
The Insiders
|
The powerful pharmaceutical industry has recently been hammered by new books denouncing its strategies in keeping U.S. prescription drug prices high and challenging its arguments against proposals to lower them. But now those criticisms are being reinforced by unlikely sources—insiders who know how drug companies work and are willing to speak out publicly against some of their practices. Three such insiders—a top marketing executive in the world's largest drug company, a salesman who promotes products to doctors and an ex-lobbyist who left the business in disgust—recently talked to the AARP Bulletin about their experiences.
Speaking more in sorrow than in anger, all three paint a picture of a once-admired industry that has lost its ethical way, more concerned to protect its bottom line than patients' health
Their comments come at a time when the industry is taking a nosedive in public opinion. Two in three Americans now believe that drug prices are "unreasonably high," and 60 percent favor federal price controls as a solution, according to the latest Harris polls. Only 44 percent think drug companies serve consumers well, down from 79 percent seven years ago, the sharpest drop in esteem of any industry. Big Tobacco, the most reviled group, now rates only 14 points lower than what is increasingly called Big Pharma.
[...]
'It is obvious to me that probably tens of thousands of Americans are dying today because they can't afford drugs. And once you recognize that is the case, if you don't speak up, you're really part of the problem.'
| |
[more]
commie cameras
More adventures with my FED 2. I bought a collapsible Industar 50 from Alex in the Ukraine, for $17. It's a copy (not exact) of the Leitz Elmar 50/3.5. I had always wondered why anyone would use an f3.5 Elmar when, if you wanted a collapsible, there was the f2 Summitar with another 2 stops. I finally realized that the I-50 / Elmar *really* collapses.
The lens extends out for shooting. The glass is clear and the reports I found indicate it's a really sharp lens.
When it's retracted it will fit in a coat pocket. Now I need a coat with pockets.
This combination is a joy. I've got a mint Jupiter 8 50/2 coming soon. I'll use that for low available light. My Jupiter 12 35/2.8 was missent from the Ukraine to Italy. I received the lens that was supposed to go to the Italian. He has his know and mine finally showed up in Italy and is on it's way home. I traded four roles of film for another Fed 2 from a member of the Range Finder Forum. It arrived today. It has shutter release problems. If I can't fix it, it will be a learning camera for camera repair. I think I can fix it. Now I'm looking at a Fed 3a for the Jupiter 8. It has more low speeds.
I have some more adjustments to make to dial in the FED 2 in but it is going to be very nice. After it's all adjusted and cleaned I will be getting rid of the vulcanite and replacing it with leather and new paint. Sweet!
where i've been
It's been pretty traumatic this week. Zoe's mom has been staying with us. She has early Alzheimer's. He medication is being adjusted and that has taken up most of our energy dealing with that. She has been living by herself but she isn't comfortable with that any more. Many adjustments coming.
election 2004
I have way more links on the election than I have time to put up right now but these two cover some important bases.
They voted for this mess
|
"My stepfather's mother, a northeast Nebraska housewife all her life, used to drive my mother crazy with her political views. A widow living solely on Social Security benefits and paying for her doctors with Medicare, grandma Elsie constantly spouted something along the lines of 'I'll never vote for a Democrat. They've never done anything for me.'"
So here's the thing. We're wrong. We have to stop. We have to do something different.
[...]
And Elsie? She's just a willfully ignorant asshole. Who votes. And there's millions just like her. They want to take what we give them and then go to the polls and vote so that those things are gone forever. For everyone. I say, "hey, dumbass, you don't see your Medicare, your social security, your safe food and medicine, your right to vote and own property, all these rights and safeties liberals fought and died for. You hate liberalism because Sean Hannity told you to? Fine--give it all up--lose all your rights, your safety and comfort. Great. But don't drag us down with you." Why should I lose my rights because all the Elsies in the world go vote their hatred and delusion at their pastor Karl Rove's bidding?
We can read Mark Ames' The Spite Vote , we can read Franks' What's the Matter With Kansas? We can think and discuss and argue and get angry with each other for various sins of political incorrectness all day long. And in the end, we're left facing the fact that more people than we thought possible are just plain assholes. They're mean. They're weak. They're cowardly.
They're hateful. And they're fucking stupid.
They just voted in their president. And they're marching us toward a fascist state .
(And it doesn't matter if the election was Diebolded and robocalled and thwarted at the polls, either: it should never have been close enough to steal.)
These people never vote for good government; they don't even believe in government. They're spoiled little toddlers who freak out when they're expected to share. They don't think they have to pay for anything that they take. And they're right--they don't.
We do .
[...]
Let's secede.
And for our first act of secession, Arios announces The Tax Fairness Act of 2005 :
"I suggest the Democrats first major legislative proposal, complete with press conferences, laser show, hunger strike, whatever, is the "Tax Fairness Act of 2005." This Act would mandate that, within some reasonable margin of error, your state should get as much back from the feds as is sent to them in taxes. It's time to end this kind of geographic welfare!"
We have the money. We have the skills. We have the knowledge and science and art and decency. We have the money. Blue state taxes go to red states.
We subsidize their bigoted, murderous asses.
All we have to do is help the Republicans stomp the federal income tax into oblivion and then crank up our state's income tax to cover our social programs.
So, let's teach them evolution first-hand, and let them starve. No more Blue State funds to Red States.
Write them off, because their culture war is more important to them than ethics, security, retirement, overtime, the house they live in, the food in their bellies or even the health and safety of their children.
If red state voters want to vote GOP, let them live in the world they vote for.
| |
[more]
Sparta 286 Athens 254
|
We have just had the election of 1856 - and with it will come the radicalization of the liberal wing of American politics, on that will use its technological and social organization as leverage in a life or death struggle with the militarized oligarchy which is now in power.
It's about rent versus capital, and money as a stock, versus money as a flow
America, narrowly, voted for National Socialism - a system by which the industrial and technological sections of the economy are taxes and pillaged for the sinews of a militarized economy, while the hinterland is given access to land, social status and oil in order to hold on to previous value relationships. Nazi comparisons are facile - because they lead to the wrong conclusion. Americans did not vote for racism, bigotry, death camps or any such will o the whisp. They voted for an ossification of the social structure, and placing a certain nationalist mania in a privileged social and political position. The army cannot be questioned, and those traits which make it possible to fill that army are national imperatives.
The campaign hinged on this - the Swift Boats and marriage attacks were not distractions, but encapsulations of two simple points. The first was a way of saying that Kerry would betrayed the military, and therefore he would cut the military to balance the budget. Simple terms: make the cost fall on someone else. The second was a way of saying that the social changes that come with a high production, high value added economy - namely a cosmopolitan society - would happen under Kerry.
That is Kerry was presented, accurately, as being a threat to the social and economic hierarchy to the land owning classes. Land, which holds its value through having cheap gasoline, demands a military machine to obtain the oil and to maintain the social inequality should it come to that. Kerry was, accurately, presented as someone who would not go to war for oil.
| |
[more]
For those not up on history — the election of 1865 set the stage for the Civil War.
photography
Jasper Wiedeman
[more]
thanks to Conscientious
iraq
Disappointment...
by Riverbend
|
Well, what is there to say? Disappointment doesn't even begin to describe it...
To the red states (and those who voted for Bush): You deserve no better- I couldn't wish worse on you if I tried. He represents you perfectly... and red really is your color. It's the color of the blood of thousands of Iraqis and by the time this four-year catastrophe in the White House is over, tousands of Americans, likely.
To the blue states (and those who were thinking when they voted): Condolences. Good luck- you'll need it.
I'm thinking of offering up the idea of "Election Condolences" to Hallmark or Yahoo Greetings. The cards can have those silly little poems inside of them, like:
Condolences and heartfelt tears-
You get Bush for four more years!
or
Sympathies in advance
For when they reinstate the draft!
We hope (insert_name_here) stays as safe as he/she can
And writes frequently while in Iran!
| |
[more]
Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, On the eve of the invasion of Falluja
|
With Vice-President Dick Cheney describing the presidential election result as "a broad, nationwide victory," secured on the platform of an unapologetically hard-line foreign policy, the world should expect more of the same from President George W. Bush and his administration in the "war on terror" he declared on September 12, 2001.
Specifically, this means Bush, Cheney, and their coterie of neoconservative ideologues will continue to visualize the ill-defined war on terrorism in purely military terms, and deploy the Pentagon as their primary instrument to win it. What that undoubtedly translates into is: an immediate assault on Falluja in Iraq to destroy a bastion of insurgents resisting the occupation of their country, and ratcheting up pressure on Iran under the rubric of "countering Tehran's nuclear arms ambitions."
This will take place in a context in which anti-American feeling, already rife in the Muslim world, is rising yet again in the wake of a recent report from Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. It concluded that some 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died between March 2003 (when the Bush administration with its British allies invaded Iraq) and September 2004; that the largest number of these deaths were caused by the unleashed air power of the invading and then occupying armies; and that women and children had suffered most.
In other words, the invaders may have managed to kill up to a third as many Iraqis in a year-and-a-half as President Saddam Hussein did in his 24-year dictatorial rule. This comparison led the Riyadh-based, pro-government Saudi Gazette to ask rhetorically, "If this is a war on terror, then who are the terrorists and who are the terrorized?"
The net result of Washington's escalating confrontation with Muslim countries and peoples under various guises will only be to widen further the gulf that already exists between the United States and Muslims in general, paving the way for a much-dreaded "clash of civilizations" that never need have happened.
| |
[more]
Polk: American Options in Iraq
|
Official inquiries have verified what independent observers have long said: the invasion of Iraq was not justified; a small, remote and poor country, Iraq posed no threat to the United States. As in the Tonkin Gulf issue during the Vietnam war, the Congress and public were misled. Those of us who said so from the beginning are tempted now to say "I told you so" but that indulgence doesn't lead anywhere. When I was the member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East, I had the duty not to lament past mistakes but to identify what could be done to pick up the pieces where they then lay. With the elections behind us and the Bush administration in office for the next four years, an intelligent choice among current options in Iraq becomes even more urgent. Now as a private citizen, I ask what can be done with the current reality?
Iraq is in a terrible condition, its society has been torn apart, scores of thousands have been killed and even more wounded, its infrastructure has been shattered, dreadful hatreds have been generated. Today, there are no good options -- only better or worse -- alternatives. Three appear possible:
| |
[more]
photography
Wijnanda Deroo
[more]
thanks to Conscientious
just busy
Posting has been a little light lately. Reality has been rearing it's ugly head again. It may be a few days before I can stuff reality back into it's bottle. It's not like there is a shortage of links. There is one good bit of news. My son-in-law didn't end up in Fallujah like we thought. He's still in Ramadi. That's good — for now.
|
|
|
|
