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And, yes, I DO take it personally: 07/13/2008 - 07/20/2008
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"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
- Noam Chomsky
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And, yes, I DO take it personally

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Video-blogging, Feria Mataderos, Buenos Aires

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yeah, ok... it's taken me a week to put this up... (see previous post...)

a friend and I visited feria mataderos last sunday... in winter, the fair starts about noon and closes up shortly after dark... these two guitar players were the second to the last performers and, boy, were they good...! the guitar player on the right had been playing world-class flamenco guitar and then decided to amaze and delight everybody with his prowess... i wish my camera was able to take longer video clips..
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The Kabul ice cream man

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i was sitting in the office in kabul one afternoon in early june, when i heard some music coming from outside that was unmistakably that of an ice cream vendor... now, i'm sure that, no matter where you might be in the world, that kind of music would immediately trigger a mental picture of "ice cream man"... i ran to the second-floor terrace just in time to see the man and his little, umbrella-covered cart disappearing around a corner... i was determined to get a video clip, so, for the next few days, i was primed, the moment i heard that music, to grab my camera and do the deed... several times, i heard the music, grabbed the camera, but couldn't quite pin down the location... i was telling this story to someone and they asked, "why didn't you run outside...?" i patiently explained that, in kabul, afghanistan, you simply didn't just RUN OUTSIDE... anyway, the afternoon before the morning i was to leave, i heard the music, snatched up my camera, ran to the terrace, and GOT HIM...!



i tried posting this well over a month ago but, for some reason, my youtube uploader wasn't working right, so, after several abortive efforts, i said to hell with it... today, i decided to re-install the uploader and, VOILA, it works...! (yes, i'm sometimes a little slow figuring things out...)

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Friday, July 18, 2008

Send Karl Rove to jail

something i can certainly get behind... how about you...?

sign the petition here...

brave new films...




i can see it's time to trot out my personally doctored rove photo that i haven't used in a while...

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Privatizing profits, socializing risks - the continuing financial melt-down

yes, it's time to get angry...

william greider...

We are witnessing a momentous event -- the great deflation of Wall Street -- and it is far from over. The crash of IndyMac is just the beginning. More banks will fail, so will many more debtors. The crisis has the potential to transform American politics because, first it destroys a generation of ideological bromides about free markets, and, second, because it makes visible the ugly power realities of our deformed democracy. Democrats and Republicans are bipartisan in this crisis because they have colluded all along over thirty years in creating the unregulated financial system and mammoth mega-banks that produced the phony valuations and deceitful assurances. The federal government protects the most powerful interests from the consequences of their plundering. It prescribes "market justice" for everyone else.

[...]

Americans should forget about whining; it's too late for that. People need to get angry -- really, really angry -- and take it out on both parties. What the country needs right now is a few more politicians in Washington with the guts to stand up and tell us the hard truth about our situation. It will be painful to hear. They will be denounced as "whiners." But truth might be our only way out.

funny thing about truth... it makes forward movement possible... let the house of cards collapse so we can get on with it...

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$16.2M for the Air Force to create "world class" accommodations exceeding the standards of a regular business-class flight

flying as a passenger in a large military cargo aircraft is no joy ride... neither is flying economy on a commercial airline or a military passenger aircraft... but my response to that is, "tough shit"... i'm a regular long-haul flyer and i have to make do with what i can afford - economy - or what my employer will pay for - economy... if i have work to do, i figure out how to get it done... if i want to sleep, i try to make myself as comfortable as possible and nod off... i don't get the pleasure of the lie-flat beds in first class... i don't even get the pleasure of the fully-reclining seats in business class... the last thing we need is our military leaders even more separated from their troops than they are by enjoying first-class amenities on their travels, particularly amenities paid for by anti-terrorism funds...

from page one of today's wapo...

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

[...]

Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.

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The Air Force's new capsules, which will
fit in large aircraft, are meant to ensure
that senior military officers and civilian
leaders can travel in comfort.
(Special To The Washington Post)


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An Air Force document specified that the
capsule's seats are to swivel such that
"the longitudinal axis of the seat is
parallel to the longitudinal axis of the
aircraft" regardless of where the capsules
are facing.
(Special To The Washington Post)


The effort has been slowed, however, by congressional resistance to using counterterrorism funds for the project and by lengthy internal deliberations about a series of demands for modifications by Air Force generals. One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table's wood be darkened.

Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.

In all, for the past three years the service has asked to divert $16.2 million to the effort from what the military calls the GWOT, or global war on terrorism. Congress has twice told the service that it cannot, including an August 2007 letter from Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to the Pentagon ordering that the money be spent on a "higher priority" need.

Officials say the Air Force nonetheless decided last year to take $331,000 from counterterrorism funds to cover a cost overrun, partly stemming from the design changes, although a senior officer said yesterday in response to inquiries that it will reverse that decision.

i repeat... tough shit... fly like the rest of us... more importantly, fly like the troops have to fly...

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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Note to the New Yorker - the world as you know it does NOT end at the Hudson River [UPDATE]

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no one likes satire better than i do, but in these days of heightened sensitivity to goddam near EVERYTHING, the line between good satire and outright offensiveness is thin... the new yorker, a purported bastion of good taste and high-brow sophistication, should have known better... yes, i know that manhattanites think the world ends at the hudson river, but my guess is that there are also plenty of manhattanites who think the new yorker shot itself in the foot...

al jazeera english...




let's face it... the new yorker could have saved their asses AND themselves a whole lot of trouble by simply captioning the cover with something like "How the lunatic fringe sees the Obamas" or "Fear-mongering at its finest" or SOMETHING, ferchrissake, that would have left no doubt as to the satirical intent... leaving the cover to stand alone was simply an invitation to a very justified firestorm that tarred not only the magazine but also, by association, one of its finest contributors, sy hersh...

[UPDATE]

next week's new yorker cover, demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that turnabout is fair play...

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Sunday, July 13, 2008

The deep shame of our treatment of illegal immigrants

notice: fair use violation, but too important not to post in full...

from today's nyt...

July 13, 2008
Editorial

The Shame of Postville, Iowa

Anyone who has doubts that this country is abusing and terrorizing undocumented immigrant workers should read an essay by Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor and Spanish-language court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of a huge immigration workplace raid at a meatpacking plant in Iowa.

The essay chillingly describes what Dr. Camayd-Freixas saw and heard as he translated for some of the nearly 400 undocumented workers who were seized by federal agents at the Agriprocessors kosher plant in Postville in May.

Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in a twist of Dickensian cruelty, more than 260 were charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and most were sentenced to five months in prison.

What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.

Dr. Camayd-Freixas’s essay describes “the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see” — because cameras were forbidden.

“Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”

He wrote that they had waived their rights in hopes of being quickly deported, “since they had families to support back home.” He said that they did not understand the charges they faced, adding, “and, frankly, neither could I.”

No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.

Court interpreters are normally impartial participants and keep their opinions to themselves. But Dr. Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, said he was so offended by the cruelty of the prosecutions that he felt compelled to break his silence. “A line was crossed at Postville,” he wrote.


our so-called fairly-elected government has done nothing BUT cross lines for years and the shame of it all just keeps accumulating...

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