tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38083652023-10-18T07:52:05.021-07:00Tomorrow and Tomorrow and TomorrowTomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Out, out brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.comBlogger177125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-76674405946207719712012-06-12T10:24:00.001-07:002012-06-12T10:24:38.801-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The world has taken quite a wobble in the past few years and the most significant truth I've found is that is that most of my neighbors are so uninformed as to assume that their 10% CD's are going to offset the loss of their real wealth by 18 % inflation. Not to say that an increased money supply would not help if it was introduced from the bottom of the pyramid; but it is coming only to the top and they are just salting it away to UBS in Zurich and The Bank of Israel in Tel Aviv. And Barack Obama is completely aware of this and is selling the shekel market to the Americans. BO is the greatest actor of all time and should face the gallows. </div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-50681362206312015012011-11-28T15:50:00.000-08:002011-11-28T15:50:52.347-08:00Lock 'em up, Danno!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;"><b>American soldiers who come home will feel the need to kill Americans now that their blood lust has been stirred by Republican scum and "Liberals" who couldn't carry the jockstrap of a real progressive hero or heroine. </b><br />
<br />
to wit:<br />
<br />
While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;"><a href="https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3865&s_subsrc=fixNDAA" style="color: #003399;">Senators need to hear from you</a>, on whether you think your front yard is part of a “battlefield” and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — <a href="https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3865&s_subsrc=fixNDAA" style="color: #003399;">the power</a> to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;"><a href="https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3865&s_subsrc=fixNDAA" style="color: #003399;">The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision</a> is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress/senate-panel-pushes-ahead-with-defense-bill-over-white-house-objections-on-terror-suspect-plan/2011/11/15/gIQAEUoYPN_story.html" style="color: #003399;">The bill was drafted in secret</a> by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">I know it sounds incredible. New powers to use the military worldwide, even within the United States? Hasn’t anyone told the Senate that Osama bin Laden is dead, that the president is pulling all of the combat troops out of Iraq and trying to figure out how to get combat troops out of Afghanistan too? And American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">The answer on why now is nothing more than election season politics. The White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the Attorney General have all said that the indefinite detention provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act are harmful and counterproductive. <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/112/saps1867s_20111117.pdf" style="color: #003399;">The White House has even threatened a veto</a>. But Senate politics has propelled this bad legislation to the Senate floor.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">But there is <a href="https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3865&s_subsrc=fixNDAA" style="color: #003399;">a way to stop this dangerous legislation</a>. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) is offering the <a href="https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3865&s_subsrc=fixNDAA" style="color: #003399;">Udall Amendment</a> that will delete the harmful provisions and replace them with a requirement for an orderly Congressional review of detention power. The Udall Amendment will make sure that the bill matches up with American values.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">In support of this harmful bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explained that the bill will “basically say in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield” and people can be imprisoned without charge or trial “American citizen or not.” Another supporter, Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) also declared that the bill is needed because “America is part of the battlefield.”</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">The solution is the <a href="https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3865&s_subsrc=fixNDAA" style="color: #003399;">Udall Amendment</a>; a way for the Senate to say no to indefinite detention without charge or trial anywhere in the world where any president decides to use the military. Instead of simply going along with a bill that was drafted in secret and is being jammed through the Senate, <a href="https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3865&s_subsrc=fixNDAA" style="color: #003399;">the Udall Amendment</a>deletes the provisions and sets up an orderly review of detention power. It tries to take the politics out and put American values back in.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">In response to proponents of the indefinite detention legislation who contend that the bill “applies to American citizens and designates the world as the battlefield,” and that the “heart of the issue is whether or not the United States is part of the battlefield,” Sen. Udall disagrees, and says that we can win this fight<a href="https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3865&s_subsrc=fixNDAA" style="color: #003399;">without worldwide war and worldwide indefinite detention</a>.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">The senators pushing the indefinite detention proposal have made their goals very clear that they want an okay for a worldwide military battlefield, that even extends to your hometown. That is an extreme position that will forever change our country.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">Now is the time to stop this bad idea. <a href="https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3865&s_subsrc=fixNDAA" style="color: #003399;">Please urge your senators to vote YES on the Udall Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.</a></div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;"><strong>UPDATE: </strong>Don’t be confused by anyone claiming that the indefinite detention legislation does not apply to American citizens. It does. There is an exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032 of the bill), but no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial (section 1013 of the bill). So, the result is that, under the bill, the military has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens, but it does not have to use its power unless ordered to do so.</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">But you don’t have to believe us. Instead, read what one of the bill’s sponsors,<a href="http://www.c-spanvideo.org/appearance/600840428" style="color: #003399;">Sen. Lindsey Graham said about it on the Senate floor</a>: “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”</div><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">There you have it — indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial. And the Senate is likely to vote on it Monday or Tuesday.</div></div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-13723244482754813642011-10-28T09:31:00.000-07:002011-10-28T09:37:40.527-07:00Lines Drawn: Difficult weekend with Hades and Zeus Sunday 30th Oct<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Not a great time for a revolutionary act but it never really is. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">hades zeus</span> <br />
<br />
<br />
Grave viciousness. Destruction by fire. Burns. War atrocities. Villainous, mean trick. Industry. Lack of coal. Strike. Lockout. Destructive fire. Outbreak of hate. Causing a disaster. Incendiary. Idleness and vice. Unable to pursue one's objective. Lack of purposeful behavior. Prevented to act, paralyzed (in respect to action). Compelled toward inaction. Cramp (to restrain or confine the action of as with a cramp). Crimp. Cuffing. Kettling. <br />
<br />
Last conjunction heliocentric: 10 August 780; 284° 14' (14 Capricorn 14) <br />
<br />
Next conjunction heliocentric: 31 Dec 2510; 235° 17' (25 Scorpio 17) <br />
<br />
MARS HADES ZEUS End of the procreative activity. A soldier. Military service. War service. Death caused by machines, by auto, firearms (murder). Burned to death. Aggravated work through deficiencies. Lack of fuel. Ashes. Losses though warlike circumstances. Abortion. Death by fire or through serious injury. Suicide by firearms. End of holidays. Start of a new work. Very dangerous acute illness or bad injury. A deed born out of hate. Strikers (work). Target practice. Battle actions. Fires, conflagrations.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-57693497044289681572011-02-04T10:08:00.000-08:002011-02-04T10:08:12.256-08:00Intel<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
John Wayne!! ohmigd you have returned from the well of souls...with your game bag filled with goat herders and cow-milking maidens !!<br />
<br />
One thing you need to get firmly in mind about intelligence is that it is a full-duplex circuit. Both ways >> Always. Intelligence always goes both ways. So it is a useless waste of taxpayer resources. We pay to be compromised. Just keep these double agents somewhere where they can't muck up the works like the DIA. <br />
<div><br />
</div></div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-74475368817711008772011-02-04T09:32:00.000-08:002011-02-04T09:32:36.366-08:00The 1936-1939 Revolt in Palestine by Ghassan Kanafani<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><h2><center>The 1936-1939 Revolt in Palestine</center></h2>Between 1936 and 1939, the Palestinian revolutionary movement suffered a severe setback at the hands of three separate enemies that were to constitute together the principal threat to the nationalist movement in Palestine in all subsequent stages of its struggle: the local reactionary leadership; the regimes in the Arab states surrounding Palestine; and the imperialist-Zionist enemy. The present study will concentrate on the respective structures of these separate forces and the dialectical relations that existed among them. <br />
The intensity of the Palestinian nationalist experience, which emerged since 1918, and was accompanied in one way or another with armed struggle, could not reflect itself on the upper structure of the Palestinian national movement which remained virtually under the control of semi-feudal and semi-religious leadership. This was due primarily to two related factors: <br />
<ol><li> The existence and effectiveness of the Zionist movement, which gave the national challenge relative predominance over the social contradictions. The impact of this challenge was being systematically felt by the masses of Palestinian Arabs, who were the primary victims of the Zionist invasion supported by British imperialism. </li>
<li> The existence of a significant conflict of interests between the local feudal-religious leadership and British imperialism: It was consistently in the interest of the ruling class to promote and support a certain degree of revolutionary struggle, instead of being more or less completely allied with the imperialist power as would otherwise be the case. The British imperialists had found in the Zionists "a more suitable ally." </li>
</ol>The above factors gave the struggle of Palestinian people particular features that did not apply to the Arab nationalist struggle outside Palestine. The traditional leadership, as a result, participated in, or at least tolerated, a most advanced form of political action (armed struggle); it raised progressive slogans, and had ultimately, despite its reactionary nature, provided positive leadership during a critical phase of the Palestinian nationalist struggle. It is relevant to explain, however, how the feudal-religious leadership succeeded in staying at the head of the nationalist movement for so long (until 1948). The transformation of the economic and social structure of Palestine, which occurred rather rapidly, had affected primarily the Jewish sector, and had taken place at the expense of the Palestinian middle and petty bourgeoisie, as well as the Arab working class. The change from a semi-feudal society to a capitalist society was accompanied by an increased concentration of economic power in the hands of the Zionist machine and consequently, within the Jewish society in Palestine. It is significant that Palestinian Arab advocates of conciliation, who became outspoken during the thirties, were not landlords or rich peasants, but rather elements of the urban upper bourgeoisie whose interests gradually coincided with the expanding interests of the Jewish bourgeoisie. The latter, by controlling the process of industrialization, was creating its own agents. <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_R1_o19ZgA2I/TUw2vMlZQgI/AAAAAAAAAok/K1Q4F7vnuQ0/s1600/230px-Ghassan_Kanafani.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_R1_o19ZgA2I/TUw2vMlZQgI/AAAAAAAAAok/K1Q4F7vnuQ0/s1600/230px-Ghassan_Kanafani.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ghassan Kanafani</td></tr>
</tbody></table>In the meantime, the Arab countries surrounding Palestine were playing two conflicting roles. On the one hand, the Pan-Arab mass movement was serving as a catalyst for the revolutionary spirit of the Palestinian masses, since a dialectical relation between the Palestinian and overall Arab struggles existed, on the other hand, the established regimes in these Arab countries were doing everything in their power to help curb and undermine the Palestinian mass movement. The sharpening conflict in Palestine threatened to contribute to the development of the struggle in these countries in the direction of greater violence, creating a revolutionary potential that their respective ruling classes could not afford to overlook. <br />
The Arab ruling classes were forced to support British imperialism against their counterpart in Palestine, which was in effect leading the Palestinian nationalist movement. <br />
Meanwhile, the Zionist-Imperialist alliance continued to grow; the period between 1936 and 1939 witnessed not only the crystallization of the militaristic and aggressive character of the colonial society that Zionism had firmly implanted in Palestine but also the relative containment and defeat of the Palestinian working class; this was subsequently to have a radical effect on the course of the struggle. During that period, Zionism, in collaboration with the mandatory power, successfully undermined the development of a progressive Jewish labor movement and of Jewish-Arab Proletarian brotherhood. The Palestine Communist Party was effectively isolated among both Arab and Jewish workers, and the reactionary Histadrut completely dominated the Jewish labour movement. The influence of Arab progressive forces within Arab labour federations in Haifa and Jaffa diminished, leaving the ground open for their control by reactionary leaderships that monopolized political action.<br />
<br />
[Ghassan Kanafani was killed by the Mossad in 1972 in Beruit by a car bomb] </div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-23936145579532101232011-02-04T09:01:00.001-08:002011-02-04T09:01:44.886-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><h2><center>Letter from Gaza by Ghassan Kanafani</center></h2>Dear Mustafa, <br />
I have now received your letter, in which you tell me that you've done everything necessary to enable me to stay with you in Sacramento. I've also received news that I have been accepted in the department of Civil Engineering in the University of California. I must thank you for everything, my friend. But it'll strike you as rather odd when I proclaim this news to you -- and make no doubt about it, I feel no hesitation at all, in fact I am pretty well positive that I have never seen things so clearly as I do now. No, my friend, I have changed my mind. I won't follow you to "the land where there is greenery, water and lovely faces" as you wrote. No, I'll stay here, and I won't ever leave. <br />
I am really upset that our lives won't continue to follow the same course, Mustafa. For I can almost hear you reminding me of our vow to go on together, and of the way we used to shout: "We'll get rich!" But there's nothing I can do, my friend. Yes, I still remember the day when I stood in the hall of Cairo airport, pressing your hand and staring at the frenzied motor. At that moment everything was rotating in time with the ear-splitting motor, and you stood in front of me, your round face silent. <br />
Your face hadn't changed from the way it used to be when you were growing up in the Shajiya quarter of Gaza, apart from those slight wrinkes. We grew up together, understanding each other completely and we promised to go on together till the end. But... <br />
"There's a quarter of an hour left before the plane takes off. Don't look into space like that. Listen! You'll go to Kuwait next year, and you'll save enough from your salary to uproot you from Gaza and transplant you to California. We started off together and we must carry on. . ." <br />
At that moment I was watching your rapidly moving lips. That was always your manner of speaking, without commas or full stops. But in an obscure way I felt that you were not completely happy with your flight. You couldn't give three good reasons for it. I too suffered from this wrench, but the clearest thought was: why don't we abandon this Gaza and flee? Why don't we? Your situation had begun to improve, however. The ministry of Education in Kuwait had given you a contract though it hadn't given me one. In the trough of misery where I existed you sent me small sums of money. You wanted me to consider them as loans. because you feared that I would feel slighted. You knew my family circumstances in and out; you knew that my meagre salary in the UNRWA schools was inadequate to support my mother, my brother's widow and her four children. <br />
"Listen carefully. Write to me every day... every hour... every minute! The plane's just leaving. Farewell! Or rather, till we meet again!" <br />
Your cold lips brushed my cheek, you turned your face away from me towards the plane, and when you looked at me again I could see your tears. <br />
Later the Ministry of Education in Kuwait gave me a contract. There's no need to repeat to you how my life there went in detail. I always wrote to you about everything. My life there had a gluey, vacuous quality as though I were a small oyster, lost in oppressive loneliness, slowly struggling with a future as dark as the beginning of the night, caught in a rotten routine, a spewed-out combat with time. Everything was hot and sticky. There was a slipperiness to my whole life, it was all a hankering for the end of the month. <br />
In the middle of the year, that year, the Jews bombarded the central district of Sabha and attacked Gaza, our Gaza, with bombs and flame-throwers. That event might have made some change in my routine, but there was nothing for me to take much notice of; I was going to leave. this Gaza behind me and go to California where I would live for myself, my own self which had suffered so long. I hated Gaza and its inhabitants. Everything in the amputated town reminded me of failed pictures painted in grey by a sick man. Yes, I would send my mother and my brother's widow and her children a meagre sum to help them to live, but I would liberate myself from this last tie too, there in green California, far from the reek of defeat which for seven years had filled my nostrils. The sympathy which bound me to my brother's children, their mother and mine would never be enough to justify my tragedy in taking this perpendicular dive. It mustn't drag me any further down than it already had. I must flee! <br />
You know these feelings, Mustafa, because you've really experienced them. What is this ill-defined tie we had with Gaza which blunted our enthusiasm for flight? Why didn't we analyse the matter in such away as to give it a clear meaning? Why didn't we leave this defeat with its wounds behind us and move on to a brighter future which would give us deeper consolation? Why? We didn't exactly know. <br />
When I went on holiday in June and assembled all my possessions, longing for the sweet departure, the start towards those little things which give life a nice, bright meaning, I found Gaza just as I had known it, closed like the introverted lining of a rusted snail-shell thrown up by the waves on the sticky, sandy shore by the slaughter-house. This Gaza was more cramped than the mind of a sleeper in the throes of a fearful nightmare, with its narrow streets which had their bulging balconies...this Gaza! But what are the obscure causes that draw a man to his family, his house, his memories, as a spring draws a small flock of mountain goats? I don't know. All I know is that I went to my mother in our house that morning. When I arrived my late brother's wife met me there and asked me,weeping, if I would do as her wounded daughter, Nadia, in Gaza hospital wished and visit her that evening. Do you know Nadia, my brother's beautiful thirteen-year-old daughter? <br />
That evening I bought a pound of apples and set out for the hospital to visit Nadia. I knew that there was something about it that my mother and my sister-in-law were hiding from me, something which their tongues could not utter, something strange which I could not put my finger on. I loved Nadia from habit, the same habit that made me love all that generation which had been so brought up on defeat and displacement that it had come to think that a happy life was a kind of social deviation. <br />
What happened at that moment? I don't know. I entered the white room very calm. Ill children have something of saintliness, and how much more so if the child is ill as result of cruel, painful wounds. Nadia was lying on her bed, her back propped up on a big pillow over which her hair was spread like a thick pelt. There was profound silence in her wide eyes and a tear always shining in the depths of her black pupils. Her face was calm and still but eloquent as the face of a tortured prophet might be. Nadia was still a child, but she seemed more than a child, much more, and older than a child, much older. <br />
"Nadia!" <br />
I've no idea whether I was the one who said it, or whether it was someone else behind me. But she raised her eyes to me and I felt them dissolve me like a piece of sugar that had fallen into a hot cup of tea. ' <br />
Together with her slight smile I heard her voice. "Uncle! Have you just come from Kuwait?" <br />
Her voice broke in her throat, and she raised herself with the help of her hands and stretched out her neck towards me. I patted her back and sat down near her. <br />
"Nadia! I've brought you presents from Kuwait, lots of presents. I'll wait till you can leave your bed, completely well and healed, and you'll come to my house and I'll give them to you. I've bought you the red trousers you wrote and asked me for. Yes, I've bought them." <br />
It was a lie, born of the tense situation, but as I uttered it I felt that I was speaking the truth for the first time. Nadia trembled as though she had an electric shock and lowered her head in a terrible silence. I felt her tears wetting the back of my hand. <br />
"Say something, Nadia! Don't you want the red trousers?" She lifted her gaze to me and made as if to speak, but then she stopped, gritted her teeth and I heard her voice again, coming from faraway. <br />
"Uncle!" <br />
She stretched out her hand, lifted the white coverlet with her fingers and pointed to her leg, amputated from the top of the thigh. <br />
My friend ... Never shall I forget Nadia's leg, amputated from the top of the thigh. No! Nor shall I forget the grief which had moulded her face and merged into its traits for ever. I went out of the hospital in Gaza that day, my hand clutched in silent derision on the two pounds I had brought with me to give Nadia. The blazing sun filled the streets with the colour of blood. And Gaza was brand new, Mustafa! You and I never saw it like this. The stone piled up at the beginning of the Shajiya quarter where we lived had a meaning, and they seemed to have been put there for no other reason but to explain it. This Gaza in which we had lived and with whose good people we had spent seven years of defeat was something new. It seemed to me just a beginning. I don't know why I thought it was just a beginning. I imagined that the main street that I walked along on the way back home was only the beginning of a long, long road leading to Safad. Everything in this Gaza throbbed with sadness which was not confined to weeping. It was a challenge: more than that it was something like reclamation of the amputated leg! <br />
I went out into the streets of Gaza, streets filled with blinding sunlight. They told me that Nadia had lost her leg when she threw herself on top of her little brothers and sisters to protect them from the bombs and flames that had fastened their claws into the house. Nadia could have saved herself, she could have run away, rescued her leg. But she didn't. <br />
Why? <br />
No, my friend, I won't come to Sacramento, and I've no regrets. No, and nor will I finish what we began together in childhood. This obscure feeling that you had as you left Gaza, this small feeling must grow into a giant deep within you. It must expand, you must seek it in order to find yourself, here among the ugly debris of defeat. <br />
I won't come to you. But you, return to us! Come back, to learn from Nadia's leg, amputated from the top of the thigh, what life is and what existence is worth. <br />
Come back, my friend! We are all waiting for you. </div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-28200486553567960652010-11-15T11:18:00.000-08:002010-11-15T11:19:49.783-08:00<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family:Courier New;font-size:85%;">I think we need to tax stock market holdings while they are held maybe by averaging all the valuations of a stock over the course of a year and assessing an income tax on the mean average price in that year. The selling taxes could be eliminated and we would have a more stable income stream which would not be prone to sudden dumping as it is now on bad news. You couldn't park money in the speculative vehicle of the stock market without a tax. You would spend more and stimulate things around you. </span></p>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-28090196487332033662010-06-07T12:40:00.000-07:002010-06-07T12:48:45.545-07:00Radical Centrism30 Day Eviction Notice:<br />All assets held by Israeli dual citizens are to be immediately frozen awaiting the resolution of their dual citizenship status by the following:<br /><br />Those Israeli's with dual citizenship currently outside the US cannot ever officially return to the United States unless they turn in their Israeli passport and pledge their sole allegiance to the US while canceling their Israeli citizenship upon their return to the US. Failure to comply with this provision will result in immediate deportation and forfeiture of all their US holdings and assets and they shall forever be denied the right of return to the United States.<br /><br />Any traveling Israeli within the United States shall leave the United States within two weeks unless they reject their Israeli citizenship; only then will be allowed to apply for US citizenship as a refugee fleeing the terrorist pariah state of Israel. <br /><br />...<br />A most disturbing thing is that a majority of these IDF forces are just jejunely credulous American kids who drank the kool-aid of Israeli legitimacy from some organ-dealing Brooklyn rabbi and now murder equally and as brutally as American 18 year-olds murder in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Some of these IDF children soliders are dual citizens so they come home and play American citizen as returning GI's and then go back to the IDF and to double-dip murdering Arabs and we are expected to calmly accept this as Americans watching the madness on the sidelines. What happens when they wake up to their self-imposed schizophrenia while on leave, forgetting what national role they are playing today? Several million "Son of Sam" zombies seeking revenge on liberals in Berkeley, Austin, Seattle, Portland, and Ann Arbor ?<br /><br />... Friend, I object to the actions and I clearly remember Meier Kehane who started this mess from Brooklyn along with encouraging decades of assassinations by the JDL and ADL murders into the present (ask Darryl Issa about that) and then spread the disease to Israel. This IS happening. Is it the exposure of the mechanism which makes you quibble, is it my uncomfortable historical framing? Maybe it is time to take of the kid gloves and speak truth to both the powerful and the meek seeking a backbone to solve these issues ? Have you forgotten the "two for one" t-shirts depicting pregnant Palestinian women as targets given out at the graduation parties of IDF forces? That is just the sort of jejunely credulous murderous brain-washing that occurs in the IDF. I have encountered these crazies right here in academic environments BCC and CSUEB bragging about what they are pulling off. Don't shoot the messenger !<br /><br />... There is no redemption with these sorts they murder to instill fear and unfortunately fear is the only way they will heel to the will of the world's citizens. They continue to escalate and we must respond by exposing them at every step of the way. Any manner of opportunity to make their parents re-think their sending their beautiful children off to become murdering monsters in Israel should be explored. And plain talk is the first step.<br /><br />... This is interesting tidbit but nothing more; in my opinion there will never be any prosecutions for these murders, no impartial investigations, and no relief for the people of the world from Israeli madness. Just whitewash and US "state secret privilege" invoked when it is revealed that Rahm Emanuel brokered and took part in the planning directly with Netanyahu during his "bar mitzvah" visit with his son he used as a theatrical prop...Israel does nothing without our covert approval..reminds me of the October Surprise manuever when Reagan sent George Bush to Iran to stall the hostage release to prevent Jimmy Carter from being re-elected. And since Rahm Emanuel is a Reserve Officer in the IDF, Netanyahu is his commander in chief.<br /><br />... And to think that a great journalist just now is forced to retire for stating the truth..Helen Thomas I love you.<br /><br />... Talk to Russell Bates the bumper sticker vendor on Telegraph Ave what these IDF/Mossad reservist types did to him recently. He's out there 5 days a week. Get down with the people Friend, get your hands dirty. I support your moderate bid for Congress when you feel it is appropriate to announce it.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-83825705770411806402010-04-21T16:13:00.000-07:002010-04-21T16:15:50.458-07:00The fatal use of the cell phone by a journalist in Baghdad<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans; font-size: medium; "><h1 style="font-size: 32px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.1; font-weight: normal; ">What I want from the Pentagon</h1><div class="timestamp" style="font-size: 10px; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); font-weight: bold; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-left: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; ">APR 21, 2010 15:30 EDT</div><div class="headerTopics" style="font-size: 11px; color: rgb(204, 204, 204); margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 2px; "><a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/reuters-editors/tag/namir-noor-eldeen" style="color: rgb(0, 110, 151); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; ">NAMIR NOOR-ELDEEN</a> | <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/reuters-editors/tag/saeed-chmagh" style="color: rgb(0, 110, 151); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; ">SAEED CHMAGH</a> | <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/reuters-editors/tag/wikileaks" style="color: rgb(0, 110, 151); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; font-weight: bold; text-transform: uppercase; ">WIKILEAKS</a></div><div id="postcontent"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; "><em>This op-ed by Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger appeared in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/apr/21/war-journalists-right-safety" style="color: rgb(0, 110, 151); text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer; ">The Guardian</a>.</em></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">When Wikileaks published the harrowing video of the deaths in Iraq of my colleagues Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his assistant and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, the world finally had the transparency it should have had about this tragedy.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">It was impossible for me to watch and not feel outrage and great sorrow – but this is not about trying to tell anyone else what to feel. This is about trying to find out exactly what happened and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">What I want from the Pentagon – and from all militaries – is simple: Acknowledgment, transparency, accountability.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">Acknowledgment means both understanding at headquarters and training in the field that journalists have a right to be on the battlefield, and not just those embedded with a military unit. A journalist’s mission is to provide understanding, provide context and provide the reporting that citizens deserve. That mission requires journalists cover the story from multiple angles, including ones that potentially put them in harm’s way. A war prosecuted in darkness is a war without accountability. The journalist’s role is vital for a democracy and it must be acknowledged.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">Then, there must be acknowledgment that true journalists come in every race, both sexes and a multitude of nationalities. Within Reuters, our 2,800 journalists come from 80 different nationalities. They all have a right to safety.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">As too many tragic deaths, including those of Namir and Saeed, have proven, soldiers in tense warfare repeatedly mistake cameras and tripods for weapons. They’re not. There must be a way of training soldiers to distinguish the forms. It is imperative to have the consciousness that the shape in the scope might not be a threat.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">Transparency is vital. This is the honesty for all to learn lessons from what has transpired. Soon after the incident, Reuters editors were shown only one portion of the video . We immediately changed our operating procedures – the first portion of the video made clear that anyone walking with a group of armed people could be considered a target. We immediately made it a rule that our journalists could not even walk near armed groups.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">However, we were not shown the second part of the video, where the helicopter fired on a van trying to evacuate the wounded. Had we seen it, we could have adjusted our procedures further.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">Transparency saves lives.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">We have been trying for more than two and a half years to get this video from the military through formal legal means without success and in fact have an appeal to their last denial of our request still pending; now it transpires that officials who repeatedly told us that what the video contained was important enough for security reasons to withhold it from us, made no efforts to secure it and weren’t even clear where it was. It took a whistleblower to make sure the world had the transparency it needed and deserved.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">I want the Pentagon to join me in a search for thorough and complete transparency.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">Finally there is accountability. There are rules of war as there are in peace. The lack of transparency has meant there’s been absence of accountability.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">Let’s dig behind the video. Let’s fully understand the rules the military were operating under. Let’s have a complete picture of what was going through the fliers’ minds. Let’s hear the Pentagon explain its interpretation of the rules of engagement and the Geneva Convention and how the actions either did or did not accord with them in its view. And importantly, let’s keep in mind that while we focus on this particular tragedy, it is the rare circumstance that when a journalist is injured or killed in a conflict area, there is a video of the death, and even more rare as this case demonstrates, for the public to see such a video.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">And then let’s have the debate. Seeing the hundreds of articles and thousands of comments in the wake of the video’s release, it’s clear that people on every side of the issue have strong feelings. Let’s have a debate based on fact and not on emotion.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">Acceptance, transparency and accountability – these add up to true justice. And that, in the end, is what I am after. I want justice for the journalists who lost their lives.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.6; ">Justice is not vengeance. Justice is about holding all to account to make sure that proper lessons are learned, that mistakes aren’t repeated and that tragedies don’t happen again.</p></div></span>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-63998369898607915902010-02-25T11:51:00.000-08:002010-02-25T11:53:08.565-08:00<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 22px; "><p style="margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 30px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); "><img src="http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/images/commentary_and_analysis/sarah-mcsherry.jpg" border="0" alt="Sarah McSherry" title="Sarah McSherry" hspace="10" vspace="10" width="176" height="240" align="right" style="border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; border-top-left-radius: 3px 3px; border-top-right-radius: 3px 3px; border-bottom-right-radius: 3px 3px; border-bottom-left-radius: 3px 3px; border-top-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-right-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-left-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); " />The legality of the use and abuse of foreign passports? </span></em><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); ">The falsification of passports and identity theft are serious criminal offences under British law. No doubt they are too under Israeli law. Falsification of a British passport by a member of the Israeli intelligence services is therefore more than just a clear breach of diplomatic relations. Moreover, there would be serious implications were it to transpire that the British government was aware that falsified travel documents were being used by Mossad as has been suggested by one British security source.<br /><br /></span></em></strong><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); ">What are the steps the governments of these foreign passport-holders should do in light of these revelations?</span></em><br /><br /><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; ">The respective governments should:</em></strong></span> </p><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 30px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 30px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><ul style="margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; list-style-type: disc; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial; "><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 35px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; line-height: 21px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); ">Condemn the extra judicial killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh as a breach of international law;</span></em></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 35px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; line-height: 21px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); ">Unequivocally declare whether they were aware that falsified travel documents were being used by Mossad in relation to this operation and/or any other;</span></em></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 35px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; line-height: 21px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); ">Require the Israeli government to confirm whether its intelligence services were involved in the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh;</span></em></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 35px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; line-height: 21px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); ">Require the Israeli government to confirm whether or not their intelligence services used falsified passports for this or any other operation or whether they have done since any assurance that they would not do so;</span></em></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 35px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; line-height: 21px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); ">Seek an assurance from the Israeli government that their intelligence operatives will never falsify passports for use in operations;</span></em></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 35px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; line-height: 21px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); ">Require the Israeli government to condemn the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh as a breach of international law;</span></em></li><li style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 35px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; background-image: none; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; line-height: 21px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); ">Seek an assurance from the Israeli government that they will extradite any of those identified by the Dubai authorities as having been involved in the killing to Dubai to face trial for murder and to Ireland, Britain, France and/or Germany to face trial for offences arising out of the abuse of passports issued by those countries.</span></em></li></ul></div><p style="margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(203, 0, 0); "><em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; ">What steps should be taken to prevent this from happening in the future? <strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; ">If the Israeli government fails to comply with any of the requests made of them, the government could expel the Israeli ambassador from the country, break off diplomatic ties and/or impose sanctions which could deter future occurrences.</strong></em></span></p><p style="margin-top: 15px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; "><span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 12px; ">Sarah McSherry,</strong><br />Human Rights Lawyer and Solicitor at Christian Khan</span></p></div></span></div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-39742300991124482042010-02-21T13:55:00.000-08:002010-02-21T14:58:32.055-08:00From George Lakoff<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 17px; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><p style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em; ">The experimental results confirming our theories of embodied cognition have been coming in regularly, especially in the area of metaphorical thought. Natalie Angier, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/science/02angier.html" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 255); ">on February 1, </a>summarized some of the recent research very clearly.</p><ul><li>A University of Amsterdam study showed that subjects thinking about the future leaned forward, while those thinking about the past leaned backward. This was predicted by the 1980 analysis of common European metaphors in which The Future is Ahead and The Past is Behind. This is not just a matter of language, but of thought, as Johnson and I showed. </li><li>At <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/y/yale_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 255); "><span style="text-decoration: underline; ">Yale</span></a>, researchers found that subjects holding warm coffee in advance were more likely to evaluate an imaginary individual as warm and friendly than those holding cold coffee. This is predicted by the conceptual metaphor that Affection is Warmth, as in <em>She gave me a warm greeting.</em> </li><li>At Toronto, subjects were asked to remember a time when they were either socially accepted or socially snubbed. Those with warm memories of acceptance judged the room to be 5 degrees warmer on the average than those who remembered being coldly snubbed. </li><li>Subjects asked to think about a moral transgression like adultery or cheating on a test were more likely to request an antiseptic cloth after the experiment than those who had thought about good deeds. The well-known conceptual metaphor <em>Morality is Purity</em> predicts this behavior. </li><li>Students told that that a particular book was important judged it to be physically heavier than a book that they were told was unimportant. The conceptual metaphor is <em>Important is Heavy</em>. </li><li>In a parallel study with heavy versus light clipboards, those with the heavy clipboards were more likely like to judge currency to be more valuable and their opinions and their leaders more important. </li><li>And in doing arithmetic, students who used their hands to group numbers together had an easier time doing problems that required conceptual grouping. This is predicted by the analysis of mathematics in <em>Where Mathematics Comes From</em> by myself and Rafael Núñez where we show how mathematics from the simple to the advanced is based on embodied metaphorical cognition.</li></ul><p style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em; ">These results don’t happen by magic. How can these results be explained?</p><p style="margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.9em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF0000;"><i>read the whole post on buzzflash.com </i></span></p></span>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-51618732025635145202010-01-26T15:31:00.000-08:002010-02-01T08:15:40.504-08:00relayed through Counterpunch<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 4px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 4px; font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><h1 align="left"><span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">A Strictly Humanitarian Mission</span></span></i></span></h1><h1><strong><span style="color:#990000;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">We Send Doctors, Not Soldiers</span></span></i></span></strong></h1><p><span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">By FIDEL CASTRO</span></span></i></span></p><p><span style="color:#990000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">T</span></span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">wo days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote:</span></span></span></p><blockquote><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">“In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian people free of charge. Our doctors are working every day at 227 of the 237 communes of that country. On the other hand, no less than 400 young Haitians have been graduated as medical doctors in our country. They will now work alongside the reinforcement that traveled there yesterday to save lives in that critical situation. Thus, up to one thousand doctors and healthcare personnel can be mobilized without any special effort; and most are already there willing to cooperate with any other State that wishes to save Haitian lives and rehabilitate the injured.”</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">“The head of our medical brigade has informed that ‘the situation is difficult but we are already saving lives.’”</span></span></span></p></blockquote><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Hour after hour, day and night, the Cuban health professionals have started to work nonstop in the few facilities that were able to stand, in tents, and out in the parks or open-air spaces, since the population feared new aftershocks.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">The situation was far more serious than was originally thought. Tens of thousands of injured were clamoring for help in the streets of Port-au-Prince; innumerable persons laid, dead or alive, under the rubbled clay or adobe used in the construction of the houses where the overwhelming majority of the population lived. Buildings, even the most solid, collapsed. Besides, it was necessary to look for the Haitian doctors who had graduated at the Latin American Medicine School throughout all the destroyed neighborhoods. Many of them were affected, either directly or indirectly, by the tragedy.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Some UN officials were trapped in their dormitories and tens of lives were lost, including the lives of several chiefs of MINUSTAH, a UN contingent. The fate of hundreds of other members of its staff was unknown.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Haiti’s Presidential Palace crumbled. Many public facilities, including several hospitals, were left in ruins.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">The catastrophe shocked the whole world, which was able to see what was going on through the images aired by the main international TV networks. Governments from everywhere in the planet announced they would be sending rescue experts, food, medicines, equipment and other resources.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">In conformity with the position publicly announced by Cuba, medical staff from different countries--namely Spain, Mexico, and Colombia, among others--worked very hard alongside our doctors at the facilities they had improvised. Organizations such as PAHO and other friendly countries like Venezuela and other nations supplied medicines and other resources. The impeccable behavior of Cuban professionals and their leaders was absolutely void of chauvinism and remained out of the limelight.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Cuba, just as it had done under similar circumstances, when Hurricane Katrina caused huge devastation in the city of New Orleans and the lives of thousands of American citizens were in danger, offered to send a full medical brigade to cooperate with the people of the United States, a country that, as is well known, has vast resources. But at that moment what was needed were trained and well-equipped doctors to save lives. Given New Orleans geographical location, more than one thousand doctors of the “Henry Reeve” contingent mobilized and readied to leave for that city at any time of the day or the night, carrying with them the necessary medicines and equipment. It never crossed our mind that the President of that nation would reject the offer and let a number of Americans that could have been saved to die. The mistake made by that government was perhaps the inability to understand that the people of Cuba do not see in the American people an enemy; it does not blame it for the aggressions our homeland has suffered.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Nor was that government capable of understanding that our country does not need to beg for favors or forgiveness of those who, for half a century now, have been trying, to no avail, to bring us to our knees.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Our country, also in the case of Haiti, immediately responded to the US authorities requests to fly over the eastern part of Cuba as well as other facilities they needed to deliver assistance, as quickly as possible, to the American and Haitian citizens who had been affected by the earthquake.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Such have been the principles characterizing the ethical behavior of our people. Together with its equanimity and firmness, these have been the ever-present features of our foreign policy. And this is known only too well by whoever have been our adversaries in the international arena.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Cuba will firmly stand by the opinion that the tragedy that has taken place in Haiti, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, is a challenge to the richest and more powerful countries of the world.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Haiti is a net product of the colonial, capitalist and imperialist system imposed on the world. Haiti’s slavery and subsequent poverty were imposed from abroad. That terrible earthquake occurred after the Copenhagen Summit, where the most elemental rights of 192 UN member States were trampled upon.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">In the aftermath of the tragedy, a competition has unleashed in Haiti to hastily and illegally adopt boys and girls. UNICEF has been forced to adopt preventive measures against the uprooting of many children, which will deprive their close relatives from their rights.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">There are more than one hundred thousand deadly victims. A high number of citizens have lost their arms or legs, or have suffered fractures requiring rehabilitation that would enable them to work or manage their own.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Eighty per cent of the country needs to be rebuilt. Haiti requires an economy that is developed enough to meet its needs according to its productive capacity. The reconstruction of Europe or Japan, which was based on the productive capacity and the technical level of the population, was a relatively simple task as compared to the effort that needs to be made in Haiti. There, as well as in most of Africa and elsewhere in the Third World, it is indispensable to create the conditions for a sustainable development. In only forty years time, humanity will be made of more than nine billion inhabitants, and right now is faced with the challenge of a climate change that scientists accept as an inescapable reality.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">In the midst of the Haitian tragedy, without anybody knowing how and why, thousands of US marines, 82nd Airborne Division troops and other military forces have occupied Haiti. Worse still is the fact that neither the United Nations Organization nor the US government have offered an explanation to the world’s public opinion about this relocation of troops.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Several governments have complained that their aircraft have not been allowed to land in order to deliver the human and technical resources that have been sent to Haiti.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Some countries, for their part, have announced they would be sending an additional number of troops and military equipment. In my view, such events will complicate and create chaos in international cooperation, which is already in itself complex. It is necessary to seriously discuss this issue. The UN should be entrusted with the leading role it deserves in these so delicate matters.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Our country is accomplishing a strictly humanitarian mission. To the extent of its possibilities, it will contribute the human and material resources at its disposal. The will of our people, who takes pride in its medical doctors and cooperation workers who provide vital services, is huge, and will rise to the occasion.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">Any significant cooperation that is offered to our country will not be rejected, but its acceptance will fully depend on the importance and transcendence of the assistance that is requested from the human resources of our homeland.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">It is only fair to state that, up until this moment, our modest aircrafts and the important human resources that Cuba has made available to the Haitian people have arrived at their destination without any difficulty whatsoever.</span></span></span></p><p><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:verdana;">We send doctors, not soldiers!</span></span></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div></span>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-70864931210176320252009-12-24T14:02:00.000-08:002009-12-24T14:06:01.480-08:00Isrraeli Frankenstein's are exposed in a rare moment of clarity!!! At long last after several years of personally attempting to get this information past the Zionist censors of Huffington Post, Truthdig, and Commondreams and countless other venues and into the public record, the vile and horrendous practice of killing Palestinian children for their organs is finally getting the curtain lifted just a little bit. There is still much, much more to this story extending to the murders and brutal injuries by flechette munitions in the Christmas Holocaust on Gaza last year and it requires much pressure from people here in the United States to make sure that the Israeli's are brought to account for these monstrously vile acts, and made to pay in profit and prison after war crimes tribunals. There is no way for American Jews to deny that their taxes and contributions to Madoff, Merkin and others funded these war crimes against humanity. It is time to balance the books. A great day for the truth to begin to emerge...Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-70605185913716353472009-12-21T12:11:00.000-08:002009-12-21T12:33:36.604-08:00Lay off Howard Dean please!<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 17px; font-family:Verdana, Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><p style="font-size: small; ">Bill Boyarsky...What an idiot!</p><p><a href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_deadly_cost_of_blocking_health_care_reform_20091218/">http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_deadly_cost_of_blocking_health_care_reform_20091218/</a></p><p style="font-size: small; "><br /></p><p style="font-size: small; ">Bill just doesn’t seem to comprehend that the<br />Republicans intentionally forced every bit of crap<br />into this bill and took every bit of goodness out of<br />it to force its defeat in the eyes of the American<br />people while requiring the Congress to pass it so<br />that the Democrats can look like the short sighted<br />fools that they are in order to elect the Sarah Palin<br />- Glen Beck in 2012. </p><p style="font-size: small; ">As this bill is written now your medicare money and<br />your social security check will be reduced to give<br />even more money to insurance executives in the terms<br />of wall street size bonuses. That’s what Dean saw;<br />and what any other moderately astute American needs<br />to be able to get their heads around. Most retired<br />Americans get a little over 500 a month in social<br />security. Then any federal indebtedness like student<br />loans and this public/private option swindle comes<br />out in 20% chunks from that 500. Most retired<br />Americans carrying these debts will have $325 a month<br />as their sole means of survival. With the TARP<br />giveaway inflationary effects (to be experienced in<br />reduced buying power and the already quickly rising<br />prices of food and consumables like gasoline that<br />$325 should be enough to fill your gas tank once and<br />get you two cases of beer from Liquor Store Larry and<br />some beef jerky. If you don’t believe that<br />conditions such as those will get Palin—Beck elected<br />then you had better stockpile canned food for your<br />retirement and live like the father and son in “The<br />Road”. Either way the Devil gets his due. </p><p style="font-size: small; ">David Michael Green had a piece today in Counterpunch and had the<br />clearest picture of Obama yet:</p><p style="font-size: small; ">““...I did not run for office to continue George<br />Bush’s valiant effort at shredding the Bill of<br />Rights. It’s just that those government-limiting<br />rules are so darned pesky.”</p><p style="font-size: small; ">“...I did not run for office to dump a ton of<br />taxpayer money into the coffers of health insurance<br />companies. It’s just that they asked so nicely.”</p><p style="font-size: small; ">“...I did not run for office to block equality for<br />gay Americans. I just never got around to doing<br />anything about it.”</p><p style="font-size: small; ">“...I did not run for office to turn Afghanistan into<br />Vietnam. I just didn’t want to say no to all the<br />nice generals asking for more troops.”</p><p style="font-size: small; ">Here’s a guy who was supposed to actually do<br />something with his presidency, and he’s turned into<br />the skinny little geek on Cell Block D who gets<br />passed around like a rag doll for the pleasure of all<br />the fellas with the tattoos there. He’s being punked<br />by John Boehner, for chrisakes. He’s being rolled by<br />the likes of Joe Lieberman. He calls a come-to-Jesus<br />meeting with Wall Street bank CEOs, and half of them<br />literally phone it in. Everyone from Bibi Netanyahu<br />to the Japanese prime minister to sundry Iranian<br />mullahs is stomping all over Mr. Happy.</p><p style="font-size: small; ">And he doesn’t even seem to realize it.”<br /><a href="http://counterpunch.org/green12212009.html" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(170, 68, 68); text-decoration: none; ">http://counterpunch.org/green12212009.html</a></p><p style="font-size: small; "><b>The evil of Obama's election with one lie following another like segments of a tapeworm are starting to get into the body politic and are eating the soul of the country from the inside out.</b></p></span>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-64829870489095504722009-12-10T07:00:00.000-08:002009-12-10T07:01:54.553-08:00Lies, Lies, and Damn LIES<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1381347179" class="UIImageBlock_Image UIImageBlock_SMALL_Image" title="Mic Jordan" style="cursor: pointer; color: rgb(59, 89, 152); text-decoration: none; float: left; margin-right: 8px; "><img class="UIProfileImage UIProfileImage_SMALL" src="http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/v230/1807/2/q1381347179_4921.jpg" alt="Mic Jordan" style="border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; width: 32px; height: 32px; display: block; " /></a><div class="UIImageBlock_Content UIImageBlock_SMALL_Content" style="display: table-cell; vertical-align: top; width: 1000px; "><div class="comment_text" style="padding-top: 1px; padding-right: 5px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1381347179" class="comment_author" style="cursor: pointer; color: rgb(59, 89, 152); text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; ">Mic Jordan</a><div id="text_expose_id_4b210aa371f6d34994aa5" class="comment_actual_text text_exposed" style="display: inline; padding-left: 0.4em; ">If you want to hear a complete utter pack of outright mendacious lies, falsehoods, untruths, mixed with red meat for the right wing idiots just tune in and listen the Obama Peace Prize acceptance speech. Written by the oil enterprise institute. What a tool. He lied about the reason for invading Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In less than 20 <span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; ">minutes he lied about every rotten decision made to steal oil from the rest of the world. As Joe Begeant says, terrorists are the people who live near oil deposits and have the audacity to expect to build their societies from the revenue from petroleum just like the US did at the turn of the Century.<br /><br />Barack Obama is rotten to the core. At this juncture I look forward to Palin as President, as at least she found a way for the Alaskans to benefit from Prudhoe Bay. Goddamn I never thought I'd write a sentence like that last one!!</span></div></div></div></span></div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-57011455444579858492009-11-29T11:18:00.000-08:002009-12-09T11:12:16.704-08:00Tiger by the tailCircumstances and questions swirling around Tiger Woods and possible cocaine addiction persist as he stalls police again (to allow for Detox Tea to clear his system ?) after an early morning accident leaving his driveway hitting a fire hydrant and crashing into a tree and needing to be pulled from his vehicle by his wife who broke into his car with a golf club. Golf clubs seem to be the tool of choice in the family as Tiger has been using them to throw into crowds when he misses a shot missing fans by inches while easing his anger and tension. <div><br /></div><div>Probably the most private of billionaires, his uptight demeanor is classic teeth gritting uberstress probably nurtured in his youth by a father who pushed him relentlessly from the age of 3 to be the golf champion his father never was. In recent years Tiger has been rumored strongly of adultery toward his wife and two children. This most recent incident happened in the early morning shortly after 2 AM. Stay tuned for further details as another larger than life figure returns to Earth. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>update:</b> marriage infidelity was the cause of the dust-up and this will probably turn out to be the most expensive piece Tiger ever bought...ah the life of the petty bourgeoisie of Stanford University.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>They really need an ethics course at Stanford.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>update 2 (12/8/09):</b> Turns out the Tiger drugs were Ambien and Vicodin, --The Republican speedball. The number of b-girls for the Tiger is presently at 10 with his childhood buddy Byron Bell doing the pimping and watching out while Tiger pumps. Just like a couple o' TKE frats at a pig party. Yuck ! I see both of them running around in tighty-whities and the gag response becomes uncontrollable...Byron is getting married on Saturday??...That ought to be a very interesting exchange of vows...I hope his new wifey-mate has a sense of dramatic ceremony and humour. Maybe she will do the right thing and refuse to tie the knot with a pimp. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>update 3:</b> Mother in law taken away in ambulance with stomach pains. On the night of the accident Tiger admitted with a drug OD to the hospital under a phony name. This is far from over...</div><div>more at <a href="http://www.tmz.com/">TMZ.com</a></div><div><br /></div><div><b>update 4: </b>...it's up to 11 now...I think Tiger has a good case for The Betty Ford Clinic...Vicodin is narcotic and depresses function including blood pressure and is used for reducing pain awareness...accompanied with blood pressure reduction -erectile dysfunction ... Advair raises blood pressure to compensate and a battle ensues between an upper and a downer...the John Belushi OD was of a similar dynamic except he was combining cocaine and heroin. Tiger should have been made aware of these dangers by his Big Pharma medical team just as Michael Jackson should have been made aware by Dr. Feelgood....</div><div><br /></div><div>Healthcare? The less invasive procedures of integrative medicine might have produced less toxic interactions and not brought the demise of these stars. How would Dr Weil have counseled either man? </div><div><br /></div><div>Tiger's transits at the time of the incident 2:25am Friday 27th ...</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"><i>MERCURY NEPTUNE CUPIDO </i></span><i><span style="font-family:WinstarTT;font-size:180%;"></span></i><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"><i>Professional breach of promise (also of marriage). Infidelity in married life. Thinking about the division of a community, desiring to leave it. Thoughts of sorrow and sadness about the break-up of the family or about a shortage of housing. Mutual plans are not accomplished. Artistic, fairy tale fiction. Unfortunate thoughts of marriage. Society swindle. Marriage swindler.</i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman';font-size:medium;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"><i>MARS NEPTUNE CUPIDO </i></span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"><i>Destruction of family happiness. Dissolved community. A grave misunderstanding in the society. Accident. Divorce. Dissolved artistic ties. Marriage intentions have faded away. Impotence or infection of the husband. Quarrels in housing matters.</i></span></span></span></span></div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-24577613565744924692009-11-17T08:06:00.000-08:002009-11-20T09:27:54.198-08:00Goldstone Report highlights and conclusions:<div>from Counterpunch (11/16/2009 Clark):</div><div><br /></div>1883. The Gaza military operations were, according to the Israeli Government, thoroughly and extensively planned. While the Israeli Government has sought to portray its operations as essentially a response to rocket attacks in the exercise of its right to self-defense, the Mission considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.<div><br /></div><div>...<br /><br />1887. The timing of the first Israeli attack, at 11.30 a.m. on a weekday, when children were returning from school and the streets of Gaza were crowded with people going about their daily business, appears to have been calculated to create the greatest disruption and widespread panic among the civilian population. The treatment of many civilians detained or even killed while trying to surrender is one manifestation of the way in which the effective rules of engagement, standard operating procedures and instructions to the troops on the ground appear to have been framed in order to create an environment in which due regard for civilian lives and basic human dignity was replaced with disregard for basic international humanitarian law and human rights norms.<div><br /></div><div>...<br /><br />1889. The repeated failure to distinguish between combatants and civilians appears to the Mission to have been the result of deliberate guidance issued to soldiers, as described by some of them, and not the result of occasional lapses.<br /><br />…<br /><br />1891. It is clear from evidence gathered by the Mission that the destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy by the Israeli armed forces. It was not carried out because those objects presented a military threat or opportunity, but to make the daily process of living, and dignified living, more difficult for the civilian population.<br /><br />…<br /><br />1893. The operations were carefully planned in all their phases. Legal opinions and advice were given throughout the planning stages and at certain operational levels during the campaign. There were almost no mistakes made according to the Government of Israel. It is in these circumstances that the Mission concludes that what occurred in just over three weeks at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 was a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.</div></div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-28960065594320337712009-11-03T15:32:00.000-08:002009-11-03T15:48:05.241-08:00The Goldstone Report: Fiasco for Obama CredibilityThe <i>Credibility Gap</i> gets abysmal as yet another Israeli government decree is HEEDED by the United Zionist States of America: <div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Ignore the Goldstone Report and send more arms to the 51st State of Israel to scorch the earth of Palestine and shred the collective karma of American dual citizens who fight for the IDF and train their gunsights on pregnant Palestinian bellies and then return to American colleges as if nothing happened. When questioned, refuse to cooperate and cite antisemitism. Earn a law degree and join the Obama Administration. "</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in reverse. </div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-49040629518629660322009-10-26T07:12:00.000-07:002009-10-26T07:28:18.322-07:00<div><div>The Bad News Jews strike again...religion injures more innocent children...concussion grenades used against the sticks and stones of a conquered children people who don't want the oldest historical artifact, their temple, damaged by irresponsible archaeologists ...so what do the Jews do? GRENADES inside the structure...</div><div>....what a horrible place to live and defend...why are we Americans doing it? We have an amendment in our laws stating that we have no connection with religion and yet since 1946 we have allowed these people to blackmail us into supporting their Jewish state religious homeland nonsense...while standing aside while they murder thousands...and destroy olive trees (food) to destroy homes displace 300,000+ people to build homes for American Jews to move-in and take over...murdering pregnant women while in the IDF...harvesting organs of the injured before they are murdered instead of healing the wounded which is what civilisation demands....a very mad situation...there is no excuse for this level of base deportment...top it off with beatings by baton weilding American Jewish children offering their poor neighbors severe doses of tear gas...why are we in Israel? </div></div>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-30200947076239519612009-10-08T10:42:00.000-07:002009-10-08T10:46:38.252-07:00Creepy guy from Moldova<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 17px; font-family:Verdana, Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:small;"><p style="font-size: small; ">"If optimism is a glass half full, pessimism a glass half empty, Israel Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is the guy who pours out the glass and proudly proclaims it completely empty. The right-wing politician recently declared that there’s “no chance” of a solution to core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that people need to learn “to live with it.” <a href="http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20091008_pessimism_on_the_israel-palestine_front/">Truthdig</a></p><span class="comment-body"><p style="font-size: small; ">I agree with Avigdor Lieberman that this is a<br />blessing of riches to be reaped for Israeli’s when<br />one considers the expanded health insurance in the US<br />(to come soon) -which will further expand the market<br />for illegally obtained organs from wounded<br />Palestinian children shot by the IDF.</p><p style="font-size: small; ">There must certainly be a program of increased<br />compensation for soldiers to provide further<br />incentive for those who wound for the purposes of<br />organ harvesting. The prices will go up because the<br />schmear will involve more payoffs of airport<br />officials and customs inspectors. </p><p style="font-size: small; ">The spin-off market will perhaps someday leave the<br />Middle East and concentrate solely in the US where<br />the spoilage problem is less severe. There are<br />plenty of poor people who are in desperate financial<br />agony and will be easily seduced by the organ brokers<br />to part with anything they have two of. Of course<br />when under the anesthetic, the operation for a kidney<br />could easily turn into a heart or liver and often was<br />the primary reason for getting a poor person to agree<br />to part with a kidney. You can always say “operator<br />error”.</p><p style="font-size: small; ">This is a great way for people who have no human<br />worth to live beyond their natural lives by stealing<br />the hearts of those without money. This is the<br />darkest of ages and Avigdor Lieberman is brave enough<br />to face it with a smile. It’s not surprising that he<br />got his start in Moldova where rabbinical organ<br />trafficking is canonical. You have to admire someone<br />like Avigdor Lieberman who has/is chosen to lead his<br />people away from compassion and into the jaws of<br />perennial historical criticism and thorough lasting<br />eternal disgust and damnation. </p><p style="font-size: small; ">Even Hitler couldn’t do that.</p></span></span>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-4766835050894730962009-10-05T09:40:00.000-07:002009-10-05T09:41:54.212-07:00Rachel for Congress??<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px; ">Rachel Maddow is becoming increasingly shrill and irrelevant. Her cheer-leading for the Israeli holocaust of the Palestinians considered along with her awful interview of Representative Alan Grayson, (D-FL 8th district) was really a horrible attempt to paint him as anti-semitic when he is in fact Jewish, born in NYC, and a distinguished graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She apparently thinks the word "holocaust" is the exclusive property of WWII victims and cannot be applied to Palestinians or even the 45,000 Americans who are bureaucratically executed by the health insurance companies and die for lack of insurance. <br /><br />Even when reminded that Alan Grayson is a distinguished Jewish Harvard alumni she was never able to retract her THREE attempts to have HIM retract his use of the word "holocaust" to describe the net effect of Republican negativity. Unfortunately she is precisely the reason why progressives are going to lose the next two elections. Poor research and pig-headness rather than humility rules her approach, which is often entertaining but never completely without taint of "know it all", without the knowledge to back it up. <br />Interview is here:<br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfwza0jo1yw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" style="list-style-type: none; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; outline-color: initial; color: rgb(228, 51, 0); text-decoration: none; ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfwza0jo1yw</a><div style="list-style-type: none; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; "><br /><br />Read more at: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/rachel-maddow-id-be-a-bad_n_309485.html" target="_blank_" style="list-style-type: none; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; outline-color: initial; color: rgb(228, 51, 0); text-decoration: none; ">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/rachel-maddow-id-be-a-bad_n_309485.html</a></div></span>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-85687324146180960852009-08-25T19:44:00.000-07:002009-08-25T19:47:05.175-07:00Gravlax RecipeI love this dish and have achieved much success with skin-on sandwich of salmon enclosed with a mixing of salt 2/3 with 1/3 sugar with a generous portion of fine pieces of fennel which grows wild where I live in Berkeley and then more fennel on each side where the skin is. Then I sprinkle more salt outside the fennel before I wrap it so that it is completely surrounded with plenty of salt and fennel to seal the cure. This prevents undue saltiness because the salt-sugar mixed with the fennel is next to the flesh.<br /><br />Then wrapping with plastic wrap works fine and then into a glass baking oblong. I then take another glass baking oblong of the same dimension and place it upside down on top of everything and weight it with a brick (or once with an antique flat iron) once the weight is in the upper oblong, mash it uniformly to facilitate slicing later on. Refrigerate it. Turn it when ever you think of it and in 2 days it is done. The salty brine mixture facilitates the cure by drawing water out of the fish and the sugar takes the bite of the salt. The only pure salt is outside the skin and intermingled with the fennel while remaining away from the flesh. It gets pretty wetly briny and most of the bacteria have burst their placentas due to the salt induced osmosis and greatly compromised. If you want you can keep it in for another day that is OK too.<br /><br />Slicing is important and must be as thin as humanly possible and at no more than a 15-20 degree angle so that you can achieve a piece that is razor thin and about 5 inches measured along the backbone. Be deft while separating the slice from the skin because the meat near the skin is more fragile.<br /><br />A good piece of rough grain bread with a cardiac inducing smor of unsalted fresh butter will produce a delightful sensation you can feel in your ears. The second bite is sheer glutinous excess. It is really not necessary to obsess over keeping it, for it will be gone in short order.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-64469001735619768432009-08-23T18:36:00.001-07:002009-10-27T08:43:51.467-07:00Gee kiddo you actually believe they didn't??? and directed by jack abramoff! As Barney Frank would say "What planet are you currently living on???"<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 21:02:21<br /><br />The Road Ahead for Michael Vick<br />...with his tongue<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 18:02:39<br /><br />The Road Ahead for Michael Vick<br />When rich football players start fighting homeless people in pit rings on chains then maybe, MAYBE, the world will work out its demons but I doubt it. Bring back the gladiators. Let Vick fight a lion bare handed. Let's get totally Roman! Seriously though I really appreciate your bringing the facts into the light. It is a shame that your post got so little sensible and serious treatment. Your ASPCA group was completely right in setting the record straight on this inhuman brute aberration. People who do this are human beings in the clinical sense only and do not deserve to walk freely alongside the rest of us. Thank you sir. Send all dog fighters to jail for a minimum of 10 years hard labor at the Parchment Farm.<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 16:13:30<br /><br />Michael Vick: Black Sheep or Scapegoat on Animal Rights?<br />Michael Vick killed dogs to make money by illegal activity. If he had been hungry, it would have been justified. He has never needed the money or the food so he should not be given any breaks. Kim Basinger was right to book a flight out of this relationship. Read some Chomsky Alec, or Joe Lieberman will clean your clock. There is nothing to make anyone believe that Vick has any subtlety or sincerity regarding animals. He had his 15 minutes on the world stage and now is rich. He needs to summon some grace and go gently into the night and keep his nose clean.<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 15:40:00<br /><br />Should You Get Your Drug Information From An Actor?<br />If your dad has any indications for blocked arteries or has any indications at all of high blood pressure this inhaler could bring about a stroke. Inhalers are very, very, dangerous short term miracle cures which have dangerous addictive side effects. Most people who start to use them can never stop and have to use them more and more frequently. Find another way to fix dad. The inhaler will finish him off prematurely.<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 15:29:47<br /><br />Millions Face Shrinking Social Security Payments<br />The "facts" in this article are stunningly incorrect. Inflation has increased dramatically. Just check out the prices in the Safeway if you don't believe me. They are jumping up at rates approaching 20% here in the San Francisco Bay Area at Safeway stores. One item, beer, has now gone to $8.99 from $6.99 in less than 5 months. Boca Burgers have gone from $3.49 for 4 to $3.99 when on sale to $4.39 when not on sale. They have already made decision at the top of the corporate ladder to raise prices in advance of the inflation rate increase so their profits don't suffer, just their customers who are captive consumers who have to eat. Dog and cat food is becoming more appealing every day but even those prices have gone from $4.99 a bag to $9.99 a bag. An increase of 100% ! Please do your research more carefully and don't listen to people who peg inflation to oil prices. They are lying.<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 14:42:10<br /><br />Arianna Discusses Obama's Leadership on Charlie Rose<br />Just 40 days ago Obama was threatening to cut off all support for progressive legislators who wanted to show their disgust for burning even more money for Iraq and Afghanistan by voting against appropriations. He was not going to campaign for them and I guess brand them as lilly livered liberals. A big win for the defense industry to sell guns and ammo and support to perpetuate the killing by both sides and the prospect of promoting eternal revenge on all sides as in the 900 plus years of the Middle East blood bath. And now he cozy's up to Southern Democrats and Republicans of all stripes and ignores 78% of the population plus the majorities in both "deliberative bodies" and again sides with the profiteers in the health industry. And close by are sweet giveaways to suited criminals and yes men of Wall Street. And while we are at it let's give a boatload of cash directly to car dealers through a "clunker" program. And then how about expanding farm subsides for tobacco farmers not to grow tobacco so that they can maintain their position in elite society and not have to do anything at all for it. But don't give amnesty for student loans. And don't press Uncle Bernie Madoff about where 65 billion dollars went. (I bet he would cave with waterboarding...) This is what the outcome of 500 plus million dollars pocketed in the Denver Convention has come to.<br />posted Aug 21, 2009 at 11:19:58<br /><br />Dionne: When The President Is Black, The Guns Come Out<br />Is this a stunt comment?<br />posted Aug 20, 2009 at 11:44:17<br /><br />Jon Stewart Gives Props To Barney Frank (VIDEO)<br />"Wooden Ships" CSN "Have you seen any of those purple berries? ...Hav'n't got sick once, probably keep us both alive"<br />posted Aug 20, 2009 at 11:33:34<br /><br />Jon Stewart Gives Props To Barney Frank (VIDEO)<br />This is no country for old men.<br />posted Aug 20, 2009 at 11:26:24<br /><br />The Terminator is Back<br />Obviously, my dear, he doesn't give a damn !<br />posted Aug 19, 2009 at 20:18:17<br /><br />"Resistance Efforts," Guns and the Constitution<br />Name the states and state the conditions or stuff it.--liar! Or are these the Balkan states? Are you considering becoming an American? Ummm... indeed!<br />posted Aug 19, 2009 at 18:17:15<br /><br />"Resistance Efforts," Guns and the Constitution<br />This is exactly how we destabilize other countries. We give guns to conservatives and they become warlords and threaten and kill the producers in the society, burn their homes, and burn the olive trees. Now thanks to AZ, TX, and FL the disease of violence spreads and my country goes down in flames. All because of ignorance and genetic decay.<br />posted Aug 19, 2009 at 15:09:01<br /><br />Stand Up, Max Baucus<br />It is really good to hear from you on this matter sir. You are channeling Jack Bauer and it is wonderful to hear you in this debate and inferring that Reed, Pelosi, et. al. show without doubt where they stand and demand that the majority be respected; and by all means take the gloves off and stop dressing in buttons and bows and rid us of these scoundrels Grassley and Baucus without further delay.<br />posted Aug 18, 2009 at 15:23:15<br /><br />What's Wrong With American Medicine?<br />I have been with you for the entire journey since "The Natural Mind" Dr. Weil, having extolled your total approach to rational health care right here in these pages. With your work and that of Karen Sanders, Depak Chopra, and even Jamie Lee Curtis, I have been able to escape from the clutches of generally ineffective and decidedly toxic conventional drug care and have emerged into a personal space of strong robust health. For far too long, jejunely credulous Americans have fallen prey to the same marketing of tobacco and medicine with similar destructive results. Important areas of holistic dentistry and holistic medicine have been pushed to the fringes so that the toxic peddlers can continue to mislead their audiences while promoting irresponsible and irreversible courses of drugs which increase maladies on the long term for unrealistic short term and often disastrous short term "miracle cures". The sheer lunatic madness of modern day drug therapies can be seen right out in the open with the disclaimers which are routinely broadcast along with the commercials including "deaths" and "heart attacks". As long as legitimate herbal cures and healthy eating and recreation are ridiculed and often censored the public will continue to be exploited; ripe to be shot in a barrel like fish. Health insurers and conventional MD's aided by greedy litigators are all it takes to rig the system. Obama seems content to let this continue. Quite disturbing.<br />posted Aug 18, 2009 at 15:02:54<br /><br />Three Reasons We Need an Economic Wake Up Call<br />Wanna get some of that giddus you will have to pull weeds and know your way around a leaf blower.<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 13:08:34<br /><br />Three Reasons We Need an Economic Wake Up Call<br />My take? Rationing Coupons for Thanksgiving, breadlines for Christmas. Martial Law by St. Patrick's Day<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 12:36:20<br /><br />Michael Jackson: Beyond Great<br />a little too frequently I might add...<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 10:51:22<br /><br />Obama On Track To Break Records With Congressional Support<br />And the conclusion is: Democrats need the money!<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 10:36:03<br /><br />Huffington Post Blogger Shannyn Moore in Palin's Cross Hairs (UPDATED - Press Conference in Anchorage)<br />A tempest in a teapot, I say.<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 10:15:53<br /><br />Peter King: Michael Jackson A 'Pervert' And 'Low-Life' (VIDEO)<br />You are not alone.<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 10:11:07<br /><br />150 Years for Madoff?<br />15o years is OK with me as long as we don't have to keep the bugger alive for that long.<br />posted Jul 05, 2009 at 18:20:27<br /><br />Michael Jackson: Beyond Great<br />Second that. Junk food for the hordes. Loaves and fishes for his fans. Crucified for his actions.<br />posted Jul 05, 2009 at 18:12:09<br /><br />Biden Ignores Warnings Of Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini And Others<br />don't laugh there are a "host" of these who bought the Brooklyn Bridge.<br />posted Jul 05, 2009 at 16:48:19<br /><br />Biden Ignores Warnings Of Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini And Others<br />The handwriting was on the wall but it was covered over with graffiti.<br />posted Jul 05, 2009 at 16:44:17Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-49044237120547825032009-08-23T18:36:00.000-07:002009-08-23T18:37:58.742-07:00apolloguide<br />Member Since October 2008<br />Upload New Photo<br />Profile<br />Comments<br />apolloguide's Comments (439)<br />View Comments: Sort: <br /> displayed 1 - 25 of 439 next> last>><br />Sunday Roundup<br />Gee kiddo you actually believe they didn't??? and directed by jack abramoff! As Barney Frank would say "What planet are you currently living on???"<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 21:02:21<br /><br />The Road Ahead for Michael Vick<br />...with his tongue<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 18:02:39<br /><br />The Road Ahead for Michael Vick<br />When rich football players start fighting homeless people in pit rings rings on chains then maybe, MAYBE, the world will work out its demons but I doubt it. Bring back the gladiators. Let Vick fight a lion bare handed. Let's get totally Roman! Seriously though I really appreciate your bringing the facts into the light. It is a shame that your post got so little sensible and serious treatment. Your ASPCA group was completely right in setting the record straight on this inhuman brute aberration. People who do this are human beings in the clinical sense only and do not deserve to walk freely alongside the rest of us. Thank you sir. Send all dog fighters to jail for a minimum of 10 years hard labor at the Parchment Farm.<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 16:13:30<br /><br />Michael Vick: Black Sheep or Scapegoat on Animal Rights?<br />Michael Vick killed dogs to make money by illegal activity. If he had been hungry, it would have been justified. He has never needed the money or the food so he should not be given any breaks. Kim Basinger was right to book a flight out of this relationship. Read some Chomsky Alec, or Joe Lieberman will clean your clock. There is nothing to make anyone believe that Vick has any subtlety or sincerity regarding animals. He had his 15 minutes on the world stage and now is rich. He needs to summon some grace and go gently into the night and keep his nose clean.<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 15:40:00<br /><br />Should You Get Your Drug Information From An Actor?<br />If your dad has any indications for blocked arteries or has any indications at all of high blood pressure this inhaler could bring about a stroke. Inhalers are very, very, dangerous short term miracle cures which have dangerous addictive side effects. Most people who start to use them can never stop and have to use them more and more frequently. Find another way to fix dad. The inhaler will finish him off prematurely.<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 15:29:47<br /><br />Millions Face Shrinking Social Security Payments<br />The "facts" in this article are stunningly incorrect. Inflation has increased dramatically. Just check out the prices in the Safeway if you don't believe me. They are jumping up at rates approaching 20% here in the San Francisco Bay Area at Safeway stores. One item, beer, has now gone to $8.99 from $6.99 in less than 5 months. Boca Burgers have gone from $3.49 for 4 to $3.99 when on sale to $4.39 when not on sale. They have already made decision at the top of the corporate ladder to raise prices in advance of the inflation rate increase so their profits don't suffer, just their customers who are captive consumers who have to eat. Dog and cat food is becoming more appealing every day but even those prices have gone from $4.99 a bag to $9.99 a bag. An increase of 100% ! Please do your research more carefully and don't listen to people who peg inflation to oil prices. They are lying.<br />posted Aug 23, 2009 at 14:42:10<br /><br />Arianna Discusses Obama's Leadership on Charlie Rose<br />Just 40 days ago Obama was threatening to cut off all support for progressive legislators who wanted to show their disgust for burning even more money for Iraq and Afghanistan by voting against appropriations. He was not going to campaign for them and I guess brand them as lilly livered liberals. A big win for the defense industry to sell guns and ammo and support to perpetuate the killing by both sides and the prospect of promoting eternal revenge on all sides as in the 900 plus years of the Middle East blood bath. And now he cozy's up to Southern Democrats and Republicans of all stripes and ignores 78% of the population plus the majorities in both "deliberative bodies" and again sides with the profiteers in the health industry. And close by are sweet giveaways to suited criminals and yes men of Wall Street. And while we are at it let's give a boatload of cash directly to car dealers through a "clunker" program. And then how about expanding farm subsides for tobacco farmers not to grow tobacco so that they can maintain their position in elite society and not have to do anything at all for it. But don't give amnesty for student loans. And don't press Uncle Bernie Madoff about where 65 billion dollars went. (I bet he would cave with waterboarding...) This is what the outcome of 500 plus million dollars pocketed in the Denver Convention has come to.<br />posted Aug 21, 2009 at 11:19:58<br /><br />Dionne: When The President Is Black, The Guns Come Out<br />Is this a stunt comment?<br />posted Aug 20, 2009 at 11:44:17<br /><br />Jon Stewart Gives Props To Barney Frank (VIDEO)<br />"Wooden Ships" CSN "Have you seen any of those purple berries? ...Hav'n't got sick once, probably keep us both alive"<br />posted Aug 20, 2009 at 11:33:34<br /><br />Jon Stewart Gives Props To Barney Frank (VIDEO)<br />This is no country for old men.<br />posted Aug 20, 2009 at 11:26:24<br /><br />The Terminator is Back<br />Obviously, my dear, he doesn't give a damn !<br />posted Aug 19, 2009 at 20:18:17<br /><br />"Resistance Efforts," Guns and the Constitution<br />Name the states and state the conditions or stuff it.--liar! Or are these the Balkan states? Are you considering becoming an American? Ummm... indeed!<br />posted Aug 19, 2009 at 18:17:15<br /><br />"Resistance Efforts," Guns and the Constitution<br />This is exactly how we destabilize other countries. We give guns to conservatives and they become warlords and threaten and kill the producers in the society, burn their homes, and burn the olive trees. Now thanks to AZ, TX, and FL the disease of violence spreads and my country goes down in flames. All because of ignorance and genetic decay.<br />posted Aug 19, 2009 at 15:09:01<br /><br />Stand Up, Max Baucus<br />It is really good to hear from you on this matter sir. You are channeling Jack Bauer and it is wonderful to hear you in this debate and inferring that Reed, Pelosi, et. al. show without doubt where they stand and demand that the majority be respected; and by all means take the gloves off and stop dressing in buttons and bows and rid us of these scoundrels Grassley and Baucus without further delay.<br />posted Aug 18, 2009 at 15:23:15<br /><br />What's Wrong With American Medicine?<br />I have been with you for the entire journey since "The Natural Mind" Dr. Weil, having extolled your total approach to rational health care right here in these pages. With your work and that of Karen Sanders, Depak Chopra, and even Jamie Lee Curtis, I have been able to escape from the clutches of generally ineffective and decidedly toxic conventional drug care and have emerged into a personal space of strong robust health. For far too long, jejunely credulous Americans have fallen prey to the same marketing of tobacco and medicine with similar destructive results. Important areas of holistic dentistry and holistic medicine have been pushed to the fringes so that the toxic peddlers can continue to mislead their audiences while promoting irresponsible and irreversible courses of drugs which increase maladies on the long term for unrealistic short term and often disastrous short term "miracle cures". The sheer lunatic madness of modern day drug therapies can be seen right out in the open with the disclaimers which are routinely broadcast along with the commercials including "deaths" and "heart attacks". As long as legitimate herbal cures and healthy eating and recreation are ridiculed and often censored the public will continue to be exploited; ripe to be shot in a barrel like fish. Health insurers and conventional MD's aided by greedy litigators are all it takes to rig the system. Obama seems content to let this continue. Quite disturbing.<br />posted Aug 18, 2009 at 15:02:54<br /><br />Three Reasons We Need an Economic Wake Up Call<br />Wanna get some of that giddus you will have to pull weeds and know your way around a leaf blower.<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 13:08:34<br /><br />Three Reasons We Need an Economic Wake Up Call<br />My take? Rationing Coupons for Thanksgiving, breadlines for Christmas. Martial Law by St. Patrick's Day<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 12:36:20<br /><br />Michael Jackson: Beyond Great<br />a little too frequently I might add...<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 10:51:22<br /><br />Obama On Track To Break Records With Congressional Support<br />And the conclusion is: Democrats need the money!<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 10:36:03<br /><br />Huffington Post Blogger Shannyn Moore in Palin's Cross Hairs (UPDATED - Press Conference in Anchorage)<br />A tempest in a teapot, I say.<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 10:15:53<br /><br />Peter King: Michael Jackson A 'Pervert' And 'Low-Life' (VIDEO)<br />You are not alone.<br />posted Jul 06, 2009 at 10:11:07<br /><br />150 Years for Madoff?<br />15o years is OK with me as long as we don't have to keep the bugger alive for that long.<br />posted Jul 05, 2009 at 18:20:27<br /><br />Michael Jackson: Beyond Great<br />Second that. Junk food for the hordes. Loaves and fishes for his fans. Crucified for his actions.<br />posted Jul 05, 2009 at 18:12:09<br /><br />Biden Ignores Warnings Of Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini And Others<br />don't laugh there are a "host" of these who bought the Brooklyn Bridge.<br />posted Jul 05, 2009 at 16:48:19<br /><br />Biden Ignores Warnings Of Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini And Others<br />The handwriting was on the wall but it was covered over with graffiti.<br />posted Jul 05, 2009 at 16:44:17Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3808365.post-63084080939207497132009-07-06T14:20:00.000-07:002009-07-06T14:24:41.309-07:00from chris floyd<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; ">"Yet it is certain that no one in the upper reaches of the American power structure will note -- or even recognize -- the howling illogic of Biden's position. Why should they? It is their own underlying, animating principle, the very air they breathe: <em>whatever We and Ours do is good, is true, is right, is righteous</em>.<br /><br />"If We torture, it is good; in fact, it's not even torture. If We invade other countries without provocation, it's not aggression; it's liberation. If We kill innocent people to further Our political agenda, it's not terrorism; it's heroism, it's a "defense of the realm," of "our way of life." If We and Ours openly call and plan for "regime change" in other countries, those countries have no right to feel threatened; they should simply fall into line with Our wishes. This, again, is the unquestioned and apparently unquestionable core assumption of the American political, corporate and business classes."</span>Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04549165373273013894noreply@blogger.com0