Journal BlackHat's Journal: Is that the way we stand/ Were you lying all the time 15
An obvious ref and a very unlikely song to be played at the RNC. Even though it does aptly describe the relationship between Bush-II and the GOP at this time.
The GOP is faced with only a small selection of options; Bush flavor kool-aid, Nader, or a Mulldoon'esk flame out. And, so, what do we see today? The little shrubbie waiting too long to dis the not_so_swiftboaters. It might have worked early last week. Rove's direct connection might have then gone unnoticed, back 7 or 8 days ago. It, also, may have been a bad move drawing the elephant-sharks to the surface with the blood-twins. We should see them all attacking each other for lack of food [anything left unconnected to shrub co] at the RNC. Popcorn!!!
Quote(1):
Who will save the warchild baby/
Who controls the key?/
The web we weave is thick and sorted/
Fine by me/
At times of war, we're all losers/
There's no victory/
We shoot and kill and kill your lover/
Fine by me/
Warchild, victim of political pride/
Plant the seed, territorial greed/
Mind the warchild, we should mind the warchild/
I spent last winter in New York and came upon a man/
He was sleeping on the streets and homeless/
He said, 'I fought in Vietnam'/
Beneath his shirt he wore his mark, he bore the mark of pride/
A two inch deep incision, carved into his side/
Warchild, victim of political pride/
Plant the seed, territorial greed/ --The Cranberries.
As he was; Black, Gay and a Trade Unionist, there he remains. Vote the GNAA ticket!
Quote(2):
The cloud which for the space of a month hung gloomily over the civilized world, black with far worse evils than those of simple war, has passed from over our heads without bursting. The fear has not been realized, that the only two first-rate Powers who are also free nations would take to tearing each other in pieces, both the one and the other in a bad and odious cause.
For while, on the American side, the war would have been one of reckless persistency in wrong, on ours it would have been a war in alliance with, and, to practical purposes, in defence and propagation of, slavery. We had, indeed, been wronged. We had suffered an indignity, and something more than an indignity, which, not to have resented, would have been to invite a constant succession of insults and injuries from the same and from every other quarter.
We could have acted no otherwise than we have done: yet it is impossible to think, without something like a shudder, from what we have escaped. We, the emancipators of the slave--who have wearied every Court and Government in Europe and America with our protests and remonstrances, until we goaded them into at least ostensibly cooperating with us to prevent the enslaving of the negro--we, who for the last half century have spent annual sums, equal to the revenue of a small kingdom, in blockading the African coast, for a cause in which we not only had no interest, but which was contrary to our pecuniary interest, and which many believed would ruin, as many among us still, though erroneously, believe that it has ruined, our colonies,-- we should have lent a hand to setting up, in one of the most commanding positions of the world, a powerful republic, devoted not only to slavery, but to pro-slavery propagandism--should have helped to give a place in the community of nations to a conspiracy of slave-owners, who have broken their connection with the American Federation on the sole ground, ostentatiously proclaimed, that they thought an attempt would be made to restrain, not slavery itself, but their purpose of spreading slavery wherever migration or force could carry it.
A nation which has made the professions that England has, does not with impunity, under however great provocation, betake itself to frustrating the objects for which it has been calling on the rest of the world to make sacrifices of what they think their interest. At present all the nations of Europe have sympathized with us; have acknowledged that we were injured, and declared with rare unanimity, that we had no choice but to resist, if necessary, by arms. But the consequences of such a war would soon have buried its causes in oblivion. When the new Confederate States, made an independent Power by English help, had begun their crusade to carry negro slavery from the Potomac to Cape Horn; who would then have remembered that England raised up this scourge to humanity not for the evil's sake, but because somebody had offered an insult to her flag? Or even if unforgotten, who would then have felt that such a grievance was a sufficient palliation of the crime?
Every reader of a newspaper, to the farthest ends of the earth, would have believed and remembered one thing only--that at the critical juncture which was to decide whether slavery should blaze up afresh with increased vigor or be trodden out at the moment of conflict between the good and the evil spirit--at the dawn of a hope that the demon might now at last be chained and flung into the pit, England stepped in, and, for the sake of cotton, made Satan victorious.
The world has been saved from this calamity, and England from this disgrace. The accusation would indeed have been a calumny. But to be able to defy calumny, a nation, like an individual, must stand very clear of just reproach in its previous conduct. Unfortunately, we ourselves have given too much plausibility to the charge. Not by anything said or done by us as a Government or as a nation, but by the tone of our press, and in some degree, it must be owned, the general opinion of English society. It is too true, that the feelings which have been manifested since the beginning of the American contest--the judgments which have been put forth, and the wishes which have been expressed concerning the incidents and probable eventualities of the struggle--the bitter and irritating criticism which has been kept up, not even against both parties equally, but almost solely against the party in the right, and the ungenerous refusal of all those just allowances which no country needs more than our own, whenever its circumstances are as near to those of America as a cut finger is to an almost mortal wound,--these facts, with minds not favorably disposed to us, would have gone far to make the most odious interpretation of the war in which we have been so nearly engaged with the United States, appear by many degrees the most probable.
There is no denying that our attitude towards the contending parties (I mean our moral attitude, for politically there was no other course open to us than neutrality) has not been that which becomes a people who are as sincere enemies of slavery as the English really are, and have made as great sacrifices to put an end to it where they could. And it has been an additional misfortune that some of our most powerful journals have been for many years past very unfavorable exponents of English feeling on all subjects connected with slavery: some, probably, from the influences, more or less direct, of West Indian opinions and interests: others from inbred Toryism, which, even when compelled by reason to hold opinions favorable to liberty, is always adverse to it in feeling; which likes the spectacle of irresponsible power exercised by one person over others; which has no moral repugnance to the thought of human beings born to the penal servitude for life, to which for the term of a few years we sentence our most hardened criminals, but keeps its indignation to be expended on "rabid and fanatical abolitionists" across the Atlantic, and on those writers in England who attach a sufficiently serious meaning to their Christian professions, to consider a fight against slavery as a fight for God.
Now, when the mind of England, and it may almost be said, of the civilized part of mankind, has been relieved from the incubus which had weighed on it ever since the Trent outrage, and when we are no longer feeling towards the Northern Americans as men feel towards those with whom they may be on the point of struggling for life or death; now, if ever, is the time to review our position, and consider whether we have been feeling what ought to have been felt, and wishing what ought to have been wished, regarding the contest in which the Northern States are engaged with the South.
In considering this matter, we ought to dismiss from our minds, as far as possible, those feelings against the North, which have been engendered not merely by the Trent aggression, but by the previous anti-British effusions of newspaper writers and stump orators. It is hardly worth while to ask how far these explosions of ill-humor are anything more than might have been anticipated from ill-disciplined minds, disappointed of the sympathy which they justly thought they had a right to expect from the great anti-slavery people, in their really noble enterprise.
It is almost superfluous to remark that a democratic Government always shows worst where other Governments generally show best, on its outside; that unreasonable people are much more noisy than the reasonable; that the froth and scum are the part of a violently fermenting liquid that meets the eyes, but are not its body and substance. Without insisting on these things, I contend, that all previous cause of offence should be considered as cancelled, by the reparation which the American Government has so amply made; not so much the reparation itself, which might have been so made as to leave still greater cause of permanent resentment behind it; but the manner and spirit in which they have made it. These have been such as most of us, I venture to say, did not by any means expect. If reparation were made at all, of which few of us felt more than a hope, we thought that it would have been made obviously as a concession to prudence, not to principle. We thought that there would have been truckling to the newspaper editors and supposed fire-eaters who were crying out for retaining the prisoners at all hazards.
We expected that the atonement, if atonement there were, would have been made with reservations, perhaps under protest. We expected that the correspondence would have been spun out, and a trial made to induce England to be satisfied with less; or that there would have been a proposal of arbitration; or that England would have been asked to make concessions in return for justice; or that if submission was made, it would have been made, ostensibly, to the opinions and wishes of Continental Europe. We expected anything, in short, which would have been weak and timid and paltry. The only thing which no one seemed to expect, is what has actually happened. Mr. Lincoln's Government have done none of these things. Like honest men, they have said in direct terms, that our demand was right; that they yielded to it because it was just; that if they themselves had received the same treatment, they would have demanded the same reparation; and that if what seemed to be the American side of a question was not the just side, they would be on the side of justice; happy as they were to find after their resolution had been taken, that it was also the side which America had formerly defended. Is there any one, capable of a moral judgment or feeling, who will say that his opinion of America and American statesmen, is not raised by such an act, done on such grounds?
The act itself may have been imposed by the necessity of the circumstances; but the reasons given, the principles of action professed, were their own choice. Putting the worst hypothesis possible, which it would be the height of injustice to entertain seriously, that the concession was really made solely to convenience, and that the profession of regard for justice was hypocrisy, even so, the ground taken, even if insincerely, is the most hopeful sign of the moral state of the American mind which has appeared for many years.
That a sense of justice should be the motive which the rulers of a country rely on, to reconcile the public to an unpopular, and what might seem a humiliating act; that the journalists, the orators, many lawyers, the Lower House of Congress, and Mr. Lincoln's own naval secretary, should be told in the face of the world, by their own Government, that they have been giving public thanks, presents of swords, freedom of cities, all manner of heroic honors to the author of an act which, though not so intended, was lawless and wrong, and for which the proper remedy is confession and atonement; that this should be the accepted policy (supposing it to be nothing higher) of a Democratic Republic, shows even unlimited democracy to be a better thing than many Englishmen have lately been in the habit of considering it, and goes some way towards proving that the aberrations even of a ruling multitude are only fatal when the better instructed have not the virtue or the courage to front them boldly.
Nor ought it to be forgotten, to the honor of Mr. Lincoln's Government, that in doing what was in itself right, they have done also what was best fitted to allay the animosity which was daily becoming more bitter between the two nations so long as the question remained open. They have put the brand of confessed injustice upon that rankling and vindictive resentment with which the profligate and passionate part of the American press has been threatening us in the event of concession, and which is to be manifested by some dire revenge, to be taken, as they pretend, after the nation is extricated from its present difficulties.
Mr. Lincoln has done what depended on him to make this spirit expire with the occasion which raised it up; and we shall have ourselves chiefly to blame if we keep it alive by the further prolongation of that stream of vituperative eloquence, the source of which, even now, when the cause of quarrel has been amicably made up, does not seem to have run dry. I do not forget one regrettable passage in Mr. Seward's letter, in which he said that "if the safety of the Union required the detention of the captured persons, it would be the right and duty of this Government to detain them."
I sincerely grieve to find this sentence in the dispatch, for the exceptions to the general rules of morality are not a subject to be lightly or unnecessarily tampered with.
The doctrine in itself is no other than that professed and acted on by all governments--that self-preservation, in a State, as in an individual, is a warrant for many things which at all other times ought to be rigidly abstained from.
At all events, no nation which has ever passed "laws of exception," which ever supended the Habeas Corpus Act or passed an Alien Bill in dread of a Chartist insurrection, has a right to throw the first stone at Mr. Lincoln's Government.-- JS Mill
Cotton, people, rubber, oil, spices, etc. It never changes. It just mutates into more and more complex structures of-- half-truths, misdirection and make-believe.
News in the best possible light:
And look there's a master of half-truths, misdirection and make-believe now. Jack "Strawdog" Straw in Darfur. Not much fur on a straw dog.
"PM's wife ranked most powerful woman in Britain,..." I'm sure a bath and the recommendation not to lie with dingos will clear that up.
Anarchy in the UK, c.1964 Forty years ago, when A Hard Day's Night was at the top of the hit parade and Harold Wilson was prime minister, a long-haired teenage Glaswegian anarchist was arrested in Madrid on a mission to assassinate General Franco with some plastic explosives he had smuggled across the border from France under his woolly jumper. He faced the possibility of death by Franco's favoured method of execution, the garrotte.
Mine! cries little Robert. But if you study the logistics/ And heuristics of the mystics/ You will find that their minds rarely move in a line/
Events are being held worldwide to mark the abolition of the slave trade and to highlight the fact that millions still live as slaves in all but name. The United Nations is leading the celebrations in Paris, while a new slavery museum is to open in the US state of Ohio later on Monday.
NTT DoCoMo, the world's second-largest mobile phone company, is in talks to buy handsets from the US's Motorola. until they change their name to Frilly Underpants Chip Co.
Adam Ereli steps up to the plate.
QUESTION: Well, is it normal for a senior official to attend a closing ceremony of an Olympics?
MR. ERELI: Well, President Bush attended the opening ceremonies representing the United States Government.
QUESTION: The elder Bush.
MR. ERELI: The elder President Bush, representing the U.S. Government. Secretary Powell has been wanting to go to Greece for some time, so this is a good opportunity to both represent the United States and pay a visit to a country that's very important to us.
QUESTION: A follow-up?
MR. ERELI: A follow-up? Mm-hmm.
QUESTION: Mr. Ereli, are you going with Secretary of State to Greece, too? (Laughter.)
MR. ERELI: I don't have any comment on my travel plans. I don't think that's the point. The point is the Secretary is going.
Strike one.
QUESTION: Can we go to the issue of settlement construction? There were reports today that Israel plans to build more than 530 new settler homes in the West Bank. There were, as you are well aware, there was a tender last week for the construction of an additional 1,000 housing units.
What is the U.S. position on this? Is this acceptable under the roadmap? Is it not acceptable under the roadmap?
MR. ERELI: I think the position was best articulated by the President when he made it clear in his speech on June 21st, 2002*, that, consistent with the recommendations of the Mitchell Committee, Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must stop.
Under the roadmap that was worked out with both parties, we are looking for practical steps from both sides to help us realize that vision -- the vision that the President expressed on June 24th.
On the Palestinian side, you have action that's needed to take in the security area. On the Israeli side, what we're looking for and what the parties
- - and what the Israelis committed to was a dismantling of outposts and progress towards a settlement freeze.
We are currently involved in technical talks with the Government of Israel in an effort to clarify their intentions with respect to the settlements, and we will continue to work with the Government of Israel towards a settlement freeze as is called for in the roadmap.
QUESTION: Okay, well, does your citing a two-year-old speech by the President, saying that settlement activity must stop, mean that you do not wish them to proceed with the additional 1000 housing units that were formally tendered for and the 530 that are reported this morning?
MR. ERELI: Yeah. I'm not going to speak to these specific cases that you raise. What I will speak to is the general proposition that we all have a goal of working towards, which is a two state solution, and that the roadmap, as the way to get there, has both sides undertaking commitments, and that on the Israeli part includes progress towards a settlement freeze.
We are working with the Israelis to provide meaning to that commitment, and to do that in a way that allows the Palestinians to follow through with their commitments, that allows the Israelis to follow through with their commitments, so that we can reach the end state, the goal of the end state, which is a Palestinian state living side by side in security with Israel and a state where settlement activity has stopped.
So I would say it is a process. It is something that, with respect to these specific incidents that you cite, we are discussing with the Israelis, but look at it in the larger context of an engagement on following through on commitments.
QUESTION: So, in your view, in the U.S. Government's view, then, progress toward a settlement freeze could include continued building of settlements, additions to existing settlements?
MR. ERELI: I'm not going to speculate on what it could include, what it couldn't include. What is has as its goal is an end to settlement activity.
QUESTION: Well, notwithstanding your quoting of the President's two-year-old speech, you are clearly not telling the Israelis don't build these settlements that they tendered for last week; correct?
MR. ERELI: I'm not in a position to tell you what we are telling the Israelis or what we are not telling the Israelis. What we are discussing with the Israelis is how we can practically follow through on those commitments to make progress towards a settlement freeze. That is the nature of our discussions, but I'm not in a position to go into saying what exactly we are telling them to do and what exactly we're not telling them to do. But the point is --
QUESTION: What --
QUESTION: Adam --
MR. ERELI: Sorry. The point is that both parties need to be mindful of the commitments they made and the fact that actions they take are reflective of those commitments.
QUESTION: Adam --
QUESTION: May I ask a -- can I ask you a follow-up, please?
QUESTION: Sure.
QUESTION: Thank you. It is then, now, the U.S. Government's position that the cessation of settlement activity called for in the roadmap reflects simply a desire to make progress, progress toward a settlement freeze? That is your current interpretation of that?
MR. ERELI: Let's be clear. The vision, the end state, is an end to settlement activity, okay? The roadmap is the way to get there and how do you get from where we are now to the end state. So, by definition, it is a chart for progress. Same way with the Palestinians on security. You've got a situation now that is inadequate. You want to get to a situation where you have two states where the Palestinians are capable of providing for security and ensuring that their state is not a threat to Israel, and so their commitments under the roadmap chart their progress from where they are now to the end state. So, in both cases, we're talking about progress towards a goal and the way to get there.
QUESTION: And, Adam --
QUESTION: But you called for an end to Israeli settlement activity in the roadmap, and I want to know what that means.
MR. ERELI: It means -- well, I'm not in a position to define it further for you.
A fielding error and a... Strike! That's two.
QUESTION: Can I ask a different question on Israel? How seriously the U.S. is taking the threat by Iran that they have the capacity and capability of destroying Israel's nuclear and other installations? This has been in many, many press, including India Globe. So, are you in touch with Israel, or they are in touch with you, that has Israel taking this threat from Iran, and Iranians are being --
MR. ERELI: No. No, no, no, this is not a -- as I said before, as I said last week when it was asked, and I said the week before that was asked, this is a issue that we, the United States, is committed to dealing with peacefully and through diplomatic channels. That's what our diplomacy and our policy is geared toward, and I don't think it's useful or productive to get into hyperactive speculation on rhetoric.
QUESTION: How about in the same connection, I'm sorry, that -- are you concerned about that China is behind missile technology to Iran as early as in the last few months? And also, Pakistan is behind a nuclear -- China's
- -
MR. ERELI: I'm sorry. Let's stick to -- let's stick -- we're still on Israel. We're still on Israel, right?
QUESTION: Oh, sorry.
MR. ERELI: Are we still on Israel?
QUESTION: No.
QUESTION: Adam, as the gentleman suggested, there's a very widespread impression in the Middle East that in recent days there's been a change in U.S. policy with regard to settlements. Is that -- yes or no? I mean, has there been?
MR. ERELI: I guess -- I don't think anything I've said today would lead you to that conclusion. I've said -- I've reiterated what the President said in 2002. I've reiterated what was agreed to under the roadmap. I've said we are continuing to work with both parties to fulfill those commitments made under the roadmap, and that in the case of the Israelis, we are in ongoing discussions to clarify intentions and to work towards a freeze on settlement activity. So I don't know where the departure is.
Strike three. But he keeps swinging well after every one went home.
QUESTION: There's one big question that's being raised in Venezuela by the opposition, and that is if the United States pushed so hard and got a paper, a complete audit of the results in the Fujimora elections in Peru, why won't they do it in Venezuela?
MR. ERELI: Because the process agreed in Venezuela was for the international observers, as represented by the Carter Center and the OAS, to be the accredited, responsible observers for this election. That's what was -- that was what was worked out. Those are the groups that had the confidence of everybody. They continue to have our confidence. We think that they lived up to their mission and provided much-needed credibility to this process. he did not add 'and it would say things we don't want said at this time'.
OYAITJ:
43547 : Juan's Clean-Air Coal --The Bush administration plans to open a huge loophole in America's air pollution laws, allowing an estimated 17,000 outdated power stations and factories to increase their carbon emissions with impunity. Critics of draft regulations due to be unveiled by the US environmental protection agency next week say they amount to a death knell for the Clean Air Act, the centrepiece of US regulation., Brazil's Space program setback --About 20 people have been killed in an explosion which destroyed a Brazilian space rocket just days before its scheduled launch, military officials have said., hot words-- A newspaper columnist the other day invoked the adage that there is NO honour among thieves - a careless mistake not uncommon among those of us who pump out thousands of words a week for a living. I wondered how many people would spot the proverbial solecism. Not many, apparently. When I said in a jocular tone to a number of sharp and educated people that someone had referred to there being no honour among thieves, a perceptible pause followed as most of them did a mental check on what I was getting at. One or two wondered what was wrong with that, and one was even prepared to wager it was right. Well, the proverb had lasted for 200 years (according to the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable) only because the correct version, "There IS honour among thieves", is a kind of paradox, underlining a subtle truth. It is listed in the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase, Saying and Quotation under the general heading of "Co-operation". , and more.
Texttoon:
Fumetti : Composited photo of John Ashcroft flanked by Sam the Eagle on the right. Waldorf and Stadler to his left. All three muppets have flattop hats and 'McKinley - Roosevelt' campaign pins added. A speech bubble for Waldorf has him saying; "Sam sure is sore." With a bubble for Stadler; "And so are we. Ha hah!" Caption at the bottom; "Some old birds question John's performance."
Kerry Talking Points (Score:2)
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Re:Kerry Talking Points (Score:2)
Article & Essay / Articles & Essays
Date: Oct 21, 2002 - 08:04 PM While Americans were dying in Vietnam and demonstrating in America, our hawkish President did neither. He went AWOL!
By Frederick Sweet
Amid a constant beating of the war drums at The White House, President George W. Bush has been urging everyone to join him in a regime changing invasion of Iraq to eliminate Saddam Hussein. Americans are still waiting for Bush to make a convincing case
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Re:Kerry Talking Points (Score:2)
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Although my view is
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I never fancied living in the DDR [fortunecity.com], though...
Re:Kerry Talking Points (Score:2)
In the year of the scavenger/ The season of the bitch/
Sashay on the boardwalk/ Scurry to the ditch/
Just another future song/ Lonely little kitsch/
There's gonna be sorrow/ Try and wake up tomorrow/
Re:Kerry Talking Points (Score:2)
The times they are a-telling, and the changing isn't free
You've read it in the tea leaves, and the tracks are on TV...
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Bent on getting hung and buried/
And the legendary curtains are drawn round' Baby Bankrupt/
Who sucks you while you're sleeping/
It's the theater of financiers/
Count them, fifty round' a table/
White and dressed to kill/
Re:Kerry Talking Points (Score:2)
Count them, fifty 'round a table
White and dressed to kill
It gets pretty good around this bit, donn'it?
It's on Amerika's tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame -
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes,
From Ibeza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds -
To my mother, my dog, and clowns
But the film is a saddening bore,
'Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It's about to be writ agai
Re:Kerry Talking Points (Score:2)
or we'll have them weeping in the sawdust before the first chorus.
Hit it Mr. Gilmore!
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Re:Kerry Talking Points (Score:2)
They will have a list of those already with the skill set or close enough for one year[or less] crash program. Not to mention the obvious usages[abuse] of a selective draft where the criteria is open ended. !Good.
Re:Kerry Talking Points (Score:2)
I was hoping for an interesting race this year. I hope the Democrats have something, anything, in Nixon's proverbial drawer. I don't see much there though.
I'd have to agree with both of those points. With some minor additionals, of course, but you have pointed to the key problem(s).