Lucky Wander Boy, D. B. Weiss
a story of childhood, obsession and videogames
Get Things Done
corporate trainer gives advice
Dan Gilmore, We The Media
blog blog, blah blah
Monthly Archives: December 2004
Heartland
It still shocks me that there are people who openly defend the sickening hate of things like this. I’m not shocked that there are hypocritical defenders of genocide in America. There will always be at least a few people who manage to poison themselves with the stink of their own bile.
What still shocks me is when open calls for racial genocide are waved away as a just wee bit of a rant. Blowing off a little steam. As many times as I see it, I am still shocked when this kind of holocaust-porn is dismissed as normal enough to excuse. To accept. To defend…
That’s when a society becomes able to commit the most unimaginable horrors — when these horrors become innocuous things. When calls for mindless slaughter can be easily brushed aside or ignored. When a society is able to remain asleep while enacting its nightmares. That’s when things get truly fucking frightening.
Fortunately there are still conservatives who are sane enough to be frightened too. Scott McConnell at the American Conservative Magazine :
You see it on certain blogs and hear it in the rants of some of the most widely listened to right-wing talk-radio hosts. If the Arabs don’t want to be democratic, we should nuke them. We have no choice but to nuke them for our own safety. It’s a vulgarized neoconservatism –no one from the American Enterprise Institute speaks like this (in public). But this talk is around in the heartland and growing, and it is wind in the sails of the new administration.
[via Daily Kos]
Hopefully it’s not too late to be speaking up….
The pictures aren’t going to go away
Regarding the Torture of Others:
Just as it was regarded by many as an implicit criticism of the war to show on television photographs of American soldiers who have been killed in the course of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it will increasingly be thought unpatriotic to disseminate the new photographs and further tarnish the image of America.
After all, we’re at war. Endless war. And war is hell, more so than any of the people who got us into this rotten war seem to have expected. In our digital hall of mirrors, the pictures aren’t going to go away. Yes, it seems that one picture is worth a thousand words. And even if our leaders choose not to look at them, there will be thousands more snapshots and videos. Unstoppable.
Susan Sontag, New York Times Magazine
May 23, 2004
Country My Ass
Clearing brush speaks louder than words…
Guardian, Dec 2003:
On Dec. 26, 2003, when Bush was beginning his 2003 post-Christmas vacation here, his advisers were keeping him abreast of an earthquake in southeastern Iran that left more than 26,000 dead.Bush also spent time clearing brush at his ranch and thinking about what he’ll say in his inaugural speech and upcoming State of the Union address.
Washington Post, Dec 2004:
Skeptics said the initial aid sums — as well as Bush’s decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy — showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia.
…
Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was confident he could monitor events effectively without returning to Washington or making public statements in Crawford, where he spent part of the day clearing brush and bicycling.
Dale Watson, Country My Ass
Hey, that’s country, my ass,
Who do they think we am?
Force-feed us that shit.
Ain’t you real tired of it?
Tell ‘em, stick it up high,
Where the sun don’t shine.
Get pissed, an’get mad,
’cause that’s country, my ass.
Bitch
Gal. 4:16
Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?
Update — the Stalinist Red State speaks out at Editor and Publisher:
“Their dissent equals treason.”
“Today’s press undermines our troops and supports our enemies.”
“The Patriot Act will put both of you (Al Neuharth and Greg Mitchell) on trial for treason and convict and execute both of you as traitors for running these stories in a time of war”
lycos finance: Swiss Blocks Accounts in Oil Co. Probe
Swiss Blocks Accounts in Oil Co. Probe
3 December 2004, 4:26pm ET
GENEVA (AP) — Swiss justice authorities have blocked bank accounts containing $100 million in an investigation of an alleged bribery scandal tied to a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., the oil services company formerly headed by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.
Geneva state investigator Daniel Dumartheray confirmed a report in the daily Tribune de Geneve that the freeze was imposed after France asked Switzerland to grant judicial assistance for its investigation in the case. He declined to identify the accountholders or the banks involved.
It was unclear whether the frozen money was part of the total $180 million allegedly paid by an international consortium to win contracts for a natural gas project in Nigeria between 1995 and 2002.
The French investigation, launched in October 2003, centers on allegations that the TSKJ consortium paid illegal commissions in connection with a $4 billion contract it won in 1995 to build and expand a Nigerian liquefied natural gas plant.
The four partners in the consortium were M.W. Kellogg Co., a subsidiary of Dresser Industries; Technip SA of France; ENI SpA of Italy; and Japan Gasoline Corp.
Halliburton acquired Dresser in 1998 _ three years after Cheney began his 1995-2000 tenure as Halliburton’s CEO _ and combined its Brown & Root subsidiary with M.W. Kellogg to form engineering and construction unit KBR.
The consortium got other contracts involving the Nigerian plant in 1999 and 2002.
Last month, Halliburton said an ongoing internal investigation by the Houston-based conglomerate had still not found any evidence that supports claims of bribery.
The U.S. Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission and Nigerian officials also are investigating.
In June, Halliburton fired two consultants including former KBR chairman A. Jack Stanley, for violating the company’s business code of conduct by receiving “improper personal benefits” related to TSKJ’s construction of the Nigerian plant.
Halliburton shares rose 13 cents to close at $38.74 Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Oil for Food – notes
Fairly raw notes on the “oil for food” scandal…
letter to our enemies – via horsefeathers
Full text of a letter posted on Horsefeathers. In just a few paragraphs, it manages to call for torture, summary execution, internment, church burning, and genocide.
For some reason this solemn promise of random vengeance and gleeful murder eventually provoked a degree of outrage. However several other fundamentalist/fascist blogs re-posted the letter, and apparently continue to support it’s sentiments.
The author of the letter, Martin Kozloff, Professor of Education at The University of North Carolina at Wilmington, defended his call for genocide as a poetic hypothetical. He suggested that statements like “We will burn your mosques,” and “If we had enough ammunition and time, we would kill every last one of you” we’re just being taken the wrong way.
start executing the leftists
From Editor and Publisher readers’ comments regarding Joe Pitts, the reporter who suggested the lack-of-armor question that a Guardsman asked Rumsfeld:
Joe M. Richadson: “The duped soldier should be put at the very front of the action, no armor. The cooperating sergeant’s career should be over and maybe become MIA. Pitts and all his cronies should be executed as traitors. We are fighting a war, the debate is over, you’re either for us or against us, there is no middle ground. I say start executing the leftists in our country, soon.”
via atrios
comment: American Subsidiaries in Iraq
Responding to post by Tim Worstall on October 08, 2004.
Fundamentalist Checklist – TOTALLY not gay
Characteristics of fundamentalist fascism:
- They hate liberated women and all that symbolizes them. They hate it when women compete with men in the workplace, when they decide when or whether they will bear children, when they show the independence of getting abortions. They hate changes in laws that previously gave men more power over women.
- They hate the wide range of sexual orientations and lifestyles that have always characterized human societies. They hate homosexuality.
- They hate individual freedoms that allow people to stray from the rigid sort of truth they want to constrain all people. They hate individual rights that let others slough off their simple certainties.
This measure of fundamentalist insecurity turns out to be a helpful way to size up man’s man Doug Giles at TownHall. He firmly (ooh!) expresses his masculinity — without even the slightest hint of defensivenes — by picking on… Clay Aiken.
Yep. That’s how friggin’ hardkore Doug Giles is.
So watch your back, girlie men.
comment: Republican Donations from Iraqi Oil
Responding to post at Friends of Saddam, Oct 11, 2004
Family Values vs. Liberal Jewish Butt-Sex
The truth comes out — “mainstream” is really a code word for ass.
LA Times – Alternate Reality (Rick Caruso’s Malls)
Alternate reality
Rick Caruso’s outdoor malls are a cleaned-up facsimile of city life.
By Tina Daunt, Times Staff Writer
December 1, 2004
Multimillionare developer Rick Caruso is walking past the shops on Royal Street in the heart of the French Quarter, surveying the streetscape with all its architectural elegance and decay.
Little escapes the notice of the Los Angeles businessman: the ornately carved crown moldings, the wrought iron balconies, sizzling gas lanterns, cypress shutters, cracked sidewalks, leaning walls, bare wires. The place is beautiful but worn out. To Caruso, it looks like a dump.
“They certainly haven’t spent any money on maintenance,” he says. “I don’t see any reason to ever come back here again.”
Former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan opposed Caruso’s effort to remove Parks as chief, but says he admires the developer’s business sense.
“His father is a wealthy man, so he came to it the easy way,” Riordan says. “But he never let that make him lazy.
“I think he’s ready to take over Los Angeles.”
NOTE
The text of this story was taken down at the request of the LA Times (May 14, 2008). The timing of this request to remove the text is probably related to the recent opening of Caruso’s Americana mall in Glendale, which was lavishly and flatteringly covered by the LA Times.
The story which was taken down was an interesting portrait of Caruso as a born-wealthy Republican fundraiser with an avowed hatred for the disorder of living cities. It’s an interesting picture, especially given the rumors of his possible run for LA mayor. Sadly, the original link to the story on the Times website is now broken. However the full text of this article seems to be available for purchase for just $3.95.
Four bucks may seem like a lot just to read a short biographical article from 2004. But clearly the Tribune-owned LA Times knows how to run a profitable business, so rather than question their economic decisions, let us simply wish them the best.
LA Times – PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-warinfo1dec01,0,321180.story?coll=la-home-headlines
THE NATION
PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror
The use of misleading information as a military tool sparks debate in the Pentagon. Critics say the practice puts credibility at stake.
By Mark Mazzetti
Times Staff WriterDecember 1, 2004
