Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Friday, October 26, 2007
Paint is thicker than blood
Good morning, Mickey and all soon to arrive. Mickey, have a safe trip. Your Mother will be receiving the best medicine any mother could get when she sees you.
I saw the excessive force used during the arrest of the protester. The police were really in a big hurry to get the truth-sayer out of there so the TV cameras would not get much of the scene.
During the Congressional Hearing on Thursday, Condo Rice said, among other things, that the usa military cannot protect the State Dept staff - that’s why they need Blackwater there. Proof that we have created so much chaos and danger in Iraq that even ALL of the us military cannot protect usa personnel.
DN reports that Blackwater is “training” and operating within 6 miles of the Mexican border in the usa. Guess we are preparing for our war against Mexico.
The hate speech against anyone whose mother was not in the usa when they were born has reached new levels on Albany talk radio. We really need a “Hug-a-Mexican-Day” - or a “We-are-all-illegal-immigrants-Day”.
Posted by RMJ on from Mickey Z 4 Prez Hdqts 10/26 at 08:06 AMGood morning RMJ and Mickey and everyone…
Hugging...it saddens me and disappoints me the activists in my area can’t seem to find a common human bond...only what I perceive as a shallow, traditional political bond, shouting peace as if it’s disconnected from all other human feelings and activities. I see human relations in amerika as violence representing the long time war here, at home in america. It’s no damn wonder war is fabricated so easily...it’s not simply the powerful can get their way anytime they want...they are violence even when not bombing another nation. I have been ranting about human relations among activists locally and I seldom get a response. One older academic states how the atrocities are escalating but does not call for justice...what is justice?...for me it’s prosecuting war criminals and saying no to the republicats, voting, 2,3 parties broadway bombing theatrics. The script needed rewriting centuries ago and we still choose to be the audience, in our separate seats. The mention of isolation and alienation of individuals, I feel cannot be discussed enough...I don’t need to think about Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, The Philippines to experience war...it’s here everyday in your local communities.
Posted by joe of maine on from 10/26 at 09:16 AMThis one’s been coming to mind to mention past few days:
Posted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 10/26 at 09:25 AMJames...thanks for that one. How true!!! I will be forwarding it.
joe...Yep, the activists here are the same as you describe. I agree with everything that you say, except, I believe that it is important to think about the atrocities that we commit in other countries. I don’t see any justification for limiting empathy by geographical/national borders. We have to love them as much as we love ourselves. Right???
captcha says “attack”. HummmmmmmPosted by RMJ on from Mickey Z 4 Prez Hdqts 10/26 at 10:02 AMRMJ...you’re right...love everyone...and this is exactly where americans lose the whole thing...love in america means giving your mate a new electric drill because that is as close to humanity as it gets...[yes I’m generalizing, I don’t feel like typing]
Posted by joe maine on from 10/26 at 11:41 AMHello Expendables. It suddenly feels awfully cold and damp in NYC. I might actually be looking forward to some Texas heat.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 10/26 at 11:43 AMCondi Rice: State Department punk.
Congratulations, James, that cartoon works. No, it really works. The next question on the exam is “How many Iraqis need to be killed to make us feel safe?”
a. Dick Cheney will say ‘when.’
b. a mountain of corpses.
c. a mountain range or corpses.
d. M-16’s jam too much. Better call in air.
e. Don’t know.I’ll complete this post on war crimes by noting the Red Sox won a squeaker last night. I expect Steinbrenner & Sons to file suit in The Hague early next week (rim shot optional).
Posted by Zen Prole on from Urth 10/26 at 11:59 AMZen...you make an important point. The USA would have to kill all of the Iraqis, all of the Iranians, all of the Cubans, etc. Then all of the people here…
joe...love in America means putting your kids in day care, your parents in nursing homes - the institutionalization of anyone who needs love and care.
Posted by RMJ on from Mickey Z 4 Prez Hdqts 10/26 at 06:14 PMDid you hear about the fake FEMA news conference...maybe we have finally made it to total Orwellian-ism.
Posted by RMJ on from Mickey Z 4 Prez Hdqts 10/26 at 06:25 PMHi from a cold and rainy Vermont. Looks like the protesters in Boston might get wet. They had trouble filling the bus to go there. I don’t think it is because people have decided that protesting doesn’t work - I think it is because of apathy - protesting doesn’t work, and most don’t care that it doesn’t work.
Here the big event of the day is the annual “pumpkin fest”. The town is trying to break the record set by a New Hampshire town for having the most lit pumpkins on display - blocking off Main Street etc. It seems sad to me that people could be amused by lit pumpkins when so many bombs have lit up Baghdad, but then, what can I say. Did someone write a book “Amusing Ourselves to Death”?
captcha says “country”. Yeh, I used to have one, or at least I used to think I had one.
Posted by RMJ on from Mickey Z 4 Prez Hdqts 10/27 at 07:54 AMHere’s an update on Donald Rumfraud the war criminal...for what it’s worth?
Posted by joe of maine on from 10/27 at 09:26 AMjoe...I have been following that case. In my view to single out Rumsfeld is wrong - but it is a step in the right direction. Won’t amount to much more than the charges against Kissinger. Sometimes the only answer is an extra-judicial one. No one on the planet has the will or the power to accomplish that. The bad guys will continue to win until someone gets very creative.
Posted by RMJ on from Mickey Z 4 Prez Hdqts 10/27 at 01:03 PMkoyaanisqatsi...a state of life that calls for another way of living...I like the word..Koyaanisqatsi..
I think our whole society tries to stabilize itself by starting out to destroy sensitivity to incoherence starting with very young children. If people could see the vast incoherence that is going on in society they would be disturbed and they would feel the need to do something. If you’re not sensitive to it you don’t feel disturned and you don’t feel you need to do anything.
I remember an instance, a daughter was telling her mother, “this school is terrible, the teacher is terrible, very inconsistent, doing all sorts of crazy things,” and so on. Finally the mother was saying, “You’d better stop this--in this house the teacher is always right.” Now she understood that the teacher was wrong obviously, but the message was, it was no use. Even the message may have been right in some sense, but still it illustrates that the predicament is that in order to avoid this sort of trouble, starting with very young children, we are trained to become insensitive to incoherence. If there is incoherence in our own behavior, we thereby also become insensitive to it.--David Bohm, seminar on Thought and Dialogue in Ojai, November 4, 1989
Posted by joe of maine on from 10/27 at 01:20 PMI’m really not sure who Layla Anwar...I like her writings and here is what she says about ‘ours’
“You are nothing but words on paper. And we have become nothing but a target people riddled with your bullets.”
Last evening I listened to a drunk telling me about a rape...his needy-ness could’nt help bring himself into the conversation until I told him to get to the point of the story which was the young lady victim...I’m in one of those moods...I feel there is absolutely no hope for western man and if the many wars are choreographed to stop tommorrow, I’m afraid piece activists will want to take credit...justifying their staying asleep.
Layla continues…
“Daily, you read words and papers. A bulimia of words and papers...So ?
Daily, I read thousands of words and write them too...So?Has it changed anything? Has it improved anything ? Has it given me and millions of other Iraqis any hope...?
Sadly, the answer is NO.
Posted by joe of maine on from 10/28 at 09:42 AMI’m also not a fan of ken burns...wars against women…
“A Letter to Ken Burns about The War: An Intimate History”...Dr. Suki Falconberg
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m37607&hd=&size=1&l=e
Posted by joe of maine on from 10/28 at 10:51 AMHi joe...ken burns did not do a very good job with his production on jazz either. Many of us were disappointed that he apparently never heard of Garner - one of the most imitated jazz artists of all time (he won many contests including the Playboy Jazz poll in the 50s). Some of Garner’s recordings are still being sold 50 years after they were recorded. It seemed to me, that Burns just used the videos and films that were the easiest to get. There was no rhyme or reason for the way that he did things.
Posted by RMJ on from Mickey Z 4 Prez Hdqts 10/28 at 01:14 PMRMJ...16...yes...american history, ken burns...civil war, baseball, whose version? who cares?...will burns have a documentary about american war criminals televised on the Ariel Sharon Broadcasting Network?
Burns probably gets large sums of grant money to tell it the way authorities want it told..and if this isn’t the case, I don’t find any of his work of any real value or very interesting...I don’t find anything interesting about this 500 year page of history or those who are proud of this sabotage of social evolution!
Posted by joe of maine on from 10/28 at 03:00 PMjoe...the US invented baseball, fire, the alphabet, mathematics, the wheel, and the cure for mid-life crisis - or was that some other culture that all of those things...well, at least we invented baseball. Maybe that was worth something in the progress of humanity, or maybe not. hummmmm, I guess that this culture has not accomplished much of anything. More evolution is definately needed.
Posted by RMJ on from Mickey Z 4 Prez Hdqts 10/28 at 03:45 PMOn the brighter side - The NYT is reporting that Congress will be working fewer days in the next session. They will have Fridays off. Now, if we could only find a way to keep them out of Washington on the other days. Come to think of it, that might be the way to end the funding of the war. Keep them out of Washington forever. They need a permanent vacation.
Posted by RMJ on from Mickey Z 4 Prez Hdqts 10/28 at 05:41 PMhello all
i like it when nmickey asks folks to tell personal storues but it is sometimes quite hard to think of one at the exact moment but here is a delayed one...and all true…
I was reminded of this event tonight and just wanted to write up the story.
After I finished the time in the village in Nepal where I was volunteering, myself and a couple of friends had a couple of weeks just to hang out before we went home. Some of what we would have got up to was curtailed by a general strike but as I have also written, we didn’t let it stop us too much.
Anyway, at a time when the strike wasn’t on, after a big night out me and my similarly shorthaired friend went for breakfast. It was about 10am Nepali time.
We were eating breakfast and minding our own business when a guy who did not look like the average Nepali decided to come and speak to us. He had a suit and a gold chain around his wrist and was prominently displaying his mobile phone, which is a thing not a lot of people had in that country when I was there.
He invited himself over to our table and began to talk, asking us where we were from what we did etc. The question he really wanted an answer to was how soon we were going home, which happened to be very soon.
That got him interested.
He asked us if we would be interested in taking something to London for him. At this point my friend and I exchanged a glance that meant a lot. ‘No’, we were saying, ‘neither of us is that stupid… but… lets hear what his bullshit story is before we tell him to f*ck off’, much more interesting that way - and it gives you something to blog about (even if it happened years before you knew what a blog was).
He wanted us to take what he assured us was only £2000 worth of jewellery through customs undeclared for him - which he said was entirely legal. I doubt it was only £2000 worth but that is beside the point.
“What for?” I asked him.
“An exhibition.”
“A jewellery exhibition?”
“Yes.”
Hmmm. So we decided to let him talk his nonsense and after a few minutes more his prominent mobile rang. Some sort of pretend conversation began which seemed to involve him trying to find as many ways as possible to include the word ‘exhibition’ in a sentence.
He finished his pretend conversation and turned to us and said…
“That was the exhibition.”
“In London?”
“Yes.”
“Wait a minute, it is 10am here which means it is 5am in London.”
—quick as a flash—
“it is 24 hour.”
“A 24 hour jewellery exhibition?”
“Yes.”
Hmmm. I don’t know about you but I have never came across or even heard of such a thing.
After a few more random pieces of nonsense from the chap he finally popped the question and asked if we were going to do it.
“No, we are washing our hair that day.”
He wasn’t entirely amused when we laughed him out of the place.
Posted by michael on from scotland 10/28 at 07:58 PM
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