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by: Laura

Sat Dec 12, 2009 at 17:40:26 PM EST


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Laura :: Open Thread 1 2 3 4...
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Open Thread 1 2 3 4... | 16 comments
On another thread you sounded like a chemmie. (4.00 / 1)
You also said you don't like Mike Rivero. If that's true, I have one thing to say. Kiss me you fool! Maybe that should be my new sign-off. Bet on it with milk has probably hit its saturation point.

And unless donkeybreath can come up with proof that Michael Jackson abused children, I stand by my opinion that MJ was a beautiful and misunderstood man. I mean that in a non-sexual way. Wow, check it out. The Jackson Five doing I Shot the Sheriff. Janet Jackson was in there also. {<:)

Ok, I need some real Bob Marley to get rid of a disco-induced headache. Jah rastafari.



http://davefromqueens2.blogspo...
http://allaircraftarenotinvolv...

OK, here you go: (3.00 / 1)
On The Early Show, she told co-anchor Harry Smith that Jackson "calls white wine 'Jesus juice' and red wine 'Jesus blood'" and that he drinks the beverages out of soda cans.

He is seen with soda cans often but Orth says, "I don't know how often the real stuff is in it versus the wine, but that's the way he does it because he wants everybody to think he's Peter Pan."

Whom does he give it to?

"In the latest allegations of this 13-year-old cancer boy, he and his brother were both alleged to have been given wine by Jackson, also showed pornography -- naked girls on the Internet -- and given antihistamine," Orth says. "The sister supposedly given sleeping pills...because, as Michael told the boys, girls are tattletales."

In the article, Orth also writes that Jackson seems to have a serious drug problem.

"You recall in 1993, he had to be taken to London to go through detox," she explains. "Elizabeth Taylor was summoned to Mexico, where he was because one of his managers got a phone call saying, 'You better come down here; either he's going to get killed by an overdose or fly out of a window because he thinks he can fly.' Since then, I talked to several people on the record who told me they paid for doctors both in Germany and in Korea to try to detox him from Demerol and morphine."

She adds that one of Jackson's advisers told her "on the record, on one trip in 1999, by the end of the flight, he was flat-out on the floor. They had to get him up and stagger him off the plane."

Ok, I get it, he was just a beautiful misunderstood Pan who was being driven to suicide or confusion.

Murdered by his own personal anesthesiologist is the current story, no?

[ Parent ]
I don't see that as any more than heresay from a grifter (0.00 / 0)
It does seem MJ had a serious addiction to prescription drugs and whatnot, and that his doctor may have been negligent or worse. Call me crazy, not late to dinner, but there's this American thingie I respect called innocent until proven guilty. As a Celtics fan, you'd think I'd be into calling Kobe a rapist. But I don't. I see Jackson as having suffered from a form of Elvis Presley Syndrome. He got too absorbed in a never ending battle between his inner self against society's depiction and fantasies revolving around him. At least it's true that MJ was abused as a child. I'm not sure what the King's excuse was for turning into a fat slob drug addict.

http://davefromqueens2.blogspo...
http://allaircraftarenotinvolv...
[ Parent ]
where did i put my golf club? (4.50 / 4)
Kiss me you fool!



The defectors have started an underground railroad to smuggle other rebels out of hostile territory

[ Parent ]
Oopskies (5.00 / 1)
I forget what donkeytale said exactly, but he made it seem I was gonna run this new schtick into the ground. So I kind of dropped it and was moving on. I'd rather be friends with you in real life. Though I can see how that might be problematic, as in how do we establish email contact. Then others would probably be trolling me and warning you I'm a stalker or whatever.

I've often felt a desire to share things about my blogging experience with others. I have made a recent friend like that and won't get into it. I'm just saying you're the kind of person I would trust to blab it all to in private and answer any questions you had. Then I'd be into developing trust and hearing your story.

Donkeytale had that opportunity, but he might be considered as the Mad Max of blogging. He might be the man to drive the rig, but he won't remain with the community after beating down the villains.

I got a rush for example in telling a bit of my story and finds to Joe Lauria. I also revealed a lot to Mark Singer, and in return, he sent me a signed copy of his book on Kimbercheese. It used to be fun to be in email contact with Brad Friedman before the storms arrived. There is a catharsis to letting stuff out, if you get my drift.

I obviously love writing and posting on the net. Nonetheless, there is no substitute for real life contact and friendship.

I didn't realise there was so much going on with Tiger Woods. What a fool. His wife is so beautiful. He makes Sammy Malone look like a priest. Sex like that is dirty. You'd think he could have found a way to find an extra-marital affair without having to pay for it. If the story is true, he must be a sex addict.



http://davefromqueens2.blogspo...
http://allaircraftarenotinvolv...

[ Parent ]
This place is so crazy sometimes... (5.00 / 1)
congratulations!!!

Anyway, to my mind one of the most fascinating things about the excerpts you have chosen here is the overlap in the careers of Verdi and Toscanini. The fact is that there was a consultation and admiration - Toscanini even having performed in Verdi's opera orchestra. It's this pedigree thing that gets musicians really exercised - that we are hearing Verdi's (unrecorded) thoughts through his brief times mentoring Toscanini, but I'll stop blabbering now. Thanks, though!

Toscanini conducted Verdi as fast as humanly possible, per Verdi (5.00 / 1)
No modern conductors are as daring, so you also never hear the proper type of rit. that seems so natural when you hear these old recordings. Verdi's supposed to be ridiculously melodramatic.

Now that I think about it, unsafe and fluctuating tempos seem to be the hallmark of noted conductors.

On the 1929 recording above you can hear the subway coming and going under Carnegie Hall during the quiet parts. If you have a good pair of headphones you can feel it. Spooky.

[ Parent ]
LOL (5.00 / 1)
May 16, 1925
The Talk of the Town

How the rumbling of the B.M.T. trains was audible in the Hall, in its western portion, and how one old subscriber inquired if Mr. Mackay was going to discharge all his double bass players as soon as the B.M.T. constructed another subway beneath the building...

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/searc...


[ Parent ]
Stop that Train, I Wanta Get Off (5.00 / 1)

Jacob with more Iraqi genocide (4.00 / 1)
http://seminal.firedoglake.com...

He seems to have decided not to go with the "Nazi" thing this time.  A mistake in my view but then if I were there I would be banned for pushing it.  Using the word "genocide" about Iraq should not be controversial but it will probably be taken that way again.

He links to another highly educated English speaking middle class Iraqi woman blogger.  (Why do they have to e women to be taken seriously?) except this one for some reason is angry at Americans.

Reading a bit of her stuff she also seems to have an irrational hatred of men, so she's at least accepted some of the mind-numbing propaganda of the empire.

http://uncensoredarabwomanblue...

She critices ordinary Americans for their part in the 20 year genocide.  (I would have dated its start from 1989 not 1991 but whatever)

You have destroyed Iraq because deep down you are a deeply racist, chauvinistic, brutal, immoral people...You have destroyed Iraq because you are deep down an envious, covetous, jealous, rootless, ruthless people...You have destroyed Iraq, not just for its oil, not just for its wealth, not just for its resources, not just for its strategic location, not just because of its regime that you hated...oh no, these are only the outer excuses...that your anti-war leftist pieces of garbage like to believe...

You have destroyed Iraq because you HATE ARABS, because you HATE MUSLIMS and because you cannot bear anyone, who refuses not only to bow to you but anyone who despite your years of murderous sanctions, stood still with dignity and honor. And this you cannot take. You cannot take because you have neither. You have no dignity and you have no honor. What you have is false bravado and false pride. And that's it!

And despite all your great proclamations of faith, you are indeed a Godless people.

My own views are quite well known here perhaps, contra Vox on many occassions I think the faux guilt felt by him and others is unwarranted and counter-productive.  Instead I have directed guilt at those specifically involved with the crimes.

Well this woman attacks all Americans so Vox should like that.

Incidentally -- "chauvinistic"???  Americans kill Iraqis because they are "chauvinistic"?  Funny.  Feminists of all stripes blame men for everything bad in the world.  It's like the way people used to always say God was on their side to make their moral case.  Now they say "men" are on the side of the enemy.  "Men" = Devil.  The Western feminists of course say precisely the opposite that the countries the US attacks are the "chauvinistic" societies.

Maybe we need to put those girls in a room together and let them fight it out?

Why am I expected to differentiate between what a country does and what its people do, think and believe?

Because it's the truth.  And you know it.

They say - hey its our government. There is no such thing out there called government. When you go looking for government, you will not find something called government. There are people who form governments. Just like people form societies. Just like people form institutions and systems... PEOPLE.

First of all I have never met an American who said, "hey its our government".  Because they are fucking idiots who are programmed from birth to accept responsibility for and identify with their government.  If you ever found an American to say that don't slap them down.  They are like a recovering alcoholic.

But more to the point, yes of course government is people, but not all the people of a country are in the government.  Not all are in the armed services or otherwise are intimately and directly participating in the genocide.

Your government is made of people who represent you. And you chose them to represent you. In your case you kept choosing war criminals to represent you, as you have done in the past

Are you kidding?  Their government represents them?  is that a joke?  You could probably argue that their military represents them better.  If you mean "is a representative sample".  if you mean "looks out for your interests" or "follows your orders" then you know that's bullshit of course.  Perhaps less so on other issues but on foreign policy?  has there ever been a country where the prince, once decided upon war, has been persuaded against it by the people?

And sure they keep choosing war criminals.  That would be immoral if they ever had a choice of a non-war criminal to select from.  That is never the case.

because the problem is not your government, the problem is not the society out there, the problem is not the institutions and the system, some abstract entity, the problem is YOU. Yes you. You make up all of the above, from government to institution to system to society. And I tell you, it's rotten to the core.

But now your accusation is shifting from direct involvement in genocide, to merely being a typical unreflective member of an imperial society where public opinion is tightly controlled by the elites.  If the charge is simply that Americans could do more then who would withstand such a criticisim?  It is a human universal.  You obviously want to make the case that Americans are specifically to blame and directly to blame for Iraq's circumstances.  The evidence is not there.  Americans may be unimaginative, arrogant, docile, ignorant and racist but all of that doesn't add up to one bullet in one head.  Being an asshole isn't a crime.

There's more blame to the political classes, the chattering blogging progressives who go round saying "steady on -- don't call Obama a Nazi" and so on.  The people who are keen to dispute that "millions" of Iraqis have been killed and that it is a case of on-going genocide by Obama.  They are the little Eichmann's if you like, not with a direct line to genocide, but with a direct line to continuing the political self-image of America that is a pre-condition of such acts.

It is a terrible wrong and their knowledge of the politics leave them no excuse of ignorance as with 90% of Americans, but it is not genocide either.  By being the fifth column that endorses with backwards compliments the imperium, the limit on "respectable" opinion, the guardians that make sure the very bleak truth doesn't get out tot he people, the fake left that denies the worst of the evil's of empire with the stolen authority of being the supposed anti-war voice.  They do all that mostly unconsciously of course, but not THAT unconsciously.  Is that a direct connection to the killings?  Is that not a prerequisite of imperial war?  The oil that greases the war time propaganda and wins scant approval (or close enough) for mass murder by making it seem that - at worst - the wars are wrong for "putting out troops in harm's way" and other bullshit arguments.

It's not enough.  It isn't actually killing.  It isn't needed for the killing.  It's not directly connected to the killing.  No more than a keyboard commando cheering on war actually effects one damn thing one way or another.  They fight another war over the long term, making the opinions of society safe for war mongers and war criminals.  "Humanitarian conflict", "think of the women", "bringing democracy", "we broke it so we must fix it", "we can't abandon them [our victims]", "don't let the terrorists win".

You could have chosen another path from the very beginning..but you did not. Because you did NOT WANT TO...And you did not want because you are a deeply hateful, ignorant, envious, jealous, people who are too lazy to think.

You stopped Vietnam, ok granted it took you some time...but wait it was not you who stopped Vietnam, it was the body bags that did. Seems that violence is the only language you really pay attention to...because you are inherently violent yourselves.

Concede defeat.  They didn't stop Vietnam.  The draft did which is why the got rid of it.  Your criticism of American (and for that matter the rest of the world) inaction on Iraq must be measured by the low low bar of what in fact could be achieved by any individual.

Protests to the Iraq war part 2 were the largest in history were they not?  Unprecedented crowds world wide.  it made little difference, but some.  Tony Blair had to lie a little harder.  Perhaps (who knows?) the delay prevented further wars they had planned during that window of opportunity over 9-11?  Was it a good result?  A bad one?  Just average?  I don't know.  It failed and that's good enough for you to say it was a bad attempt, but that logic doesn't hold.

Violent, aggressive, bigoted, haughty, arrogant...

And you expect me to consider the exceptions ? After 20 fucking years ?

You must be kidding...

This dividing gap is a done deal.

And you asked for it.




"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it", Helen Keller, communist.
Wish I could speak out there (4.00 / 2)
at least Jacob is.  Someone points out he uses the word "holocaust" which ties it back to the WW2 / Nazi thing at least to some.

One commentator is sympathetic but is ignorant of so much of the truth.  Like a baby not knowing.

Feith, Wolfowitz, Cheney, etc knew what would take place when they sent in too few troops. They knew that once the Saddam lid was taken off that infighting would be unleashed. Bremer knew what he was doing when he disbanded the Iraqi army.

No these folks did not pull the triggers or drop the bombs. They just fixed the intelligence sent in just enough soldiers to unleash the internal fury. Along with American soldiers losing their minds and using innocent Iraqi people as targets.

Genocide indeed. Thanks for calling it what it is.

Too bad that some are completely unable to to draw parallels between genocides of the past to this one.

It's so sad.
He tries to do right but in fact defends the American genocide as something done by others.

He doesn't know that the US under Clinton and Bush 1 had a policy of targeting civilian infrastructure with the express wish that it cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians through epidemics borne by water that could no longer be cleaned properly because they deliberately banned the import of chlorine and so on.  Humanitarian items -- a crime against humanity for sure but the intention was mega death.  It was no accident.  It was not even a reckless side effect of other goals.  Death was the goal.  

Genocide requires intent.  The intent was there.

Again this poor baby doesn't know that the US deliberately created the civil war so-called.  They did that by training sectarian death squads and playing one group against the other -- a time proven tactic with any imperial power (except for some stupid reason they backed the Shiite majority at first and the classic imperial handbook says always back the minority group).  It didn't "just happen".  It wasn't merely a foreseeable consequence of other goals or of incompetence.  It was directly intentional.

And you know what?  That doesn't even matter that much but there it is.  Bad thoughts make the difference between genocide and just an ordinary "vanilla" killing of millions of people but of the two things the bad thoughts are not the worst; the killing are.  The killings and the destruction of lives, families, society and all that makes up peoples lives in material terms.

Genocide is not the worst crime humanity has (according to Nuremberg); War is.

But yes Leen, yes they damn well knew and they planned it and it was their intention.  How else do you control a country of twenty five million people who hate you than by genocide, torture and terror?  When you have only a quarter million troops?  And the same pattern will be repeated in Afghanistan.  And it won't be an "accident" there either and it won't be just reckless behaviour while trying to do something else.  

To control these societies you must destroy the peoples' will by massive killings and massive terrorism.

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it", Helen Keller, communist.

[ Parent ]
Kudos to Jacob for including Jon Stewart (4.00 / 1)
in his montage of holocaust deniers over Iraq:
http://seminal.firedoglake.com...

Looks like plenty of moderation going on on Jacob's first Obam is a Nazi thread:
http://seminal.firedoglake.com...

As with me the moderation is mostly of his opponents but that didn't stop them from banning me not the people they were slapping down for attacking me.

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it", Helen Keller, communist.

[ Parent ]
pro-Obama apologetic bullshit, the anti-Jacob (0.00 / 0)
http://firedoglake.com/2009/12...

Bullshit is popular.

Hope requires a tougher realism than either cynicism or surrender.

Yeah we all saw how much fucking realism "hope" had last year.


"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it", Helen Keller, communist.

[ Parent ]
Excellent analysis (4.00 / 1)
because I almost completely agree with it. I wish people would start telling the truth about "legal bribery 'democracy'" -- it's not democracy and it doesn't represent us citizens. And secondly, if people want to focus two specific groups to be angry at, look at the major campaign contributors to the two-headed imperial beast, and at the actual imperial soldiers who are actually doing the killing.

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness, For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people, For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. -- A-Hep
[ Parent ]
The People Speak program on History channel (4.00 / 1)
started off pretty good so I decided to watch it but it never really got back to the good start it got off to with a criticism of the US constitution itself by Zinn himself.  

On the whole the program was mostly nothing the elites would have to worry about celebrating victories that the elites have long since co-opted to be patriotic proof of how wonderful America is --- the end of slavery, woman's vote, racism and oh the poor wounded troops home from war.  All things that are perfectly status quo to say because they are all in the PAST.

The stuff about unions was alright but generally the constitution was the only sacred cow they had a go at.

The criticism of the constitution came so fast, blink and you missed it.  They read the first part (the good part) of the declaration of Independence and said that the DoI right to the pursuit of happiness was replaced in the constitution by a property rights.  And then dropped the topic at a point where it simply wouldn't make any sense at all to their viewers.

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it", Helen Keller, communist.

[ Parent ]
I'm too poor to get the History Channel (0.00 / 0)
Or, cable is such a time-waster for a sorta TV addict like me.

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness, For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people, For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. -- A-Hep
[ Parent ]
Open Thread 1 2 3 4... | 16 comments
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