You Think He Doth Protest Too Much?

George Tenet's book is out this week, and he's hopping mad. Mad at the White House for dissing his CIA team. Mad at Cheney, Rice and the other Neo-Con/Pentagon apparatchiks that blundered and lied their way into an Iraq invasion ... and supposedly mad at himself for allowing the CIA to 'guess wrong' about WMDs.

And from his viewpoint and what has been said about he CIA over the past few years, I'd be pissed too. It would appear that the CIA --- and he in particular --- became the fatted calf to be sacrificed for White House/DOD/DIA and State eff-ups of CATASTROPHIC proportions.

But is George Tenet being just a weeeeee bit disingenuous? I should not judge him before reading his book (which I hate paying for, but can't see a way out of), it would appear that he and the CIA are responsible not for where we are in Iraq today, but where we would be had we NOT destroyed the infrastructure and bureaucracy of the Ba'athists; in other words, reexamining a more Allende-like situation, where we would need to defend bumping off a foreign dictator, and justifying it with words like "imposing Democracy".

I am not so dumb as to think that bad political organizations like the Ba'athists can be cured by sweet talk over tea, but Iraq STILL would have been a lose-lose situation. In other words, hindsight ain't so golden in Tenet's case, since the CIA would still have been playing the King-Killing game anyway. Which is supposed to be ILLEGAL, according to Congress.

All this book and others like it point to is a big, circular argument trying to justify the COSMICALLY STUPID action of invading Iraq. And letting all those America, British and other Western military forces die there for no good reason. They are no less noble in death because of it; it just makes their lost lives that much more tragic.

Oh, yes ... and the million or so Iraqis who died without any say in the matter.

City of Brotherly Love Not So Fraternal with Psychics

Interesting link to the Philadelphia Inquirer story today about the Quaker City's crackdown on store front fortune tellers!

One fellow quoted in the article made a very good point:

The owner of Psychic, a fortune-telling shop at 2041 Walnut St., sat on his steps yesterday and complained bitterly about the police action. He would not give his name or his lawyer's name.

"First of all," he said, "they've got to stop the 129 murders in this city. What we do is entertainment."

He also said the police Major Crimes Unit had shut him down even though he had bought a business license from the city and paid taxes.

"Shouldn't they be cracking down on rapes and murders, not palm readers?" he asked.

Excellent point, Mandrake! Considering that Philly has the highest murder rate on the East Coast, perhaps they should be more focused on that issue. Or ....

Could this be a clever plan by their City Hall to hire all those out of work soothsayers to sort out the mysteries behind all those murders??? INQUIRING MINDS WANNA KNOW!

AP-WIRE: Phila, PA; 4/27/2007:

ENGLISH MEDIUM CRIES "MURDER MOST FOUL"

Liverpool born, Derek Acorah, lately shit-canned by the producers of the UK TV hit, "Most Haunted" (See your local TRAVEL CHANNEL guide for times) has had scarier experiences in his storied life as a medium and spirit hunter, but not many compare with his huge reversal of fortune today just moments after opening his first "Spooks-Be-Us" US franchise in Center City. No sooner had Derek opened the doors this morning, then the boys in blue charged in wearing full SWAT attire and hustled him outside into an unmarked black armored van.

"They're takin' me out to their Black Mariah! Halp! Halp! SOOOMbody HAAAALLLP!", he cried out as the doors swallowed the former footballer and occasionally competent psychic. A blind old woman on the sidewalk at the time asked, "Was that Ringo Star? I had his baby, the bastid!"

A potential customer, who staggered out into the sunlight after this stupendous event, muttered to himself, "He's gone from Most Haunted to Most Fucked."

Derek's attorney had no comment. However, SAM, Derek's spiritual guide and a 2000-plus year old spirit entity, declared that Derek had misrepresented the situation in Philadelphia to him, and that he would be filing a suit of Discorporation in the near future.

Atlas Ralphed

I am not a big fan of Ayn Rand's novels, though I believe I have read them all. It's not that she wasn't a good writer, she was. The problem is her philosophy, Objectivism, which can be loosely translated to mean that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or "rational self-interest;" i.e., feck everybody else's problems, if you can't deal then crawl off and die. I am too noble to waste my time with your paltry short-comings.

Now, why am I not surprised that somebody has a film version of "Atlas Shrugged" in production already, and then why am I doubly not surprised that Rand's heroine, cold little Dagny Taggart, is being penned for portrayal by Angelina Jolie? I am not sure that anyone has really explained Rand's F-O-A-D belief system to the entity that is BrAngelina, as they are all up themselves to do the movie. Apparently Ms. Jolie is a big fan of Rand, and Mr. Pitt hopes they will rewrite the story line so that Rand's other leading character from "The Fountain Head", Howard Rourke can be played by Pitt in this clusterfeck. I think he wants it so bad 'cause Howard was an architect, the closet dream of Mr. Pitt for many years.

How's this for an interesting viewpoint?

Has no one explained to these people that shite like Rand's has brought us Libertarianism, Reaganisim and Neo-Conservativism? Well, actually you can blame the Neo-Con movement on Former American Trostskyites at Columbia University.

But once again, Hollywood attempts to feck about with something it doesn't really understand, and expose millions of impressionable young minds to this horseshit all over. The important thing on this planet is TO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN YOURSELF.

Are they trying to regurgitate the Me-Generation? I am afraid the BrAngelina have fallen victim to the Cult of Personality.

Ecstasy, With A Lower-Case E

I have stumbled across a couple of interesting pieces recently on the massive depressing atmosphere floating around most of Western Civilization --- as opposed to the massive clouds of dust and smoke floating around Mideastern Civilization, and fuck-all knows of the way Eastern folks are handling it. They keep damming up rivers and drowning people ... that should be pretty fucking depressing.

But I digress. What am it that doth makes us so blue and sad, makes us feel so unconnected to the Great Big Universe, that in general causes people to become NeoCons and Republicans?

It is the BIG DISCONNECT from JOY, RAPTURE and ECSTASY. Yes, some might get an instant reconnect using E, but then your kidneys will fail earlier than age 92, and then where are you?

One writer, Barbara Ehrenreich, who in her new book, Dancing in the Streets explores the experience of collective joy, ponders the questions, “if ecstatic rituals and festivities were once so widespread, why is so little left of them today? If the 'techniques' of ecstasy represent an important part of the human cultural heritage, why have we forgotten them, if indeed we have?”

AMEN, SISTER! That is probably a major sticking point for modern humanity. Have we forgotten how to do this? We don't get down with ourselves anymore in big spectacles of fervor and passionate expression. It is very uncool to want to experience the transport of religion, or great art. The closest we get to it is sporting events, and even those have become big money, anemic affairs where we pay others to cheer and jump about for us (especially hotties). The sports experience has become the Corporation's bitch, and we won't see her set free very soon. Not when sky boxes dominate the price of every event.

What's that leave us with? NASCAR and Snake Handling? Both can be deadly between flying tires and venom.

I remember somebody asking me at church once what I felt was missing from the experience. Remember, it's a Unitarian Universalist church, and I'm a Catholic/Protestant half breed.

What was missing? "Incense, drama and Saints that die gooey deaths." I mean, it was a great place for the peace and inner calm, and for a life-long comparative religion course. But it wasn't RELIGION. It wasn't MIDNIGHT MASS. And it certainly wasn't GOSPEL, or SPEAKING IN TONGUES.

It was kind of dull. I know the kids had a blast, more than adults, because they got to learn every freaky Bible story from the Old Testament, along with its matching Babylonian versions (yes, they are all the same). But for the adults? It was more of a book club.

OK, I'll get off that rag, but you see my point. What have we to compare with the rites of the Bacchae, the Dionysian orgies, etc. Didn't those Slavs used to chase each others' asses around the woods and boogie for days on end? Even the Brits did that way back in Ye Olde Daye. Well, maybe they were Celts, but you know what I mean.

Compared to that, we got nada.

But to experience great passion also means to have strong and sometimes violent feelings on a glandular level, which is pretty much what one sees in those places that hate us Godless Infidels. How could we return to the real experiences of transport and vision, without losing contact with our inner adult? And creating a false temple of passion with drugs like E and acid is a false solution (and idol for that matter).

I guess I'll have to take up fly fishing.

Hot Fuzz and Hot Speakers with EYES...

Saw the much-anticipated "Hot Fuzz" flick this weekend, and enjoyed it immensely. The boys have done themselves proud.

Here are the lads being playful. Vaguely homo-erotic, isn't it?

One scene that comes to mind is the command center for Sanford's Neighbourhood Watch Association (cleverly labelled NWA), which maintains a bank of digital cameras covering every conceivable inch of "England's prettiest village".




While these cams are ubiquitous in London and other parts of Europe, there are just beginning to be utilized here in the States. I noticed this piece in The Independent today on how the Labour Party has changed everyone's way of life through creeping big-brother-watching solutions to policing the streets: And one very interesting addition to the thousands of cameras. Adding a speaker to it to screech at the 'yob' who is doing the offending in the camera lens! Quoth the Independent:


"Could Foucault be talking about his future vision of Middlesbrough, the town which has adopted talking CCTV cameras in its town centre, presided over by council apparatchiks who bellow to citizens from their screen-filled observation posts that they are to pick up the fag end they just dropped, or risk arrest? Or is he talking about the whole of Britain, a nation so in love with the CCTV camera that it boasts one for every 14 citizens, and has spent, in the last 10 years, more than three-quarters of its Home Office crime prevention budget on this technology of record?"


I am sad to say that, considering recent events, perhaps these cameras are needed to keep an eye on our gun toting loons. Not that it would have stopped what happened on the Virginia Tech campus last week, but a system like this set well in place could have helped to reduce the body count (as if that mitigates the horror).

Do I think I am losing my liberty if a city camera can see me when I commit a civil transgression? Like running a stop sign (GUILTY in the PAST) or flipping the bird to a fellow motorist (DITTO- PLUS UNCIVIL AGGRESSION)?

Frankly, that train has already left the station. We are always being observed at least as a flock, by our financial transactions, our web clicks/choices, even where we are driving (do you use a transponder to pay your road tolls? --or parking?) While we do have the right not to incriminate ourselves in a public hearing or a court of law (key concept here), the right of the individual to privacy does not include a secluded glade wherein one can commit capital crimes. That's like saying, "If a tree is raped in the woods, and no one sees it, does it matter?"

(Believe me, in New England it could happen.)

What constitutes my right to privacy is no one invading my home to observe me using the john at 3AM, or to record my public utterances without my permission (I have had to get those disclaimer releases signed about a billion times, an utter pain in the ass, but I wouldn't give it up for anything). OR have anyone listen in while I worship with my family in church (STOP THAT LAUGHING, RIGHT NOW). OR watch me vote for that matter, though I guess they will find out the result eventually (except in Florida - snort!)

That's the same illusion as the guarantee of private communications on the Web. PLEASE! The only guarantee of secrecy on the Internet is hiding in plain site. Too many places to look, so who's going to find you?

Those are the keys to maintaining a free citizenry, unshackled by Big Cheney's plan to listen to each registered Democrat's individual farts at night. THAT kind of guy is dangerous. You know, the kind of fellow that reads spy novels by Robert Ludlum, or maybe Scooter Libby.

Or hires him to do dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

Vermont Senate Acts as the US Senate Should ...

... out of shame?

This just in .... Vermont's State Senate has become the first state legislature in the Union to actually put to a vote whether President Bush and VP Cheney should be impeached for their participation in IRAQ-GAK (the Iraq War Bamboozle).

The vote tally? Yea - 16; Nay - 9.

Mr. President, you haven't landed support in Vermont Marble ...

... the Vermont Marble has landed on you!

=

Selling War: How US Media Guilded the Lilly

Today in Editor & Publisher appears a review of the upcoming Bill Moyers documentary, "Buying the War." Weirdly, I found out about it through Drudge... go figure.

Moyers lets everybody have it for helping the Bushies hard sell the Invasion of Iraq as a necessary part of the 'War on Terror' (or, as Borat says, 'Your Terror War'). He also may come the closest I have seen to accusing Colin Powell of being party to this Great Big Lie.

I can recall some news sources at the time indicating that everyone in the know at the Pentagon and the CIA thought most of the salacious 'facts' presented by Bush, et al, were at best murky ... and some outright bullshit. As we all found out.

I guess the saddest part of all this, 5 years and thousands of US, British, and other countries' lives lost, not to mention the 600,000+ Iraqi Dead; the saddest part is watching public figures like John McCain who, though I don't generally agree with him, still respected, debase themselves by supporting digging a DEEPER hole for us there.

Isn't this the ultimate reactionary political scenario? We doggedly continue to support a mission created by fools that endangers the very standard of who we are as a nation, simply because we're "stuck"?

Eff that shit! I have had it with trying to fix Iraq, even if we did break it. Enough is enough. Leave today, go home, and let the crazed freaks duke it out among themselves.

We Ain't Sinking in Beantown, the Water Line Be Movin On Up

Observe the difference in these two images of Boston Harbor and the Charle River area. Yoy might think that the one on the left is a current image, and the one on the right is Boston before we the "Back Bay" was drained and filled in. But you would be wrong!

Why? Mostly because the right hand image is a forecast of the Boston area about 50 years from now, after Global Warming has melted most of the ice caps. It is oddly similar to the original Boston landscape. Ironic, ain't it? Here 's some of the science chatter locally via the Bahston Globule.

The above graphic comes from THIS SEQUENCE (check it out!)

Oh, and that does mean that my office would be under about .... uh. lemmee see ... 25 feet of water! Cool! I could come to work in an aqualung!

Trying to Fit in? ... Maundy Thursday Gang Bangers

These wild fellas are hoping to improve community relations by taking their Morris Dancing troop into West Philadelphia, celebrating Maundy Thursday in their own, special way.


Do you think they will come out alive? Inquiring minds wanna know!

Those Darn Christians!

Since Easter is upon us, and the day of celebration of the resurrection of the Christ is of the utmost in many evangelical and fundamentalist minds, I thought I would address what was of utmost importance in the forming of Christianity as a religion in the West. Namely, the persecution of the martyrs (as I believe it is referred to).

I went trolling through my web archives of ancient texts to get the down-low at the time, from a worms' eye view so to speak. I rummaged through my link into The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon (the man, not the ape); and in particular,

(Volume 1) Chapter XVI
Conduct of the Roman government towards the Christians, from the reign of Nero to that of Constantine.

In it, Gibbon tries to explain why Christianity, the mildest of religions, was so downtrodden by the Roman Emperors, practisers of Polytheism which is perhaps the most liberal of all religious beliefs. For instance, the Jews were a major pain in the glutus-maximus on numerous occasions, and were sorted out right quick often. Yet, even after all this malarkey, they were even allowed NOT to pay tribute to the Pantheon of Gods like every other Roman citizen or subject, mostly because they were such noisy complainers, but great producers (no steak knifes for them!).

Why O Why didst they prosecute and persecute the kindly Christians so voraciously? Because they committed the UNFORGIVABLE sin in Roman Society... INTOLERANCE of the beliefs of others.

Herein I quote Gibbons; this subsection of Chapter XVI is titled:

The Jews were a people which followed, the Christians, a sect which deserted, the religion of their fathers.

"By their lofty claim of superior sanctity the Jews might provoke the Polytheists to consider them as an odious and impure race. By disdaining the intercourse of other nations they might deserve their contempt. The laws of Moses might be for the most part frivolous or absurd yet, since they had been received during many ages by a large society, his followers were justified by the example of mankind, and it was universally acknowledged that they had a right to practise what it would have been criminal in them to neglect. But this principle, which protected the Jewish synagogue, afforded not any favour or security to the primitive church. By embracing the faith of the Gospel the Christians incurred the supposed guilt of an unnatural and unpardonable offence. They dissolved the sacred ties of custom and education, violated the religious institutions of their country, and presumptuously despised whatever their fathers had believed as true or had reverenced as sacred. Nor was this apostasy (if we may use the expression) merely of a partial or local kind; since the pious deserter who withdrew himself from the temples of Egypt or Syria would equally disdain to seek an asylum in those of Athens or Carthage. Every Christian rejected with contempt the superstitions of his family, his city, and his province. The whole body of Christians unanimously refused to hold any communion with the gods of Rome, of the empire, and of mankind. It was in vain that the oppressed believer asserted the inalienable rights of conscience and private judgment. Though his situation might excite the pity, his arguments could never reach the understanding, either of the philosophic or of the believing part of the Pagan world. To their apprehensions it was no less a matter of surprise that any individuals should entertain scruples against complying with the established mode of worship than if they had conceived a sudden abhorrence to the manners, the dress, or the language of their native country."

SO this will help explain why all that nasty shit happened to them. It might also explain how other groups perceive overbearing Christian organizations, authorities or nations.

I guess they never got The Robe on DVD.

Obama Be Jesus?

Not to leave any Saint unstuck... this is a puppet sculpture by David Cordero, a Chicago Sculptor who apparently likes poking sacred cows.

See the article on him from the Globule:

'Sculpture of Obama as Jesus causes stir'

Mitt in The Funny Papers

(This image brought to you by The Heretik!)

It seems Doonesbury is having fun with Mitt Romney's flippity-jippity thang, having reversed his position on gay rights, abortion and gun control. I'm thinking that, if Garry Trudeau is focusing on him --- and we all know Garry gets his info intravenously from the Democratic Party Gods --- then we should all be thinking on just how saleable the Mitt is to those people who have had their brains Reaganized for the past 8-10 years.

Now, the Demo Party Organ that is the Bahston Globule, did alert me to said Doonesbury Strip in this article, which also tells us in very serious tones that, if you make jokes about Mitt, they will come ... meaning, the voters. It would seem to the Globule, and to the BU PoliSci Prof they do quote, that ANY publicity for Mitt is BAD publicity, simply because it will make middle-aged women voters google his image and swoon at his movie star visage.

As if. I don't think a middle aged guy with Grecian Formula touch ups is really going to turn on Ms Middle American Mom ... not when

• (a) their boys and even their girls who joined up to help America after 9/11 are being sacrificed at the altar of Smirking Neo Cons.
• (b) See above.
• (c) See above again.

Sorry about the bullets, but things always come in threes, don't they?

Mitt does seems a regular fellow on first glance, and did have the capacity for actual rational thought (at lease, at one time), as opposed to the rest of the vitriolic right. But Mr. Olympics is a sneaky customer, as all us Massholes found out.

And since he seems to have found the Mother-Lode Vein O' Gold for running his campaign, there are some big movers behind him.

Be prepared.

My, MY, Look Who Has All The Marbles!

And you all thought I was obsessing about nothing! Drudge and most other news outlets are reporting that the Mitt-ster is second only unto Hillary Clinton in fund raising, ranking number one in the GOP ranks for dollars raised ($23ml to date).

He is therefore the official Dark Horse of the Apocalypse. Watch him and his minions carefully. THis guy sweet talked his way into Massachusetts politics, and managed to alienate everybody (including Mass Republicans) by the time he was out of office. He even treated the Lt. Gov like his bitch, and offered not a sliver of support to her guvernatorial campaign, though she faithful approved every blunder he committed, and refused to speak ill of him even when he dissed her.

I guess he was always a hack hiding in sheeps clothing. I still have a hard time imagining him as a hard-line conservative (I'm hoping its an act to get the Jesus vote). But he's sticking to the super conservative party line, and that makes me VERY uncomfortable.

While I still have serious doubts ANY Republican can get elected to the Oval Office in 2008, I think he still bears watching.