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Let’s hope so

Well, in a move shockingly reminiscent of a U.S. invasion of Iraq that actually empowered Iran (of whom we should have been much more afraid), the U.S. and Israel have now in the space of a few short weeks manage to unite the previously antagonistic-toward-one-another Hezbollah (who disapproved of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S.), Al Qaeda, and Hamas.

Shall we see if we can support a little more violence against innocent civilians and maybe get a few more terrorist organizations to join forces under the same banner? Maybe we could boil some Arabic children alive, kosher, and have them at a combined Seder—stars-and-stripes-themed weenie roast?

Christ.

FINALLY someone calls it what it is.

And then there is this, which begins by discussing the latest book in the Iraq idiocy, but finishes with the best, most concise, most cogent analysis yet on the Middle East question and indeed the entire post-World War II world.

Israel: “We want peace! (On your backs, in your land.)”

Well, the house (who WE pay) has finally figured out how to make political hay out of the estate tax and the minimum wage, without having to actually do anything at all. How?

Tie them together in a bill that pairs a minimum wage increase with the repeal of the estate tax. It’ll never become law, of course, but now, in the next election Republicans can say “We wanted to increase the minimum wage, but Democrats wouldn’t support it,” and the Democrats can say “The Republicans wanted to offer a new tax cut to the very, very richest 1% in this country, and we finally managed to stop it.”

Meanwhile, few in the public will realize that these bills are one and the same, along with half a dozen other policy issues tied to the same document.

We pay these people, and the public knows shit all about how their government works. Americans deserve every anal reaming they get.

The world must reinstate U.N. Resolution 3379!

got that right

According to U.N. observer corps statistics:

Israeli border violations against Lebanon since 2000: 11,768
Hezbollah border violations against Israel since 2000: 112

Hmmmm… Tell me again who are the reckless terrorists with no regard for international law? People say that Israel “lost patience with Hezbollah” and had to say enough is enough, damn the consequences, but given the disparity in strength, the statistics above, and the destruction being wrought on Lebanon just now, it seems to be that it’s actually the opposite. Despite knowing the potential consequences, Hezbollah simply lost patience with Israel and had to say enough is enough, damn the consequences.

George Bush came to office with a trade surplus, a strong international community and peace, an ally in Russia and virtually every other G8 nation, a stable, secularizing Middle East, a strong domestic economy, pragmatic energy policy, and a trend of increasing conservation and environmental preservation. The U.S. was not a civil rights leader per se, but at least was regarded as a neutral-to-benign force by most other nations and peoples in the world.

He will leave office with trade deficits and a national debt that are all-time records by an order of magnitude, a destroyed international community now discussing the dissolution of the U.N., an enemy in Russia (with most other G8 leaders booted out in their countries due to support for Bushian policy), a radicalized, Iran-dominated, unstable Middle East, a bubble economy teetering on the brink of collapse, an international and domestic energy crisis, and a trend of utter disregard and destruction of the environment. The U.S. has become an egregious civil rights violator and will in the future be regarded as an imperial, militaristic threat by most other nations and peoples in the world.

This man may go down in history as the single most important factor in bringing about the end of the post-Cold-war civilized world. He may yet end up less well-regarded than Hitler and Stalin due to the broad swath of destruction that he has wrought on all people and things that exist—the single worst person, symbolically, in all of modern history.

Israel:
“That which wasn’t we couldn’t accomplish by force we can no doubt still accomplish with double the force, and that which we couldn’t accomplish by taking land we can no doubt still accomplish by taking more land.”

USA:
“There is nothing left in the universe to accomplish. All things are done, all things are perfect, only you can’t tell because the liberals are lying about it and trying to undo it.”

Christians and Jews:
“The accomplishment of all things depends on our ability to kill all non-whites, non-Christians, and non-Jews in concentration camps.”

Bush:
“How can I accomplish a snog with this governmental German lady…”

and more

Listen, all you stoopid American pundits, I’m tired of hearing this question:

“If the government of Lebanon is really a legitimate democracy, how can they allow a terrorist organization like Hezbollah to remain a part of the government? If they’re a democracy, why don’t they boot Hezbollah out of the government?”

Jesus, how stupid can we be as Americans? Do people really not understand this? Are we really that far gone? No wonder G.W. is ru(i)n(n)ing the world.

Democracy = Votes

People vote for you = You get elected

People vote for Hezbollah = Hezbollah gets elected

Elected officials were to get booted out of government = Government would NOT be a democracy

Ten years ago people in poly sci and IR used to laugh at the historians and anthropologists when we told them that the last thing they wanted in the Middle East was democracy. There already was one in Israel, and what did they do? Vote to oppress+segregate+imprison Arabs. You put in some Arab democracies and what will they do? Vote to attack Jews. In short, you democratize the Middle East, you create World War III.

Which Bush may now have done.

Shoulda thought harder, or maybe asked someone from the cultural-behavioral wings of the social sciences instead of always thinking with your missiles as you forcefully bring the vote to people that have a bone to pick.

I do have a spiritual center, and I know it very well. It is time that I stop ignoring it and return to it. Chicago was a detour; my life still takes me to the desert and to the mountains, and I still smell yesterday’s salty openness on the wind.

Sometimes you have those days or nights during which nothing that you can name to anyone happens, but it seems as though an immense shift or two has happened nonetheless. A tough, loud, strange couple of days (and nights).

Last night in particular. I don’t know how many times I’ve almost launched a browser and made a post, only to stop myself. Ultimately, at the end of it all, there just isn’t anything ot say. There never is.

I begin to get excited about moving to NYC and the possibility of living in Manhattan. This is the the first time; until now I’ve been at best lukewarm on the subject, seeing it as something that must be done, rather that something that I want to do.

I’m going to be working on converting from Greymatter to something else. Hosts are increasingly unhappy with CGI-based websites, as is seen by the decline in Greymatter and Moveable Type sites. WordPress and PHP, sometime in the next couple of months.

In the meantime I’m not doing a lot of shooting, but I’m doing a hell of a lot of photo processing, in an attempt to get some kind of prints store up and running and also get most of my work on Alamy, where I will be focusing my efforts in months to come.

Sometimes I miss Chicago.

Sometimes I actually see things as they are, and it depresses me.

The trick is never to face your past—even your recent past. The past holds nothing but traps and traitors. Maybe someday I’ll get to a better place. I used to be a person that directed hate outward in all directions. Now that I’m “older” and more mature, it mostly sits inside and ages, dissolving my stomach lining in the process.

Make no mistake, though, the hate continues to build. Hate for hypocrites, for selfish people, for consumers, for idiots, for the willfully deluded, for those that have hurt me, knowing that they have hurt me.

I wonder what happens next.

Final goodbyes, handwritten and sent across years and oceans, by post.

That’s deep.
It’s almost too much.

First among them is the using of a single asterisk (*) as the entire field in a greymatter entry. Result: hung processes and the need to edit control files to remove the offending entry or entries. Also, several days worth of lost blogging due to being too fscking lazy to fix it.

One of “the majors” has agreed to carry my work. Now I need to figure out what to do. I have far too much to think about these days. Far too much on my plate.

She has just stopped talking to me altogether. I don’t even want to think about it right now, it gets me down and makes everything complicated. I still don’t know what happened. But from all appearances right now she seems to hate my guts.

Every now and then I realize just how unhappy a certain portion of the population will be in a growing world that increasingly denounces (and indeed, seeks to destroy) capitalism, rational instrumentalism, and the West. But of course it will be the right portion of the population that will be unhappy, so I don’t have particular ethical qualms with it.

There is a rude awakening to come amongst the countless millions of Americans busy out there day by day watching MSNBC and Fox News and believing—truly believing—that “the cold war is over” and that “free markets have triumphed.”

In the meantime, the New Chinese Wall goes up, anti-western governments are elected across the east, terrorism is at an all-time high, as is the obligation of the U.S. treasury (with China holding the bulk of the assets), and no-one in the U.S. seems to make the connection.

Americans had a stroke when Reagan got elected and they haven’t regained consciousness yet. By the time they do, it’ll be too late, and they’ll find themselves in the buried box, most likely interred there by a “paper tigeter” that turned out to have real teeth.

Required reading:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060710/cohen
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney07052006.html
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-breaks and http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/16/juggling-oranges

People who say “everything is temporary” say so only because they have never had anything permanent.

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