http://townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2009/04/16/forever_in_blue_jeans
Conservative commentator George Will looks down on Americans in general. Well already I have problems with this guy. First of all, he's conservative, synonomous with regressive policy, repression, etc. The same people that thought blacks, women and Native Americans were inferior to white men. But I won't say that about him. That's how I, as well as my brothers, are different. George, the commentator, the co-signer, Mr. 2 cents, believes wearing blue jeans is for kids... as well as animation and video games. Well, one would guess he hasn't considered anything outside of his world of suits and lattes.
On the contrary, his beef with denim isn't railed against all adults, only wealthy adults. I totally agree with George on this, I'm sick of rich people prancing around wearing affordable clothes! They should be wearing top of the line fasion all the time! Well, I only think so because it makes it easier to decide who to mugg in the streets.
Video games came home in the 80's, and there they have carved a comfortable nook in family life. For me, they filled the time I couldn't spend outside, with my working parents, or mutilating kittens. Outside of my life I could say for sure its brought people together under a common flag. Sure, we all cringe at the thought of WOW and EVE geeks, but... wait, that shit is a collosal waste of time. But what you do for leisure is what YOU WANT TO DO. The industry agrees, that why its worth billions. Billions of dollars changing hands, new technology being developed, new software, and new manufacturing techniques, are invaluable elements not limited to the gaming culture.
Animation evolved similarly. Animation can tell stories that would otherwise be impossible to tell. Pictures have been used as aids for thousands of years. And if you don't like King of the Hill, Xbox, or denim, then you probably wouldn't be welcome on my block. So, George Will, go fuck yourself.
(And FYI, GQ Magazine endorses denim!)
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
NAACP calls for firing of N.Y. Post cartoonist
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Leaders of the NAACP on Saturday called for the firing of the New York Post cartoonist whose drawing lampooning the federal stimulus bill has drawn charges that it's racist and encourages violence toward President Obama.
NAACP's Benjamin Todd Jealous says the organization will take issue "national" if Post cartoonist isn't fired.
Speaking at the civil rights group's annual meeting in New York, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said that if Sean Delonas is not fired, the group will call for protests of the paper and Fox television affiliates, which are owned by Post parent company News Corp.
"There is consensus that if the Post does not ... get rid of the journalists who are responsible for this bit of hate speech seeing the light of day, that we will move this from a local, regional issue to a very national issue," Jealous said.
The group also called for the cartoonist's editor to be fired.
Many critics said the cartoon played on historically racist images by appearing to compare Obama, the nation's first black president, to a chimpanzee that had been shot by police officers.
The cartoon references the mauling of a Connecticut woman by a chimpanzee who was later shot and killed by police.
In its caption, one of the officers says, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill."
Obama had signed the bill the day before the cartoon ran.
On its Web site Thursday, the paper offered a qualified apology, saying it was "most certainly not our intent" to express racism, but also accusing some of jumping at a chance to attack a paper they already disliked. "To them, no apology is due," the paper wrote. "Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon -- even if the opportunists seek to make it something else."
But NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said that explanation rings hollow.
"This is tastelessness taken to the extreme," he said. "For the publication to suggest the only people who object to it are constant critics of the New York Post is beyond ridiculous.
"This was an invitation to assassination of the president of the United States and anyone who was not offended by it doesn't have any sensibilities."
We are all extremists now; UK
For most of the past century, Britain's secret state bugged, blacklisted and spied on leftists, trade unionists and peace campaigners, as well as Irish republicans and anyone else regarded as a "subversive" threat to the established order.
That was all supposed to have been brought to a halt in the wake of the end of the cold war in the early 1990s. MI5 now boasts it has ended its counter-subversion work altogether, having other jihadist fish to fry (it will have soon doubled its staffing and budget on the back of the 9/11 backlash).
Whether those claims should be taken at face value must be open to question. But it now turns out that other arms of the secret state have in any case been stepping up to the plate to fill the gap in the market.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) insists that its confidential intelligence unit – reported last week to be now coordinating surveillance and infiltration of "domestic extremists", including anti-war protesters and strikers – is not in fact a new organisation, but has been part of its public order intelligence operations since 1999, liaising with MI5 and its 44 forces' special branch outfits across the country.
But yes, Acpo's spokesman tells me, it is in the business of targeting groups such as those involved in the recent Gaza war protests, trade unionists taking part in secondary industrial action and animal rights organisations – though only if they break the law or "seek to break the law".
Now, that qualification could be used to cover a very wide group of political and industrial activists indeed: including all those students who have been occupying university buildings since the new year in protest at Israel's carnage in the Palestinian territories; all those engineering construction workers who staged mass walkouts at refineries and power stations over the past couple of weeks; and all those who blocked streets – or threw their shoes at police – around the Israeli embassy in London at the height of the Gaza bombardment in January.
Add to that the fact that Acpo, and the government as a whole for that matter, bandies around the term "extremism" without being able to make even a face-saving stab at what it actually means – "there doesn't seem to be a single, commonly agreed definition", Acpo's spokesman concedes – and you have a recipe for a new lease of life for the harassment and criminalisation of legitimate dissent, protest and industrial action.
In case there were any doubt about the kind of thing this intelligence outfit is up to, a recent advertisement for its new boss specified that the unit would be specifically working with government departments, university authorities and private corporations to "remove the threat" of "public disorder that arises from domestic extremism" using "secret data" and "sensitive source material".
But since Acpo operates as a private company outside the Freedom of Information Act – and the budget and staffing of its confidential intelligence unit are, well, confidential – who's going to hold them to genuine account?
It is this kind of blurring of the distinction between political violence and non-violent protest that has seen catch-all anti-terrorist legislation routinely abused in recent years. That's exactly what seems to have happened over the weekend, when police arrested nine people on the M65 motorway near Preston allegedly on their way to join George Galloway's Viva Palestina aid convoy to Gaza.
Security sources said the arrests were in connection with a "potential threat of terrorism in the Middle East" — and it seems they didn't mean a renewed Israeli use of white phosphorus and heavy artillery shells against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza strip.
Six have already been released, but the operation instantly delivered a "Galloway aid convoy link to terror suspects" headline in yesterday's Mail on Sunday, casting a shadow over the 150-vehicle convoy, including 12 ambulances and a fire engine, which is intended to transport £1m worth of aid and highlight the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The crudely politicised timing of these arrests — "security sources" have been quoted as saying the three still being held had been under surveillance for two months – underlines how easy it is to play anti-democratic political games once the mantras of terrorism and national security have been invoked. But the net can be thrown far wider under the even more meaningless badge of "extremism".
That was all supposed to have been brought to a halt in the wake of the end of the cold war in the early 1990s. MI5 now boasts it has ended its counter-subversion work altogether, having other jihadist fish to fry (it will have soon doubled its staffing and budget on the back of the 9/11 backlash).
Whether those claims should be taken at face value must be open to question. But it now turns out that other arms of the secret state have in any case been stepping up to the plate to fill the gap in the market.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) insists that its confidential intelligence unit – reported last week to be now coordinating surveillance and infiltration of "domestic extremists", including anti-war protesters and strikers – is not in fact a new organisation, but has been part of its public order intelligence operations since 1999, liaising with MI5 and its 44 forces' special branch outfits across the country.
But yes, Acpo's spokesman tells me, it is in the business of targeting groups such as those involved in the recent Gaza war protests, trade unionists taking part in secondary industrial action and animal rights organisations – though only if they break the law or "seek to break the law".
Now, that qualification could be used to cover a very wide group of political and industrial activists indeed: including all those students who have been occupying university buildings since the new year in protest at Israel's carnage in the Palestinian territories; all those engineering construction workers who staged mass walkouts at refineries and power stations over the past couple of weeks; and all those who blocked streets – or threw their shoes at police – around the Israeli embassy in London at the height of the Gaza bombardment in January.
Add to that the fact that Acpo, and the government as a whole for that matter, bandies around the term "extremism" without being able to make even a face-saving stab at what it actually means – "there doesn't seem to be a single, commonly agreed definition", Acpo's spokesman concedes – and you have a recipe for a new lease of life for the harassment and criminalisation of legitimate dissent, protest and industrial action.
In case there were any doubt about the kind of thing this intelligence outfit is up to, a recent advertisement for its new boss specified that the unit would be specifically working with government departments, university authorities and private corporations to "remove the threat" of "public disorder that arises from domestic extremism" using "secret data" and "sensitive source material".
But since Acpo operates as a private company outside the Freedom of Information Act – and the budget and staffing of its confidential intelligence unit are, well, confidential – who's going to hold them to genuine account?
It is this kind of blurring of the distinction between political violence and non-violent protest that has seen catch-all anti-terrorist legislation routinely abused in recent years. That's exactly what seems to have happened over the weekend, when police arrested nine people on the M65 motorway near Preston allegedly on their way to join George Galloway's Viva Palestina aid convoy to Gaza.
Security sources said the arrests were in connection with a "potential threat of terrorism in the Middle East" — and it seems they didn't mean a renewed Israeli use of white phosphorus and heavy artillery shells against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza strip.
Six have already been released, but the operation instantly delivered a "Galloway aid convoy link to terror suspects" headline in yesterday's Mail on Sunday, casting a shadow over the 150-vehicle convoy, including 12 ambulances and a fire engine, which is intended to transport £1m worth of aid and highlight the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The crudely politicised timing of these arrests — "security sources" have been quoted as saying the three still being held had been under surveillance for two months – underlines how easy it is to play anti-democratic political games once the mantras of terrorism and national security have been invoked. But the net can be thrown far wider under the even more meaningless badge of "extremism".
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Cartel For Thought
Mexican cartels are taking over small towns near the border of the US and Mexico. But something is bothering me about this issue. Supposedly last spring 70 cartel members took over a town, Villa Ahumada, and all the police quit last spring in this town. They are taking specific targeted towns along the border to create strategically placed travel points. That seem really specific for trafficking drugs across the border, and its supposed to be all weed and coca that this is all about. but most bud here in the U.S. is grown in the U.S. But that's not the issue I'm having with this.
Ive heard a lot of theories about how martial law will be implemented and in most cases the "conspirators" say that as we get nearer to this, the U.S. government would use local gangs or gangs in general as a front in the beginning stages of a "martial law" type of status. I really didn't see how this could be possible, but i think I'm starting to see how this might be.
Cartels at this point have the government almost on its knees and according to congress Mexico is becoming a bigger threat to the United States than Iran. Mexico is at the edge of martial law, and this is all from Mexican drug cartels? I thought to myself if the U.S; intended on martial law as an inevitability, they could fund cartels and give them orders, in return for a transaction they believe is valuable without thinking of further down the road consequences. If our country wanted to take control of key positions across the Mexican border, and tell the cartels THEY will be in control of these small towns, they could at a later point take them back from the cartels and use them as a secondary border control after martial law would be implemented in the U.S. In a way it would grant them power to stop people in Mexico AFTER people begin to flea south of the border to avoid capture. What this would allow them is a space to search within outside of the U.S. to find hiding Americans within 80 to 100 miles of the border, where the police and military will be pushed out of by gangs and cartels.
These types of tactics are talked about in tsun tsu's the art of war. the government convinces the cartels they will have the power by giving them power, and you say they already had it, giving them alot of space to work and lots of "we will let this one slide" ideals. Once you have successfully hired your enemy, you use your enemy, than take your enemy/friend as your prisoner, or if they are as influential as they seem, make them your prisoner/employee. Seeing as how they are already so desensitized to blood and death and murder, what better a ruthless prison guard? or the "Lieutenant Stewy" captured from the cartel, getting his name "stewy" from stewing over 3000 people in vats of acid. Would there be a better employee of death? hmmm....
-Pinky
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
