Friday, March 24, 2006
Ma quanti alberi si potevano salvare?
Presto, riferisce la Repubblica, arriverà nelle case di milioni di Italiani la riedizione della celebrazione trash-agiografica di Silvio Berlusconi.
I fedelissimi hanno anche per queste elezioni il loro santino in formato gigante e patinato da guardare con occhi tumidi.
Ma gli altri, tutti gli altri, saranno esposti all'ennesima occasione di disgusto, tra le innumerevoli con le quali l'ubiquo e unto Silvio Berlusconi ci affligge.
Ma quanti alberi si potevano salvare invece di trasformarli direttamente in mer... spazzatura?
Ricordate di riciclare la carta almeno.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Alaska high school violated a student's free speech rights by suspending him after he unfurled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" across the street from the school, a federal court ruled on Friday. [...]
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
From The Puppet and the Dwarf, The Perverse Core of Christianity by Slavoj Zizek
Monday, March 20, 2006
KID POLITICS | Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up rigid and traditional. Future liberals, on the other hand ...
Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals. [...]
Read the whole article here.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Silvio Berlusconi, avanspettacolo e delirio
Invece, a sorpresa, Silvio Berlusconi ha partecipato al convegno, ma lo ha fatto a modo suo: come soubrette, diva, primadonna che impone al pubblico i propri vezzi, capricci e ossessioni, al di là del rispetto delle regole e del buon senso.
Laddove Prodi che aveva partecipato al convegno il giorno prima aveva risposto alle domande degli imprenditori, rispettando il tempo di tre minuti e mezzo per risposta, la Vanda Osiris della politica Italiana - Silvio Berlusconi - ha voluto il palco tutto per sé, lanciandosi in uno dei suoi soliti monologhi, che a dire il vero, negli ultimi tempi hanno sempre più il tono di un disperato e ossessivo delirio.
Nel frattempo, riferisce il Corriere, circa 300 attivisti di Forza Italia avevano riempito le ultime file della sala per esprimere il proprio devoto e rumoroso entusiasmo. Insomma qualche effetto speciale, visto che i cameramen e lo studio non sono quelli Mediaset, e ancora gli applausi preregistrati ai convegni non sono consentiti.
Così, quando la soubrette Silvio Berlusconi si è cimentato nel consueto, ancorché trito e noioso, repertorio sulle congiure comuniste dell'intera Via Lattea, e sulla necessità di essere ottimisti (come se la crescita zero del PIL fosse una questione di ottimismo o pessimismo) il silenzio glaciale di molti imprenditori imbarazzati dall'osceno e patetico show è sceso in platea, si sono uditi fischi, ma non sono mancati i diligenti applausi delle squadre di Forza Italia giunte al seguito del premier (leggere anche i commenti di Della Valle, che parla di claque).
Eloquente il commento di Montezemolo: «Ho troppo rispetto delle istituzioni repubblicane per commentare. Ho troppo rispetto verso il presidente del Consiglio come istituzione».
Ormai la cifra di Silvio Berlusconi è il patetico avanspettacolo, il delirio, la follia narcisistica, la paranoia di "congiure comuniste" viste dappertutto, e la negazione psicotica della (triste) realtà dei freddi e inesorabili dati dell'economia italiana.
Nel frattempo il Guardian lancia un'allarme sulla "tossica minaccia alla democrazia" rappresentata da Berlusconi che appare collocarsi "in una linea diretta di discendenza da Mussolini", sebbene "sotto forme nuove".
New Labour must recognise that Berlusconi is the devil
Blair's friend and ally lies in direct line of descent from Mussolini and poses a toxic threat to democracy
Excerpt:
"[...] Berlusconi is the most dangerous political phenomenon in Europe. He represents the most serious threat to democracy in western Europe since 1945. It might be argued that the far right as represented by such openly racist and xenophobic figures as Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jörg Haider poses a more serious danger, but such figures remain relative outsiders in the European political scene. Berlusconi does not. During his two spells as prime minister there has been a very serious erosion of the quality of Italian democracy and the tone of public life. [...]"
Read the whole article here.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
From Freepress.org:
Kurt Vonnegut's "Stardust Memory"
by Harvey Wasserman
March 4, 2006
On a cold, cloudy night, the lines threaded all the way around the Ohio State campus. News that Kurt Vonnegut was speaking at the Ohio Union prompted these “apathetic” heartland college students to start lining up in the early afternoon. About 2,000 got in. At least that many more were turned away. It was the biggest crowd for a speaker here since Michael Moore.
In an age dominated by hype and sex, neither Moore nor Vonnegut seems a likely candidate to rock a campus whose biggest news has been the men’s and women’s basketball teams’ joint assault on Big Ten championships.
But maybe there’s more going on here than Fox wants us to think.
Vonnegut takes an easy chair across from Prof. Manuel Luis Martinez, a poet and teacher of writing. He grabs Martinez and semi-whispers into his ear (and the mike) “What can I say here?”
Martinez urges candor.
“Well,” says Vonnegut, “I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.” [On this, read my note below]
The students seem to agree.
“The only difference between Bush and Hitler,” Vonnegut adds, “is that Hitler was elected.”
“You all know, of course, that the election was stolen. Right here.”
Off to a flying start, Vonnegut explains that this will be his “last speech for money.” He can’t remember the first one, but it was on a campus long, long ago, and this will be the end.
The students are hushed with the prospect of the final appearance of America’s greatest living novelist. Alongside Mark Twain and Ben Franklin, Will Rogers and Joseph Heller and a very short list of immortal satirists and storytellers, there stands Kurt Vonnegut, author of SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE and SIRENS OF TITAN, CAT’S CRADLE and GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER, books these students are studying now, as did their parents, as will their children and grandchildren, with a deeply felt mixture of gratitude and awe.
Nobody tonight seems to think they are in for a detached, scholarly presentation from a disengaged academic genius coasting on his incomparable laurels
“I’m lucky enough to have known a great president, one who really cared about ALL the people, rich and poor. That was Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was rich himself, and his class considered him a traitor.
[read the whole article here]
NOTE:
To understand the "syphilis president" concept, one may perhaps note what Vonnegut said in an interview at "Real Time with Bill Maher":
MAHER: Yeah, you said this in the new book, you said about the planet, “We could have saved it, but we were just too damn cheap and lazy.”
VONNEGUT: Yes. We are killing the planet as a life support system. And we may have gone so far already that there’s no recovery from it. The game may be over. Just to cheer you up. [chuckles]
MAHER: Right. And would that be a bad thing? Would that be a bad thing? I know you’ve said things like—
VONNEGUT: No, look, I think it’s – I think the earth’s immune system is trying to get rid of us, and it’s high time they did. My goodness, we are a disease on the face of this planet. You know, after two world wars and the Holocaust, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and, well, the Roman games and the Spanish Inquisition, and the burning of women in public squares. It’s time we got out of here, and I—
MAHER: You left out “The Gong Show.” [laughter]
VONNEGUT: Yeah, but we are a disease on the planet. And I think we ought to become “syphilis with a conscience” and stop reproducing. [laughter] [applause]
MAHER: Well, I’m going to do my part. [laughter] And I know you’ll do yours. Kurt Vonnegut, I thank you very much for making time out to talk to us. And good luck with the book. [applause] [cheers]
Lawmaker: Religious virgins eligible for South Dakota abortion
Resisting calls by moderates from both sides, as well as public statements by President Bush, South Dakota lawmakers have rejected the idea of allowing exemptions for cases of rape or incest to the state's abortion ban.
One backer of the bill, State Senator Bill Napoli, argued on PBS's Newshour that if a victim had followed strict religious guidelines, her life would be endangered by the pregnancy. Under this scenario, she would be eligible for an abortion.
Transcript excerpt via Newshour online:
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls "convenience." He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother's life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.
BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
*
COMMENT
A "religious virgin", "brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and (...) impregnated" could get an abortion according to South Dakota lawmaker Bill Napoli.
First of all, notice the sick and indulgent description of what, according to Bill Napoli, represents a possible case for exemption from the abortion ban. One wonders what type of movies the guy watches. I am sure a psychotherapist would find Mr. Napoli's graphic description professionally interesting.
However, one does not need to indulgently evoke "sodomised religious virgins" to justify an abortion: normal American life is already the worst, nightmarish scenario for many women.
Let me make a very ordinary example:
A teenage girl. Let's call her Katy.
Katy has not got proper contraceptive education because in her school abstinence-only education was the only programme allowed.
She lives in a small town where the majority are born-again Christians who believe that having sex before marriage is the door to eternal punishment. They actually call premarital sex fornication.
Well instructed by parents and pastors, even young people use this terminology in Katy's school, at least those of the most popular Christian Clubs. In the same high-school, the previous year a girl had not been allowed to take part in her graduation ceremony because she had become pregnant (but the father of the baby had been allowed).
In her town, having premarital sex causes immediate ostracism and a stigma of grave immorality and depravation.
One time, Katy's father saw her kissing a boy a bit too intensely and tells her "Repent, and sin no more!". After that, the father behaved as if deeply wounded emotionally and religiously for "having a daughter behaving like a harlot, punishable in hell". It took months for her father to behave normally with her.
Now suppose the young girl of this example, unmarried, becomes pregnant in this type of normal setting.
She did not plan to, it just happened (there are about 1,000,000 unintended pregnancies every year in the US amongst teenagers). The boyfriend disappears after learning about the pregnancy.
What is Katy going to do?
There are many chances that she will go straight to an abortion clinic, rather than having to put up with the hell of her "pious" environment.
And how could anyone blame her, considering the fanaticism and intolerance she is surrounded by? She cannot speak to anybody. And she does not want to be pointed as one of the "harlots of the town who will go to hell".
In this hell of intolerance, sexophobia and religious fanaticism, she is alone and isolated, and she decides to have an abortion.
Of course, one may also add other, equally ordinary, details to this example. Maybe Katy does not have a job. Maybe she does not have health insurance (like 45 million Americans).
Bill Napoli does not need to evoke to "sodomised religious virgins". Ordinary American life is often a pretty bad scenario for many women. But perhaps lawmakers do not observe ordinary life nowadays.
Friday, March 10, 2006
I still have to understand - but the perplexity is rhetorical - what does Christianity have to do with lies, deception, illegal wars, bombing villages in foreign countries not at war to fetch a single 'terrorist' (the US would not bomb their own cities to catch a single criminal would they?), using depleted uranium and white phosphorous, Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons, torture (of children too) and capital punishment.
Bush Advisor Says President Has Legal Power to Torture Children
By Philip Watts
01/08/06 "revcom.us" -- -- John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.
This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.
What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.
It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the 'war on terror’ than John Yoo."
This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.
Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us
Yoo argues presidential powers on Constitutional grounds, but where in the Constitution does it say the President can order the torture of children ? As David Cole puts it, "Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the President the 'Commander-in-Chief,’ no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished."
What is the position of the Bush Administration on the torture of children, since one of its most influential legal architects is advocating the President’s right to order the crushing of a child’s testicles?
This fascist logic has nothing to do with "getting information" as Yoo has argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and adopted by the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. People have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to death in U.S.-run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in Europe or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can explain this sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill widespread fear among people all over the world? [...]
[read the whole article here]
COMMENT: The extent of the madness and power-obsession, and loss of touch with reality and humanity, of the current American administration could not appear clearer than from the above article.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Featured artists: Perry Farrell, Peter Gabriel, Ben Harper, Elton John, Iggy Pop, Sean Lennon, Annie Lennox, Marilyn Manson, Joni Mitchell, Gwen Stefani, Steve Nicks, Patti Smith, Sting, Steven Tyler, Thom Yorke and many others.
On Showtime March 8th at 8:00pm
There is nothing to laugh about.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi people and 2300 American soldiers, as well as others in the coalition, have died for an illegal war based on lies and deceit. 17,000 soldiers were wounded in action. A whole country was contaminated with radioactive weapons. The Middle-East is more unstable than ever. Terrorism has increased. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted.
In the last weeks only, thousands of people have died. Yet, according to Rumsfeld, media are "exaggerating the gravity of the current situation". Should the media say "mission accomplished"?
Friday, March 03, 2006
U.S. signs $38 million deal for depleted uranium tank shells
by John Byrne
Published: March 2, 2006
The U.S. Army quietly placed an order for $38 million in depleted uranium rounds last week, bringing the total order from a West-Virginia based company to $77 million for fiscal year 2006, RAW STORY has learned.
[Read the whole article here]
Weapons which remain radioactive for 4,500,000 million years! That is, their effect will continue contaminating the countries in which they are used for hundreds of generations, producing genetic illnesses. And it affects thousands of American soldiers too.
Does that sound human, civilised, 'compassionate', 'Christian'?
How credible is the U.S.A. in its battle against nuclear proliferation when, in actual facts, it uses nuclear weapons (DU is a radioactive byproduct of nuclear reactors or of manufacturing nuclear weapons)?.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Leo Bassi lanza sus dardos contra la religión
Leo Bassi en 'La Revelación'
El comediante e intérprete italiano Leo Bassi invoca en su último espectáculo a Descartes, Averroes, Sócrates, Confucio, Kant, Einstein y a los filósofos y científicos de todos los tiempos para abrirnos a todos los ojos y revelar la verdad.
'La Revelación', que se representa en el madrileño Teatro Alfil, tiene la misión de resolver la paradoja en la que vivimos. A pesar de la invasión tecnológica y científica que experimenta la sociedad actual -asegura Bassi- ha vuelto el oscurantismo, las sectas, los fundamentalismos, los esoterismos... Nuevos movimientos que el artista italiano denuncia en su papel de bufón, para lo que no duda en enfundarse el traje de Papa, de telepredicador sudamericano o de fundamentalista 'yanqui'.
Bassi se rebela ante hechos como que en Estados Unidos, el 55% de los americanos piensen que la Biblia explica los orígenes del universo y que éste fue creado hace tan solo 6000 años. "Aquí, -continúa- los Legionarios de Cristo y otros fundamentalistas cristianos, inspirados por un viejo Papa intransigente, intentan despertar los viejos demonios de la represión sexual situándose ideológicamente no muy lejos de sus viejos rivales monoteístas del Islam". Por todo eso, asegura que ha llegado la hora de la revelación. [...]
[Read the whole article here]
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
February 14 2006
Counterbias.com
by Andrew Bosworth
The Republican Propaganda Machine is firing on all pistons. It has to be. The new agenda is about convincing conservatives to betray their core principles.
The new Party Line is:
- Limited government is now Big Brother government
- Free enterprise is now crony capitalism
- Science is now garbage science
- Prudent use of force is now permanent war
All governments play with words and ideas, spinning things their way. But the Bush administration is the first to bathe America in a sewer of propaganda: Free Speech Zones; the Middle Class Tax Cuts; No Child Left Behind; the New Freedom Initiative; the Clear Skies Act; the Data Quality Act, the Patriot Act and Compassionate Conservatism all mean, in the real world, their opposites. Consider the following egregious examples of propaganda:
- The White House even concocted a fake news agency, Talon News, to provide a cover for a fake reporter, Jeff Gannon, to lob fake questions at President Bush. After suspicions arose, the White House spokesman, Scott McLellan, denied that they were using Gannon to propagandize ("just a wild conspiracy theory"). But proof soon came forward that Jeff Gannon was his fake name, and that in real life he was a prostitute.
- Republicans in Congress broadened the classification of "manufacturing" so much that even the Starbuck's company qualifies as a manufacturer (and receives tax breaks). Gregory Mankiw, one of Bush's economic advisors, proposed redefining "manufacturing" to include making hamburgers. The inclusion of McJobs as manufacturing would thus mask the loss of real manufacturing jobs.
- The "Data Quality Act" prevents the federal government from disseminating warnings about products if industries can produce, with garbage science, countervailing data. The Act has been used to harvest more timber, to treat playground equipment with arsenic, and to suppress reports on the hazards of nickel.
- The White House regime hired a professional public-relations firm, the Rendon Group, to help sell the American public on the War in Iraq.
- President Bush repeatedly juxtaposed "Saddam Hussein" and "Al Qaeda" in the same sentence, implying a strong connection, and more than half of Americans were fooled into believing that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9-11. The result is the indirect fabrication of an enormous lie, which recalls the words of Joseph Goebbels: "When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it."
- Condoleeza Rice, as National Security Advisor, disseminated the even-then-suspicious "Niger uranium" theory linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program and then, when the theory was demonstrably false, she offloaded the mistake to the CIA. (When it was a CIA report in the first place that put the Niger uranium theory in doubt).
- The White House hoodwinked the media into airing countless "fake news" segments: the fake Jessica Lynch story about being "rescued" behind enemy lines (when in fact she was resting in a hospital and retrieved with no hostile fire); the fake Pat Tillman story about dying while fighting the enemy (he was killed by friendly fire); and the toppling of Saddam's statue in front of a fake spontaneous crowd (the sympathizers were bused in for the pre-arranged event).
- The Bush Administration orchestrated a fake presidential chat with the troops in Iraq, who were coached for each "impromptu" question by White House spin doctors. [...]
