October 2008 archive

What “incredibly tough” foreign policy actions is Obama preparing?

Original article, by Patrick Martin and subheaded Biden’s chilling remarks at fundraiser, via World Socialist Web Site:

In remarks made over the weekend in Seattle, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden warned that Barack Obama, if elected president, would be compelled to take deeply unpopular actions in both domestic and foreign policy within months of taking office.

Cultures and Cassoulets

Crossposted  to The Crusty Polemicist

“Two thousand years of Judeo-Christianity  have not obscured the fact that pagan thought has not yet disappeared, even though it has often been blurred, stifled or persecuted by monotheistic religions and their secular offshoots.”

                        Alain De Benoist

People here in the US don’t speak much about “culture” anymore, not in any real sense. To speak these days about things like “a culture” or “a people,” and to demand that such things be taken seriously, is to invite smirks at best, anxious frowns at worst. I believe that the new century will contain certain centrifugal forces that will enable us – force us – to take these things seriously again.

The US has always comforted itself with the myth of the “melting pot.” What we actually have – what we have always had, if the truth is to be told – is more like the southern French dish called “Cassoulet.” A large, bubbling pot full of chunks of disparate, bizarrely matched ingredients. When people speak of “an” American culture, they are willfully insisting on the myth of the smoothly mixed “melting pot” rather than the uncomfortable reality of the American cassoulet. American culture as such does not exist. In place of the culture is the shared assertion that “We are all Americans!” From the perspective of authentic cultures, this is a non-statement. It simply says, “We believe in the same ideas.” So saying, “I am an American” means nothing more than “I accept the same propositions that you do.” In a nation where even the illusion of such unity of beliefs and values lies shattered on the ground, this entire model collapses – and the US has nothing authentic with which to replace it.

Once the chimera of “shared ideas and values” is seen for what it is, we are confronted with a Bizarro World free-jazz interpretation of an authentic culture. By the time Americans’ ancestral cultures have been fed into the maw of the great American degradation machine and shat out the other end, they are nothing more than a collection of Disney Land “small world” artifacts bearing no more resemblance to authentic cultures than “Saint Patty’s Day” bears a resemblance to my ancestral Gaelic culture that it purports to “celebrate.” The idea that a nation can simply manufacture a culture at will is not only the height of hubris, it also misses the point.

With the idea of “an” American culture exposed for the myth that it has always been, perhaps it is time to rediscover and renew our faith in the authentic cultures of the ancestors we left behind. Not so that we can “celebrate our heritage” in some typically shallow, mercantile little ritual of consumption. But rather so that we can have a true understanding of who we are and where we are from. As the “American idea” vanishes into smoke and faerie dust, this may be the only thing we have to hang on to, the only firm ground on which we can stand.

When I drive along the shore of the Mediterranean from Barolo to Monaco to Nice to Provence to the scrublands of Languedoc to the small rocky beach at Banyuls-sur-Mer, regions where the locals are once again demanding that their homelands be called by their true names – Catalonia, Occitania, Savoy – I rejoice in the multitude of alive, vital, authentic cultures. When I drive from mad King Ludwig’s castle across the Rhine and into the heart of wine country in regions that the locals are once again proud to call Bayern and Alsace and Bourgogne, I rejoice. Any place where an authentic culture grounded in an authentic people survives and even occasionally thrives in this flat, dull, monotonous, pasteurized, globalized, Disneyfied world, I rejoice in them. And I salute them.

The Morning News

Miskatonic University sends out Antarctic Expedition-

82 Huge Mountain Range Should Not Be There

LiveScience Staff

Tue Oct 21, 10:21 am ET

An Antarctic mountain range that rivals the Alps in elevation will be probed this month by an expedition of scientists using airborne radar and other Information Age tools to virtually “peel away” more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of ice covering the peaks.

One of the mysteries of the mountain range is that current evidence suggests that it “shouldn’t be there” at all.

The researchers hope to find answers there to some basic questions about the nature of the southernmost continent, including the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet. For instance, it is unclear how Antarctica came to be ice-covered in the first place and whether that process began millions of years ago in the enigmatic Gamburtsev Mountain range.

At The Mountains of Madness

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

A Transition through Poetry XXXIV – finis

Art Link

Passage

Rites and Passages

(the latter years)

Isolating

Declaring

Bemoaning

Observing

Writing

Speaking

Affirming

Protecting

Finding voice

Initiating

Writing

Speaking up

Ghettoizing

Returning

Creating space

Confronting the beast

Writing

Speaking out

Helping

Representing

Taming the beast

Depicting

Moving on

Broadening

Writing

Spreading out

Identifying the larger beast

Combining

Proclaiming

Defending

Teaching

–Robyn Elaine Serven

–November 15, 2005

–June 13, 2006

Iglesia ………………………..Episode 58

(Iglesia is a serialized novel, published ….rarely these days!…on Tuesdays and Saturdays at midnight ET, you can read all of the episodes by clicking on the tag.)

Previous episode

They had not made love. Coupling on the bed had been instinctive, a response, an act of primate behavior, the fear and dread of death too big for even sex to conquer…..for now. Near death experiences bond humans together in a fundamental way. Having their real, actual death, yet continued real, actual existence demonstrated to them so shockingly had left them nothing to cling to but each other.

In the morning, they felt like children, children who had moved to a new town, a new country, a new world. Not knowing what they would face but knowing that it would be totally new and completely unexpected.  Rogers entered, and shortly after him, so did the breakfast cart.  It came rolling in and stopped behind him, propelled guided and stopped, they realized, by his will.  A reminder of the new rules of their “existence.”  Milk was poured, lemon squeezed, and kippers were silently eaten, before Iglesia raised her eyes and asked in a small voice, “So …..what the hell are we?”

Overnight Caption Contest

The State newspaper promotes racism and division

The State newspaper printed a letter to the editor on October 20, 2008, entitled “Financial chaos a result of white guilt”.  The letter, written by Mr. Hambrecht of South Carolina, is full of GOP talking points with one goal; to promote division.  Not content to merely print the letter, The State newspaper saw fit to give Mr. Hambrecht’s letter its own page.

You can read his letter here.

That plastic “C”

Please indulge a family story…

On doing the right thing

I found this post from Ta Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic to be incredibly moving.

I was looking at this picture of Obama’s grandparents and thinking how much he looks like his grandfather. And suddenly, for whatever reason, I was struck by the fact that they had made the decision to love their daughter, no matter what, and love their grandson, no matter what. I’d bet money that they never even thought of themselves as courageous, that they didn’t give much thought to the broader struggles in the the world at the time. They were just doing what right, honorable people do. But the fact is that, in the 60s, you could be disowned for falling in love with a black woman or black man…

We often give a pass to racists by noting that they were “of their times.” Fair enough, and I know Hawaii was a different beast, but still, today, let us speak of people who were ahead of their times, who were outside of their times. Let us remember that Barack Obama learned the great lessons of life from courageous white people. Let us speak of those who do what  normal, right people should always do when faced with a child–commit an act love. Here’s to doing the right thing.

 

Critical Reading – The Democrats: A Critical History

Original review, by Pham Binh, via dissidentvoice.org:

With less than a month to go before the election and Obama’s inauguration a mere three months away, Lance Selfa’s The Democrats: A Critical History is critical reading for anyone interested in real change we can believe in i.e. not the kind Obama will bring.

Open Thread

This is an open thread.  Chat away!  Please do not rec the open thread!

An International Test?

The interesting part is what did I know and how did I hear about it.  It started with this story.

http://www.adirondackdailyente…

Ah but were did I get the link for that particular blurb?  Pilotsfor911truth.com of course.  It took until this afternoon and Jay Sevrin to bring up what Biden said about a real international incident on the scale of the Cuba missle crisis.  Do we not have enough to deal with?  So it would seem the lamestream media does not keep an inventory of international military brass yet those who well and truely know government is evil have their eyes wide open!  I love it.

Talking point of the day.

http://www.nwotruth.com/biden-…

Here is a really cool one about how “the world” came to the very strange unanimous conclusion that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction needed to be dealt with.

http://www.brasschecktv.com/pa…

Ya, you know what link is coming up next don’t you.

http://www.scl.cc/home.php

I regret not studying harder, eating the right organic foods and stuff and even for “the benefits” I would not wish this on anyone.

James is one of those internet places few attend and turn off when the going gets weird.  Then again how weird is today.

http://www.jamescasbolt.com/

How does one really know indeed.  Remote viewing?  Psychic remote viewing of military installations, how cool would that be.  Or would it be like that movie The Green Mile seeing all the uglyness in the world.  John Coffee, like the drink Maam, only not spelt da same.

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