Utrecht is a lively university town in The Netherlands. The medieval warehouses at canal level have been turned into cafes and above, are shops, street musicians, and a constant swirl of people.

One of Utrecht’s great landmarks is its Dom Tower, a surreal computer-generated-like gothic tower that dominates the landscape and the sky. As I said to my nephew, visiting me from NY, you don’t see this in Poughkeepsie. No, he said, you don’t.

Perhaps just as unlikely, in Poughkeepsie, would be running into a small band of Iranians seeking solidarity in another revolutionary attempt. Yesterday, though, there were 11 Iranians standing in front of St. Martin’s Cathedral in Utrecht, each holding the picture of someone killed in the protests in Iran. One of those faces was Neda, perhaps this century’s Anne Frank. Anne was on my mind, having been at the Secret Annex the day before and still thinking about Primo Levi’s observation . . .

One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did… Perhaps it is better that way: If we were capable of taking in the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live.”

^{Primo Levi}

^{cross posted at Daily Kos}

I never  r e a l l y  thought about the rule of law before. I took for granted that the law existed as a regulatory force in society. Something both to keep me in line and keep me safe. I had no idea how important the concept of a RULE of law would become to me.

Well, I had no idea until a little over eight years ago. . . until the dark years . . .

^{cross posted at dKos}

“…the really important stuff they never tell you about – you have to imagine it on your own.”

b. andreas 1997

^{cross posted at Daily Kos}

From  Dean Barker in dKos essay

Soapblox sites hacked? Info gathering thread

(+)   SoapBlox is Dead

by: pacified

[subscribe]

January 07, 2009 at 08:15:46 MST

It was a good ride, but it’s over.

Thanks for all the fish.

All these hackers messing with our stuff, and we here at SoapBlox have no clue what to do.  We don’t have enough knowledge, time, money, or care to fix it.

So I hope the Hackers are happy.

If you want the data from your blog, we will get it.  But we are not going to try and restore anything.

Consider this the “We’re Out of Business” post.

Most of the servers have been taken off line because they were being used to hack and exploit other websites.  The hackers install this crap on servers after they get in.  SoapBlox’s ISP then takes the servers off line.

We do not know when they will come back online.

We do not know if they will come back online.

everything has a time stamp. it’s there, telling us how long til we walk, talk, or go from trike to bike. there’s a time for our first kiss and our last breath  . . .

even bloggers have a shelf life. really. there’s that hard-to-define moment that tells you: it’s time to move on.

now it’s my turn. one more among the many in the blog-o-sphere diaspora to find their time done at a certain place.

it’s my turn. to have found that moment. at this particular place.  

???????????????

That’s my reaction, in totality, to this run-a-way train that life has become.

I am reduced to laughing an empty ironic cackle. heh. huh. spitting and sputtering. no. forget it. i’m not doing this in capital letters.

forget the rules. all the packaging. all the shiny shit. it is time to step back.

ma’am. step away from that shop window.  that’s right. and take a jump into some madness below the fold . . .

^{cross posted at Daily Kos}

dogs. dogs. dogs.

love them critters.

enjoy this truly fabulous christmas doggy decorating party!

_________________________________________________________________________________

“What is a LEADER?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“A LEADER isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. It’s realizing that every experience develops some latent force within you.¹ You begin to understand that vision is the art of seeing the invisible² so that when you want to build a wagon, you don’t gather the other toys to collect wood or assign them tasks, but rather you teach them to long for ways to traverse the endless immensity of the backyard.³ Then you become a LEADER.”

Rick Warren will give a prayer at the inauguration of Barack Obama. Personally, I’d prefer the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He’s a liberation theologian. He was Barack Obama’s pastor in Chicago. And during the ungodly-long 2008 presidential campaign, Rev. Wright was placed in the spot light, focusing on what some have said were his outrageous statements. Like the government of the United States is responsible for terrorist attacks. Rev. Wright said our gov’t invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.

^{at dKos}