21 October 2006
18 October 2006
Hong Kong Movie Pics(Well, Kinda)!!!!
Shot and edited these last night, 'tho' had the idea in my head, and the figures more or less set up, for a few months prior to the actual shoot, so, was glad to finally get this done.
The pics depict a quartet of Hong Kong film industry workers(circa 1965), a director and producer, respectively, and two screenwriters having a late night meeting about the screenplay for their latest flick.
From the looks of it, it seems that the producer and director are having a few heated words, probably over the flick's budget, but maybe over creative matters, too.
As for the writers, well, one of the saddest parts of workin' in the film industry world-wide is that the writers are very often the very LAST people consulted about anything to do with a film.
So, what they say don't mean bupkis most of the time.
Anyhow, hope, as always, that you like the pics, or that they at least don't send you runnin' out into traffic, screamin' bloody blue murder in horror at their sheer awfulness.
The pics depict a quartet of Hong Kong film industry workers(circa 1965), a director and producer, respectively, and two screenwriters having a late night meeting about the screenplay for their latest flick.
From the looks of it, it seems that the producer and director are having a few heated words, probably over the flick's budget, but maybe over creative matters, too.
As for the writers, well, one of the saddest parts of workin' in the film industry world-wide is that the writers are very often the very LAST people consulted about anything to do with a film.
So, what they say don't mean bupkis most of the time.
Anyhow, hope, as always, that you like the pics, or that they at least don't send you runnin' out into traffic, screamin' bloody blue murder in horror at their sheer awfulness.
17 October 2006
Attended a very small anti-Iraq War rally on the Federal Courthouse here yesterday morning, and took some snaps of the various signs wielded by the six demonstrators, including Yours Truly, there.
The link to where these snaps, plus a rather brief and blandly-worded commentary on the rally's events, can be found at http://lasvegas.staughton.indypgh.org/news/2006/10/5592.php.
Please check 'em out if you will.
The link to where these snaps, plus a rather brief and blandly-worded commentary on the rally's events, can be found at http://lasvegas.staughton.indypgh.org/news/2006/10/5592.php.
Please check 'em out if you will.
13 October 2006
More Mixed-Theme Pics(Sort Of)
Shot and edited these to-day, with the first set of pics below, "Auto Repair Shop, Las Vegas, 2006", being an attempt of mine to present a kind of image of African-Americans that isn't that often seen, a positive or at least neutral image of working-class African-Americans.
Yeah, we've come a long ways since the days when African-Americans were portrayed as servants or ne'er -do-wells, and the range of African-American portrayals has broadened somewhat since the 1970s.
However, for all the African-American gangstas, cops, lawyers, doctors and business-people one see portrayed in most media outlets, there's rather a dearth of portrayals of working-class and poor African-Americans that don't involve crime, drug addiction and the like.
Ain't sayin' that these things don't happen in working-class and poor African-American communities.
They do, but so do a lotta positive or at least neutral events as well.
So, this is kinda my tiny contribution at remeding that imbalance.
By the way, the same could be said for European-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans, of working-class and poor origins, too.
Working-class and poor people's lives in general tend to be given rather short shrift by the mainstream media, unless they involve something sensational. That's why the former, whenever possible, can't afford to wait 'round for the MSM to discover their lives and issues, and that's why I thank God for the Internet, 'cos it at least allows some working-class and poor people to show how they see the world.
The second set, "Female Black Panther Militant, Oakland, 1967" is a kinda bittersweet tribute/portrait of a female member of that group, and, in a way, of the Black Panther Party itself.
It started out in Oakland, California in 1966-67, with the idea of preventing the kinds of police brutality and intimidation of Oakland's African-American community then going on.
The movement spread very rapidly nationwide, especially after tv news footage of a shotgun-wielding demonstration held by the BPP at the Capital Building in Sacramento, California in 1967, in which both male and female BPP members, dressed in roughly the same kind of outfit as shown here, carrying (un-loaded)shotguns appeared, made speeches, and proceeded for the next few years to galvanise many in the African-American community, and scare the shit out of many in the European-American community.
Eventually, the BPP, despite its vigourous early start, was worn down to a nubbin by a combination of FBI, state and local police harassment, and, in the case of Fred Hampton in Chicago in 1968, out-right murder of BPP leaders, factional in-fighting, and drug abuse, especially true in Huey Newton's case, and the flight into exile of some of its most prominent leaders, like Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton, and, although the BPP was still around in 1981, it had pretty much shot its bolt.
There may have been other factors, like the end of the Viet-Nam War, which took the wind out of the sails of a lot of radical causes in the States, and especially outta the New Left's sails, and a kind of longing for escape from politics and causes, especially radical ones, by many Americans of various backgrounds in general, that contributed to the BPP's decline and dissolution.
However, from the extremely little I know about the BPP, it would seem that the first-named causes were the ones that got the Panthers in the end.
However, the Panthers' verbal and visual rhetorical style lived on, and still does to-day, long after the BPP closed up shop in the early '80s, and can be seen and heard in the way that many rappers and hip-hop artists present themselves and their views of politics in their work.
The American Left in general still reflects a strong dose of Panther influence in much of its rhetoric and militancy even to-day, as well.
In pop culture, the BPP's style, as well as the prominence of some of its female members, as well as figures like Angela Davis, set much of the tone for many of the various blaxploitation movies made by Hollywood(often with European-American producers, directors and writers at the helm)in the early and mid-'70s, and especially in the kinds of roles given to Pam Grier in those films.
Finally, in 1992, a New Black Panther Party was formed again, and is still in operation.
However, the NBPP's views are much more similar to those of the Nation of Islam than the original BPP, which tended to mix African-American nationalism with bits of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideologies, and wasn't about racial separatism, as are the NBPP and NOI.
The Black Panthers were a pretty heady mix of those influences, and probably more that I don't know about.
It's a pity that, between the FBI/state and local police harassment-murders of its leaders, the factional disputes, and exile of its most prominent leaders, the Panthers succumbed, as, perhaps, it might have been a means for the African-American community to express its grievances and a non-separatist form of African-American nationalism to win the power to determine its own affairs.
But, since events went the way they did, we will never know if that could have happened or not.
Hope you like the pics.
Be seeing you.
Yeah, we've come a long ways since the days when African-Americans were portrayed as servants or ne'er -do-wells, and the range of African-American portrayals has broadened somewhat since the 1970s.
However, for all the African-American gangstas, cops, lawyers, doctors and business-people one see portrayed in most media outlets, there's rather a dearth of portrayals of working-class and poor African-Americans that don't involve crime, drug addiction and the like.
Ain't sayin' that these things don't happen in working-class and poor African-American communities.
They do, but so do a lotta positive or at least neutral events as well.
So, this is kinda my tiny contribution at remeding that imbalance.
By the way, the same could be said for European-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latinos, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans, of working-class and poor origins, too.
Working-class and poor people's lives in general tend to be given rather short shrift by the mainstream media, unless they involve something sensational. That's why the former, whenever possible, can't afford to wait 'round for the MSM to discover their lives and issues, and that's why I thank God for the Internet, 'cos it at least allows some working-class and poor people to show how they see the world.
The second set, "Female Black Panther Militant, Oakland, 1967" is a kinda bittersweet tribute/portrait of a female member of that group, and, in a way, of the Black Panther Party itself.
It started out in Oakland, California in 1966-67, with the idea of preventing the kinds of police brutality and intimidation of Oakland's African-American community then going on.
The movement spread very rapidly nationwide, especially after tv news footage of a shotgun-wielding demonstration held by the BPP at the Capital Building in Sacramento, California in 1967, in which both male and female BPP members, dressed in roughly the same kind of outfit as shown here, carrying (un-loaded)shotguns appeared, made speeches, and proceeded for the next few years to galvanise many in the African-American community, and scare the shit out of many in the European-American community.
Eventually, the BPP, despite its vigourous early start, was worn down to a nubbin by a combination of FBI, state and local police harassment, and, in the case of Fred Hampton in Chicago in 1968, out-right murder of BPP leaders, factional in-fighting, and drug abuse, especially true in Huey Newton's case, and the flight into exile of some of its most prominent leaders, like Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton, and, although the BPP was still around in 1981, it had pretty much shot its bolt.
There may have been other factors, like the end of the Viet-Nam War, which took the wind out of the sails of a lot of radical causes in the States, and especially outta the New Left's sails, and a kind of longing for escape from politics and causes, especially radical ones, by many Americans of various backgrounds in general, that contributed to the BPP's decline and dissolution.
However, from the extremely little I know about the BPP, it would seem that the first-named causes were the ones that got the Panthers in the end.
However, the Panthers' verbal and visual rhetorical style lived on, and still does to-day, long after the BPP closed up shop in the early '80s, and can be seen and heard in the way that many rappers and hip-hop artists present themselves and their views of politics in their work.
The American Left in general still reflects a strong dose of Panther influence in much of its rhetoric and militancy even to-day, as well.
In pop culture, the BPP's style, as well as the prominence of some of its female members, as well as figures like Angela Davis, set much of the tone for many of the various blaxploitation movies made by Hollywood(often with European-American producers, directors and writers at the helm)in the early and mid-'70s, and especially in the kinds of roles given to Pam Grier in those films.
Finally, in 1992, a New Black Panther Party was formed again, and is still in operation.
However, the NBPP's views are much more similar to those of the Nation of Islam than the original BPP, which tended to mix African-American nationalism with bits of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideologies, and wasn't about racial separatism, as are the NBPP and NOI.
The Black Panthers were a pretty heady mix of those influences, and probably more that I don't know about.
It's a pity that, between the FBI/state and local police harassment-murders of its leaders, the factional disputes, and exile of its most prominent leaders, the Panthers succumbed, as, perhaps, it might have been a means for the African-American community to express its grievances and a non-separatist form of African-American nationalism to win the power to determine its own affairs.
But, since events went the way they did, we will never know if that could have happened or not.
Hope you like the pics.
Be seeing you.
Another Stinkin' Political Post.
Published this little messterpiece in my MySpace blog around a half-hour ago or so, and decided to publish it here, for reasons I give in the MySpace intro to the editorial.
If you like, just ignore part, or all, of the whole stinkin' mess, and scroll down to the figure pics instead.
If you are interested in this sort of thing, keep goin' down, down, down the page, and may God help you, 'cos you're in for kinda a long read, Buckaroo.
Just hope y'all think it's worth the time.
An Unusual Take On North Korea's Bomb Test
Current mood: Amused and Bemused
Category: Amused and Bemused News and Politics
The following op-ed piece on the recent North Korean nuclear test by one F.Red Bergen was sent to me to-day by a Yahoo Marxist-Leninist news group to which I subscribe.
The reason am posting it here in my blog, is that, for many Americans, any Marxist-Leninist take on ANY issue, much less this one, is rarely, if ever seen.
Personally, I find Mr. Bergen's take to be marred by two major problems; one's stylistic, in that he trots out the usual cliches of poor Marxist-Leninist rhetoric like so many badly whipped circus ponies on command.
The other's an internal contradiction between the expressed unconditional defence of the DPRK that Mr. Bergen states that all revolutionaries should have and make, and his attacks on the DPRK's upper strata for its privileged life-style at the expense of so-called ordinary North Koreans.
The contrast between that opening statement, and the latter sentiment into which Mr. Bergen launches half-ways into the essay are just a teeny startling to me.
Personally, am no fan of Kim Jong-Il and his feudal fief. Am also no fan of the Bush Administration and its policies and actions, either.
My own take on this whole matter is that the DPRK(short for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, for those of you out there who've neither read nor heard the North Korean government's name for itself and its country), far from being a bunch of nuts, as has been often portrayed in the US media, is letting the US know, in a pretty clear fashion, that enough's enough with the Six-Power Talks, indirect negotiations bullshit.
What the North Koreans have wanted with the US all along is for us to sit down with them, in direct and bi-lateral talks, and jaw-jaw about the DPRK's nuclear power and weapons issues, as well as American troop levels in South Korea, and probably a number of other items that I don't even begin to have a clue about.
Me, I think that we should do just that, end the whole "Axis of Evil" crap that this Administration has been preaching ever since 12th September, 2001, and, along with the Six-Power Talks' partners(the Republic of Korea, aka South Korea, China, Japan and Russia)consulting, hash out a serious, no-bullshit deal with the DPRK, and make sure that, however this deal's worked out, the North Koreans, the Americans, and everyone else on board for this, sticks to it.
If the DPRK tries anything cute after the deal's worked out, it should face serious international, diplomatic and economic sanctions, and I think even China, whose leaders were made saps of by the North Korean nuclear test, would support those.
What they won't support, and I wouldn't blame 'em, is a US-led invasion of the DPRK.
'Sides, we don't have the trained and equipped troop levels we'd need to invade the North and not have it turn into a cluster-fuck, because of our on-going committments cum cluster-fucks in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have got so many of our Regular, Reserve and National Guard troops pinned down in those places already.
'Nuff said by me.
Look at the piece below, and decide what you think of it, its author's opinions, and my bullshit above for yourselves.
Yours, D., who's been listenin' to DPRK music the whole damn time I've been writin' this.
The latest tune to pop up on my personal DPRK Hit Parade in closing this out is "Wish Of Health"( for the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il)by the Ponchonbo Electronic Ensemble, a DPRK pop music band.
Anyway, am gonna get afore I bores ya with more such shee-ite.
Yours Again, D.
Working Class Emancipation Editorial
North Korea nuke test: A justified measure of self-defense
A powerful nuclear deterrent can help keep the imperialist
menace at
bay, but only political revolution in the north and socialist
revolution
in the south will protect the deformed workers state in the
North and
advance the Korean revolution.
The butchers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are up in arms
(literally)
because North Korea apparently tested a nuclear bomb. Once
again,
Washington and Wall Street are threatening to drag the world
into a
nuclear holocaust because North Korea dares to defend itself
against
their threats of invasion and regime change. Let's remember
that,
contrary to the claims of Bush and his Democratic partners in
crime,
Iraq and Afghanistan were not invaded because they had "weapons
of mass
destruction". They were invaded because they didn't.
We revolutionaries are for the unconditional defense of North
Korea,
because the post-World-War-II liberation of Korea destroyed
capitalism
in the North, driving out the capitalists and big landlords, and
created
a workers' state that was deformed from the start by a
conservative
bureaucracy on the Stalinist model. Soviet troops drove the
Japanese
imperialist invaders out of the North in the summer of 1945,
installing
the government of Kim Il Sung, but in the South, the US
occupiers
installed the tyrannical regime of Syngman Rhee, a brutal US
puppet who
massacred and tortured suspected Communists and trade-union
activists.
The isolation and impoverishment of the stalled Korean
revolution was
increased by the US-led Korean war, in which the US leveled
North Korean
cities with saturation bombing and an official policy of gunning
down
civilians from the air (see the declassified memo dated July 25,
1950
from US Air Force colonel T.C. Rodgers to General Timberlake, in
the US
National Archives). Over three million Koreans were killed by
the US and
allied imperialist forces under cover of a United Nations
"police action."
In July 1950, at the South Korean village of No Gun Ri, US
troops
massacred 400 Korean civilians who were seeking shelter from US
bombing
and strafing under a railroad bridge. A 1950 letter from US
ambassador
to South Korea John J. Muccio to Assistant Secretary of State
Dean Rusk
proves that the slaughter of these civilians by the 7th US
Cavalry
regiment was consistent with a policy approved at the highest
levels of
the US military "If refugees do appear from north of US lines
they will
receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing
they will
be shot," writes Muccio, reporting on a decision of the US
generals on
the night before the massacre. This puts the lie to the
Pentagon's
earlier claim that the massacre was "an unfortunate tragedy" and
"not a
deliberate killing." The memo was reported by the Associated
Press in 1999.
The North Korean regime under Kim Jong Il is known for its fiery
denunciations of US imperialism, which the capitalist media,
including
Bush's liberal critics, play up with a heavy helping of
anti-Asian
racism, doing their part for the war propaganda effort. But
aside from
its occasional military exercises, which are entirely justified
by the
nuclear-armed menace poised on its southern border, the
Stalinist North
Korean bureaucracy pursues a policy of conciliation with
imperialism. It
cannot do otherwise. The Stalinist bureaucrats, a privileged
caste of
North Korean society, fear workers' democracy in industry and
agriculture, because it would do away with their obscene
privileges and
autocratic brutality. Instead of allowing for democratic
planning and
adjustment of the economy, they substitute economic development
by
arbitrary command. Such clumsy maneuvers lead to crises, in
which they
must turn to foreign investment to correct the disastrous
results,
continually weakening the social and economic basis for
socialism that
was gained at the end of the Second World War with the help of
the
Soviet army.
The bureaucratic dictatorship in Pyongyang cannot defend the
workers'
state no matter how many nuclear weapons it has, because the
bureaucrats
around Kim Jong Il have all the appetites and aspirations of
capitalists
without the social base of private property that could satisfy
these
appetites. They are a deadening, conservative social layer
suffocating a
still-living revolutionary class, and they fear that to mobilize
the
workers and poor farmers in defense of their lands and factories
would
unleash a force that would sweep them away, too. North Korean
workers
and peasants must know that their future lies not in
"self-reliance", a
bureaucratic euphemism for the starvation and isolation imposed
by the
imperialists on the Korean people, but in proletarian revolution
in the
South, in Japan, and in the heart of imperialism, the United
States. A
new political leadership is needed in the DPRK, committed to
world
revolution, which is the only hope for the survival of the North
Korean
workers' state. The task of overthrowing the
counterrevolutionary North
Korean bureaucracy is in the hands of the Korean workers and
poor
farmers, and they must have the full solidarity of workers and
youth in
the US and other imperialist countries. We call on workers and
youth in
the US to make every effort to defend North Korea against
imperialist
attack, and fight for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal
of US
troops from Korea.
11 October 2006
Mixed Lot Of Recent Pics
The pics seen below are a grab-bag of figure pics shot in late September and early October of this year, and cover a small range of subjects.
The pics at the top of the batch, and the quartet immediately below, are from the long-delayed continuation of the Spanish Civil War anniversary pics I started back in July to commemorate the 70th anniversary of that war's beginning.
The first two are of former Spanish Republican soldiers who fled to France in late March-early April, 1939, just as the Nationalist forces under Generalissimo Francisco Franco(still continuing in his valiant fight to remain dead, as of this writing)were putting the finishing touches on their victory over the Republicans, and thousands of Republican refugees, civilian and military alike, headed into south-western France to escape the wrath of their Nationalist countrymen.
There, many of these refugees were crowded into internment camps by the French authorities, a condition with which left-wing Austrian and German refugees would become familiar in October, 1939, when the French government tossed them into internment camps as well, and, finally, French and foreign Jews, when the Vichy government packed them in, on its own initiative, in late 1940-early 1941.
The quartet below are pics of a Spanish Republican guerrilla in action along the Aragon front in north-eastern Spain circa 1938.
The pic below those is a birthday gift portrait of a friend of mine that I couldn't resist posting here, because I like the colour scheme match of hair and clothing I did in it.
Finally, the last two batches, which are kinda inter-mixed, depict, in the man with dog photos, one of the worst aspects, for any dog's human, that is, of walkin' a dog, while the other is my take on an aspect of the GI Joe Adventure Team mythos, the Adventure Team Administrator.
For those of you un-familiar with the GI Joe Adventure Team line, it came out in 1970 as a response to pressure from parents' groups and the like who were concerned about GI Joe's previous incarnation as a WWII-era American soldier, sailor, marine and pilot, and felt that such toys contributed to encouraging kids to be violent and war-like.
Whatever one thinks of that now, it resulted in 1969 and 1970 in a complete transformation of the line.
The GI Joe Action Team, once having consisted of an Action Soldier, Sailor, Marine and Pilot, as well as an Astronaut and six Action Soldiers of the World(made up of, respectively, a German Stormtrooper, Imperial Japanese Soldier, British Commando, Australian Jungle Fighter, French Resistance Fighter and Russian Soldier), and a Green Beret and Marine Jungle Fighter in 1966-67, became the GI Joe Adventure Team, consisting of an Adventure Team Commander(one European-American, the other African-American), a Land Adventurer, Sea Adventurer, Air Adventurer, Adventurer(who was African-American, as opposed to the other team members, who were European-Americans), Man of Action(a code-name for a re-worked version of the GI Joe Action Soldier) and an Astronaut(in the first two years of the AT 's existence only), and, in 1975-76, two super-hero characters who were added to the AT in its final years, Mike Power, Atomic Man and Bulletman the Human Bullet.
It was also in the last year, 1976, of the AT's US and Canadian existence that the only two "enemy" characters, The Intruders, a race of super-intelligent aliens who physically resembled Neanderthal Men, in the GI Joe line's history appeared.
Anyhow, the AT went off on all sorts of exciting adventures, hunting white tigers, capturing pygmy gorillas, solving spacewalk mysteries, and so on.
But, in recently thinking about the AT mythos, it sorta hit me that the AT, which, at its height, consisted of only 10 members, must have had more people than that overseeing the day-to-day operations of the team, making sure that bills got paid, equipment was maintained, and so on.
Hence, drawing on this idea, plus a pic I took about 4 years ago called GI Joe, Action Bureaucrat(now lost, alas), which depicted a Joe of the Action Team era heading into work, served as the inspiration for this series, called Adventure Team Administrator, 1974, which is when I figured the pic would have taken, if the AT had ever existed, and which depicts him, briefcase in paw, walking into one of the AT's several regional head-quarters around the world.
Whew!!!! All that palaver, just to introduce a photo-set!!!!!
Almost as exhausting to write it, as it is to read it, I'm sure.
Anyhow, hope y'all enjoy the pics.
The pics at the top of the batch, and the quartet immediately below, are from the long-delayed continuation of the Spanish Civil War anniversary pics I started back in July to commemorate the 70th anniversary of that war's beginning.
The first two are of former Spanish Republican soldiers who fled to France in late March-early April, 1939, just as the Nationalist forces under Generalissimo Francisco Franco(still continuing in his valiant fight to remain dead, as of this writing)were putting the finishing touches on their victory over the Republicans, and thousands of Republican refugees, civilian and military alike, headed into south-western France to escape the wrath of their Nationalist countrymen.
There, many of these refugees were crowded into internment camps by the French authorities, a condition with which left-wing Austrian and German refugees would become familiar in October, 1939, when the French government tossed them into internment camps as well, and, finally, French and foreign Jews, when the Vichy government packed them in, on its own initiative, in late 1940-early 1941.
The quartet below are pics of a Spanish Republican guerrilla in action along the Aragon front in north-eastern Spain circa 1938.
The pic below those is a birthday gift portrait of a friend of mine that I couldn't resist posting here, because I like the colour scheme match of hair and clothing I did in it.
Finally, the last two batches, which are kinda inter-mixed, depict, in the man with dog photos, one of the worst aspects, for any dog's human, that is, of walkin' a dog, while the other is my take on an aspect of the GI Joe Adventure Team mythos, the Adventure Team Administrator.
For those of you un-familiar with the GI Joe Adventure Team line, it came out in 1970 as a response to pressure from parents' groups and the like who were concerned about GI Joe's previous incarnation as a WWII-era American soldier, sailor, marine and pilot, and felt that such toys contributed to encouraging kids to be violent and war-like.
Whatever one thinks of that now, it resulted in 1969 and 1970 in a complete transformation of the line.
The GI Joe Action Team, once having consisted of an Action Soldier, Sailor, Marine and Pilot, as well as an Astronaut and six Action Soldiers of the World(made up of, respectively, a German Stormtrooper, Imperial Japanese Soldier, British Commando, Australian Jungle Fighter, French Resistance Fighter and Russian Soldier), and a Green Beret and Marine Jungle Fighter in 1966-67, became the GI Joe Adventure Team, consisting of an Adventure Team Commander(one European-American, the other African-American), a Land Adventurer, Sea Adventurer, Air Adventurer, Adventurer(who was African-American, as opposed to the other team members, who were European-Americans), Man of Action(a code-name for a re-worked version of the GI Joe Action Soldier) and an Astronaut(in the first two years of the AT 's existence only), and, in 1975-76, two super-hero characters who were added to the AT in its final years, Mike Power, Atomic Man and Bulletman the Human Bullet.
It was also in the last year, 1976, of the AT's US and Canadian existence that the only two "enemy" characters, The Intruders, a race of super-intelligent aliens who physically resembled Neanderthal Men, in the GI Joe line's history appeared.
Anyhow, the AT went off on all sorts of exciting adventures, hunting white tigers, capturing pygmy gorillas, solving spacewalk mysteries, and so on.
But, in recently thinking about the AT mythos, it sorta hit me that the AT, which, at its height, consisted of only 10 members, must have had more people than that overseeing the day-to-day operations of the team, making sure that bills got paid, equipment was maintained, and so on.
Hence, drawing on this idea, plus a pic I took about 4 years ago called GI Joe, Action Bureaucrat(now lost, alas), which depicted a Joe of the Action Team era heading into work, served as the inspiration for this series, called Adventure Team Administrator, 1974, which is when I figured the pic would have taken, if the AT had ever existed, and which depicts him, briefcase in paw, walking into one of the AT's several regional head-quarters around the world.
Whew!!!! All that palaver, just to introduce a photo-set!!!!!
Almost as exhausting to write it, as it is to read it, I'm sure.
Anyhow, hope y'all enjoy the pics.
09 October 2006
More Las Vegas Demo Pics(Christ!!! Don't He EVER Quit???!!!)
Well, Gang, went to a demo at Bishop Gorman High School(a private Catholic high school here in Vegas)on Saturday night, protesting the school's policy of refusing admission of gay and lesbian Gorman students to its prom, which was being held that night, though, as it turned out, not on the Gorman campus.
Took 11 pics of the demo, as well as two pics of anti-Mayor Oscar Goodman graffiti that I saw on the side of a local Einstein Bagels outlet across the street from UNLV, while on my way to meet a friend at an area bar after the demo, and they can be found here: http://lasvegas.staughton.indypgh.org/news/2006/10/5568.php.
Check 'em out, if you like.
Took 11 pics of the demo, as well as two pics of anti-Mayor Oscar Goodman graffiti that I saw on the side of a local Einstein Bagels outlet across the street from UNLV, while on my way to meet a friend at an area bar after the demo, and they can be found here: http://lasvegas.staughton.indypgh.org/news/2006/10/5568.php.
Check 'em out, if you like.
05 October 2006
Well, went to a local World Can't Wait demo here in Vegas to-day, ended up taking some snaps there, and, a little while ago, posted 'em, accompanied by a verbose but bare bones description of the event at the following link-http://lasvegas.staughton.indypgh.org/news/2006/10/5547.php.
So, if you've the mind to, please head on over there and see the little suckers for yourselves.
BTW, have taken some new figure pics in the past few days, and will be postin' 'em here, and one or two on the REJECT Forums blog as well, to-morrow, so stay tuned, Kiddies, and check 'em out if ya like.
After the last several posts, which have been political in nature, it'll be nice to post something that expresses some of the other sides of that twisted psychological skein I call a personality, and what some people would call A Suitable Case For Treatment!!! LOL
To-day is also my 42nd birthday, and had a jolly good time all 'round to-day.
Not bad at all, I must say.
So, if you've the mind to, please head on over there and see the little suckers for yourselves.
BTW, have taken some new figure pics in the past few days, and will be postin' 'em here, and one or two on the REJECT Forums blog as well, to-morrow, so stay tuned, Kiddies, and check 'em out if ya like.
After the last several posts, which have been political in nature, it'll be nice to post something that expresses some of the other sides of that twisted psychological skein I call a personality, and what some people would call A Suitable Case For Treatment!!! LOL
To-day is also my 42nd birthday, and had a jolly good time all 'round to-day.
Not bad at all, I must say.
26 September 2006
Las Vegas Homeless Advocacy Demo Pics
Went to a demo held by a new homeless advocacy group here in Las Vegas called SNAHP(Southern Nevada Advocates for Homeless People) on the Strip this evening, and was one of around 30-40 participants in the march.
Also took some pics of portions of the demo, which can be seen at http://lasvegas.staughton.indypgh.org/news/2006/09/5531.php.
Wander on over there, and check 'em out, if you feel like it.
They ain't Pulitzer Prize material, by any means.
But, aside from a cameraman for the local Fox station here in Vegas, they may be some of the relatively few footage or pics of the demo.
Also took some pics of portions of the demo, which can be seen at http://lasvegas.staughton.indypgh.org/news/2006/09/5531.php.
Wander on over there, and check 'em out, if you feel like it.
They ain't Pulitzer Prize material, by any means.
But, aside from a cameraman for the local Fox station here in Vegas, they may be some of the relatively few footage or pics of the demo.
War Signals? A The Nation article link
Am enclosing a link to a The Nation article that I read this morning, entitled "War Signals?", in this post.
It concerns the dispatch of a US Naval task force from Virginia to the Persian Gulf, where it may or mayn't take part in any possible US military action against Iran at the end of next month.
If you think the article sound, please pass this link onto your family, friends and associates.
Everyone should know about this, as this may be one of the most important political and military decisions made in the US in the past decade.
It may also be nothing, but why take the chance???
The link's http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/lindorff.
It concerns the dispatch of a US Naval task force from Virginia to the Persian Gulf, where it may or mayn't take part in any possible US military action against Iran at the end of next month.
If you think the article sound, please pass this link onto your family, friends and associates.
Everyone should know about this, as this may be one of the most important political and military decisions made in the US in the past decade.
It may also be nothing, but why take the chance???
The link's http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/lindorff.
12 September 2006
A Response To Keith Olbermann's Blog of 12th September, 2006
The following's a re-post of another blog, this one written to-day, that I originally posted on my MySpace blog.
Oh, before I leave you to the message below, one more thing, and that's I've made it so that you don't have to be a Blogger member to leave comment on here anymore. Have decided to go with the word verification thingy to avoid the comment spam I was gettin' on here when I first started up.
So, just enter in the word given to you if you want to leave a comment on this or any other thing featured here.
That's it.
A friend of mine sent me a link to a YouTube video of Keith Olbermann's latest commentary on 11th September and the Bush Administration. Well, I'm on the Dread Dial-Up, which generally means that down-load times for YouTube videos on my computer generally tend to range between a Day and an Age and an eternity for me.
So, I did the next best thing, and went over, via truthout.org, to Mr. Olbermann's blog at MSNBC, where I read the text version.
The following's the reactions I wrote down in response to my friend's message. Have tried to take out the personal parts of the original, because they don't fit with the general thrust of what I've to say here.
One last thing: I eventually decided not to put the following in my response as it'd have taken my friend as long to read it as I wrote it.
So, I decided to post it here, and make you poor bastards suffer, instead.
As you've doubtlessly already guessed, this is a longish post, so those of you with short attention spans or limited patience might want to avoid it.
If you don't fit into the latter, Good Luck to you, and May God Help You, 'cos I really don't know when to shut up.
If there's one thing that I think Mr. Olbermann left out of his commentary, it's this: 11th September happened for a number of reasons, the most important of which were US and Israeli policies and actions in the Middle East over the past forty-fifty years.
Whether we like it or not, our policies and actions, and those of the Israeli government as well, helped create an enviroment in which Muslim ultra-fundamentalists, like Osama Bin-Laden, could successfully argue that both countries were engaged in a "War Against Islam", and the Muslim world, and where they could exploit the trememdous anger felt by many Muslims, especially Arab ones, at the Americans and Israelis, over the Israeli/Palestinian crisis, the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, and many other issues.
Many Muslims, Arab and non-Arab alike, were, and are, angered by our support for the kinds of authoritarian governments, like those of Egypt, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others, and the policies and actions carried out by those governments at the expense of their own peoples.
Corruption and un-responsiveness to their own peoples by those same goverments, as well as the kind of political and social repression practised by the regimes I've mentioned above, of political and social advocates for change, of various stripes, also helped to create the form of ultra-fundamentalist Islam, since many of those same regimes also used some form of state-sponsored, or at least indulged, form of Islam as a means of channelling and diverting their peoples' anger and desire for change into what they hoped would be "harmless" religious activities that would present no threat to them and theirs.
How wrong they were, especially after the kind of mass mobilisation of Muslims to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Russians in Chechnya, and the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia in the '80s and '90s, as well as the rise of radical Shi'i Islam in Iran, Lebanon and Iraq in the '70s, '80s and '90s, due, in part, to our policies and support for the Shah's regime in Iran, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in '82, and the Gemayel government that came to power in the aftermath of that invasion(the reason that the USS New Jersey, among other American and French ships and aircraft, was shelling and bombing Lebanese Druze Muslim areas in the Shuf Mountain range close to Beirut in '83, was because that goverment had sent the Lebanese Army, as well as the Lebanese Forces, the biggest Christian militia fighting in the Lebanese Civil War, which was raging at that time, into the Shuf to sock it to the Druze militia there, which was supporting the various Shi'i militias who opposed that government, with which we'd aligned ourselves), and the kinds of deals that we made with the Iraqi Ba'athists during the Iran-Iraq War at that same time.
All of these events, plus many, many more that I've not mentioned here, due both to space and time considerations, desire to save you any more reading of my oft-ponderous writing style, and simple ignorance or forgetting on my part, combined to help create the kind of political and social situations in the Middle East and throughout much of the Muslim world that would come back to haunt us, resulting in what happened on 11th September, 2001.
From the Truman Administration on-wards, our policies and actions in the Middle East, combined with those of the Israeli government, the various Egyptian, Saudi, Iraqi, Iranian, Lebanese, and other governments, as well as the various Palestinian faction leaders, and leaders of other factions throughout the Arab and Muslim world, have, in one way or another, inflicted death, injury, torture, repression, fear and a fierce desire for revenge on the parts of many living in that region, and elsewhere, and it was that latter that came right at us on 11th September, 2001.
This doesn't justify the wholesale murder of thousands of people in New York, Washington and in Pennsylvania on that day, however.
Al-Qaida, the Taliban, and their various supporters and imitators throughout the world are, like their counter-parts in the West and Israel, lovers of power and death.
Those are their true religions, not Islam, just as, for the Bushes, Cheneys, Coulters, Blairs, Sharons and Olmerts in the West and Israel, Christianity and Judaism aren't.
Blood and Iron are what they love, and, if the Taliban's record of governance in Afghanistan is anything to go by, they proved themselves to be spectacularly inept in providing anything else to their desperately war-weary and needy people.
Their Northern Alliance, and other Afghan opponents, were no better on this score. They were simply even more inept and divided than the Taliban were, and that's why many Afghans, especially those from the country's Pashtun majority, from whom many Taliban leaders and recruits came, rallied to it, at least initially.
But, the Taliban soon proved themselves to be exactly what they were- a bunch of angry teen-age Pashtun refugees poorly educated, for the most part, in ultra-fundamentalist religious schools in and around the refugee camps in Pakistan, where they grew up during the Soviet-Afghan War, led by men who may have not had much more academic education than their followers, but who had plenty more worldly experience, and supported by Pakistani army and intelligence officers and Saudi money, which were provided for their donors' own purposes, who'd about as much idea of running a modern nation, as a duck does translating Shakespeare.
The only things at which the Taliban were any good were waging war and frightening and repressing an already fearful and repressed people, at least, in the areas of Afghanistan they controlled.
They relied on Japanese cars and trucks for their transport, Russian and other countries'- made arms and ammunition for their weaponry, and Saudi and Pakistani money, intelligence information and military advice to help them win their battles.
They even had help with the latter from the large number of seconded Pakistani Army officers on detached service with the Taliban forces, Pakistani volunteers to provide more cannon fodder, and, of course, the Arab and other nationals' members of Al-Qaida.
That's why, to me, any sort of Calliphate set up by Al-Qaida and its supporters, if that's what they even really want to do, would, over time, be a spectacularly ineptly-run failure, as, even though a number of its members and supporters are trained as engineers and the like, its leadership and middle-ranking officials are, first and foremost, death-and-power-lovers, just as so many of Western and Israeli leaders are, with no real interest in the welfare of their own peoples, aside from their own, and those immediately around them.
The tragedy is that, through the policies of the American, Israeli, and other Western governments, the Soviet and Russian governments, and, of course, the various Arab and Muslim goverments, these death-and-power lovers ever got the chance to emerge and be taken seriously by much of the Arab and Muslim public, much less that they got the chance to pull off their various deeds, including 11th September.
This represents a colossal failure of responsibility and will on the parts of not only those governments, but of their opposition as well, whether coming from the centre, left or right wings of their various polities, and of their publics, too.
The Western and Israeli Left have far too often been content to make the kinds of compromises, when they've been in power, that resulted in policies and actions that have contributed to the various cycles of death and destruction, or, if not in power, for sniping from the side-lines and failing to make an effective enough case to their publics, as to why they should be in power, and, once there, implementing the kinds of policies they advocate on this, and many other issues.
I include those segments of the Western and Israeli Left who've opted not to participate in elections, because they disdain bourgeois elections as being part of a rotten political and economic system.
OK. Now, I've a question for those segments and their supporters???? If not through elections or other forms of action, like the kind of general strike advocated by anarcho-syndicalists, or through violence, how else are you going to be able to take and exercice power, so that you can effectively implement the kinds of policies towards the Arab and Muslim world, as well as with every other kind of issue at hand????
Protests, agitation, and other tactics like that are great. But, without actually getting into positions of decision-making power, those can be ignored or dismissed by the Powers That Be, albeit not always easily.
Eventually, some sort of negotiations between the various Western governments, the Israeli government, and the various Arab and Muslim governments, and their opponents, will have to come about, especially, as Afghanistan and Iraq have shown, the policies and actions that the former have taken thus far have only resulted in counter-productively bloody death, injury and destruction, with no positive results on the ground to show for them.
Likewise, for Al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and many others besides, while they may very well win at least some, if not all of their goals, in Iraq and Afghanistan, they may eventually run into a fact that most guerrilla armies engaged in a long-running war do, and that's, without substantial support from outside powers, and particularly outside regular armies with the resources and training to wage a decisive military campaign, they can wear their opponents down, yes, but, in turn, they and their peoples can also be worn down to a nub by the wars they fight.
Sooner or later, the choices open to them become pretty stark: keep fighting with fewer and fewer results, until the group starts splitting apart at the seams, give up entirely, and watch the group fly to flinders, or sit down at the negotiating table with their opponents, and work out the very best possible deal they can for themselves and their people.
The Provisional IRA, by the mid-'90s, was confronted with those choices, after fighting the British Army, Ulster Defence Force and Royal Ulster Constabulary, and Protestant para-militaries since 1969, and found that, the longer it went on, the fewer constructive results it was getting.
The British and Ulster Protestants had also found that, while they might have been able to badly hurt or stem the amount of damage the Provos could do to them, they couldn't destroy their opponents.
Whether any one of them wanted to admit it or not, they were all stale-mated.
Depending on how long this goes on, I think that this set of struggles will do the same to the Americans, British, Israelis, various Arab and Muslim governments, and their opponents as well.
A hit here, a victory there, a defeat somewhere else, but, in the end, all of these sides, and their respective peoples, will find that they can't completely defeat nor destroy their opponents.
Ulitmately, all concerned will have to bite the bullet, swallow all of the rhetoric they've heaped onto the world's public for years and decades, sit down and negotiate with their opposites, and eventually hash out a compromise peace of some sort.
That peace won't satisfy everyone, will include all manner of sorry, shabby deals, and will have only come after years of lives, blood, treasure and other resources have been thrown away in the pursuit of stupid dreams and goals.
It will be a peace of mutual exhaustion and resignation.
But, considering the foundations on which it will have been built, at least, it will be some sort of peace.
We in the West desperately need to change the ways in which we interact with the Muslim and Arab worlds, as well as with the rest of world, period. To do that, we need to, among other things, throw out, like the Spanish people did the Aznar goverment, those leaders and policies that are built on deceptions, lies and assumptions about what's "rightfully" ours, and what isn't.
It won't come through elections alone, nor through protests, strikes and other such tactics, but through a combination of those and other forms of public pressure on our governing classes, and, through them, the Israeli and various Arab and Muslim governing classes, too.
At the same time, Al-Qaida and company will eventually have to learn, through a combination of military, police and other pressures, that their continued use of violence will only back-fire on them as time goes on.
But, this means the judicious use of such pressure.
The American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, Israeli occupation of the West Bank and intimidation of the Gaza Strip's inhabitants, Russian occupation of Chechnya, and other actions like them, must end, so that military, intelligence and other resources can be better and more effectively used, in combination with peace overtures and other forms of positive engagement, to bring them to the negotiating table, and "jaw-jaw rather than war-war", to steal a phrase from that old arch-imperialist Winston Churchill, who at least sometimes knew when to fight and when to talk, unlike so many of our leaders to-day.
The end of those occupations will also mean the end of a prime recruiting tool for Al-Qaida, the Taliban and their ilk, as without American, British, Israeli and Russian troops running all the place, making the kinds of horrific messes that soldiers do in the countries they occupy, much of their claims of defending the Muslim and Arab worlds will start coming into question, after a short period of victorious after-glow.
It will also put them under a very different kind of pressure than anything we could ever throw at them, and that's the pressure to deliver on the promises they made during the fighting, and on rebuiliding their shattered countries' infrastructures.
That will take some time, but, not an eternity,as some might think.
The hardest thing for any politician to do, especially one who's come into power through violence, is to deal with the day-to-day work, plus the rebuilding, of his or her respective territory.
General De Gaulle quit the French government in 1946, after saying, among other things, that he didn't fight for France's liberation only to "have to worry about the macaroni ration".
Eventually, he returned to power in 1958, when France was once again involved in a grave crisis.
However, he at least learned to deal with such things as the macaroni ration his next time in.
I don't think Bin-Laden and Mullah Omar will.
Sheik Nasrallah of Hizbollah has, and will, if what I've read about Hizbollah's reconstruction efforts in Lebanon are true.
But, he's also had experience as the leader of a combined political-military-religious and charitable organisation, which neither Bin-Laden nor Omar have, and he's had to work within the confines of a political party system, which neither of the latter have had to do.
Consequently, Nasrallah's the only one of the lot I'd give more than a Hope in Hell to, of actually making the sort of society he and his supporters want work.
The others are mere players, prayers and praters, and will consequently find themselves in deep shit with their peoples, when they can't deliver on the day-to-day necessities of living that the latter need.
After a while, it doesn't matter how many Yanks, Brits, Jews or Russkies one killed in the various wars in which one fought, if one can't get working sewers or regular garbage disposal going and steadily maintained.
The more Al-Qaida, the Taliban and others fail on those issues, especially in the absence of American, British, Israeli and Russian troops in their areas, the stronger the pressure from the peoples they fought for will be for them to put up or shut up, and that's a kind of pressure that the West and Israel can't put on their opponents.
But, it may very well be that kind of pressure, along with political, military, police and economic pressures and incentives, that may very well beat Al-Qaida, the Taliban and their ilk.
Only time, plus changes in policies and actions on the parts of the West, Israel and the various Arab and Muslim governments, will tell.
Oh, before I leave you to the message below, one more thing, and that's I've made it so that you don't have to be a Blogger member to leave comment on here anymore. Have decided to go with the word verification thingy to avoid the comment spam I was gettin' on here when I first started up.
So, just enter in the word given to you if you want to leave a comment on this or any other thing featured here.
That's it.
A friend of mine sent me a link to a YouTube video of Keith Olbermann's latest commentary on 11th September and the Bush Administration. Well, I'm on the Dread Dial-Up, which generally means that down-load times for YouTube videos on my computer generally tend to range between a Day and an Age and an eternity for me.
So, I did the next best thing, and went over, via truthout.org, to Mr. Olbermann's blog at MSNBC, where I read the text version.
The following's the reactions I wrote down in response to my friend's message. Have tried to take out the personal parts of the original, because they don't fit with the general thrust of what I've to say here.
One last thing: I eventually decided not to put the following in my response as it'd have taken my friend as long to read it as I wrote it.
So, I decided to post it here, and make you poor bastards suffer, instead.
As you've doubtlessly already guessed, this is a longish post, so those of you with short attention spans or limited patience might want to avoid it.
If you don't fit into the latter, Good Luck to you, and May God Help You, 'cos I really don't know when to shut up.
If there's one thing that I think Mr. Olbermann left out of his commentary, it's this: 11th September happened for a number of reasons, the most important of which were US and Israeli policies and actions in the Middle East over the past forty-fifty years.
Whether we like it or not, our policies and actions, and those of the Israeli government as well, helped create an enviroment in which Muslim ultra-fundamentalists, like Osama Bin-Laden, could successfully argue that both countries were engaged in a "War Against Islam", and the Muslim world, and where they could exploit the trememdous anger felt by many Muslims, especially Arab ones, at the Americans and Israelis, over the Israeli/Palestinian crisis, the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia, and many other issues.
Many Muslims, Arab and non-Arab alike, were, and are, angered by our support for the kinds of authoritarian governments, like those of Egypt, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and others, and the policies and actions carried out by those governments at the expense of their own peoples.
Corruption and un-responsiveness to their own peoples by those same goverments, as well as the kind of political and social repression practised by the regimes I've mentioned above, of political and social advocates for change, of various stripes, also helped to create the form of ultra-fundamentalist Islam, since many of those same regimes also used some form of state-sponsored, or at least indulged, form of Islam as a means of channelling and diverting their peoples' anger and desire for change into what they hoped would be "harmless" religious activities that would present no threat to them and theirs.
How wrong they were, especially after the kind of mass mobilisation of Muslims to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the Russians in Chechnya, and the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia in the '80s and '90s, as well as the rise of radical Shi'i Islam in Iran, Lebanon and Iraq in the '70s, '80s and '90s, due, in part, to our policies and support for the Shah's regime in Iran, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in '82, and the Gemayel government that came to power in the aftermath of that invasion(the reason that the USS New Jersey, among other American and French ships and aircraft, was shelling and bombing Lebanese Druze Muslim areas in the Shuf Mountain range close to Beirut in '83, was because that goverment had sent the Lebanese Army, as well as the Lebanese Forces, the biggest Christian militia fighting in the Lebanese Civil War, which was raging at that time, into the Shuf to sock it to the Druze militia there, which was supporting the various Shi'i militias who opposed that government, with which we'd aligned ourselves), and the kinds of deals that we made with the Iraqi Ba'athists during the Iran-Iraq War at that same time.
All of these events, plus many, many more that I've not mentioned here, due both to space and time considerations, desire to save you any more reading of my oft-ponderous writing style, and simple ignorance or forgetting on my part, combined to help create the kind of political and social situations in the Middle East and throughout much of the Muslim world that would come back to haunt us, resulting in what happened on 11th September, 2001.
From the Truman Administration on-wards, our policies and actions in the Middle East, combined with those of the Israeli government, the various Egyptian, Saudi, Iraqi, Iranian, Lebanese, and other governments, as well as the various Palestinian faction leaders, and leaders of other factions throughout the Arab and Muslim world, have, in one way or another, inflicted death, injury, torture, repression, fear and a fierce desire for revenge on the parts of many living in that region, and elsewhere, and it was that latter that came right at us on 11th September, 2001.
This doesn't justify the wholesale murder of thousands of people in New York, Washington and in Pennsylvania on that day, however.
Al-Qaida, the Taliban, and their various supporters and imitators throughout the world are, like their counter-parts in the West and Israel, lovers of power and death.
Those are their true religions, not Islam, just as, for the Bushes, Cheneys, Coulters, Blairs, Sharons and Olmerts in the West and Israel, Christianity and Judaism aren't.
Blood and Iron are what they love, and, if the Taliban's record of governance in Afghanistan is anything to go by, they proved themselves to be spectacularly inept in providing anything else to their desperately war-weary and needy people.
Their Northern Alliance, and other Afghan opponents, were no better on this score. They were simply even more inept and divided than the Taliban were, and that's why many Afghans, especially those from the country's Pashtun majority, from whom many Taliban leaders and recruits came, rallied to it, at least initially.
But, the Taliban soon proved themselves to be exactly what they were- a bunch of angry teen-age Pashtun refugees poorly educated, for the most part, in ultra-fundamentalist religious schools in and around the refugee camps in Pakistan, where they grew up during the Soviet-Afghan War, led by men who may have not had much more academic education than their followers, but who had plenty more worldly experience, and supported by Pakistani army and intelligence officers and Saudi money, which were provided for their donors' own purposes, who'd about as much idea of running a modern nation, as a duck does translating Shakespeare.
The only things at which the Taliban were any good were waging war and frightening and repressing an already fearful and repressed people, at least, in the areas of Afghanistan they controlled.
They relied on Japanese cars and trucks for their transport, Russian and other countries'- made arms and ammunition for their weaponry, and Saudi and Pakistani money, intelligence information and military advice to help them win their battles.
They even had help with the latter from the large number of seconded Pakistani Army officers on detached service with the Taliban forces, Pakistani volunteers to provide more cannon fodder, and, of course, the Arab and other nationals' members of Al-Qaida.
That's why, to me, any sort of Calliphate set up by Al-Qaida and its supporters, if that's what they even really want to do, would, over time, be a spectacularly ineptly-run failure, as, even though a number of its members and supporters are trained as engineers and the like, its leadership and middle-ranking officials are, first and foremost, death-and-power-lovers, just as so many of Western and Israeli leaders are, with no real interest in the welfare of their own peoples, aside from their own, and those immediately around them.
The tragedy is that, through the policies of the American, Israeli, and other Western governments, the Soviet and Russian governments, and, of course, the various Arab and Muslim goverments, these death-and-power lovers ever got the chance to emerge and be taken seriously by much of the Arab and Muslim public, much less that they got the chance to pull off their various deeds, including 11th September.
This represents a colossal failure of responsibility and will on the parts of not only those governments, but of their opposition as well, whether coming from the centre, left or right wings of their various polities, and of their publics, too.
The Western and Israeli Left have far too often been content to make the kinds of compromises, when they've been in power, that resulted in policies and actions that have contributed to the various cycles of death and destruction, or, if not in power, for sniping from the side-lines and failing to make an effective enough case to their publics, as to why they should be in power, and, once there, implementing the kinds of policies they advocate on this, and many other issues.
I include those segments of the Western and Israeli Left who've opted not to participate in elections, because they disdain bourgeois elections as being part of a rotten political and economic system.
OK. Now, I've a question for those segments and their supporters???? If not through elections or other forms of action, like the kind of general strike advocated by anarcho-syndicalists, or through violence, how else are you going to be able to take and exercice power, so that you can effectively implement the kinds of policies towards the Arab and Muslim world, as well as with every other kind of issue at hand????
Protests, agitation, and other tactics like that are great. But, without actually getting into positions of decision-making power, those can be ignored or dismissed by the Powers That Be, albeit not always easily.
Eventually, some sort of negotiations between the various Western governments, the Israeli government, and the various Arab and Muslim governments, and their opponents, will have to come about, especially, as Afghanistan and Iraq have shown, the policies and actions that the former have taken thus far have only resulted in counter-productively bloody death, injury and destruction, with no positive results on the ground to show for them.
Likewise, for Al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and many others besides, while they may very well win at least some, if not all of their goals, in Iraq and Afghanistan, they may eventually run into a fact that most guerrilla armies engaged in a long-running war do, and that's, without substantial support from outside powers, and particularly outside regular armies with the resources and training to wage a decisive military campaign, they can wear their opponents down, yes, but, in turn, they and their peoples can also be worn down to a nub by the wars they fight.
Sooner or later, the choices open to them become pretty stark: keep fighting with fewer and fewer results, until the group starts splitting apart at the seams, give up entirely, and watch the group fly to flinders, or sit down at the negotiating table with their opponents, and work out the very best possible deal they can for themselves and their people.
The Provisional IRA, by the mid-'90s, was confronted with those choices, after fighting the British Army, Ulster Defence Force and Royal Ulster Constabulary, and Protestant para-militaries since 1969, and found that, the longer it went on, the fewer constructive results it was getting.
The British and Ulster Protestants had also found that, while they might have been able to badly hurt or stem the amount of damage the Provos could do to them, they couldn't destroy their opponents.
Whether any one of them wanted to admit it or not, they were all stale-mated.
Depending on how long this goes on, I think that this set of struggles will do the same to the Americans, British, Israelis, various Arab and Muslim governments, and their opponents as well.
A hit here, a victory there, a defeat somewhere else, but, in the end, all of these sides, and their respective peoples, will find that they can't completely defeat nor destroy their opponents.
Ulitmately, all concerned will have to bite the bullet, swallow all of the rhetoric they've heaped onto the world's public for years and decades, sit down and negotiate with their opposites, and eventually hash out a compromise peace of some sort.
That peace won't satisfy everyone, will include all manner of sorry, shabby deals, and will have only come after years of lives, blood, treasure and other resources have been thrown away in the pursuit of stupid dreams and goals.
It will be a peace of mutual exhaustion and resignation.
But, considering the foundations on which it will have been built, at least, it will be some sort of peace.
We in the West desperately need to change the ways in which we interact with the Muslim and Arab worlds, as well as with the rest of world, period. To do that, we need to, among other things, throw out, like the Spanish people did the Aznar goverment, those leaders and policies that are built on deceptions, lies and assumptions about what's "rightfully" ours, and what isn't.
It won't come through elections alone, nor through protests, strikes and other such tactics, but through a combination of those and other forms of public pressure on our governing classes, and, through them, the Israeli and various Arab and Muslim governing classes, too.
At the same time, Al-Qaida and company will eventually have to learn, through a combination of military, police and other pressures, that their continued use of violence will only back-fire on them as time goes on.
But, this means the judicious use of such pressure.
The American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, Israeli occupation of the West Bank and intimidation of the Gaza Strip's inhabitants, Russian occupation of Chechnya, and other actions like them, must end, so that military, intelligence and other resources can be better and more effectively used, in combination with peace overtures and other forms of positive engagement, to bring them to the negotiating table, and "jaw-jaw rather than war-war", to steal a phrase from that old arch-imperialist Winston Churchill, who at least sometimes knew when to fight and when to talk, unlike so many of our leaders to-day.
The end of those occupations will also mean the end of a prime recruiting tool for Al-Qaida, the Taliban and their ilk, as without American, British, Israeli and Russian troops running all the place, making the kinds of horrific messes that soldiers do in the countries they occupy, much of their claims of defending the Muslim and Arab worlds will start coming into question, after a short period of victorious after-glow.
It will also put them under a very different kind of pressure than anything we could ever throw at them, and that's the pressure to deliver on the promises they made during the fighting, and on rebuiliding their shattered countries' infrastructures.
That will take some time, but, not an eternity,as some might think.
The hardest thing for any politician to do, especially one who's come into power through violence, is to deal with the day-to-day work, plus the rebuilding, of his or her respective territory.
General De Gaulle quit the French government in 1946, after saying, among other things, that he didn't fight for France's liberation only to "have to worry about the macaroni ration".
Eventually, he returned to power in 1958, when France was once again involved in a grave crisis.
However, he at least learned to deal with such things as the macaroni ration his next time in.
I don't think Bin-Laden and Mullah Omar will.
Sheik Nasrallah of Hizbollah has, and will, if what I've read about Hizbollah's reconstruction efforts in Lebanon are true.
But, he's also had experience as the leader of a combined political-military-religious and charitable organisation, which neither Bin-Laden nor Omar have, and he's had to work within the confines of a political party system, which neither of the latter have had to do.
Consequently, Nasrallah's the only one of the lot I'd give more than a Hope in Hell to, of actually making the sort of society he and his supporters want work.
The others are mere players, prayers and praters, and will consequently find themselves in deep shit with their peoples, when they can't deliver on the day-to-day necessities of living that the latter need.
After a while, it doesn't matter how many Yanks, Brits, Jews or Russkies one killed in the various wars in which one fought, if one can't get working sewers or regular garbage disposal going and steadily maintained.
The more Al-Qaida, the Taliban and others fail on those issues, especially in the absence of American, British, Israeli and Russian troops in their areas, the stronger the pressure from the peoples they fought for will be for them to put up or shut up, and that's a kind of pressure that the West and Israel can't put on their opponents.
But, it may very well be that kind of pressure, along with political, military, police and economic pressures and incentives, that may very well beat Al-Qaida, the Taliban and their ilk.
Only time, plus changes in policies and actions on the parts of the West, Israel and the various Arab and Muslim governments, will tell.
11 September 2006
11th September, 2001/2006
This is the full text of a blog entry that I wrote in my MySpace blog to-day on the fifth anniversary of 11th September, 2001.
The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone, and I don't expect anyone else to either share nor agree with them.
The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone, and I don't expect anyone else to either share nor agree with them.
11th September, 2001/2006
Category: News and Politics
Yesterday and earlier this morning, I was thinking of what best to say to commemorate this day, and what happened five years ago on this very day.
My answer???? This: to-day belongs to the victims, living and dead, of the hi-jackings and mass murders that happened on 11th September, 2001, their families, friends and associates, as well as to all those who died, have been wounded, or have suffered as a result of the various events in the five years following those events.
They don't belong to anyone else, me, you, Joe Blow, Sally Snow, this current Administration, nor anyone who didn't suffer a loss, either directly or indirectly as a result of everything outlined above.
This is THEIR day to grieve and to mourn, just as is every other day, and we've no right to intrude our various agendas, personal, political, what have you, upon their grief.
If we can do something, anything, at all for those people, it is to simply say that we are sorry for their losses and for the pain that they've had to endure.
Our view-points are simply immaterial and irrelevant to the story at hand here.
If we can't do anything for the victims and their loved ones, we should at least commemorate the day and its events quietly, in the privacy of our own homes and souls, maybe light a candle in the privacy of our homes, think on what happened on 11th September, 2001, and why it happened, and thusly resolve to change our lives and actions so that something like that doesn't happen again.
Forget the flags and ceremonies. They aren't for you, if you've not suffered the loss of a loved one on that day, nor afterwards, and they aren't appropriate to the occasion.
Finally, if we can't do anything else for the victims and their families, we should at least leave them decently alone, so they can cope with their losses, their memories and their pain without our intruding on them.
May the souls of those who died on 11th September, 2001 and afterwards rest in peace, may their families, friends and associates find some sort of peace and the strength to cope with the pain of their losses, and may we learn how to better conduct ourselves in the world as a result.
That is all I have to say on this subject.
That really is pretty much it on the subject for me. Anything else on my part, I think, would be exploitation of those who died on that day, their families, friends and associates, and of those who died in Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the world as a result of the events and their loved ones.
May all of their souls rest in peace.09 September 2006
"Big Men" The Poem
Well, Folks. Got permission from Mr. Jason Quiggle, "Big Men"'s author, to reproduce the text of the poem here, so, here goes.
on a verdant
weeping lawn
i wept as he wept
on his knees,
my gun in his face.
i
told him
not to hurt what
he had
or i'd make it
so no one would see his face again-
i'd be the last.
i left
him there
and never returned.
Again, thank you so much, Jason, for the poem, the inspiration it provided me to do the pics, and for permission to quote the poem in full here.
08 September 2006
Big Men Portrayed by Little Men
Well, finally got up off my dead arse, and made the following set of pics to-night.
The series is entitled "Big Men" , and is based on a short poem of mine by an old acquaintance of mine from the Las Vegas poetry scene of the early and mid-90s, Jason Quiggle.
The poem, as can be deduced from its pictorial adaptations, is about violence, and its after-effects, on the two men involved in it.
It reminded me a bit of some of what I'd seen in James Ellroy's novels(LA Confidential, The Black Dahila, The Cold Ten Thousand, and others), and so, I thought I'd have a crack at adapting it.
Don't know if Mr. Quiggle will care for my adaptations of his work, but, will see.
To see the original poem, please go to http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=7270559&blogID=163958748&MyToken=f80edb67-d179-4df3-9b2f-646600c86531.
If you're not a MySpace member, and can't access the poem via that link, no worries, as will write Mr. Quiggle and get his permission to reproduce the poem here.
In the meantime, look on and see what you think of the pics.
The series is entitled "Big Men" , and is based on a short poem of mine by an old acquaintance of mine from the Las Vegas poetry scene of the early and mid-90s, Jason Quiggle.
The poem, as can be deduced from its pictorial adaptations, is about violence, and its after-effects, on the two men involved in it.
It reminded me a bit of some of what I'd seen in James Ellroy's novels(LA Confidential, The Black Dahila, The Cold Ten Thousand, and others), and so, I thought I'd have a crack at adapting it.
Don't know if Mr. Quiggle will care for my adaptations of his work, but, will see.
To see the original poem, please go to http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=7270559&blogID=163958748&MyToken=f80edb67-d179-4df3-9b2f-646600c86531.
If you're not a MySpace member, and can't access the poem via that link, no worries, as will write Mr. Quiggle and get his permission to reproduce the poem here.
In the meantime, look on and see what you think of the pics.
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