Tuesday, September 05, 2006

open dread

i'm gonna be away for the next few days - Noise and Rimone (and maybe others) will be guest blogging in my Absinthe. this post will stay on top in the interim in case you wanna add something generic in the comments

scroll down for their posts - i'm sure they won't behave (at least i hope they won't) - and i trust that the rest of you will be equally ill behaved.

i'll try to check in when i can - and i might even try to explain to my nana how these toobz work.

everyone say 'hi' to my nan - she's a remarkable woman.

chat. chat, chat

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi, Nan, much love from England via NYC. *kisses*

re Noise and Rimone (and maybe others) will be guest blogging in my Absinthe.

bastard! you told on me! they would have NEVER guessed w/my new screen-name and all. and worse yet, /you have Absinthe/? *voice rising to a shriek*

double triple bastard!

nb: as i told Luke in mail, i honestly don't know if i'm up to posting here. just sayin'.

/amerikan_psycho

lukery said...

oops - if anyone apart from Noise posts here, it is notrimone

Anonymous said...

Please take the time to read my post below and study the two sources I provided. It's worth your time, and is a matter of grave concern to everyone.

In it I give support to the unbelievable assertion the Bush administration has a very transparent plan to exterminate the human race, and I show you how they plan to do it. Please share it with your friends and colleagues, and share your comments.

Anonymous said...

Uranus: That "post below" is a corker. It reminds me of discussions had in the past with a wingnut pal who was all in favor of invading Iraq. By the time things got that far, and the millions had turned out to protest all over the world with the nincompoop-in-chief paying no attention whatsoever, I remember telling my pal that he ought not to be so damned cocky about US military might because at the rate things were going, the rest of the world would join forces against the US and if they did that, they would most likely win. As soon as he's back from vacation, I'm sending him the article. Thanks for posting it.

Anonymous said...

You're more than welcomed. I've come to realize a couple things about war. Government policy can't go too far afield if public opinion holds it in check. In the run-up to Iraq, we didn't have enough people saying no. And, I've learned most people lack the ability to extrapolate, to visualize, to consider the consequences. What I'm saying is my opinion, but it's also just repeating what some good science already said before it was silenced. That's the good thing about being a poor, obscure individual. The bad thing is, people don't listen to poor, obscure individuals. I'm glad you guys do. In spite of the fact I've written and written (and written) about this, and shared those links, before tonight only two people I know have understood how this works, and how dangerous it is. The whole world needs to be telling the Bush administration to not even think about it, and the only way to make that happen is spread the word.

Anonymous said...

" . . . spread the word."

Yup. It's like I've been thinking for years - we're living in a GD Batman movie!

Anonymous said...

Thanks Uranus. Nice link. And welcome!

As you can see from the map I'm Australia based so it's an odd little perspective on things. But our leading paper, Murdoch owned The Australian, has been pumping out an incredible amount of 'attack Iran' propaganda for the last week or so (3 editorials (!) accusing people who don't support US-Israeli policies of being Nazis no less!). The level of public discussion is just fucking abysmal. I mean awful. When the Lebanon -ambulance bombing story came out the press here shrieked about Hizbollah propaganda. One letters column ran 27 letters from the public complaining about the propaganda. So my three(!) attempts to redress the balance never got published. Here's one of those letters which I publish here as some kind of consolation prize:

I am a bit nonplussed by the outrage over the Lebanon ambulance. The fact is that western audiences have been subject to propaganda from their own leaders for quite some time now. For example, on 10 April 2006 Thomas E. Ricks in a Washington Post article pointed out that a specific US military propaganda program was in place in regard to al-Zarqawi, a program which also targetted Western domestic audiences. The article described how the Pentagon had concocted fake al-Zarqawi letters boasting about suicide attacks and then leaked them to Dexter Filkins of the New York Times who published one of the letters despite having good reason to believe it was fraudulent. All of this was done, of course, specifically to ramp up the importance of al-Zarqawi and to tie the Iraq war to al-Qaeda and 9/11.

And there was also Emil Tehir, the PR firm Benador and the outrageous concoction that Iran was legislating to require Jews to wear distinctive color badges (shades of Nazi Germany!). All total fiction, of course, directed at Western audiences by Western leadership.

Why are people concerned about the other side? Our own guys lie to us.


No one here at WIIG4 seems to have all the answers. But people are way out in front of what the public know. The propaganda's only going to get worse, I'm afraid. Welcome, anyway. Cheers.

Anonymous said...

Hear, hear, Oldschool!!

If any of you would like to be able to help with some push-back on this damnable *pre-emptive war* crap, have I got a deal for you!

I need some copy/paste help with a major project. It all got started when a group of volunteers began working on a rescue mission that has now evolved in an effort to try to persuade some Senate and House committees to hold hearings (it IS directly war-related, I promise!). If y'all could bear with my 'secrecy' at the moment, it is not that I can't tell you what it's about, it is simply that the instant project should not be waved about online until those directly involved are ready for it to go public.

I'm asking for volunteers who could each take just one committee and using the links I will provide, visit the relevant websites to copy the addresses, phone and fax numbers, etc., of the committee members and email the info back to me so I can get the data base populated and ready to roll by the end of this week.

Click my name at the top of this post for my email addie and let me know if you can help and so I can send you the project description. [To defeat the spam filter, please put the words "GSF Troops, KP Duty" in the subject line so I can find you easily.]

The database is set up in Excel, so if you have Excel and want a copy of the format to put the stuff in directly, that's great. If you don't have Excel and can just put the relevant info in an email (I'll give you a list so you'll know what you're looking for), that's great, too. I will just be delighted with whatever help I can get with this phase.

Once we get this part covered (the six committees) I believe I'll try to continue adding to the DB until all 535 seats are in there -- after elections, updates will be a piece of cake by comparison. The completed database will be available to anybody who wants it for their own causes.

Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Well, heck! That bit for the email addie didn't work. Try this instead.

Anonymous said...

How right you are oldschool to stick the facts in people's faces. And yes, we should never underestimate the efforts we make to get the public informed and engaged. I guess I was merely bemusing that in the current Australian context the newspaper editors are setting up a lot of falsehoods to overcome. Still, that's the challenge.

LeeB, regrettably I am not in a position to assist the US situation, especially at the local level. But my own country is an important ally to the US and there is much that can be done with local journalists and politicians to clear up confusions - especially the nonsense driving the attacks against Iran. I think it best for me to work locally, but cheer your own efforts from afar.

Anonymous said...

Ooops . . . did I somehow imply that this was a local situation? If so, I apologize for the misdirection. It is definitely national.

Anonymous said...

LeeB: please mail me again cause i wanna help. and use easy simple words, just tell me what i should do (i know you did already explain this in mail but i'm emotionally and physically dead to the world now and have shitloads of offline crap to take care of today).

ps, Uranus, you rock. please mail me as well, wanna talk to you about f/p-ing your excellent post.

Anonymous said...

WooHoo, Rimone and Oldschool!

Emails on their way to you both. Yay!

Clearly, I need to do a better job with my own, so baxtl at hotmail dot com . . .

Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Oldschool,

I'm with you. It's not where you're from, It's what you say, how you say it and to whom you say it. The Pen is mightier than the Sword.

LeeB a database by Congresional committee would be super handy for a lot of different stuuufff.

John Bolton's confirmation hearing is coming up at the SFRC this Friday. People should call the SFRC and insist that they not take a vote unless and until they receive the docments they requested last time. (NSA Intercepts requested by Bolton)

It's question of protecting the role of the Senate in the nomination process of advising and consenting or NOT consenting.

To allow Bush to circumvent the Consitutional requirment of the Senate's consent by abusing the recess provison is a slap in the face of the Senate and a severe blows to the Consitutional seperation of powers and the co-equality of the three branches of gov't.

I'd rather see Dems get up and walk out, rather than participate in the farce of voting on Bolton without receiving the documents they requested to make an informed decision.

It's show us your spine time, Dems.

Hello Nan, I'm a grandmom too. My little munchkins call me Gummy, I guess because we stick together, through thick and thin.

We love your Lukester!!!!

Anonymous said...

allo all - nice to see you all chatting and organizing and saving the world and stuff.

nan's doing great - she said to say hi ('except to that one with the foul mouth' (am not sure who she was talking about - perhaps she meant 'say hi to LeeB')

i'll be back on board in 24 short hours.

lukery

Anonymous said...

Hi everybody. I'm busier over here than a one-legged guy in a jumprope contest and accomplishing almost nothing. Fortunately it's a little slow for news, but what I'm reading is the same old dreary-ass bullshit we've come to expect from Washington. Rimone, I'm trying to send you e-mail, but must have too many windows open and XP didn't like it. I'll try again. Please feel free to use anything I write here or elsewhere however you'd like. Are you really in the U.K.? I have a very dear cousin who lives near Oxford. What is it you're doing, Lee? I'd like to help but haven't jumped aboard because there's a little too much background noise going on at my house (routine and extraordinary chores, animal convalescence and a minor family cyclone).

About writing to the local media, I'd write to these guys in Oklahoma if they'd have it. Heaven knows, they all know who I am. But they're slanted so far to the right they only support war and despotism, like our U.S. congressmen, and it's a waste of time. That's okay. I reach more people online anyway.

Anonymous said...

You're in the ideal location Uranus. Get the local farmers talking about animal husbandry and then gently segue into impeachment discussions. Done right, they won't notice the change.

Anonymous said...

This is a messed up state. My sister-in-law was chief counsel for the state bureau of investigation for 20 years. Then, she created and implemented a state initiative to ban cock fighting (of all things) and with almost no help got all the signatures needed in the exceedingly short time the law allowed.

That made a lot of idiots mad and they threatened to kill her. She got in fights with dumb bells like Wilford Brimley. Then some dodo who was laundering money with illegal bets on chicken fights paid off a crook in the state legislature to have her fired, he greased the bureau director's palms and she hasn't had a job since.

Try reasoning with these people, just try. If I want to buy a firearm, I have to wait a week in that I'm on social security and the bureau puts a hold on the application. She says if it weren't for her work there, I couldn't buy a gun at all because the director doesn't think people who are retired are competent to have them. Yeah, you hear about oldies shooting up the place all the time. The federal statutes don't support such a move, but our bureau director says screw the law, it just doesn't matter.

Speaking of our state bureau, they're building a new forensic lab and education center about a half mile from my house. The place is GIGANTIC. Do they know something we don't?? It's stories like these that make me toss and turn in my bed. If you feel afraid, don't think you're the Lone Ranger.

Anonymous said...

Nothing like an "enforced absence" (mine) of several hours to get a bunch of fresh snark moving on this board!

Uranus, glad to see you've come back up for air - I figured you were partying over the three-day weekend, but mebbe not so much, huh . . .?!

My project is HUGE. We are building a database for quickie letter-writing campaigns to Congress with a special project in the works right now, hence the focus on six specific committees. Email me at baxtl at hotmail dot com when you have a minnit and I'll fill you in on what remains. My plan is to also shoot for getting all of the remaining 535 Congressional seats in this thing so we can hit 'em on any level whenever we damned well feel like it. When your "background noise" settles down, I'm sure there will still be plenty to do, and I'd love to have you aboard . . . which reminds me. Can we put you on the map?

Nan, Hi!! I second Kathleen . . . we do LOVE your Lukery . . . and Rimone? Well, what can I say . . . we love her spicy sith, too. Desperate times call for a colorful vocabulary, else we all blow a gasket - especially those of us here in the U.S. of A, although at the rate things are going, if you're anywhere on Planet Earth, the same seems to apply.

Luke! How much room on yer little "farmlet thingie" is there for furious GSFers? . . . just curious . . .

Superteemu said...

Also, is it on the Beach?

Anonymous said...

Oy!

Anonymous said...

Lordy! By my calculations, Lukery should be back home in about an hour or so, and I have a map to bring up to date. Anybody else want on this round? This is my last chance to be so presumptuous as to issue the draft notices . . . er, I mean, the invitations . . . yes. That's it. The invitations.

Okay. I'll be checking in here from time to time . . . slaving away entering Oldschool's hard work into the data base . . . :-)

So, speak up. If you don't want to post your city/state/country online, email me at baxtl at hotmail dot com. Or send the stuff to Lukery and he'll forward it to me, as usual. I take a stab at getting you close to home, but it is far from exact - I think the 'dot' is about the size of Rhode Island - so as I've mentioned before, we would still have to call first for directions before showing up on your doorstep.

Chop! Chop!

Anonymous said...

dear lord, are you people stoopit or what? i'm really this disgusting old dude sitting in his undies ('my whites') goofin' on y'all. and with Cheet-os (and buttered roll) crumbs flying every which way as i type and chomp away in my undying emulation of the decider. then i go to redstate boards and mock the losers over here. btw, thanks for all the material, suckers.

Superteemu: you just made coffee spurt out of my nose. :-)

LeeB: Desperate times call for a colorful vocabulary

um...i always talk(ed) like this. but the one good thing thanks to bu$hCo is, i don't get too many complaints anymore. well, maybe from my mom who's still begging me to 'be nice to him' on my site and on the phone. poor mom and her NSA worries. tsk tsk tsk.

ps, thank you very muchly, Oldschool/Jay. :-)

Anonymous said...

Yes, please do put me on the map. It looks like I have mail from Luke and Rimone, but haven't read it yet. My sister-in-law wants to move (again). I'm starting to think she does it to give me extra work. She's at the center of a family feud about to reach a rolling boil, started by my nephew's wife's brother and mother. I figure I'll have a few thousand hours invested by the time it's resolved--oh good.

This is why I live like a hermit, a recluse, a shut-in: life, the longest thing we do, is still too short for a world full of dumb-as-a-post republicans who screw up and start useless, endless battles about how they are right and we are wrong. Phooey! I plan to reach life expectancy in 150 years, and just don't have time for it.

The good news is, we are going to win this one. If politics were this easy, there wouldn't be another war until the end of time.

Anonymous said...

Uranus: This is why I live like a hermit, a recluse, a shut-in...

i live the same way but for different reasons. i think a few others here do as well. you're in good company, dude (that's if y'all dig anti-social fuckwits like me).

i love the internets. :-)

lukery said...

yay for the Toobz.

i'm not sure that Uranus is in 'good' company... but similar company none-the-less. (altho i'm not particularly interested in living till 150. I couldn't think of anything worse)

Anonymous said...

me too. my mother and i have a running thing; she's 89 and totally can't understand why i don't ever wanna be like that. i shudder of thinking of somehow reaching like even 60 or 65. although john lydon's wife is 63 and jane fonda's 68 or whatever but then again, they've both had 'work.'

but i digress. looks aren't the main reason why i don't wanna be old(er).