Jimmy Pinkpanther von Barc H., rip

I had to put one of my cats to sleep today. He was very sick. The end was peaceful; I thank God for caring professionals, to use a cliche. He was a difficult cat, always sickly, quite ill-mannered, semi-feral, and had a questionable grasp of potty-training, but he was a warm bed companion in winter, and very loyal to me for having rescued him from a shelter.

He is survived by his roommate Henry Skylark von Barc H., who didn't usually get along with him, and me, who is sad, but glad that he is no longer suffering or frightened.

G'night Jimmy.

Enhanced Contradiction

One nation has used nuclear weapons, incinerating thousands in the blink of an eye. And if it is Japan, Germany, and Russia who have the reputation for being the bad guys of the last century, going around and attacking other nations unprovoked and then brutally occupying them, one might want to maintain some perspective and remember who carpet bombed North Vietnam for much of the 1960s and 1970s, who invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965, who invaded Grenada in 1983, and who invaded Iraq in 2003--all more or less if not unprovoked, unthreatened in any real way. And one might want to remember who was behind a multitude of coups and proxy wars in Guatemala in 1954 and the 1980s, Nicaragua in the 1980s, El Salvador in the 1980s, Cuba in 1961, Congo in the 1960s, Iran in 1953, Afghanistan in the 1980s.

What I grew up hearing called "Chinese water torture" (thanks to the Korean war) turns out to have its roots in the Spanish Inquisition, practice at the hands of Japanese militarism, and perfection with hoods and boards at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, is now called "water boarding" with its subtle suggestion of leisure-time recreation. And in the nation that most excels in double plus good euphemistical new-speak water-boarding turns out to be only one of the many prescribed practices of "enhanced interrogation" spelled out in recipe books issued by our former president George Bush's ironically-named justice department.

President Obama has, to his vast credit, opened some of the books on these deplorable inhumanities, shedding a little light on the Bush/Cheney doctrine of bureaucratic inhumanity that lead to our modern day gestapo-esque reality of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Baghram, and CIA black site prisons.

So now we all know, crimes were committed. What will we do about that? Well, apparently not very much, including not even clearly saying it won't happen again. Here's the rub. In his eternal optimism--and I don't actually mean that to sound so harsh--Obama knows that just under half the country doesn't have much of a problem with these crimes. It must be said that half the country doesn't seem to have much of a problem with the rest of us being enslaved to insurance companies, credit card companies, banks, soul-lessly greedy corporations, corrupt politicians, or religious fundamentalists either.

So how does the agenda of change which half the country DID vote for a few long months ago proceed? How now when the mildewing morality of a nation which claims to be free and progressive is revealed to be rotten with stinking and exposed corruption and hypocrisy is Obama to proceed?

President Obama is at one of many crossroads. He, who now controls the predator drones that kill innocent and guilty alike without trial or appeal, who now must choose secrecy or openness, who now holds the keys to the torture cells still stocked with people of unjudged innocence, who now claims to steer the ship of state, can choose not to fight this battle. Having defeated that other half of the country in his election he now hopes to unite us and heal us.

But what if it is not possible to heal that contradiction between the nation that murders at will (and the half of the population that unquestionably supported the actions of Bush and his predecessors in tradition) and the nation that claims to stand for a higher vision?

I want universal healthcare. I want marriage equality. I want economic justice. I want green energy. I want all the promises that Obama has made. But if all of these things are going to be battles, then let the battle be joined now over torture, where the morality is clear. If Obama is going to need more allies in the fight for a new more humane future, let him win them by repudiating completely the past and dismantling its machinery of murder. That intolerant, militaristic, backward, corrupt less-than-half of America is not monolithic. Let them be called out.

The United States has done terrible terrible things. They didn't start with Bush and they didn't end with him leaving office. We will win nothing if at every step we allow the forces of reaction to call the tune, to threaten, merely by their presence, to derail the cause of justice.

The previous administration must be held accountable, and responsible, for its crimes. Whether its judges or bureaucrats or interrogators or George Bush himself, the guilty must be punished. President Obama is wrong to reject that path.

What's wrong with this picture?

This is a photo of Lenora Fulani with NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg, who was elected twice as a Republican, recently strongarmed democracy and bribed City Council into letting him run for a third term, against the term limits laws twice voted into law by New York voters. Lenora Fulani is a figure in the Independence Party. Since Bloomberg--at least until last week; apparently he will now ALSO be running as a Republican again--calls himself an Independent and "Independent" sounds like "Independence" and he thought that would be a nice way to appear on the ballot.

Bloomberg basicaly agreed to bankroll the Independence Party in return for their party line on the ballot. Nice deal, eh? But who is the Independence Party? Just a bunch of nice independents?

Um, not really.

The Independence Party is the latest incarnation in a mind-control cult half a step away from such outfits as Scientology and with traceable connections to Lyndon LaRouche. Formerly known by such entities as The New Alliance Party and the Institute for Social Therapy and Research, this shady outfit and personality cult for Fulani and founder Fred Newman, used to haunt the left and progressive movement trying to siphon off disaffected questioning individuals into its near brain-washing psychotherapy programs. They would urge troubled people to attend their therapy sessions with a doctrine saying that "the system" was responsible for people's depression or mental issues and that the solution to personal unhappiness or psychological issues was to join their group and fight capitalism.

Now, apparently capitalism is no longer the enemy. As the left and progressive movements faded, providing a lack of recruits for this cult, the Independence Party drifted rightward, toying with all sorts of unsavory right-wing characters. This unholy alliance between a would-be dictator and a power-hungry personality cult should be a major scandal in this city, but it is not. My question is:

WHY?

I moved to New York City in 1981. One of my closest friends was a man names Steve Rose. He had moved to NYC from upstate New York, become an RN, and joined the gay activist world with gusto. He joined GAA, the Gay Activists Alliance--in the late 1970s, and was part of the faction of GAA at its end who became sympathetic to the Revolutionary Socialist League, then one of the left groups most active in that pre-AIDS gay movement. Steve was not drawn to the left through intellectualism, through student disaffection at some ivory tower. He became a leftist because his heart told him it was the right thing to do. He chose the RSL because of its unique attempt to combine socialist orthodoxy with a left libertarian spirit and its complete embrace of the nascent GLBT movement.

Eventually as the RSL imploded in those dark Reagan years Steve and I had a falling out. We both moved on, and sadly, Steve joined those first ranks activists to be diagnosed with AIDS. His first over Alberto passed on first, and Steve himself lost his battle with injustice sometime in the mid to late 1980s. The last time I saw Steve was on a street corner. Although a few years before he made numerous sharp and stingingly incisive polemical attacks against the New Alliance Party and their ilk, by then he was defeated. Facing personal demoralization along with the challenges of fighting HIV Steve joined the NAP. When I saw him on that corner telling me of his new allegiance to NAP I saw such despair behind his eyes belying the wooden and rote recitation of how NAP had helped him to see that his problems were not his own, rather the burden of oppression and capitalism. It was heartbreaking to see him so broken, so surrendered to the easy answers of a cult that could do his thinking for him. I grieve that he spent his last years in such company. While brash and not always sympathetic, Steve was a fighter and a real hero of gay liberation. The cult that parasitically attached itself to him, joining the HIV in sucking out his life force, cannot now go unopposed.

Bloomberg's unholy alliance must be exposed, and Bloomberg's Giuliani-like power grab must be spiked.

update: check out Lyndon LaRouche Watch for a lot of details about the Fred Newman cults.

New York Post = Racism Unleashed

This speaks for itself. This paper's offices should be burned to the ground. This cartoonist is long known as a anti-gay bigot of the worst type. Now he turns his "humor" on President Obama. The editorial board of the paper has defended the racist caricaturist, Sean Delonas.

Finally

From President Obama:

In the last few days, we've seen proposals arise from some in Congress that you may not have read but you'd be very familiar with because you've been hearing them for the last 10 years, maybe longer. They're rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems; that government doesn't have a role to play; that half-measures and tinkering are somehow enough; that we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges -- the crushing cost of health care, the inadequate state of so many of our schools, our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

So let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed. They've taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, and they've brought our economy to a halt. And that's precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action.

Historic Inauguration; Clarence Thomas Sleeps

Thanks to this super cool inauguration photo you can see that conservative supreme court justice/sexual harasser/right-wing stooge Clarence Thomas thinks that the occasion is perfect for dozing off.

!

President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama! President Barack Hussein Obama!

still a little giddy.

A new step forward for civil rights

From the website of the President of the United States:

Support for the LGBT Community

"While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It's about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect."

Check out whitehouse.gov, and welcome and thank you, President Barack Obama.

Progress

Tomorrow Barack Hussein Obama will be inaugurated as president of the United States of America.

There will be a time to hold him to the promises he has made; there will be a time to gnash our teeth in worry and frustration and anger; there will be a time to assess the lines of battle and count defeats and victories; there may even be a time to thank him for achieving real progress. But tomorrow is a day to stand together and marvel at what we have done.

Never in my lifetime have I seen this. Anti-war candidates lose. Civil rights candidates are admired but lose. But not this time. A decent and intelligent young man is about to become President of the Empire. Our nation is being offered on a silver platter a chance to atone for some of the wrongs it has wrought. Surely, no matter what happens next, this is progress.

Rev. Robinson's Prayer

Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson delivered a beautiful prayer before yesterday's Inaugural Celebration Concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Bishop Robinson is openly gay, causing the bigots in his church to begin the process of secession from the world Episcopal church in order to build a counter-church built around the hatred of gays. Anyway, it's a beautiful prayer, unfortunately not broadcast as part of the Cable TV version of the event:

"Bless us with tears...
Bless us with anger at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort � at the easy, simplistic �answers� we�ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future
Bless us with patience...
Bless us with humility...
Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity...."

It's worth going and reading the whole thing. I didn't watch the entire concert; I caught three numbers: John Mellencamp doing "Aint that America" which was beautiful if it made me feel as old as Mellencamp looks; Herbie Hancock, Sheryl Crow and Will I. Am doing Bob Marley's "One Love"; and Josh Groban, Heather Headley and the Gay Men's Chorus doing some patriotic song that made me weep uncontrollably. Ah emotion.

Don't fuck this up, Barack.

Terrorists Assassinate Government Minister

Terrorists today assassinated the Interior Minister of the freely elected government of the Palestinian Authority. Said Siam, representing the Islamic Liberation Movement, or Hamas, was killed in an attack along with his brother. Since the terrorist assassins were the Israeli Defence Forces, world governments failed to condemn this murder and obvious violation of international law. Minister Siam and his brother had not been charged with any crime.

WHERE IS JUSTICE?

Terrorist Sympathizers Loose on the Streets of NYC

How easy it is for these people to rationalize murder. Well, there's two politicians who will never get a vote from me.

Heartless Beasts Watch Mass Murder

Here is an entire article with pictures and quotes about the Israelis going out to watch the mass murder:

""Look at that," she shouts, clapping her hands as four artillery rounds pound the territory in quick succession. "Bravo! Bravo!""

Found this link on Angry Arab.

Their morals and ours

From The Angry Arab News Service: Arabs will see this picture, and they will remember it. They will take note that when the Israeli terrorist army was butchering Palestinian women and children, Israeli "civilians" stood and watched cheeringly, while sipping their beverages. "A tower of white smoke rose from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun after another Israeli bombardment Monday morning, and a half-dozen Israelis, perched on a dusty hilltop, gazed at the scene like armchair military strategists. Avi Pilchick took a long swig of Pepsi and propped a foot on the plastic patio chair he had carried up the hillside to watch the fighting. "They are doing good," Pilchick, 20, said of Israeli forces battling Palestinian militants in Gaza, "but they can do more.""

Oh yes. This is a closeup of what made them laugh. The heart numbs.

a voice of reason amidst the bloodbath?

Shockingly, the first acceptable article I've read in the MSM on the attack on Gaza is from Haaretz. By Gideon Levy.

"We've hit the Hamas military machine from the air" and now the ground invasion

Pictured above, the Hamas military machine.

I weep for the world. The Israelis are murdering butchers.

No Happy New Year in Palestine

The Zionist murder rampage in Gaza continues.

The parade of lying Israeli politicians continues.

In order to assassinate one Hamas leader--without trial, without jury, without verdict--the Israelis murdered everyone in his block: men, women, children. Such terrorism and collective punishment has not been seen since, I will say it, the terror of the Nazis in Europe. Confronted with the murder of these children, the Israeli unapologists say, "we blame Hamas for the deaths of civilians." Disgusting.

--

In brighter news, the Cuban revolution has now survived fifty years, despite repeated provocation and blockade from the mightiest imperialist nation on the planet, which is also its very bad neighbor. Long may the flag of Cuban freedom wave.

Terrorists Kill Almost 300 Civilians In Two Days of Targeted Attacks

In two days of targeted attacks, terrorists calling themselves the State of Israel have murdered almost 300 people, mostly civilians, in the walled-off ghetto they control in the Gaza region of Palestine.

Targeting infrastructure of the region's elected government, the terrorist forces -- already engaged in a blockade of the region and in random individual assassinations -- have used the pretext of the Palestinian peoples' self defense as an excuse for the brutal attacks.

Once again the world turns a blinded eye to the murder of innocents and the outrages of the racist settler regime. It is beyond time for this cruel entity to be wiped off the map.

Pinter/Kitt

I'm not a theater person. Perhaps you can tell that by my insistence on spelling it "theater" rather than "theatre." Anyway Harold Pinter has just died, and somehow my first recollection is a line in Sondheim's "The Ladies Who Lunch." But at my dose-of-socialism blog, Lenin's Tomb, from the UK, there is an awesome Pinter poem cited, which I reprint here. Thanks, as it were.

American Football by Harold Pinter

Hallelujah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew them into fucking shit.
They are eating it.

Praise the Lord for all good things.

We blew their balls into shards of dust,
Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.


I had no idea. That is some shocking fist-in-the-gut critique of what...American imperialism? Male dominant culture? I read it and winced.

--

What I am is a music person. And the other sad passing of this holiday time is Eartha Kitt. I was lucky enough to see one of her cabaret shows at the Hotel Carlisle in New York City just a few years ago. In a small intimate room we had seats quite up to the front. She had the energy (and body) of a twenty-two year-old; and this insane magnetism that swept up everyone in the room with a combination of love and terror. Love, at the open flirtation she displayed and the musical ability to make a song weep or laugh. Terror, that her eyes would alight on you and draw you into her act, reducing you to a quivering prop in some larger show. She made everyone in that room fall in love with her; I will never forget it, and rue the passing years for not scrounging up the money to go see her again. I remember dancing and singing and laughing along with her disco hit in the eighties, "Where Is My Baby Where Is My Man." My friend David and I even composed--but never debuted--performance art to complement this song (entitled "Recitation/Suscitation"). May we all end up, eventuallllllly, at our own Monte Carlo in the sky. Purrrrrrrr. What a classy classy lady.

Who, it turns out, hated the Vietnam war as much as any decent person, and said so.

Ibaye, Harold & Eartha.

"This is a goodbye kiss, you dog!"

Amen, brother. Who knew the Iraqis were people of such concise and poetic vision? (the photo shows an Iraqi journalist flinging his shoe at President Bush in today's surprise Bush appearance with Iraqi puppet PM Al-Maliki.