More gardening
Well, I just got through putting together a new toy--a mini-greenhouse. It just barely fits on my back porch, but it's nice and roomy for my seedlings. The seedlings were really getting leggy under the grow light, so it's time to put them outside during daylight. I know they will outgrow the pots in a few more weeks, and I don't have enough big pots to replant them into. I'll do the best I can.
All the tags that seem to fit? Blame Tarpley:
To recognize the centrality of oil in the geo-political calculations of the United States does not mean, however, that it provides a full and complete explanation of the war against Iraq and the general embrace of militarism. The manner in which the United States, or another capitalist country, identifies and defines its critical interests, and the means by which it seeks to secure them, is not merely the product of simple economic calculations. Rather, these calculations, however critical, are fundamentally influenced and shaped by the whole structure and internal dynamic of the given society. From this standpoint, the invasion of Iraq is the manifestation of deep and malignant social and political contradictions in the American body politic.
--David North (21 March 2003)
People who have cooperated with the inevitability of American strength for decades have decided that they no longer can do business with people who are so stupid they can't even grasp their own basic self-interest. Oil development contracts are being awarded on the basis of ideology. Markets have very little to do with it.
--Xymphora
It was always inevitable that the Barack Obama electoral contraption--that eclectic assemblage rigged to resemble a "movement" on its way to no political destination in particular--would find itself grounded on the ragged shoals of America’s Unnamed Coast. The location of this treacherous yet Unnamed Coast was always common knowledge, and to be avoided at all cost. The problem was, and remains, that the very act of explaining to the uninitiated the nature and whereabouts of the Unnamed Coast reveals irreconcilable truths about the uncertain future of the entire American Archipelago. Very bad for tourism, investments of all kinds, and the ever-volatile national sanity quotient.
--Glen Ford
The fact is that black America is more pro-Palestinian than any other constituency except Arab-Americans, and more suspicious of US claims to be an "honest broker" for peace in the Middle East. Obama's labeling of "radical Islam" as the transcendent national enemy, however, is perfectly in line with that of corporate media, as well as with Hillary's, McCain's and Bush's "war on terror" foreign policy framework. It is exactly the opposite of where most of Black America stands. If Barack believes, as he says, that "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" are the reasons we are at war in the Middle East, what difference is there between Obama and Hillary, between Obama and McCain or even between Obama and George Bush or the neo-cons? If Barack believes this, the promised withdrawal and "over the horizon" redeployment of "combat troops" (not of mercenaries or contractors or counterinsurgency troops or training troops or the rest of the occupation, just the "combat brigades") will be followed by another intervention somewhere else in hopes of squashing "the perverse and hateful ideology of radical Islam" in Somalia or Afghanistan or Pakistan or someplace else.
--Bruce Dixon
VERY HARD TO FIND--CNN REPORTED NO EVIDENCE PLANE HIT PENTAGON 9/11--AIRED ONLY ONCE!
That the author of a body of work best summed up as Penis Monologues is not only a dick head, but a paid shill for neo-con causes shouldn't come as any real surprise for anyone who has seen The Unit, Mamet's prime time wet kiss to US military interventions, and the highly trained grunts who commit its most egregious abuses, with the added twist of focusing in part on the wives holding down the fort as their menfolk battle evil-doers and the neglected household chores that await them after each mission.
--Stella Dallas and Jennifer Matsui
As has been stressed throughout this book, US society today is neither a tyranny nor a democracy; it is organized from top to bottom according to the principle of oligarchy or plutocracy. The characteristic way in which an oligarchy functions is by means of conspiracy, a mode which is necessary because of the polycentric distribution of power in an oligarchic system, and the resulting need to secure the cooperation and approval of several oligarchical centers in order to get things done. Furthermore, the operations of secret intelligence agencies tend to follow conspiratorial models; this is what a covert operation means--coordinated and preplanned actions by a number of agents and groups leading towards a pre-concerted result, with the nature of the operation remaining shielded from public view. So, in an oligarchical society characterized by the preponderant role of secret intelligence agencies--anyone who rules out conspiracies a priori runs the risk of not understanding very much of what is going on. One gathers that the phobia against alleged conspiracy theory in much of postmodern academia is actually a cover story for a distaste for political thinking itself.
--Webster Tarpley
All the tags that seem to fit? Blame Tarpley:
To recognize the centrality of oil in the geo-political calculations of the United States does not mean, however, that it provides a full and complete explanation of the war against Iraq and the general embrace of militarism. The manner in which the United States, or another capitalist country, identifies and defines its critical interests, and the means by which it seeks to secure them, is not merely the product of simple economic calculations. Rather, these calculations, however critical, are fundamentally influenced and shaped by the whole structure and internal dynamic of the given society. From this standpoint, the invasion of Iraq is the manifestation of deep and malignant social and political contradictions in the American body politic.
--David North (21 March 2003)
People who have cooperated with the inevitability of American strength for decades have decided that they no longer can do business with people who are so stupid they can't even grasp their own basic self-interest. Oil development contracts are being awarded on the basis of ideology. Markets have very little to do with it.
--Xymphora
It was always inevitable that the Barack Obama electoral contraption--that eclectic assemblage rigged to resemble a "movement" on its way to no political destination in particular--would find itself grounded on the ragged shoals of America’s Unnamed Coast. The location of this treacherous yet Unnamed Coast was always common knowledge, and to be avoided at all cost. The problem was, and remains, that the very act of explaining to the uninitiated the nature and whereabouts of the Unnamed Coast reveals irreconcilable truths about the uncertain future of the entire American Archipelago. Very bad for tourism, investments of all kinds, and the ever-volatile national sanity quotient.
--Glen Ford
The fact is that black America is more pro-Palestinian than any other constituency except Arab-Americans, and more suspicious of US claims to be an "honest broker" for peace in the Middle East. Obama's labeling of "radical Islam" as the transcendent national enemy, however, is perfectly in line with that of corporate media, as well as with Hillary's, McCain's and Bush's "war on terror" foreign policy framework. It is exactly the opposite of where most of Black America stands. If Barack believes, as he says, that "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" are the reasons we are at war in the Middle East, what difference is there between Obama and Hillary, between Obama and McCain or even between Obama and George Bush or the neo-cons? If Barack believes this, the promised withdrawal and "over the horizon" redeployment of "combat troops" (not of mercenaries or contractors or counterinsurgency troops or training troops or the rest of the occupation, just the "combat brigades") will be followed by another intervention somewhere else in hopes of squashing "the perverse and hateful ideology of radical Islam" in Somalia or Afghanistan or Pakistan or someplace else.
--Bruce Dixon
VERY HARD TO FIND--CNN REPORTED NO EVIDENCE PLANE HIT PENTAGON 9/11--AIRED ONLY ONCE!
That the author of a body of work best summed up as Penis Monologues is not only a dick head, but a paid shill for neo-con causes shouldn't come as any real surprise for anyone who has seen The Unit, Mamet's prime time wet kiss to US military interventions, and the highly trained grunts who commit its most egregious abuses, with the added twist of focusing in part on the wives holding down the fort as their menfolk battle evil-doers and the neglected household chores that await them after each mission.
--Stella Dallas and Jennifer Matsui
As has been stressed throughout this book, US society today is neither a tyranny nor a democracy; it is organized from top to bottom according to the principle of oligarchy or plutocracy. The characteristic way in which an oligarchy functions is by means of conspiracy, a mode which is necessary because of the polycentric distribution of power in an oligarchic system, and the resulting need to secure the cooperation and approval of several oligarchical centers in order to get things done. Furthermore, the operations of secret intelligence agencies tend to follow conspiratorial models; this is what a covert operation means--coordinated and preplanned actions by a number of agents and groups leading towards a pre-concerted result, with the nature of the operation remaining shielded from public view. So, in an oligarchical society characterized by the preponderant role of secret intelligence agencies--anyone who rules out conspiracies a priori runs the risk of not understanding very much of what is going on. One gathers that the phobia against alleged conspiracy theory in much of postmodern academia is actually a cover story for a distaste for political thinking itself.
--Webster Tarpley