The Light Entertainment at the End of the Tunnel. Ridin' that train... yes, that train...

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Unanimous Consent


The American Conservative -- Unanimous Consent

When Israel acts, Congress applauds. No debate required.

By Glenn Greenwald


....


AIPAC’s enthusiasm was unsurprising since the text of the resolution could easily have been written by the Israeli government. Every sentence was framed exclusively from the Israeli perspective, each clause grounded on the premise that Israel was 100 percent just. Not a word of criticism or even reservation. On the contrary, Berman’s resolution praised Israel for its humanitarian conduct of the war—even as the UN accused Israel of possible war crimes and the Red Cross vehemently complained about the IDF’s impeding of medical and other humanitarian services. Most notably, the resolution expressed unyielding American dedication to the “welfare” of Israel, both in general terms and with regard to this war.

....

Though the resolution was nonbinding, it was not inconsequential. At a time when worldwide disgust was at its peak, the U.S. made Israel’s war our war, its enemies our enemies, its intractable disputes ours, and the hostility generated by Israeli actions our own. And we emboldened Israel to continue.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Nazraelis killed civilians including children waving white flags

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 01/27/2009 | Israeli troops killed Gaza children carrying white flag, witnesses say

"The evidence we've gathered in two of the cases so far is exceedingly
strong," said Fred Abrahams, a senior researcher with Human Rights
Watch working in the Gaza Strip. "All the research so far suggests they
shot civilians that were leaving their homes with white flags."
 
The Nazis are back, but now they are Nazraelis pretending to be Jews! Would a real Jew do this? Would my Jewish grandfather? Would the Jewish guy I eat raw fish with all the time do this? Not so much... I don't know what these Nazraelis are, but I won't call them Jews, out of respect for my grandfather and all my Jewish friends. To think that we fought the Nazis, and now they're back and we're backing them! For shame!

Friday, January 16, 2009

The universe may be a giant hologram

Our world may be a giant hologram - space - 15 January 2009 - New Scientist

So what would it mean it if holographic noise has been found? Cramer likens it to the discovery
of unexpected noise by an antenna at Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1964.
That noise turned out to be the cosmic microwave background, the
afterglow of the big bang fireball. "Not only did it earn Arno Penzias
and Robert Wilson a Nobel prize, but it confirmed the big bang and opened up a whole field of cosmology," says Cramer.

Hogan is more specific. "Forget Quantum of Solace,
we would have directly observed the quantum of time," says Hogan. "It's
the smallest possible interval of time - the Planck length divided by
the speed of light."

More
importantly, confirming the holographic principle would be a big help
to researchers trying to unite quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory
of gravity. Today the most popular approach to quantum gravity is
string theory, which researchers hope could describe happenings in the
universe at the most fundamental level. But it is not the only show in town.
"Holographic space-time is used in certain approaches to quantising
gravity that have a strong connection to string theory," says Cramer.
"Consequently, some quantum gravity theories might be falsified and
others reinforced."

  


It also would seem to support the idea that the universe is not fundamental but is manifested and determined by something along the lines of Platonic Ideals or the causal plane, a dream in the mind of Lord Brahma, a mental process or spiritual plane perhaps connected with Jung's Collective Unconscious, God and so forth. "God" not by any means to be confused with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic notion of God, which when stripped of all the nice rhetoric is in practice nothing but a tarted-up tribal fire-demon or somesuch cosmic joke, but the Real Thing, the Tao, which cannot be named, cannot be told, which we could comprehend perhaps nearly as well as a virus could speak French.

Friday, January 09, 2009

Reuters: Great Depression jobs parallel may not be far flung

Great Depression jobs parallel may not be far flung | U.S. | Reuters

....

As many as 25 percent of Americans were unemployed during the days of bread lines that symbolized the Depression, but that figure is more than three times the current 6.7 percent unemployment rate, the economists say. Even the most pessimistic estimates only foresee the rate rising barely above 10 percent.

"We are in a very, very different place than the U.S. economy was in the 1930s," James Poterba, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research told a recent Reuters Summit.

Or are we? Figures collected for Reuters by John Williams, from the electronic newsletter Shadowstats.com, suggest that, while we are not there yet, the comparison is not as outlandish as it might initially seem.

By his count, if unemployment were still tallied the way it was in the 1930s, today's jobless rate would be closer to 16.5 percent -- more than double the stated rate.

"I expect that unemployment in the current downturn, which will be particularly deep and protracted, eventually will rival, if not top, the 25 percent seen in the Great Depression," Williams said.


Monday, January 05, 2009

Norwegian doctor: Israel intentionally targeting civilians

The Raw Story | Norwegian doctor: Israel intentionally targeting civilians

"Just a little bit more than an hour ago, the Israelis bombed the central food market in Gaza City and we had a mass influx of about 50 injured and between 10 and 15 killed," said Gilbert, on the phone with Sky News.

  An important part of the Zionist/Neocon whispering campaign has been about how we have "shared values" with Israel and the Zionists, unlike those nasty A-Rabs who target civilians and so forth. Of course, we were to understand that after 9-1-1, the "new Pearl Harbor" they were so eager for, "everything was different" and our "shared values" with Israel now included torture, waging aggressive war, targeting civilians (while vigorously denying doing so, of course for an important part of our new "shared values" is "waging war by deception") and other things we hung Nazis for at Nuremberg before "everything was different.

  I have no "shared values" with those people, neither the Zionist/Neocons (pretty much the same people) or their Chistian "useful idiots". I hope they rot and burn in Hell.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Madoff Front-man even ripped off his Bulgarian cleaning lady

Avellino 123108

A Nantucket summer resident with ties to disgraced Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff has been accused of defrauding his island house cleaner of her life savings.


Frank Avellino, who owns a $10 million Nantucket estate on Cliff Road, was sued Monday in Nantucket District Court by his house cleaner, Nevena Ivanova, who alleges that she handed over $124,000 to Avellino in 2006 which he now claims has been entirely lost.


Saturday, January 03, 2009

CNN: US weapons 'killing innocent civilians' in Gaza

The Raw Story | CNN: US weapons 'killing innocent civilians' in Gaza


"Precision guided bombs are only precision in that they hit the target they are aimed at," Starr explained. "We're getting these civilian casualties. These weapons are supposed to be used for a country's self-defense. Israel, obviously, believes this is its self-defense against Hamas, but you see these civilian casualties. That's not why the US sells weapons abroad -- for the killing of innocent civilians."

  One good reason for not selling or (in reality) giving weapons to kill civilians is that according to the principle of retributive justice, every man, woman, child, cat and dog in the USA becomes a legitimate target for reprisal attacks. Thanks a lot, Zionists.