Tag Archives: Armageddon

Thinking outside the bomb, in the box

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THINK OUTSIDE THE BOMB is a clever antiwar appropriation of Taco Bell’s inventive twist, but since when does imitation break from a box? And does “the bomb” mean what it used to? By the look of their logo, the TOTB activists are not talking about the A-bomb, nor bunker-busters, nor smart-bombs, nor predator drones. Intentionally or not, TOTB they’re invoking the proverbial cartoon explosive, wielded by anarchists or other insurgents, the only means by which social uprisings have ever transcended the box.

“The bomb” was the feared Armageddon of the early nuclear age. More recently, “Food Not Bombs” conflates bombs with militarism because modern war-making, aka peace-keeping, is dominated by aerial bombing. Returning to “bomb” in the singular insinuates nukes, or the mutually-assured destructiveness of endlessly reciprocated violence. So let’s see the bomb depicted more as a nuclear warhead or an artillery shell.

Intrinsic to the plea for nonviolence is the determination to subdue the military instinct with transcendence. And when have proponents of nonviolence exerted jurisdiction over anyone but themselves? Lead by example they cry. We will defeat the barbarians by not becoming barbarians ourselves. Turn the other cheek, the meek shall inherit the earth. I rather suspect, quoth Camelot: “It’s not the earth the meek inherit, it’s the dirt.”

To warmongers I say: think. In of itself, thinking is outside the box enough for you. To peaceniks: exchanging the challenges of human reality for a spiritual realm, is a religious balm that dates to antiquity, about as inside the box as it gets.

I knew Black Friday, and You Sir, are no Black Friday

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Robinson Crusoe illustration by OffterdingerIf this year’s “Black Friday” fails to pull retailers out of their red ink, should the dubious protologism retire its presumption to speak for consumer confidence? I think it should. Wasn’t it really just an economist’s “for the Gipper” meme –putting the solvency of the market on the shoulders of Christmas shoppers, rallying them to pull the economy into the black, regardless if it meant spending themselves into the red? I hate it when emotion-charged phrases are usurped by pretenders. Hiroshima was “Ground Zero” before the WTC, the “Homeland” was Nazi Germany, and “Black Friday” was Robinson Crusoe’s, well, Man Friday.

“Black Friday” in general has represented whichever awful event befell that day of the week of recent memory. It may be a wonderful anti-racism step to appoint a rare positive attribution to the word “black,” but I object to its use here to exacerbate affluenza, targeted against the best efforts of sustainability educators to reframe the day-after-Thanksgiving as Buy Nothing Day. If you are a booster for consumerism, black is an accounting concept meaning profitability. But how disingenuous to expect that those outside the balance sheet should share the enthusiasm. For example, it’s not everyone’s Good Friday just because Notre Dame wins that day. Good Friday, by the way, is also called Black Friday, as is any Friday that falls on the 13th.

Below I will list history’s Black Fridays, lest nocturnal Wikipedia cobbler elves continue their PR visits to bolster the retailer claim to the term. According to “Wikipedia” the earliest citation for a shopper’s “Black Friday” is 1966. But in actuality, the expression came from Philadelphia bus drivers and policemen referring to the traffic congestion created at their city center on the busiest shopping day of the year. But Philadelphia retailers objected to the negative connotation. Perhaps as a result, the “black ink” angle surfaces, attributed to a store clerk, offering a more upbeat, chamber-of-commerce-friendly spin. Hmm.

Many people think Black Friday recalls the Stock Market Crash of 1929. It does, and they’re right to be confused about which day of the week it was in particular, because the first day of the crash became known as Black Thursday, followed by Black Friday, then the next trading days, Black Monday and Black Tuesday.

What other occasions in man’s history have warranted the dark coloration? Let’s begin with Black Sabbath:

Black Saturdays
Sept 10, 1547, disaster for Scottish defenders at Battle of Pinkie Cleugh, Scotland
Aug 6, 1621, Mass hysteria caused by dark stormy night confirming Armageddon arrived with Episcopacy, Scotland
Dec 28, 1929, Massacre of Mau demonstrators by NZ police, Samoa
June 13, 1942, Disastrous UK Battle of Gazala against German Afrika Korps
June 29, 1946, UK Operation Agatha against Zionist terrorists in Palestine
Oct 8, 1962, height of A-bomb scare, Cuban Missile Crisis
Dec 6, 1975, Beirut massacres which started Lebanese Civil War, Lebanon
July 31, 1982, worst road accident in French history, (on annual “Black Saturday” when entire of population takes to the road for vacation)
July 14, 1984, Honk Kong exchange rates fall to all time low
Aug 20, 1988, worst day of Yellowstone Fires
Jan 20, 1990, January Massacre of Azeri demonstrators by Soviet Army, Azerbaijan
Feb 7, 2009, brush fires, Victoria, Australia

Black Sundays
Feb 14, 1926, bush fires, Victoria, Australia
April 14, 1935, “Black Blizzard” over Dust Bowl, the Great Plains of US and Canada
Feb 6, 1938, fatal waves on Bondi Beach, Australia
Nov 8, 1942, Nazi extermination of Jews in Staszow, Poland
June 11, 1944, disastrous Canadian battle against German Panzers, Normandy, France
Sept 24, 1950, sunlight blocked by forest fires, Pennsylvania
Jan 2, 1955, brush fires in Southern Australia
May 2, 1982, Exxon canceled shale oil project in Parachute, Colorado
Nov 24, 1991, extreme right party ascension in Belgium
May 1, 1994, San Marino Grand Prix death of Ayrton Senna
April 26, 1998, DIA inter-terminal subway fails, Denver
Jan 21, 2001, Direct TV purged viewers who were pirating signals
Feb 18, 2001, Datona 500 death of Dale Earnhart
Dec 28, 2008, Detroit Lions finished 0-16

Black Mondays
Easter, 1209, English settlers massacred in Dublin, Ireland
April 14, 1360, Easter misfortune during Hundred Years War
Feb 8, 1886, Pall Mall Riot, London, UK
Dec 10, 1894, Newfoundland bank failure, Canada
Oct 28, 1929, Stock Market Crash, 3rd day of trading
May 27, 1935, US Supreme Court overturns National Recovery Act
Sept 19, 1977, Shutdown of Youngstown, Ohio steel mill
Nov 27, 1978, Assassination of Harvey Milk
Oct 19, 1987, global stock market crash
Oct 8, 1990, Temple Mount Massacre by Israeli IDF, Palestine

Black Tuesdays
Oct 29, 1929, Stock Market Crash
1967, brush fires in Tasmania, Australia
Oct 20, 1987, global stock market crash, because Monday is Tuesday in Australia

Black Wednesdays
Sept 16, 1992, when UK withdrew currency from European Exchange Rate Mechanism, suffering a devaluation of 3.4 billion pounds.
Nov 3, 2004, John Kerry concedes 2004 election immediately after promising to challenge polling irregularities.

Had not the US Stock Exchange been shut down on Tuesday, there would have been a Black Wednesday 1929 as well.

Black Thursdays
Feb 6, 1851, brush fires, Victoria, Australia
Oct 24, 1929, start of US Stock Market Crash
Oct 14, 1943, disastrous US-UK bombing raid over Schweinfurt, Germany
Dec 16, 1943, disastrous UK bombing raid over Berlin, Germany
Aug 24, 1995, Moscow Interbank credit market collapse, Russia
Feb 8, 1998, Black World Wide Web Protest
July 24, 2003, Guatemala City riots, Guatemala

Black Fridays
Sept 24, 1869, collapse of price of gold.
Oct 14, 1881, Eyemouth Disaster, Scotland
Nov 11, 1887, Haymarket hangings of innocent anarchists, Chicago
Nov 18, 1910, Police assault of suffragettes, London, UK
Jan 31, 1919, George Square Riot, during strike for 40hr work week, Glasgow, Scotland
Oct 25, 1929, second day of Stock Market Crash
Jan 13, 1939, bush fires in Victoria, Australia
1940 movie starring Boris Karloff
Sept 18, 1942, Bombing of Dartmouth, Devon, UK
Oct 13, 1944, Disastrous Canadian raid, Battle of the Scheldt, Belgium
Feb 9, 1945, Disastrous UK air raid, Battle of Sunnfjord, Norway
Oct 5, 1945, Hollywood Warner Brothers union riot, led to Taft-Hartley Act
May 5, 1950, Red River Flood, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Oct 7, 1977, Phillies lost to Dodgers, game 3 of National League series
Sept 8, 1978, Massacre of protesters in Tehran, led to Iranian Revolution
May 31, 1985, US-Canadian Tornado outbreak
July 31, 1987, Edmonton Tornado, Alberta Canada
March 12, 1993 Bombay Bombings
Aug 12, 2004, suppression of protests, Male, Maldives
Sept 30, 2005, Students protesters killed in Meghalaya, India
Oct 3, 2008, EESA Wall Street Bailout
–AND–
Nov 28, 2009, the first day of the Christmas shopping season, when America’s retailers balance sheets are brought out of the red.

It fits right?

Zionism’s unholy alliance

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Christian plus Zionists equals unholy allianceTonight is Colorado Springs’ first annual A Night to Honor Israel, an event put on by the local chapter of Christians United for Israel. On the face of it — at least on the flyer for it — the gathering appears to be an outreach of the Christian community to our Biblical compatriots in their “hour of need”, whatever that means. Ostensibly a lovely gesture, but below the surface it’s murkier.

Does anyone remember Jerry Falwell? In 1979, Falwell founded the political lobby known as the Moral Majority on the following four principles:

1. opposition to abortion
2. support of the traditional family
3. strong American military
4. unconditional support for Israel

Abortion, family, even military I understand. But unconditional support for Israel? Why would right-wing Christians be unabashedly pro-Israel? Jerry Falwell saw Israel’s fate as a crucial international issue for Christians because of the role it plays in Biblical eschatological schemes.

To Christian Zionists, the land of Israel is covenant land — land that belongs not to Jews or Arabs but to God himself. It is on God’s land that the Second Coming of Christ will occur. It is on God’s land where the Chosen, the Jewish people, will perish by the millions in the battle of Armageddon, excepting those few Jews who accept Christ’s final offer of salvation. To Christians, Israel is a key player in the Biblical apocalypse and little more. Christian Zionism is, at its core, supremely self-centered and anti-semitic.

Not surprisingly, Christian Zionists are a major obstacle to a just peace between Palestine and Israel, pressuring both the U.S. and secular Israeli governments to refuse to cede a single inch of the Promised Land, indeed to take the entire West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and all of Jerusalem — a message that American Jews are more than happy to embrace.

Since 9/11 a growing contingent of the Christian Right has been aligned with Israel in another important respect. Both see militant Islam as the greatest threat to Judeo-Christian culture, a common enemy that must be defeated. Pastor John Hagee, who founded Christians United for Israel with the active assistance of none other than Jerry Falwell, has called for Israel to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran, not to ensure the safety of the Jewish homeland, but to hasten Christ’s return to earth and the certain annihilation of the Jewish people. I guess it is acceptable to be anti-semitic as long as you’re pro-Israel.

Although called to be peacemakers, Christian Zionists are happy to warmonger in the Middle East and will keep continued pressure on the U.S. government to support Israel’s right to exist and be safe in the midst of the Islamic world — at least until the Second Coming provides the Final Solution.

Little Eichmann Country-Western anthem

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Of course, that describes most of the Pseudo-patriotic crap infesting the airwaves now…

But there’s one I heard “that’s the way things were and still ought to be”

Like honoring our preachers, leaders, teachers and heroes and believing everything they said

Charlie Manson was a preacher. Preached Armageddon really really strong.
Cotten Mather was a Preacher who gets quoted a lot by the Reich Wing, (Like Chuck Norris and Dawg the Bounty Hunter, just another couple of Wannabe Pigs) whenever they say that America should be a Religious Dictatorship…

Who also said that Native Americans were a construct of Satan because we’re not specifically mentioned in Genesis, that we had no souls and should be exterminated.
And that the people who allowed their kids to play with dolls were practicing witchcraft and should be killed.
And the Kiddoes themselves…

Imagine, if you will, somebody offing your rug-rats because you gave them a Teddy Bear or let them watch Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny….
And the Good Pastor Mather also owned Slaves.

Leaders? McCarthy, for instance, with all the Liars, Murderers and Thieves who were and are his Fellow Travelers, like Reagan, Nixon, Bush (all the Bush Klan), Billy Sunday who was one of Their Crowd and also a Nazi Sympathizer (and, leave us not forget, a Preacher), People who could feel at ease at a Country Club or a Klan Rally?

We should believe everything they said or say?

Really?

We’re supposed to (here in Colorado Springs) Revere and Honor “heroes” like Custer and Chivington and Palmer…

Racist SCUM who tried to wipe a whole race of Americans from the face of the world.

When Custer is quoted in the book (and film) Little Big Man as saying

It’s more important to kill the women and children, because if we let them breed there wouldn’t be any point killing the men

It’s an accurate representation of what the punk murdering bastard actually DID say.

And we’ve got an Idol of his disciple William Jackson Palmer parked right in the middle of a busy intersection.

By the way, Custer and Chivington and Palmer also believed in and quoted Cotten Mather…

And the “War on Christmas” loudmouths should remember this, Cotten Mather was a Puritan… whose family had been run out of England for criticizing their Religious Dictatorship and, importantly, pissing off King James by opposing the celebration of CHRISTMAS because it’s a Catholic holiday

I don’t remember the name of the singer, but it’s one of those redneck punks who offers to beat up on anybody who disagrees with him.

Yep, real Role Model for a working Civilization.

The kid who sings the song is (to me) a youngster. Mid twenties, maybe thirties.

No way in HELL could this dude remember anything at all about the 70s even.

Far Less the 40s, 50s and 60s that’s he’s so nostalgic about.

When Apartheid was the Official Law of the Land in 20 states. People of “color” could be arrested or even hanged for not stepping off the sidewalk to let the Master Race walk past.

THAT’S the way things were, and I for one actually remember some of it…

So, is the stupid bastard really sure “that’s the way it still should be”?

Or is he merely hoping that WE are simple-minded enough to believe that?

Half of all Americans have below average intelligence

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McCain puts lipstick on pigAbuse of power. More information arises about Palin’s persecution of her sister’s ex-husband.
 
Will Sarah Palin have Anne Kilkenney killed?

Sarah Palin (Armageddon Party) thinks we should invade Russia.

Sarah Palin (Delusion Party) says Iraq attacked us on 9/11.

Palin lied about her never saying global warming isn’t caused by human activity. She challenged Gibson to prove she had, so he did.

Religion is evil incarnate. Vatican issues fatwah against satirist who joked about the bigot Pope.

Religious Reich is spitting fire and brimstone because McCain and Palin didn’t obey their summons to appear.

The latest Christian videogame: commit genocide on Muslims, in Jesus name!

Oh, fuck.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s Sept 12 notes, thomasmc.com.

Is John McCain a zombie?

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Hypocrite John McCain, who thinks “Social Security is a disgrace,” received $23,157 last year from it. His total income for the year was $405,409, and his wife’s was in the tens of millions.

The McCain campaign, which has been complaining for months that Obama hasn’t visited Iraq, is now complaining that Obama is visiting Iraq. It’s amazing how many Republicans I’ve talk to say they are sick of McCain’s crap, and will vote for Obama just to spite him.

McCain isn’t just McBush, he’s also McHelms.

Calling Dr. Freud, stat! Larry Craig speaks .

Karl Rove tried to get Patrick Fitzgerald fired for investigating his role in Valerie Plame leak.

The profits of terror. Air Force caught using anti-terrorism funding to provide luxury suites on aircraft for brass.

Cop busted for blackmailing Starbucks for thousands of cups of free coffee.

What nonsense Christians can be made to believe! “The sun (and entire universe!) rotate earth”. I guess, once you have convinced yourself to believe one lie, you are open to anything.

Conservative radio host Michael Savage declares that Autism is a fraud, the kids “are just brats!” Well, that’s Compassionate Conservatism for you.

Why is Israel — the only Middle Eastern nation threatening, and on a regular basis attacking, its neighbors — allowed to have nuclear weapons, but Iran — who is only threatening to defend itself from such attacks — not? Because Israel bought our corrupt Congress (both parties) via AIPAC. Who says treason doesn’t pay?

Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz says Israel has “no choice” but to attack Iran and drag the USA into Armageddon.

Con job. Israel alledges that al Qaeda in Israel plotted to kill Bush. Hmm. Al Qaeda is in Israel. We must attack!

Rahm Emanuel for Speaker of the House? He’d be even worse than Pelosi, but the Dems do always do seem to promote the worst of the worst.

Court Jester House of Representatives promises to investigate Bush/Cheney “Imperial presidency,” while at the same time reiterating that impeachment is “off the table.”

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes July 18, thomasmc.com.

I’ll keep my Old Life, thanks

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Another tragedy has been visited upon New Life Church. This time the perpetrator is not a gay male prostitute. No, Matthew Murray is one of their own. The son of devout Christians and a former member of Youth with a Mission.
 
As is the norm for evangelicals, the story is being presented in the thought-stopping language of Christian-ese. “Ms. Assam, as you were advancing toward the gunman firing repeatedly, what was going through your mind?” “I was thinking how awesome and powerful God is, and how happy I am that I was his chosen instrument.” Okaaay.

Let’s try again. “Why would a young man raised by devoted Christian parents feel such hatred toward fellow believers?” Permit me to improvise here. Matthew Murray hated Christians because he’d allowed sin to gain a foothold in his life. Or because he didn’t have Jesus in his heart. Maybe he didn’t actually have a personal relationship with the Lord. Perhaps he was being assailed by Satan and his minions, caught in his own private Armageddon.

I have a thought. Maybe Matthew Murray despised Christians because he’d been isolated from his peers and home schooled (brainwashed) by them. Obviously he was experiencing some emotional turmoil, a common thing really, but instead of being heard, or being helped, he was expected to trust in the Lord because, after all, his ways are higher than our ways. As a young man, when his God-given inclination was to find himself and taste a bit of freedom, he was expected to be a youth with a mission. Go to the ends of the earth and spread the good news of our Lord!

One spin I’m sure we won’t hear coming out of Christian mouths in the coming days is the possibility that, like Hurricane Katrina and the AIDS epidemic, the shootings represent God’s wrath pouring down on people who claim to know him, to speak for him; people who oppress and repress and judge in his name. There will be no one uttering what many of us are thinking. Perhaps Matthew Murray was God’s chosen instrument.

Rupert Brooke’s foreshadowed grave

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The grave of poet Rupert Brooke on Skyros Island in Greece.
If I should die, think only this of me:
that there’s some corner of a foreign field
that is forever England…
 
Rupert Brooke wrote these words in 1914 and embarked thereafter on the British expedition to invade Turkey at Gallipoli. “Well if Armageddon’s on, I suppose one should be there.” Just days after receiving a telegram of this poem’s acclaimed reception, he contracted blood-poisoning and died. They give the 27-yr-old poet a hasty night time burial and the day after his mates met their ill fates on the Turkish shores. Rupert Brooke rests in an olive grove on the Greek Isle of Skyros where his grave is still visited today, re: rupertbrookeonskyros.com. Survivors returning to England called it Rupert’s Island.

Rove wants to project a sense of humor

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Bushies laughing at Fundies? What a strange story. We learned recently that the Bush White House has been referring to its right-wing fundamentalist base as “nuts.” Rove leaked it, but denies it. Sixty Minutes interviewed an Evangelical leader who professed concerted offense. The GOP biting the hand that feeds it? And right before the election? For whose ears might this story be intended?

Evangelical Christians may be grievously put off, but who else are they going to vote for? Will this gaffe be enough to drive them into the arms of Democratic representatives? Do you think so? The nuts are no doubt used to being called plenty worse by their own grandmothers.

As long as Bush delivers the Evangelical goods, expanding the reach of Christianity by conquest or by killing the heathens outright, the Fundies couldn’t care what names Bush calls them. By gosh, the foul-mouthed idiot has practically delivered Armageddon, that crafty little dry-drunk bastard, who is he calling “nuts?!”

This bit of Rovean egg-on-self is for the benefit of disaffected conservative voters. Voters who might be drawn back to the Bush cabal with even this weak hint of common sense in the Republican administration.

Of course there are signs of intelligence in the GOP. They’re slick as foxes. Unfortunately, they’re in the henhouse and we’re the hens.

Taking it to the streets

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Protests in Nepal
This picture was taken in Nepal shortly before soldiers began swinging their sticks and firing into the crowd. Recent events have wrought inumerable protests such as this. Except for the Ukraine, Haiti and Bolivia, few have ended favorably. Protestors in western nations have thus far faced only tear gas, rubber bullets and trunchons, nothing like the massacres in Uzbekistan and China.

Look hard at this picture. Do you think the American People could ever see themselves brave enough to face this moment?

Americans have seen their elections stolen, their treasury looted, their sons and daughters killed to enrich war profiteers. They’ve seen a president lie to take them into war, try to steal their Social Security, stack the Judicial Branch to a marked imbalance, hold himself above the law against invasion of privacy, exempt himself from new laws with “signing statements,” imprison people without due process, insist on being able to torture, limit free speech to “free speech zones,” declare a war on terror but refuse to acknowledge prisoners of war, weaken pollution standards and call it a “Clear Skies Initiative, ” sell protected public lands, promote the outsourcing of jobs overseas, seek to legalize the payment of poverty waves to illegal immigrants, inhibit states and foreign nations from taking action to avert global warming, double the U.S. deficit in order to give a tax break to the super rich, launch the thoroughly illegal war against Iraq and supervise the killing of now upwards of 250, 000 Iraqi lives, more than half of them children.

Feel free to add to this list if I’ve missed something.

Most recently we’ve learned that the president considers it his right to intimidate political opponents like Ambassador Joe Wilson by “declassifying” the CIA status of Wilson’s wife, thereby endangering the life her colleagues, her contacts, her friends, and all of their contacts and friends, everyone who foreign governments now suspect might have been CIA informers.

More Americans are coming to see that our president might have conspired, abetted or at the very least permitted the mass murder of 2,986 Americans on September 11th, 2001, to create the rallying cry of “9/11” not dissimilar to Remember the Main, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin before it. Each as dubious as the Reichstag fire.

Is it time as well to consider that the fate of the world rests in the hands of a man who believes in the end times as foretold in the Book of Revelations? Is it possible that our president does not care if Armageddon is hastened in the Middle East because anyhoo it has been prophesied?

If President Bush attacks Iran, this time using nuclear weapons, will it finally occur to the American people to do something to stop him? Are they up to the task?