Wiley is working on her first cup of coffee ( “morning god”). This is kind of kicky—-describing herself in second person…no article…hmmmmm.
Wiley is happy to have practiced and——whoa!——not using the article because we don’t have a gender neutral pronoun! (Wiley does not often use so many exclamation points.)
Wiley wants a gender neutral pronoun. Other languages have one? Anyone found one? Wants to make one up? Knows a gender neutral in a foreign (furrin)—-well that’s chauvinistic, no? In a language other than English? Wiley was thinking zee, zoss, and zer. Then Wiley forgot what they were supposed to translate into.
Oh, yeah—- he/she, him/her his/hers.
more ‘morning god.’
Rabbit wants Wiley to read link that Rabbit thinks will piss Wiley off. Rabbit is probably right. Wiley go to work today, which means that Wiley must change out of payamas, get ready for work, and reach escape velocity. Wiley is happy she has a four hour window for “on time” at this job. Wiley is even happier at home in her payamas.
Wiley must hear Democracy now and one Fire on the Prairie segment before Wiley goes to work for LadyBug, or Wiley will get sporty underwear in a bunch.
Will check your link after Wiley posts this.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 9, 2005 at 9:48 AM
Long article. Will listen this morning. Read tonight.
Some Christians want to crucify everyone but themselves and complain about being martyrs having to do all this “hard work” of crucifying all these people.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 9, 2005 at 10:01 AM
Wiley,
The neuter pronoun in English is of course ‘it’. But if you are looking for a gender neutral pronoun there is a choice between ‘one’ as in ‘One is wondering whether one is entirely in possession of one’s wits’ which works in all persons or the delightfully supercillious first person imperial ‘we’ as in ‘We shan’t be discussing this with you any further, you scurrillous scumbag.’
We are sure one knows all this, but we suspect one’s daybreak deity is not answering one’s morning prayers too promptly. Hope the caffeine kicks in before you get to work.
That reminds of a third option common in Spanish to just drop the first person singular altogether and leave it implied.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 9, 2005 at 11:27 AM
As in this little ditty:
No tengo tabaco,
No tengo papel,
No tengo dinero,
Dammit to hell.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 9, 2005 at 11:42 AM
But Wabbit, people are offended by “it”. Tell someone “it sure is cute” referring to their infant. Heck, I’ve seen people get upset about their cats being referred to as “it”.
“One”—-in the Ummerican vernacular—-is not in the Ummericun vernacular. It is often considered to be pretentious or condescending.
Spanish, you silly rabbit doesn’t just imply the person, it’s built into the conjugation of their verbs.
No matter, though. I was just yakking.
Listened to Democracy Now. Today’s story was devoted to New Orleans victims, and the term “concentration camp” came up. Give it a listen—- it’s definitely on the Torturers R’ Us topic.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 9, 2005 at 11:56 AM
Now Wiley is calling Luminous Beauty Rabbit like Luminous Beauty was calling Jason Jordan yesterday. On another thread Rabbit is posting comments that belong on yet another thread.
One hopes that this is not a sympton of the scourge of old timers disease ravaging your once bright and beautiful minds. Or have you been smoking something?
It’s sad. Do you remember your own names ?
Hello, is there anyone in there?
Just nod if you can here me.
Is there anyone at home?
Just teasing. :)
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 9, 2005 at 2:33 PM
You had me going there for a few seconds David in Canada—-I was starting to think you were really an a**hole.
Just teasing. ;)
My bright and beautiful mind is always being ravaged one way or another. Sorry, I mix up Lumens and Rabbit. Mixing up “Jordan” and “Jason” is more understandable. Both start with a “J”.
No, I haven’t been smoking anything.
To the topic of “torture”. Is normalizing trauma and collective punishment a form of torture?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11258.htm
Another story about increased aerial bombing in Iraq. Is it fair to say the U.S. Air Force is terrorizing and torturing the people of Iraq?
AND FOR WHAT!?
If Ummericans suddenly found themselves in a failed state, oh how quickly they would be screaming for security.
Years of non-stop bombardment, harrassment, land mines, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, collective punishment, random arrests, torture, lack…
AND FOR WHAT?!
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 9, 2005 at 4:30 PM
Wiley wakes slowly, Fire signs burn bright at night, starting slow.
Rabbit starts with a Cappucino with Mrs Rabbit each morning, then an instant coffee or two once at work. Instant always tastes nasty after home ground Cino, but the Caffeine still works.
Remember the Rabby is under your feet, it is now 10am here but it is late night there. You are also still in yesterday, Rabbit is in your tomorrow.
His morning coffee is being drunk while you folk are going to bed.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 9, 2005 at 7:15 PM
My problem is I haven’t been smoking anything. Dangit!
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 9, 2005 at 7:15 PM
Poor Lume.
Rabbit has just scored some of the new season’s goodness, and is putting the final touches to a bit of West Aussie Blonde , which is nice to sprinkle over the mix too.
He would gladly share but computer doesn’t yet have this option. A picture would hardly do it.
Bom Shiva anyway. ......................^^...................
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 9, 2005 at 8:41 PM
Blowing shotguns through cyberspace would be quite the bonding exercise. You could have tasting parties.
We must be something. We’s about to be really broke. The United States in Chapter 11, not allowing individuals to declare bankruptcy. Having them work it off in government camps. My model of the U.S. after the party’s over is one third dying in the first two weeks from discomfort and inconvenience, and then another third preying on the third who are trying to deal with it!
Where are these huge sums of money going to Halliburton, et al, coming from anway? Opium sales?
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 10, 2005 at 10:36 AM
Bush did say a really bad thing; but he could always afford more than the Constitution could give him anway, right?
Clouds in Blue Sky says that maybe someone will one day hand W. his Death Warrant and tell him not to worry—-it’s just “a goddamned piece of paper”.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 10, 2005 at 10:42 AM
I’ve known Marine officers whose interpretation of their oath to defend the Constitution is not to defend the concepts inherent in it, but the physical document itself. These guys must be kinda pissed.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 10, 2005 at 12:57 PM
LOL, Lumens. Officers, you say? Someone would really have to be “educated” I guess to think something that stupid. It’s understandable that these guys are killed by their own “men” in wartime.
In one of my units we regularly elected an officer as “the most likely to be shot by his own men in a war zone”. Air Force officers sometimes appeared to me to be doing a lot of acid, but thinking that—-nahhhh——I can’t even think that.
Do you think these officers ever got smart enough to wonder why they were sent into so many war zones that were such a great distance from our cherished document?
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 10, 2005 at 1:17 PM
They really made pretty good sense in a purely military sort of way. It’s hard to establish a defensive perimeter around an idea. You gotta have some kind of physical point of reference. Regimental colors have provided this from time memorial. Not stupid so much as unimaginative. There are way too many otherwise intelligent people who only see the denotative and have no room for the connotative.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 10, 2005 at 2:04 PM
They really made pretty good sense in a purely military sort of way.
May I suggest that it made sense in a purely <u>territorial</u> way, and that a military operates or should operate on a strategy that is formulated upon some fairly complex and abstract issues.
Tactics is where you get into pointing at objects, throwing up perimeters (doesn’t that sound painful?), and taking aim.
I wonder if the Marines you know are in tactical units.
Not stupid so much as unimaginative. There are way too many otherwise intelligent people who only see the denotative and have no room for the connotative.
Could you go more into this topic, Lumens?
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 10, 2005 at 3:21 PM
Yoh! Rabbit!
I see yer still smokin the skunks out of there holes!!
Kudos to Yah “mon ami”
Posted by Eadora on Dec 10, 2005 at 5:01 PM
Yoh! Rabbit!
I see your still smokin the skunks out of their holes.
Kudos mon ami.
Posted by Eadora on Dec 10, 2005 at 5:07 PM
Hi Eadora
Good to see you around these parts again. See we have found a nice Witch to join the party, yet all the game has run away, except Natty of course, she’s still slinking about in the background.
BTW Rabbit has a little bloggy thing these days, but it isn’t much. More of a home base, where he works on things with the odd bit of input.
Lumens, (better Witch nomenclature), dost thou mean theat the apes are seeing the word but not the meaning?
“They draw near to me with their lips, yet their hearts are far from me”?
Talking about smoking the Skunk, this latest weed smells like Skunk but looks like Buddha. Still dry is it?
<a href=“http://tinyurl.com/99rjd”> To much demand. The idea of Cyber shotguns is interesting. Rabbit wonders how long before we can do such things? If the race can stay afloat and focused, we might be able to start things like that within the decade, two at most I reckon. They have already successfully “teleported” a single electron I think, maybe a whole atom. OK not much buzz in an atom of anything, and THC is a complex molecule. But it is good to have a goal.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 10, 2005 at 5:29 PM
Hey, Eadora, do you know this
<a >Jason Pappas?</a>
Thinks I saw him on past threads on ITT. You have been around longer than Rabbit, at least on ITT, not so?
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 10, 2005 at 5:34 PM
Back on topic, the following article Rabbit just posted on WP thread as a link. Thinks it is good enough to be cut and pasted, mostly.
Torture And
White Phosphorus
John Chuckman
“The captured terrorists of the 21st century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice, which were designed for different needs. We have to adapt.”
—Condoleezza Rice
I’ve previously charged Condoleezza Rice with having an appalling ignorance of history. I don’t mean the kind of knowledge - dates of battles, names and terms of treaties, etc. - that earns a good grade on an exam. We know Condoleezza got good grades in school. No, I mean a deeper understanding of the economic, social, and moral forces of history and of the irrepressible role of truth despite the countless attempts to silence it.
Guerilla warfare, terrorism, and fanatical causes are not new to the 21st century, they are as old as human society, and governments have had many ways of dealing with them. This goes so far as governments changing around those regarded as terrorists and heroes, according to the needs of the time, much the way victors in a war define who were the good guys and bad guys.
One thing history surely does tell us is that nothing is more dangerous than Condeleezza’s tendency to speak in sweeping, virtually meaningless generalizations about the people she regards as foes. Every war of aggression, every wave of state terror, every deadly fanatical cause has used just such terms. People are described with de-humanized slogans, making them easy to hate and abuse. We should all go on a personal terror alert when powerful figures talk this way.
The assertion of a special case or status in the current situation is utterly dishonest. It is more than dishonest: it is a deliberately constructed logical fallacy calculated to elicit the idea of special measures from listeners. It is America’s special measures that Condoleezza went to Europe to defend.
The special measures of concern are secret prison camps and torture. Condoleezza’s basic approach at the start of her trip was to assert that the United States doesn’t do anything nasty or underhanded while at the same time just telling everyone to mind their own business. That didn’t get her very far, and she had to adjust her words in the face of incredulity, frustration, and anger.
Then Condoleezza demonstrated a remarkable ability to turn around American policy or at least to seem to be doing so. In one day, she went from firmly stating that Americans abroad were exempt from certain international commitments of the United States in treating prisoners to saying they were bound. European leaders were publicly contented with what seemed a concession, but the truth is they were just not prepared to stand up to threats Condoleezza whispered in their ears.
“The United States has not transported anyone and will not transport anyone to a country where we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured.” Condoleezza Rice
I wonder then what could have been happening then when a German citizen was kidnapped in Macedonia about two years ago, drugged, flown to Afghanistan, kept for five months, tortured, and finally left abandoned in some bleak place in Bosnia when his American Gestapo captors apparently learned they had made a mistake?
I wonder what was going on when a Canadian citizen whose plane made a stopover in the U.S. was removed, imprisoned, and denied his rights? He happened to be a dual citizen with the country of his birth, Syria, so instead of sending him where his wife, children, and home were in Canada and where he repeatedly asked to be returned, he was deported to Syria for a year of (totally predictable) brutal imprisonment and torture.
cont…...........
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 10, 2005 at 6:12 PM
There are many such cases known, and they must be regarded as more than administrative glitches. What are all those mysterious places in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Romania, Poland, and as far away as Diego Garcia, now run by American crew-cut thugs and to which there is no access? What are all the many hundreds of flights recorded by dedicated amateur plane spotters and checked back to registration? Are we to believe the US is not running a huge, illegal secret prison and torture system?
How could such an enterprise possibly conform to international agreements and treaties? Are there really thousands of people looking for free trips in shackles to nowhere courtesy of the CIA? Thousands ready to give up all rights and years of their lives voluntarily to satisfy the urges of American paranoia? Of course not, to ask the question is to know the answer.
I don’t want to quibble about the meaning of torture. The CIA term “enhanced interrogation technique” is straight out of the horrors described in Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. If, as one wag put it, it isn’t torture, then why not use it on Cheney in getting to root of current scandals in Washington? Of course, it’s torture.
...........
Nothing, I repeat nothing, the United States thinks it is protecting itself from is worth this descent into moral hell.
“The United States will use every lawful weapon to defeat terrorists” Condoleezza Rice
That statement is a platitude, useful only to stir blood at a Fourth of July speech in Muncie, Indiana. It tells us nothing. It is inherently evasive because the lawfulness of tactics being used is the very issue in question.
We all recall with a frown or a grimace Bill Clinton’s playing with truth when he testified, “It depends on what you mean by the word is”? Although his statement concerned a relatively trivial matter, it is actually representative of something far greater and more sinister that has grown to become an integral part of American political culture. American politicians and their creatures like Condoleezza simply have become expert in the art of giving an interview or a speech and avoiding saying almost anything meaningful. Artful lying, subtle avoidance, and giving an answer different than the question asked have become a basic set of political job skills.
Members of the American government, more and more, resemble those sleazy well-prepared witnesses on the stand who just can’t recall point after point or a cheap lawyers who rephrases a statement to a similar-sounding one and assure you, yes you have his word on that.
The string of lies and misrepresentations leading up to the invasion of Iraq alone are enough, in the words of Charles Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution, “to make the Testament leap from her [the witness’s] hand.”
Only recently, after a year of denials about using napalm at Fallujah, despite the words of witnesses and the charred bodies of victims, we learn that white phosphorus was used. Indeed, Marines are trained to use white phosphorus to drive people out to places where they can shoot them, only the people are supposed to be soldiers, not civilians. Now, I am not sure people whose flesh is roasted to bubbling globs care whether the Marines used napalm or white phosphorus doing it.
But on such fine distinctions and guarded answers stands the word of the United States today. “No, Sir, I don’t understand how those good folks got roasted, but I can assure you we did not use napalm.” So when Condoleezza asserts, as she did a while back on a trip to Canada, that “the word of the United States is as good as gold,” you just have to smile bitterly.
Source
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 10, 2005 at 6:18 PM
Really it is all so very familiar. It is the face of the Trolls and Shills, the nature of the non-debate we are forced to endure when attempting to engage the Morons. Such a genius plan, they have removed the reason from people’s lives, without reason there can be no avoiding conflict, if just once the idea of a demon can be implanted.
Such a primitive state of existence, and awareness.
It occurs to Rabbit that the Human Race is becoming polarised about two distinct forms of humanity.
One is still ruled by ancient fears and prejudices, unable to concieve of their own intrinsic connection to all of life thus with no understanding of the consequences of thought and action. These people are self righteous, illogical and capable of convincing themselves of anything in order to avoid confronting the reality that they are not the center of the universe.
The other part of the race, appear to be rapidly evolving on a pane of awareness and ultimate spirituality, often without even noticing, because this has nothing to do with religion. The spirituality comes form the full realisation that one is not the center of the universe, but rather an integral part of it. The responsibility to the world which flows out from that understanding is possibly a large enough leap forward in human evolution, to be the new age of understanding which has been long anticipated by some.
.................................................^^..............................................
OK, there was a lot more after that, but Rabbit decided it is time to take this off topic but on topic line of thought elsewhere.
Not a good idea to leave such as the next bit lying around for Trolls to find. This is not an ad, but an invitation for any open minded ones to follow Rabbit’s reasoning on what may be no more than a whimsy. You knows where to find Rabbit’s burrow.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 10, 2005 at 7:12 PM
Damn, my well thought out reply to Wiley didn’t go through, damn it.
Anyhow Wiley, I’d rather hear what you think I meant. Rabbit’s idea was interesting. “Draw near to me with your lips…”
A real shotgun hit is the best way of interfacing.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 10, 2005 at 8:50 PM
Quote the Rabbit! Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 10, 2005 at 7:29 PM
“Talking about smoking the Skunk, this latest weed smells like Skunk but looks like Buddha”
Yoh! Ho Ho Mon Ami!
Posted by Eadora on Dec 10, 2005 at 8:56 PM
I bean beeting my brains out in Russia.
Posted by Eadora on Dec 10, 2005 at 8:58 PM
Yoh “Luminous Beauty”
Make your copy on your “Word Processor”
This site is software unfreindly”
Copy or WP on to the site.
You may have to post once or twice before the damd thing takes.
Posted by Eadora on Dec 10, 2005 at 9:05 PM
Yoh Eudora
I know. I usually save before I post. I just got lazy, or stupid. (not in steve martin’s sense though. double darn!)
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 10, 2005 at 9:17 PM
Oh what the heck.
Rabbit lost a pertinent post to electro-gremlins and it is late and many tokes into the evening. Enough to say long live life, life is strife and the time is rapidly approaching when Rabbit must go home to his…................missus.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 11, 2005 at 6:41 AM
There are way too many otherwise intelligent people who only see the denotative and have no room for the connotative.
Lumens,
Did you mean that otherwise intelligent people make the mistake of taking things too literally, and missing the finer points in the process?
Truth be told, I’ve been too lazy and forgetful to look up “denotative”. I’m not sure I know exactly what it means. My impression was that you were referring to people making judgements based on—-
Oh hell, I have to look that up.
Where’s my flashlight? Clouds in Blue Sky is sleeping.
Got it.
Muzak.
—-a classification instead of an understanding?
Still, after reading the defintions of both, I am not sure I understand——
——anything! AHHHHHHHHHH. Some daze I just can’t loyne.
Sorry you lost your well thought out reply. I hate it when that happens. It always feels strangely contrived to me to rewrite a post I just wrote and then lost. Have to remind myself that it isn’t repetetive to the addressed.
Maybe it come back to you and you send, hey?
Good luck to your lips.
Gonna go say “hi” to Eudora.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 11, 2005 at 11:45 AM
EADORA, hello. Wileywitch here. You seem like a social butterfly—-fun at parties——been around this block a while. Unlike Condi.
Ms. Rice may become the most reviled woman in human history. I wish she weren’t African-American, or at least hadn’t told anybody.
The lies, lies, lies, lies!
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 11, 2005 at 11:57 AM
Wiley,
You got it on your first try. I’m so glad. I don’t think I could have put it that succinctly without seeming trite.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 11, 2005 at 12:35 PM
Hi Eadora, good to see you posting here again.
Luminous Beauty, is there another term for those otherwise intelligent people who cannot see the denotative and have no room for the connotative either?
Rhetorical question but I hope you, or anyone else for that matter, has an inspired answer for us. My thinking is along the lines of the protective stupidity that Orwell mentions here :
A Party member is expected to have no private emotions and no respites from enthusiasm. He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline. The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough. On the contrary, orthodoxy in the full sense demands a control over one’s own mental processes as complete as that of a contortionist over his body. Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink.
The alleged intelligence balanced with < protective stupidity </i>.And right now the butchers have their thumbs on the stupid side if the scale.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 11, 2005 at 3:32 PM
that the Party is infallible
the word of the United States is as good as gold
Wow, right from the playbook.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 11, 2005 at 3:35 PM
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days.
James 5:1-3
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 11, 2005 at 3:52 PM
Creepy, isn’t it?
This is off topic, but I invite everyone who has a minute or two to kill, to scroll through one of my wordless walks to work.
http://home.comcast.net/~just.tina/walk2work_29nov05.htm
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 11, 2005 at 5:03 PM
Nice photos Wiley,
I liked the ducks and the babbling brook best ... quack quack. Nice to see ducks and squirrels getting along. Here where I live the Stellar Jays and squirrels are always scolding one another.
The cloud photo at the end ... I see a face with a strong jawline.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 11, 2005 at 5:51 PM
Yoh Dave
Good to yak with you guys again. Don’t know for how long.
I’m just cruising around looking for a fight. As time allows.
Lookin for a
Posted by Eadora on Dec 11, 2005 at 7:12 PM
Many decades, Eudora. I was just searching for a quote by one of the Dulles bros. to the effect that Somoza may be an SOB, but he’s our SOB and found
THIS
Just a brief exposition on the fruits of the SOA.
p.s. Wiley, I enjoyed your photo walk, too. Is that central Oregon?
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 11, 2005 at 7:45 PM
Eudora;
While you’re looking for a wingnut to beat up on you might like to make up a buncha
these. Deelish. ‘Speshly if’n ya outta herb, mon. I be havin’ much fun all afternoon with a certain Troll (really, that’s what he calls hisself) and his blog buddies over at Jesus’ General. You might like to join in.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 11, 2005 at 8:13 PM
Guys Jason Pappas (above), is an apparent junior Zionist and Muslim hating wingnut type. He also calls US Bush imitators. He has the appearance of a genuine full blown Troll and his own Blog is a small Troll cave. Rabbit is wacking them a bit for fun at the moment and highly recommends it.
Chasing down Trolls in their caves is wicked good fun, one can lurk what’s more and select your targets carefully. Not that rabbit has done so, he just jumped in with both feet after following the Troll’s link to his own rants as Proof of something.
Also Natty is still lurking and doing hit and run jobs, but she is the pits as are all Shills. No fun wacking someone who has no more heart in the battle than any mercenary.
Shill wacking is the pennace one must pay for having so much fun chasing down Trolls. It is a duty while the Trolls are for sport.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 11, 2005 at 9:42 PM
I hope this means you’re gonna let Nattie dangle for a while over at ‘It’s the War’, Rabbit. I’d like to see how much rope she lets out before she hangs herself.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 11, 2005 at 10:03 PM
Thanks for the pictures, Wiley.
Rabbit likes the Tree Rabbits with the Ducks.
Has anyone ever put the words evil squirrel into a search engine?
Squirrel pack kills dog.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 11, 2005 at 10:09 PM
That’s the idea Lume.
Rabbit got really spiteful and dumped a heap of the stuff she’d left behind at God squad, onto her snarky head it was easier than reading anymore of her crap. I think she’s dead meat, but since she is a Vampire its hard to tell, she has always smelled dead, metaphorically speaking.
The hope was that she would do a finale on this torture thread, just to present her in balance for the museum display.
DU….......911….......Torture.
Neat and tidy. All in one Shilly bundle.
Rabbit has become so contemptuous of her reason and mind that he was a bit too obvious in trying to trap her. Told her exactly what he was doing and why, but he did that to get her off DU thread in the end. Though the logic of why she should do it was still true for her own advantage, the obvious advantage to Rabbit never occurred to her until too late. She is more wary this time, but she showed she towed the official line in her short rebuttal, it can be used.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 11, 2005 at 10:20 PM
They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.
A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical.
Jesus, it also says it was a BIG dog. They have run out of pine cones so they start on dogs? Woh….....
..............................Not tree rabbits…....Tree Rats….....
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 11, 2005 at 10:33 PM
Them’s some badass Russian furry-tailed rats, alright.
If you’re up for some trollwacking, Rabbit there’s a live one over at the ‘Real Case For Israel’ thread. Eudora’s whomping him pretty good. I gotta go beddy-bye so’s I can drive over to the beautiful Free Republic of Humboldt en la manana. Have fun.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 11, 2005 at 10:55 PM
THIS is a fine piece of writing on the overview of our current situation. I love John Ross’s & if I had the money for gas I’d run down to Mendocino just to shake his hand.
I’m still saving that Lennon/Ono interview until I can get the proper consciousness adjustment, Rabbit. It looks too delicious to just imbibe straight.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 12, 2005 at 8:04 AM
David in Canada,
The last words on that Jay link shook me up on the torture topic:
Stellar’s Jay will also dive bomb predators such as an owl sitting in a tree or a cat walking on the ground. This is called ‘mobbing’. This is a behavior common to many birds, and is usually done by a flock of birds, rather than an individual bird. Scientists believe mobbing has several functions:
1. to scare off predator.
2. to let other birds know a predator is in the area.
3. to protect young.
Earlier in the article, it referred to the Bluejay practice of “divebombing”, which reminded me of an incident I witnessed in a neighborhood in Austin years ago. I was watching two Jays and a cat from my kitchen window. There were two jays on two trees that were about twenty five feet apart. They took turns divebombing this cat stuck in the middle of a fenced-in yard. Simple manuevers perfectly timed. The cat was cowering and looked like he was about to go insane.
Oddly enough, at the time this was happening, it reminded me of the time my unit was “attacked” by A-10s while we were camping out in German woodland. At that time I said to myself, ‘F**k the game—-I want to SEE this!’ I was supposed to get a bead on the jet and yell “BANG!!” (no kidding) .
I saw it in slow motion. The fact that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen has kept me up on many nights. How horrible it would be to be a target of one of these beauties! What terror it would strike in the heart of someone who had met one during an attack and the aftermath. BTW, when the aircraft is right over you, you don’t hear a thing. You only hear the BOOM when the afterburners are on the horizon.
So, I’m thinking about that cat being attacked by the A-10 Jays that were keeping him from retreating and attacking him by turns, snatching a plug of hair each time they flew over the poor thing. This cat was going to rember this fight every time he took a bath for a long time.
Anyway, so much of our behavior is animal behavior, however enhanced by technology it may be. There is a somewhat natural urge to go a little overboard with the “stay away from my nest” manuevers. And in humans any and all instincts may be bastardized, convoluted, amplified, lost, corrupted, ad nauseum by our thought and cunning then enforced with the power of jet fuel, billions of man hours of work, massive amounts of metals and plastics, ad nauseum.
Yes. I am actually coming back to the topic of torture. It’s probably as old as sociopathy itself, but practiced in small isolated cases for most of human history. It was probably instituted with the city-state. Who else but government would have an office and staff dedicated to torture?
At some time in human history it became a tool of militaries and police, with the bureacracy and policies that come with the territory.
ANYWAY, in order to carry torture out on a large scale against people in their own nation, it is necessary to make it so they have no way out, or cannot see a way out, and so that others cannot come in to help them. It is also necessary to gang-up on them in artificial settings, so that victims feel like a minority in their own country. The people (whether incarcerated or not) need to be terrified in order for the torturers to take their time torturing.
There would be no U.S. troops torturing Iraqi’s in large numbers were it not for the bombing, and strafing, and mining, and missiles…
Torture seems to me to be more of an indulgence on the part of torturers than a useful military tactic. Torture is a bully putting firecrackers up a frog’s butt, because he can and because he likes to watch things die.
To make any allowance at all for torture is to open the door for pathological maniacs and beg them to come in. Give em an inch, they take a mile.
I would agree with Rabbit that torture should only be practiced on people who are in favor of it, but to the masochists, I say “No.”
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 12, 2005 at 11:02 AM
Raise your hands if you anticipated groups of people turning up with their hands tied or cuffed behind their backs and a bullet in the back of each head when you first heard Negroponte’s name mentioned in connection with Iraq, or thought of him after seeing reports of his style of execution turning up all over Iraq.
Bet there are quite a few hands up out there.
Some people make me think there might be something to that anti-christ thing and that it has many minions.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 12, 2005 at 12:57 PM
Well said Wiley.
On the last point, as much as Rabbit is not prone to superstition, yet he is versed in some understandings which make for occultic knowledge.
Does this make sense to a witch? Put the words in one’s mind and feel the understanding come through.
This leaves me with but one conclusion on this anti-christ thing, and all the religious armageddon stuff. Dear the answer is obvious, and the virtual inescapability of the impending scenario is obvious to any fourth dimensional soul. (Rabbit has a rant from long since about fourth dimensional thinking. Ask and you shall recieve.)
We create our own reality You do know that don’t you? the most real thing is our soul, mind, spirit, whatever you want to call it. Everything else is a result of sentience.
The problem, the big one, is that this little scenario has replaced rational thinking and curiosity for far too many for far too long. This gives it quite a huge force of entity. Can you not percieve this beast? Rabbit can, he can sense it and it is becoming a very real thing. Get ready for some much more magnificent-beautiful sights yet. Of course what an Aries finds beautiful, is to others horror of horrors. Nothing like being right in the middle of an inferno to know you are alive.
Burn baby burn….........
Mwa Ha Ha!
Fire brimstone, trumpets in the bloody sky and some mighty destructive dudes on big scary horses will all be recognisable in their turn.
Wiley, it is Rabbit’s earnest belief we, the new breed of enlightened people have a future, we just have to wait for these stupid arseholes to burn, bomb and torture themselves into a total collapse, and then those of us who can, will pull oursleves out from under the rubble, and see if we can’t have another go.
The only thing which will stop this coming to pass in fairly short order, is a very large portion of the people who are currently living with their heads up their own butts, will need to evolve in a similar way to us. It is happening, and it’s a process which even appears to be accelerating of late. But will it be in time?
Rabbit isn’t optimistic about it as it happens. He expects the Four Horsemen and the Dragony bit first.
The play is about to begin, which is why all the watchers at the moment. Maybe some galactic ticketing agency is selling tickets to “Earths Armageddon Show” The finale which has been thousands of years in the making.
In fact one hears some have come from other galaxies, quite a trip for “just another human implosion”.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 12, 2005 at 8:42 PM
That play I want to see, Rabbit, is you and Lumens, and David in Canada, Eadora, et al.—- whacking trolls and ...whatever it is that you do to shills.
(It seems like every article here has a different group on it.)
ANYWAY, I like to study.
Personally, I’ve been forcing myself to read about torture and the CIA renditions. It hurts, Rabbit. It hurts bad and I want to use that hurt and put that hurt into a whack on the back of the neck of a troll. WHACK!!! One wack, neat and clean! And then (after an apprenticeship) I want to piss off a shill. It will put my inner universe in order, I can feel it in my bones. It whispers in the wind, ‘whack a troll’ , ‘whack a troll’.
As a matter of fact, with proper training, I think I can do some of what I did in the military, track trolls and direct our wackers to enemy targets.
Need to scamper to your site soon. Clouds in Blue Sky had my computer busy with DVD’s all day, he has a flu.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 12, 2005 at 9:23 PM
Mysterious and shiny witch.
A wonderful document, just another “godamned piece of paper”.
Desiderata
Like so many things, what is generally believed about it is false. Not found a few hundred years ago in St Pauls Cathedral, but no less inspired for that.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 12, 2005 at 10:35 PM
The hopper would ask things of Wiley, he is curious but will do so in less public spaces. Say hi to Rabbit in his field sometime, nobody except friends go there, it is fairly troll proof, without actually having a security fence.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 12, 2005 at 11:11 PM
Also yes we need Trackers, tracking is time consuming, and can be hard to keep up with when one works alone. rabbit is trying to build a network of loosely aligned Troll Hunters. (STM Hunters really, Shills, Trolls, Morons), but Morons are more of a personal amusement and often just a part of Troll hunting. The morons often flock about a battle ground too, they make up a large percentage of the web race after all. There is no automatic increase in wisdom or intelligence just because one learns to turn on a computer and post on a discussion thread.
Shills are serious business and usually end up being long term committments, campaigns which do not merely come and go, with the troll getting more and more strident and more and more desperate until the moment we are striving for, Implosion. POP and the Troll self destructs.
Not so Shills. They have no heart in the fight. They are determined not by their personal pride and beliefs, although these may play a part, but by a rigid, machinelike duty to a central message. A core code. The Shill code.
So we can best call ourselves Troll Hunters, but in the knowledge that we are no more limited to trolls as a Shark Fisherman is limited to Hammerheads.
Hammerhead was the best Troll metaphor I could come up within the three second limit rabbit has on all creative thought.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 12, 2005 at 11:22 PM
Nothing new, but another commentary.
An Empire Without Virtue: The Defenders of Torture
Paul Craig Roberts | December 12 2005
The spectacle of an American Secretary of State being sent to Europe to reassure America’s allies that the US does not torture prisoners has brought an end to America’s moral grandeur. America stands revealed before the world as just another unaccountable police state.
Condi Rice’s declaration that the Bush administration is too morally pure to engage in torture was just another transparent Bush administration deception. What is the point of Bush’s rendition policy that Rice was sent to Europe to defend if the purpose is not torture? Why else do CIA agents kidnap foreign nationals in foreign countries and fly them to secret prisons in other foreign countries?
The Bush administration defends its policy of “extraordinary rendition.” Everyone who has survived the policy has testified to experiencing brutal torture. Just read the account in the December 11 Sunday Observer (UK) of the Ethiopian student that the CIA kidnapped and tortured in Morocco.
The student, who speaks no Arabic, was brutally tortured for 18 months until he was forced to confess to conspiring with top al Qaeda chiefs and plotting with Padilla. While one American hand was forcing the tortured student to incriminate himself in the “Padilla plot,” the other American hand was dropping plot charges against Padilla!
The “Padilla plot” was nothing but a fantasy made up by American officials to justify their police state policies. Unlike the hapless Ethiopian student, Padilla is an American citizen. After suffering three years of illegal detention by the Bush administration, the law finally gave Padilla some protection, and the false charges that he intended to set off a radioactive bomb in an American city and blow up apartment houses were dropped.
Some Americans, horrified at what the Bush administration has done to their country, took hope in Europe’s uproar over Bush’s rendition/torture policy. Alas, European governments were shedding crocodile tears for show purposes only.
On December 11 the Telegraph (UK) reported on a European Union document in its possession that summarizes an EU-US meeting in Athens Greece on January 22, 2003 in which the EU agreed to “co-operation in removals.” The Telegraph reports that “EU officials confirmed that a full account was circulated to all member governments.”
So we have the entire Western world complicit in kidnapping and torture. The entire non-Western world surely notices the unbridgeable gap between the Bush administration’s immoral practices and Bush’s moral posturing about “freedom and democracy.” The prestige of the Western world is gone forever.
People will say anything under torture, which is why the practice and the “evidence” it provides were ruled inadmissible centuries ago. The great English jurist, William Blackstone, declared that torture determined guilt by the hardness of a man’s constitution and the sensibility of his nerves. Blackstone proudly declared that there was no place for the rack among the laws of England.
Everyone knows that confessions obtained under torture are worthless. By having them tortured, Stalin was able to get the heros of the Bolshevik Revolution to declare that they were guilty of striving to overthrow the communist revolution!
Why then do we have the disgusting spectacle of the president and vice president of the US and their neoconservative apologists, such as Charles Krauthammer, defending torture?
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 13, 2005 at 1:52 AM
In his defense of torture as a “moral duty,” Krauthammer assumes that the person being tortured is guilty and will reveal the truth under torture. There is no basis whatsoever for Krauthammer’s assumptions.
The reason that the Bush administration and the neocons defend torture is that, having launched an illegal invasion and created an American police state, they are desperate for “evidence” of the terrorist threat in order to justify their illegal and unconstitutional policies.
The only way to obtain this “evidence” is to torture people until they confess to the plots that are invented for them. A steady stream of confessed “terrorists” serves to justify the police state that has been created. Bush revealed the ploy when he asserted on December 10 that terrorist violence will be the result if Congress does not renew the Orwellian-named “Patriot Act” by December 31: “In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without that vital law for a single moment.”
What Bush declares to be a “vital law” is, in fact, the greatest assault on civil liberties in the history of our country.
Do Americans really want to give up the civil liberties granted to them by the US Constitution merely in order that the Bush administration can lord it over the Middle East, establish puppet governments over Muslim peoples, protect Israel from retribution for its crimes against Palestinians, and steal oil from Arabs and Persians?
If Americans do, what remains of their virtue?
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 13, 2005 at 1:53 AM
Rabbit has been waiting for this to turn up again.
Sorry it’s off topic again, but is still about DoD lies.
Death Count is Bullshit
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 13, 2005 at 4:10 AM
Quote from Post by GhostRabbit on Dec 12, 2005 at 10:42 PM
Posted by Eadora on Dec 13, 2005 at 6:05 AM
I would have to be trained Eadora, this is much different than a Korean-vintage mobile radar unit. It’s tactical stuff. Gotta loyne du taktiks.
Haven’t been to ‘Jesus General”. Is that JasonPappas link? He needs practice being withering. His dismissals are too cool,——Wait! I’m not here to train trolls.
I like your metaphor for what time does to you.
There was something I was going to say to Lumens but I forgot.
Rabbit, that was one of the articles I read yesterday. Sheesh. Someone said, or quoted someone who said something to the effect that the fact that we’re talking about torture as if it’s a valid and viable option, and not something purely evil is, at best, promoting a particular evil behavior.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 13, 2005 at 9:26 AM
Whatever it was you were going to say, Wiley, it got me thinking.
Jesus’ General is the fictive resident persona of the eponymous blog which is a parody and satire site devoted to lambasting the Religious Right. Sometimes he can be pretty funny. He’s got a host of regular commentators who are also adept at the art of parody.
They draw their share of trolls, naturally. One thing they do is, if a troll has a blog, to storm it with pointy barbs of ridicule. Trolling the trolls, so to say. This can be great fun.
Wikipedia has a lengthy and informative article with lots of links about Internet Trolls . Googling “internet trolls” gives a lot of stuff that can help in understanding the phenomenon. Skills and tactics are still pretty much an ‘on the job’ and autodidactic training program, as far as I know. It’s much more an art than a science, anyway.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 13, 2005 at 12:01 PM
Yoh Luminious!
Thanks for the straightening out.
I just bopped <in & then out> between some serious involvements.
Took a cursory glance. Hurriedly looked at the pictures.
And dumb old me took him serious.
I should know better than that.
I
Posted by Eadora on Dec 13, 2005 at 2:56 PM
I just checked out your
Posted by Eadora on Dec 13, 2005 at 3:15 PM
On the subject of Trolls, since it is off topic, and you ask Eadora, Rabbit will comment further at his field, where there are actual Troll threads. Rabbit is definately an autodidact, but David had studied the literature a bit. Rabbit prefers to do it, then read what others say about it, when one has some context to relate it all too. E-mail is sent.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 13, 2005 at 4:48 PM
... and in a way this is on topic .
Isn’t calling another person a troll or any other sort of slur inflammatory ?
Sounds like abuse and maybe even torture to me.
I recognize the term as part of the internet lingo but think it is more harmful than good.
There certainly are real trolls out there, I have seen them from afar at other corners of the internet, but never met one yet here at In These Times. Or maybe I have when I remember ... sheeps clothing but inside ravenous trolls
.... but I haven’t met one I didn’t like :)
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 13, 2005 at 8:29 PM
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. Matthew 10:16
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 13, 2005 at 8:32 PM
My aplogies for the homily but our In These Times hosts request that we be respectful in our comments, always worth repeating, and it is a tangent worthy of this discussion too.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 13, 2005 at 8:36 PM
David, as witheringly ascerbic and sarcastic as you can be (please note my sarcasm), I’ve never known you to be inflammatory or disruptive (barring the occasional timely comic relief). It may be you have yet to fully embrace your inner troll.
I love trolls, tam bien. I must confess it is a love sometimes tempered by the kind of love B. Kilban’s cats have for mousies.
I can’t truly express my effulgent delight, joy, and happiness to see J. Cline has returned to the fray.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 13, 2005 at 9:44 PM
Luminous Beauty, sarcasm noted and enjoyed immensely. Thank you.
Embrace Your Inner Troll , brilliant ! Maybe one day your coining of that phrase will make it into a Wikipedia entry.
Thanks for cat and mouse link. Yes, Jay is back. I am happy too.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 13, 2005 at 9:59 PM
Boy, is you a bunch a killjoys or what? I was so psyched for jousting, and so now the very existence of trolls is being drawn into question? What next? Are we going to draw the existence of propoganda into question? What if the speakers believe the lies they tell? Or agitprop? Is it all just an amazing coincidence? Look over there!!!! Michael Jackson!!! Forged documents. Lacy Petersen!!!
If sociopaths account for approximately three to five percent of a society, then in any city there will be one on every block. People who know not how to joust are easy marks.
I believe the biggest mistake the left has made is to insist that all people are basically good. There are certainly people who are not. And those people can leave an amazing swath of destruction behind them, and trauma, and nightmares, and chronic pain. And when they own the government? Oh I get so tired just thinking about it.
Have I been a “troll”? Have I been disruptive? I trust my fellow posters and the site managers will tell me if I offend? And how? I would, of course, take it very seriously.
(...sticks in the mud…)
pttthhhhth. (rasperries)
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 13, 2005 at 10:55 PM
Oh ... they exist ... in everyone of us :)
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 13, 2005 at 11:01 PM
...“troll” can also mean the inflammatory message itself posted by a troll or be a verb meaning to post such messages. “Trolling” (the gerund) is also commonly used to describe the activity.
From the wikipedia, David in Canada. Would you feel more comfortable if I used “troll” as a verb? I could easily point out many “trolls” as a verb in my own posts and still I think 99 out of a hundred people surveyed would say that my posts, and the posts of most of the posters on this thread are not characterized by trolling.
Ja? Niet? What?
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 13, 2005 at 11:07 PM
Another big mistake is to insist that all people are basically evil.
People are basically good and evil.
Wiley, you have been very nice. It has been warm and fuzzy here mostly of late. Sometimes the words exchanged have become unnecessarily and excessively inflammatory.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 13, 2005 at 11:17 PM
Sometimes the words exchanged here in the past have become unnecessarily and excessively inflammatory.
Wiley, use the word troll as you like. Speaking the language is fine. I think you may feel my words were singling you out, they were not. Just reminding everyone to be nice as much as is possible.
Jousting with civilized words is fine and more instructive than hurling cheap insults.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 13, 2005 at 11:31 PM
TORTURE TOPIC: After hearing an activist on Democracy Now asking U.S. citizens to take action and tell the government if you want NGOs to have access to Guantanamo. I sent this:
Why do you not let them in? What do you have to hide? Why does international law scare you so? What exactly is the toll you would have to pay if someone forced you to obey?
Clouds was afraid that I was sending it directly to the president’s e-mail. I told him that was the last place where it would be read.
If you want to chime in, I guess this is a good time to push for transparency. Torture thrives in the dark.
Lumens, ya got the location right. Happy duck place. People appear to be miserable, however.
I heard your good advice and will do my homework with a sense of adventure.
I just glanced at the Jesus General link. It made me flash back to my mother dragging me to Southern Baptist tent revivals and having to sing “I’m in the Lord’s Army”.
This is the first time I’ve seen that Uncle Sam version of Jesus Machismo articulated. Its might pass like the “Yes-Men” at the Air Force Academy.
Would you believe that the commander of the U.S. Space Command is General Lance Lord. I am not kidding.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 13, 2005 at 11:33 PM
Another big mistake is to insist that all people are basically evil.
That is certainly a big mistake—-that ‘born in sin’ kind of thing, or Freudian model of a human as a death force that must thwart itself in order to become decent.
People are basically good and evil.
See, this is where the left ain’t getting it, Dave. Some people are NOT basically good. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. They have no remorse. They never had it.
A person can only get a conscience and then lose it through rare and unfortunate brain damage or very specific tumors. Sociopaths were never imprinted. Not bonded. No empathy. Period. You can’t love an adult sociopath into anything.
You can bet that the CIA wants to give most of them jobs.
I understand the sociopath—-it’s a neurological tragedy. I don’t understand the people who fall for them en masse. And people on the American left fall for the wolf in sheep’s clothing like nobody’s business. I got sick of watching it. so tired of watching everybody learn the hard way.
I don’t want to be a part of the Collective Chump. I don’t want anybody with a conscience to be a chump. Look at the United States—-it takes twelve years of public education and incessant media bombardment to make this many chumps.
The quickness with which the majority of my peers will fall under a spell is breathtaking. I’ve seen adults suckered over and over again by a six year old child they had never met before! BABYTRICKS!!!
SCREAM.
Wiley, you have been very nice. It has been warm and fuzzy here mostly of late. Sometimes the words exchanged have become unnecessarily and excessively inflammatory.
Talk about “warm” and “fuzzy”—-I predict, from my record weight and my hithertofore unprecedented furiness that this is going to be one cold winter. And it’s going to cost at least 50% more per Kilowatt hour.
I hope we can be candid. Panache is always a work in progress. One person’s wall is another person’s fun and challenging hurdle.
I hope the human race lasts long enough to learn how to talk itself into a state of cool, calm, collectedness. We finally have a medium in which we can collectively think and rethink.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 13, 2005 at 11:57 PM
Funny you should mention that, Dave. I was thinking about saying something to the effect that I was going to go with my mystical troll slaying adventure spirit whether or not it is tilting at windmills.
Better than tilting at nothing as we totter on the edge of our species’ existence. Language itself is worthy of a strong defense. It is the scaffolding of our thought.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 14, 2005 at 12:05 AM
Like the frog that needed a kiss to turn into a prince ...
Maybe a troll needs a hug to turn into a friend.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 14, 2005 at 12:19 AM
cold winter ... A father and sons who are friends of mine….
Sons ” It’s cold in here. Turn on the heat. ”
Dad ” Put on a sweater. ”
Sons ” I am still cold. Turn on the heat. ”
Dad ” Do your chores. That will warm you up. ”
And in the summer ...
Sons ” It’s hot in here. ”
Dad ” Take off the sweater. ”
Sons ” I am still hot. ”
Dad ” Remember when you were cold last winter? Aren’t you ever happy? ”
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 14, 2005 at 12:34 AM
Rabbit had a big reply all typed up and the computer struck again. Still think it’s off topic here and since Dave has reposted all this on Rabbits Troll thread, he will start answering there. It is a bit flippant for a torture discussion thread.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 14, 2005 at 3:12 AM
Having said that Rabbit would add that Wiley has got it, and the implications. Not all people are able to get better, at least in the tinme allotted. Some are just going to have to go, so that someone at least can continue. It might as well be those who have a penchant for death and armageddons. Rabbit said it before about the Lemmings, shall see if he can dig it up, for relevance..
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 14, 2005 at 3:14 AM
And here it is Friends
THE TORTURE TREE
From is poisonous roots through it tentacle branches, to its predatory leaves.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/discuss/2414/P200/
Posted by Eadora on Dec 15, 2005 at 5:01 AM
I messed up the link agains sorry.
Try this one.
http://www.thenation.com/special/pdf/torture_tree.pdf
Posted by Eadora on Dec 15, 2005 at 5:04 AM
Yoh ! Friends
Were
Posted by Eadora on Dec 17, 2005 at 8:37 AM
Hi Eadora ... this thread got a little stale. We took it off topic into a discussion about trolls and the original topic of torture fizzled out.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 17, 2005 at 1:30 PM
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11325.htm
Eadora, I just finished reading those articles on ICH and will go read the article in the Nation next. It’s very difficult to talk about, and it’s sickening.
What can we do? If other governments in the world can’t stop this, how will the atomized U.S. stop it? Millions marching, and writing, and calling doesn’t matter because Congresspeople are listening to the lobbyists who pay them more than the taxpayers do.
This isn’t even “our government” they’re just (bad) manager is the kingdom of corporate feudalism. I feel like the peasants in “The Holy Grail”, talking about the King while working in the fields.
It’s scary to talk to people that think torture is o.k. and that the administration is really making us safer by “fighting terrorists over there”. One thing about the U.S. personality is that it is very blaze about other peoples’ pain and suffering and it is always seems to be afraid of everything but real, impending threats to its well being.
The scariness doesn’t keep me from talking to those who support it, but the evident futility of it does. If someone is gun-ho about torture, what can you say?
If you have found something that works, please share it—-anything to help break the spell will be appreciated.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 17, 2005 at 6:22 PM
Yoh Friends
A - OK!
We will be around!
I’m going to try your blog again Rabbit.
Sometime when I’m not runnin!
Keep on keepin on!
Posted by Eadora on Dec 17, 2005 at 8:04 PM
Rabbit wonders that Eadora got a returned e-mail. Maybe he is being fiddled with by the Offical Watchers?
Dave is right, the Torture topic was not something anybody seemed inclined to want to defend for long if at all. Oh they had their say: “it isn’t torture if we do it” “The USA doesn’t torture” and “they did it first”. But even the Nat the Rat declined to get into it.
Guess even the scumsucking bottom dwellers who support the Junta have a problem facing this one, even with all their craven denials and blatant mindless excuses, something about standing up for Torture is obviously galling them. Not that it worries their emperor who is happy to advocate “whatever it takes”. For what? presumably to bring about the big finale they think is their destiny.
Ha Ha, they think, we are just going to light the fuses and then jump into the chariots which will come down from the clowds to save us God will take us away just in the nick of time, so lets set the place on fire and then wait for him to come.
<i>“Look, up in the sky, what is it?”
“Is it a bird?”
” No they’re all dead. Is it a plane?”
“No they have run out of fuel and bombs”
“.....Its, yes it is God in his Chariot come to save us all, and take us away from this EVIL world. Ha ha…....................”
“So long suckers, heathen, see you stupid Muslims, and Budhists. Look at us Hindus, we are in the chariot and you are all going to burn in the mess we made for you. We’re the Christians we own the GOD and we got the Chariot. Ha ha”
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 18, 2005 at 3:45 AM
Ahhh, but such is their faith Rabbit, the ones at the top intend to spend that time in a granite bunker with a lake, stockpiles of food and medicine, and stock piles of people of their ilk. There are rumors that they can’t pry Cheney out of it sometimes.
Like pharoahs, they will be preserved in a sarcophagus—-albeit a really big one. Even if they survive the blasts, they will surely die, all sealed up nice and neat so that anthropologists from another galaxy could easily glean the names and numbers of the sleazy little morons that destroyed our race. Perhaps they will end up on display in an alien museum.
I can entertain the thought, anyway.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 18, 2005 at 1:02 PM
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
Revelation 6: 12-17
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 18, 2005 at 4:44 PM
Rabbit shall stand.
Until the sky falls on him.
Then he will kiss this game goodbye and find a new one.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 19, 2005 at 5:29 AM
What kind of drugs do you think John of Patmos was on?
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 19, 2005 at 9:08 AM
Hmm .. maybe he was high on life. Or death.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 19, 2005 at 10:01 AM
.. and I just realized that Eadora already posted the URL for this article as it appeared on Information Clearing House. Sorry for the repitition.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 19, 2005 at 11:18 AM
I think this John was the original anti-christ. He was step one in co-opting Christianity. Look at his description of heaven! As an adult I can only see a Roman wanking off when I read Revelations.
Besides, the world was still flat then and it only consisted of the Roman Empire as far as the Romans were concerned. He and his cohorts didn’t even have a concept of our planet, much less the destruction of it.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 19, 2005 at 2:09 PM
Oh, I think John was co-opted alright. Revelations can be read as an initiatory Mystery Play in the Gnostic tradition as well as a self congratulatory Prophesy of the Universal Church Triumphant.
That vision of Heaven is repeated in the symbolic representations of all spiritual traditions in the world of the Sacred Spot. The immanent presence of the sacred in the world. The cross representing the four cardinal points that define one’s place on Earth, inside a circle representing the infinite, complete, transcendent reality of the Cosmos to which that particular Spot relates. The principle, as above so below.
Meaning is depending on who’s doing the representing.
The astronomers of the day were well aware the Earth was a sphere. Ptolemy put it at the center of the universe, though, for ontological reasons a lot having to do with becoming a Christian. That caused a lot of grief later on for Galileo, Copernicus and especially Bruno.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 19, 2005 at 2:58 PM
David,
Have you ever run across THIS interpretation? Blew my socks off back in the ‘80’s.
Some disciple of Gurdjieff whose name I can’t recall off hand, as well.
Posted by luminous beauty on Dec 19, 2005 at 3:22 PM
Hmmm. That’s interesting Lumens. Had to check with the unabridged to put Ptolemy in time. Thanks for the correction.
Perhaps it’s the stink of sulpher from the fire and brimstone of my childhood, but I have always hated the way rapturists and other (il)literal fundamentalists use Revelations as justification for nuclear war and love of cataclysm.
Whatever the case, future prophets and teachers of the mysteries might want to consider how their work would be taken if it were taken literally and save the poetry for the initiated. Perhaps John did do that…oh don’ t care, I still hate Revelations.
Posted by wileywitch on Dec 19, 2005 at 4:58 PM
Luminous Beauty, Thanks for the lead. I will visit my local used bookstores to look for it. At the one store they will even find a used copy for me. They just found me a copy of C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters a couple weeks ago.
Wiley, I understand your concerns about Revelations and the like being used as justification for apocalyptic warmongering. Not my favorite either.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 19, 2005 at 5:52 PM
Funny that when someone says that liberals are hoping we lose the War, then libs jump up and say NO! we don’t want America to lose. But their actions say different.
Hard to believe that we have to many “traitors” ... yet another example of why “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder”.
Posted by tina1 on May 10, 2006 at 12:35 AM
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So far the new security laws have resulted in a very dead electrician on a train in Britain, some people who might have thought about bombing something in Australia, And a Slightly disturbed man shot dead, in America, along with the controlled demolition of two passengers suitcases.
We sure do have those freedom hating terrorists stumped. They probably can’t stop laughing long enough to organise any sort of action.
Wiley is working on her first cup of coffee ( “morning god”). This is kind of kicky—-describing herself in second person…no article…hmmmmm.
Wiley is happy to have practiced and——whoa!——not using the article because we don’t have a gender neutral pronoun! (Wiley does not often use so many exclamation points.)
Wiley wants a gender neutral pronoun. Other languages have one? Anyone found one? Wants to make one up? Knows a gender neutral in a foreign (furrin)—-well that’s chauvinistic, no? In a language other than English? Wiley was thinking zee, zoss, and zer. Then Wiley forgot what they were supposed to translate into.
Oh, yeah—- he/she, him/her his/hers.
more ‘morning god.’
Rabbit wants Wiley to read link that Rabbit thinks will piss Wiley off. Rabbit is probably right. Wiley go to work today, which means that Wiley must change out of payamas, get ready for work, and reach escape velocity. Wiley is happy she has a four hour window for “on time” at this job. Wiley is even happier at home in her payamas.
Wiley must hear Democracy now and one Fire on the Prairie segment before Wiley goes to work for LadyBug, or Wiley will get sporty underwear in a bunch.
Will check your link after Wiley posts this.
Long article. Will listen this morning. Read tonight.
Some Christians want to crucify everyone but themselves and complain about being martyrs having to do all this “hard work” of crucifying all these people.
Wiley,
The neuter pronoun in English is of course ‘it’. But if you are looking for a gender neutral pronoun there is a choice between ‘one’ as in ‘One is wondering whether one is entirely in possession of one’s wits’ which works in all persons or the delightfully supercillious first person imperial ‘we’ as in ‘We shan’t be discussing this with you any further, you scurrillous scumbag.’
We are sure one knows all this, but we suspect one’s daybreak deity is not answering one’s morning prayers too promptly. Hope the caffeine kicks in before you get to work.
That reminds of a third option common in Spanish to just drop the first person singular altogether and leave it implied.
As in this little ditty:
No tengo tabaco,
No tengo papel,
No tengo dinero,
Dammit to hell.
But Wabbit, people are offended by “it”. Tell someone “it sure is cute” referring to their infant. Heck, I’ve seen people get upset about their cats being referred to as “it”.
“One”—-in the Ummerican vernacular—-is not in the Ummericun vernacular. It is often considered to be pretentious or condescending.
Spanish, you silly rabbit doesn’t just imply the person, it’s built into the conjugation of their verbs.
No matter, though. I was just yakking.
Listened to Democracy Now. Today’s story was devoted to New Orleans victims, and the term “concentration camp” came up. Give it a listen—- it’s definitely on the Torturers R’ Us topic.
Now Wiley is calling Luminous Beauty Rabbit like Luminous Beauty was calling Jason Jordan yesterday. On another thread Rabbit is posting comments that belong on yet another thread.
One hopes that this is not a sympton of the scourge of old timers disease ravaging your once bright and beautiful minds. Or have you been smoking something?
It’s sad. Do you remember your own names ?
Hello, is there anyone in there?
Just nod if you can here me.
Is there anyone at home?
Just teasing. :)
You had me going there for a few seconds David in Canada—-I was starting to think you were really an a**hole.
Just teasing. ;)
My bright and beautiful mind is always being ravaged one way or another. Sorry, I mix up Lumens and Rabbit. Mixing up “Jordan” and “Jason” is more understandable. Both start with a “J”.
No, I haven’t been smoking anything.
To the topic of “torture”. Is normalizing trauma and collective punishment a form of torture?
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11258.htm
Another story about increased aerial bombing in Iraq. Is it fair to say the U.S. Air Force is terrorizing and torturing the people of Iraq?
AND FOR WHAT!?
If Ummericans suddenly found themselves in a failed state, oh how quickly they would be screaming for security.
Years of non-stop bombardment, harrassment, land mines, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, collective punishment, random arrests, torture, lack…
AND FOR WHAT?!
“And For What?!”
Why to rotect our freedoms and way of life of course.
Dubya said a Bad Thing!
Wiley wakes slowly, Fire signs burn bright at night, starting slow.
Rabbit starts with a Cappucino with Mrs Rabbit each morning, then an instant coffee or two once at work. Instant always tastes nasty after home ground Cino, but the Caffeine still works.
Remember the Rabby is under your feet, it is now 10am here but it is late night there. You are also still in yesterday, Rabbit is in your tomorrow.
His morning coffee is being drunk while you folk are going to bed.
My problem is I haven’t been smoking anything. Dangit!
Poor Lume.
Rabbit has just scored some of the new season’s goodness, and is putting the final touches to a bit of West Aussie Blonde , which is nice to sprinkle over the mix too.
He would gladly share but computer doesn’t yet have this option. A picture would hardly do it.
Bom Shiva anyway. ......................^^...................
Wow, you guys must be really rich.
Rabbit was hoping for a few plants for his office, a new mouse for his computer and a few new pairs of socks this christmas.
Blowing shotguns through cyberspace would be quite the bonding exercise. You could have tasting parties.
We must be something. We’s about to be really broke. The United States in Chapter 11, not allowing individuals to declare bankruptcy. Having them work it off in government camps. My model of the U.S. after the party’s over is one third dying in the first two weeks from discomfort and inconvenience, and then another third preying on the third who are trying to deal with it!
Where are these huge sums of money going to Halliburton, et al, coming from anway? Opium sales?
Bush did say a really bad thing; but he could always afford more than the Constitution could give him anway, right?
Clouds in Blue Sky says that maybe someone will one day hand W. his Death Warrant and tell him not to worry—-it’s just “a goddamned piece of paper”.
I’ve known Marine officers whose interpretation of their oath to defend the Constitution is not to defend the concepts inherent in it, but the physical document itself. These guys must be kinda pissed.
LOL, Lumens. Officers, you say? Someone would really have to be “educated” I guess to think something that stupid. It’s understandable that these guys are killed by their own “men” in wartime.
In one of my units we regularly elected an officer as “the most likely to be shot by his own men in a war zone”. Air Force officers sometimes appeared to me to be doing a lot of acid, but thinking that—-nahhhh——I can’t even think that.
Do you think these officers ever got smart enough to wonder why they were sent into so many war zones that were such a great distance from our cherished document?
They really made pretty good sense in a purely military sort of way. It’s hard to establish a defensive perimeter around an idea. You gotta have some kind of physical point of reference. Regimental colors have provided this from time memorial. Not stupid so much as unimaginative. There are way too many otherwise intelligent people who only see the denotative and have no room for the connotative.
They really made pretty good sense in a purely military sort of way.
May I suggest that it made sense in a purely <u>territorial</u> way, and that a military operates or should operate on a strategy that is formulated upon some fairly complex and abstract issues.
Tactics is where you get into pointing at objects, throwing up perimeters (doesn’t that sound painful?), and taking aim.
I wonder if the Marines you know are in tactical units.
Not stupid so much as unimaginative. There are way too many otherwise intelligent people who only see the denotative and have no room for the connotative.
Could you go more into this topic, Lumens?
Yoh! Rabbit!
I see yer still smokin the skunks out of there holes!!
Kudos to Yah “mon ami”
Yoh! Rabbit!
I see your still smokin the skunks out of their holes.
Kudos mon ami.
Hi Eadora
Good to see you around these parts again. See we have found a nice Witch to join the party, yet all the game has run away, except Natty of course, she’s still slinking about in the background.
BTW Rabbit has a little bloggy thing these days, but it isn’t much. More of a home base, where he works on things with the odd bit of input.
Lumens, (better Witch nomenclature), dost thou mean theat the apes are seeing the word but not the meaning?
“They draw near to me with their lips, yet their hearts are far from me”?
Talking about smoking the Skunk, this latest weed smells like Skunk but looks like Buddha. Still dry is it?
<a href=“http://tinyurl.com/99rjd”> To much demand. The idea of Cyber shotguns is interesting. Rabbit wonders how long before we can do such things? If the race can stay afloat and focused, we might be able to start things like that within the decade, two at most I reckon. They have already successfully “teleported” a single electron I think, maybe a whole atom. OK not much buzz in an atom of anything, and THC is a complex molecule. But it is good to have a goal.
Dumb Rabbit.
Maybe this is why? Too much demand maybe?
Oz is probably similar stats.
Hey, Eadora, do you know this
<a >Jason Pappas?</a>
Thinks I saw him on past threads on ITT. You have been around longer than Rabbit, at least on ITT, not so?
Again.
Jason Pappas?
Not so fast Rabbit, slow down the button pushing.
For Lumen especially, but all those who would join us in a better world.
Have you seen this John Lennon Interview?
Back on topic, the following article Rabbit just posted on WP thread as a link. Thinks it is good enough to be cut and pasted, mostly.
cont…...........
Source
Really it is all so very familiar. It is the face of the Trolls and Shills, the nature of the non-debate we are forced to endure when attempting to engage the Morons. Such a genius plan, they have removed the reason from people’s lives, without reason there can be no avoiding conflict, if just once the idea of a demon can be implanted.
Such a primitive state of existence, and awareness.
It occurs to Rabbit that the Human Race is becoming polarised about two distinct forms of humanity.
One is still ruled by ancient fears and prejudices, unable to concieve of their own intrinsic connection to all of life thus with no understanding of the consequences of thought and action. These people are self righteous, illogical and capable of convincing themselves of anything in order to avoid confronting the reality that they are not the center of the universe.
The other part of the race, appear to be rapidly evolving on a pane of awareness and ultimate spirituality, often without even noticing, because this has nothing to do with religion. The spirituality comes form the full realisation that one is not the center of the universe, but rather an integral part of it. The responsibility to the world which flows out from that understanding is possibly a large enough leap forward in human evolution, to be the new age of understanding which has been long anticipated by some.
.................................................^^..............................................
OK, there was a lot more after that, but Rabbit decided it is time to take this off topic but on topic line of thought elsewhere.
Not a good idea to leave such as the next bit lying around for Trolls to find. This is not an ad, but an invitation for any open minded ones to follow Rabbit’s reasoning on what may be no more than a whimsy. You knows where to find Rabbit’s burrow.
Damn, my well thought out reply to Wiley didn’t go through, damn it.
Anyhow Wiley, I’d rather hear what you think I meant. Rabbit’s idea was interesting. “Draw near to me with your lips…”
A real shotgun hit is the best way of interfacing.
Quote the Rabbit! Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 10, 2005 at 7:29 PM
“Talking about smoking the Skunk, this latest weed smells like Skunk but looks like Buddha”
Yoh! Ho Ho Mon Ami!
I bean beeting my brains out in Russia.
Yoh “Luminous Beauty”
Make your copy on your “Word Processor”
This site is software unfreindly”
Copy or WP on to the site.
You may have to post once or twice before the damd thing takes.
Yoh Eudora
I know. I usually save before I post. I just got lazy, or stupid. (not in steve martin’s sense though. double darn!)
Oh what the heck.
Rabbit lost a pertinent post to electro-gremlins and it is late and many tokes into the evening. Enough to say long live life, life is strife and the time is rapidly approaching when Rabbit must go home to his…................missus.
There are way too many otherwise intelligent people who only see the denotative and have no room for the connotative.
Lumens,
Did you mean that otherwise intelligent people make the mistake of taking things too literally, and missing the finer points in the process?
Truth be told, I’ve been too lazy and forgetful to look up “denotative”. I’m not sure I know exactly what it means. My impression was that you were referring to people making judgements based on—-
Oh hell, I have to look that up.
Where’s my flashlight? Clouds in Blue Sky is sleeping.
Got it.
Muzak.
—-a classification instead of an understanding?
Still, after reading the defintions of both, I am not sure I understand——
——anything! AHHHHHHHHHH. Some daze I just can’t loyne.
Sorry you lost your well thought out reply. I hate it when that happens. It always feels strangely contrived to me to rewrite a post I just wrote and then lost. Have to remind myself that it isn’t repetetive to the addressed.
Maybe it come back to you and you send, hey?
Good luck to your lips.
Gonna go say “hi” to Eudora.
EADORA, hello. Wileywitch here. You seem like a social butterfly—-fun at parties——been around this block a while. Unlike Condi.
Ms. Rice may become the most reviled woman in human history. I wish she weren’t African-American, or at least hadn’t told anybody.
The lies, lies, lies, lies!
Wiley,
You got it on your first try. I’m so glad. I don’t think I could have put it that succinctly without seeming trite.
Hi Eadora, good to see you posting here again.
Luminous Beauty, is there another term for those otherwise intelligent people who cannot see the denotative and have no room for the connotative either?
Rhetorical question but I hope you, or anyone else for that matter, has an inspired answer for us. My thinking is along the lines of the protective stupidity that Orwell mentions here :
The alleged intelligence balanced with < protective stupidity </i>.And right now the butchers have their thumbs on the stupid side if the scale.
that the Party is infallible
the word of the United States is as good as gold
Wow, right from the playbook.
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days.
James 5:1-3
Creepy, isn’t it?
This is off topic, but I invite everyone who has a minute or two to kill, to scroll through one of my wordless walks to work.
http://home.comcast.net/~just.tina/walk2work_29nov05.htm
Nice photos Wiley,
I liked the ducks and the babbling brook best ... quack quack. Nice to see ducks and squirrels getting along. Here where I live the Stellar Jays and squirrels are always scolding one another.
The cloud photo at the end ... I see a face with a strong jawline.
Yoh Dave
Good to yak with you guys again. Don’t know for how long.
I’m just cruising around looking for a fight. As time allows.
Lookin for a
Many decades, Eudora. I was just searching for a quote by one of the Dulles bros. to the effect that Somoza may be an SOB, but he’s our SOB and found
THIS
Just a brief exposition on the fruits of the SOA.
p.s. Wiley, I enjoyed your photo walk, too. Is that central Oregon?
Eudora;
While you’re looking for a wingnut to beat up on you might like to make up a buncha
these. Deelish. ‘Speshly if’n ya outta herb, mon. I be havin’ much fun all afternoon with a certain Troll (really, that’s what he calls hisself) and his blog buddies over at Jesus’ General. You might like to join in.
Guys Jason Pappas (above), is an apparent junior Zionist and Muslim hating wingnut type. He also calls US Bush imitators. He has the appearance of a genuine full blown Troll and his own Blog is a small Troll cave. Rabbit is wacking them a bit for fun at the moment and highly recommends it.
Chasing down Trolls in their caves is wicked good fun, one can lurk what’s more and select your targets carefully. Not that rabbit has done so, he just jumped in with both feet after following the Troll’s link to his own rants as Proof of something.
Also Natty is still lurking and doing hit and run jobs, but she is the pits as are all Shills. No fun wacking someone who has no more heart in the battle than any mercenary.
Shill wacking is the pennace one must pay for having so much fun chasing down Trolls. It is a duty while the Trolls are for sport.
I hope this means you’re gonna let Nattie dangle for a while over at ‘It’s the War’, Rabbit. I’d like to see how much rope she lets out before she hangs herself.
Thanks for the pictures, Wiley.
Rabbit likes the Tree Rabbits with the Ducks.
Has anyone ever put the words evil squirrel into a search engine?
Squirrel pack kills dog.
That’s the idea Lume.
Rabbit got really spiteful and dumped a heap of the stuff she’d left behind at God squad, onto her snarky head it was easier than reading anymore of her crap. I think she’s dead meat, but since she is a Vampire its hard to tell, she has always smelled dead, metaphorically speaking.
The hope was that she would do a finale on this torture thread, just to present her in balance for the museum display.
DU….......911….......Torture.
Neat and tidy. All in one Shilly bundle.
Rabbit has become so contemptuous of her reason and mind that he was a bit too obvious in trying to trap her. Told her exactly what he was doing and why, but he did that to get her off DU thread in the end. Though the logic of why she should do it was still true for her own advantage, the obvious advantage to Rabbit never occurred to her until too late. She is more wary this time, but she showed she towed the official line in her short rebuttal, it can be used.
They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.
A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical.
Jesus, it also says it was a BIG dog. They have run out of pine cones so they start on dogs? Woh….....
..............................Not tree rabbits…....Tree Rats….....
Them’s some badass Russian furry-tailed rats, alright.
If you’re up for some trollwacking, Rabbit there’s a live one over at the ‘Real Case For Israel’ thread. Eudora’s whomping him pretty good. I gotta go beddy-bye so’s I can drive over to the beautiful Free Republic of Humboldt en la manana. Have fun.
THIS is a fine piece of writing on the overview of our current situation. I love John Ross’s & if I had the money for gas I’d run down to Mendocino just to shake his hand.
I’m still saving that Lennon/Ono interview until I can get the proper consciousness adjustment, Rabbit. It looks too delicious to just imbibe straight.
David in Canada,
The last words on that Jay link shook me up on the torture topic:
Stellar’s Jay will also dive bomb predators such as an owl sitting in a tree or a cat walking on the ground. This is called ‘mobbing’. This is a behavior common to many birds, and is usually done by a flock of birds, rather than an individual bird. Scientists believe mobbing has several functions:
1. to scare off predator.
2. to let other birds know a predator is in the area.
3. to protect young.
Earlier in the article, it referred to the Bluejay practice of “divebombing”, which reminded me of an incident I witnessed in a neighborhood in Austin years ago. I was watching two Jays and a cat from my kitchen window. There were two jays on two trees that were about twenty five feet apart. They took turns divebombing this cat stuck in the middle of a fenced-in yard. Simple manuevers perfectly timed. The cat was cowering and looked like he was about to go insane.
Oddly enough, at the time this was happening, it reminded me of the time my unit was “attacked” by A-10s while we were camping out in German woodland. At that time I said to myself, ‘F**k the game—-I want to SEE this!’ I was supposed to get a bead on the jet and yell “BANG!!” (no kidding) .
I saw it in slow motion. The fact that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen has kept me up on many nights. How horrible it would be to be a target of one of these beauties! What terror it would strike in the heart of someone who had met one during an attack and the aftermath. BTW, when the aircraft is right over you, you don’t hear a thing. You only hear the BOOM when the afterburners are on the horizon.
So, I’m thinking about that cat being attacked by the A-10 Jays that were keeping him from retreating and attacking him by turns, snatching a plug of hair each time they flew over the poor thing. This cat was going to rember this fight every time he took a bath for a long time.
Anyway, so much of our behavior is animal behavior, however enhanced by technology it may be. There is a somewhat natural urge to go a little overboard with the “stay away from my nest” manuevers. And in humans any and all instincts may be bastardized, convoluted, amplified, lost, corrupted, ad nauseum by our thought and cunning then enforced with the power of jet fuel, billions of man hours of work, massive amounts of metals and plastics, ad nauseum.
Yes. I am actually coming back to the topic of torture. It’s probably as old as sociopathy itself, but practiced in small isolated cases for most of human history. It was probably instituted with the city-state. Who else but government would have an office and staff dedicated to torture?
At some time in human history it became a tool of militaries and police, with the bureacracy and policies that come with the territory.
ANYWAY, in order to carry torture out on a large scale against people in their own nation, it is necessary to make it so they have no way out, or cannot see a way out, and so that others cannot come in to help them. It is also necessary to gang-up on them in artificial settings, so that victims feel like a minority in their own country. The people (whether incarcerated or not) need to be terrified in order for the torturers to take their time torturing.
There would be no U.S. troops torturing Iraqi’s in large numbers were it not for the bombing, and strafing, and mining, and missiles…
Torture seems to me to be more of an indulgence on the part of torturers than a useful military tactic. Torture is a bully putting firecrackers up a frog’s butt, because he can and because he likes to watch things die.
To make any allowance at all for torture is to open the door for pathological maniacs and beg them to come in. Give em an inch, they take a mile.
I would agree with Rabbit that torture should only be practiced on people who are in favor of it, but to the masochists, I say “No.”
Raise your hands if you anticipated groups of people turning up with their hands tied or cuffed behind their backs and a bullet in the back of each head when you first heard Negroponte’s name mentioned in connection with Iraq, or thought of him after seeing reports of his style of execution turning up all over Iraq.
Bet there are quite a few hands up out there.
Some people make me think there might be something to that anti-christ thing and that it has many minions.
Well said Wiley.
On the last point, as much as Rabbit is not prone to superstition, yet he is versed in some understandings which make for occultic knowledge.
Does this make sense to a witch? Put the words in one’s mind and feel the understanding come through.
This leaves me with but one conclusion on this anti-christ thing, and all the religious armageddon stuff. Dear the answer is obvious, and the virtual inescapability of the impending scenario is obvious to any fourth dimensional soul. (Rabbit has a rant from long since about fourth dimensional thinking. Ask and you shall recieve.)
We create our own reality You do know that don’t you? the most real thing is our soul, mind, spirit, whatever you want to call it. Everything else is a result of sentience.
The problem, the big one, is that this little scenario has replaced rational thinking and curiosity for far too many for far too long. This gives it quite a huge force of entity. Can you not percieve this beast? Rabbit can, he can sense it and it is becoming a very real thing. Get ready for some much more magnificent-beautiful sights yet. Of course what an Aries finds beautiful, is to others horror of horrors. Nothing like being right in the middle of an inferno to know you are alive.
Burn baby burn….........
Mwa Ha Ha!
Fire brimstone, trumpets in the bloody sky and some mighty destructive dudes on big scary horses will all be recognisable in their turn.
Wiley, it is Rabbit’s earnest belief we, the new breed of enlightened people have a future, we just have to wait for these stupid arseholes to burn, bomb and torture themselves into a total collapse, and then those of us who can, will pull oursleves out from under the rubble, and see if we can’t have another go.
The only thing which will stop this coming to pass in fairly short order, is a very large portion of the people who are currently living with their heads up their own butts, will need to evolve in a similar way to us. It is happening, and it’s a process which even appears to be accelerating of late. But will it be in time?
Rabbit isn’t optimistic about it as it happens. He expects the Four Horsemen and the Dragony bit first.
The play is about to begin, which is why all the watchers at the moment. Maybe some galactic ticketing agency is selling tickets to “Earths Armageddon Show” The finale which has been thousands of years in the making.
In fact one hears some have come from other galaxies, quite a trip for “just another human implosion”.
That play I want to see, Rabbit, is you and Lumens, and David in Canada, Eadora, et al.—- whacking trolls and ...whatever it is that you do to shills.
(It seems like every article here has a different group on it.)
ANYWAY, I like to study.
Personally, I’ve been forcing myself to read about torture and the CIA renditions. It hurts, Rabbit. It hurts bad and I want to use that hurt and put that hurt into a whack on the back of the neck of a troll. WHACK!!! One wack, neat and clean! And then (after an apprenticeship) I want to piss off a shill. It will put my inner universe in order, I can feel it in my bones. It whispers in the wind, ‘whack a troll’ , ‘whack a troll’.
As a matter of fact, with proper training, I think I can do some of what I did in the military, track trolls and direct our wackers to enemy targets.
Need to scamper to your site soon. Clouds in Blue Sky had my computer busy with DVD’s all day, he has a flu.
Mysterious and shiny witch.
A wonderful document, just another “godamned piece of paper”.
Desiderata
Like so many things, what is generally believed about it is false. Not found a few hundred years ago in St Pauls Cathedral, but no less inspired for that.
The hopper would ask things of Wiley, he is curious but will do so in less public spaces. Say hi to Rabbit in his field sometime, nobody except friends go there, it is fairly troll proof, without actually having a security fence.
Also yes we need Trackers, tracking is time consuming, and can be hard to keep up with when one works alone. rabbit is trying to build a network of loosely aligned Troll Hunters. (STM Hunters really, Shills, Trolls, Morons), but Morons are more of a personal amusement and often just a part of Troll hunting. The morons often flock about a battle ground too, they make up a large percentage of the web race after all. There is no automatic increase in wisdom or intelligence just because one learns to turn on a computer and post on a discussion thread.
Shills are serious business and usually end up being long term committments, campaigns which do not merely come and go, with the troll getting more and more strident and more and more desperate until the moment we are striving for, Implosion. POP and the Troll self destructs.
Not so Shills. They have no heart in the fight. They are determined not by their personal pride and beliefs, although these may play a part, but by a rigid, machinelike duty to a central message. A core code. The Shill code.
So we can best call ourselves Troll Hunters, but in the knowledge that we are no more limited to trolls as a Shark Fisherman is limited to Hammerheads.
Hammerhead was the best Troll metaphor I could come up within the three second limit rabbit has on all creative thought.
Nothing new, but another commentary.
Rabbit has been waiting for this to turn up again.
Sorry it’s off topic again, but is still about DoD lies.
Death Count is Bullshit
Quote from Post by GhostRabbit on Dec 12, 2005 at 10:42 PM
I would have to be trained Eadora, this is much different than a Korean-vintage mobile radar unit. It’s tactical stuff. Gotta loyne du taktiks.
Haven’t been to ‘Jesus General”. Is that JasonPappas link? He needs practice being withering. His dismissals are too cool,——Wait! I’m not here to train trolls.
I like your metaphor for what time does to you.
There was something I was going to say to Lumens but I forgot.
Rabbit, that was one of the articles I read yesterday. Sheesh. Someone said, or quoted someone who said something to the effect that the fact that we’re talking about torture as if it’s a valid and viable option, and not something purely evil is, at best, promoting a particular evil behavior.
Whatever it was you were going to say, Wiley, it got me thinking.
Jesus’ General is the fictive resident persona of the eponymous blog which is a parody and satire site devoted to lambasting the Religious Right. Sometimes he can be pretty funny. He’s got a host of regular commentators who are also adept at the art of parody.
They draw their share of trolls, naturally. One thing they do is, if a troll has a blog, to storm it with pointy barbs of ridicule. Trolling the trolls, so to say. This can be great fun.
Wikipedia has a lengthy and informative article with lots of links about Internet Trolls . Googling “internet trolls” gives a lot of stuff that can help in understanding the phenomenon. Skills and tactics are still pretty much an ‘on the job’ and autodidactic training program, as far as I know. It’s much more an art than a science, anyway.
Yoh Luminious!
Thanks for the straightening out.
I just bopped <in & then out> between some serious involvements.
Took a cursory glance. Hurriedly looked at the pictures.
And dumb old me took him serious.
I should know better than that.
I
I just checked out your
On the subject of Trolls, since it is off topic, and you ask Eadora, Rabbit will comment further at his field, where there are actual Troll threads. Rabbit is definately an autodidact, but David had studied the literature a bit. Rabbit prefers to do it, then read what others say about it, when one has some context to relate it all too. E-mail is sent.
<i>I don
... and in a way this is on topic .
Isn’t calling another person a troll or any other sort of slur inflammatory ?
Sounds like abuse and maybe even torture to me.
I recognize the term as part of the internet lingo but think it is more harmful than good.
There certainly are real trolls out there, I have seen them from afar at other corners of the internet, but never met one yet here at In These Times. Or maybe I have when I remember ... sheeps clothing but inside ravenous trolls
.... but I haven’t met one I didn’t like :)
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. Matthew 10:16
My aplogies for the homily but our In These Times hosts request that we be respectful in our comments, always worth repeating, and it is a tangent worthy of this discussion too.
David, as witheringly ascerbic and sarcastic as you can be (please note my sarcasm), I’ve never known you to be inflammatory or disruptive (barring the occasional timely comic relief). It may be you have yet to fully embrace your inner troll.
I love trolls, tam bien. I must confess it is a love sometimes tempered by the kind of love B. Kilban’s cats have for mousies.
I can’t truly express my effulgent delight, joy, and happiness to see J. Cline has returned to the fray.
Luminous Beauty, sarcasm noted and enjoyed immensely. Thank you.
Embrace Your Inner Troll , brilliant ! Maybe one day your coining of that phrase will make it into a Wikipedia entry.
Thanks for cat and mouse link. Yes, Jay is back. I am happy too.
Boy, is you a bunch a killjoys or what? I was so psyched for jousting, and so now the very existence of trolls is being drawn into question? What next? Are we going to draw the existence of propoganda into question? What if the speakers believe the lies they tell? Or agitprop? Is it all just an amazing coincidence? Look over there!!!! Michael Jackson!!! Forged documents. Lacy Petersen!!!
If sociopaths account for approximately three to five percent of a society, then in any city there will be one on every block. People who know not how to joust are easy marks.
I believe the biggest mistake the left has made is to insist that all people are basically good. There are certainly people who are not. And those people can leave an amazing swath of destruction behind them, and trauma, and nightmares, and chronic pain. And when they own the government? Oh I get so tired just thinking about it.
Have I been a “troll”? Have I been disruptive? I trust my fellow posters and the site managers will tell me if I offend? And how? I would, of course, take it very seriously.
(...sticks in the mud…)
pttthhhhth. (rasperries)
Oh ... they exist ... in everyone of us :)
...“troll” can also mean the inflammatory message itself posted by a troll or be a verb meaning to post such messages. “Trolling” (the gerund) is also commonly used to describe the activity.
From the wikipedia, David in Canada. Would you feel more comfortable if I used “troll” as a verb? I could easily point out many “trolls” as a verb in my own posts and still I think 99 out of a hundred people surveyed would say that my posts, and the posts of most of the posters on this thread are not characterized by trolling.
Ja? Niet? What?
Another big mistake is to insist that all people are basically evil.
People are basically good and evil.
Wiley, you have been very nice. It has been warm and fuzzy here mostly of late. Sometimes the words exchanged have become unnecessarily and excessively inflammatory.
Sometimes the words exchanged here in the past have become unnecessarily and excessively inflammatory.
Wiley, use the word troll as you like. Speaking the language is fine. I think you may feel my words were singling you out, they were not. Just reminding everyone to be nice as much as is possible.
Jousting with civilized words is fine and more instructive than hurling cheap insults.
TORTURE TOPIC: After hearing an activist on Democracy Now asking U.S. citizens to take action and tell the government if you want NGOs to have access to Guantanamo. I sent this:
Why do you not let them in? What do you have to hide? Why does international law scare you so? What exactly is the toll you would have to pay if someone forced you to obey?
Clouds was afraid that I was sending it directly to the president’s e-mail. I told him that was the last place where it would be read.
If you want to chime in, I guess this is a good time to push for transparency. Torture thrives in the dark.
Lumens, ya got the location right. Happy duck place. People appear to be miserable, however.
I heard your good advice and will do my homework with a sense of adventure.
I just glanced at the Jesus General link. It made me flash back to my mother dragging me to Southern Baptist tent revivals and having to sing “I’m in the Lord’s Army”.
This is the first time I’ve seen that Uncle Sam version of Jesus Machismo articulated. Its might pass like the “Yes-Men” at the Air Force Academy.
Would you believe that the commander of the U.S. Space Command is General Lance Lord. I am not kidding.
Wack a troll. Fine. Be sure it is a troll.
Be sure that you are not tilting at windmills.
Another big mistake is to insist that all people are basically evil.
That is certainly a big mistake—-that ‘born in sin’ kind of thing, or Freudian model of a human as a death force that must thwart itself in order to become decent.
People are basically good and evil.
See, this is where the left ain’t getting it, Dave. Some people are NOT basically good. They have no conscience. They have no empathy. They have no remorse. They never had it.
A person can only get a conscience and then lose it through rare and unfortunate brain damage or very specific tumors. Sociopaths were never imprinted. Not bonded. No empathy. Period. You can’t love an adult sociopath into anything.
You can bet that the CIA wants to give most of them jobs.
I understand the sociopath—-it’s a neurological tragedy. I don’t understand the people who fall for them en masse. And people on the American left fall for the wolf in sheep’s clothing like nobody’s business. I got sick of watching it. so tired of watching everybody learn the hard way.
I don’t want to be a part of the Collective Chump. I don’t want anybody with a conscience to be a chump. Look at the United States—-it takes twelve years of public education and incessant media bombardment to make this many chumps.
The quickness with which the majority of my peers will fall under a spell is breathtaking. I’ve seen adults suckered over and over again by a six year old child they had never met before! BABYTRICKS!!!
SCREAM.
Wiley, you have been very nice. It has been warm and fuzzy here mostly of late. Sometimes the words exchanged have become unnecessarily and excessively inflammatory.
Talk about “warm” and “fuzzy”—-I predict, from my record weight and my hithertofore unprecedented furiness that this is going to be one cold winter. And it’s going to cost at least 50% more per Kilowatt hour.
I hope we can be candid. Panache is always a work in progress. One person’s wall is another person’s fun and challenging hurdle.
I hope the human race lasts long enough to learn how to talk itself into a state of cool, calm, collectedness. We finally have a medium in which we can collectively think and rethink.
Funny you should mention that, Dave. I was thinking about saying something to the effect that I was going to go with my mystical troll slaying adventure spirit whether or not it is tilting at windmills.
Better than tilting at nothing as we totter on the edge of our species’ existence. Language itself is worthy of a strong defense. It is the scaffolding of our thought.
Like the frog that needed a kiss to turn into a prince ...
Maybe a troll needs a hug to turn into a friend.
cold winter ... A father and sons who are friends of mine….
Sons ” It’s cold in here. Turn on the heat. ”
Dad ” Put on a sweater. ”
Sons ” I am still cold. Turn on the heat. ”
Dad ” Do your chores. That will warm you up. ”
And in the summer ...
Sons ” It’s hot in here. ”
Dad ” Take off the sweater. ”
Sons ” I am still hot. ”
Dad ” Remember when you were cold last winter? Aren’t you ever happy? ”
Rabbit had a big reply all typed up and the computer struck again. Still think it’s off topic here and since Dave has reposted all this on Rabbits Troll thread, he will start answering there. It is a bit flippant for a torture discussion thread.
Having said that Rabbit would add that Wiley has got it, and the implications. Not all people are able to get better, at least in the tinme allotted. Some are just going to have to go, so that someone at least can continue. It might as well be those who have a penchant for death and armageddons. Rabbit said it before about the Lemmings, shall see if he can dig it up, for relevance..
And here it is Friends
THE TORTURE TREE
From is poisonous roots through it tentacle branches, to its predatory leaves.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/discuss/2414/P200/
I messed up the link agains sorry.
Try this one.
http://www.thenation.com/special/pdf/torture_tree.pdf
Yoh ! Friends
Were
Hi Eadora ... this thread got a little stale. We took it off topic into a discussion about trolls and the original topic of torture fizzled out.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11325.htm
Eadora, I just finished reading those articles on ICH and will go read the article in the Nation next. It’s very difficult to talk about, and it’s sickening.
What can we do? If other governments in the world can’t stop this, how will the atomized U.S. stop it? Millions marching, and writing, and calling doesn’t matter because Congresspeople are listening to the lobbyists who pay them more than the taxpayers do.
This isn’t even “our government” they’re just (bad) manager is the kingdom of corporate feudalism. I feel like the peasants in “The Holy Grail”, talking about the King while working in the fields.
It’s scary to talk to people that think torture is o.k. and that the administration is really making us safer by “fighting terrorists over there”. One thing about the U.S. personality is that it is very blaze about other peoples’ pain and suffering and it is always seems to be afraid of everything but real, impending threats to its well being.
The scariness doesn’t keep me from talking to those who support it, but the evident futility of it does. If someone is gun-ho about torture, what can you say?
If you have found something that works, please share it—-anything to help break the spell will be appreciated.
Yoh Friends
A - OK!
We will be around!
I’m going to try your blog again Rabbit.
Sometime when I’m not runnin!
Keep on keepin on!
Rabbit wonders that Eadora got a returned e-mail. Maybe he is being fiddled with by the Offical Watchers?
Dave is right, the Torture topic was not something anybody seemed inclined to want to defend for long if at all. Oh they had their say: “it isn’t torture if we do it” “The USA doesn’t torture” and “they did it first”. But even the Nat the Rat declined to get into it.
Guess even the scumsucking bottom dwellers who support the Junta have a problem facing this one, even with all their craven denials and blatant mindless excuses, something about standing up for Torture is obviously galling them. Not that it worries their emperor who is happy to advocate “whatever it takes”. For what? presumably to bring about the big finale they think is their destiny.
Ha Ha, they think, we are just going to light the fuses and then jump into the chariots which will come down from the clowds to save us God will take us away just in the nick of time, so lets set the place on fire and then wait for him to come.
<i>“Look, up in the sky, what is it?”
“Is it a bird?”
” No they’re all dead. Is it a plane?”
“No they have run out of fuel and bombs”
“.....Its, yes it is God in his Chariot come to save us all, and take us away from this EVIL world. Ha ha…....................”
“So long suckers, heathen, see you stupid Muslims, and Budhists. Look at us Hindus, we are in the chariot and you are all going to burn in the mess we made for you. We’re the Christians we own the GOD and we got the Chariot. Ha ha”
Ahhh, but such is their faith Rabbit, the ones at the top intend to spend that time in a granite bunker with a lake, stockpiles of food and medicine, and stock piles of people of their ilk. There are rumors that they can’t pry Cheney out of it sometimes.
Like pharoahs, they will be preserved in a sarcophagus—-albeit a really big one. Even if they survive the blasts, they will surely die, all sealed up nice and neat so that anthropologists from another galaxy could easily glean the names and numbers of the sleazy little morons that destroyed our race. Perhaps they will end up on display in an alien museum.
I can entertain the thought, anyway.
And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
Revelation 6: 12-17
Rabbit shall stand.
Until the sky falls on him.
Then he will kiss this game goodbye and find a new one.
What kind of drugs do you think John of Patmos was on?
Hmm .. maybe he was high on life. Or death.
Fun Bits About American Torture
.. and I just realized that Eadora already posted the URL for this article as it appeared on Information Clearing House. Sorry for the repitition.
I think this John was the original anti-christ. He was step one in co-opting Christianity. Look at his description of heaven! As an adult I can only see a Roman wanking off when I read Revelations.
Besides, the world was still flat then and it only consisted of the Roman Empire as far as the Romans were concerned. He and his cohorts didn’t even have a concept of our planet, much less the destruction of it.
The Book of Revelation is very controversial.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ ... unto his servant John
Oh, I think John was co-opted alright. Revelations can be read as an initiatory Mystery Play in the Gnostic tradition as well as a self congratulatory Prophesy of the Universal Church Triumphant.
That vision of Heaven is repeated in the symbolic representations of all spiritual traditions in the world of the Sacred Spot. The immanent presence of the sacred in the world. The cross representing the four cardinal points that define one’s place on Earth, inside a circle representing the infinite, complete, transcendent reality of the Cosmos to which that particular Spot relates. The principle, as above so below.
Meaning is depending on who’s doing the representing.
The astronomers of the day were well aware the Earth was a sphere. Ptolemy put it at the center of the universe, though, for ontological reasons a lot having to do with becoming a Christian. That caused a lot of grief later on for Galileo, Copernicus and especially Bruno.
David,
Have you ever run across THIS interpretation? Blew my socks off back in the ‘80’s.
Some disciple of Gurdjieff whose name I can’t recall off hand, as well.
Hmmm. That’s interesting Lumens. Had to check with the unabridged to put Ptolemy in time. Thanks for the correction.
Perhaps it’s the stink of sulpher from the fire and brimstone of my childhood, but I have always hated the way rapturists and other (il)literal fundamentalists use Revelations as justification for nuclear war and love of cataclysm.
Whatever the case, future prophets and teachers of the mysteries might want to consider how their work would be taken if it were taken literally and save the poetry for the initiated. Perhaps John did do that…oh don’ t care, I still hate Revelations.
Luminous Beauty, Thanks for the lead. I will visit my local used bookstores to look for it. At the one store they will even find a used copy for me. They just found me a copy of C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters a couple weeks ago.
Wiley, I understand your concerns about Revelations and the like being used as justification for apocalyptic warmongering. Not my favorite either.
Funny that when someone says that liberals are hoping we lose the War, then libs jump up and say NO! we don’t want America to lose. But their actions say different.
Hard to believe that we have to many “traitors” ... yet another example of why “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder”.
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