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In celebration of the Nobel Peace prize going to a United States president presiding over two occupations in which an insurgency still thrives and no plan has yet emerged, let us recall that the award was the creation of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, a weapons manufacturer and the inventor of dynamite, who in 1888 read his own obituary mistakenly published by a French newspaper and decided he did not want to be recorded in the history books as “the merchant of death.” Nobel was lauded indirectly just three years earlier than that in the February 21, 1885 edition of the Marxist publication The Alarm by Albert Parsons, one of the Haymarket anarchists, who wrote: “Dynamite! Of all the good stuff, that is the stuff! Stuff several pounds of this sublime stuff into an inch pipe … plug up both ends, insert a cap with a fuse attached, place this in the immediate vicinity of a lot of rich loafers who live by the sweat of other people’s brows, and light the fuse. A most cheerful and gratifying result will follow. In giving dynamite to the downtrodden millions of the globe, science has done its best work.”
The prize always makes strange bedfellows. Thus far an a brief Google news search, those decrying President Obama’s award include nearly all the Republican party, a number of UK Tory pundits, right-wing pro-settlement Israelis, the conservative religious party of Pakistan, Hamas and the Taliban. Or maybe that makes some sense. At any rate, blowing holes in the moon with a couple rockets was a great way to celebrate.
“And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create,” says the guy who wants to be able to launch U.S. missiles from inside Europe.
via The White House – Blog Post – A New Year, A New Beginning.
Today’s mix involves the latest statement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who announced that the much touted $900 million in aid to Palestinians — after the weeks of Israeli bombs raining on Gaza — was now being held hostage over a demand for an unqualified statement on Israel’s right to exist. This comes as Israel gets its $30 billion package approved from Obama, par usual. I’m adding here some images of Gaza taken recently and posted on my friend Luma’s Facebook profile. Social network websites are a often a great, underestimated platform, squandered by most.
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To commemorate Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th president of America, The Guardian commissioned illustrators to depict the most momentous parts of his campaign speeches. Content aside, they point me to some pretty good typography out there to hunt down and add to my font collection. I post this one in honor of scientists everywhere who were ignored for eight years of George W Bush. This was one of my favorite of his statements while on the stump. We’ll see if it still rings true or not four years on, though. — Link
It’s a quite a stretch of road to cover, from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to the Rev. Rick Warren. I thinks it’s safe to say that soon-to-be-president Barack Obama has sure come a long way.
The president-elect, who has made sure that he and his staff make every attempt to erase his connection to Rev. Wright from public memory, recently taped Rev. Warren to deliver the invocation at his Jan 20 inauguration.
Let’s see, Obama’s former religious mentor has a history of civil rights activism, is openly critical of U.S. imperial ambitions and speaks on behalf of minorities, immigrants, the poor and the working class. Obama’s new favorite is an evangelical popular with the flat-earth crowd who wants to criminalize a woman’s right to abortion and sees gay marriage as akin to child abuse and incest. Interesting choice of association.
Democracy Now has a nifty interview with Max Blumenthal on the real Rick Warrens. Meanwhile, I think Bill Moyers had the best interview and profile piece on Jeremiah Wright during the whole Republican-inspired anti-Wright hate fest that scared the now president-elect into the arms of the right wing.
Religious affairs are somewhat of a perverse curiosity at this blog. The official editorial policy here is that a religious invocation of any kind at a government event is in defiance of the separation of church and state. Churchspeak is best left in the church where the rest of us don’t have to be harassed by it. Still, it would be interesting to be able to somehow peer into that alternate universe where Obama still had his spine and it was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright giving the inaugural invocation. At the very least, it might have been something inspirational instead of another blatant attempt to “reach out” to the Palin crowd.
This plus the staff appointments thus far leads one to consider if the Republicans didn’t find a way to win another election after all. But just when did the brain swap take place?
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“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
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