Recently aired on British TV, here is a very interesting documentary about the original UK street artist King Robbo and the ongoing graffiti war between him and Banksy. This short also features interviews with street artists Blek le Rat, Elate, Ben Eine and others. 
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| Photo: Israel National News |
“I want my vote back. This is a good man . . . but I don’t think the man is qualified to understand the structure and what business needs, which is to be well-informed. . . . Our President had two years of local experience, was born in Hawaii and never ran a business in his life.”
Jane Wells interviewed Simmons on CNBC and asked him what he thinks of President Obama, for whom Simmons voted and now regrets it. He answered, “If you have never been to the moon, you can’t issue policy about the moon. For the president to be sitting in Washington D.C. and saying, ‘Go back to your ‘67 borders in Israel' – how abut you live there and try to defend an indefensible border – nine miles wide?" “On one side, you got hundreds of millions of people who hate your guts. On the other side you got the Mediterranean. Unless you control the Golan Heights, it is an indefensible position. it is a nice idea, [but] when you grow up, you find out that life is not the way you imagine it. “President Obama means well - I think he actually is a good guy, He has no idea of what the world is like because he does not have to live there." Simmons also told the interviewer that “women are much brighter than we are. You should have thousands of babies.” He was born in Israel in 1949 as Chaim Witz and moved with his family to New York when at the age of eight. His Polish mother survived the Holocaust. He has written about the United States, "I wasn't born here. But I have a love for this country and its people that knows no bounds. I will forever be grateful to America for going into World War II, when it had nothing to gain, in a country that was far away... and rescued my mother from the Nazi German concentration camps. She is alive and I am alive because of America. And, if you have a problem with America, you have a problem with me.” Last March, he performed in a homecoming visit to Israel and said, "I'm Israeli. I'm a stranger in America.” He also said that artists who boycott Israel are "fools." |
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-=[ Ramblin’ Man]=-
I don’t mean to poke fun at such a serious topic, and I should add that I once seriously considered the same route, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that a NYC man yesterday jumped off his high rise building, plunged 40 stories, landed in the backseat area of a Dodge Charger after crashing through the windshield... and survived. Broken legs, critical condition.
When I made the commitment to jump, a strong wind from an early November Nor’easter knocked me on my skinny, seriously malnourished, drug addicted ass as I attempted to scale the Brooklyn Bridge’s pedestrian walkway (yes, a drama queen to the end, no regular rooftop for yours truly. I was going out in style, muthafuckas!). Some would say that the wind was a blessing or a gift from some God (who apparently had nothing better to do that day), but my state of mind was such that I considered the event the worst of insults: I was such a loser; I couldn’t even commit suicide successfully. I became convinced that with my luck, my suicide attempts would only manage to leave me crippled, so I stopped all thoughts of taking the short cut. I did try to get other people to do it for me, but that’s another story.
So today, as I reflect on this man's actions as well as my own, I have to wonder about his thoughts, his state of mind, and I have to wonder if he's regretting having survived his actions... I wish him some measure of serenity and clarity
Oh yeah, President Obama... his speech last night is now being eviscerated for not being celebratory enough by the same chickenhawk pundits and politicians who cooked the evidence in creating that led to the Mess in Mesopotamia in the first place. I’ll be honest and admit that I didn’t watch the speech, but I getting some chuckles from people like Chuckles the Clown (Charles Krauthammer), and that Wolfowitz twit (the latter stating that we should stay in Iraq, like, forever).
Well, people? How the fuck do we celebrate the cluster fuck now known as the
There will be more American and Iraqi lives needlessly sacrificed for a long time to come.
Speaking of evisceration and lies, Vanity Fair just published a must-read on Sarah Palin. “Erratic behavior and a pattern of lying matter little: ‘Such falsehoods never damage Palin’s credibility with her admirers, because information and ideology are incidental to this relationship.’” No surprise there (Duh!), but the article is worthwhile in that it documents beyond a shadow of a doubt that Palin and the Right are just a bunch of crazy muthafuckas with an deeply embedded aversion to reality testing.
While I’m on the reality-challenged brigade, let me mention that Beck’s Whitestock hate fest, taking place on the anniversary of the historic March on
“Whenever this issue of compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race 300 years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up.”
DANG! Additionally, the same people who call me a “race-baiter,” “race hustler,” and “plantation overseer,” would say the same about MLK. In fact, conservatives at the height of the civil rights movement, called MLK and other civil rights leaders, guess what? Socialists and commies!!! LOL! Which lends credence to the notion that the more things change, the more they stay the same. I would add (in paraphrase) that while it is true that history does repeat itself, it does first as tragedy and then as farce.
Finally, I won’t get into it as deeply as I should (perhaps at a later date), but they’re coming after social security -- again. Social Security, people, is a manufactured crisis. There is no death knell tolling for Social Security and with minor tweaks, it could go on perpetuity. Watch out for the Goobers coming after Social Security and for their bleats around the deficit. But those thoughts are for another day.
Well, that’s it. I probably had more thoughts to share, but in the process of thinking more thoughts, I forgot the ones I wanted to post here...
BTW, don’t think so much, it makes my dick itch.
Love,
Eddie
¡Hola! Everybody...
Yesterday was the anniversary of one the most horrible atrocities in human history: the dropping of the atomic bombs on
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The Tree of the Knowledge of good and Evil/ Hiroshima Maidens
60"x80" Oil on Canvass/ Wood, 2003
The central image of this painting is a representation of the tree of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The side panels are taken from displays in the Hiroshima Peace Museum showing the aftermath of the nuclear bombing of that city.
-=[ The
The Hiroshima Maidens is a group of twenty-five Japanese women who were seriously disfigured as young women as a result of the atom bomb dropped on
My curiosity piqued after listening to their talk, I investigated further and what I discovered wasn’t pretty, to say the least.
The accepted rationale for
Many nations have tested nuclear weapons, but only one has ever used them. That nation, of course, is the
How many lives would have been lost in such an invasion is not clear. While President Truman threw around figures from 500,000 -- one million dead, at least one historian wrote that the figures the military planners projected put the number at between 20,000-46,000. However, the disturbing issue here is not the discrepancy in numbers, but the fact that neither an invasion nor a nuclear attack was necessary to make
By June 1945, whole-scale bombing of
While it is true that some Japanese factions were resisting the notion of surrender, the leaders in charge were on the verge of calling it quits. The only point deterring surrender was the Japanese concern that the emperor would be allowed to maintain his title. The
A
Another 1946 document, a recently discovered secret intelligence study by the army’s top planning and operations group came to the same conclusion: an invasion “would not have been necessary” and the A-bomb was not decisive in ending the war.
This view wasn’t some radical lefty bullshit; key military leaders echoed it. “The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender… In being the first to use [the atomic bomb] we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages,” said William D. Leahy, who was the president’s Chief of Staff and the nation’s senior military officer. The same opinion was offered by Dwight D. Eisenhower and Winston Churchill.
This isn’t hindsight, these assessments were known by US policy makers before they chose to drop the bombs. In fact, in July, American intelligence had intercepted a cable from Japanese foreign Minister Shigenori
There was no attempt on behalf of the Truman administration to demand surrender. No show of power by, say, dropping the bomb on an unpopulated island. There was no careful consideration. This wasn’t the act of last resort.
So, if there was no true imperative to drop the bombs then why?
There are several theories, but the one I adhere to is that the
The bombs were more of an opening shot in a Cold War that would last for decades.
I write all this because we should never forget... We all should know all those innocent men, women, and children didn’t need to die, as those in power would have us believe.
Love,
Eddie
Resources
Alperovitz, G. (1995) The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth. (
Zinn, H. (1991). A people's history of the United States: 1492-present.
Loewen, J. W. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong New York: Touchstone Books.
Please justify the war, or any other war, described below. Even WWII (a supposedly just war) wasn’t necessary (nor just). But we like to talk about it as the “good” war, and an “unavoidable” war. And that’s a bunch of bullshit...
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-=[ The Forgotten War ]=-
The first casualty of war is the truth...
Euphemistically described as a conflict, the
In one of the most isolated and dangerous places on earth, in the conflict dubbed “
Unlike Matt Taibbi, who recently wrote of the fracturing of the Left, I never fooled myself into thinking Obama a progressive. In fact, I think Taibbi's premise is flawed: Obama never was and never will be a progressive by any stretch. Still, I have to grant that many progressives voted for Obama in the hopes that he would veer leftward, even if just a little bit. And believe me, actually framing health care as a right rather than privilege is deemed left only in
When President Obama introduced his “just war” doctrine to rationalize his accepting a Nobel Peace Prize while escalating the war on Afghanistan, he cited mass rape in the Congo as one reason wars are needed. What he didn’t explain is causes of this war and the abuse -- and how the
Don’t take my word for it. Human Rights Watch has a full chronology online so you can see for yourself how one crisis led to another...
It’s time for Obama to start walking the walk and not merely talking the talk. So far, his leadership on health care reform was abominable. His responses to the economic mess has amounted to “more of the same” -- help the economic elites and pray they rain piss on the rest of us (aka Reaganomics). As it stands, he’s now merely a darker (though admittedly more articulate) version of the Worst President in History.
Get it together brother. You may have inherited a large portion of this mess, but your actions today will assure you will own it a year or two down the road.
Yours,
Eddie
Today, I’m turning over my blog to someone I have great admiration for and consider a mentor -- historian Howard Zinn. I get sick listening to cowards like Cheney talking about courage -- he’s like the many people who never fought in a war (he filed for and got seven deferments during the Vietnam War) and think nothing of sending other people’s children to senseless death.
It’s almost as if it’s inevitable that this nation sends its expendable youth to die in wars but not for national security, honor, or the rights of free people anywhere. Let’s be clear: war is always for wealth and power and the privileged get to stay home safe and in comfort letting others do their dying. Then they shamelessly hold a day of remembrance honoring them for their sacrifice. This is the long tradition of a nation that since its inception in 1776 has been at war with one or more adversaries every year without exception from that time to the present.
For once let us honor the fallen by attempting to speak truth to power instead of mouthing empty flag-waving jingoisms.
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Published on June 2, 1976 in the
-=[ Whom Will We Honor Memorial Day? ]=-
by Howard Zinn
Memorial Day will be celebrated... by the usual betrayal of the dead, by the hypocritical patriotism of the politicians and contractors preparing for more wars, more graves to receive more flowers on future Memorial Days. The memory of the dead deserves a different dedication. To peace, to defiance of governments.
In 1974, I was invited by Tom Winship, the editor of the Boston Globe, who had been bold enough in 1971 to print part of the top secret Pentagon Papers on the history of the Vietnam War, to write a bi-weekly column for the op-ed page of the newspaper. I did that for about a year and a half. The column below appeared June 2, 1976, in connection with that year's Memorial Day. After it appeared, my column was canceled.
Memorial Day will be celebrated as usual, by high-speed collisions of automobiles and bodies strewn on highways and the sound of ambulance sirens throughout the land.
It will also be celebrated by the display of flags, the sound of bugles and drums, by parades and speeches and unthinking applause.
It will be celebrated by giant corporations, which make guns, bombs, fighter planes, aircraft carriers and an endless assortment of military junk and which await the $100 billion in contracts to be approved soon by Congress and the President.
There was a young woman in
No politician who voted funds for war, no business contractor for the military, no general who ordered young men into battle, no FBI man who spied on anti-war activities, should be invited to public ceremonies on this sacred day. Let the dead of past wars he honored. Let those who live pledge themselves never to embark on mass slaughter again.
"The shell had his number on it. The blood ran into the ground...Where his chest ought to have been they pinned the Congressional Medal, the DSC, the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, The Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of
Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies."
Those are the concluding lines of John Dos Passos angry novel 1919. Let us honor him on Memorial Day.
And also Thoreau, who went to jail to protest the Mexican War.
And Mark Twain, who denounced our war against the Filipinos at the turn of the century.
And I.F. Stone, who virtually alone among newspaper editors exposed the fraud and brutality of the Korean War.
Let us honor Martin Luther King, who refused the enticements of the White House, and the cautions of associates, and thundered against the war in
Memorial Day should be a day for putting flowers on graves and planting trees. Also, for destroying the weapons of death that endanger us more than they protect us, that waste our resources and threaten our children and grandchildren.
On Memorial Day we should take note that, in the name of "defense," our taxes have been used to spend a quarter of a billion dollars on a helicopter assault ship called "the biggest floating lemon," which was accepted by the Navy although it had over 2,000 major defects at the time of its trial cruise.
Meanwhile, there is such a shortage of housing that millions live in dilapidated sections of our cities and millions more are forced to pay high rents or high interest rates on their mortgages. There's 90 billion for the B1 bomber, but people don't have money to pay hospital bills.
We must be practical, say those whose practicality has consisted of a war every generation. We mustn't deplete our defenses. Say those who have depleted our youth, stolen our resources. In the end, it is living people, not corpses, creative energy, not destructive rage, which are our only real defense, not just against other governments trying to kill us, but against our own, also trying to kill us.
Let us not set out, this Memorial Day, on the same old drunken ride to death.
Resources
Loewen, J. W. (1996). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong ( 1 ed.).
Zinn, H. (1995). A people's history of the
Zinn, H. (1995). You can't be neutral on a moving train: A personal history of our times.
::blank stare::
Another week, another dollar. I’m hoping to take some time off during the holidays...
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-=[ Silent Night ]=-
As everyone who bothers to read already knows, I love stories. I come from a long line of storytellers (no smart remarks! LOL!). At one time, the responsibility of storytelling fell upon the shoulders of those we loved – those who had our interests at heart. Today, our stories are told by highly paid, hair-sprayed teleprompt readers following the dictates of their corporate masters. They are otherwise known as journalists, TV news reporters, and then there are, of course, the movie and video directors, etc.
Believe me, they don’t give a damn about you or me, or the “truth” (whatever that is). Their God is the bottom line -- money. Just between you and me, the vast majority of people yesterday did not kill someone, set fire to their children, committed a series of rapes, or slapped his or her wife or husband. Most of us didn’t even trample someone else in a mad rush to buy a video game. While crime stats decrease, the news reporting on crime increases because those in charge believe violence sells. I once got in trouble at my job for suggesting that we set a bare-breasted woman on fire if we wanted to garner media attention for affordable housing. If it bleeds, it leads, as the dictum goes.
The fact of the matter is that our world – our reality – has very little resemblance to the noise we see on the idiot box. Nevertheless, we buy into it. Yes “we” – that means you too. It means that your children are buying into whatever the media is selling these days -- most often sex mixed with the message to consume: buy! buy! buy! It’s ironic how conservatives are so repressed about the human body, but fail to see the obscenity in the brainwashing (and medicating) of our youth to become mindless consumers. This is the God of the newer, improved Christianity. It’s Corporate Christianity and will solve all the world’s problems as soon as we take all other leaders, shoot them in public (preferably during prime time, EST), and convert them.
So, today, I will tell the story and I hope that you, in turn, tell the story to someone else. Maybe, just maybe, we can convince our children to sit at the table and hear stories just once – just for today. I guarantee you our stories are infinitely more interesting than anything on “reality” TV. I’m sayin’, am I the only one that sees the irony in such a phrase? Reality TV?!!
May your Higher Power save you… and here’s my story...
What we preserve in the larger human story determines what we believe is possible in the world.
On Christmas Eve in 1914, two lines of homesick soldiers, one British, one German, were dug into the trenches on the Western Front in the middle of World War I. Now, you have to understand that WWI was considered the “war to end all wars.” It was one of the vicious wars because in those days, you had to look your enemy in the eye as you stabbed or shot him. You were as likely to die from starvation, exposure, and disease as you were at the hands of the enemy. So, there are these two front lines and between them was a fire zone called no-man’s land. On this moonlit, snowy night in a God-forsaken landscape, the Germans lifted army issued Christmas trees sparkling with tiny candles over the edge of their trenches and set them in plain sight.
The British shouted and cheered with delight. The Germans began to sing “Stille Nacht… ”and the British began to sing along with “Silent Night.” This encouraged the Germans and they set down their guns in the moonlight and heaved themselves from their trenches carrying candles, cake, and cigars toward their enemies. The British responded in kind, carrying steamed pudding and cigarettes.
These men met in the middle of the forbidden zone, exchanged gifts, sang carols, and played soccer. This seemingly spontaneous truce eventually extended for hundreds of miles among thousands of soldiers. The really funny thing was, having seen each other’s humanity, they could no longer shoot each other…
The war essentially stopped.
Horrified, commanders on both sides had to transfer thousands of men to new positions until the enemy became faceless again, something killable, not a human being -- not a brother.
Almost a hundred years later, scholars are still studying this event, reading soldier’s journals and letters that refer to it, seeking to understand “the breakdown of the military mindset,” or seeking to understand how a spontaneous peace movement could spread even in the cold heart of war.
And that’s my story today. You will hear countless other stories today. Stories of death and unspeakable cruelty. You will no doubt hear stories justifying, in the name of global economics or war, the starvation and killing of innocent men, women, and children. You will hear, in the name of the Free Market, that's reasonable to allow 3 million jobs to disappear. You will see or read approximately 80,000 messages today bombarding you with the agenda to get you to buy something -- most of it will fly under the radar of your awareness. But if you remember anything, remember this story because it is true and it speaks to who we really are and the essence of what it means to be a human being.
Love,
Eddie
