the moon's favors

2009-12-02T16:22:00.002-05:00

Only the change in the attitude of the individual is the beginning of the change in the psychology of the nation. ~CGJUNG (CW7,4, trans, mod.)

’DZAM LING CHI DANG YÜL K’AM ’DI DAG TU

In the world at large and in this region in particular,

NE MUG TS’ÖN SOG DUG NGÄL MING MI DRAG

May not even the names ‘sickness’, ‘despair’ and ‘war’ be heard.

CHÖ DEN SÖ NAM PÄL’JOR GONG DU ’PEL

May the meritorious qualities, honour and prosperity of those who act in accord with Dharma greatly increase,

TAG TU TRA SHI DE LEG P’ÜN TS’OG SHOG

And may there always be an absolute perfection of good fortune, happiness and auspicious circumstances.

Jñâna.
HH Düd'jom Rinpoche
English translation by Mike Dickman

peel me a grape

2009-11-29T21:39:00.002-05:00

Huzzah!

16

2009-11-28T20:14:00.002-05:00

I'm game.

2009-11-28T20:10:00.000-05:00

(Please. Feel free. Hurry!)

Beyond News From Nowhere!

Only The Super Rich Can Save us!

kill the ragheads; god will know his own

2009-11-28T15:25:00.001-05:00

alternet
Scahill and Olbermann on Blackwater: Murderous Crusaders for Christ
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 27, 2009 at 6:00 PM.

frequent AlterNet contributor discuss Blackwater on Keith Olbermann's show. And if you missed it this Tuesday, be sure to check out Jeremy's piece on the shady mercenary firm's secret war in Pakistan.

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The same people who gushed about the virtues of the free market, and the “slam dunk” WMDs in Iraq, get to air their wrongness every Sunday, while the ones who were right — the pro-regulation, anti-war crowd, are shut out of the conversation entirely.

2009-11-25T17:03:00.001-05:00

Like she says.

Allison Kilkenny: If Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn did Meet the Press

now marry this to Jeff Sharlet's "The Family"

2009-11-25T14:35:00.003-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Paving the road to hell. Palin scares me to death.

*********

Almost a decade ago, I began getting emails from a person I never knew and never did know about a group that was intent (yea, verily: hell-bent) on putting their version of Jesus into world power, a theocracy with its own peculiar convictions. I'd get 200 emails a day, which stories to watch, who to follow. And so all this long strange trip from then to now -- well -- no real surprise. But knowing doesn't stop a thing; information isn't always power. So please: pay attention. And if you're Rapture-bent and Palin and Billy and Hagee and Doug Coe appeal to you, understand that world is man created, and not the world you think it will be.

The nuns taught me that Jesus is there in anyone's eyes if I look for him: THAT is the meaning of incarnation. It's in your power now.

What beats my heart?
This wisdom that knows how to beat a heart:
it beats all hearts.
It's here right now — birthing in every breath
saying
Let peace begin
with me

one word they're leaving out here: China

2009-11-25T14:16:00.003-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

most popular news stories of the moment -- google news

2009-11-24T17:02:00.000-05:00

So this is what america finds important. all those stars exploding and dying, all those who suffered and sacrificed to bring us here. I'm so sorry.

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Company Hitches Car to "New Moon" Success

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understanding mammograpy

2009-11-24T13:49:00.000-05:00

excerpt, The trouble with mammograms

The detection of tumors that would never have caused trouble is known in the medical trade as overdiagnosis. It's a common problem with screening tests, which, by definition, aim to detect disease in people without symptoms.

Breast cancers generally behave in one of three ways. Some grow very aggressively and metastasize (i.e. spread to other tissues) long before any mammogram can detect them. Others grow more gradually and can be successfully treated if caught early. Still others grow so slowly that they'll never cause the woman a problem.

Autopsy studies have found undetected breast cancer in about 37% of women who died of some other cause. And a study of 42,238 Norwegian women published in November calculated that 22% of symptom-free cancers found on a screening mammogram naturally regressed on their own.

The problem is that, even under a microscope, it's impossible to distinguish these different types of cancer from one another, and mammograms are better at catching the less dangerous kinds.

Horowitz really off the deep-end

2009-11-23T21:27:00.010-05:00

He's really gotten shameful. It's so obvious that his ego has him by the balls. Beck, the pathetic walking wounded, watches him with eyes of such admiration. (When have Republicans ever supported labor, the things that brought us better wages, decent hours, safe working conditions, compensation for injury? When have they supported the working class? Womens' rights in the workplace? Fed aide to Education? Student loans? Clean air? On and on. Those are the things the Democrats have brought us; and yes, they do protect the "underdog.")

I watch Horowitz and Beck and wonder. What world do they want? Left to actually deal with problems, and offering only divisiveness / unity through fear and hate, how would they shape it?

They're shaping it now.

I'm used to the twisting (re mammography, my views here; and please know, I'm a cancer survivor, and x-rays may have contributed to my cancer), but looking at Frontpage Mag today to see who advertises there, we find a sidebar for a new book by Jaime Glazov, United in Hate.

Glazov, United in Hate.

What troubles me most is how very much the ad reminds me of posters from the Third Reich’s propaganda machine, the Jewish "enemy." (And how is this not antisemitism, o my brothers?) Where has hate ever gotten us? What world would you bring our children?

Third Reich propaganda, The Jewish Enemy

them patriots

2009-11-22T20:23:00.001-05:00

a thread

I commented on a picture of Lady Lib, US flag, and eagle with talons. The caption of the picture was about having claws to rip and tear those the poster thought should be -- well, ripped and teared. Anyway, my comment to it was urging thought; to think about the dangers of the loss of order.

And so it goes...
*********

New comment after your comment

By SKeene1956

SKeene1956

Nov 21, 2009 6:46:30 PM

Yes! I Do with the understanding from all people who wish to retain the right to call themselves such should all know the Constitution and the meaning of it and the fact we are born with inalienable rights that do not come from the Government which can be taken away. A return to common law where all have equal rights. An understanding that this knowledge is to precious not to be taught in school and if not then end up lost to us like when our fathers and grandfathers fell under the spell of sleep.

Post reply Unsubscribe from this conversation

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to me

show details 9:53 PM (22 hours ago)

SKeene1956

Nov 21, 2009 6:50:57 PM

Our for fathers; and not just the Patriots of the War of Independence; but also WW1 and WW2; KOREA; ETC. So I ask you; did all the people shed their blood for no remembrance as well as honor; as well as for the fact they all fought and died for the call of liberty only to have it snuffed out now?

*********

Two posts asking for my reply. Here it is:

|
deborah
to Picasa

show details 8:01 PM (3 minutes ago)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Is this what you mean? It's not from the Constitution.

You need a better source of information; start checking things out for
yourself, doing your own reading.

I'm sorry your candidate wasn't elected. I've lived through many I
didn't vote for, but because I believe in the process of our democracy
and the Constitution, I supported them.

Please do not speak lightly of Revolution. Don't you understand the
innocents who will be lost if this current fear-mongering propaganda
has its way? Talk about taking rights. Go read about the Bosnian war,
know how fragile order can be. What we have, and what your casual and
thoughtless and uniformed views can spawn.

Violation of "rights" you say. What rights have been violated? What
evils? This is not what our Deist founder Jefferson was writing about.
But funny to think that the same corporate-led imperialism of an East
India Tea Company has fooled so many onto its decks to do its
dirty-work for them.

Criticism is not the way we solve problems. That requires work, not
just shooting your mouth off or climbing onto a bus paid for by
Americans For Prosperity, a corporate-run fake grassroots
organization, for a nice weekend in our nation's capital. My dad
worked for years on the Hill for Vet's rights, and back then -- under
Ike's presidency, when the middle class paid more in taxes and had far
more done for it by government-run programs, the opposition parties
sat down to dinner together and the goal was to hear one another and
work things out together. It wasn't perfect and all problems were not
solved. But no gave up. called names, declared the other evil. No one
spoke as God. That's what yes WE can means: We all work to make the
country the best it can be.

Forget the hate and sharp claws, and think of how you can help. Start
by getting informed rather than riled up.

cats

2009-11-22T19:35:00.001-05:00

what I don't like about the South

2009-11-19T17:10:00.010-05:00

From The Daily Reveille, LSU student newspaper (online version)

KKK to march in Oxford on Saturday - 1:40 p.m.
Banned cheer leads to march when Tigers face Ole Miss

By Xerxes Wilson

Published: Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The Klu Klux Klan confirmed it will march on Ole Miss's campus Saturday.

Shane Tate, Grand Titan for the Mississippi White Knights of the Klu Klux Klan confirmed via e-mail the KKK will be marching from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. in Oxford on Saturday.

Multiple news organizations reported last week the KKK was considering the march in response to Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones' order for the Ole Miss band to discontinue playing "From Dixie with Love." Jones issued his order after students refused to stop chanting the "the South will rise again" during the song.

——

Comments
Coulda told you this would happen
Thu Nov 19 2009 11:48
well you knew this was coming. Good job Jones. You done messed with the wrong people apparantly.

Johnny
Thu Nov 19 2009 09:13
It seems the KKK is the only group that is willing to speak our for freedom of speech and our rights as citizens of Mississippi, especially those of White people who are just as important as any other group of people that God made.

Christian Crusader
Wed Nov 18 2009 20:23
I'm very proud that Southerners still have a upstanding organization like the KU KLUX KLAN.I can only hope that the march is peaceful and People see the klan is not their enemy ,they are here for them and their rights.What other organization has said anything about the issue on the removal of FREEDOM of SPEECH.One day people will wake up and see all of our traditions and rights gone and wish they had done something to stop it.

*********

What to remember; what to forgot: the essence of learning. Why is Dixie offensive? Yes, we remember the times, those lost. We honor the fallen. Most Southerners in the Civil War were fighting to protect their homes. But politics and "rights" -- that's not what war is about. War may begin that way; people convinced, sold an idea. Convinced of an an enemy, their duty to fight it. But it's a dangerous business to do such convincing-- to rile people up and keep them from thinking what really happens when order falls away.

Why is Dixie offensive? Simple. Because it also celebrates slavery.

In mid July, the Orange Men march in Northern Ireland to celebrate their 1690 victory that symbolizes Protestant supremacy in Ireland. But it's not about religion; it's not even about that victory. It's about power, the joy of vanquishing the vanquished.

What to remember; what to forgot: there is the other side.

*********

HEARD you that shriek? It rose
So wildly on the air,
It seemed as if a burden'd heart
Was breaking in despair.

Saw you those hands so sadly clasped-
The bowed and feeble heart-
The suddering of that fragile form-
That look of grief and dread?

Saw you the sad, imploring eye?
Its every glance was pain,
As if a storm of agony
Were sweeping through the brain.

She is a mother pale with fear,
Her boy clings to her side,
And in her kirtle vainly tries
His trembling form to hide.

He is not hers, although she bore
For him a mother's pain;
He is not hers, although her blood
Is coursing through his veins!

He is not hers, for cruel hands
May rudely tear apart
The only wreath of household love
That binds her breaking heart.

His love has been a joyous light
That o'er her pathway smiled,
A fountain gushing ever new,
Amid life's desert wild.

His lightest word has been a tone
Of music round her heart,
Their lives a streamlet blent in one-
Oh, Father! must they part?

They tear him from her circling arms,
Her last and fond embrace.
Oh! never more may her sad eyes
Gaze on his mournful face.

No marvel, then, these bitter shrieks
Disturb the listening air:
She is a mother, and her heart
Is breaking in despair.

The Slave Mother ~Frances E. W. Harper

---------------------

2 comments:

Carole and Chewy said...: I'll play Devil's Advocate here. At the end of the Civil War Abe Lincoln ordered the band to strike up Dixie much to his cabinet's shock - he explained he just thought it a great marching song. And to play even more of a Devil's Advocate....where do we draw the line of historical value? Something offends someone somewhere all the time. At what point does offending black people become mor eimportant than letting some white people enjoy their history-no matter how questionable others may view that history? Rap music offends me as a female, but if I complain about it, I'd be labeled a racist. There's my contrasting opinion for the night. I must confess I agree with Abe - I love to hear a band play Dixie. It's that southern side of my hybridness...; 00:04
astraea said...: and we do love the devil. as you illustrate, context is everything, snuggled up next to intent as it is. Good on Lincoln. I like that. Embrace and find common ground, especially in times of healing. It's a big part of healing, because remembering we're one species on one planet is the simple truth. (Familiarity breeds, I always say.) The idea of "enemy" implies more than just opposition to cause; it implies something to be feared. A threat. When I mentioned the Orange Men marching down streets in Belfast, the point is that they take advantage of this celebration to loudly tramp down the streets in the Catholic neighborhoods. As I personally know, there's not been much mixing of these parties, and conflict between them stems not from doctrine, but from old wounds, and manifests in the present power structure. So their moment of "Dixie" isn't just a teenager in his Stars and Bars cap; it's part of remembering pain, of keeping it in memory. Of keeping healing from happening in a new generation. (Great word, generation.) The militias are building their ranks right now. Fear, rights, we got to stop it: all the language of hate radio, fox news, the general hate mongering. People are loaded for bear, in search of an "enemy." It gives them the illusion of control over things when they have been convinced that order and justice are "being messed with." Good sense and good order knows better than to feed a fire. In such times my heart -- which beats by the power of all hearts, after all -- urges all sides to back down on talk of rights and move towards thoughts of solving problems together. Looking for solutions, one problem at a time. In that environment, debate is good and differences can make us stronger. That's what yes WE can means. Obama never asked or believed in doing things alone.; 12:08

things I like about the South

2009-11-19T14:58:00.000-05:00

The Band.

ok. i'm a damn yankee, thank you. but I KNOW we're the same species. Peace?

AHA. So THAT"S what happened to Bear Stearns

2009-11-18T10:26:00.003-05:00

trust and loosely arranged marriages 101

Krugman blog, the aig report:

[...]

Big financial institutions are a small club, with a shared interest in sustaining the system. Ever since the days of JP Morgan it has been standard practice, in times of crisis, to get major players together in a room and get them to forgo short-term profit maximization on behalf of the industry interests. It happened in the Panic of 1907; it happened in the Latin American debt crisis of the 80s; it happened in the LTCM bailout, which was financed by private firms, not the feds.

Also, individual banks are in a long-term relationship with the public and the government. They have an interest in preserving that relationship. The Epicurean Dealmaker offers an imaginary speech that Tim Geithner an anonymous government official could have given:

[T]hose people and institutions in this room which did not help us, which put their own narrow personal and corporate interests before the interests of this nation and its people, will be remembered as well.

And let me tell you something, gentlemen, banker to banker: you do not want to be on that list. That list will be a world of pain. That list will be Death.

Indeed. Bear Stearns famously refused to participate in the rescue of LTCM — and it’s widely believed that the lingering bad feelings from that exercise in free riding had a lot to do with the firm’s demise last year.

So could the feds have negotiated a haircut? Yes. It might not have been that much money, but it would have had a lot of symbolic importance. And that matters....

it gets worser and worser.

as for the general public confounding the stimulus with the "deeply unpopular" bailouts, well, that's the failure of media once again. Just like the Republicans have been ranting on about the public not wanting health care reform and public options, it's like those gooey toy frogs you can splat on the ceiling: lies seem to stick, the bigger the better. wonder why that is.

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this is why I fear teabaggers and those dazzled by Palin

2009-11-17T14:42:00.006-05:00

No kidding.

SPLC documents continued militia growth
In this segment, CNN discusses SPLC's militia report, which documents the sharp rise in militia groups since President Obama was elected. The video shows militia members at target practice and learning survivalist techniques. One armed man states he is prepared to defend his rights and suggests that the government should "think twice."

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while we still hear 911 at every step, where is the memory, the caution, the lessons learned from The Oklahoma City bombing.

The House Republicans and their talk of revolution fuels this stuff.

What actually does bring Hitler to mind in all this is the way he blamed the Jews all along for making his war, "the enemy" propaganda crafted and targeted to make it inescapable. (See info about Jeff Herf's groundbreaking book on the subject below.) Fundamentalism lives in bubbles. Break through. Talk to your neighbor, your Rush loving brother-in-law. Try.

amazon:

The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust

Jeffrey Herf
Visit Amazon's Jeffrey Herf Page
(Author)

Review
Here, practically for the first time, we can see how Germans before and during World War II were at all times in their daily lives confronted with a carefully designed view of the world in which a mythical Jewish enemy was portrayed as threatening Germans and hence had to be killed. No prior study has shown as clearly as this one how central this theme was to German wartime propaganda in all its forms.
--Gerhard L. Weinberg, University of North Carolina (20060922)

Jeffrey Herf has written a brilliant book that reorients our understanding of the Holocaust. Arguing that racial antisemitism, however vicious, was an insufficient basis for genocide, Herf demonstrates that a major shift occurred in Nazi propaganda during the war: Jews were now presented as a political threat to the German nation, and as the instigators, through their puppets, America, England, and the Soviet Union, of a deadly world war against Germany.
--Susannah Heschel, author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (20061106)

A commendable and compelling elucidation of the Nazi propaganda which accompanied the Holocaust, indispensable for both students of the Third Reich and general readers.
--Jay W. Baird, author of The Mythical World of Nazi Propaganda, 1939-1945 (20070301)

In this impressive book, Jeffrey Herf shows that the omnipresent image of the 'international Jew' as the source of Germany's victimhood was central to the propaganda and political imagination of the Nazi leadership, which made no secret of its intention to destroy European Jewry.
--Anson Rabinbach, Princeton University (20070514)

With the market so saturated with books that have "Nazi" in their titles, when a path-breaking new work does appear, one that explains the "why"--not just another documentation of the "how"--there is a chance it will slip under many readers' radar. One can only hope that such a fate will not befall Jeffrey Herf's incredibly important The Jewish Enemy, one of those rare works of Holocaust history that poses the most essential question: "Why did European, especially German, antisemitism, which had never led to an effort to murder all of Europe's Jews before, do so between 1941 and 1945 in the midst of World War II? What changed to make anti-Semitism a rationale for mass murder rather than for a continuation of centuries old patterns of persecution?"...[Herf is] the legitimate intellectual heir to [George] Mosse.
--Noah Strote (Forward )

Jeffrey Herf's latest book, The Jewish Enemy--dealing with Nazi propaganda during the Holocaust--sheds new light on what happened then in Europe and is a trenchant refutation of those who try to make us believe that antisemitic hate speech is merely a cynical tool employed by politicians...At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the demented discourse of radical antisemitism has resurfaced in different idioms and cultural contexts. It would be complacent to assume that variants on the narrative explored in Jeffrey Herf's brilliant work will not play a part in the future as well...This is a book that should be read widely.
--Karl Pfeifer (Searchlight )

What may be the most important book on the Holocaust in a generation...In The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, [Herf] concedes that hatred and racism were important, but he argues that they don't explain Germany's unique efforts to destroy the Jews...The real answer isn't hate, but fear. Poring through miles of speeches, private comments, journal entries, party memoranda and all 24,000 pages of Goebbel's diaries, Herf concludes that the Nazis really believed that the Jews ran the world and wanted to destroy Germany. They believed that Jews controlled not only the Bolsheviks to the east but the capitalists to the west.
--Jonah Goldberg (Los Angeles Times )

Many historians who have tackled Hitler and the Third Reich have found it impossible to take the Führer's rhetoric or Nazi ideology seriously. A. J. P. Taylor was infamous for treating Hitler as an ordinary statesman in the German mould. A succession of historians, including Rainer Zitelmann, Detlev Peukert and Götz Aly, continues to insist that Nazism was a rational modernizing force. It is hard to see how this approach will withstand Jeffrey Herf's patient, incisive and ultimately devasting analysis of the Nazi world-view in The Jewish Enemy.
--David Cesarani (Times Literary Supplement )

Which of the major findings of this excellent study is more disturbing: that human beings are capable of inventing and believing the kind of vicious nonsense the Nazis believed about Jews, or that such profoundly irrational beliefs can become the basis of a meticulously devised and implemented program of industrial mass murder? It is indeed the case, to say the least, that 'an examination of modern political culture draws attention to the causal significance of many irrational and illusory ideological perspectives'...The Jewish Enemy is both a revealing, carefully documented historical study and a reminder of the timeless and astonishing human capacity for demented belief, bottomless hatred, and a correspondingly stunning readiness to act upon bizarre convictions and fantasies...This study is also highly informative about the methods and character of Nazi propaganda. The author makes use of sources not widely used before, such as the ubiquitous wall newspapers (also favored in communist states), posters, and archival materials (including directives to the press about the tasks and methods of propaganda), and the diaries of Goebbels, among others. Some striking visual images of 'the Jewish enemy' used in the press and posters are reproduced (remarkably similar to both Soviet anti-capitalist, anti-American propaganda and the images purveyed in Arab anti-Israeli propaganda).
--Paul Hollander (New Criterion )

Through a chronological structure that moves seamlessly from an introductory section on pre-1939 Nazi propaganda themes and structures to the shifting narratives of the wartime period, Herf shows convincingly that the attacks on the regime's wartime "enemies" (Britain; after 1941 the Soviet Union and the United States) were underpinned by the same Überbegriff of an alleged "international Jewish conspiracy."...Herf's book adds much-needed intellectual ammunition to the argument that propaganda should be taken very seriously.
--Aristotle A. Kallis (H-Net )

Undoubtedly, this is a much-needed study that convincingly demonstrates the centrality of radical anti-Semitic language in the Nazi leadership's thinking and the regime's wartime propaganda. Herf has succeeded in showing how in the minds of the regime's leaders and propagandists the Second World War and the Nazi genocide of the Jews were directly and inherently connected.
--Thomas Pegelow Kaplan (Canadian Journal of History )

Herf is meticulous in his scholarship, and the book's vivid detail can certainly hold up to historians' scrutiny...This is a must-read.
--Dave Roy (Curled Up with a Good Book )

Herf has made excellent use of many overlooked sources...Most shockingly, he shows the remarkable extent to which the German people were informed by Hitler and his colleagues that the Third Reich was engaged in annihilating Europe's Jews. The overall effect is one of a regime in thrall to its own paranoid fantasies, with devastating consequences that are all too familiar.
--Dan Stone (Journal of Genocide Research )

Jeffrey Herf, one of the most prolific and challenging historians of twentieth-century Germany, has written an important book, the first comprehensive work detailing the structure of the Third Reich’s effort to inculcate antisemitism in the German population. This was a propaganda effort, and much of Herf’s book focuses on Joseph Goebbels; but Herf also carefully delineates changes in the antisemitic content of Hitler’s speeches and gives a great deal of attention to Otto Dietrich, the Reich press chief. The result for readers is a nuanced sense of the volume and flow of antisemitic propaganda—and The Jewish Enemy leaves no doubt that antisemitism, indeed murderous antisemitism, was an ideology propagated up front and in public. For some readers, this may seem an obvious point, but a great deal of older research underscored how the Nazis placed antisemitism in the background, emphasizing instead the material gains that ordinary citizens could expect from Nazi rule. Herf shows that nothing could be further from the truth...it is Herf’s significant achievement to gather the antisemitic propaganda of the Third Reich and demonstrate its patterns. For the first time, we have a nuanced account of how state-produced antisemitism changed during the war and how this antisemitism connected to the Holocaust.
--Helmut Walser Smith (Journal of Modern History )

people who say they understand health reform support it, while those who admit they don't understand it don't support it

2009-11-17T12:00:00.001-05:00

go read, via Blue Virginia

Again, a measure of media's power.

the mammogram thing again

2009-11-17T11:42:00.004-05:00

Problem is, people don't understand what cancer is. Cancer cells aren't foreign invaders. Cancer is a metabolic process gone awry; the more awry the worse. That's the business of cell type, the proportion of nuclei gone rogue. And radiation isn't harmless; it's a test with risks. In fact, it helps, even causes the mutation. It has to be used with care. We don't begin to understand all the ins and outs of cancer, so we look at outcome. Good article on this sensitive issue, an issue sure to be fauxified and death-paneled as Obama's Health Care Wants to Give You Cancer...

"as painful as it is to admit, we have oversold mammography to the public"
Aug 22, 2009
the trouble with mammograms. the exams lead to overdiagnosis, causing women to go through treatment for breast cancers that wouldn't kill them. article reviewed.

Huzzah!

2009-11-17T11:28:00.000-05:00

glasgow

2009-11-16T21:11:00.002-05:00

dover

2009-11-16T20:59:00.003-05:00

sneek prevuew of palin's book (shhh!)

2009-11-16T11:26:00.009-05:00

I got the especial fridge version. Put it in Hebrew characters, claim your personal savior, send it to ten friends within the next five minutes, and it tells the FUTURE.

Special prize: ancient symbol that causes immediate chuck norris style death with one glance:

Too bad if you looked!

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Sorry, I just can't take any of this seriously. She's just so damn stupid.

yes of yes

2009-11-15T19:14:00.006-05:00

go read.

Why are we letting fellofaux friends hold us all hostage? Congress: Whatever you do, they won't like it. So feel free. Get the jobs out there and the hoi polloi will be too busy to get on those air-conditioned Americans For Prosperity(sic) buses. You can do it if you want to. And we're watching the who doesn't wannas.

goats, sheepses, teabaggery and such

2009-11-15T15:39:00.005-05:00

my little daughter in england writes me (after I mentioned my first love was robin hood when she said she was visiting york this weekend):

robin hood is from nottingham! not york! nottingham is actually just up the road about 30 minutes. i haven't gone though cause its nickname is 'shottingham' here. it's like the most dangerous city in england, haha. but they do apparently have a lot of touristy robin hood stuff.

(I wrote back:)

I love it.

O broken dreams. The Merry Men who came here are now Teabaggers.
Weird, these honor-shame cultures. Did you read Gladwell's http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html Outliers? Explains a lot about the US South, http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/outliers_excerpt2.html, which was much (un)settled by northern Brits, Geordie boys, and that Americanism, "Scotch-Irish": honor-shame cultures. Comes from shepherding. Yeah. really. All about clan and territory, disputes about where your lot grazes. Life and death things, but different from the rest of Europe who relied on the seasons of finicky grains and acts of god therein to starve them. Albion's Seed is the book Gladwell draws from here, and I'd like to get my hands on it. It tends to make certain theoretically-bent historians all upset, but -- History is more than theory and fashion. Sometimes it's genetic.

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/whh/hirecrsds.html

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must add / would not want you to miss:

Carole and Chewy said...: Dear English Friend-If you *really* want to get into the whole Scots>American thing, read Jim Webb's "Born Fighting". He explains it much better than Gladwell, from inside out. I think he and I had the same crazy cousins.XXXX and OOOO,Your Scottish-American cohort