Josh
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Posts posted by Josh
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I'm seeing him.
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No doubt in my mind, some elements of the CIA, in collaboration with the Mafia, killed JFK.
CIA killed Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X too.
No doubt in my mind.
I'd say the military was involved as well. Oswald started out in the Marine Corps (which is part of the U.S. Navy) and learned Russian there. The story that he was a "red" then sounds like complete bullshit, because the U.S. Marine Corps in the late 1950s wouldn't have tolerated a Communist in its midst! According to one researcher, he learned Russian from reactionary white Russian publications. One researcher said he was also at the military's Monterey (California) language institute. My recollection from one of my JFK books is that he was one of three US Navy people in 1959 who defected to the USSR, which is an unprecedented number for one year that never happened before or since to the book's publication date. One congressman publicized that Oswald was FBI and CIA. I think he was ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) as well, and that they groomed him for his "defection."
The military wanted the Vietnam War, and continually pushed JFK to up the number of people there, while BSing him that everything was going well. He once complained (and I'm paraphrasing from memory), "If things are going so well, why do I have to keep sending more people?" He resisted, and in the last months of his life tried to bring 1,000 people back from Vietnam. There's a lot of good material on this in John Newman's book JFK and Vietnam.
Since we're in the book thread, I should mention that there is a really large literature of the JFK assassination. In the 1980s it had reached 1000 books, and recently has topped 2000. Whatever the advocates of the official "lone nut" theory want to be true, interest in this subject has not abated. I'd say that the continuous publication and sale of books indicates that the JFK assassination isn't settled in the mind of the reading public.
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Soros has some heavy ties with Serbia, doesn't he? he's supposed to be from these parts, or something...?
Soros is Hungarian. (No reason he couldn't have ties to Serbia.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros
I wonder what effect, beneficial or harmful (I'd expect the latter) his short-selling of the pound had on the average Briton? (Shorting tends to push the price of the shorted issue, currency or commodity downward.)
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ah, coming here for your daily dose of sickness is the only way to make 'em shut up?
Heh, "he put his disease into me."
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Apparently they're very keen on 'Staalemann' (I think it - corrections please, Swerika), which is the Swedish name for 'Superman'.
I'm assuming that means Steel Man, or Man of Steel. (I know that Stalin means that in Russian, but due to prior usage it's unlikely to be used for Clark Kent's alter ego.)
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Son shot over chicken recipe
A FAMILY ROW over a recipe for cooking chicken ended with a father shooting his son in the head.
They began arguing about dinner and ended up shooting each other
The pair began arguing about preparing dinner and ended up firing .22 calibre handguns at each other at home in West Virgina, in the US.
Jackie Lee Shrader, 49, was charged with malicious wounding and wanton endangerment after a bullet hit son Harley Lee Shrader, 24, in the ear and lodged in his skull.
After being treated in hospital, Harley Shrader was also charged with wanton endangerment.
Ah yes, Lynndie England's people. ;)
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What kind of music was in that 20 minute preview?
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Josh:
What's a Quaker?
Quaker is an informal name for Friends, members of the Religious Society of Friends. They are the only English branch of anabaptist peace church. All the rest of the peace churches are German (Swiss Brethren, Amish, Hutterites, Mennonites). The Quakers started in England in the 1600s and were oppressed for being different, since the 1600s was a time of great oppression of many differing groups in that country. The Quakers were at first egalitarian but very quickly also became pacifist, being opposed to military service and violence even in defense of self or others, and eventually became anti-slavery in the United States and elsewhere. Through the 1800s they wore plain clothes, and were known as the "plain people." The men often wore broadbrim hats and the women wore bonnets. Some Quakers spoke to others as "thee" and "thou" even into the 20th century.
Quakers were often business people and some achieved great wealth, including William Penn (after whom Penn's Wood, or Pennsylvania, was named), the Cadbury chocolate-making family and Herbert Hoover. They often had political influence (including Penn, who was at court, Hoover, and the Secretary of State for Pres. Monroe who first negotiated the agreement making the U.S.-Canadian border the longest undefended one in the world), but their influence I think has been eclipsed during the more warlike 20th century. They still seek to influence politics through political activism, including through the Friends Committee on National Legislation, and do service work, including through the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Some areas of activism include anti-war work, counselling people who are thinking of going into or who are already in the military, and prison reform. Service work includes the Afghans for Afghans project, an AFSC activity that sends individually made knit goods to needy people in Afghanistan. (Quakers oppose our military actions in Afghanistan but want to help the people there.)
The Quakers are in Richmond, Indiana in a big way. I think they have at least one university and a publishing house and who knows what else there. Most Quaker gatherings are not churches, but are called meetings, and don't have paid clergy. Some of the largest and most established meetings are in Philadelphia, but Quakers are scattered all around the United States, with a strong concentration in North Carolina. Worldwide their biggest numbers in a single country are in Kenya.
Things contributed to the world by Quakers are unitary pricing (one unalterable price for a good, instead of haggling) and consensus decisionmaking. Also Quakers were the subject of a trial in English Common Law that determined that judges do not have the right to alter jury verdicts or to compel juries to rule the way the judge wants. (English Common Law up to the American revolution is precedent for the U.S. legal system.)
I know all this because my significant other is a Quaker and works on the Afghans for Afghans project, among others.
You know, I'm a Christian, and I'm left-wing and liberal socially and politically. Every once in a while I get into discussions with other Christians about how and why I "tolerate" homosexuality (usually most of my other Christian friends are liberals, too). I actually am deeply ashamed of the church's stance on homosexuality and its impact on the American gay community. Christ said that if anyone leads a child astray, it is "better that they be thrown into the sea with a stone tied around their neck" (paraphrase). I think that since all of us are children of God, our gay brothers and sisters fall under that definition. And if hostility or icy resenment of gays has caused them to turn away from Christ, the church has a lot to answer for. I'm always so disappointed that I don't hear more pulpits crying: Come in! Come in! We don't care that you're gay! Rather than: come on in, BUT! We have this support group we'd like you to attend...I don't know what to say, Charlie, except that I think you are on the right track. I hope there will be more and more Christians like you.
Anyway, since you've clearly given this a lot of thought, what are your thoughts? You volunteer at a church, too, are you religious yourself?The funny thing is that I volunteer at a Catholic church service organization. I don't approve of all of that church's social policies, but think they've got a great social service network, and a spot at one of their groups was the best fit for me. (The Catholics are strong in San Francisco.)
The subject of churches and my religious beliefs is complicated, and I don't know really where to go with it, except to say that I was raised in a theologically liberal (non-literalist) Protestant church, and view Christianity in a generally benign way. I don't know how to characterize myself, but haven't thought of my self as Christian. This last year as I've been dealing with being unemployed, though, I've found myself feeling more religious than I have heretofore.
I'm the ultimate libertarian about religion and don't often talk about my own views because they aren't up for alteration via debate, and am not interested in influencing anyone else to think the way I do. But I do make it my business to talk against religions that are socially harmful, especially when they act against my interests.
I hope that was along the lines of what you were asking about, and that it wasn't too longwinded or irrelevant.
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Christian, I'm so sorry.
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And hopefully JC will have some longer term effects of the memories that he's left with.
JC certainly implies that in the second to last panel in the book.
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Nah. What's a dirty turd like you doing in a nice place like this?
Hmm, pillow-talk while rimming?
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I read somewhere recently that California has just outlawed necrophilia.
Here's one place it can be found:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._necrophilia_dc
While I think necro news stories are pretty funny generally, though a felony with up to eight years of possible jail time seems a bit stiff.
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cool, another Potter Fan. Atleast I'm not alone here. hehehe
No, not by any means.
I've read only HP & the Chamber of Secrets, which I've enjoyed enough to re-read. I've seen HP & the Prisoner of Azkaban, which was fun but somehow felt a bit insubstantial a few days after I saw it. But maybe it would benefit from being watched again.
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I'm not necessarily an expert on anything, but have varying amounts of knowledge on the following:
insects and arachnids, most especially spiders
Latin (I took 4 years of it). from this I developed an interesting in the interrelationship between languages
early 20th century European history, especially as relates to WWI, WWII, the inter-war period, the USSR and Nazi Germany.
I've done some studying of Naziism and fascism (from an anti-fascist point of view). aside from that, I have a general interest in politics and ideology. I was in a Maoist study group when I was in highschool.
My significant other is a Quaker so I've learned a bit about Quakerism, and as a gay man I've had to learn about Protestant fundamentalism so I could better defend myself against its adherents. Anti-semitism is something every progressive person should know something about, and I've done some reading on that. I have copies of the documents from which the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were forged.
I have a strong newspaper clipping file compiled mostly during the first Reagan administration, focusing on political events.
Military history and technology, mostly modern.
Firearms/small arms (heh, short arms)
photography when I was younger, did some b&w developing
the JFK assassination, with some looking into other weird incidents and skullduggery.
Sci-Fi, mostly books and mostly before 1975, though I have a good familiarity with all the Star Trek shows except Enterprise, and Babylon 5, and I collect sci-fi comic titles. I've seen some of the Star Wars movies as well, read some SW novels and have many comics. And I'm embarrassed to say that I've read every Dune book.
computer technology, enough to make my living in it for a time
some car stuff (i've rebuilt an engine and repeatedly replaced clutches and brake pads)
and lately I've tried to learn about the Middle East
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and that will be your demise.
Checkov has ace short stories...
Gogol as well
Dostoyevski is the greatest author that lived.
Ana Karenina and War And Peace are overrated.
How about Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time?
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Cheers...I'm not any kind of expert on Russian literature. Haven't really penetrated beyond the basics, as of yet...although I can recommend Solzhenitsyn's 'Cancer Ward' and 'The Gulag Archipelago' (non-fiction, but still counts as sort-of-literature in my book) to anyone with stamina. Dense, bleak, but brilliant.
I'm not so sure the latter book is entirely non-fiction. I read an article by Solzhenitsyn in Foreign Affairs and a subsequent exchange between him and various (anti-)Soviet studies academics. His article was about goings on in Czarist Russia, a subject I know a little about. To sum up, he was just making it up as he went along. (The academics weren't willing to say that, but they oh so respectfully made many corrections to his "facts".) He came across as a pathological liar, a personality type I have more experience dealing with than I like.
"Constantine" Theme Song Revealed online.
in Comics in other media
Posted
When people here use a term I haven't seen, I've decided to try finding it on the internet first. I got one hit for "kack metal". I'm a little closer to knowing what kack metal is, but would like to know if the song titles in the "Setlist" here are typical of kack metal:
http://thimblesnip.ods.org/band.htm