“Wars are won by destroying the enemy’s will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women.”
- Spengler

The French sold their women to the German occupiers in 1940, and the Germans and Japanese sold their women to the Americans after World War II. The women of the former Soviet Union are still selling themselves in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of female Ukrainian “tourists” entered Germany after the then-foreign minister Joschka Fischer loosened visa standards in 1999. That helps explain why Ukraine has the world’s fastest rate of population decline. On a smaller scale, trafficking in Iranian women explains Iran’s predicament.

- Spengler @ Asia Times Online: “Jihadis and whores” (Nov 21, 2006): Link.

Via Rudy Carerra @ Tower of Babel: Link

Over at Alpha Mummy, columnist Caitlin Moran has posted a thoughtful, wry essay about how raising children has improved her life:

“Have children? Yeah, but what am I going to get out of it?” … I reckon I have got a lot out of my becoming a mother … Indeed, I reckon I’ve got so much out of it, I could make a list … ”

3) Really getting a handle on the fact I’m going to die. I was never really that ambitious before I had children, because I thought I had approximately six million years left to sit around smoking marijuana, watching daytime TV and keeping a scrapbook of Richard Madeley’s best sayings. But now I’ve made a child who’s nearly four feet tall, I am very aware of the passing of time. I am going to die relatively soon. I need to get on with things. I’ve got my hustle on.

- Caitlin Moran @ Times Online: Link.

Thought for today:

“To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. “

To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd. or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge.

- J.B.S. Haldane
“On Being the Right Size” in the (1928) book “Possible Worlds”
Link @ Wikiquote

“John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS (November 5, 1892 – December 1, 1964), known as Jack (but who used ‘J.B.S.’ in his printed works), was a British geneticist and evolutionary biologist. He was one of the founders (along with Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright) of population genetics.”

- Wikipedia: Link.

Thought for today ….

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.

- John Kenneth Galbraith

“Anybody who’s half white and half black is considered black anyway. That’s one drop of blood.”

Philip Roth, interviewed by Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: What made you interested in Obama?

Roth: I’m interested in the fact that he’s black. I feel the race issue in this country is more important than the feminist issue. I think that the importance to blacks would be tremendous. He’s an attractive man, he’s smart, he happens to be tremendously articulate. His position in the Democratic Party is more or less okay with me. And I think it would be important to American blacks if he became president.

SPIEGEL: It could change society, couldn’t it?

Roth: Yes, it could. It would say something about this country, and it would be a marvelous thing. I don’t know whether it’s going to happen. I rarely vote for anybody who wins. It’s going to be the kiss of death if you write in your magazine that I’m going to vote for Barack Obama. Then he’s finished!

SPIEGEL: The discussions around Obama remind us of your figure Coleman Silk, the hero of “The Human Stain,” who is black with unusually light skin and then invents a Jewish biography. What we mean is the questions of belonging, of right and wrong behavior. Is Barack Obama black enough?

Roth: I know this discussion goes on, but I think it will disappear if he gets the nomination. The reality of his running will wash that away. Anybody who’s half white and half black is considered black anyway. That’s one drop of blood.

SPIEGEL: For whites to consider him black, yes. But the question is whether the blacks consider him black.

Roth: They will once the election goes on. If he gets the nomination.

- Philip Roth, Spiegel: February 08, 2008: Link.

Via FreeInternetPress.

Thought for today:

This is no time to make new enemies.

-Voltaire, (1694-1778)
When asked on his deathbed to forswear Satan.

Thought for today:

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night.

It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.

It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

Crowfoot’s last words (1890)
(Blackfoot warrior and orator)

Thought for today:

“The individual can take initiatives without anyone’s permission.”
- Bucky Fuller

“I told myself:

“You do not have the right to eliminate yourself, you do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to the highest advantage of others.”

So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for just me - each one of us is born of two, and we really belong to each other. I vowed to do my own thinking instead of trying to accommodate everyone else’s opinions, credos and theories. I vowed to apply my inventory of experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet earth.”

- R. Buckminster Fuller

Thought for today:

Engineer: “A self-balancing, 28-jointed adaptor-based biped; an electro-chemical reduction plant, integral with segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent actuation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries ….”

- R. Buckminster Fuller

Thought for today:

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

- Timothy Leary

See also Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud.

“Can you manage the cost of life?”

What is it like to live in poverty, struggling every day to stay healthy, keep out of debt, and get educated?

Find out now in this challenging role playing game created by the High School students in Global Kids with the game developers at Gamelab, in which you take responsibility for a family of five in rural Haiti.

[UNICEF]

Via Things Are Good.

“The lawyers representing the families of four American Blackwater contractors killed in Fallujah make the case that the company’s executives are suing the families to keep them quiet and to avoid any accountability.”

… The surviving family members looked to Blackwater for answers as to how and why their loved ones died. Blackwater not only refused to give the grieving families any information, but also callously stated that they would need to sue Blackwater to get it. Left with no alternative, in January 2005, the families filed suit against Blackwater, which is owned by the wealthy and politically-connected Erik Prince.

Blackwater … initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

… The families claim that Blackwater is attempting to cover up its incompetence, its cutting of corners in favor of higher profits, and its over billing to the government.

… Blackwater also stonewalled the families concerning any information about how the men were killed.

… Blackwater [is] suing the families for $10 million …. Blackwater has also threatened to hold the administrator of the estates personally liable to scare him into abandoning his position, and has threatened the families’ attorneys as well.

… Blackwater’s lawsuit now seeks to gag the family members from even speaking about the incident or about Blackwater’s involvement in the deaths. This is a direct attack to their free speech rights under the First Amendment.

[Daniel J. Callahan and Marc P. Miles: AlterNet]

Via Giant Monster.

Stephan Orsak is a professional violinist, and has performed under Leonard Bernstein, Kurt Masur and Seiji Ozawa.

He is about to go to trial on six counts, including a Gross Misdemeanor of Obstructing Legal Process ‘with force or violence or threat thereof,’ after he was tased by a police officer who stopped him for riding a bike out of the airport.

What happened?
I was rudely accosted, assaulted with battery, and tased at Minneapolis St Paul USA international airport by Airport Police, simply for choosing to leave the airport by bicycle. I had broken no laws. I use a bicycle as a significant part of my daily mode of travel. I have legally cycled to and from airports internationally including 3 of the 4 major London airports, with no problems. I was using my bicycle completely in accord with MN Statutes and Metropolitan Airport Commission Ordinances.

When did this happen?
Sept 7 2006, approx 6:10pm

Where did this happen?
On the Outbound Roadway (also called Glumack Drive), just east of the post office and west of the highway.

Who would have witnessed it?
Many people. It was full daylight, and in view of the “A” concourse. Anyone leaving the airport would have passed the scene of the incident. The extensive 800+ CCTV video camera system at the airport, fully updated since 9-11, must have recorded everything, and with multiple viewpoints.

[greencycles]

Via Boing Boing.

Haunting and beautiful images of The Great War:

“Boys at their game of skittle. The one in the middle looks an acolyte. Picture made on the Place d’Erlon in the city of Reims, 1917.” [Link]

The Heritage of the Great War: Home Page

“Massacres and paramilitary land seizures behind the biofuel revolution”

Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy.

Surging demand for “green” fuel has prompted rightwing paramilitaries to seize swaths of territory, according to activists and farmers. Thousands of families are believed to have fled a campaign of killing and intimidation, swelling Colombia’s population of 3 million displaced people and adding to one of the world’s worst refugee crises after Darfur and Congo.

… A government investigation reportedly found irregularities in 80% of palm oil land titles in some areas.

… The paramilitary groups, first formed in the 80s by businessmen, landowners and drug lords to fend off guerrillas, became a powerful illegal army which stole land, sold drugs and massacred civilians. Under a peace deal with the government they have officially disbanded but many observers say remnants remain active.

… Coca production in Colombia has surged despite US-funded eradication efforts, according to an estimate that casts fresh doubt on Washington’s “war on drugs”. Satellite imagery collated by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy survey suggests that cultivation of coca, the raw ingredient of cocaine, jumped 8% last year to 156,000 hectares.

[Guardian]