Oh To Be in Prague Now That Winter Is Near

I think I need to use as my mantra the saying at the top of this blog: "I used to be disgusted now I try to be amused."  Thanks Elvis.

In reading about the Greek crisis I have a difficult time believing that the Greek people will permit the government to call for a referendum and then call it off to go with what the vast majority of the people do not want.  But there you have it.  I completely expect this to happen now and to go through with only "some" violence by the hot heads (do I need more quotation marks?).

This is the kind of thing that makes me feel that our own little Occupy movements will peter out and amount to nothing.  No violence no real bad manners because if either of those things happened then the Occupy movement would be discredited in the eyes of ............. just who exactly?  Those who matter I guess.

If there is violence it will be crushed with massive amounts of paramilitary police power.  Boys and their guns as we recently saw here in beautiful Muskingum County Ohio, give them a chance and they love to use them.

At any rate we have seen this same scenario play out in multiple third world nations over the last thirty or forty years as the IMF comes in to rescue the economy, starves the people and makes sure that some of the oligarchs and none of the foreign investors have to take any kind of a loss.   Wellllll, I guess we are all third world peasants now.

I was in discussion on a post on Lawyers, Guns and Money about the referendum a few days ago (its two or three or more pages back not worth going to any more really).   The original post was basically simply suggesting that the powers that be thought that a referendum was a little too much democracy.  The original poster kind of disagreed with them.  The comments were interesting:  too much democracy many said, things would be really bad for the Greeks if they defaulted on the loans others said.  Essentially:  TOO SCARY.  And of course, it is the Greeks' fault they essentially deserve this out come.  At least I think that was the implied conclusion.  It was suggested that the Greek government was able to hide its finances from the poor deluded bankers. 

Well now the finance minister jumps from his hospital bed and rushes to assure (I originally wrote insure, calling Dr. Freud) the German and French money men.  And the world is made safe for a few more days for our rulers. 

Time to defenestrate.    

A (Last?) Thought on Torture

A few more thoughts on our torture loving establishment.

They seem to insist on arguing minutia. Just how often was he water boarded? How long was each session? How frightened was he after each session? Has there been permanent psychological damage?

Or arguing political procedure rather than the value and right and wrong of the issue. I thought that is what politics is really supposed to be about: whether this position is right or wrong/good or bad. Apparently I was misinformed. Lincoln (with all of his compromises) would have been surprised. Obama, who claims Lincoln as a hero certainly doesn't seem to feel that way. It appears that he doesn't want a real investigation to get in the way of his reaching out to the rulers side for what I don't know. You can see something of the same attitude in the way he is trying to deal with the banks. Shoving money to the ones who screwed us up in the first place while not really changing anything.

None of those are real questions or real issues. Water boarding has been considered torture since at least the Inquisition and used as torture by them and the witch hunters of about 500 years or so ago. I doubt if it was invented then, I suspect that it has been around for much longer. There really isn't any real argument about what it is. Or at least there wasn't until a few of our governing class and our yammering class realized that is just what we've been doing for the last eight years at the direction of their buds and school chums. Suddenly then we have discussions about the mental condition and how carefully we have our (completely corrupt) house physicians keep an eye on these sessions. We are now into nuance.

The discussion has moved beyond Orwell into Lewis Carroll: "A word means just what I mean it to mean neither more nor less." It isn't torture because we say it isn't. Or maybe torture is necessary today (or yesterday) because we think that something really bad might happen if we don't torture. Actually, I think that Inquisition had the better argument there since they figured that your soul would burn in everlasting torment if they didn't torture you back to the one true god. We only want to find out if you are going to try to blow up our corporeal selves.

If Momma Ain't Happy

Momma Halley ain't happy and you'd best be advised to move out of her way.

Tuesday Beast Blogging (Yes I Know, But I Said I Would Do It On Tuesday) And I Oh Hell

Ming thinks it's all a joke.

Tansey and Loki check the neighborhood.