calimary
calimary's JournalI'm so sorry, Siwsan.
I think that's how I'd view it - your sweet mom is now reunited with your dad and your two siblings. Up in Heaven.
It's hard to know what to say. But I'm glad you posted here. It can be comforting and sustaining at a sad time like this. Thank you for sharing this deep personal pain. And save this thread. When I posted about my mom's passing, the responses from people here were so touching. They really did help me get through it. Read through the posts and know that you don't mourn alone. DU will buoy you up.
I'm so sorry to hear this, ProdigalJunkMail.
I can't imagine how deep that pain is. I'm glad you posted here. You won't mourn alone - nor will your friends. So many people here extending love and support and sympathy and solidarity. I hope in even a small way your friends can know they don't grieve alone.
I'm glad you shared this. Let us help you hoist the burden for awhile. As Skittles once said - "someone's always here."
But this isn't won yet.
We've got a LOOOOONNNNNNNNNNGGGG way to go to rid the world of hate radio's toxins.
This isn't won yet. Don't get complacent! limbaugh's still laughing all the way to the bank. For now.
THIS ^^^^
Absolutely true! Totally, Totally! And it really is up to us at the ground level. WE HAVE TO SPEAK UP. We can't let them get the last word.
I'm glad revenue's down. Serves 'em right. Your activism is OUTSTANDING! If they think we don't care, THEY WON'T EITHER! Let 'em know. Or to hijack the only usable thing presented by joni ernst, "let's make 'em squeal!"
Welcome to DU, shadowmayor!
Glad you're here. If they "trained" for these vaunted positions as foreign policy "experts" by playing "Risk" - then that would explain their utter recklessness in "shepherding" US involvement in world affairs. When you play a game - it's a GAME. There are no consequences when you lose. When you lose at "Monopoly" you don't really lose all your properties and go bankrupt in real life. I don't know if that's what the PNACers did, but they SURE didn't attempt to get any first-hand experience in actual combat situations. Sure didn't line up to sign up - and put their OWN asses in harm's way. They knew nothing, and listening to them gained us nothing. WORSE than nothing. Actively negative real-life consequences. Not just highfalutin "think" tank opining from the elitist chickenhawks of the so-called right. Very few of them ever got their hands dirty. Very few of them ever had skin in the game. They were quite literally arm-chair warriors.
And we who objected were completely shut out, and shut down. There was no face time made generously available to our side. The closest we got, back in the beginning, was michael o'hanlon. He was on camera a lot, representing "the left." michael o'hanlon's appearance on some news or news/talk show arose from his position as an analyst at the Brookings Institution. Back then, at the beginning of bush/cheney, and certainly in the latter days of the Clinton administration, you could name about a half-dozen different institutions, think tanks, foundations, and such on the far right. Heritage Foundation, Eagle Forum, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Hoover Institute, Federalist Society, and our favorites - the good folks at the Project for a New American Century.
When it came to naming institutions, think tanks, foundations, and such on the left - you could come up with the Brookings Institution, and that was pretty much it. Or at least that's all you saw on TV or cable. Ironically enough, michael o'hanlon is a signatory of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) along with donald rumsfeld and jebbie bush, john mccain, paul wolfowitz, scooter libby, elliott abrams, richard perle, john bolton, richard allen, frank gaffney, fred kagan, donald kagan, jeane kirkpatrick, randy scheunemann, john mccain, ed meese, dan quayle (!), charles krauthammer, bill kristol, and richard bruce cheney and just a whole cavalcade of VERMIN who promoted, then and now, a philosophy that called upon America to assert its dominance over the rest of the world. As such, it can be expected that the PNAC policy platform will be part of michael o'hanlon's mind set in one way or other. After all, he did sign off on it. Especially regarding control and dominance of strategic resources. To ensure this would be so, the PNACers advocated an America that was able "to fight and decisively win multiple wars on multiple fronts." All for the sake of our purported way of life and our alleged exceptionalism. Even aggressively imposed imperialism and forced capitalism everywhere. We had to be The Badass of the World, and assert our planetary primacy so that the flow of critical and strategic resources flowed to us without interruption. They wanted and tried to design war in Iraq before bush/cheney was even in the White House. They tried to sell it to Bill Clinton in the last quarter of his service. And they all rode in on their pal cheney's coat-tails.
http://www.publiceye.org/pnac_chart/pnac.html
THIS >>>>> "What a colossal mess we have created. Was Saddam a good guy? Hell no - but I notice very little discussion about those wonderful humanitarians running the Saudi empire? I could weep for a week for what has been done in our name, but I'm too tired." I know what you mean, shadowmayor.
Well, well, well. Finally waking up, are we?
We'll see. My instinct is not to trust. He's a "former" republi-CON. Let's see what happens when he stops talking and starts doing.
I'll admit it. He was a stabilizing presence in the Middle East.
OKAY - he wasn't perfect. He was an asshole. But he was OUR asshole. And the biggest thing he did, seems to me, was contain Iran.
Iran and Iraq were at war with each other and he was preoccupied with them. And they with him. And while they were so busy being preoccupied with him, they didn't have much time to bother with Israel, or making trouble anywhere else. He was right on their border, and a much more clear-and-present danger and threat to them than anybody else ever was. So he kept them busy, and kept them from stirring things up elsewhere.
And his aim, and equipment, sucked the big one. I remember during Desert Storm how Saddam's scud missiles and the rest of it were thought to be so horrifyingly formidable - at least according to the PR pushed on us all by those wanting war. And his scud missiles never did squat. Never hit whatever target they were aimed toward. Always wound up in some stupid place far afield of where they were aimed. Lot of 'em fell in the desert somewhere and did nothing. His "offensive capabilities" became a joke. And he was "not schooled in the operational art," as Schwarzkopf said. I think a VERY few of them actually landed in Israeli territory. And did very little damage of any significance, as I recall. My memory may be a little faded by now, but I can absolutely remember how I felt as it went on. And those scud missiles got fired, and - blap! A whole lotta nothing. I had to stay home at the AP's L.A. bureau while my radio colleague was sent to Riyadh where the press covering Operations Desert Storm was headquartered. I had to cover part of his beat and part of my own. I remember wondering - what's all the fuss about? What were we huffing and puffing about? Saddam's MUCH-vaunted and MUCH-hyperventilated-about "Revolutionary Guards" were equally Much Ado About Nothing. Those supposedly ruthless and terrifying troops of his folded like so many pieces of paper and dropped their weapons and the loot they stole from Kuwait and ran the other way like stampeding antelope. I kept thinking - "what the hell?"
What an over-sell job. Turned out the ferocious and horribly terrifying reputation of the Saddam forces was, as Mark Twain would say regarding rumors of his own death - "exaggerated."
http://oupacademic.tumblr.com/post/48310773463/misquotation-reports-of-my-death-have-been
(Hey! Look what I just learned! A misquote? I had no idea!)
I look at those photos of her mug shot and her getting fingerprinted and I am embarrassed.
Just embarrassed.
SHAMEFUL. Those photos are SHAMEFUL. Can't fully wrap my brain around that sweet harmless little lady being ARRESTED just for sitting where she sat, in a bus. SMH. It's just really hard and bewildering and disgraceful to think that shit like that actually happened. And disgusting that it DID.
Thank you for posting this, jaysunb!
Great story. Magnificent - and very brave - contribution he made.
Yet another lovely thread from you, sheshe2!
Are you a teacher, by any chance? Because your posts are SO thorough and detailed and well-researched - and wonderfully embellished with pictures and graphics. I learn something every time I read them - or look at the photos, many of which I never saw before.
Brava!!!!
And Brava to the Birthday Girl, Rosa Parks, who just did a "little" something - like MAKE HISTORY!!!!!
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