Ruminations -- from the ridiculous to the sublime

First, a bit of the ridiculous (there was plenty more, just not enough space!):

I'd intended to post the entire, C-Span video of Hillary finally testifying on Benghazi (four months after she was supposed to), but after watching it myself, I thought it best to neither inundate, nor insult you with that pack of pat-myself-on-the-back, regime-changing, crocodile tear-filled, imperialist lies.  If you've got a couple hours to waste however, just go to the link.

Her mysteriously unwitnessed, after-the-fact reported, yet timely fainting from dehydration -- right before she was due to testify -- remains suspect in my estimation. Sure, since many of us "old gray mares" ain't what we used to be (present company included!) -- it could have happened.  I simply don't believe it did. Too convenient.

After the Changeling shoved Susan Rice under the bus into the spotlight, with that bullshit, "anti-Muslim video" causing the attack on the consulate in "Benghazi" story (Benghazi in quotes here because there was certainly nothing ambassadorial going on there, particularly since the embassy is in Tripoli), they realized they'd wholly underestimated the nitwit Republicans and had to do an, I'm sure, Bill-Hill-Changeling scramble for a better cover story of this administration's colossal screw-up in which those four people died -- particularly since, On the day of his death, US ambassador to Libya warned that he was in danger:

Hours before US Ambassador Christopher Stevens died in a terrorist attack in Libya, he sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a cable warning that local militias were threatening to take away security officers guarding the US diplomats. (emphasis mine)

You can read the cable, embedded as "the memo," in this piece on the very telling testimony of the "Four Goats Stooges" (three of whom, were put on administrative leave, but are still on the State Dept. payroll and the fourth, basically shifting to another desk):  Benghazi attack testimony claims state department ignored warnings.

This particular exchange just chapped my ass:

With all due respect the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because there was a protest or was it because there were guys who went out for a walk one night who decided they would kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?! (emphasis hers)

With absolutely NO respect intended Hill -- the difference it makes, is that YOU, and pretty much, the rest of the Changeling's administration are bald-faced LIARS in the service of neocolonialism -- and rather callously, inept ones at that!  But we already know, none of you mind having other people's blood on your hands.  Real "Change We Can Believe In." {smdh}

~#~

Gen. Stanley McChrystal: Afghans Are Like Teenagers, We Have 'Emotional Responsibility' to Continue Occupation -- McChrystal: 'I would certainly like to see American businesses in Afghanistan'

"Like a teenager, you really don’t want your parents hanging around you, but ... you like to know if things go bad, they’re going to help," he said.

"We have an emotional responsibility" to leave US occupying forces in Afghanistan, he told AP... As for drones, their real problem, he told Reuters on Monday, is not civilian casualties but one of perceptions.

"What scares me about drone strikes is how they are perceived around the world," he said.

They foster a "perception of American arrogance that says, 'Well we can fly where we want, we can shoot where we want, because we can.'"

Really??  Can somebody tell him, the Afghan people are neither his, nor America's damned children! They are a people whose history has endured way longer than this nascent, upstart nation has even been in existence! And rather than all the murders visited upon the people by BeelzObama's drone strikes -- all he's concerned about, is how arrogantly America is perceived in the world?  Too late for that Stanley. And this is what he'll be teaching your privileged little darlings at Yale. {smmfh} Again, real "Change We Can Believe In."

This fool, is the poster-child for Rudyard Kipling's, "White Man's Burden" -- a snippet of which, was quoted in the comments section of the McChrystal piece (you can read it in its entirety at the link, because I'm not posting it here.  Hell, we already get more than enough of this foolishness from the living imperialists with whom we have to deal on the regular!).

There were many replies to Kipling's, written White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy from both Black and white folk, but the commenter's snippet sent me looking for Virgin Island-born, Black Nationalist, Hubert Harrison's, phenomenally poetic reply -- and I found it:


THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN (A REPLY TO RUDYARD KIPLING)
Hubert Harrison - from “When Africa Awakes” (New York, 1920)

Take up the Black Man’s burden--

Send forth the worst ye breed,

And bind our sons in shackles

To serve your selfish greed;

To wait in heavy harness

Be-devilled and beguiled

Until the Fates remove you

From a world you have defiled.


Take up the black Man’s burden---

Your lies may still abide

To veil the threat of terror

And check our racial pride;

Your cannon, church and courthouse

May still our sons constrain

To seek the white man’s profit

And work the white man’s gain.


Take up the Black Man’s burden---

Reach out and hog the earth,

And leave your workers hungry

In the country of their birth;

Then, when your goal is nearest,

The end for which you fought

Watch other’s trained efficiency

Bring all your hope to naught.


Take up the Black Man’s burden---

Reduce their chiefs and kings

To toil of serf and sweeper

The lot of common things:

Sodden their soil with slaughter,

Ravish their lands with lead;

Go, sign them with your living

And seal them with your dead.


Take up the Black Man’s burden---

And reap your old reward;

The curse of those ye cozen,

The hate of those ye barred

From your Canadian cities

And your Australian ports;

And when they ask for meat and drink

Go, girdle them with forts.


Take up the Black Man’s burden---

Ye cannot stoop to less.

Will not your fraud of "freedom"

Still cloak your greediness?

But, by the gods ye worship,

And by the deeds ye do,

These silent, sullen peoples

Shall weigh your gods and you.


Take up the Black Man’s burden---

Until the tale is told,

Until the balances of hate

Bear down the beam of gold.

And while ye wait remember

The justice, though delayed

Will hold you as her debtor

Till the Black Man’s debt is paid.


Today's Black mis-leadership class, top to bottom, pales in comparison to men like this!

~##~

And now, a little bit of "19 year-old" sublime:



Nineteen years-old -- 19!!  Led by the courage of her convictions, she, unlike most of our old asses, has not swallowed her tongue on this country's warmongering!

~#~

This story from Your Black World, about another 19 year-old with the courage of her convictions makes my heart full:  19-Yr Old American Gives Serena Williams Her First Loss in Months. Now don't get it twisted -- it in no way surprises me. Rather, it's just another example (and more confirmation) of that, which I already know we are capable!

Stephens said that she looked up to Williams and went straight to her phone to check for a text message from her grandmother.

...Stephens said that she had a picture of Williams up on her wall when she was a little girl. She was in tears after her big performance.

“This is so crazy. Oh my goodness,” she said. “I think I’ll put a poster of myself (up) now.”

Williams mentioned that she was having back problems, but didn’t consider that to be her excuse for not winning.

“Everyone at this stage in the locker room has something wrong with them. It’s no excuse,” she said. (emphasis mine)

Two young, extremely talented Black women squared off and, IMHO, they both "won" -- one with a healthy dose of respect and confidence, and the other -- with grace.

Related:
- Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (Google Books has a great excerpt!)
-US Regime Change: “We initiate Terrorism to create Terrorists to Overthrow Governments”

Obama's "War of Necessity"

As everyone waits to see what spews forth from the Changeling regarding Afghanistan later today, let's be clear people - THIS is the site of Obama's "Necessary War"...

When I got these pictures from the husband in April (I think you can click on them to enlarge), all I could do was shake my damn head. I couldn't even begin to write everything I was feeling, particularly since "Hearts and Minds" (like so many other issues, hotly debated and often not agreed-upon during this 29-years-last-Saturday union) had also become another one of those double-edged swords, slicing my emotions into two distinctly different, yet equally important parts between which I ultimately find my idea of "right."

I read Eric Margolis's, Chasing Mirages in Afghanistan, a little while before the U.S. presidential "selection" redux  Afghan elections.  It was an interesting take on the no-win, win for which Obama & Co. keep constantly aiming. He makes the very good point:

Ravaged Afghanistan needs genuine, honest elections, and patient national reconciliation, free of foreign manipulation. That's the only true road to peace and stability.

And I was right there with him, but then, he had to go and say this:

America has a great deal to teach Afghanistan about how to run clean elections and build the essential institutions of democracy.

and this...democracy and good government are what America should be exporting to the Muslim World, not dictators, B-1 bombers, and Predators.

and this...Running phony elections is unworthy of the United States and demeans its values and traditions.

Really now. You know, just as well as I do, that America's already taught/exported enough of "US" to Afghanistan to nearly choke the life out of an entire people - especially if we were to really unpack those good ole American "values and traditions."  But I do get where he was trying to go with the whole "makes a mockery of everything we preach around the globe" thing.  And so do they:

Starting at the 6:18 click, the men say, "We're hoping that Obama would be much better than Bush." Then they go on - wearily it seems - to the ending 7:08 click, explaining what should be painfully clear, even to the most empathetically-challenged of us.

I tell you, if watching just that little snippet (never mind the other parts - to include that brand, spanking new SuperMax-looking prison they just built on Afghan soil - among other things) does not convince you of the absolute wrongness of this thing that the Changeling, et al are doing in our names, I don't know what will.  And, either this is some serious Undercover Brother maneuvering, or these fellas need not hold out any hope of him being better:

And he had the nerve to say, "This will not be quick nor easy." Well, all I have to say to that is, what Queen Gorgo from the movie, "300" said to the crooked, rapist-politician Theron, after she rammed that sword deep into his belly in the council chamber:  Mr. President - "This will not go quickly, YOU will not enjoy it!" 

Based on his consistent-from-the-beginning rhetoric and continued hawkish behavior on Afghanistan, coupled with his general's conveniently leaked report and "Karzai's tattered victory," nobody should have any questions about whether or not he's "better than Bush."  But of course, that's wishful thinking.   

Scott Ritter illustrates some historically inconvenient truths about Afghanistan in his, McChrystal Doesn’t Get It—Does Obama? - truths Obama & Co. don't seem to even care to get as they continue their feeble march toward imperialist nation-building.  I'm sure Hill wouldn't have been overseas a couple of weeks ago (looking for some reason to me - eerily Nixonesque), telling Der Spiegel - 'Our Goal Is to Defeat Al-Qaida and Its Extremist Allies' - if they did care.  Now, nearly deafened by his administration's increasingly louder drumbeats for more war, I felt that "quiet riot" beginning to rumble.  And with her Oscar-worthy performance in the "Patriarchy Category" - parroting the lies, and posturing, just like the man who'd brushed her off his lapel Jay-Z style during the campaign - the words that had eluded me since April finally came.  But not for the warmongers.  The words are for the Afghan brothers and sisters suffering the same foot-on-neck behavior upon which this country was founded:

"My enemy's enemy is my man remember?  I ain't tryin' to be endin' up in this Man's dilemma...'til we get there, I am on your side."