The 51-year-old, you may have guessed, has little faith in the conventional democratic process and its capacity to effect change, believing it merely lulls people into a complacency. While he concedes that Barack Obama's recent victory is a major achievement, he nevertheless sees Obama, too, as just part of the machinery of the capitalist system. "It's great he's got in, cos everybody can feel better for a while," says Cope. "But [Obama] won't do anything about the things I'm talking about because he had enough money to run for president and that makes him a cunt. Albeit a far higher quality of cunt."
Last Sunday The Independent published a rare interview with black sheep Julian Cope.
Read it here
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Wishful thinking?
Since 1948, if we want to draw a curve of Israel’s progress, do you think that this curve is still heading up, or maybe is at a plateau, or is heading down? I believe that the curve is now in descent. And today, the military might of Israel is not capable of concluding matters to Israel’s satisfaction. Since 1948, you may notice that Israel has defeated 7 armies. In ’56 they defeated Egypt. In ’67 they defeated 3 countries: Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. In ’73, the war was somewhat equal in both sides between Egypt and Israel, if not for Nixon’s airlift to Israel’s forces at that time, the map of the world would be different. In ’82 Israel defeated the PLO in Beirut.
But since ’82, 26 years ago, Israelis has not won any war. They did not defeat the Palestinian resistance, and they did not defeat the Lebanese resistance. Since that time, Israel has not expanded but has contracted. They have withdrawn from southern Lebanon and from Gaza. These are indicators that the future is not favorable to Israel. Then today Israel, with all its military capabilities – conventional and unconventional – are not enough to guarantee Israel’s security. Today, with all these capabilities, they can’t stop a simple rocket from being launched from Gaza
But since ’82, 26 years ago, Israelis has not won any war. They did not defeat the Palestinian resistance, and they did not defeat the Lebanese resistance. Since that time, Israel has not expanded but has contracted. They have withdrawn from southern Lebanon and from Gaza. These are indicators that the future is not favorable to Israel. Then today Israel, with all its military capabilities – conventional and unconventional – are not enough to guarantee Israel’s security. Today, with all these capabilities, they can’t stop a simple rocket from being launched from Gaza
Counterpunch's Alexander Cockburn puts forward the theory that Israel is losing ground:
Israel's Onslaught on Gaza: Criminal, for Sure; But Also Stupid
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Ask a Stupid Question...
The EDGE Annual Question 2009 is: WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?
One sensible man stands out amongst the plethora of technology fawning drivel spewed out by the great and the good in answer to this question:
ROUNDING AN ENDLESS VICIOUS CIRCLE
"I find it hard to believe that anything will change everything. The only exception might be if we suddenly learned how to live with one another. But, does anyone think that will come about in a foreseeable lifetime?
Evidence from the past seems to point to our becoming increasingly dangerous pretty much every time we come up with a new idea or technology. These new things are usually wholesome and benign at first (movable type, pharmacology, rule of law) but before long we find ways to use these inventions to do what we do best — exercise power over one another.
Even if we were visited by weird little people from another planet and were forced to band together, I doubt if it would be long before we’d be finding ways to break into factions again, identifying those among us who are not quite people.
We keep rounding an endless vicious circle. Will an idea or technology emerge anytime soon that will let us exit this lethal cyclotron before we meet our fate head on and scatter into a million pieces? Will we outsmart our own brilliance before this planet is painted over with yet another layer of people? Maybe, but I doubt it."
ALAN ALDA
Actor, writer, director, and host of PBS program "Scientific American Frontiers."
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At The Drive-in ~ Invalid Litter Dept
6 comments:
"Ni una mas"
I have never forgotten that,I think about it almost all the time in fact.I've been written something about it years ago.I recently join a group,on facebook,I know it's nothing but perhaps I could make it discover or remember to some of my friends.I go on line to see what is going on,it still going on but not on the news of course.The atmosphere must be so heavy in there.I think about all those women and the ones that are still there.And the authorities which play a part in this atrocity,people who know and stay mouth shut..Anyway,thanks for putting this here and remind people about it.I think their souls,there are so many,are calling somehow for justice or at least not to be forgotten.
I have a firm belief that if Alan Alda's little green men ever worked up the courage to land here, that the first thing they would do, would be to vaporise every, mosque, temple, and church & souvenier emporium.
Then they would assemble all of the dogmatic sh*t disturbers from every creed and vaporise them...at which time they would prolly recognise that Plato & Socrates werre correct in their synopsis that nobody over the age of 11 were viable for for de-programming and eliminate them.
Which would leave only the children to inherit the future.
The ETs would face some tough decisions about many of the youngsters in the Middle East who seem to be integrated into the cycle of hatred from the getgo.
Oh yeah, and our visitors would vaporise the New Jersey couple who named their kid Adolph Hitler...that's a no brainer. You can't just skim the shallow end of the gene pool, it must be drained.
Sorry, one more thing..Israel's policy of launching Nukes at every major Arab Capital if they are ever over-run by their enemies..I hope that it never comes to that but I have little doubt that they would do it.
The Palestinian pawns who are being manipulated by the others don't seem to understand that the US Christian Right alliance with God's First Nation is unbreakable and non-negotiable. Gaza would be one giant crater before any Arab army ever reclaims Jerusalem.
Candie: I have been listening to the album that contains this song* (Relationship of Command by At The Drive-in) for about a year now and had no idea what it was about until I saw this video. Rodriguez-Lopez and Bixler-Zavala later went on to form The Mars Volta whose debut album Deloused at the Comatorium I highly recommend.
*intravenously polite it was the walkie-talkies
that had knocked the pins down
as their shoes gripped the dirt floor
in the silhouette of dying
dancing on corpses' ashes
yeah, they had plans for him
they has spun the last of the pimps
polyester, satin nailed jewelry lips
while the guillotine just laughed again
dancing on the corpses' ashes
paramedics fell into the wound
like a rehired scab at a barehanded plant
an anesthetic penance beneath
the hail of contraband
they had been defected and excommunicated
and all the pulses were subverted
and they made sure the obituaries
showed pictures of smoke stacks
a vivid dissection that mocked
the strut of vivisection
semi-automatic colonies
and a silencing that still walks the streets
in the company of wolves
was a stretcher made of
cobblestone curfews
the federales performed
their custodial customs quite well
callous heels
numbed in travel
endless maps made
by their scalpels
on my way
nails broke and fell
into the
wishing well
Don: I figure the little green men have formed an exclusion zone around our solar system and will vapourise us if we ever manage to stray beyond its boundaries.
Religion is only a tool in the greater game of power – your southern neighbours and their Zionist cronies have big plans for the Middle East and genocide is but one of the weapons in their arsenal.
Hmm wherever one stands on the Gaza situation I can't see us humans being invited yo a United Federation of Planets anytime soon...
Thanks for the Julian Cope link.
Jams: yeah ts good to hear from the drood.
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