RANDALL TERRY'S NOTORIOUS ANTI-ABORTION GROUP OPERATION RESCUE HAS THIS CERTAIN NOTORIETY for sheer and banal crudity of the highest order in protesting the activities of abortionists and scaring women seeking abortions into reconsidering pro Deo et patria.

In particular, its urging supporters to use their children @ anti-abortion protests Operation Rescue conducts, and hoping for the police to arrest the kids; the better so the parents can get off on lesser charges than would ordinarily be expected of mere adults protesting abortion.

Next thing you know, expect Operation Rescue to be in league with the weird and unwholesome elements of racism and white supremacy (in particular pseudoreligious elements invoking a "scientific" approach to bigotry, or otherwise associated with the false doctrine of Christian Identity) in seeking to "rescue***a once-proud and simple White Christian community from danger of persecution"--the Afrikaner peoples of South Africa, largely Calvinist/Dutch Reformed in religious leanings and whose "fear of persecution" comes from a "Communist-influenced regime" dominated by "sub-human elements***having reckless and utter disregard for White honour and privilege."

As in evacuation of the Afrikaner populace from South Africa as "refugees" and their timely resettlement in the United States, preferably as "humble and simple pastoralists."

Unfortunately, however, there are still doubts as need to be raised whether their "refugee" claims are sincere and legitimate, let alone supported by credible substantiation; there's always the danger that the claims of "fear of persecution" may be deliberately scripted to deceive or mislead immigration officials.

That, and whether the funds being raised to assist with such "rescue" efforts will serve their intended purposes--especially after questions start being raised in certain circles.

No doubt something to expect from Operation Rescue--or can you? 

NOT EXACTLY THE TALES OF BRAVE ULYSSES, READER, especially when you consider that, for starters, a three-mile stretch of I-95 in Philadelphia is closed for emergency maintenance after a substantial crack was found in a concrete support beam thereof between Girard Avenue and the Betsy Ross Bridge, the stretch in question.

Said crack is 4' long by 2" wide, and parts of the metal rebar have reportedly shown up in the crack.

Not to mention brick-sized chunks of concrete having been discerned from street level.

In any case, such should serve (along with the I-35W bridge collapse) as clear-cut examples of how far His Fraudulency's Great Within has allowed American infrastructure to deteriorate for the sake of his misadventures otherwise known as ur-RAHOWA Against Terrorism--and I feel qualified to call same "misadventures" because such was provoked based on flimsy and misleading intelligence serving to cover the "real" reasons thereof: Viz., the maintenance of continued dependency on oil imports in the face of stateside oil fields (especially so those in Texas, Oklahoma and California) close to reaching the end of their productive lives and "undue and unnecessary regulatory burden" seen as "preventing" further stateside exploration and development which could tend to the wasteful and counterproductive.

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MEANWHILE, IN NIGERIA, GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATORS HAVE UNCOVERED EVIDENCE OF WHERE 34 SHAM COMPANIES controlled or owned by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo or his droogs were awarded some US$2.25 billion in contracts related to modernisation of the Nigerian power grid and related infrastructure as failed to be carried out.

As the BBC explains:

The BBC's Ahmed Idris in the capital, Abuja, says this week's parliamentary hearings, which are being aired on television, are causing a stir with their revelations.

He says many parts of the country go for days without electricity and businesses and many homes rely on their generators.

When President Umaru Yar'Adua came to power last year he announced he would declare a "state of emergency" on the country's energy crisis.

Nigeria currently has 10 power stations - they are all between 20 and 30 years old.

Last month, Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan said power cuts were an "embarrassment" to Nigeria - after black-outs affected a meeting he was attending.

Testimonies

The House of Representatives committee is investigating why six power stations - already paid for by the government - are yet to be completed years after they were begun.

It has called all the contractors to give testimony about their progress.

Two witnesses told the hearings, which began on Tuesday, that bushes from the the site where a South African company, Pivot, had been contracted to build a station in the oil-rich Niger Delta have yet to be cleared.

IN CASE IT SHOULD EVER HAPPEN THAT ONE IS LOOKING FOR NEW AND INNOVATIVE WAYS BY WHICH TO DISTRACT FOX NEWS VIEWERS PSYCHOLOGICALLY (especially considering their being, for the most part, poor, undereducated and easily-led), I offer this suggestion:

Once the messenger starts to get rather ridiculous with their ranting, cue up as a distraction the music you hear in the background--"55 Days at Peking," an insturmental by Australian act Rob E.G., vintage 1963--so as to distract the Fox News viewer from the message Fox News is presenting @ the moment.

For maximum effect, do so about mid-sentence, so as to maximise the suspense potential and further distract Fox's vulnerable audience.

What could be sweeter?

To All Members
Minnesota State Senate
Minnesota House of Representatives
State Capitol
St. Paul, MN 55155

To whom it may concern:

In view of what amounts to a continued and continuing attitude problem on Governor Pawlenty's part vis-a-vis tax policy (as discussed previously in this weblog, know), in turn raising questions of where his mind seems to be, may I recommend to you @ this time, for the sake of the Greater Collective Good of Our Beloved Minnesota, what I think may be the most logical option you have that I can think of short of out-and-out impeachment proceedings:

Videlicet, having someone in your respective chambers come forward to introduce a Motion of No Confidence in Governor Pawlenty as a show of protest in his out-of-touch-with-Reality mindset towards taxes and socioeconomic policy in the faces of serious challenges facing Our Beloved Minnesota made all the more worse by Governor Pawlenty's hard-wired Zealotry and True Belief.

A Zealotry and True Belief which seems to be right out of the playbook of the so-called "Club for Growth," a hyperconservative pro-business entity whose articles of faith could best be summarised as "low taxes=jobs=social stability"--which, if anything, lacks serious credibility, let alone having been previously discredited.

In other words, simply asking "does the Honourable Governor, Mr. Pawlenty, have the confidence and trust of this Legislature?" and putting same to a straight up-or-down vote.

Though rarely used in American politics, perhaps the use of a Motion of No Confidence could be enough to send him a message that:

Especially so under current socioeconomic conditions made all the worse by misguided and perhaps corrupt governance @ Federal level crossing the line into scandal.

Hence, if any of you members of the Minnesota Legislature would have the courage to come forward and introduce a No Confidence Motion against Governor Pawlenty in view of recent developments, such would be a great service to Our Beloved Minnesota in this her Sesquicentenary Year. Even more so if such an action translates into a Call for Elections subsequently being issued, which may or may not likely require appointment of a Caretaker Government in the interim.

Our Beloved Minnesota will be none the worse for a No Confidence Motion being presented as a message against Governor Pawlenty's hard-wired mindsets as go against Harsh Reality. Let it be hoped, then, that such will be forthcoming in the current Legislative session. 

glitter-graphics.com

IN THE EARLY PART OF THE 19TH CENTURY, INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND WENT PARANOID AND BALLISTIC over the emergence of roving bands of unemployed workingmen who feared the installation of new, automated machinery in the cotton-weaving industries of Nottinghamshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire as a threat to their jobs, livelihoods and honour.

Calling themselves "Luddites" (probably after Ned Ludd, who smashed a spinning jenny in a Leicestershire cotton mill in 1779 to protest his job being thus lost), its followers worked largely in camera under cover of darkness before going on their orgies of destroying what they saw to be the loss of their jobs and honour. (This was years before the welfare state and unemployment benefits, remember.)

After a series of notorious orgies with sledgehammers and iron bars, 17 Luddite ringleaders were sentenced to death on the gallows @ York in 1813, soon after an Act of Parliament made "machine breaking" (as in industrial sabotage) a capital crime; numerous others involved with the Luddites were sentenced to transportation to the Australian penal colonies. (IMHO, the Luddite types thus sentenced were more than likely assigned to the Van Diemen's Land [Tasmania] penal colony, Alcatraz, as it were, in contrast to the main such in New South Wales and Queensland.)

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"WHY," YOU MAY ASK, "BRING UP LUDDITERY AS PART OF A DISCUSSION on objections to abortion?"

Good question there, reader.

Come to think of it, Your Correspondent has to wonder if those who object to abortion on socioeconomic grounds (i.e., to "protect and maintain American jobs," perhaps by way of "industrial heritage" arguments) are probably Luddites @ heart.

Put another way, the protection and continued maintenance of a Luddite socioeconomic model and paradigm--itself expected to be based on free-market capitalistic models and "experience" as are themselves expected to be one with the defence of America's "antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity"--requires maintaining a workforce expected to remain deliberately poor, ignorant and easily-influenced, especially on "patriotic" matters.

The only way they know how to "protect" what is essentially a labour-intensive socioeconomic model as is @ the core of Luddite thought? You guessed it--a "complete and final" ban on abortion, contraception, family planning and sex education.

All excused officially in the name of "economic reasons"--the very patsy which Romania's Communist regime under Nicolae Ceauçescu invoked to ban abortions during his tenure from 1966 until his overthrow in 1989.

Only in Ceauçescu's case, the core desire was to "hasten the final onset of Pure Socialism," which, in Marxist/Leninist thought, would be the final perfection of Communism. Never mind where super-secret estimates suggested that such a policy would only create a significant labour surplus some 30 years on, anathema to a political model which saw mass unemployment as a fatal flaw of capitalism and socioeconomic development based upon centralised Five-Year Plans.

And it's not just about banning abortions: Discouraging investment in new plant and industry, essentially expecting existing industries to keep soldering along with largely outdated, inefficent and labour-intensive manufacturing equipment and processes (excusing such as tax-break-protected "industrial heritage" all the while), is also key to such a strategem.

The which, in any case, needs to be challenged because of its potential socioeconomic consequences. (Unless, of course, you can provide a rational argument in defence of these points.)   

SO MUCH FOR HIS FRAUDULENCY'S GREAT WITHIN EXPECTING WASTEFUL AND FRIVOLOUS CONSUMER SPENDING ORGIES among those receiving Economic Stimulus Payments from $300 starting May 2nd, preferably @ the local Wally World and without due regard for getting your money's worth.

All that matters to the "inside of the inside," so to speak, is that these monies be spent all the sooner.

But when you get right down to it, expect elements weird and unwholesome to follow close behind, especially among those in lower-income or economically-disadvantaged communities so entitled, to exploit same in furtherance of Make Money Fast (MMF) schemes such as:

• "Five Reports" and "mailing-list generator" chain letters;
• "cashflow gifting clubs" in their several permutations (among them "Friends Helping Friends," "Dinner Party," "Pit Stop," "Aeroplane" and suchlike); and
• "Australian one-up" plans.

And if current trends are anything, expect PayPal and suchlike to be the preferred medium of choice, if only to get around the Postal Inspection Service (but, on the other hand, risking prosecution under 18 USC 1343, as proscribes Fraud by Wire, Radio or Television under pain of penal servitude).

Or, alternately, courier services like UPS, FedEx and DHL, and for much the same reasons.

In my own experience, there is precedent for such a likelihood: Almost concurrently with the State of Minnesota's issuing special tax rebate payments in 1998 and 1999 out of budget surpluses, "mailing list" chain letters were received of Your Correspondent in the letterposts (and perhaps quite a few others across Minnesota).

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HENCE, IF YOU RECEIVE ANYTHING ALONG THE LINES OF "GIFTING CLUB," CHAIN LETTER OR "AUSTRALIAN ONE-UP" PLANS about the same time you receive your Economic Stimulus Payments, by letterpost or e-mail, such would be well worth avoiding.

And should be reported instead to The Proper Channels, especially in view of their potential for exploiting the vulnerable of society to the point of causing substantial socioeconomic harm and disruption beyond that now abroad as is squarely the fault of His Fraudulency's Great Within.

But then again ... how do we know that the Great Within isn't, somehow, secretly endorsing such scams to target the vulnerable entitled to these special emouluments as a way of "keeping them in their place" all the more?

WITH THE START OF LAST YEAR, THE WORLD'S OLDEST DAILY GAZETTA (as in Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, never mind its publishing nothing but legal and commercial notices as opposed to general news and information) "went virtual" after 361 years in print.

In other words, appearing only on the Information Stuporbahn.

Which, it turns out, will be the same way that The Capital Times of Madison, WI will be going @ the end of April after 90 years of afterlunch publication. (Well, not quite: They will still have a print presence every Wednesday [covering news, opinion and commentary] and Thursday [covering arts and amusements] as both an insert to the surviving Wisconsin State Journal and free stand-alone distribution in and around Wisconsin's capital city, and will still have an editorial presence in the State Journal's Sunday edition.)

Which, as Dave Zweifel of said Capital Times explained recently, was perhaps a painful, if necessary, decision to ensure the continued presence of alternative news and editorial voices in Mad City:

As I'm sure you can imagine, I've been answering phone calls, letters and e-mails the past couple of weeks about our decision to move The Capital Times at the end of April from a printed-on-newsprint six-day paper to a seven-day paper on the Web along with two substantial weekly editions on paper--one news and opinion, the other entertainment and lifestyle.

It's difficult for some folks to understand how we could make a decision that will take away a printed newspaper they have trusted and enjoyed, some for more than 60 years.

Let me share a story that came out of Albuquerque, N.M., just last month that might contain a clue to the dilemma we faced.

The Albuquerque Tribune, which has been published for 86 years, announced it was shutting down as of Feb. 23. The Tribune, an afternoon paper, has been in a joint operating agreement with the morning Albuquerque Journal, an arrangement quite similar to the one we have here in Madison with the Wisconsin State Journal and Lee Enterprises.

The announcement revealed that the Tribune's circulation had dipped to 9,600 in a metropolitan area with a population of more than 500,000. As recently as 1988, 42,000 homes got the newspaper.

The Tribune was no slouch of a paper. It won the Pulitzer Prize as recently as 1994 and was a finalist for another one in 1996. Its staff of 38 has continued to win state and national awards since.

The Albuquerque paper was just the most recent example of what's happened to afternoon papers over the past 30 years. Some of us were able to weather the storm, but as the Internet took hold, the handwriting was on the wall.

We had a choice. We could have continued to do things like we've always done and eventually suffered the fate of the Albuquerque Tribune and all the others and let The Capital Times slowly fade away, forever stilling its progressive voice and what we've meant to the Madison area and Wisconsin for roughly 90 years.

Or we could embrace the new technology, reposition ourselves on a medium that has captured millions, and head off into a future that can keep The Capital Times alive for a long time to come.

That's the goal we've set for ourselves, and I hope you will all come along for what should be an exciting ride.

No doubt something which the publishers of faltering daily or weekly gazettas ought to ponder: "Going virtual."

Even if (especially so in the case of rural weeklies) it sometimes requires embracing the collaborative weblog approach to stay afloat--even for the "locals" as are still a staple of many small-town weekly papers. And which, come to think of it, could be a good way for someone to keep alive such weeklies as may no longer be published, but are still fondly remembered; the Hokah Chief down in Your Correspondent's "home patch," as it were, serves as a likely example.

Published from 1855 until 1952, the Chief gained particular fame and attention in its last 40 years of publication (1912-52) under the legendary Herbert Wheaton, who often wrote under such pen names as "Father Ivonoff," "Aunt Jemima," "Hen Peck," "Seldom Seen," "Rube Ellick" and "Ole Vindblo" to the point where, @ times, the Chief had press runs of as many as 10,000 copies (including a substantial circulation in nearby LaCrosse, Wisconsin) and subscribers in every state--not to mention some American visitors in inter-war Europe reportedly receiving copies of the Chief @ the leading hotels.

And this from a rather small community in the Root River Valley of southeast Minnesota!

(Only to be done in by advancing age on Mr. Wheaton's part and an inability to find good help to keep the enterprise going, prompting him to end publication in early 1952, passing away not long afterwards.)

You never can tell....

(But then again, let me know if anybody has designs on reviving the Hokah Chief concept in blog form. I'll be happy to swap links.)