CNN reports dumb-assed Al Qaeda salad bar/buffet plot after GOP stalls Food Safety Act for months

Is there not a better sign of the end of an Empire and a nation in serious trouble? Just don't tell the Obama-holdouts, they might get upset. Who on God's gray earth would believe this horseshit but a Republican or a Libertarian, all of them with serious emotional and intellectual issues regarding reality? "Al-Qaeda plot threatens America's salad bars and buffets." You gotta be kidding, right?

It beggars the imagination that someone without the ability to imagine would believe something a ten year old could see through or do a better job of concocting.

Just as they did under Bush II, being a venerable asset of Empire and the GOP, CNN is selling a very lame-assed scare story to boost another war criminal's sagging popularity ratings as well as providing some cover for corrupt food growers and processors who wanted the Food Modernization Act. Apparently, high school never ended and life has now become Facebook. How is this different from all the times that George W. Bush cried "WOLF!" (not CNN's Blitzer, or even Donner) with the terror alert warnings to save his own ass, for political ends? It's not at all and it's not the only example, Obama's just less obvious about it than the last clown.

Seriously: President Barack Obama is the same as George W. Bush, wake up assholes, pull your heads out of your collective-ass and stop having this.

CNN's talking-neck was barely able to read the salad bar/buffet headline it was so stupid, so nebbish, so moronic and transparently unimportant pap that was probably lifted from a surveillance log of someone simply toying with the idea of joining a terror cell...after a few bong-hits or a lift from some meth. Get real, quit insulting our intelligence with your counterintelligence, your disinformation predicated on scaring the dummies that over-populate every nation so that we hand over even more of our rights to a predatorial establishment.

Great, someone was going to "poison" salad bars and buffets across America...and somehow they weren't American food growers and producers who routinely employ illegal immigrants, who then lobby the GOP all of the time for fewer regulations on food safety. Yes, it was a smart timing to run the bogus Al-Qaeda story just hours after the GOP had stalled the Food Safety Act for months, very wise, well-timed. How long did they stall its passage? Since March of this year, nine whole months, which is roundly un-American.

Besides the GOP's tail-dragging on to poison the public, or not to poison it, these were some of the major opponents of the very reasonable bill--unless some of us prefer a little e-coli with our spinach, watermelons and potatoes (take that Dan Quayle!), and TEA:

Freedomworks

Competitive Enterprise Institute

American Mushroom Institute

National Potato Council

National Watermelon Association

Produce Marketing Association

United Fresh Produce Association

The John Birch Society

National Cattleman's Beef Association

Western Growers

American Academy of Microbiology

Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
(http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-510)

Any familiar names here? It passed the Senate on November 30th of this year anyway, but there was more stalling from the GOP.

And you Democratic incumbents: You can stop with the good cop, bad cop act. We're on to you. We know this is all just political theater and we're about to call bullshit on this whole clown show. We're not having it anymore, you're done. For a moment, I thought they were saying that Jimmy Buffett was being targeted by terrorists, which makes just as much sense and is just as credible...

The Lay of the Land: The human face of the Afghani front

20100313 (Time Now)

Kandahar (second largest city after kabul): multiple EXP's & SAF (Taliban attack in progress)

PHASE I MARJAH (spring 2010)(operation moshtarak)

PHASE II KANDAHAR (summer 2010)

PHASE III HIMALAYAS (near Pakistan/China borders with Afghanistan)

MARCH 01-13 (((12 x U.S. KIA)))

3-11-2010	Gamble, Garrett W.	Lance Corporal	20	2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force	U.S. Marine	Texas	Sugarland	Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack	Helmand	Afghanistan
3-09-2010	Kropat, Jason M.	Private 1st Class	25	1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)	U.S. Army	New York	White Lake	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire, RPG	Khowst	Afghanistan
3-09-2010	Richardson, Jonathan J.	Sergeant	24	1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)	U.S. Army	Arkansas	Bald Knob	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire, RPG	Khowst	Afghanistan
3-07-2010	Cook, Nicholas S.	Private	19	2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team	U.S. Army	Montana	Hungry Horse	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire	Kunar	Afghanistan
3-05-2010	Dikcis, Alan N.	Specialist	21	630th Engineer Company (Clearance), 7th Engineer Battalion (Combat Effects), 20th Engineer Brigade (Combat) (Airborne)	U.S. Army	New York	Niagara Falls	Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack	Kandahar	Afghanistan
3-04-2010	Paci, Anthony A.	Specialist	30	1st Battalion, 17th Infantry, 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division	U.S. Army	Maryland	Rockville	Non-hostile - vehicle accident (rollover)	Gereshk	Afghanistan
3-04-2010	Olsen, Nigel K.	Lance Corporal	21	4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve	U.S. Marine	Nevada	Orem	Hostile - hostile fire	Helmand	Afghanistan
3-01-2010	Owens, Vincent L.C.	Sergent	21	3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)	U.S. Army	Arkansas	Fort Smith	Hostile - hostile fire	Yosuf Khel (died at FOB Sharana)	Afghanistan
3-01-2010	Aragon, Carlos A.	Lance Corporal	19	4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve	U.S. Marine Reserve	Utah	Orem	Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack	Helmand	Afghanistan
3-01-2010	Gelig, Ian T.D.	Specialist	25	782nd Brigade Support Battalion, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division	U.S. Army	California	Stevenson Ranch	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire	Kandahar	Afghanistan
3-01-2010	Huston, Matthew D.	Specialist	24	1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division	U.S. Army	Georgia	Athens	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire, RPG	Bala Murghab	Afghanistan
3-01-2010	Crumpler, Josiah D.	Specialist	27	1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division	U.S. Army	North Carolina	Hillsborough	Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire, RPG	Bala Murghab	Afghanistan

One world is not enough for all of us...

Apocalypto (2006) review

There is only one word for Mel Gibson's Apocalypto: masterwork. We have the source of his meltdown--this film. To say that Apocalypto is a major achievement would be an understatement. It is more. Gibson has created a story about now and how civilizations fall.

Yes, there are numerous references to the war in Iraq--albeit indirect ones--but also about the fear-baiting "War on Terror." The panic surrounding 9/11 is touched-on: a scene of refugees escaping warfare very early in the film conveys the need for calm during a crisis, and not for people to fall-prey to their fears (the food of all tyrants and demagogues).

For those who want to shift the debate about this film, you should realize that it's an allegory, and it's meant to exist only in cinematic space and not as a representation of a linear-history. It's thrust is thematic. We should all know this by now regarding movies and how they portray human history. Interestingly, Gibson and his co-writer crib a scene from William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," and it fits. I also enjoyed his take on the shamanic experience and the power of human insight.

But many of the images in Apocalypto are happening in Iraq today, many-of-which are being committed by our troops in our name. The only difference here is the absence of automatic-weapons and other "high-technologies". While there isn't 100% accuracy in the depiction of the classical Mayan civilization, the bulk of their culture and practices (including the cyclical-droughts that precipitated a decline of the cities, enslavement, and an increase in human sacrifice) are present. There is a genuine love of the Maya expressed in the film, and they are a beautiful people with their aquiline-noses and their bronze-skin.

The Maya are a lovely people with a material culture and legacy that is both gorgeous and horrific, and they are a part of us all in Gibson's filmic universe. There are no Caucasian messiahs here (a truly racist conceit), as there have been in most films featuring indigenous peoples. Virtually every actor in the film is Mayan or at least Native American.

Some critics have said the tale seems more to concern the problems of the Aztecs, but consider that the rain god Kukulkan was a feathered-serpent, just as Quezalcoatl in Mesoamerican religion. Both gods received sacrifices of blood in ways that are so similar that there has to be some connection in the genesis of both civilizations, particularly in their militarized-theocratic structures. This connection may come from the Toltec and Olmec civilizations.

We can see a contemporary desire for this theocratic-context in the efforts of the Bush administration except that they sacrifice warriors to the god Mars. And so, we have one of the major themes in most of Gibson's oeuvre: the strong desire for human sacrifice and an unquenchable bloodthirstiness that is part of nearly every so-called "civilized" culture in human history. This is what makes it a story about the human-condition, and it's clear that Mel Gibson is horrified by the way that we treat each other. This raises some valid questions.

I put it to you: how-many people has he ever killed? Critics are suffering from misdirected-anger, while others are lying-racists themselves. Others are simply being reactionary and wrong-headed.

A noteworthy aspect of the film is the fact that this is the first motion picture with dialog spoken in the language of the Maya. Because most of the public don't understand that the Maya were and are a linguistic cultural group--not a single-unit as most indigenous groups are and were--it might be confusing to see Maya enslaving and sacrificing other Maya, but this is what occurred during their classical and post-classical eras.

Human sacrifice intensified when cycles of droughts, possibly due to an over-population in the cities. Due to internecine warfare, poor harvests, and general brutality through raiding and feuds, the cities began sinking. Gibson suggests that infighting as depicted in the film was the major-contributor, and Gibson appears to have done his homework on a subject that he so obviously adores. It's still a guess as to why they fell, which reveals the tale as allegory, not a simple history.

Even the philosopher Henri Rousseau with his "noble savages" might be impressed, but the co-writer/director/producer balances this all out with a display of what the Maya really did to one another as their civilization collapsed. Because of this, and the indirect references to our own time, the story has a message that isn't isolated to the fall of classical Mayan civilization, but a warning to us all that only a people can truly undo themselves.

This is a pretty radical message during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the divisiveness and chaos unleashed by the Bush administration upon the world. In past interviews, director Gibson has compared the human sacrifices in Apocalypto with Iraqis, Americans, and coalition forces being sacrificed to the war machine in the Middle East. This is a very fine-point that literally transcends the historical setting of the film and can be taken as part of its general-thrust: a civilization that wars with its neighbors and within itself cannot endure, a reminder from history. The majority of Mayan history was warfare against each other, it's just the unfortunate truth. Apocalypto is a warning to us all.

It is curious, then, that there are voices of the so-called "Left" who want to focus on the racial tirade of a man who was having a nervous-breakdown while intoxicated. It sends a very weird message indeed. The sheer brilliance of this film illuminates the incident more clearly by its technical achievements (digitally shooting, almost entirely within the jungles of the Yucatan). Ask Werner Herzog how easy this is.

This is not an apology for Gibson's comments, but we should ask ourselves how often these things happen to people who are not famous. If he wasn't Mel Gibson, we wouldn't even be talking about the tirade, we wouldn't care. It's all about having an agenda.

All attacks on him should be viewed with a reasonable degree of suspicion and level-headedness, because even a man who has done wrong can be used to commit further wrongs for individuals with an questionable agenda (like Ari Emanuel). Many of these people are supporters of the very imperialism that Gibson rails-against in this film.

There are a number of Hollywood insiders who have said point-blank that they will never even watch this film for consideration of an MPAA award. It all reminds me of the stupidity surrounding The Last Temptation of Christ (1989), an embarrassing episode for American culture. This is intellectual dishonesty at its worst, but most of these individuals are used to this state-of-being, as are many of the critics of the film--even one Ward Churchill, and he should know better.

In-character-as-usual, the Maya are mixed in their reactions to the film at this writing. They are not a monolithic people, but a culture of disjointed familial networks.

Yet, the Maya are survivors, 800,000-strong, which isn't shabby for an indigenous people in the Americas, and they even control parts of Chiapas, Belize and Guatemala. A people have a way of coming-around for their turn again, and it's possible that the Maya will have their own autonomous civilization someday. Here's to their continued resistance to colonialism. Today, the Maya often live as they always have in their small agricultural villages. Apocalypto is essential viewing with an ending that absolutely floored me. Its cinematic vistas are food for thought, regardless of who it came from.

Context-context-context:

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/sites/meso_america/chichenitza.html
http://hatherleighpress.stores.yahoo.net/secretsofmaya.html
http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/Maya/Maya_Aztec_Main.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06309/735121-37.stm
http://www.indians.org/welker/maya.htm
http://www.smm.org/sln/ma/cenote.html
http://www.britannica.com/hispanic_heritage/article-9051572
http://www.pilotguides.com/destination_guide/central_america_and_caribbean/la_ruta_maya/chichen_itza.php
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/extauazp.html

Revised 11.08.2008