A Day of Remembrance: Remembering the Holocaust of the Witches

Heart, the editor of the Women's Space blog, has declared this a Day of Remembrance in honor of all the women murdered in the witch burnings of the past and the gynocide that continues around the world to this day.

Here is an excerpt from Andrea Dworkin's "Remembering the Witches" from her collection of essays titled, OUR BLOOD: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics.

Feile Oiche Shamhna!

Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam (A country without a language is a country without a soul.)

Remembering the Witches

By Andrea Dworkin
...
Tonight, on Halloween, we are here to remember another gynocide, the mass slaughter of the nine million women who were called witches. These women, our sisters, were killed over a period of three hundred years in Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Holland Switzerland, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Amerika. They were killed in the name of God the Father and His only Son, Jesus Christ.

The organized persecution of the witches began officially on December 9, 1484. Pope Innocent VIII named two Dominican monks, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, as Inquisitors and asked the good fathers to define witchcraft, to isolate the modus operandi of the witches, and to standardize trial procedures and sentencing. Kramer and Sprenger wrote a text called the Malleus Maleficarum. The Malleus Maleficarum was high Catholic theology and working Catholic jurisprudence. It might be compared to the Amerikan Constitution. It was the law. Anyone who challenged it was guilty of heresy, a capital crime. Anyone who refuted its authority or questioned its credibility on any level was guilty of heresy, a capital crime.
...

The struggle of women, the feminist struggle, is not a struggle for more money per hour, or for equal rights under male law, or for more women legislators who will operate within the confines of male law. These are all emergency measures designed to save women's lives, as many as possible, now, today. But these reforms will not stem the tide of gynocide; these reforms will not end the relentless violence perpetrated by the gender class men against the gender class women. These reforms will not stop the increasing rape epidemic in this country, or the wife-beating epidemic in England. They will not stop the sterilizations of black and poor white women who are the victims of male doctors who hate female carnality. These reforms will not empty mental institutions of women put into them by male relatives who hate them for rebelling against the limits of the female role, or against the conditions of female servitude. They will not empty prisons filled with women who, in order to survive, whored; or who, after being beaten, killed the man who was killing them. These reforms will not stop men from living off exploited female domestic labor, nor will these reforms stop men from reinforcing male identity by psychologically victimizing women in so-called "love" relationships.
...

Before we can live and love, we will have to hone ourselves into a revolutionary sisterhood. That means that we must stop supporting the men who oppress us; that we must refuse to let them take their sustenance from our lives. That means that we will have to divest ourselves of the identity we have been trained to as females - that we will have to divest ourselves of all traces of the masochism we have been told is synonymous with being female. That means that we will have to attack and destroy every institution, law, philosophy, religion, custom, and habit of this patriarchy - this patriarchy that feeds on our "dirty" blood, that is built on our "trivial" labor.

Halloween is the appropriate time to commit ourselves to this revolutionary sisterhood. On this night we remember our dead. On this night we remember together that nine million women were killed because men said that they were carnal, malicious, and wicked. On this night we know that they live now through us.

Let us together rename this night Witches' Eve. Let us together make it a time of mourning: for all women who are victims of gynocide, dead, in jail, in mental institutions, raped, sterilized against their wills, brutalized. And let us on this night consecrate our lives to developing the revolutionary sisterhood - the political strategies, the feminist actions - which will stop for all time the devastating violence against us.

Nice Try, You Lie, Goodbye: Metro Papers Face Huge Circulation Decline

File Photo: Mike Litwin (L) and Charlie Brennan (R) confer on how to better pander the pedophile murder of Jon Benet Ramsey at the August 17, 2006 John Mark Karr arrest press conference in Boulder, CO.

Dear Racist Mountain News:

In light of the bad news (for you) below, the Fire Witch strongly suggests that you begin cutting costs by handing pink slips to the following high priests of whitemale media supremacy:

Charlie "But My Wife Will Be There" Brennan
Vince Carroll
John Temple
Todd "Herr" Heisler
John C. Enslin
Kevin "But The British Burned All Our Papers" Flynn
Berny Morson
Laura Frank
Mike Litwin

Just to name a few useless puppets right off the top of my head.

Big Metros Show Severe Declines in Latest Circ Report

By Jennifer Saba

Published: October 30, 2006 7:40 AM ET

NEW YORK The Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX report for the six-month period ending September 2006 released this morning confirmed yet again that major metros are struggling to show growth. The losses are steep while the gains are meager.

This is the fourth consecutive semi-annual report to register a severe drop in daily circulation and -- perhaps more troubling to the industry -- Sunday copies. While the estimated decline 2.8% for daily circulation for all reporting papers may seem negligible, consider that in years past that decrease averaged around 1%. Sunday, considered the industry's bread-and-butter, showed even steeper losses, with a decline of about 3.4%.

Big cities like L.A., Miami, and Boston are feeling the effects of the Internet and the trimming of other-paid circulation. In New York, however, a 5.1% surge for the New York Post allowed it to leapfrog past its rival, the Daily News -- and The Washington Post -- into fifth place in daily circ.
...

The Denver Post’s daily circulation dropped 3.1% to 255,935. The Rocky Mountain News showed similar declines with daily down 2.9% to 255,675. Combined Sunday circulation fell 4.2% to 694,053.
...

Read the rest of the great news...

Here Come the Pigs: Police Invade Oaxaca

Mexican federal police officers stand guard in the Mexico-Oaxaca road. Hundreds of Mexican police in riot gear backed by armored vehicles and helicopters occupied downtown Oaxaca, the epicenter of a five-month teachers' strike and protests to topple the state government.(AFP/Alfredo Estrella)
AFP

Follow the latest developments in Oaxaca at Narco News.

Watch Your Mouth, Pig. German Soldiers and the Expression Skull Fuck

Stan Goff of the Feral Scholar recently posted a military insider's account of the meaning of the toxic macho male term "skull fuck," connecting it through the genocide in Afghanistan back to its roots in the degradation and subjugation of women.

Skull-F**K

By Stan at 11:03 pm, 10/28/06

The New Republic’s recently fired editor, Spencer Ackerman claims that his drift to the left is what caused his firing, and no one here is likely to find that surprising. But that is not the topic here. The topic is how Aker-MAN said it.

From Michael Calderone’s New York Observer column:

Mr. Ackerman said he had clashed with Mr. Foer over various editorial matters. But he said that he had fallen from favor after growing disenchanted with the invasion of Iraq, which he and the magazine had both supported in the beginning.

“I definitely, for lack of a better term, drifted leftward,” Mr. Ackerman said. “The Iraq war will do that to you. The Bush administration will do that to you.”

Mr. Ackerman had been acting out, by his own account: telling a colleague it “wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world” to get fired “for being too left-wing”; declaring in an editorial meeting that he would “skullfuck” the corpse of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to establish his anti-terrorist bona fides.

Skull fuck.

Now, allow me to turn to a highly eupehemized scandal in Germany right now. Nine German soldiers assigned to the NATO occupation of Afghanistan have been busted for posing with the skulls of dead Afghans. “Posing.” Other accounts say “desecrating.” In fact, in at least one of the pictures, a German soldier has his dick out of his pants in the suggestion that he is about to… “skull fuck” it.

For those not in the know, I am about to break the code of omerta with the fraternity of men. This term is common military parlance, and more and more among American (and German, too, it seems) males. When you really want to prove you male “bona fides,” you talk about humiliating the enemy, by removing the eye from a corpse and “skull fucking” it.

For those newcomers and lurkers and men who don’t get it yet, how much more perfect an example could I give of the association of male sexuality with violence, aggression, and the humiliation of the (real or symbolic) female victim. And what better example of many liberal and leftist men’s cluelessness than this masculinity-donning remark by Spencer Ackerman in the context of complaining about being red-baited off of a magazine staff.

Men, language like this is not one whit more excusable or acceptable or defensible than racial epithets or ethnic slurs. But had Ackerman discussed “jewing people down” or “nigger-rigging” or any of the other shit we’ve managed to at least run off the public stage in the interest of some facade of decency, lefty blogs would be lit up like an NSA communications board, in an attempt to see who could level the harshest condemnation. Yet the implication that reception of a penis — which most men desire from women — is synonymous with the desecration of the enemy dead, seems to drift along with hardly a rustle of the leaves.

Other Campaign Indymedia Journalist Brad Will Assassinated in Oaxaca

Members of the Popular Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) carry Brad Will, a cameraman, who was shot during a shooting near a barricade in Oaxaca City October 27, 2006. Gunmen opened fire on protesters in Mexico's colonial city of Oaxaca on Friday, killing a U.S. journalist and wounding several people at road blocks set up by leftists pushing to topple a state governor. Will, a cameraman working with Indymedia New York, was shot in the chest and died before reaching the hospital, the independent news group said on its Web site. REUTERS/Daniel Aguilar (MEXICO)

Narco News has complete coverage of the Oaxaca revolution and Brad Will's assassination.

The Other Campaign in Sonora: Zapatistas Meet with O'odham, Navajos, and Cherokees

Map Source: http://www.hrusa.org/indig/reports/Tohono.shtm

The Other Campaign in Sonora: “Our Struggle is for Humanity…”

A Meeting with the Tohono, O’odham, Navajo and Cherokee Peoples in Magdalena de Kino, October 21

By Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
The Other Mexico

October 26, 2006
...

“We are Zapatistas. We live in the last corner of this country. We are of Mayan roots. We are people of Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal, Chol, Zoque and Mam roots.”

And it is our custom at times to speak, when we speak with other Indian peoples, to use a symbolic language with tales and legends – ”sometimes we speak about our history, our goals, with tales, legends and symbolic language, and in this time that we have this message for the O’odham and Navajos and Cherokees, we take this root.” To pass on this message that the Compañeros sent me to tell you, we will use that resource.

Our elders, our chiefs, say that the gods made the world, that they made the men and women of corn first. And they specifically put the heart of corn in them. But the corn ran out and some men and women didn’t get a heart. The color of the earth ran out, and they began to look for other colors. Then, the heart of corn touched people who are white, red or yellow. So there are people here who don’t have the dark color of indigenous people, but they have the heart of corn, so they are here with us.

Our oldest ones say, our chiefs, that the people who didn’t get a heart, took care of it later, they occupied the empty space with money, and that it doesn’t matter what color those people have, they have a heart that is the green color of money.

And our old ones also say that, every once in a while, the land seeks to protect its children, the men and women of corn. And that a time comes – which is when the night is the most difficult – when the land gets tired and needs those men and women to help it live.
...

What we are proposing here is that we have to unite as Indian peoples. Land dies the same way in O’odham, Navajo, Cherokee, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Purépecha and Náhuatl territory, and we must unite, but not only in Mexico, but on the whole continent.

They, those who are up above, have already shown for hundreds of years, for centuries, that the only thing that they have done has been to destroy the earth. No more – “no more that’s enough” – it’s sufficient. Now we have to take the land’s destiny and its defense into our hands. Don’t leave it one minute more in the hands of the rich.

We, those who have the color of the earth and hearts of corn, without regard to our skin color – we have to do it, because if we don’t, the whole world is going to disappear.

To the one who has money, what’s happening is not important. O’odham and Navajo territory is now a territory of death. Your fields, where your culture flourishes, is where poor Mexicans are killed, families who try to cross to the other side. The O’odham and Navajo people cannot permit that. You know that they are converting our lands, besides, into their garbage can: we are their garbage dumps. Toxic wastes, nuclear wastes, are not going to the residential zones, not in New York or Washington: they are going to Indian lands.

And land is like the human body; one cannot inject poison into one part without affecting the rest. They think that they will only poison O’odham and Navajo land. They are going to poison everything and they are going to destroy it.

As the National Indigenous Congress compañero said: “we came to invite you, not to ask the government, but to get rid of it.” Not to be praying that the North American and Mexican governments respect O’odham territory, which is divided by the borderline. And we know that the borderline crosses through your people’s ceremonial center. We want that border to disappear, so that once again the O’odham, Navajo and Cherokee nations exist, as well as our peoples, because they already demonstrated that they cannot conduct this world and take it to a good end. We have to do it, not just for our Indian peoples, but for all humanity. Therefore, we say that our struggle is for humanity and against neoliberalism.

We wanted to invite you to join this movement, which is called the Other Campaign, so that as Indian peoples, the history of each 100 years is not repeated again. It is going to be repeated, but one part is going to change.
...

And if the governments of the United States or Mexico didn’t see us when we were few, we will see if the world doesn’t see us when all the Indian peoples of this continent – from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska – unite and begin to tell of all the injustices and struggles. And that gathering is going to be in Northwest Mexico, near the border – which does not exist for us – in other words near the Oodham, Navajo, Cherokee, Cucapá, Kiliwa, Yoreme, Yaqui land, where we have been all these days. In a few days, we are making agreements with each other and taking votes, perhaps next month this call that we are proposing will come out.

That is more or less what we want to tell you. I hope you can pass the message to the traditional chiefs: Ofelia, Brenda, Alicia – Don José is here – Michelle: I ask a favor that you pass it to the Navajo people, the compañera with the Cherokee people.

We only ask you that, we are going to talk directly among ourselves and make an agreement. The next time that we come my chiefs will come, I will not come, they sent me first to see how it was. I report to them and then they will come, those that command me, because that is our way.

That is what we want to say, compañeros and compañeras. Many thanks, Good Night.

Translator’s note: Marcos spoke some English during this meeting, all text in quotation marks indicates Marcos is speaking in English.

The Zapatistas and the Brown Berets

The Brown Berets of Watsonville, California

In a City of Immigrant Farmworkers, a New Youth Movement Draws Inspiration from the Zapatistas and the Radical Organizing of the 60s

By Gloria Muñoz Ramírez
La Jornada

October 24, 2006

They take up the legacy of Chicano agrarian leader César Chávez, of Malcolm X, of Martin Luther King, of the Zapatistas and, of course, of sixties movements like the Black Panthers and the Brown Berets. From this last group they retake its name, its berets and its fighting spirit.

The new Brown Berets are a group of autonomous youths, most of them students, dressed head to toe “in the color of the earth.” They are based in Watsonville, California, an agricultural region inhabited and, above all, worked by tens of thousands of people of Mexican, African American and Filipino origin.

Ramiro Medrano relates: “We began to organize in 1994. There was a lot of social mobilization in the United States in that year, because social assistance was being taken away from undocumented people with Proposition 187. That was also the year of the Zapatista uprising and we as Mexicans in the United States, as Chicanos, well, it made a big impact on us. The Chicano has an identity problem. We feel Mexican, but we are not recognized as such in Mexico, and neither are we gringos. After 1994, we were proud to say, together with the Zapatistas, we are Mexicans, indigenous people, and we are proud of it.”

In Watsonville, 80 percent of the population is Mexican or of Mexican origin. The majority are field workers, indigenous people who confront racism daily through organization and strength of character. They are the workforce of the U.S. city that has the greatest exports of strawberries, lettuce, broccoli and raspberries, as well as other products harvested by the exodus on this side of the Rio Grande.

“In 1994, the gang violence here left a young girl and her brother dead of gunshot wounds. This caused us to say ya basta – enough already! – to the violence generated by racism in the schools and in the fields. Young people with no options search for an identity, a sense of belonging, and that is how the gangs are formed. We didn’t want that in our neighborhoods anymore,” Ramiro continues.

And that is how the Brown Berets began. First with a great march for peace and unity that went through all the battle-torn neighborhoods. Later, once organized as a group, they had more long-term goals: get the youths out of the gangs; have representation in the schools and on their administration to avoid racism in the selection of students; organize against immigration raids and their agents’ actions in the barrio; hold workshops and events to strengthen identity through education, and many more, including the organization of a “Justice Network” in order to communicate by telephone the actions of la migra. Through this network they organize rapid concentrations of people to stop attacks by immigration agents, which they record and distribute. “It’s about not just standing by.”

Published in Spanish in Gloria Muños Ríos’ column “Los de abajo” (“The Underdogs”) of October 21.

Photo above from the homepage of the Brown Berets.

Pummeled Rapist Scumbag of the Day

Municipal police take away a man beaten and with a sign hanging from his neck saying 'Look at me well, I am a rat and a rapist, I entered a nursery' after he was caught by neighbors and beaten after he allegedly tried to rape a teacher at a nursery school in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico on Oct. 18, 2006. (AP Photo/Luis Alberto Cruz Hernandez)

Of course, the mainstream media will say that this kind of summary justice from the people represents a breakdown of the Rule of Law, but the rest of us know good and damn well that it is nothing more than the breakdown of the Rule of APARTHEID Law and Order that's got the establishment media's underoos all in a twist.

Hollah, Oaxaca. Well done.

Whitey Will Pay II: Millionaire Shanked by Stingray

Another stingray shanks a crapitalist male right in the heart. Apparently, after the successful attack on Steve Irwin, the word is out amonst the stingrays that Resistance is Fertile.

Pass it on.

Millionaire critically ill after stingray attack

by BARRY WIGMORE
Last updated at 22:00pm on 19th October 2006

A Florida man was critically ill in hospital last night after being stung in the chest by a 5ft stingray that jumped into his boat.

The bizarre incident was uncannily similar to the stingray attack that killed TV Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin last month.

Millionaire property developer James Bertakis, 81, had a foot-long barb in his chest when he was airlifted to a Fort Lauderdale hospital after the attack.

Doctors said he lost pints of blood from the huge stab wound in the left side of his chest that punctured a lung and came close to his heart.

Mr Bertakis had to have open-heart surgery to find pieces of the barb that had broken off, and repair the wound.

But his surgeons said that despite his age, the fighting-fit pensioner has the body of a man 30 years younger and was in stable though critical condition.

Mr Bertakis was cruising in his 30ft boat with two of his grown-up granddaughters when the attack occurred.

Read the rest...

The Anger of the Survivor is Murderous

A Battered Wife Survives

By Andrea Dworkin

...
The anger of the survivor is murderous. It is more dangerous to her than to the one who hurt her. She does not believe in murder, even to save herself. She does not believe in murder, even though it would be more merciful punishment than he deserves. She wants him dead but will not kill him. She never gives up wanting him dead.

The clarity of the survivor is chilling. Once she breaks out of the prison of terror and violence in which she has been nearly destroyed, a process that takes years, it is very difficult to lie to her or to manipulate her. She sees through the social strategies that have controlled her as a woman, the sexual strategies that have reduced her to a shadow of her own native possibilities. She knows that her life depends on never being taken in by romantic illusion or sexual hallucination.

The emotional severity of the survivor appears to others, even those closest to her, to be cold and unyielding, ruthless in its intensity. She knows too much about suffering to try to measure it when it is real, but she despises self-pity. She is self-protective, not out of arrogance, but because she has been ruined by her own fragility. Like Anya, the survivor of the Nazi concentration camps in Susan Fromberg Schaeffer's beautiful novel of the same name, she might say: "So what have I learned? I have learned not to believe in suffering. It is a form of death. If it is severe enough it is a poison; it kills the emotions." She knows that some of her own emotions have been killed and she distrusts those who are infatuated with suffering, as if it were a source of life, not death.

In her heart she is a mourner for those who have not survived.
In her soul she is a warrior for those who are now as she was then.
In her life she is both celebrant and proof of women's capacity and will to survive, to become, to act, to change self and society. And each year she is stronger and there are more of her.

Camp Falcon Up in Smoke. Next, The Green Zone

Statements

October 23, 2006

A friend of mine - an Iraqi journalist who is still in Iraq and writing under various pseudonyms to avoid assassination (or worse) - recently wrote me a Eid greeting.

Eid Mubarak, he said.

I responded that I was sorry but I could not accept his greeting because I have not celebrated Eid since 2003. Since Iraq was brutally raped by a horde of pillaging, ravaging murderers aided by the various Iraqi exiles, businessmen and all who looked to make a quick buck as their brethren were slaughtered.

I will celebrate Eid when the occupier is vanquished, when Iraq is whole again, when there is a government that is nationalistic - not sectarian, not religious.

I will celebrate when Al Qaeda in Iraq is destroyed, when Iranian agents are cut down in the streets. When the Saudi Wahabis are burned out of Iraq ... when every foreign filth is destroyed.

But there are causes for celebration. Western Iraq is back in the hands of the nationalistic Iraqis. US soldiers do not dare tread one inch of that soil lest they be cut down like the rabid dogs they are.

The US military has lost control. The Iraqi military (haha!) has lost control.

Nationalistic tribes are mobilizing.

Indeed. The Iraqi resistance is winning. US commanders have registered up to 200 attacks on US forces each and every day in the past six weeks.

Some have let it be known to Sy Hersh and other fine Americans that there is an attack on US forces every few minutes

Thank you, o patriotic Abu Tamam and Roads to Iraq for the following blog on the US base which went up in smoke:

"US occupation forces are accusing Iraqi translators of leaking information on the location of arms and ammunition depots in the Falcon military base (Al-Rashid military base) to the resistance.

"We are sure that two Iraqi translators working with US forces leaked information and gave the base altitudes to the resistance. There are also doubts that a third interpreter had left the base one day before the bombing only and did not join again".

The Iraqi source, who refused to reveal his identity, said that dozens of American soldiers were killed in those explosions. The source pointed out that six Iraqi translators were killed in those explosions. American forces refused to hand over the bodies of the dead Iraqis to their families without giving reasons."

Ammo Dump Explosions Investigation Ocotber 16, 2006

Who needs translators when there are Google Maps?

There are emailed reports, yet to be confirmed, that the number of dead American soldiers at Al-Rashid military base (camp Falcon) has reached 300. See below pictures on the extent of some of the devastation there as a result of just a few Grad and Katyusha rockets (cost: no more than $300 - Effect: estimated at $billions of munitions, structures and American lives wasted).

For a list of the hundreds of US soldiers who died or where evacuated from the base see the following articles and US military list on Wafa's Zennobia website.

The day will come when we will see the Green Zone go up in smoke. And then we will see those proud and loyal Iraqi commentators (oh, you know who you are) kissing the boot of the American soldier for space on the escaping helicopter.

Yes, images of Hanoi come to mind. But such is the fate of any occupation. History teaches, students fail to learn. It is arrogance and the love of the greenback. Oh, what people will do for the almighty dollar.
...

Read the rest...

When White Males Attack: Larry Flynt, Racism and The Left

Thanks to the Feral Scholar (again!) for the outstanding link to a website called Hustling the Left where I found the article below.

Yep, patriarchy. That "elusive neck to snap..."

When White Males Attack: Larry Flynt, Racism and The Left

...
Sexual liberation has always meant something different for Black women. We were never allowed the sanctity of our own bodies. We were bought and sold, shackled and naked in the street for everyone's gaze and consumption. We were property for sex and labor. Middle class white women like Susie Bright have the privilege and option to play bad girl. Just being born Black and female in a white supremacist patriarchy brands you a bad girl. No props needed.
...
Woman hating as rebellion against a feared feminist onslaught on male privilege is nothing new. White men like Flynt who blame women for all their problems and who punish them are cheered on and rewarded as heroes in a woman-hating culture. Leftist males who are threatened by feminism or female leadership within progressive movements can find reassurance in the rhetoric of libertarianism used to justify the inevitability of the sex industry and that a patriarchal order of things is left unchallenged somewhere.

How dare a woman oppose a man's right to porn? Didn't we radical feminists get the memo that we are now in times when only feminists with “a sense of humor" get heard, white males are the new victims, and women choose to be objectified? It takes courage and clarity to relentlessly name and resist misogyny in spite of "The Times." We are expected to change our response to misogyny even as it reinvents itself with more clever and dangerous disguises. Patriarchy has become such an elusive neck to snap, such a seductive enemy that continuously tries to distort our interests until they become its own. Refusing and resisting pornography requires that women reject the new guises under which misogyny shields itself from criticism: free speech, libertarianism, the rights of angry white men, "female empowerment." In spite of the names we are called to berate us into fear and silence we still speak out and fight back. We are not the passive pleasing "girls" pornography wants us to be.
...

Read the rest...

Lance Hering Has a Homepage

Well, his parents do. They are using it to communicate messages of love to their son, Lance, the Marine corporal on the run from conscription in the illegal war on Iraq. There is also a blog site where other folks who care can leave comments of encouragement.

The main site is: www.lancehering.com

The blog is www.lancehering.blogspot.com

Seeing these websites makes me realize that the way things are going in this country, it wouldn't be a bad idea for all of us involved in challenging the dominant culture to discuss with our loved ones ways of communicating should any of us need to bug out suddenly or permanently. Think: Hiding in plain site. And don't forget the code words!

Trust me. If my family can learn to blog, so can yours.

Hell Yeah, We're Back From Vacation!

With a message: No matter where you go, the consequences come nearer, wave after wave.

Time for a Rest

Folks, this Fire Witch is long overdue for a pause for the cause.

Time to bank the ole fire, nestle the embers beneath the ash, and put away the gasoline.

I'm tired, I'm be-wildered, and I want to go sleep outside.

See ya'll after while....

Interview with Palestinian Resistance Leader Leila Khaled. Imperialism's Two Failures: Iraq and Lebanon

Interview with Leila Khaled

Following are excerpts from an interview conducted with Palestinian resistance leader Leila Khaled by Samia Halaby of the Defend Palestine Coalition, LeiLani Dowell of Workers World newspaper, and Sara Flounders of the International Action Center during a fact-finding delegation to Lebanon Sept. 11-17.
...

As a Marxist, how do you view Hezbollah?

Hezbollah came out from the Amal movement, which was established in the 1980s. The Shia in Lebanon were always dealt with as a minority, very oppressed and the poorest people. Hezbollah came out in 1987 because they had many contradictions with the leadership of Amal. They had a new vision towards how to deal with Lebanon and with Israel. And they have this principle: that we have to resist on the popular level.

They learned the lessons from mistakes that we, as Palestinians in Lebanon, made. They didn’t show their weapons, as we used to do. We had open bases in the South; they didn’t do that. They did not have training camps; nobody knows where they were trained. They’re very well organized people. We had people with their arms and uniforms in the South and the cities, anyone could tell that they were fighters. Now nobody knows who is a fighter.

After the cease-fire, when Nasrallah called the people to go back to the South, we were that morning in one of the schools with the displaced people. That afternoon they were carrying their things and going. We asked them, "Where are you going?" and they said, "We are going to our villages, although the roads are very dangerous, cluster bombs are still there, some of these unexploded rockets." The people—I’m talking about the people— are very well disciplined. They went directly, and they said, "Our leadership asked us to go."

This shows that the relation between Hezbollah and the people is very strong, and people feel that it is for their benefit and for their interest, although there are some villages totally leveled, and some where even the houses that remain are not useful for living.

Hezbollah considers itself a part of the resistance in the area against the common enemy, against Israel, against America. This they declare every time, and they called for talks with different groups, and they went for the talks. There were many, many sessions before the war.

The party is very well organized and trained and to the masses they have a strong relation. Every house in the South feels that this party is as their sons, as their daughters. They have schools, medical centers, training centers. Now many of the schools are destroyed, but they’re going to rebuild.

Just after the war, Nasrallah declared that they are going to compensate the people, so that they can live in dignity. I think it’s a culture, for all human beings to live with dignity. And he stresses that—now we have won the war, although the country was destroyed, but we kept our dignity, we are free people. He speaks to the people, to their minds and their hearts at the same time.

There are political parties in the area, especially in Lebanon, who said why can’t we live in peace with Israel? Now this war showed that it’s very difficult to coexist with them, and this is very dangerous, because we, as Palestinians, from the very beginning called for a one-state solution, that Arabs, Jews, Muslims, Christians can live all together peacefully on the same land and on a democratic basis. This is our vision to the end of this conflict, but we have seen that still the Israeli society is not ready for that.

Iran has a religious ideology, which I feel is dangerous. But when it comes to resisting the imperialist projects in the area, you don’t speak about ideology, you speak about resistance. Resistance is the concept, whether the origin of it is religious or not. That’s why they targeted Hezbollah, because it’s a resisting group.

Army Wrong

Way too easy. You'd think their focus groups would have seen that coming. Ad busters will have a field day.

October 10, 2006

A more muscular ‘Army Strong’

Slogan will replace ‘An Army of One’

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON - The Army is replacing its main ad slogan — “An Army of One” — with one it hopes will pack more punch: “Army Strong.”

The new approach, the fruit of a $200 million-a-year contract with McCann Worldgroup advertising agency, was announced Monday. It is to be launched Nov. 9 to coincide with Veterans Day weekend.

“There’s no question that we want to have a marketing boost right now, it’s important to us,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Van Antwerp, who oversees the recruiting effort as commander of U.S. Army Accessions Command.

The Army missed its recruiting target in 2005 by the widest margin in more than two
decades, but it bounced back this year to reach its goal of signing up 80,000 new soldiers, in part by offering bigger financial incentives, increasing its cadre of recruiters and making more use of Web sites to reach young people. It also has accepted more applicants with lower-tier scores on aptitude tests.

Read the rest....

Burning Porn Shop of the Day

Burning porn is like burning an Amerikan flag - a 1st Amendment right. Hell, a 1st Amendment sacrament.

And a seriously hot fantasy!

Photo props to the Andrea Dworkin web site.

Yankee Go Boom!

And home.

Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Tuesday, 10 October 2006

Translated and/or compiled by Muhammad Abu Nasr, member, editorial board, the Free Arab Voice
...
Baghdad.

Iraqi Resistance rockets blast into biggest American arsenal in Iraq setting off unprecedented explosions, illuminating Baghdad sky just before midnight Tuesday.

In a dispatch posted at 12:30am Makkah time Wednesday morning, Mafkarat al-Islam reported that a short while earlier Iraqi Resistance forces had attacked and blown up the largest US weapons arsenal depot in the American General Headquarters in the south of Baghdad.

The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the arsenal, located in the as-Saqr Base in the south of Baghdad is the main supplier of equipment to the US forces. It came under Resistance rocket attack late on Tuesday night. At the time of reporting, mountains of American arms and ammunition were continuing to explode in the sky in a huge fire unprecedented in Baghdad’s history.

In response, US aircraft hysterically rocketed and bombed various parts of the city, the correspondent reported, trying to knock out the launch sites of the rockets that blasted into the American arsenal.

A source in the Iraqi puppet regime told Mafkarat al-Islam that the Resistance blasted the American arsenal, known as Camp Falcon, with Grad and Katyusha rockets.

The source admitted that dozens of Americans had been killed or wounded in the blasts that were still ripping the American arsenal apart. The source said that the US forces were unable to do anything to stop the massive inferno of flame and explosions that was lighting up the Baghdad sky like fireworks.

Reuters reported the puppet regime’s "Iraqiyah" television network as showing pictures of a huge fire lighting up the night sky. Reuters reporters in central Baghdad heard more than 30 explosions, which began at about 11pm local time Tuesday night.

The puppet "Iraqi Interior Ministry" said the explosions had rocked three neighborhoods close to Forward Operating Base Falcon in the southern Baghdad suburb of ad-Durah.

Early estimates are putting damages by the Resistance attack on the Occupation's weapons depot at a billion dollars.

Christopher Columbus? Oh, Hell No!

Little Bird, a Cherokee from Oklahoma City, Okla., left, joins with Judy Gauna, a Dene from Santa Fe, N.M., along with others in protesting the Columbus Day Parade in Denver on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2006. Police were used to keep the two parties separated along the parade route through downtown Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Exploring Christopher Columbus Day

By Elias Lawless, WireTap. Posted October 9, 2006.

Opinion: How might a federal holiday relate to U.S. support for Guatemala`s bid at the U.N. Security Council?

...
To "discover" more about the man behind the day off, last year, on the eve of the nationwide break from school, I headed to my university library to learn about Christopher Columbus and the days following Oct. 12, 1492.

My findings were horrific:

* Two days following Columbus' arrival in the Bahamas, he recorded in his personal log, "These people are very unskilled in arms … with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished." This first impression would prove ominous.

* In November 1493, on a return trip to Hispaniola, Columbus ordered the enslavement of six indigenous women for the purpose of allowing his crew to rape them.

* In February 1495, Columbus rounded up 1,500 Arawak women, men and children, and imprisoned them. He then selected the 500 of them that he deemed the most marketable and shipped them to Spain. Only 300 arrived alive in Seville.

* In 1498, documents indicate that Columbus enslaved another 600 Carib people.

* By the decade's end, it appears that Columbus had kidnapped at least 1,400 indigenous people to send back to the Spanish slave markets.

Additionally, Harvard historian and Pulitzer Prize laureate Samuel Eliot Morison writes, "The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide," and "the natives were reduced to a species of slavery or serfdom and declined in numbers catastrophically."

Given the realities of Columbus' campaigns of mass murder and enslavement, why do we commemorate this man ever, much less every year?

Read the rest....

Robert Robideau: The Myth Keepers of Columbus

Carlos Montoya, left, and Justine Sandoval, both of Denver, wave a placard against Christopher Columbus to protest the Columbus Day parade through the streets of Denver, on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2006. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

October 10, 2006

The Historical Debt to Native People Has Still Not Been Paid

The Myth Keepers of Columbus

By ROBERT ROBIDEAU
...
Since 1989 the Colorado AIM chapter has lead a protest against the Columbus Day Parade in Denver declaring, "As the original people of this land, we cannot and will not, tolerate social and political festivities that celebrate our genocide. We are committed to the active, open and public rejection of disrespect and racism in its various forms---including Columbus Day and Columbus Day Parades." For these last 17 years they have tried to educate the general public about their feelings for Columbus Day; they have protested, blockaded and gone to jail for their efforts to stop this parade of indoctrinated myth keepers.

The issue of Columbus and Columbus Day is not easily resolvable in a society spoon feed on its propaganda of myths and historical lies that propagate the idea that Europeans were a superior race of two legged homo sapiens that came to save the Indians from their barbaric ways. The Europeans who came and settled invented and schooled the myth that they had created the New World by their imaged "discovery, " just as they had come to create the creation myth of its origins known as the "Bearing Strait Theory." Native Americans just had to have come from somewhere, but not the western hemisphere.

Read the article...

US Soldiers' Photos: Continuing the Legacy of Columbus In Iraq

Warning: Graphic, Racist, Psychopathic Content.

As if anything else could possibly come from white supremacist, Amerikan soljer boys... such as these cavalrymen celebrating genocide in the 2006 Columbus Day Parade in Denver...



Did you know that to this day, the US military still refers to anything outside its psychotic subjugation as "Indian Country"?

Right Wing Troll of the Day

Hint to mooncalf loser: Men have "balls". Women have ovaries.

You are a seriously bitter woman.

And honey, you're totally abusing the letter K. I mean, KKKan you give it a breaKKK? BeKKKause it's starting to get really annoying. KKKind of liKKKe your blog. It's so fucKKKing depressing.

And what's with your obsession with dicKKKs/genitals? If I have to read one more reference to "oh wah...men are evil...phallic symbols = evil white male oppression...blah blah blah" I thinKKK I may have to puKKKe.

Please...find a dicKKK and choKKKe on it. That is, if you have the balls enough to do that. OH! OH! MALE GENITAL REFERENCE! LooKKK mommy, I KKKan do it too!!!

Sweet pea, you ain't choking nothing with that dead baby bird you frontin'. But if you wanna bring it, know this: I got a reach-around that will have your hater's blue pair off and in a jar of formaldehyde faster than even you can... well... you know.

K?

The Brennan Files 90

For the entire Brennan Files letters go to www.thebrennanfiles.wordpress.com

Since today is Racist Whiteboy Colonizer Day, aka Columbus Day, the Fire Witch finds it most apropos that the final letter sent from Charlie Brennan to the Mystery Lady be published on this, the Holiday of Hate.

Brennan sent the letter below the same day that the Brennan Files first premiered on the Web.

He seems to be in a bit of a panic, no? - now that he suddenly finds himself on the receiving end of what he, as a media attack dog, has for so long given everybody else.

He even seems to all of a sudden have found a new respect for the concept of privacy.

Chuckle.

From: "Brennan, Charlie" brennanc@rockymountainnews.com
To: Mystery Lady
Subject:
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005



Hi there - Is there anything I might say that would induce you to keep what has passed between us private? I was very impressed with you - the person who I saw in your mail - and never figured you for someone who would turn a private correspondence into something else. But of course, I never really knew you. Here's hoping I didn't sorely misjudge, and you'll consider leaving what was intended to private, private.


Best, CB

Quick hint, hon, before this ugly ordeal comes to a conclusive end. If you really want to get to know a woman, at some point you have to shutup talking about yourself and pay attention, or you're gonna miss something very, very important.

OK?

Transform Columbus Day Denver 2006

Before the Convoy of Conquest arrives.



The police state takes its customary stand against the people.




Next comes the Cavalry to lead the genocidal charge.



The yellow you see on these vicious clowns comes from the tradition of cavalrymen leaving behind a yellow scarf with their wives or girlfriends to tie in their hair until their safe return from murdering Indians. This tie-a-yellow-ribbon tradition continues to this day in the ubiquitous "Support Our Troops" car magnets.



Get those animals off those horses!





Meet the new cavalry. Same as the old cavalry...



Horses asses...



Macho Asshole Wannabe...



Can you say testosterone poisoning?



G.O.D. Gold, oil, drugs.



If you are trying to find your way to a Renaissance Festival, never follow any fool whose hero is Columbus. You'll get lost.



We told you these people were haters...







Yes, they and Operation Rescue hate women, too...



But POST-natal abortion is A-OK in places like Iraq.



They're creepy and they're kooky...




Remember, the hero of these "family values" loonies is a man whose soldiers fed Taino infants to their dogs...





Hands down. Best ugly AmeriKKKans photo of the day...



Glenn Morris of Colorado AIM takes the microphone and lets loose on the freak show...



Last lost loser of the day. Shame really. We were having such a good time mocking their ugly aburdities...



A song to end a successful confrontation...




Don't be a horse's ass! Abolish Columbus Day...



Learn more at www.transformcolumbusday.org