“The falling soldier”
Robert Capa 9/5/36.
Month: May 2012
Ernesto “Che” Guevara (June 14, 1928 â October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia within popular culture.
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout Latin America and was radically transformed by the endemic poverty and alienation he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region’s ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of capitalism, monopolism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala’s social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow solidified Guevara’s political ideology. Later, while living in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.
Following the Cuban Revolution, Guevara performed a number of key roles in the new government. These included reviewing the appeals and firing squads for those convicted as war criminals during the revolutionary tribunals, instituting agrarian land reform as minister of industries, helping spearhead a successful nationwide literacy campaign, serving as both national bank president and instructional director for Cubaâs armed forces, and traversing the globe as a diplomat on behalf of Cuban socialism. Such positions also allowed him to play a central role in training the militia forces who repelled the Bay of Pigs Invasion and bringing the Soviet nuclear-armed ballistic missiles to Cuba which precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Additionally, he was a prolific writer and diarist, composing a seminal manual on guerrilla warfare, along with a best-selling memoir about his youthful motorcycle journey across South America. Guevara left Cuba in 1965 to foment revolution abroad, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and executed.
Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a “new man” driven by moral rather than material incentives; he has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist-inspired movements. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century, while an Alberto Korda photograph of him entitled Guerrillero Heroico , was cited by the Maryland Institute College of Art as “the most famous photograph in the world”. (read more)
“Guerrillero Heroico”
Che Guevara at the La Coubre memorial service.
Taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960.
- Labels: equality, freedom, liberal, liberation, rebel, revolution
Mexicans Protest Ties Between Politics, Media – WSJ.com:
“MEXICO CITYâThousands of students are joining a growing street-demonstration movement to protest Mexico’s top two television networks, which they accuse of colluding to secure the leading presidential candidate’s election this summer.”
- Labels: General
Leaders Bicker as Europeâs Crisis Gains New Urgency – NYTimes.com:
“BERLIN â With Greeceâs membership in the euro zone teetering, fears of bank insolvency rising and Europeâs leaders bickering about what to do, the euro crisis is once again intensifying and threatening to undermine fragile growth globally.”
- Labels: General
The first in-depth look at the life of John Whiteside Parsons–better known as Jack Parsons pioneering rocket scientist, and ardent disciple of the notorious magus, Aleister Crowley–is finally available courtesy of Feral House in Sex and Rockets by John Carter.
For those not in the know, Jack Parsons was a founding member of Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) back in the late 30’s, and one time head of the California branch of the magical order the Agape Lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientalis (O.T.O.). Parson’s infamous reputation was fueled by several nefarious undertakings and associations, notwithstanding his alliance with the self-proclaimed “Wickedest Man Alive!”–Aleister Crowley–who directed O.T.O. operations from his base in England.
In Sex and Rockets, Carter brings a measure of much needed clarity to the life and times of the enigmatic Parsons; an enigma that has been compounded over the years by varying degrees of misinformation and exaggeration as to just who Parsons was, and exactly what he was trying to accomplish with the Babalon Working rituals, performed in part with L. Ron Hubbard, the future founder of Scientology. The end result of the Babalon Working was to birth an elemental being; a ‘Moonchild’ that–as Crowley stated in his Book of the Law–would be “mightier than all the kings of the Earth.”
According to Thelemic legend, in 1918 Aleister Crowley came into contact with a interdimensional entity named Lam, who by the way is a dead ringer for the popular conception of the ‘alien grey ‘ depicted on the cover of Whitley Strieber’s Communion. From this purported encounter, some have inferred that the industrious Mr. Crowley intentionally opened a portal of entry–through the practice of a magick ritual, The Amalantrah Working–which allowed the likes of Lam and other ‘alien greys’ a passageway onto the Earth plane. Furthermore, this portal may have been further enlarged by Parsons and Hubbard in 1946 with the commencement of the Babalon Working, thus facilitating a monumental paradigm shift in human consciousness.
In Sex and Rockets, Carter quotes Crowley successor Kenneth Grant, who wrote, “The [Babalon] Working began…just prior to the wave of unexplained aerial phenomena now recalled as the ‘Great Flying Saucer Flap’. Parsons opened a door and something flew in.” Carter also suggests it might have been the atomic bomb that opened this door between dimensions. He then further illustrates the importance of the year 1947, which ended the first stage of the Babalon Working, as Parsons and Hubbard parted ways amid a cloud of turmoil. 1947 was the year that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. In that very same year, Israel became a nation state, the transistor was invented and the sound barrier broken. Last, but certainly not least, the Modern Age of UFO’s flew into view with the Kenneth Arnold sightings, followed not long after by the alleged saucer crash in Roswell, New Mexico. 1947 was also the year the Great Beast, Aleister Crowley died. (read more) (Jack Parsons)
Is Bradley Manning a traitor or hero ?
OSLO, Norway — The Nobel Peace Prize jury has received 231 nominations for this year’s award, a spokesman said, with publicly disclosed candidates including a former Ukrainian prime minister and the U.S. soldier accused of leaking classified material to WikiLeaks.
The secretive committee doesn’t reveal who has been nominated, but those with nomination rights sometimes announce their picks.
Names put forward this year include Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private charged with the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history, Russian human rights activist Svetlana Gannushkina and former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. (huffington post)
The Ecological Worldview: Hearing the Cries of the World | Center for Ecoliteracy: Thirty years ago, the king of Bhutan proclaimed, “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.” It’s easy to trivialize personal “happiness” as a goal, and for that reason I find “well-being” to be a more helpful concept, but the analysis of the Bhutanese government, under the leadership of its remarkably eloquent prime minister, Jigmi Y. Thinley, is sophisticated. This happiness, he says, differs markedly from the common use of that word to denote an ephemeral, passing mood due to some temporary external condition like praise or blame, gain or loss. “Rather it refers to the deep, abiding happiness that comes from living life in full harmony with the natural world, with our communities and fellow beings, and with our culture and spiritual heritage â in short, from feeling totally connected with our world.”
- Labels: General
Zbigniew Brzezinski and Osama bin Laden 1981
Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (born March 28, 1928) is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.
Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China); the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II); the brokering of the Camp David Accords; the transition of Iran from an important U.S. client state to an anti-Western Islamic Republic, encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing certain human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union; the financing of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in response to the Soviet deployment of forces there (allegedly either to help deter a Russian invasion, or to deliberately increase the chance of such an intervention occurring â or for both contradictory reasons simultaneously being embraced by separate U.S. officials) and the arming of these rebels to counter the Soviet invasion; and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing overt U.S. control of the Panama Canal after 1999.
After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Brzezinski was criticized â largely by the same people who had wholeheartedly supported his views and decisions â for his role in the formation of the Afghan mujaheddin network, some of whom later formed the Taliban and al Qaeda. He countered that blame ought to be laid at the feet of the Soviet Union’s invasion, which radicalized the relatively stable Muslim society. However, Brzezinski is also accused of having “knowingly increased the probability that they (the Soviet Union) would invade” by supporting Afghan rebels before the invasion and drawing the Soviets into an “Afghan trap.” (read more)
- Labels: satire
whats up: RC’s NUCLEAR BLOG
NO NUKES | RE-TOOL NOW
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- Labels: climate change, energy, environment, health, human rights, nuclear, world
Life is like
smashing atoms…
“Shit happens”
- Labels: evolution, joy, Life, love, lust, perspective, possibilities
HAPPPY CHILDREN’S DAY JAPAN!
TOKYO – Thousands of Japanese marched to celebrate the last of this nation’s 50 nuclear reactors switching off Saturday, shaking banners shaped as giant fish that have become a potent anti-nuclear symbol.
Japan will be without electricity from nuclear power for the first time in four decades when one of three reactors at Tomari nuclear plant in the northern island of Hokkaido goes offline for routine maintenance checks.
After last year’s March 11 quake and tsunami set off meltdowns at Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, no reactor stopped for checkups has restarted amid growing public worries about the safety of nuclear technology.
People gather at an anti-nuclear demonstration on the Children’s Day national holiday, calling for a safer future for younger generations at a park in Tokyo on May 5, 2012. The last working reactor in Japan is to be switched off May 5, 2012, leaving the country without nuclear power just over a year after the world’s worst atomic accident in a quarter of a century. AFP PHOTOS / KAZUHIRO NOGI
“Today is a historical day,” shouted Masashi Ishikawa to a crowd gathered at a Tokyo park, some holding traditional “Koinobori” carp-shaped banners for Children’s Day that have grown into a symbol of the anti-nuclear movement.
“There are so many nuclear plants, but not a single one will be up and running today, and that’s because of our efforts,” Ishikawa said…
> more: Japan Nuclear Power: Thousands Celebrate As Last Of Reactors Switch OfF | CP | By Yuri Kageyama, The Associated Press
see also
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Occupy Nuclear Daily (#OccupyNuclear)
The Kent State shootingsâalso known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacreâoccurred at Kent State University in the U.S. city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.
Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the American invasion of Cambodia, which President Richard Nixon announced in a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.
There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of four million students, and the event further affected the public opinionâat an already socially contentious timeâover the role of the United States in the Vietnam War. (read more) (four dead in ohio)
- Labels: death, police state, waste