Monday, February 28, 2011

All Of This Has Been For You

Contrary to popular belief, February does not end two days early but rather begins two days late--hence the uncanny panic and inconsolable sense of loss which, it is often reported, sets over the attuned on March 31--and is not actually shorter than the other months, but rather has had it's "missing" first two days set aside as part of your deferred compensation plan in Hell. Despite this formidible challenge, we have midwifed the most 'productive' month ever on the blog, with forty-three dispatches from the abyss, two new sister blogs launched by our collaborators, and a purely nominal promotion for our once whipping boy now Fifth Columnist, No Innocents. We'd like to thank them them all--our friends and especially our enemies; gin, coffee, and cigarettes; the people of Tunisia and Egypt; the Royal Family--but most of all, dear reader, we'd like to thank you. How much do we love you? A quick glance at our actuarial tables will let us calculate, with irrevocable certainty, the ways.

Taking into account 1) the wide range of time frames, from five minutes to an hour, needed to make a blog post; 2) the way that quotes gradually accumulate through conversations, conversations through which we used to trawl for incidental gems but which now would not taken place without this harlot blog to bring them into the world, so alienated have be grown and so desicated have our emotional and intellectual landscapes become thanks the very technology that was to bring us together and serve as a platform for our individual and collective creative self-realization; 3) a multiplier factor applied to every minute spent working on the blog to account for the energy expended during non-work hours to maintain the continuous state of stress and anxiety required to conjure bile strong enough for publishing; 4) an unknown and variable quantity to account for the effects of intoxication and space madness; and 5) the contention, raised by a council of scientists, that Quote Production reverses both the effects and importance of Time--taking all these things into account, we can see that each blog post represents on average three labor-hours at normal human intensity [see Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun], making for a total of 129 normal-labor-hours spent on the blog.

The amount of engergy spent on this blog in the month of February can further be shown to be electrochemically equivalent (based on statistical studies of the daily food consumption of average Americans) to the amount of killowatt hours needed to vacuum your childhood room or to project a 35mm print of Robert Bresson's Mouchette for approximately five horrible seconds; morally interchangeable with to $4,961.54 plus health coverage minus dental; and otherwise equal to the amount of work required to make 7 beneficial life changing decisions and 437 bad ones, to dial 36 phone calls to members of the opposite sex whose number was acquired the previous night, to attend 24 protests against American-sponsored dictators, to call your parents 12 times, and to endure 0.75 honest looks in the mirror.

And yet instead of pursuing any of these laudable goals, we threw ourselves upon the sword of our love for you, our readers, all twelve of you, you image-objects, you ego-ideals, you vampire projection screens, you anus-mouth black holes of desire. Cocks in hand we cross the finish line of one month, and, clammy with fear, haunted by regret--shouldn't we just have been watching sports and jerking off in interesting places the whole time?--we March on to the next, on to void, on to the end of the night. All of this has been for your. If you can read this, you're lying.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Sex Revolution

Sea of Evil


If you haven't noticed that our once-guest-contributor-now-regular-Fifth-Columnist No Innocents has launched a new sister blog,Wasted Ideology, spilling over with boiling bile and creamy lumps of self-degradation, rank with the coppery taste of polemic, and gravid with the bog-brained, mush-mouthed murmurs of gin-truth, you're lying.

Friday, February 25, 2011

The Vanity Mirror They Call History

"This evil blog is generating eminence at a geometric rate!"- a scientist

"We are teenage boys." - the Editors

"I'm serious, I picture Connery getting a girl naked and watching her body flex as she struggles to open the jar of cocktail garnishment." - an Editor

"We need to do an entry on baldness."
"No, let's wait 18 to 48 months."
- the Editors

"You can't go bald when you hate every moment of living." - Michael Caine, the set of Blame It On Rio

"Jesus, this is the most productive month ever on the blog. We are all damned to hell."
"Really? That seems unbelievable. You know what it is? The last fucking time was practically me and you. Now we've got people feeling horny and blog ready."
- the Gracchi

Love Is Labya


"He does it like a tomahawk hitting a Dutch pilgrim." - Ms. Anne Margaret on Sky Briggs

"This is a Sex Revolution!" - Teddy Roosevelt on Cinco de Mayo

"I've watched my teenage daughter make love, Doctor! She does it like a lizard!" - a concerned father

"What would I gain by cooperating with my body? An extension of my life, of my suffering, my humiliation?" - Larry Summers

"Now get in some grit and open that jar there, girl." - Sean Connery

"Beneath the sweet flaps of her heaven were two kinds of hell." - Ronald Reagan, the lost film, 1954

Outer Heaven


"Assange may be a sonuvabitch, but he's our sonuvabitch." - the People

"War is what we make it." - Angela Merkel to Benjamin Netanyahu

"I'd fuck Henry Clay." - Dolley Madison

Wage Stagnation Inversely Proportional to Rise of Sitcom and Prescribing of Psychosuppressants to Dogs - The Daily Beast

"You read about hard and bad shit, and it's supposed convey sadness and understanding to another human being, right? All I feel is elation and swollen potential." - Jim Murphy MP

"Fuck the no-fly zone. We're sending in one man. Solid Snake." - Ban Ki-Moon

"This plan is insane, Colonel! It will be nothing but endless war, bloodshed, the riches of Libya divided among nations--"
"That's right, Snake. It will be...OUTER HEAVEN!!!!"

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Organizations Behind The Libyan Uprising


al-Qaeda
al-Jazeera
Egyptians
Tunisians
Facebook
Nescafe
Twitter
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi
the ghost of Gamal Nasser
The Center for Expanding Consciousness in Phoenix, AZ
Wikileaks
Sky Briggs
BP p.l.c
Karima El Mahroug
Jose Saramago
Teaching Assistants' Association UW-Madison
The King of Limbs
Libyans

Two Libyan Pilots

so much depends
upon

two Libyan
pilots

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
clouds.

- from the diary of Pres. Barack Hussein Obama II, 23 February 2011

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The Critics Respond


"Hmm... Radiohead... yeah... I should say something about this." - Andre 3000

"It's spacey, you sing like a ghost, there are some sick beats, yeah, I don't find this in need of further iteration." - Jared Loughner

"This album is pretty funny, very 'the rapist.'" - Phil Spector

"I could drum to this." - Ringo Starr
Riddle: What wakes a man in the morning that is neither dog nor woman?
Answer: That disgusting Radiohead album.
"No one reviews Radiohead albums. They review the way people review Radiohead albums." - Pitchfork, An Apology
"What about Radiohead?"
"Well, yyyeahhh--"
Byrne sneezed out some sort of jelly.
"Can you see?" - Chris Martin to Thom Yorke

"I only feed my cats brie." - Thom Yorke

"Still, if this were the sixties, it would have been Pablo Honey 1964, The Bends 1965, OK Computer 1966, Kid A/Amnesiac 1968-69, Hail to the Thief late 1969, In Rainbows 1970, then contractual disputes and Thom's 'girlfriend' break up the band." - Pres. Jimmy Carter

Phase I: À la recherche du temps perdu

Radiohead is a band we all loved in high school. It gave us enough crackle and hubris to crawl over the top of the average trombone player, so we'd like them to age spectacularly. Not well. A satisfying effort could be any of about four thousand, including: O'brien as Keith, Thom as Dennis Wilson, Greenwood (which?) as Spector, the others somewhere between Munich '72 and an elephant. And they've retooled a bit conservatively with their imp dance lead man, social justice, and 625 pieces of biodegradable wasteland; think five 47-year-old Becks from Washington state, not born into scientology. So I will compare this album to the first prog bands I respected, competent electronica, and bands I currently like but. There. The things I like and the places I like to be run the gamut from the end of Zabriskie Point to the bottom of a couch cushion, and I'm tasting some nickels either way. Where did we listen to this album? Where did we imagine Radiohead in 2011? Where did we imagine us? exactly. I played the album a few times. YEHHHHHHHGGGHH. The sound floats lightly through the air of the room that I now pay for. The sight of dust makes me want to drink a gallon of Manischewitz and go find Pearl. Oh, that last song 'Separator' is pretty goddamn good. Can't wait for the new Radiohead album out next week.

Rating:

Gin out of 10.0

Balls toward you,

Gowanus XXXXXXX, The Girthiest of the 7 Most Portly Saints.

(this is the highest rating we've ever awasrdfdfed*(?

The Home Front


"The People just aren't clean." - Gov. Scott Walker, WI

"Why be Machiavelli when I could be the Prince?" - Rahm the Great

"I don't want to be a huge dick--human suffering is terrible--but it doesn't pluck my heart strings that four evangelizing American retirees on a yacht were murdered by Somali pirates." - Sen. John McCain

"When I shit, baby, it's got to be underground!" - Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney

"Dad is great!" - Peter Beinart

"No, manned spaceflight doesn't have any value. That is why we are proud to announce Sputnik VII, an el-Qaddafi-manned spacecraft mounted on a V-2 rocket. Its re-entry point: a charter bus carrying a Georgian YoungLife group en route from the Mall of America to Disneyland. Matt Jones has been holding Ashley Nance's hand since Winnipeg." - Charles F. Bolden, Jr.

"Sometimes on a nice day I can sit on my old back porch and disappear clouds with my mind." - Gerald Ford, 1999

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The Editors Review The New Radiohead Album

I feel like I don't have a lot to go on here.

Casablanca

Today I locked eyes with a beautiful girl
Who was walking her dog,
She seemed not to know who I was--
I think she was an Arab.
Will I ever see her again?

-- from the diary of President Barack Hussein Obama II, January 25, 2011

I Don't See Any Method... At All


Our sister blog Dolce&Gomorrah at last abandons mere academicism for engaged academicism with an astute post on Fukuyama and the world revolts.
For whom, we might ask, does History’s Bell Toll? Both Fukuyama and Qaddafi would probably say that it tolls “for the People”. For both, it would be a disingenuous move–to Qaddafi, “the People” means Qaddafi; while for Fukuyama It means a particular set of deeply entrenched, hierarchical institutional relations grounded in an age-old Western myth of liberal consent. Both would leverage the sheer abstraction of Hegel’s thought–the obtuse symbolism of his capitalized nouns–to further an intrinsically anti-democratic, reactionary end; despite the fact that both would be arguing for opposing outcomes.
In a rare display optimism, D&G suggests a third reading:
the ideological vacuum that emerges in the wake of revolution–the sweeping aside of one obtuse worldview in favor of a seething plurality of competing destinies–is the very definition of Hegelian Freedom.
A surprisingly Badiouian (that con-man! but who can resist so many vowels strung together?) turn: freedom as void, and void as multiplicity.

You're Lying has also taken notes of the logical contortionism of Qaddafi's state rhetoric. Qaddafi exemplifies a theme we've blogged on before--the capacity of any ideology which envisions society as an organic, unified, natural whole to legitimate unlimited violence. We are reminded that after coming to power by coup d'etat, then-Capt. Qaddafi promoted himself to the rank of colonel and has since acted only as a de facto head of state. Why? Because, as Qaddafi is eager to remind, "Libya is ruled by the people. (Do not fret for the humble enlisted man: Qaddafi has taken on himself the Imam of All Muslims and, in 2008, actually held a ceremony to crown himself King of Kings of Africa). Qaddafi stated in his address to the nation today that since he lacks an official title as head of state, he has no position from which to resign, and therefore cannot but continue on as "brotherly leader" of the Revolution. Qaddafi, who has taken us from tragedy to farce and back again a million times, out did himself with his latest dramatization of his fraternal benevolence: during his twenty second televised statement last night, he claimed to have just come from Green Square where he was, a la Oliver Stone's Nixon, milling around with the youthful dissenters. He wishes he could have stayed but for the rain.

Since Qaddafi's Libya is a society of pure and inviolable brotherhood, any who stands against Qaddafi, the personification of that brotherhood, is, by tautology, a traitor and must be eliminated lest they contaminate the body politic. Qaddafi's "de facto" leadership puts us in mind of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (the leadership of the Khmer Rouge), the existence of which was not officially acknowledged by the Cambodian government for the first two years of its reign. Qaddafi offers the same rationalization for the brutality he has unleashed as the Soviet leadership's gave for crushing worker's strikes in East Berlin in 1953--since the Soviet Union was a worker's state, strikes were unnecessary, so any strikes that did take place were by definition counterrevolutionary. Don't under-estimate the power of rhetoric, no matter how denuded it appears to be, to serve as an alibi for atrocity. Cynics do not believe their own rhetoric, but they desperately need to believe that they do, that some one does, anyone, if only the vanity mirror they call History.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Drive Out The Devil


"Libya's coming back hard, Al Jaz' is going Coltrane, and Radiohead sneezed and an ablum came out!" - PM David Cameron

"Holy shit, these people are braver than Batman." - Sen. John McCain

"Maverick, let's defect to Malta." - Val Kilmer in Green Square

"We are petro states first." - Pres. Hugo Chavez

"I am in Tripoli and not in Venezuela.” - Col. Muammar Qaddafi in Caracas

Lady Liberty



Sunday, February 20, 2011

Watch Your Back, Swine


"Yo, once your bitchass son goes on TV for you, your Drag Queen days are over." - Franz Ferdinand

"I am the mother bird. All Freedom comes from my esophagus!"  - Vladimir Putin

"I have designed a cape that turns bullets into cocoa beans!  Take my hand, and we will away in my cheetah-powered dirigible!" - Sky Briggs in Pearl Square

"The audience is an ecclesiastical vanity." - King Abdullah II

"Dictators may suspend constitutions, but the People suspend causality." - Roger Cohen

"Counter-democratic violence unfolds in earnest across the Middle East.  Helicopters strafe reporters in Manama, soldiers grenade crowds in Taiz, police shoot down protesters in Benghazi, traffic cops beat shopkeepers in Damascus, and who knows what's really happening in Tehran. And where is the White House? Isn't it easy, Mr. Obama, when it's only a matter of broken promises and duplicitous speech? Not so easy when our clients of convenience murder people in the streets. And yet still you speak of peaceful protest, 'restraint on both sides,' and vaguely condemn violence without naming any names--all to protect the military bases from which we spread our own violence and mayhem across the Arab world. Circle the wagons, imperialist scum. The natives are coming."  - Malia Obama

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Palette Fatigue


"This is spaceship Earth..." - Charlie Rose on the Nile

"If Thom Friedman says another goddam word about how the Egyptian revolution is vindication of his neo-Me Generation fantasies, I'll cut out his tongue and feed it to the ghost of my cur." - Mark Zuckerberg

"Damn, I was drunk, but now I've pushed through--"
"That's no real drunk. A real drunk gonna put you down."
"Even so--"
"Yo, don't you "even so" at me like I'm one of your nancy fetch waifs. I'll hold a revolver on ya and make ya drink rum on the porch, I'll throw BBQ sauce on ya and unleash the dogs, I'll throw sugar water on ya and let out my wasps! Step out on the veranda, bring out yer knife, and I will unleash a fury to blot out the night!"
- Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, to a mirror

"If only a man could just look in the mirror and wish himself away and be done with it." - Mahmoud Abbas

"I am Natalie Portman!" - Queen Rania

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Monday, February 14, 2011

Farewell Friday, Steinway Street




ALL IS LOVE AND LOVE IS HATE - A VIDEOGRAM OF LONELINESS IN THE CINEMA

THE IDIOCY OF YOUTH

DESPAIR IN THE AFTERNOON

THE BARBARITY OF PASSION

LOVE ON THE RUN

POETRY'S A SIN

"HATE IS A VERY EXCITING EMOTION"

MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION

REGRESSION


EXIT MUSIC

Symptoms of a Pure and Proper Nihilism

"...paralysis, insomnia, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, flattery (commission thereof and susceptibility thereto), cold sweats, anxiety, clammy hands, night terrors, panic attacks, lizard skin, psychic collapse, an interest in the cinema, the evil eye, narcissism, lying to oneself, lying to others about oneself, nausea, anhedonia, space madness, rheumatoid arthritis, enthrallment, fluency in the works of the following authors: Lucretius, Goethe, Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Lautréamont, Rimbaud, Poe, Strindberg, brainsnakes, Pessoa, Kafka, Bulgakov, Cioran, headaches, disintegration, nothing is important, sudden and intense identification with the spectacle of a People's liberation, together we are alone, the pounding, the pounding, fascination with one's own reflection combined with an incredulity in and indifference to one's material existence, enthusiasm for cured meats and bitters..."

- from the diary of 44th President of the United States of America Barack Obama, February 20, 2011

Hate Fumes


"Jesus Christ, incredible!" - Sen. Kent Conrad, watching Al Jazeera, stuffing his mouth with cherries until dragged from the bar in Biloxi Ranch, ND

"Haha, no, we wouldn't team up, I don't think. You see, Batman is a lawless vigilante, and my job as the President is to bend him to the will of the Law without mercy." - Pres. Obama in response to a child's question, Coral Cables, FL

"If by treachery or fate this Executive Branch were infested by a tyrannical alien parasite, then, under my direction, we would all take mercury together." - Pres. Ronald Reagan, Cabinet Meeting 1983

"Tonight we ride on dolphinback, a cavalry of angler fish at our fins. Tyrants shall be torn asunder on the mighty narwhal's tusk. Let the stars shimmer in our wake." - Sky Briggs, Fund Raising Director, GOProud

"Beyond the wall, there was a wall higher still...." - the last writings of the blind Sheikh Jimmy Carter

"Bring me 40 pounds of government cheese next winter or you'll die like worms." - Smokey the Bear, Dept of the Interior

"I had so many quotes I can't remember, what does it matter, it wouldn't have changed anything." - The Editors

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Band on the Run


"The night the people marched, I dreamed of an ashen-faced deGaulle, and he bid me join him in Hell!" - Ben Ali at Hempfest 2011, Santa Cruz

"Ducky ducky, rubber ducky, I am still your Queen, now I am going to the sea." - Hosni Mubarak

"Hands off the dice, baby."
"This is between me and her!"
- Recep Erdoğan to Abdelaziz Bouteflika

"We will be fine. My wife is an explosion on the people's desire." - Abdullah II bin al-Hussein

"What do you mean, 'No Vacancy'?" - Ali Abdullah Saleh, Four Seasons Riyadh Kingdom Centre

"Biden said I could keep the jet ski of my choice." - Nouri al-Maliki boarding Jet Blue Flight 221

"Can the People do this?" - Bashar al-Assad, performing one-armed push-ups

"Unlike most leaders of this region, I will not be fooled when the Zionists cast their spell. When the oceans part and the shiny riches of the sea are revealed, I will not run out to them, no matter their luminescence!" - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

"While my tigers mate, no man may take Riyadh!" - Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz

"Eventually you stop worrying that your neighbors' homes are exploding and just enjoy the spooling of the flames." - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Friday, February 11, 2011

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Stand With Egypt, Pt.3


More rallies, brought to you by the same wonderful folks who've been hosting so many amazing and vibrant rallies in NYC these past two weeks. The people I've met at the rallies have been really excited about and welcoming of the support of non-Egyptian Americans. It goes without saying that the stakes in Egypt are huge, and those at the NYC rallies with relatives in Egypt have testified that the spectacle of global solidarity is bolstering morale in Egypt, especially since the internet was partially restored there. At the very least, non-Egyptian Americans owe it to themselves, after a lifetime of having their taxes appropriated to fund Mubarak, to assert our own rights to democratic control of our foreign policy and our budget--especially now, while the government's support for Mubarak seems to be at the tipping point.

New York City 1 PM, Saturday 12, 2011
Amnesty International CALL TO ACTION
IN SOLIDARITY, IN DEFIANCE
Global Day of Solidarity with the people of Egypt

Join Amnesty International USA and others around the world as we stand with the people of Egypt in their demand for an end to the crackdown, for their freedom, their basic human rights and immediate reform.
Saturday, February 12th @ 1pm
(near) Egyptian Mission to the United Nations
(44th Street and Second Ave. NYC)
Please show your solidarity and defiance by wearing black, white or red
(the colors of the Egyptian flag).
We Stand with the People of Egypt!
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=168958493150270 For more information please contact ne1internnyc@aiusa.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 212.633.4181

***

Washington DC 1 PM, Saturday 12, 2011
Egyptian Solidarity Rally & March
Organized by Egyptian American Organizations

The Whitehouse "Lafayette Park", Washington DC
1:00 - 4:00 PM
Support the Egyptian Revolution. End US Support to Mubarak and His Regime. Also join protesters as they sleep over night in front of the white house (We have permit for the sleep over)
Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=161878673860801
Come March in Solidarity with millions of Egyptian People in their struggle for democracy and human rights as they demand the immediate DEPARTURE of the repressive Mubarak regime
For Bus Tickets in NY area: Call 212-633-6646 & 646-462-4677
NY Buses leave at 7:30 AM from The International Action Center at 55 W. 17 St., Suite 5C New York, NY 10011
NY Buses return by 9:00 PM

The President Quits Smoking


"All is lost!" - Justice Antonin Scalia

"How can we trust, or argue against, a viceless leader?" - Gov. Mitt Romney, R - MA

"The only lobby I liked, too..." - Rep. Bernie Sanders, I - VT

"When the man rejects even his own happiness..." - Rep. Chris Lee, R - NY

"He's on that dust. Hey, Robinette pass the 'dro." - Rep. Shirley Chisholm, spectre

The Great Gas Bag Farts His Last

"Morality is but a reflection in the golden eye of a perfect leader." - Omar Suleiman

"I fish with a gold pistol!" - Gamal Mubarak

"I'm no Aristide." - Hosni Mubarak

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

I Floss My Ass With May '68


Letter to The Editors:

I know what you meant. No, neither of us has every done anything material for Egyptian democracy. The only thing we have done is pay taxes that funded Mubarak. But undoubtedly, neither had many of those in Tarhir Square before January 25. Do you think Egypt normally holds 1,000,000 professional revolutionaries? Not at all! Some of those in Tarhir are car salesmen, or store managers, or landlords. Does the presence of landlords preclude the possibility of true freedom? The point is to destroy the landlord who fights against the people. But if he is willing to risk everything for freedom, whatever changes come later?

There is no special virtue in being with a movement from its beginning. This is, in fact, a repressive belief—that legitimacy, power, authenticity come from length of association. What does this belief defend? Religions, states and systems. You know what have never been around as long as religions, states and systems? Individuals. But who is suffering and who producing the suffering? Virtue is to always be on the side of the people to whatever extent you can be. You cannot be everywhere at once, but you must always be fighting for justice wherever you are.

Intellectual superiority has eaten at the Left for thirty years, ruining some of its brightest minds and rendering the rest irrelevant. We must define our own way forward. We must be totally willing to destroy every theory we have ever encountered. What theory has brought freedom and peace?

In fact, the deep pessimism with regard to public movements is nonsense bequeathed by that paternalistic maternalism of post-Cold War Americology. Our parents' generation tell us it won’t work. Why not? Because they failed, and they were the greatest! But you know what? I floss my fucking ass with May '68. Those old shit bags can fucking retire on the 401K their generation invented to fucking incentivize the working 60-year-old. They can fart on over to their McMansion suburbs, and then later the Gated Retirement Communities they built to imprison their parents. And they can take yoga and be serious about recycling and just seriously fucking kill themselves, I don’t give a shit. The hippies, the soixante-huitards are total fucking bullshit, and so are the USSR and the Spanish anarchists and Victor Serge and Sergei Eisenstein and the Fucking Situationists and Delueze and Zizek they can all jump off a fucking cliff. We need a new paradigm, and it starts with throwing out all the bullshit hero worship and respect. Those fuckers have failed us. They are responsible for where we are today: who the fuck are they to even have a suggestion? We will take what is valuable from them but we will consider them as toothpicks!

FUCK YOU,

No Innocents

Monday, February 7, 2011

Four, Five, Six... Gaza Will Be Next


"The reason why it is, I won't say stupid, but, beside the point to say 'We are all Egyptians' or 'We are all Palestinians' is that, in most contexts, political solidarity depends not on identification but on an ability to disinterestedly evaluate the situation of others and confirm that their grievances are real and their demands justified." - Nicholas Kristof

"You know what, you're right. You can have it." - Benjamin Netanyahu

"This isn't happening! It's not happening! McGovern! Nassar! Bull-Moose! Arabs!!!" - Marty Peretz, found under a bridge wrapped in old Commentary

"What I'm saying is, freedom and democracy, solidarity and velvet revolution, are great, but not in Jerusalem." - Peter Beinart

"Alright let me level with you. I've never known a thing about foreign policy or the world, I'm not even a AAA member. I just show up at my Think Tank and I pick up the cards, the blue ones." - Robert Kaplan asked on deep background about his NYT Op-Ed on Why Tunisia's Revolution Won't Spread

"iPad's are the solution." - Thomas Friedman

Saturday, February 5, 2011

No More Leaders


"Or, what if no one got what they wanted?" - Barack Obama at Tahrir Square

"I dunno, Barry, I feel like we're really missing the boat on this one." - Joe Biden

"The dolphins are trained and ready to go. I've armed the landmines around my summer cottage. What's holding up the mustache raft? They need me in Suez!" - Vladimir Putin

"Tunisia, you fucking crazy radical goddam socialist sonsuvbitches!" - Anderson Cooper

"I am honored by the term, 'opposition figure'. Wake the fuck up. I am not in charge. The People are. As it is said in Tunis, 'There are no more leaders, and that is a good thing.'" - Mohamed ElBaradei

"We will not rest until Hosni Mubarak--"
"Gesundheit."
- A protester, Nicholas Kristof, Tahrir Square

"President Bush would've known what to do! Woosh. Vrooommm. Wheeeeee!" - George W. Bush playing airplane

"After eight and a half years of vicious war and five years of instability under the abortive Articles of Confederation, the United States of America established themselves as the first fully secular, non-monarchial, democratic republic state of modern history, and liberty and democracy have persisted there ever since, some two hundred and twenty two years. But, I tell you, the Egyptian Exchange cannot endure another week of devaluation!" - Hillary Clinton Tyrannis

"This lipstick makes me feel like Christopher Columbus!" - Hosni Mubarak

Solidarity With Solidarity


Our comrade and guest contributor WJB sends us images and sneers from an Egyptian solidarity rally in San Francisco by way of his new blog Hard Tellin' Not Knowin'.

Egypt In New York


Stand With Egypt, Pt. 2


"Mubarak must die! Mubarak must die!" she screamed with the full capacity of her tiny lungs. Dad held her aloft on his shoulders and, above her, a sign: "Leave, already! My arm is getting tired!" Mother, wearing an Egyptian flag as a hijab, tried to curb daughter's rhetoric in vain. "No, no, no! Die, die, die, die, die! Mubarak must die!"

"You are a native American, aren't you?" a boy asked, his expression wrought with concern, shoving a pink camcorder in my face. "What?" "You are a native American, aren't you?" "Sure, I'm an American." "Why are you here, supporting this?" "Because I believe in freedom, democracy, and equality for all." The cloud passed. His face was flush with youth. "O.K.! Thank you!"

After a stunning rally in Times Square, solidarity continues in New York City.

Join us on Saturday, February 5, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., at the United Nations, 1st Avenue and West 47th Street in Manhattan. Organized by the Egyptian Association for Change.

Tahrir Square is rallying. The thugs goons are retreating. History calls.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Ash-sha`ab yurid isqat an-nizam!


"Fall on your sword or die on the People's!"

"I hear the Hague is beautiful this time of year"

"Give up your job before it costs you your head!"

"Down with Hosni MuBarak Obama!"

"Mubarak, even stubborn old mules know to move when they're beaten"

"No more leaders"

"Hey, Old Man, time to retire!"

"The People of America and Egypt are one."

"Change we can make for ourselves."

"Mubarak out of DeNile!"

"Shut up and get out!"

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Stand With Egypt

There will be a march in solidarity with the Egyptian pro-democracy movement on Friday, February 4, 2011, from 3:30 p.m. til 5:30 p.m. We will convene at Times Square and march to the Egyptian mission to the United Nations at 44th Street and 2nd Avenue. The event has been organized by the Egyptian Association for Change.

With the Mubarak regime setting thugs upon the peaceful protests in Cairo, it is more important now than at any point in the remarkable past two weeks to show that the American people support the people of Egypt. Democracy cannot wait.

Then The Violence Started


"The greatest gift a man can get is to be stupid enough to be happy, but not too stupid to realize that his happiness is a flaw." - Chiang Kai Shek

"Sorry, I'm just too drunk and too handsome." - Hosni Mubarak

"I order you to fall on the sword!" - Abdullah II

"Without the internet we are naked babes on a beach of coal!" - Anderson Cooper

Marquee Moon

"A real affable set there, Johnny."
"Sure was, Ed."
"He's a fine young comic, shows a lot of talent and future."
"Sure does Ed. That's why I want to fucking cut him. Cut him! Get out!!! Everyone the hell out!!!"
"God..the swelling..." - Jay Leno

"My success, if you can call it that, is due to the fact that I know it's all about the ass." - Letterman

"I won't fucking go on without a gun!" - Katie Couric at CBS 2006

"Just glue it like a fucking Van Dyke Jesus Christ!" - Dick Van Dyke helping his daughter on her school project after two bottles of champagne, 1973

"Yo, yo, maybe Herzen was Mark Twain, yeah..." - Cornell West on Real Time with Bill Maher

"No, no, there will never be sex again, that light has gone out of this universe." - Conan