., originally uploaded by cafone.

i love this photo. i hate to say it but it looks like you could put some ad copy into the dark part to the left

Brandon Bird: “No One Wants to Play Sega with Harrison Ford”

Being a star…, originally uploaded by Hugo*.

no comment …

After hearing about the situation in Burma, I am at wits end trying to figure out what the fuck one is to do in a violent military dictatorship climate. Monks, who are highly revered in the region, led protests in rebellion and for the most part, the government had restraint about using military force to crush the protests. There was huge support for the protests by the civilians and a giant party of protesters were able to peacefully march into the capital.

This protest at the very least attracted global attention to the region. In fact, you can show your support by signing a petition here: www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with…

But today, BBC reported that overnight, the military broke into monasteries and beat and arrested several hundred (?) monks. It is obvious that the junta is just trying to remove the monks from the crowds of protesters so that they can open fire on the civilians. That will allow them to remain in power without the global community intervening as urgently as they would if monks were being fired upon as well.

Here are 2 good BBC reports:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7009825.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7015751.stm

The region is traditionally unstable. The military dictators don’t recognize the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi as anything and have arrested her repeatedly for trying to establish a democratic environment. The US and Europe have imposed sanctions on trade in the region except for a few loopholes. One loophole allowed a Burmese-Thai gas pipeline to be run by a union of French oil company Total S.A. and their American counterpart Chevron. This pipeline is the cause of many human rights abuses in the area.

I am not pro-terrorist, but I can see why someone might look at becoming a military dictator as a very viable option in a climate like that. I mean, it’s a get-rich-quick scheme definitely. But what are your other options? Come up with a chain of low-cost department stores that take over the nation and then the world? Sorry, Wal-Mart’s got that cornered. Maybe come up with an operating system for personal computers that becomes the go-to OS and gets distributed with any standard build across electronics retailers all over the world? You’ll have to squash Bill Gates first and it’s tough to start down that path if your family is too poor to even afford a computer.

But what DOES happen in the region as a source of income that is in some way competitive to the minimum wage of the rest of the world is drug smuggling, which also funds the underground terrorist network. Drug smuggling in Burma also fuels China’s addiction problem.

So yeah. Where do we look as a solution to this clusterfuck? One man says China is the key: www.ksg.harvard.edu/news/op…

He’s a harvard professor and all, but you know what I would do? Go over there and get a pet python — those things are freakin huge.

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» 30,000 Years of Art – Phaidon

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Maybe it is because I am not from the region, but I have a hard time believing there is a high school that still exists where a black student would have to ask the principal if he can sit under the white’s tree. The principal says do what you want. And the next day there are nooses hanging from its limbs.

First of all, ‘sit under the tree?’ I mean I love trees but is that really the thing that sparked ALL this shit down in Jena, Louisiana. That’s like out of Tom Sawyer or something. “C’mon Huck, let’s go sneak into the burlesque theatre and watch the black face show. Them negroes is so funny.”

Dammit I wish I had a jet and didn’t work F’ing 40 hours a week because I would love to visit and just soak this place in. There’s only one way this place could possibly exist and that is a ripple in time.

I mean if I was Kenneth Purvis and I wanted to sit under some tree, any tree, I would have said “can i sit under that tree or are we from the 1800s and retarded?”

Jena has been declared to be in an emergency state. Black people all over the place, even from England, are making what is being called a “pilgrimage” by the media to this high school where all the events took place. Here is the overview of the incidents leading up to this situation from MTV news >>

And here is coverage and some interviews from the lovely Amy Goodman:

That clip is only part 1. There are several more parts to her coverage available on YouTube.

part1 | part2 | part3 | part4 | part5 | part6

And so I’m not trying to sensationalize anything here, but this story includes pickup trucks, sawed-off shotguns with pistol grips, showdowns at the fairgrounds, and more. I am having a hard time grasping the fact that these events could exist outside fiction. Is someone writing an old-timey novella?

Does this kind of stuff seriously still exist in real life? If this situation is not in fact an elaborately coordinated gag of some sort, then good god, what the hell are we doing Iraq?

Is it not obvious that there’s PLENTY to take care of here at home before we start trying tell other people how THEY should be? If I was an Iraqi citizen reading a ton of US News and the US came knocking on my door I might be like “What the fuck? You’re trying to get me to be like YOU? FUCK THAT.” And then I would be shot.

I am no stranger to racism, having grown up in Marietta, OH. Don’t get me wrong, I knew some very sweet and loving and intelligent people from there, but I also knew some 1800s retarded people. And I say that because at this point in time racism is akin to mental retardation. It’s like thinking the world is flat or something. Here is a link to the science behind skin pigmentation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_pigmentation

If you don’t read that article, at least know that it is documented. There is one point of interest that is worth checking out — at the very bottom of the article — it is this image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Valtorta_cave_painting.jpg
The caption reads:

Cave painting from Valtorta spain dated to 13,000 years ago. The bowmen are depicted as darker than the animals

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