Saturday, October 08, 2005

HOWL


OCTOBER 8 1955
HOWL
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war

Howl of beat's heart


October 08, 2005 FIFTY years ago today in San Francisco, disaffected young bohemians, with their goatees, berets, angst, wine and marijuana, gathered at the Six Gallery to listen to poetry. It was a cool, hip thing to do and rock'n'roll had not yet been invented.

If they had arrived as individuals in search of confirmation that society sucked, by the time Allen Ginsberg had finished reading his seminal work, Howl, an eloquent, passionate rage against conformity, the 200 or so there left united into new movement: the beats.

"That was the day the bomb went off," says Anthony Bliss, curator of rare books and literary manuscripts at Berkeley's Bancroft Library, home to one of the foremost collections of beat literature.

The Howl Obscenity Trial and free speech

"Beat Generation" is a term referring to a heterogeneous mix of young people, artists and intellectuals of the 1950s (and later) whose unconventional work and lifestyle reflected profound disaffection with contemporary society. They expressed objection and criticism against American materialism in a bitter, harsh and often abusive language. They mocked its conformity, denounced its immorality and set out "on the road" to discover America's true spirit. They experienced with drugs and sex, explored Eastern religions and Western avant-gardes, from dada to jazz "burning for the ancient heavenly connection." (Ginsberg) The Beats rediscovered poetry as a form of public entertainment, returned to its sources in the body, breath, the spoken word and music. The Beat ethos reverberated through the anti-war movement and movements from psychedelia to punk and enjoys a current resurgence.
Members of the Beat Generation, responded to the conformist materialism of the period by adopting lifestyles derived from Henry David Thoreau's social disobedience and Walt Whitman's poetry of the open road. The movement had no shared artistic credo beyond breaking the current literary orthodoxy. Most representative and influential were Kerouac' s novel On the Road (1957) and Ginsberg's poem Howl (1956), and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch. (1959) Other prominent Beat related literary figures were poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet Gregory Corso, and novelist John Clellon Holmes. In a first section of this course we will concentrate on the works of these "core Beats". We will then move on to study the convergence of the Beat Movement with the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance.


Howl was one of those books, and it is a book not just a 'poem', that had a profound impact on me when I was a teenager. The others were the Communist Manifesto, the writings of Bakunin, Freud's Analysis of Dreams, Heinlien's Stranger in a Strange Land, Aleister Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice, the novels of H.P. Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler, William Burroughs, Samuel Delany and the poems and stories of Edgar Allan Poe. I liked my poets dark, stoned and gothic.

Don't call me a baby boomer, I never did. I am a child of the Atomic Age, the Space Age, the Age of Television, the new Age of Comics, Rock n Roll in the New Jazz Age. In growing up I embraced the Beat/Hippie/Yippie/Freak kulture.... I was baptized in the Anti-War and Liberation Movements of the seventies; youth libertation, womens liberation, gay liberation. Underground comix, Alternative Press and Media was juice for my creativity. The revival of Surrealism, Wobbly labour activism and Paganism was the carnival of resistance I ran away to join.

I was cheered by Hendrix, the poetics of the Doors, the siren call of Leary and the other Experiences of the Doors of Perception that opened for my in-between generation, 1954-64, not really the sixties and not yet generation X.


There now you know a bit more about me......
and at 50 I still Howl.


Penquin Empiricism

There is a current frenzy on the right over the movie March of the Penquins.
Plot
Every year, Emperor Penguins march, in single file, to their mating ground deep in Antarctica. They mate monogamously, and the females hang around long enough only to lay a single egg. While the male looks after it, the female goes to fend off approaching stavation. Then the roles are reversed, so that Dad can find food for the hatchling.

They are having a warm fuzzy feeling about the apparent monogamous relations that the film shows Emperor Penquins having. As Bill Moyers points out In the New York Times recently, Jonathan Miller reported that conservatives are invoking "March of the Penguins" as an inspiration for their various causes. Some praise the penguins for their monogamy. Opponents of abortion say it verifies "the beauty of life and the rightness of protecting it." A Christian magazine claims it makes "a strong case for intelligent design." On the website "lionsofgod.com" you can find instructions to take a notebook, flashlight and pen to the movie "to write down what God speaks to you" as you watch the film.

Opps don't let George II into the theatre we know what happens when God talks to him.

As for intelligent design, as The Panda's Thumb points out:

That any one of these eggs survives is a remarkable feat—and, some might suppose, a strong case for intelligent design.

Sadly, that’s the sum total of his argument. It would be interesting to know why having a high mortality rate makes a good argument for ID, but I guess that’ll have to remain a mystery. Maybe it’s because these penguins live in such harsh conditions that he can’t imagine how they could have adapted to the cold so suddenly. But given the fact that penguins live at the equator, it wouldn’t have been sudden.


Well unfortunately Empire Penquins are not monogamous they only pair up until the chicks hatch and then the males are off again looking for a new mate. Which is the biological function of males, to impregnate and leave....which leaves rearing and caring to the female of the species, which is why females determine if they can support their young, if not then they abort or commit infanticide, as a social neccesity, regardless of the moral values of the conservative right. Once again empiricism and science contradicts the faith of the religious right.

Adam Leipzig, president of National Geographic Feature Films,
'pointed out that this species of penguin, the emperor, is usually monogamous for a year, but not for life: the following year, it takes a different partner. He added: 'People read it into what they want. There are universal truths about parenting and bonding with offspring, but it's not a film with a political and social agenda. When we put the English-language version together, we never once had a discussion about social, religious or cultural points of view. We wanted to get the audience involved to follow the penguins' lives.'

Yeah right except that this version is different than the original.Had the American Christian Right Wingnutz seen the original French version it would have made them even happier.

Remaking the March of the Penguins
The original film (en français) features voiceovers for each of the main family characters (dad, mom, baby boy) and some French pop songs. The effect is quite cheesy at times, particularly during the singing of the love songs.

And a couple of folks have noted that they still have to explain the homosexual tendencies of Emperor Penguins.

Marriage advocate and conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher praised the recent surprise hit documentary March of the Penguins for extolling the values of love and devotion. But instances of homosexuality in the penguin world might add an unwanted twist to her analogy

Gay Penguins!

It seems that the world is suddenly overflowing with gay penguins. At Central Park Zoo in New York, there are two male penguins, Roy and Silo, who appear to be in a gay relationship. They nuzzle each other and behave just like other sets of mates. They have sex with each other. When the zoo put female penguins in to entice them to mate with them, they had no interest at all. But they apparently make great parents:

And even some Christians have trouble with the anthropomorphizing of Penguins, cause it leads to difficult questions about God's creation, but whew then again he only made MAN in his image, not the rest of the universe he inhabits, created, destroyed, recreated.....

Morality not from animals

Indeed, Christians must be careful about using examples from the animal world to support human morality. Some animals (in this fallen world) exhibit homosexual behavior! Remember, man was made in the image of God. Even though our body has features which enable it to be classified in the same grouping as mammals, for instance, people were created differently than the animals. God commanded, and the animals came into existence. But for man He said, “Let us make man in our image.” (Genesis 1:26). There is an insurmountable gap between people and animals. God gave us His Word (and our consciences) to inform us of right and wrong—we don’t get our morality from animals. The movie showed what happened when a young chick didn’t make the tricky transfer from Dad to Mom. When a failed transfer resulted in a frozen newborn chick, a grieving mother (of course this is interpreted by man as “grieving”—but is it “grieving” as we understand it, or an instinctive behavioral reaction programmed into the animal?) tried to steal another penguin’s chick (we trust people who are comparing the penguins’ behavior with humans won’t use this to justify stealing someone’s baby!). The tribe wouldn’t allow her to take it and the mother had no choice but to head back to sea. This was yet another reminder of living in a fallen world which includes death and suffering.




Of course some folks could ask Are Penguins Communist?

Since they act collectively in order to survive their harsh geography, no rabid individualism here, survival of the fittest is through mutual aid, cooperation and collective solidarity of the species. Something that the American Right denies is 'natural', opps, empiricism trumps ideology again.

Boys will be Girls

The Metrosexual Age

We have dreamt of every woman there is, and dreamt too of the miracle that would bring us the pleasure of being a woman, for women have all the qualities - courage, passion, the capacity to love, cunning - whereas all our imagination can do is naively pile up the illusion of courage.
Jean Baudrillard

During the American Presidential primaries Howard Dean called himself a 'Metrosexual', so how much chest hair has he lost? Perhaps that's the reason for his infamous scream that went across the air waves.


Mascara men outdo girls at garba
TIMES OF INDIA NEWS NETWORK
[ FRIDAY, OCTOBER 07, 2005 10:43:56 PM ]


AHMEDABAD/SURAT/VADODARA: Last year, they were thronging accessory stores, buying bracelets, anklets, piercing their ears. Navratri 2005, they are queuing up outside beauty salons to streak their hair, doing a facial, pedicure, manicure and they are even waxing their chests and backs!

The metrosexual male has arrived. And he is flaunting his 'assets' acquired from frenzied work-outs at the neighbourhood gym.

Like 22-year-old garba-freak, Amit Thakkar, who went through all that pain only to woo girls. "It's all about fun. Girls like men without chest hair. We don't mind bearing a little pain to look good and feel good," says Thakkar, who waxed his chest specially for Navratri.

Urvish Shah, an MCom student who also waxed his chest, bares it all — "It's trendy and looks good under kurtis without buttons." To complete the picture, he coloured his hair and did a facial. Beauticians are beaming. "Business is brisk due to Navratri.

The profit in the men's section alone has soared 40 per cent" claims Sonal Shah of a popular beauty clinic. The demand for highlighting and colouring hair has also soared during the season, say beauticians. And, men are also wearing earrings and sporting the bicep-accessory, the 'kadu'.

Girls can't help but gush. "It looks attractive, especially if you have a physique to go with the clean chest," says 19-year-old Pragya Khatri, a garba enthusiast from Navrangpura. Jal Shah of Vadodara is spending Rs 250 every night to set his hair for all the nine nights.

Hairdressers say they are getting equal number of men, as girls this Navratri. Says centre head of Vandana Luthra Curls and Curves (VLCC), Vadodara, Sujata Gohil, "We have seen more males walk in for hairstyles, streaking and German re-bonding to straighten their hair and they are ready to spend up to Rs 2,500."

Limbachia brothers of Capital beauty parlour, Vadodara, confess that males are waxing their chests. "Some boys want tattoos of bulls and anchors on their chests," says Abhishek Limbachia. "Boys, in fact. highlight their hair according to the colour of their dresses."


Navratri (Navaratri) an Indian Festival :-

Come October and there's just one feeling allover. A feeling of joy & happiness. A time for dance, music and devotion. Yes, we are talking about the most awaited festival by people from all walks of life -Navratri. A festival when the young-hearts throb with excitement and energy and the older generation is full of devotion.

What is 'Navaratri' all about?
Navratri is a festival of worship, dance and music celebrated over a period of nine nights (Nav-nine and Ratri-nights). It is celebrated from the first to ninth date of Ashwin Shukla Paksha of the Hindu Calendar for the worship of the Goddess Durga. Goddess Durga is believed to exist in many forms like Goddess Bhavani, Jagdamba, Mahakali etc. The first nine days of the Ashwin are devoted for worshipping the Divine Mother -'MAA'. These nine days are divided and devoted to the Trinity of God worshipped in a female form - three days for Durga (Goddess of valor) three days for Lakshmi (Goddess of Wealth) and three days for Sarswati (Goddess of Knowledge and Art). On the fifth day (Lalita Panchami), it is traditional, to gather all books, light a lamp and invoke Sarswati . The eighth and ninth day, it is traditional to perform Yagna (sacrifice offered to the fire) to honor Divine Mother and bid her farewell.


In Edmonton a new Mens Spa has opened, aptly titled the Boardroom. The only one in Canada, specifically for men. And it opened in Edmonton not Montreal or Toronto, or even Calgary (they like their men hairy and butch, like Stephen Harper). The Edmonton Journal recently ran a feature on the new trend in Men's grooming, taking advantage of manicures, pedicures, waxing, once the domain of women. Meet the Metrosexual. The age of consumer bi-sexual gender f**k is upon us.

LOLA The Kinks (1970)


I met her in a club down in old soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola [lp version:
Coca-cola]
C-o-l-a cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her her name and in a dark brown voice she said lola
L-o-l-a lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Well I’m not the world’s most physical guy
But when she squeezed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola
Well I’m not dumb but I can’t understand
Why she walked like a woman and talked like a man
Oh my lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Well we drank champagne and danced all night
Under electric candlelight
She picked me up and sat me on her knee
And said dear boy won’t you come home with me
Well I’m not the world’s most passionate guy
But when I looked in her eyes well I almost fell for my lola
Lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola
Lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

I pushed her away
I walked to the door
I fell to the floor
I got down on my knees
Then I looked at her and she at me

Well that’s the way that I want it to stay
And I always want it to be that way for my lola
Lo-lo-lo-lo lola
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It’s a mixed up muddled up shook up world except for lola
Lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Well I left home just a week before
And I’d never ever kissed a woman before
But lola smiled and took me by the hand
And said dear boy I’m gonna make you a man

Well I’m not the world’s most masculine man
But I know what I am and I’m glad I’m a man
And so is lola
Lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola
Lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola lo-lo-lo-lo lola

Ray Davis and his great rock band the Kinks were always ahead of their time. This metrosexual anthem set the stage for a coming out of the bi-sexual gender f**k in Rock and Roll. Two years later Lou Reed released his famous (drag) Queen anthem, Walk on the Wild Side.

Lou Reed was first known as the songwriter and singer for the hugely influential and acclaimed Velvet Underground. He released his self titled debut solo album in 1972. It consisting of songs originally written during the Velvet years. David Bowie produced Transformer later that year and included a surprise hit, "Walk On The Wild Side." The song reached the UK Top 10 and US Top 20, his only track to enter the pop charts in either the US or UK.

1972 The era of androgynous bi-sexuality,Glam Rock was upon us in the 1970's with Reed, David Bowie, and the New York Dolls, etc.

The New York Dolls were a rock music group formed in New York City in 1971. They found little success during their lifetime, but the New York Dolls prefigured much of what was to come in the punk rock era and even later; the Dolls' over-the-top crossdressing influenced the look of many hair metal groups.

1972 was certainly the year that Bowie began to get a glimpse of the power of the pop. Previewed in London that Spring, his rock and roll creation Ziggy Stardust, put on one of the most spectacular and innovative live shows to date, and the craze that followed was the beginnings of his superstar myth. The summer of 1972 was also a busy one for him in the studio, as he produced albums for Lou Reed ('Transformer') and Mott The Hoople ('All The Young Dudes', for which he wrote the hit title track). The US Ziggy tour began in September playing sold out shows full of theatrically inspired Japanese costumes, snarling guitars courtesy of Mick Ronson, and a bold, daring approach to performance that propelled the audience into a rock and roll fervor. He abruptly put his own creation to rest on June 3, 1973 with, the pronouncement, "of all the shows on the tour this one will stay with us for the longest because not only is this the last show of the tour, but it is the last show we will ever do." This surprised everyone in the house - not least the members of his band.

Rockers were wearing make up, which has always been a bi-sexual gender f**k, and by the end of the era of Glam Theatrical Rock the logical outcome was the Kabuki Drag of Kiss. So that even the toughest long haired head banger macho guy was allowed to like guys in Drag, and even wear drag. Cause bad guy Gene Simmons said so.

And of course I would be remiss if I did not at least reference the Queen of rock and roll, Freddy Mercury. He and Queen have remained enormously popular over the past thirty years. And even more so after his passing in 1991.

Rock and Roll culture was given permission to challenge sexual/gender stereotyping by the emergence of the gay liberation and feministmovements in the seventies. It was gay/feminist movement that transformed the popular cultural definition of masculine. And Rock and Roll was its medium, especially rock n roll coming out of New York city. The ultimate Metropolis, and home to all the above bands sans Queen. And by the eighties the gender f**k bisexuality of rock n roll came out of the closet with a new age Queen, Boy George. Who while not making music is still making the news.

And it is still reflected in the musical culture around us.
Ever on the cutting edge of Gangsta Culture and hip capitalism even P Diddy is going Metrosexual. P Diddy Combs To Launch Mens Beauty Line

Today the boys, can care about looking good and being pampered, just like the girls.

Meet the metrosexual
He's well dressed, narcissistic and bun-obsessed. But don't call him gay.

For some time now, old-fashioned (re)productive, repressed, unmoisturized heterosexuality has been given the pink slip by consumer capitalism. The stoic, self-denying, modest straight male didn't shop enough (his role was to earn money for his wife to spend), and so he had to be replaced by a new kind of man, one less certain of his identity and much more interested in his image -- that's to say, one who was much more interested in being looked at (because that's the only way you can be certain you actually exist). A man, in other words, who is an advertiser's walking wet dream. Beckham is the biggest metrosexual in Britain because he loves being looked at and because so many men and women love to look at him: He's the future, but also a way of adapting other, less advanced specimens to that future.

Gender f**k and cultural bi-sexuality have come of age after thirty five years, and we now call it Metrosexual. It is the culture of the subject in the urban metropolis and its objectification. What men had objectified in women has in capitalist urban culture become the mirror of subjectivity, men are now beautifying themselves.

The appreciation of the mirror as object, to push the metaphor, reminds us that however deployed as a metaphor for likeness or sameness, mirrors are actually not at all about similarity, since there is ontological difference (at the very least, ontological, but also epistemological, representational, and political differences) between the subject of the mirror's reflection (image) and the subject reflected before the mirror. Indeed, this difference is crucial for Lacan; his digression on the need of a particular species of bird to perceive another of its species in order to mature emphasizes that it is not the function of the mirror so much as the function of specularity, the seeing someone irreducibly other and yet recognizably similar.To Mirror Tomorrow Reflections on Feminism and the Future by E. L. McCALLUM

Once again capitalism through consumer culture challenges the very 'traditions' and stereotypes of gender that those on the right cling too. Capitalisms revolutionary destruction of all the old moral and conservative traditions, as Dr. Marx pointed out, continues. "The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his, real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."Those who cling to capitalism as some sort of conservative life saver are sadly mistaken about the revolutionary nature of a system that remakes and resells itself on a continous basis.

Metrosexual is a term coined in 1994 (along with the noun, metrosexuality) by British journalist Mark Simpson, who used it to refer to an urban male of any sexual orientation who has a strong aesthetic sense and spends a great deal of time and money on his appearance and lifestyle. He is the fashion-conscious target audience of men's magazines:

The promotion of metrosexuality was left to the men's style press, magazines such as The Face, GQ, Esquire, Arena and FHM, the new media which took off in the 1980s and is still growing (GQ gains 10,000 new readers every month). They filled their magazines with images of narcissistic young men sporting fashionable clothes and accessories. And they persuaded other young men to study them with a mixture of envy and desire.

Some people said unkind things. American GQ, for example, was popularly dubbed "Gay Quarterly". Little wonder that all these magazines - with the possible exception of The Face - address their metrosexual readership as if none of them was homosexual or even bisexual.

The origin of the term traces to a 1200 word article titled "Here come the mirror men" dissecting the new urbane man by Mark Simpson, published on November 15, 1994 in The Independent, a major British daily. Barely any usage of the term in print publications can be found in the same decade. Beginning around June 2003, the term frequently appeared in the British press. A June 22, 2003 New York Times article titled "Metrosexuals Come Out" inaugarated fashionable usage of the word in the American media. The rising popularity of use followed the increasing integration of gay men into mainstream society and a correspondingly decreased taboo towards homosexuality (and, by extension, the appearance of homosexuality or effeminacy). Over a short span, Canada introduced same-sex marriage legislation, the US Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy statutes as unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas, and gay characters and themes, long present on TV shows like Will & Grace, made further inroads. In particular, the Bravo network introduced Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a show in which stereotypically style- and culture-conscious gay men gave advice to their heterosexual counterparts.


Macho man has bitten the dust: he's been replaced by something just as tough inside, but softer at the edges. Peter Gotting reports on a new target market.

Lenin once said that 'come the revolution it will be the capitalist who sells us the rope to hang the last aristorcrat'.

Today it is capitalism that sells men mascara to challenge masculine stereotyping and homophobia.

This reification of gay liberation and feminism has upset some on the left, which see it as reducing the revolutionary potential of these movements. However the fact is that it is the result of capitalisms ability to absorb cultural identity movements through making them consumers and consumer sub cultures. Gay culture was and is middle class male culture from the begining, feminism was absorbed into capitalisms cultural hegemony once it focused on its academic and corporate success at getting 'women into power'.

Metrosexuality the Middle Class Way
Exploring Race, Class, and Gender
in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

The portrayals on the show contain numerous contradictions, some of which contribute to gay visibility. However, ultimately, the show contains gayness by reducing it to a commodity that services heteronormativity. Given the recent decision by the US Supreme Court overturning the Hardwick vs. Bowers case (Lawrence and Garner vs. Texas), and the growing international debate over same-sex marriage, these portrayals serve to depoliticize queerness. Much work in feminist visual culture has explored the gendered power relations in the gaze that is constructed by filmic representation, while critical race theorists have analyzed the colonizing nature of that gaze and queer critics have discussed the commodification of the “gay” hip look. This article brings together these bodies of work in order to suggest that the cultural function of Queer Eye does more than perpetuate problematic stereotypes. Specifically, this article analyzes the interrelated links between the commodification of gayness, the reinscription of the heterosexual imperative, and the problematic racial and class-based constructs of masculinity perpetuated by the show in order to argue that Queer Eye ultimately serves to dramatically limit radical queer resistance.

George Bush Admits to Being Insane


Bush: God Told Me to Invade Iraq

How do you know you're God?" "When I pray I find I'm talking to myself.
Peter O'Toole in the Ruling Class, 1972

Gee really and God told Pat Robertson to call for the
Assassination of Hugo Chavez and he told the Son of Sam to kill too. God sure does talk to alot of people lately , must have a party line.

Well regardless of ones religious convictions George W has proven he is definetly psychopathic, and we usually lock those folks up. You know the ones who engage in random acts of murder and mayhem only to say when they are arrested; ' God Told Me To'. Yep it's time for the rubber room for the self appointed President of the Free World.


BBC Press Releases

Category: News

Date: 06.10.2005

God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers

President George W Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals. In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.


Ok this is now really scary cause this story posted on the news wires today was originally posted waaay back in 2003 inthe Washington Post where it was reported:

Road Map in the Back Seat?

By Al Kamen

Friday, June 27, 2003; Page A27

Imagine our surprise Wednesday to read in the Israeli paper Haaretz (online), that Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Abu Mazen, meeting recently with militants to enlist their support for a truce with Israel, said that, when they met in Aqaba, President Bush had told him this: " God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam [ Hussein], which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.


Published on Monday, June 30, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
Did Bush Say God Told Him To Go To War?

And it's only making news headlines now?! Cause the BBC is reporting it. Uh Oh.
You mean Americans re-elected a mad man, what a cover up. This could have been the Democrats ace in the hole.
This is the new October surprize.

Over the Edge
The Madness of King George
By KURT NIMMO
CounterPunch
Weekend Edition
June 5 / 6, 2004

It's described as "erratic behavior" by Capitol Hill Blue.

Bush has "wide mood swings," he rants and raves against "enemies" both domestic and foreign, and quotes the Bible like a deranged Southern preacher.

It's like the Nixon days is how a worried GOP political consultant describes it.

Only Bush, unlike Nixon, will not resign and fly off into the sunset. Nixon knew to get out while the getting was good.

"In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be 'God's will' and then tells aides to 'fuck over' anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration," including Kerry and the Democrats, writes Doug Thompson of Capitol Hil Blue.


But wait it gets better waaay back in 2002 folks already knew the President was nuts.

Is the President Nuts?

Psychopathology of the President

COUNTERPUNCH 2oct02

"Is The 'President' Nuts?" asks Carol Wolman, M.D. "Many people, inside and especially outside this country, believe that the American president is nuts, and is taking the world on a suicidal path." A board-certified psychiatrist in practice for 30 years, Dr. Wolman feels compelled to understand the "psychopathology" of man "under tremendous pressure from both his family/junta, and from the world at large." Dr. Wolman wonders if GW is suffering from Antisocial Personality Disorder, as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Fourth Edition:

"There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others: 1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest; 2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure; 5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others; 7) lack of remorse by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated or stolen from others."

And some of us knew this way back when Bush got first elected. Guess it was just impolitic to say the obvious.

You know there is something about elected rulers of the world with the name of George who end up mad...like
King George III who ruled when America declared independence....hmmmmm there may be hope for a real revolution in Iraq yet.

George III had a particularly severe form of porphyria. His first attack occurred in 1765, four years after his marriage to Queen Charlotte. Further signs of the disease showed up in 1788-1789. From 1811 to the time of his death in 1820 the royal patient became progressively insane and blind. He was nursed in isolation, and kept in straight jackets and behind bars in his private apartments at Windsor Castle.