>Jeff Monson charged with graffiti felony

January 17, 2009 Indy 1 Comment

>
Jeff Monson, 37, professional MMA fighter, holding a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in psychology, was charged with First Degree Malicious Mischief on January 14 for spraypainting an anarchy symbol, a peace symbol and the words “no war” and “no poverty” on the Washington State Capitol. This is a Class B felony carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine. The graffiti cost $19,000 to clean up, court papers state. Yeah, right…
What’s the penalty for wife beating again? Sexual abuse? Child pornography? Here’s an example:
Consumption of child pornography can lead to a maximum penalty of five years in federal prison.
Read the full story here.

As for tonights UFC event, UFC 93, I sure hope Dan Henderson will kick Rich “Ace Ventura” Franklin’s ass all over the place. I’d like to see Shogun Hua make Mark Coleman suffer as well. The rest is just a bonus…

art, humour

>MS Paint album cover artwork mayhem

January 17, 2009 Indy 10 Comments

>There’s this hot Swedish forum called Loseup Sepe IV that I’ve been visiting for ages. The creative members once gathered for attack on MS Paint, the suckiest art software on this planet, to interpret some classic album covers, so here’s some mindblowing art for ya! Hope I got the names right…
Clicking on some of the images will give you a larger version.

Overt

spudster

non hanxion

biff

spudster

mugabe

Josefsson

spudster

renttu

Pava

Overt

spudster

Linnéa

teenass cavegay

spudster

Cold Seed

metal david

sikas

biff

Pava

sikas

Tapir

Bug-Eyed Earl

Josefsson

politics, religion

>More terrorism, please!

January 14, 2009 Indy Leave a comment

In fact, a disproportionate response is exactly what terrorists are hoping to elicit as a way to garner sympathy and support for their cause. The current situation in Gaza is a textbook case. Claiming that Israel was not fulfilling its obligations, Hamas declared an end to a cease-fire and militants subsequently fired rockets into Israel. In response, Israel decided first to bomb and then invade Gaza. As this is written about a dozen Israelis, most of them soldiers, have died since the beginning of Israel’s Dec. 27 offensive against Gaza. By comparison, over 900 Palestinians have been killed, with over half of them believed to be civilians, including children. The casualties and resulting humanitarian crisis will be used by Hamas to recruit more Palestinians to take up arms to avenge the deaths of family and friends.
Charles Peña, Antiwar.com

In short, the near future will without a doubt bring more terrorism, more ethnic cleansing, more suffering, more racism, more insecurity in the world. The war on terroris escalating and life goes on towards death in the fast lane…

Hail power! Hail religion! Hail the human race!

links, politics, quotes

>With each grave…

January 11, 2009 Indy 6 Comments

To listen and watch without hearing or seeing

allows the indifference, the ignorance and complicity to continue
and deepens with each grave our collective shame.

Just some links and quotes
from relevant articles about the war in Gaza.

Jennifer Loewenstein – If Hamas didn’t exist (zmag)
There was a time when Fatah and the PFLP held the day; when few Palestinians wanted anything to do with Islamist policies and politics. Such politics have nothing to do with primitive rockets being fired over the border, or smuggling tunnels and black-market weapons; just as Arafat’s Fatah had little to do with stones and suicide bombings. The associations are coincidental; the creations of a given political environment. They are the result of something entirely different than what the lying politicians and their analysts are telling you.

Rashid Khalidi – What You Don’t Know About Gaza (New York Times)
Nearly everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

Elaine C. Hagopian – Why Hamas is not the issue – History matters (counterpunch.org)
The picture changes when history matters. Treating Israeli war crimes as historically detached events, unrelated to its Zionist ideology and militaristic strategy to control all of Palestine, becomes more transparent each day.

Glenn Greenwald – Both parties cheerlead still more loudly for Israel’s war (salon.com)
At exactly the time that worldwide horror over this war is at its peak, the Democratic-led Congress steps up to announce to the world: “this is our war, too; we support whatever Israel does absolutely and without reservations.” We thus make Israel’s wars our wars; its enemies our enemies; its intractable disputes our disputes; and the hostility and anger it generates our own. And we embolden Israel to continue further.

Thalif Deen – Aid Groups Dispute Israeli Claims in Gaza (antiwar.com)
As the Israelis try to justify the massive loss of civilian life in Gaza, their arguments and counter-charges continue to be shot down either by the United Nations or by international human rights organizations.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, adopted on November 10, 1975 by a vote of 72 to 35 (with 32 abstentions), “determine[d] that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”.

politics

>The New Historians

January 9, 2009 Indy 2 Comments

While revisionism at 99% percent of the time is connected to neo-Nazism by people without brains, it might be of interest to look at the New Historians, a group of Israeli (yes, Jews…) historians who are rewriting the traditional Israeli version of Israeli history. This is of course very controversial in a Jewish state run by ruthless Zionists… and of course, some of the New Historians have been labelled self-hating Jews, lost their jobs, suffered death threats and been forced to leave the country. That’s the way the story goes when you criticize Israel, question the Holocaust or denounce Zionism.

The New Historians, compromised of some 120 brave scholars, do not represent a unified body of thought, but they firmly believe that the Israel and Arab countries each have their own share of responsibility for the Arab-Israeli conflict. They’ve simply removed the blindfolds.
Here’s how their history differ from the ”official” version of Israeli history:

The official version said that Britain tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state; the New Historians claimed that it tried to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The official version said that the Palestinians fled their homes of their own free will; the New Historians said that the refugees were chased out or expelled.
The official version said that the balance of power was in favor of the Arabs; the New Historians said that Israel had the advantage both in manpower and in arms.
The official version said that the Arabs had a coordinated plan to destroy Israel; the New Historians said that the Arabs were divided.
The official version said that Arab intransigence prevented peace; the New Historians said that Israel is primarily to blame for the dead end.

Now, any sane person wouldn’t find these claims controversial. It’s pretty much what critics of Israel and Zionism have pointed out for years. However, since traditional Israeli history is clearly abused, primarily using the Holocaust memory to Nazify Arabs, exclude criticism and justify criminal policies, crimes against humanity and the violation of so many rights (alwaysprotected by the United States), using the above claims is devastating to the Zionist cause. Thus, the New Historians are public enemies number one.

In my opinion, the New Historians take on history with honesty. As already stated, they claim that Israel and Arab countries each have their own share of responsibility for the Arab-Israeli conflict, and Ilan Pappe, for example, has said that Palestinians are ”as violent as the Israelis, no more or less, with only one difference: The difference between the violence of the occupier and the violence of those fighting occupation”. Also, the Palestinians don’t have planes or tanks, they use the tools of the weak. The present situation forces Hamas to aggression. Israel must end their occupation and concentrate on including rather than excluding various ideological movements. That way Hamas’ stance will turn from aggressive to constructive. The New Historians seem to agree on this.
Genuine intellectuals should strive to have respect for someone else’s point of view, and this is where the New Historians succeed. They woke up and realised ”there are other people living here, maybe we should examine how they feel about history”.

The educational system in Israel, the media in Israel, the political system in Israel, sends us Jews in Israel a very clear message from our very early days until we die. The message is very clear, and you can see that message in the platforms of all the political parties in Israel. Everybody agrees with it, whether they are on the left, or on the right. […]
The message is that personal life – not collective life, not even political life – personal life of the Jew in Israel would have been much better had there not been Arabs around. […]
I mean, you can understand – maybe not accept but you can understand – how a society treats immigrants. Sometimes they find that these immigrants come to take my job, you know these politics of racism that are the result of immigration. But we are not even talking about immigrants, we are talking about a country that someone else immigrated into, and turned the local people into immigrants, and said that they have no rights there.
Ilan Pappe, The History of Israel reconsidered

Every 30 years (50 years for military matters, 30 for political matters) the Israeli archives declassify secret material, so when Ilan Pappe in the early 1980’s began studies of ”the other side” quite a lot of material about 1948 was released. He saw a picture of 1948 that he was not familiar with. The documents showed a reality different from what he knew. In 1998 the military archives were opened and the New Historians got even more evidence supporting their claims. But the Israeli people turned against them. This what not what they wanted to hear.
It’s the same thing with Holocaust revisionism. People don’t want the truth because it’s devastating to their cause. They respond with death threats, censorship, jail and just about anything but an open debate.

In 1948 the world knew what was happening and still decided not to do anything, thus sending a sickening message to the state of Israel: It’s okay to get rid of the Palestinians. This is why the ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues today as we speak. Will the world react this time? It’s been two weeks of relentless killing and the leaders of the world are still not doing what they should.

The creation of Israel in 1948 was a result of the Holocaust, and it resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, a military occupation of Palestine (didn’t the Jews learn anything from the Holocaust? Or maybe they did…). Israel is attempting to divide the West Bank in one part annexed by Israel and another part maintained as a huge concentration camp (like the Gaza Strip). Zionism is clearly an ideology of racism, exclusion and expulsion. Future Palestinians will not forget, and certainly not forgive. The result of this war will be devastating – not only to Arabs and Jews, but to the whole world. Peace though war – everybody know how silly that sounds.
So why does the world allow Israel to do what it does?

This article is based on a great speech – The History of Israel reconsidered – by Ilan Pappe. Go here to read it.

1948 – lest we forget
Swedish review by Nikanor Teratologen of Ilan Pappe’s book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

politics

>War and pain

January 4, 2009 Indy 5 Comments

This is what’s happening right now. Crank up the volume, watch the whole clip and digest. Then let’s read this post, Zionism, Jews and conspiracy theories, follow the links and at least think about the total failure of the pathetic human race for a while before continuing our daily lives.
Let’s go, 2009!

EDIT: According to comments here this video might not be showing Israel bombings in Gaza, but Hamas rockets detonated by mistake – in 2005. Well, it’s all about wartime propaganda – who to trust? Thanks to Jacques de Beaufort for bringing this to my attention.
However, no matter where this video is shot it still depicts the brutality of war and the complete failure of the human race, so this blogpost is nonetheless of major relevance. This is still what happens in Gaza right now: With the connivance and approval of the United Nations, Europe and the United States, Israel is engaged in a campaign of extermination, a holocaust against the Palestinians. Time to speak up!

movies

>The best movies 2008

January 4, 2009 Indy 2 Comments

>This list will feature some films that were originally released in 2007.
Explanation: This is Sweden, the Northern hemisphere of everything cold and damp, and we’re still a bit behind. For example, Tropa de Elite premiered in Rio De Janeiro in August 2007 and reached Sweden one year later. No wonder those who take serious interest in movies and want to take part in the worldwide discussions on internet forums and elsewhere resort to illegal downloading…

There are two Swedish films I haven’t seen yet, De ofrivilliga (Involuntary) och Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In). I think Gitarrmongot (The Guitar Mongoloid), Ruben Östlund’s first full-lenght feature, is one of the best Swedish films ever (one day I’ll write about Swedish films exclusively), and I love John Ajvide Lindqvist’s debut book and have heard only good things about the movie, so I’m sure both films would have been featured on this list if I’d seen them.
As for The Dark Knight, well, it’s an ok movie. Very overrated, though. Heath Ledger (R.I.P.) was amazing as The Joker, but that alone doesn’t make a good movie. And yes, I enjoyed the total mindlessness of Rambo a lot!
As for the amount of worthless or just anonymous movies I’ve watched thoughout the year… Well, I’ll spare you the hate and leave you happy not knowing what junk there is out there (Tropic Thunder and its’ fans, please fuck forever off…).

Me and a friend ran the Östasiatiska Museets Filmklubb for several years, showing movies from the Far East (China, Korea and Japan), but also from India and Southeast Asia. Since the downfall of that club I got sort of tired of those kind of movies and haven’t really been updated there. The Warlords reminded me of how mesmerizing Asian movies can be when that very special Asian humour is left out. The scenery is fantastic (so many bodies…), like an epic war poem, or a painting brought to life. As always, the fight scenes are superior to everything Hollywood has ever accomplished. And Jet Li looks old, which is cool.
Speaking of Asian movies, I still haven’t seen Lust, Caution. I’ve heard some good words about the sex scenes in that one.

If you had to chose only one or two (ok, three then) films from the list below, I suggest There Will Be Blood, Into The Wild and Eden Lake. Here’s why:
Eden Lake made my pulse rise, it made me cringe in my seat. Very few horror movies have that effect on me nowadays. The psychological horror is mixed with blood and comes full circle: it’s scary. And let’s face it, children are as evil as adults. There’s no escaping the human madness.
Into The Wild made me cry, think about my family and planted thoughts of relevance in my mind. I wrote about that in a previous post entitled Into The Wild and the ego. It’s got an amazing soundtrack as well. Very good lyrics and music on that one.
There Will Be Blood… wow! It’s about life, misanthropy, belief, cause and effect. It’s subtle, but still epic. Last year I was blown away by No Country for Old Men. This year it’s There Will Be Blood. Both of these films have a faint relationship to the Southern Gothic genre. Guess I enjoy disturbing characters who say cool stuff like There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking and I… drink…your…milkshake.
However, all ten films are well worth watching.