Obama No. 1; Perry hacken' 10; never again Perry's world

The Guardian on 6 December 2011 noted that President Obama has

 told US officials to consider how countries treat its gay and lesbian populations when making decisions about allocating foreign aid.

Reactionary presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry issued this Statement on the president's decision:

 "This administration's war on traditional American values must stop.

"This silly idea is just the most recent example of an administration at war with people of faith in this country. Investing tax dollars promoting a lifestyle many Americans of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong."

This "silly idea" is the subject of a  chilling comment by the admirable and beautiful blog another country:

 Iran Celebrates the End of Ramadan:

Six hanged in the City of Ahvaz,
Three of Them for "Lavat" (sexual intercourse between men)

If you ain't moved by another country's comment, you ain't my kinda folk.

The Guardian article quotes Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as saying

"I am not saying gay people can't or don't commit crimes," she said. "They can and they do, just like straight people. And when they do, they should be held accountable. But it should never be a crime to be gay."

Quite right, Madam Secretary.  You'd have made a great president, too.


I yearn for the day when Governor Perry is nominated by The Reactionary Party and is on a debate platform with Barak Hussein Obama, explaining why persons with "traditional American Values" insisted on by "many Americans of faith" would celebrate hanging young Texans from a sour apple tree.


The Guardian article notes:

The 10 countries granted the greatest economic and military assistance from the US – according to USAID – are Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Sudan, West Bank/Gaza, Ethiopia, Kenya and Colombia.

In Israel, gays are more free than in Texas, excepting Austin.  Columbia, to my astonishment, is moving toward freedom.  The rest of the countries to which we give untold amounts of money gladly murder gays.

Do you, any of you, remember John Rechy's  City of Night (1963),

http://likedreamsville.blogspot.com/2008/12/john-rechy-city-of-night.html

 or his Numbers (1967)?

These autographical novels are the moving and mad adventures of a desperate  youngman [Recy's phrase] in the Perryesque America as I lived it in the 50s and early 60s.  Rechy's depiction of El Paso and Los Angeles reminds me of Egypt today:

From Wikipedia:

Egypt is influenced by the civil law system [note from Durell:  derived from Roman law, as is the law of France, Germany, Italy, and most European countries, England excepted). As the criminal code is silent on the subject of private, adult and consensual homosexual acts, and cross-dressing, they are not de jure illegal in Egypt. However, since 2000 certain laws have been used to impose what amounts to a de facto ban on homosexuality and cross-dressing.

In 2000, police arrested an Egyptian gay couple and charged them with, "violation of honor by threat" and "practicing immoral and indecent behavior". Their lawyer asked that the charges be dropped because homosexuality is not a crime, but the judge refused on the grounds that two men had in fact "offended" religious and moral standards [1]. The incident became a media sensation, promoting various public figures to view homosexuality as a product of Western decadence and demand that the government execute homosexuals or send them to mental institutions to be reformed[2].

Within a year, the Egyptian government began a public crackdown on Egyptian gay men by raiding private parties, arresting the guests and charging them with various laws, including violating the "Public Order & Public Morals" code, enacted in the 1990s to combat "Satanic" and "lewd" expressions, as well as engaging in prostitution and "violating the teachings of religion and propagating depraved ideas and moral depravity." [3].

If the Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt's expression of Perry's point of view) doesn't prevail in Egypt, with our help, Egypt might turn out to deal fairly with brave and gay young men who insist on Democracy.

Surely not every young man who opposed Mubarak in Tiananmen Square was gay. . .

http://www.channel4.com/news/egypt-protests-spread-as-huge-demos-planned

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351904/Egypt-protests-Internet-shut-hackers-message-out.html

A Chinese worker 

expresses support for 

mass protests at 

Tiananmen Square [differentSquare, same issue]

before the government's

 bloody crackdown.

http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/revolt-02072011131108.html

. . . but Wally knows one who wants sexual freedom as well as economic and political freedom.

I'm very happy to see my government help 

Egyptian protest poster courtesy

another country

. . . freedom spread around the globe:  not only political and economic freedom, but the most valuable freedom of all:  the freedom to be as one is.

Once Perry's vision of America was the predominant vision.  Never again!

Images of the World as it seems to be

These are images I captured from the Web over a 10-year period, while I was recovering from a stroke. I did not and could not, then, record the blog from whence the images came.  If I've got one of yours, I'd love to give you credit for it; and if you insist, I'll remove it with greatest reluctance.  I love each of these images.

BBC News

I like all the marines I know.

I fear I'm caught in that 'ol

"Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner"

nonsense.

Glory and madness

Sit yet on our

wounded hearts. 

Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, sorta.

Peace, after a storm.

We have always known

the beauty and horror of 

Violence.

A View of Toledo, El Greco, lib art

The Kurdish Peshmerga

the greatest fighting force,

 man for man,

outside Pahstunistan.

Another kind of grace.

Clyde Archer, a  Nee York dancer in Madrid, from a  

Spanish blog I'll keep, possibly named Magazine

This is on the side of a nine-story
building in Tehran. Lotta folks
didn't like our bombing
Iraq.

This design could well serve as
our own, only substitute
drones for
skulls.

And of course change the slogan.

Photo by Mike Meany

Brazilians protest Bushco's War -- you know, the one that bankrupted us.

Two kinds of innocence

Photographed by Kevin Caarter.  See All Men are Brothers.

Entitled Worst Slum in America.
I kinda like it.
"You would," some will say.

This, one of my favorites, is said to belong
to Bhavesh Moody, Man vs.Man.
A truly great work.
Congratulations, Mr. Moody.

Note the boy in the window.

Not only is the human spirit indomitable,
football (soccer to you North Americans)
is too.

Polaris Images says this about this image:

"Adam Nadel has won 1st prize Sports Features Singles 

in the 2004 World Press Contest

 for a photograph of the 

Amputee Soccer team of Sierra Leone"

You try to find a shirtless construction worker 

who isn't a professional model.  Hard to do.

Construction workers

are modest guys.

The URL is "cuba-christ1".  Can't find it.
I reckon that Our Lord and Savior
is about 12, now.

When He comes into His own,
the Tenth Imam, revered by Shiites,
will exit Occlusion, and History
will end.

No wonder there are Disturbances in the Firmament.

If we lived in Uruguay, the cow might sport a map

like this:

Rio Ganges, a Spanish language
blog has it.

The most sophisticated woman
in the whole world. . .

image1730859, but I bet you can't find it.  Pulled, I think it has been. 

Obscene, I guess it is thought to be.

Disrespectful?

Human?

No!

The Queen's grandson.

. . . and then the rest of the world.

My friend M., or might as well be,
after he Battle of Fallujah . . .
M. can imitate the sound
each caliber of bullet makes
as it speeds past
his ear.
To this day.
Probably as long ass he lives.

URL is "iraq.loarge".  I can find it.

If you can, let me know.

One of the great pics of last century.

I like it also because I
remember being
with Abe on
 this spot.

Irony, irony, irony.
Might as well love it.
Can't escape it, no how.

Us . . .

. . . and our bitterest enemies.

Take your lick.

St. Louis, where we want to move.

You, soon enough.

India. . . .

My clients, as it might have been.

All I remember is that
the guy is one of the
world's great
football
players.

The blog advises us to
quit complaining
about your
job.

Some other good pics, too.

Womanless Saudi men
trying to have fun.

Sorry lot, the lot of  'em.

La Tomatilla, in Buñol, Spain.  I'll get there, some day.

Leroy Williams, next farm over, had trailers

 full of ripe tomatoes.  We used to chunk 'em 

at each other.  Great fun.  

This looks better.

Our guy.

Our ancestors saw the Sun as Helios, the Sun God, said to ride a chariot or fire across the Heavens each day.  Her, Nicholas Poussin, the great Baroque painter, shows Helios with his son Phaeton, Saturn, and the Four Seasons, personified.  Phaeton "borrowed" his dad's chariot and crashed it into the Earth, setting it on fire.  Oops.

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone

It's not warm when she's away

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone

She always gone too long anytime she goes away

Bill Withers

And this, boys and girls, is the whole shebang.

This is a picture of the light, at 3.7 degrees Kelvin,

from the Big Bang

which began streaming in all directions 

about 100,000 years after the Universe cooled

enough so that 

light

could escape the cloud of 

other particles.

This light has been streaming throughout the

Universe for  perhaps 13.75 billion

years.

Note the light is slightly uneven:  if it were uniform , we wouldn't be.

We have 7 billion people on earth,

nearly enough for one billion for each billion years

since the Big Bang.

.

The 7 billion folks have 5 billion cel phones.

Our friend Josh

who quite sensibly makes cel phones for a living

 estimates that

1.47 billion of the cel phones

can access google images, after government censorship.

Suppose half that number are school or madrassa children,

 and each child shares

his favorite images 

with three friends

For years I agreed with Yates:

 Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst

    Are full of passionate intensity.

If you look at Congress now, you'll agree with Yates.  

If you look at the World through my eyes,

 the closer I move to death,

says my old friend Dylan Thomas,

  one man through his sundered hulks,

  The louder the sun blooms

And the tusked, ramshackling sea exults;

  And every wave of the way

And gale I tackle, the whole world then,

  With more triumphant faith

That ever was since the world was said,

  Spins its morning of praise,

  I hear the bouncing hills

Grow larked and greener at berry brown

  Fall and the dew larks sing

Taller this thunderclap spring, and how

  More spanned with angles ride

The mansouled fiery islands! Oh,

  Holier then their eyes,

And my shining men no more alone

  As I sail out to die.

What a world is aborning!

How I love its awful beauty!