Friday, September 30, 2011

TURF FEINZ "RIP RichD" YAK FILMS DANCING in the RAIN DANSE SOUS LA PLUIE...

Be Still, My Heart!!

Just because this happens on a daily basis somewhere in the world, and because someone thinks it's worth filming with love, hope for a better day lives on.


Thank god for Yak Films and Turf Feinz. Somebody's got, as my daddy used to say, their priorities in order.

Bless 'em.

Kinda makes you wonder if Obama ever even sees anything like this.

I can't seem to stop replaying it.....

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Inquiring minds want to know......


Here's my question: If Rick Perry, who after all is only marginally "other" than Shrub, wins the White House, would that make Anita Thigpen Perry, a former nurse and adamant supporter of her hubby's mandatory HPV vaccination for l'il girls, the first bleached blonde First Lady to occupy the White House? Given her stated priorities – her family and her husband's political ambitions –she's the perfect female role model for the Me-Firsters who will decide the next election given the country's general drift into despair and apathy, i.e., the likelihood that many voters will simply not show up in 2012. Unless, of course, they're lucky enough to live in Massachusetts and head out to vote for Elizabeth Warren . . . . lucky ducks. (If you haven't sent her a few bucks lately, click on link and donate to her campaign. Even if you don't live in Mass., it's the Senate, folks. Tu sabe?)

Inquiring minds want to know.....

And what do we know of "Crisco" Christie's wife? Who is the woman behind this guy who even centrist Jersey voters elected? Would a Christie presidency include intimate suppers with mob bosses? Is he just demurring 'neath batted lashes when he sez he won't run? Then there are those rumors that folks like Barbara Bush (sr.) are calling his wife, Mary, and encouraging them to go for it. The White House that is. Would he then be our fattest president ever? Shades of Taft.

James Antle of The American Spectator had this to say here:

"Having said all that, the speech does remind me why so many people hope he'll run and doesn't do anything to discourage speculation that he ultimately will."

Again....... inquiring minds.........

You ask me, we need a guy in the White House who has the patience, forethought, intelligence, respect for nature, and general chill attitude toward problem solving that THIS guy has in spades.


Thursday, September 22, 2011

The face of Innocence?

This day started badly for me, but at least it started. That's more than I can say for Troy Davis, the 35th US citizen to be put to death this year by We The People, by a government that purports to represent our will. The People -- that would be me, or so I've been taught to believe. Mr. Davis lost his life to prison for twenty years, stuck there after having been prosecuted on flimsy evidence (no concrete evidence linked him to the crime) and found guilty of the murder of a white off-duty cop in the state of Georgia. He filed several appeals, including for clemency, always insisted on his innocence, his requests for a polygraph denied, and, just to make sure their point was made, the holding facility in which he awaited his death by lethal injection at the hands of a crowd of grateful Christians approaching "closure", denied him the comfort of a visit from his pastor in the hours before he was executed.

It's possible Mr. Davis was the only true Christian in the room at the time of his death, as the murdered policeman's family, including his two sons, witnessed the calculated, slow murder of a black man. In a final gesture of Christian kindness, Mr. Davis raised his head from the gurney to tell the dead cops' family he was "sorry for their loss" and reassure them he did not kill their father, son, husband, that he hoped they would try to find the real killer, and then proceeded to forgive his murderers (as Jesus forgave those who executed him), to bless them, before laying his head down to have what was left of his life taken from him.

All that time there was a LAWYER in the White House, a man who understood clearly how flimsy the case against this man was, a man who could have granted this man clemency at the last minute, after all appeals, including one that took the US Supreme Court an unusual four hours to finally deny, had been exhausted. The President knew there was no evidence against this man. But no, Ol' Hand-Picked, pippin' honky Obama wasn't touchin this one with a ten foot pole.

There's a scene in The West Wing in which President Bartlet asks an aide, "Why is a Kundunese [black] life worth less to me than an American one?" To which his aide (who he fully expects will exonerate him) bravely replies, "I don't know, Mr. President, but it is."

Man, Obama could use an aide like that.

“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can­not sleep for ever.”
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

That quote requires some thought. Read it again. Jefferson's warning cautions us to administer justice fairly, that eventually we will pay for not doing so.

In the early seventies a friend of mine was arrested for throwing watermelons on the White House lawn, protesting some racist policy or other. Were I Troy Davis' mother, I'd have a few choice words for my homey in the White House. A few watermelons wouldn't even begin to express my rage.

The entire nation of Greece is on strike, clogging the streets with fury and their refusal to be forced to their knees as the bitches of the rentier bankers. The world condemns America's use of the death penalty, both here at home and via covert government and military "actions". But this is how we vent our rage at the results of our own lousy political choices. We vent it at innocents around the world, mindless acts of blaming the victim. The Nation in Denial, armed to the teeth and loaded for bear.

While in America's streets, cowardice reigns.

Except of course for the youthful few here. And right on, there.

Here's the letter Troy posted to those who tried to help him.

To All:

I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

“I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”

Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!



Tuesday, September 13, 2011


Oyeh, Oyeh!!
Best news I've heard all day!!
Lisbeth Warren won't go away.
Oyeh! Oyeh!


They squeezed her out of heading up the Consumer Protection Agency she insisted on creating after Wall Street buggered the American populace, but she won't go quietly into that good night. No sirree. And just when we need someone truly fearless, a leader undaunted by the intimidation tactics of The Power Elite, someone who really knows how to speak truth to power and has the cajones to do it. Elizabeth Warren, the obstreperous defender of Little Man and Woman, of you and me, the brainy, practical scourge of Too Big Banks and Tea Party anti-oversight bozos, and [breathlessly] MY HEROINE for over three years,


Halleluia, praise the Lord, and pass the ammo, baby! This is the best news I've heard in, well,

forever!

No matter your political bent, this is a person of genuine integrity and smarts who knows how things were done, are done, and should be done, and done differently than the powers that be who are screwing the middle class. Warren is a whole new variety of politician, a female Ralph Nader (you remember him, the guy to whom many of us owe our very lives?), and I'm gonna send her a feckin check this very day. [She's testing the financial waters here.] Send her some dough! Register for updates! Tell her, "You go, girl, cause we, the dying Middle Class, will have your back!"

Take some time to check her out if you give a shyte about what happens to this country; you'll be glad you did. Again, send her money, cause the Dems might be shy about supporting a gal who tells it like it is. If you haven't been following this truth seeking missile, and you need a little convincing that she's the real deal, a genuine Patriot, the kind of voice we need in DC, consider taking a moment to read the links above offered for your rabble rousing inspiration. Unlike the diabolical shysters running Wall Street and K street, this gal is what used to be called a God fearing human being. See her on Daily Show here.

Let's put her in the Senate! let's fill Teddy Kennedy's seat with someone who will do justice to his legacy.

Then let's talk Bernie Sanders into running for President and really turn this wheelless buggy around.

Damn! This calls for a celebration!!

As Gomer would say: Shazzam!

You know, we had to actually read C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite in high school, a public high school. Deez teachers today nevah hoid a dat book.

Sunday, September 11, 2011


Ten Years After.....


No, Not Alvin Lee's band....

I wonder how many more years these "commemoration celebrations" will endure, where we mourn our supposed "loss of innocence" (quoi?)as though we'd all suffered like the emergency teams' and the 9/11 fatalities' families and friends have. A nation of sad-faced, newly minted and regretful teenage ex-virgins. Yes, there's genuine empathy out there, but also, there's something else that's quite over the top. Disproportionate, as Bartlet would say.

Americans never seem to know whether to cry or party hearty over national traumas. Fireworks at a memorial service? Isn't All this hoopla just bad taste? We've done our share of nasty things to the planet. But here comes Leslie Gore Syndrome again, so illogical: it's my party and I'll cry if I want to...

huh?

September 11, 2001, was a tragedy. Impossible to watch, impossible to stop watching. Tarrantinoesque. But why the disconnect from history? Those helpless folks in Manhattan were not the first to jump to their deaths out of burning buildings because The Man didn't give a damn. The emergency responders were not the first heroic people to risk or lose their lives to save complete strangers. Is it, like Eddie Izzard sez, a matter of numbers? Then why isn't the imminent death of three quarters of a million Somalis on our radar? Why isn't every American infuriated by this? I mean really... why?

The despicable folks who allowed the tragedy of 9/11/01 to unfold because Bush's numbers were in the toilet and then made political hay out of it were not the first greedy humans to cause the deaths of thousands.

...and get away with it.

And those who participate in perpetuating the myth of unjustified wars are hardly innocent victims of the results.

Which is why the following is good advice if you want to stay sane in this Wag The Dog world.



(Now where did I put that flag pin... Can't leave home without it, as I recall.)

Monday, September 5, 2011


Miss Sarah's "Come to Jesus"? Not so fast...

So check this out... While addressing a horde of tea partyers (let's face it, a bunch of self-proclaimed partyers) in Iowa recently, Ms. Palin (does she use Ms. I wonder?) cautions her supporters to beware of Dems and Repugs running for President, all of whom she insists are, unlike herself, corporate cronyists. But look at this phrase she tossed out that went completely unnoted by press:

"This is why we must remember the challenge is not simply to replace Obama in 2012. The real change is who and what we will replace him with," Palin said at a Tea Party rally in a rural area south of Des Moines. "Folks, you know it's not enough to change the uniform." [my italics]

Excuse me – "who and what"? "change the uniform"? Will someone please 'splain to me what she means? Just what kind of 'uniform' was in her mind's eye? Is it too much to assume a not-too-subtle racial meaning here? I'm not one who goes around constantly on the alert for racial slurs, but since when do dems and repugs wear uniforms? Did she not mean "color"? As in change of color is not enough? Blind to her own fear/racism, she goes on to lash corporate cronyism while proposing we fix the economy by destroying the remnants of regulation and oversight that attempt to keep that very cronyism in check. Never a dull moment with the Queen of the Me-Firsters.

Poor Sarah. She is at heart just another american white (as-a- sheet)- collar aspirant suffering from "Last Place Aversion" described in recent research. LPA finds that, among other things, things, Jim Crow (note a recent resurgence of those laws) was more important to poor Southern whites than it was to plantation owners. Hmmmm... You'd think the plantation owners would have more of a vested interest in keeping blacks from voting than poor whites who have nothin to do with the massah's farm. Why does this matter? What, if any, light does it shed on today's voters?

Among my fellow Americans are those citizens I call the Me-Firsters. These are not just the Tea Party types. Some of them are quite stealthy about their Me-Firstism until pressed to offer an opinion. They're the stingiest among us. They rule the new Republican Party, perhaps even Congress, and include ersatz Independents and tend to ally themselves with candidates claiming to be Repubs. The info on the above link may curl your hair, but it demonstrates what I've been saying for some time: A large and often vocal 'cadre' of Americans have become the most fearful, desperate, I've Got Mine and I'm Hangin Onto It, greedy folks in the developed world. Let me say that I encountered nothing of this kind of Me-First thinking among regular folks in Europe last year, only among the wealthier rentier class, but even they according to news reports are telling their governments to raise taxes on them cause it's getting embarassing. (Also they have vague memories of the guillotine.)

American Me-Firsters were the kids in preschool (which they later defunded as grownups) who did not get a smiley face sticker in Sharing. This so called "silent majority" (with usefully vague parameters) became a movement. Spawned in the Reagan greed-is-good eighties, suckled at the gushing tit of Bush One's color coded fear culture and touted by his "Christian" base, Me-Firstism has grown fat and lazy, resting smugly on its corpulent laurels (and unacknowledged government largesse), unbowed by facts and unchallenged by the majority of Democrats. But the rationale of Me-Firstism is a lie.

Because Me-Firstism is about as far as you can get from Jesus' admonition to keep only what you need. (Bankers, take heed! The only folks upon whom Jesus vented his worst wrath were the Money Lenders.) The New Testament (like - duh - there's a reason they needed a "new" one) sez that if we have two coats, we must give one to the man who has none, i.e., to share (redistribute) wealth rather than hoard or covet more. Me-Firsters do no such thing. They might smugly haul a trash bag of last year's coats ("oh, this one has a hole in it") to GoodWill, which will then charge a middle man's fee and donate that money to the Republican party, but be assured a Me-Firster will hoard several "nice" coats ("why throw away good money?") against the possibility of future want. (Then they'll insist Jesus said give only "one" coat. Typical Repub rationale. No.. Stingy... he said if you have Two give One away; an argument here for 50% tax on the wealthy, you ask me.)

It is that fear of future want that has swept the nation since 2001, a fear that stands in staunch denial of our own willful ignorance, our vulnerability to unpredictable events, including events for which we as a nation cannot bring ourselves to accept responsibility, like the ruin wrought by illegal wars or global warming. So we hoard what we have, building a wall of denial that things must change and that we must be the ones who change it, that we are our brothers' keepers (no mention of "fraternite" in our founding documents, no sirree), that ignores the karmic repercussions of our stinginess and denial, our hoarded wall of illusory safety. We hoard, each in his way, and retire in fear to the remote- controlled comfort of the screen rather than respond to brave voices demanding that a new way forward is needed (Bernie Sanders for President?), that tyranny is the enemy, a hungry beast we are all feeding with small choices we make every day, that our fellow Americans are our brothers in the struggle against that tyranny. That, as Jesus said, "as you do to the least of these (the poor) you do to me". That there is no return to some mythical past where everyone had what they needed (unless they were black, a minor detail, see The Help), never mind that the wealthiest were taxed at something like 90% then.

Me-Firstism is the reason we as a nation are headed for the dumpster. In a We-Are-All-Bankers now fantasy, we've adopted their selfish values thinking we can compete and win on their level. But the Joke's on us as we plod onward, admonishing the poor to grab their bootstraps and stop complaining, with nary a glance backward to see what history's taught us. Ardent Me-Firstism is why the dems (their mindnumbingly passionless delivery aside) can't get a progressive message across despite research that affirms liberal ideals of commonwealth comprise the mindset of most independent voters and are what's most desperately needed now to get us out of the hole we're in. It's why folks vote against their own economic interests, and why this Second Great Contraction (see Kenneth Rogoff) won't make a damn bit of difference in why those near the bottom (as opposed to AT the bottom) of the economic ladder will vote against their own interests in next election, siding with the wealthy, yet never know know what hit em when it backfires. As the study linked above tells us, Americans as a voting public are most terrified of being the last guy chosen for the team, the one left standing alone. In a nation gripped by fear of the future, they vote for those at the top, simply in order to avoid being the guy at the very bottom by keeping at least ONE person poorer than they are below them, between them and the very bottom. And some of these folks actually call themselves Christians. They will vote for the very politicians that are screwing them just to stand next to the cool kids' table even as they are left poorer by further government "cutbacks".

The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. If the guy below YOU doesn't survive, you're movin down , baby, not up the ladder. You're the next one to go. How myopic (read: terrified) do you have to be to not see this?

I saw The Debt last night. Good film. There's a powerful scene that felt to me like the center around which everything else seemed to revolve. The former Surgeon of Birkenau, held captive by Mossad agents, tells one of them that the Jews perished because, as a people, they were too weak (the Jews saw themselves as " too nice a people" not to blindly follow the law, however heinous) to stand up to the Nazis. Otherwise, he sez, how else were four Nazi soldiers able to force a thousand Jews to the camps?

Hmmm.. there's an attention getter. Because there simply IS no logic to four human beings being able to enslave a thousand. While somewhat discomfiting, the guy has a point, certainly one no one likes to consider.

And herein lies the timely lesson. Of course the German people bore a huge responsibility. Few would admit they saw it coming, even if they did, as the German government subjected Jews and others to one seemingly minor humiliation after another?But what of the Jews themselves? What would you or I do, and when? How would we know it was time to stand up? If none of us are willing to put everything on the line – and is there any doubt about what that means today? – to save what's left of our hopelessly corrupted Republic, and if the effort to deny the depth of that corruption is sapping whatever strength we may have to put it right, we are doomed to being herded, as the Jews were, into metaphorical death camps, lives of debt servitude at the hands of banks, loss of privacy and civil liberties, of freedom of movement, deprived of decent education and healthcare and relegated to a lifetime spent pandering to the wealthiest among us, or facing a screen in an office or pacing a big box store parroting some sales pitch or other, hawking crap no one needs, or toting a gun for the military in exchange for the privilege of seeing a doctor when we're wounded or bringing up a worthy credit score if we want to purchase a house or own a car.

The old Nazi was right. History teaches us real human liberty is no joke, it has a price. It's why the deaths of JFK, RFK and MLK shame us when we think about them. They risked everything to lead, and they knew it. The only folks who took to the streets after those deaths in '68 were black. What did they have to lose? They'd lost their hope and their leaders. They'd get the shaft either way, stay home or riot.

Everyone thinks it's someone else's job to lead, to protest, to risk...... risk what? Isn't the very fact that we're all cowed by the notion of an all- knowing NSA and FICO, of having a "bad record", enough to convince us that things have already gone too far? That we don't deserve to regain the republic we aren't willing to "keep". That the justice system isn't what it should be? That things are perilously close to a kind of Germany-in-the-30s Light? Isn't it interesting that the only folks in the streets these days are ones without The Bomb handy to keep their enemies in line? Someone said terrorism is the atomic bomb of the poor. Is it really the media's fault that they fail to inform us properly? Or is that just an excuse for our docility? Willful ignorance. We see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear. Obama's message of "hope", change you can believe in? Sounds too much like a religion to me, something into which you are baptized. No thanks. I know how to read.

Everyone wants someone else to do it for them. Yet they don't even take the time to do the homework on those who would presume to do that in government. Then they complain government sucks and say kids today have no values, no work ethic. Please. Who do you think those kids are emulating?

Tolstoy asked, "What then must we do?" I keep reading blog posts that say when it gets bad enough people will rebel. I said that myself in 2000, figuring four years of Bush would wake people up. I hear people say, When is someone gonna do something? I always think, Well, how bout you, guy? then I think, How bout me? How will that happen when all the things that matter to our ability to survive in a crowded world – a reliable job, a little emergency savings, ethical businesses, a place to live, decent schooling for your kids or yourself, a credit score over which you have no control, time for real conversation, declining median income, exorbitant bank fees, the illogically high cost of food and medical care, the lack of affordable public transport, rigged election machines and new Jim Crow laws, a corrupted electoral process wherein bankers own the voting machines, an unresponsive congress – get worse every year as our power to use the system to make needed changes weakens along with our spirit for such action and the cost of elections goes up along with pharmaceutical sales and the size of entertainment screens and anyone who isn't a couch potato, who doesn't know the latest DWTS winner is regarded as abnormal, even suspicious, by the majority?

It's the little things we do wrong. They accumulate like malignant cells. Quietly, in the dark unless you're watching carefully. A silent civil war's been going on for more than forty years now and it's coming to a head. Yet Americans are acting more like mooning, heartbroke teenagers than righteous defenders of liberal democratic ideals, all grown up and ready to do battle with the thoroughly corrupted powers that be. What makes us think such courage is no longer required here? We know this is what it takes. To live in a principled society, there have to be those willing to stand up and die for those principles so the rest of us remember what's important.

How was it that four Nazi soldiers could force a thousand Jews into a camp?

Because not enough people refused to accept the little tyrannies, not enough stood up and said NO to participation. Not enough people were willing to risk their lives for a principle. The urge to unprincipled survival is strong. Would the Jews have chosen defiant death if they knew what awaited them in the camps? Is that how bad it has to be for people to stand up?

Ask the Egyptians, the Syrians.

It wasn't in their nature, the Nazi says.

Is it in ours?




OK,,, if you're feeling like you need a laugh, here's a good one, unless you're one of those passive aggressive PC types who'd insist this constitutes child exploitation. then, well....whatever...



Saturday, September 3, 2011

Pour baby?

So here's what my righteous daughter wrote to the President the other day as he cowered beneath his desk in the Oval, tail between his legs, smacked down by the King of the Me-Firsters "Crybaby Boehner's" diss of a half-black, rabidly un-partisan (not to say, myopically polite, as in 'yes, massa') President's request to address congress this coming Wednesday night, an unprecedented rejection, according to the Congressional Historian. I'd like to commend her on her free-and-easy use of sports metaphors, a must when addressing politicians. In fact, it's apparently the only language they understand. You must pepper generously with Sportsspeak if you want your message to even get a hearing. And you know where that leaves most of the gals, right? So here's her spiel. Right on, sister.

"Regarding the President's address to Congress which was supposed to happen next Wednesday:

Boy, did you guys blow this play. Congressional Republicans deny the PRESIDENT an invitation to speak on a night when there is a Republican presidential debate and the White House backs off and takes the suggested night that is later offered? The same night the NFL season starts?! What are you all thinking? I am a loyal Democrat, I worked for the Maine Coordinated Campaign in 2008 as a field director and I support the party, but holy mackerel, this is a serious fumble. The Speaker of the House was not elected by the country, President Obama was, and it's about time he started acting like it. Your numbers are tanking because people want to see NOT a president that will bend over to accommodate the Republicans but a president that has the backbone to say, "Well sorry Mr. Speaker, but we're just going to have to address the nation, not Congress, that night. If Congress would like to know what I'm going to say, they can tune in.I'm not interrupting people watching a football game to make things more convenient for you. Frankly, the people who would only tune into the Republican debate wouldn't want to watch my speech anyway." The Republicans are running the table, as they have been for years and people aren't going to support the Democrats if we keep acting like the party that is happy with whatever scraps we can get. The country is NOT leaning to the right, stop letting the last election (which was all about better messaging and people being reactionaries) make you all think that this is a country that wants the Dems to bow and scrape. And that's what the President has done here. He has the bully pulpit, it's the BEST weapon. He needs to learn to USE it. Otherwise, all the people who believed in him in 2008 will abandon him in 2012. Please stop blowing these plays. You're all we have standing between us and the right-wing agenda. The President needs to stand up. It's not about making friends down there. The GOP is going to take no prisoners and we're going to be left holding the bag."

Nice to think I may have done something right along the way. You go, girl.

“Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning." Gloria Steinem

And then there's this bit of food for thought, from a recent Too Much: "The wider that gaps in income and wealth go, the greater the differences in the things that different classes can afford. In markedly unequal societies, things take on ever greater significance. They signal who has succeeded and who has not.

In London, the developed world’s most unequal city, these signals may dominate daily life as ferociously as anywhere else on Earth. Their incessant repetition drowns out the socially cohesive signals that people see and hear and feel in more equal societies, the sense that “we’re all in this together.” From sam pizzaigati, @ Too Much. (see site link to right)

Yeah, I'm thinkin of ditchin my shiny 99 Volvo (my notion of a NEW car) and getting a working person's car. An old Ford or Volvo 240 perhaps. I think I'm over whatever desire I may have once harbored to be viewed as one of the 'haves'.

I stumbled on this youtube video. Moammar is gone, but he's not so dumb as his flaccid looks might suggest. Especially where the subject of Obama's subservience to the white boys running The Hill is concerned. Read the subtitles carefully, they are accurately translated; MEMRI is a respected organization in international affairs circles. Memri also has a trove of ol' osama's speeches too that might surprise you.