Category Archives: Culture

Expressly for our amusement

What’s behind the Churchill adoration?

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What’s behind the Churchill adoration?


What’s behind the current wave of Churchill-mania? I’m inclined to think it’s about rebooting pan-nationalism. Churchill was a hero of WWII, propping up the supposition that WWII was a just war where Churchill led the defense against Fascism. The victors have been embellishing that history since before that capitalist scam began.

The latest movie, DARKEST HOUR, presumes to glorify Winston Churchill BE MOFO SOB as England’s savior, begging to presume there’s no argument it was her darkest hour. Aimed to pull the wool back of the eyes after Britain’s improbable moment of clarity about their opportunity to make a BREXIT from the talons of their banker overlords.

Churchill was an adventurer and glory-seeker whose every move supported colonialism and imperialism. His first taste of war was on the side of the Spanish as they suppressed independence movement in Cuba. Next he fought the Boers in South Africa. Next opposed labor struggles. He ordered the immolation of Anarchists. He sent death squads to Ireland. He disparaged Indian attempts at sovereignty, suggesting Gandhi should be bound hand and foot and crushed beneath an elephant. He bombed Dresden. He gave Palestine over to Zionists. He held rebellious Kenyan tribes in concentration camps.

This was a warmonger war criminal we’re praising as one of History’s greatest leaders, probably because these are times of war and today’s sadists need affirmation their actions will be similarly lionized.

Kimya Dawson knows from where protest must burst: At the Seams.

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Kimya Dawson not only nailed the essence of protests for #BlackLivesMatter. She knew in which direction the protest marches needed to push. Toward our system’s seams. If you are having trouble finding the lyrics of her song about HANDS UP DON’T SHOOT I CAN’T BREATH, it’s because it’s called At the Seams.

I’ve taken the liberty to reformat Dawson’s brilliant lyrics to unpack her references and simulate her cadence.

AT THE SEAMS by Kimya Dawson

1.
Left hands hold the leashes
and the right hands hold the torches,
And Grandpas holding shotguns
swing on porch swings hung on porches,
And the Grandmas in their gardens
plant more seeds to cut their losses,
And the poachers,
with the pooches
and the nooses,
preheat crosses.

And the pooches see the Grandpas
and they bare their teeth and growl,
While their owners turn their noses up
like they smell something foul,
And they fumble with their crosses
and they start to mumble curses,
And they plot ways
to get Grandpas
off of porches
into hearses.

But the Grandpas on the porches
are just scarecrows holding toys,
And the Grandmas in the gardens
are papier-mâché decoys,
While the real Grandmas and Grandpas
are with all the girls and boys
Marching downtown to the City Hall
to make a lot of noise,
Saying:

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

2.
Sometimes it seems like
we’ve reached the end of the road
We’ve seen cops and judges sleep together
wearing long white robes.
And they put their white hoods up,
Try to take the black hoods down,
And they don’t plan on stopping
til we’re all in the ground.

Til we’re dead in the ground
or we’re incarcerated
‘Cause prison’s
a big business form
of enslavement
Plantations that profit
on black folks in cages
They’ll break our backs
and keep the wages.

It’s outrageous that there’s no place
we can feel safe in this nation
Not in our cars, Not at the park,
Not in subway stations,
Not at church, The pool, The store,
Not asking for help,
Not walking down the street,
So we’ve gotta scream and yell:

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

3.
You tweet me my own lyrics,
Tell me to stop
Letting a few bad apples
ruin the bunch.
Don’t minimize the fight
comparing apples to cops
This is about the orchard’s poisoned roots,
not loose fruits in a box.

Once the soil’s been spoiled,
the whole crop’s corrupt.
That’s why we need the grassroots
working from the ground up.
And we look to Black Twitter,
to stay woke and get some truth,
‘Stead of smiling cops
and black mugshots
from biased corporate news.

‘Cause if you steal cigarillos,
or you sell loose cigarettes,
Or you forget your turn signal,
will they see your skin as a threat?
Will they KILL you, And then SMEAR you,
And COVER IT UP and LIE?
Will they call it “self defense”?
Will they call it “suicide”?

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

4.
Decades of cultivation start
from tiny seeds that were once planted.
And we mustn’t take the gardens that
our elders grew for granted,
Though it is up to our youth
how new rows sown are organized,
Because movements can’t keep moving
if old and unsharpened eyes
Can’t see the need to hear
what those on the ground hafta say,
In Ferguson and Cleveland,
Staten Island, The East Bay,
Charleston, Phoenix,
Detroit, Sanford Waller,
Seattle, Los Angeles,
Chicago, Baltimore.

Climbing flagpoles, Taking bridges,
Locked together to the BART,
Speaking up about injustice
in our music and our art,
Storming stages to ask candidates
when they’re gonna start
Really DIRECTLY addressing issues
BREAKING OUR HEARTS.

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

    Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
    BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
    I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
    A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

5.
And if the altars are torn down,
we’ll just keep on placing flowers
For the boy whose body was in the road
FOR MORE THAN FOUR HOURS.
We will honor the dead
of every age and every gender
‘Cause we can’t just have it be
the brothers’ names that we remember.

Oh black boys with skateboards,
and black boys with hoodies,
And little black girls who
are on the couch sleeping,
And all of the black trans
women massacred,
Too many black folks killed and brutalized,
And there’s no justice served.

After the lynchings of our people
by the murderous police,
Who stand like hunters ’round their prey
gasping helpless in the street,
Feet from the TEEN SISTER they tackled
and locked handcuffed in the car,
Feet from her TWELVE YEAR OLD BROTHER DYING —

WHILE NO ONE DID CPR…

6.
And we’ll keep on planting flowers,
and we’ll fight until the day
That we don’t have to pick them all
to put them all on graves.
Yeah we’ll keep planting flowers
and we’ll fight until the day
That we don’t have to pick them all
to put them all on graves.

  Hands up. Don’t shoot. I can’t breathe.
  BLACK LIVES MATTER. No justice No Peace.
  I know that we can overcome because I had a dream-
  A dream we tore this racist broken system apart at the seams.

American christianity is a cargo cult

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American christianity is a cargo cult

Jesus loves me
Haha I sympathize with this meme. But it applies to the colonized as well as the colonizers. I do tend to fault impoverished people for shackling themselves to church dogma. Religion rationalizes and preserves inequity. Of course this ignores that African American congregations are community centers above everything else. To cast off religion would deprive believers of their whole social fabric. But isn’t that like arguing that slave plantations were more than places of involuntary employment? Obviously tobacco and cotton plantations were the centers of slave communities. To end slavery threatened a slave’s source of everything: sustenance, shelter, family and community. Small wonder most slaves resisted those agitating for abolition. Slave rebellions were always betrayed by fearful slaves. No churches advocated for abolition. Even the civil rights movement a century later, was resisted by African American churches, except for a tiny few associated with MLK. Everyone today pretends to have marched with MLK, even as they admonish their followers to stay in their pews! Ferguson ignited the Black Lives Matter movement despite local preachers incessantly calling for the protests to cease.

Passing Syrian gas attack story by Occam’s Razor: who smelt it, dealt it.

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When you’re looking for who perpetrated the latest “gas attack” in Syria, you might first ask, who has stockpiles of the stuff? Bashar al-Assad has suspected quantities of chemical weapons, but the US has known riches of the banned material. The same people who keep pointing the finger at Assad are the same cretins who’ve been trying to ignite a covert war in Syria for decades, who’ve been unmasked hiring fake lesbian or small-child bloggers to spread propaganda in the Baghdad Blogger mold, long before their phony Arab Spring roll-out, the same agency that spawned al-Qaeda now Isis, the same agents who coordinate arms trades to all parties, the same meatheads who urge a renewed cold war with Russia because Putin nearly brought the Syria conflict to a dead calm, and the same warmongers who’ve now succeeded with a full-on US deployment! We’re supposed to trust the US intelligence crime family about who is using gas against Syrian civilians? Next they’ll try to pin US drone victims on Assad. Those numbers are much higher, concealed no doubt in Bashar Assad’s stockpiles of budgeted tolerance levels of collateral damage.
 
The complicit war media is now decreeing unanimous outrage, Russia’s attempts to shift blame (how’s that for loading the question) rejected (by accusers), this atrocity demands a US response! Like Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia. Like a bunch of kids declaring candy to be universally healthy! Doctors’ lies rejected (by children), checkout counter impulse buy must not be thwarted by parent.

SEAL Team Glossary includes Canoeing, Winkler Hatchets & Bleed Out Videos.

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You won’t find these terms in the indexes of the countless books praising SEAL Team 6. But they feature prominently in an Intercept exposé about the war crimes of America’s most famous death squad. “Bleed out” videos are passed among operators, as Special Ops mercenaries are called, featuring their victims bleeding to death as they are taunted by their murderers. “Canoeing” is the act of aiming a final gunshot through the top of the victim’s forehead such that the head splits open to form a V like the bow of a canoe. Canoeing Photos of faces spilling over with brains, such as the proof-of-death pic of Osama bin Laden, are then taken for the official record, including the team’s formal scrapbook. “Devil’s Guard” is an obscure war novel that glamorizes Nazi attrocities including fictional methods of inflicting state terror. Title 50 authority is the so-called license which US Special Ops have to partner with allied commandos to form death squads. Winkler hatchets are tomahawks made by craftsman Daniel Winkler for the SEAL Team 6 Red Squadron, known as the redmen, who are expected to bloody their hatchets as they conduct their raids. Using the hatchets to collect DNA hair-follicle samples for the Redmen means flaying their victims and returning with scalps, fingers and other disfiguring momentos. Another insight revealed by the Intercept: The British aid captive Linda Norgrove, who was killed during a botched rescue attempt, wasn’t killed by her captors, but by a grenade thrown at her by a Seal Team operators, perhaps because the goal of reaching Norgrove was not rescue but exposure control. Linda Norgrove worked for DAI, Development Alternatives Inc, an American NGO, a cover for being an agent for MI-6. The glossary we already knew: Blue Squadron, known as the Pirates; Gold Squadron, known as the Crusaders or Knights; Silver Squadron; and Red Squadron, known as the Redmen.

A favorite joke

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Marvin is working in his store when he hears a booming voice from above: “Marvin, sell your business.” He ignores it. It goes on for days. “Marvin, sell your business for $3 million.” After weeks of this, Marvin relents, sells his store. The voice says ‘Marvin, go to Las Vegas.”

He asks why.

“Marvin, take the $3 million to Las Vegas.”

He obeys, goes to a casino.

The voice says, “Marvin , go to the blackjack table and put it down all on one hand.”

He hesitates but knows that he must.

He’s dealt an 18. The dealer has a six showing.

“Marvin, take a card.”

What? The dealer has — ”

Take a card!”

Marvin tells the dealer to hit him. He gets an ace. Nineteen. He breathes easy.

“Marvin, take another card.”

What?

“TAKE ANOTHER CARD!”

Marvin asks for another card. It’s another ace. He has twenty.

“Marvin, take another card,” the voice commands.

I have twenty! Marvin shouts.

“TAKE ANOTHER CARD!!” booms the voice.

Hit me, Marvin says. He gets another ace. Twenty one.

The booming voice goes: “Un-fucking-believable!”

Wilfred Owen: Spring Offensive & PTSD

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You won’t find a more haunting depiction of battle induced PTSD than the last two stanzas of Wilfred Owen’s Spring Offensive. You’ll be curious no doubt to double back on the setup: troops being marched to the frontline, the idyllic lull before battle, the unceremonious charge, and the moment a stealthy sprint turns to mayhem. The next stanza speculates about the fate of those who fall in battle: to bullets, to explosive shells, and to shrapnel. The last stanza is about the “too swift” survivors who “out-fiend” death to come through, and don’t want to, or can’t, talk about it.

Spring Offensive (April, 1917)

Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees,
Carelessly slept.
                          But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field—
And the far valley behind, where the buttercup
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
Where even the little brambles would not yield,
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
They breathe like trees unstirred.

Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word
At which each body and its soul begird
And tighten them for battle. No alarms
Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste—
Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
O larger shone that smile against the sun,—
Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
Over an open stretch of herb and heather
Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them; earth set sudden cups
In thousands for their blood; and the green slope
Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high place
Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence’ brink
Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
With superhuman inhumanities,
Long-famous glories, immemorial shames—
And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
Regained cool peaceful air in wonder—
Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

Wilfred Owen: Dulce et decorum est (Pro patria mori – The Old Lie)

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Wilfred Owen: Dulce et decorum est (Pro patria mori – The Old Lie)


The Roman poet Horace wrote “It is sweet and glorious to die for one’s country” as Rome shifted from republic to empire. By 1917 British infantryman Wilfred Owen had reduced Horace’s sentiment to “The old Lie.” Owen was killed in the Great War. His poem wasn’t published until 1920 after the war. Even exposed, the old lie went on to adorn many monuments, including, also in 1920, the rising U.S. empire’s Arlington National Cemetery.

Dulce et Decorum Est (August, 1917)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Then somewhere near in front: Whew… fup… fop… fup…
Gas-shells or duds? We loosened masks, in case —
And listened … Nothing… Far rumouring of Krupp…
Then stinging, poison hit us in the face.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Why is the New Yorker selling a bright eyed, androgynous Millennial Hillary?

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Why is the New Yorker selling a bright eyed, androgynous Millennial Hillary?

Cheaky Bastards. The New Yorker pulls Sy Hersh, and their covers are establishment all the way. There have been four Trump covers, as many for Hillary, and curiously none for the senator from Vermont. This week’s issue touts a resilient confident Hillary, conveyed oddly as a bright eyed baby-faced twenty-something scrapper. Remove the band-aid and her eyes are very wide apart. Inside, the same artist, propagandist recidivist Barry Blitt, rendered an editorial illustration of Bernie Sanders as Icarus falling, semi-naked, essentially the same unbecoming pose he gave coverboy Trump doing a belly flop to crash the GOP.

Insightful photos of Hillary Trump

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Insightful photos of Hillary Trump

Hillary TrumpI’ve been laughing at this photo for so long now that I’m not certain it is a photoshop mashup. It may be possible that Hillary and the Donald share the same face. Their only difference is gender, maybe. Hillary feminists are counting on their candidate’s inherent maternal instinct to subvert her just one of the boys warhawkish temperment. I’m not convinced sociopathology reflects gender. If we want a bonafide benevolent mother, we might start with one that hasn’t authored mass infanticide.

Hillary Trump

Donald Clinton

Happy (International) Labor Day

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Because the official one will be (a) months away and (b) it’s going to be a party for office workers more than laborers. All the bars and restaurants and stores will be open. THEIR employees ain’t going to have the day off.

But since this is also a Communist holiday, and of course in Northern Europe an ancient celebration of spring, well, I can’t really write about it without being called a commie. Too bad.

It doesn’t bother me any. Communism as an economic structure has been continuously practiced for more than a century and has proved more stable than Capital. In just my lifetime we’ve been subjected to recession after recession or as the Wall Street Elitists (not the same thing as being elite, just thinking that they are) “market corrections” more times than I have kept count thereof.

the “corrections” actually put more control of resources into fewer pockets/hands/bank accounts and especially if there’s massive bail outs. The ones who engineer these “corrections” know full well what they do. Nice for them, but for those who have been repeatedly impoverished by the same scam being perpetrated over and over and over… shit, we don’t even have to participate in the scam to be steamrollered.  Although Steam Rollers are kind of outdated, the name lives on as a verb.

 

And as the first sentences said, the Corporates have taken Labor Day and are selling us a shadow of what it is supposedly the meaning of actually celebrating Labor and our contributions to the world.

Try to have a good time anyway. Sometimes it actually works.

 

 

 

 

The Queen can’t name her own successor, get it right.

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One of the few good things coming from the Cromwell Regime civil war in England was the Union Constitution. That’s the “British Empire” as represented by the Union Jack flag. Their constitution was much more liberal than that of the US and a hundred years earlier. My apologies, IS more liberal still.

And one part of it is that the succession is decided in Parliament. But there was another (yet another) gaudy news headline on a gossip “news” paper at the checkout line in King Soopers. Stating that QE2 had chosen Prince William to succeed her on the throne.

By the way, all through the time I spent thinking of this and now writing it, I’ve had this Python routine being an obsessive waking dream… “strange ladies lying in puddles distributing swords is no basis for kingship… true executive authority comes by a mandate from The Masses, not some farcical aquatic ceremony” and you either know the rest of that or you really should buy the DVD of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and just damned learn it. It is worthwhile. What Mrs Saxe-Goetheberg needs to really do is make a big grand gesture, not the one involving the middle finger nor the brit version which is a backward peace sign…

Instruct the Prime Minister to push a bill in Parliament to dissolve the monarchy, have all her heirs executed and abdicate.  Charlie and Camilla almost got their asses dragged out of their limo and street justice would have prevailed, blue blood would have run in the gutters of London etc…

5 years ago more or less. I was impressed that the London Anarchists had found a neat way to block and defeat “kettling” and that the issue at hand was BessTwo planning a royal pain in the ass I mean “Royal Wedding” which cost the people millions of USD (only in euros) while and at the same time the Tory government which licks her feet was demanding austerity measures for the peasants.

But in return of the original thread, even though the most recognized Hereditary Dictator on earth, she is powerless to name her successor in advance. I don’t know if Will and Kate actually are the sweetest people in the world. Wouldn’t matter. Nobody is actually born to serve under or rule over any other person. It’s that simple.

As for the niceness of any of the Royals, their family has trained their bastard get to be nothing like nice for generations. Nature v Nurture but they sure have a lot of the latter. And it’s almost universally bad. The family has Dracula, Jack the Ripper and the Bush family tagged onto them.

Very ugly indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Virginia Dare was an “Anchor Baby”

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Not meaning to poke fun at young Ms Dare who disappeared along with the rest of the Roanoke Colony more than 400 years ago. More like mocking and reproving redneck bigots who make a big stink about other people having the same immigration privileges as THEIR ancestors did. Especially as it’s an election issue.

Along with the Religious Refugees. See, the first English immigrants were notably religious extremists fleeing from other religious extremists. Virginia the colony was named not for the Virgin Mary, but for Queen Elizabeth. The one who bullied Parliament into passing the Conformity doctrines. Which led to some hugely large massive horrifying monstrous big “civil” wars in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland. Then exported to America along with the ongoing British v Spain and France wars.  The plan was then as now (think Israel) put a large amount of people who are just too contentious to allow them to stay in the Motherland, give them discount passage and sell them limited supplies and weapons. And do a lot of it on credit. The French term for it was pioneers. A support system for military adventures.  Make sure they’re likely to piss off the natives, but not likely to survive without some “emergency” backup from Momma England.

Others did the same thing, the English just were the ones who got away with it. Davy Crockett was part of two such maneuvers. Born in Tennessee when the Revolution hadn’t been worked out, Tennessee having been treaty land which the Crown was refusing to allow English expansion. One of the sore spots that the sorehead revolutionaries used as an excuse for the revolution. It’s referenced in the Declaration of Independence. The British government honoring some of their treaty obligations by selling weapons to Natives. And blankets (ahem!) and other goods. The Treaties in question being the peace agreements after the 7 Years War which was fought mostly in Europe but in American History class we’re taught to call it the French and Indian War. And since he was born in 1786 which was just barely almost 20 years before the Louisiana purchase, where the kings of  France and Spain took turns financing each others wars by selling land in The New World which had never been visited by any European king. They sold land back and forth that they had never seen. Along with the people of the region. Subject of Spain one morning and France the next. The English and their bastard child The United States did the same thing.

to tie it all together….

Definitely Davy Crockett was born of illegal immigrants on Cherokee land. The Roanoke colony was located in what’s now the Carolinas, named for one of the Kings Charles of England. The Conformity Acts caused such frictions between English Christians that Protestant groups like the Pilgrim Church, Puritans, Presbyterians and of course Catholics were slaughtered and persecuted whenever their factions weren’t persecuting every other faction. And a whole bunch of Christians who just could not conform to other Christian doctrines fled to America to set up shop. And put up shot. There was for instance a running feud which often broke into gunfire between South Carolina and North Carolina about the difference between Presbyterian and Episcopalian and another cross-Potomac same thing because Virginia was mostly Protestant and Maryland was predominately Catholic.  You didn’t have to be across the Catholic Protestant line to piss off the authorities. Just being a Non Conformist protestant would do the trick. I got that from the Oxford World Almanac which interestingly enough is sponsored by the Episcopal Church.

Whatever happened to Ms Dare and the rest of the Roanoke settlers is pure speculation but there sure is a lot of that too. Some have said in my hearing that the Roanoke people assimilated into the Cherokee or other nearby tribes. No documentation of that, all the documentation is on the lines that they Never Were Found Again.   Some of the speculation seems, to me, very cult like.

And a lot of the ones who promote that kind of conspiracy theories are also heavily into the Birther and Minuteman militias. And with ties to the Klan.

But with all these centuries of Christian v Christian slaughter, it’s somehow the fault of Jewish merchants (who say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas)and Muslims. There have already been calls for the opening of internment camps for American Muslims.

Although the Hate Groups keep telling us that Muslims can’t be Americans. Or Native American Church. Or Jews. Or anybody who doesn’t attend Their Church. Ask any of those who proposing a Church State which one is to be the State Church and he’ll probably (eventually) say his own church of course.

Before any of all that comes around, maybe Christians better stop hating each other first. And your fellow Americans regardless of whether you think we’re actually Americans.

Don’t miss the big fight: Bernie “Birdie” Sanders versus Hillary the War Hawk!

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democratic-convention-bellini-fight-poster
A Damn clever poster for the 2016 DNC. Forgot to list fight venue. SHOWDOWN IN PHILLY.

Biggest U.S. national political showdown of the century.

Democratic Convention. July 25-28, 2016 at 8:00 AM.

Mainstreet vs. Wall Street.

Bernie ‘Birdie’ Sanders, aka Lefty Sanders, aka The Bern, aka The Sandman, aka El Sabio (the wise) vs.

Hillary ‘War Hawk’ Clinton, aka Goldman Girl, aka Monsanto Mama, aka The Fracker, aka Not My Abuela.

Spouses discuss: internships at the White House, favorability polls vs GOP, FBI investigation, independent voters of the USA, Bernie or Bust reality check, election fraud, political revolution or status quo, public interest or corporate interest.

Tickets are $27 bucks for general admission or $250,000 VIP seating.

At the WELLS FARGO CENTER in PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, USA.

Prince the Artist Formerly

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Prince the Artist Formerly

PrinceEverybody has something to say about Prince, RIP, the artist formerly known by a pseudo-hieroglyph. Of his own design, it was pseudo-silent and un-typeable so he became “Formerly Known as Prince.” Before that he was the single-named Madonna-esque “Prince”.

The media’s gushing last chance push of the Prince back catalog reminds me how completely the “independent” maverick was integrated in the pop crap industry.

I’m addressing Prince’s pioneer branding because up until today his musical legacy was illusory. An earlier hit gave Prince a comeback when “1999” became relevant to the turn of the millennium. The musician’s second act was to impersonate a Hendrix tribute icon. Tormented, gifted, undead.

WHAT PRINCE REALLY TAUGHT US was that you can forbid the media to speak your name and they will obey.

What a crock! You try it! I have a friend who goes by just “Lotus”. He has a hell of a time getting local journalists to report his name as only that. They usually write “Lotus, he doesn’t use his last name, etc.” Often they don’t quote him because one name is too weird. By royal purple edict apparently, Prince was even let to declare his hieroglyph was unpronouncible.

The real lesson was about everyone’s complicity in the manufacture of marketing campaigns.

You’d think that the music business or our corporate celebrity culture might be reported like news. It appears to be. It certainly makes up most of mainstream news. Its happenings are not irrelevant to a consumer economy. But no.

Instead, publicists dictate how their brands are sold, just as lawyers insure trademarks aren’t violated, and the media divisions of the same entertainment corporations comply. If the news tellers don’t play along, products like Prince wear no clothes.

The Modern Prometheus doesn’t fear your Second Amendment. He fears fire.

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By HE I mean Dr. Frankenstein’s penultimate scientific industrial creature, Capitalism. Everything I know about bringing down the system I learned from horror movies. Maybe. Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker knew not only the evils to be feared, but which fears paralyze evil. For Frankenstein is was fire. For Dracula, daylight. Pretty damn spot on.

The Second Amendment sidearm may protect you from troops quartering in your house and raping your maidens, but guns don’t have the stopping power to bring down man-made monsters. Capitalism is preoccupied about being immolated however. Maybe that’s why people can easily get a license to concealed carry, but will serve years in prison for possession of incindiaries. Molotov cocktails have stopped heavy tanks. Whether or not fire brought down the WTC, the state definitely doesn’t want you to have it. Mankind’s first tool. DIY.

Frankenstein the Modern Prometheus was undeterred by bullets. Like every undead monster since, Frankenstein was held off by fire.

Dracula was likewise impervious to human might. His bloodsucking immortal reign was vulnerable to daylight. By outward appearance, vampires represent our most jaded celebrities, thought their immortality and superhuman power more closely resembles our corporate trusts, or the sociopath olygarchs They too cannot be shot down or beaten, so long as no one believe they exist Exposed to light vampires are reduced to ashes. As moviegoers know, that takes some clever thinking, on top of the laborious coming around to believing vampires for the evil they are. Dragged into the light of day, Nosferatu is history.

DEA agents strap on weapons to teach elementary school children about drugs

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A Teller County reporter for TMJ snapped this photo of the DEA visiting a local elementary school to give a presentation advising children against the use of drugs. The DEA agents landed a helicopter on the school playground to join reservists already deployed. Despite having secured the perimeter, and disarmed the kids, weapons were the show and tell.

Mad Max Fury Road is hardly feminist. It’s Dances With Wolves With Women.

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I confess I never saw “Dances with Wolves” but I’m pretty sure the number Kevin Costner pulled on Native Americans is what this loner White Savior just did for Women. Saved them. What feminists needed was a MAD MAXINE. Instead they got another strong silent type, who drove for them, defended them, and made decisions for them. So he wasn’t as good a marksman, once, as one-armed Furiosa. I went to see Mad Max Fury Road with some skepticism that it was an adventure about saving damsels in distress. Art directed by Victoria’s Secret. Objectified not merely as helpless models, but as the patriarch’s incubators. Steam Punk already has a feminist heroine, Tank Girl.

Osama bin Laden’s books. They could do you more good than they did him.

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Last week the CIA decided
Crossing the Rubicon, The New Pearl Harbor, Imperial Hubris, Obama's Wars, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy... to declassify the list of books found in Osama bin Laden’s last hideout when Seal Team Six made their raid. There were 39 titles, which the press has categorized as heavy on conspiracy theory. That’s true, untrue, and unsurprising if you consider the official White House line is that the US does not support illegal coups. These authors beg to differ, including the unimpeachable Noam Chomski. Other investigative standouts include William Blum, Greg Palast, John Perkins. The list did not include publication dates or editions, just author and title. A closer inspection of the list is revealing.
 
(This is part one of a continuing series.)

It would be more accurate to describe Osama bin Laden’s bookshelf as history, mostly contemporary with notable exceptions. For example, bin Laden’s reference on Christianity and Islam in Spain 756-1031 was published in 1889 with the full title “The Relations and Mutual Influences of Christianity and Mohammedanism During the Khalifate of Cordova.” In 1889 European perspectives on the Moorish occupation appear dramatically antisemitic.

The history of The US and Vietnam 1787-1941 begins with Thomas Jefferson’s first interests in trading for rice with “Cochinchina”. Written by a former ambassador, it was published in 1990 by the National Defense University Press. The Best Enemy Money Can Buy is about the symbiotic relationship between the US military industrial complex and Russia’s.

Some of bin Laden’s “books” such as Michael O’Hanlon’s Unfinished Business were staple-bound publications from US policy think tanks. I’ll review those and the various intelligence agency exposés in subsequent posts.

Here are the 39 titles listed alphabetically:
The 2030 Spike by Colin Mason; A Brief Guide to Understanding Islam by I. A. Ibrahim; America’s Strategic Blunders by Willard Matthias; America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ by Michel Chossudovsky; Al-Qaeda’s Online Media Strategies: From Abu Reuter to Irhabi 007 by Hanna Rogan; The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast; The Best Enemy Money Can Buy by Anthony Sutton; Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century by Bev Harris; Bloodlines of the Illuminati by Fritz Springmeier; Bounding the Global War on Terror by Jeffrey Record; Checking Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions by Henry Sokolski and Patrick Clawson; Christianity and Islam in Spain 756-1031 A.D. by C. R. Haines; Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources, and Strategies by Cheryl Benard; Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins; Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Committee of 300 by John Coleman; Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert; Fortifying Pakistan: The Role of U.S. Internal Security Assistance (only the book’s introduction) by C. Christine Fair and Peter Chalk; Guerrilla Air Defense: Antiaircraft Weapons and Techniques for Guerrilla Forces by James Crabtree; Handbook of International Law by Anthony Aust; Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky; Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer; In Pursuit of Allah’s Pleasure by Asim Abdul Maajid, Esaam-ud-Deen and Dr. Naahah Ibrahim; International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific by John Ikenberry and Michael Mastandano; Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II by William Blum; Military Intelligence Blunders by John Hughes-Wilson; Project MKULTRA, the CIA’s program of research in behavioral modification. Joint hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, United States Senate, Ninety-fifth Congress, first session, August 3, 1977. United States Congress Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky; New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 by David Ray Griffin; New Political Religions, or Analysis of Modern Terrorism by Barry Cooper; Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward; Oxford History of Modern War by Charles Townsend; The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy; Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower by William Blum; The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly Hall (1928); Secrets of the Federal Reserve by Eustace Mullins; The Taking of America 1-2-3 by Richard Sprague; Unfinished Business: U.S. Overseas Military Presence in the 21stCentury by Michael O’Hanlon; The U.S. and Vietnam 1787-1941 by Robert Hopkins Miller; “Website Claims Steve Jackson Games Foretold 9/11,” article posted on ICV2.com.

Poster for 2015 Telluride Film Festival

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TELLURIDE, COLO- The Nugget Theater boasts two in its window but posters for the 42nd annual SHOW have yet to be distributed. [Update: they’re at TFF online]. This year’s festival poster is by Laurent Durieux and stars the mining town in its box canyon backdrop, a chem-trail, a bear, and most implausible, a theater marquee and box office on the main street. As usual the festival lineup will not be announced until the Thursday before Labor Day.

“Ex Machina” heralds creation of life, but Doctor Geekenstein’s blueprint imitates pornography

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ex-machina-tits-ass-mouth
“WHY DID YOU GIVE HER SEXUALITY!?” asks the geek tasked with debugging the anthropomorphic robot. Except they didn’t. Unless by sexuality you mean just the “female” bits and transluscent circuits where her belly and cranium should be.

These filmmakers gave Ms. Machina just the tangibles to titillate pre-sexuals: tits, ass, and a face for, um, facials. Their ideal is basically a blowup doll, upgraded to show off CGI; the Bionic Woman pared of nonessentials for viewers fixated on orifices; imagine the Six Million Dollar Man a cyborg whose flesh parts are lips and phallus. For male heterosexual tastes, a nubile female would have a womb. Otherwise the bare midriff would not be a thing. Nor belly dancing. But no mate of any age can lack a cranium. And a soulmate needs a soul. I think we can say the soul lives in the heart, but I’m pretty sure we manifest its presence under the cranium. A sexual mate, even as a sexual object, must be “all there” in the head, or is that just me?

The film “Her” pared the romantic partner down to a disembodied voice, this film preserves the body but disembowels her.

Presumably the filmmakers screen-tested their heroine on a focus group. If the results decided which virtues a virtual sex object requires for allure and which could be dispensed to skimp on parametric objects, I’m not impressed. Is hair no longer an asset to attractiveness? Ex Machina takes our depilation fetish to its nadir.

Spoiler: I haven’t seen the rest of Ex Machina. Does she have toes? Why or why not? How could she not have toes?

And what about “chemistry”? By chemistry I mean whatever electricity or scents we exude to guide ships in the night. Okay, no doubt biomechanical robots can be modelled to emit pheromones, but I’m sorry that’s about as romantic as boutique soap.

Whatever social commentary we are to make of this “high concept” thought experiment, I’m reminded of attending a lecture given by a geek who Time Magazine listed among the world’s most influencial people. He had coined the term “virtual reality” or some such and had shaped what the internet has become. I wondered why we entrust social engineering to antisocial engineers, then look to them as philosophers endowed with clarevoyance. With arrested adolescents for our gurus, of course “the internet is for porn.”

Viewed from Interstate 70, Kansas is the selfie of American Idiocracy

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Post office in KansasTOPEKA, KANSAS- Who’s not in Kansas anymore? Anyone with a lick of sense. I crossed the state recently to find the western half riddled with fracked well heads, billboards condemning abortion, tollbooths on the interstate, police cruisers extorting drivers, and privatized postal services! I told the tollbooth attendant I didn’t think much of Kansas, I meant its dumbfuck Kansans.