Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Citizen USA!

“Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part...and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.”
    ― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers 


 "This is for all you new people. I only have one rule. Everyone fights. No one quits. You don't do your job, I'll shoot you myself. You get me"
    --Jean Rasczak, from the film, Starship Troopers

Fredric Jameson is an otherwise leftist intellectual who’s put out a book, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army, edited by Slavoj Zizek, in which he proposes universal conscription into the military for every U.S. resident. In subsequent chapters, other purportedly leftist intellectuals critique Jameson’s proposal with hardly a hint of concern at such an expansion of a machine of mass murder.

What Jameson wants is a vision of Utopia. He wants to nationalize banks and insurance companies, seize and presumably shut down fossil fuel operations, impose draconian taxes on large corporations, abolish inheritance, create a guaranteed basic income, abolish NATO, create popular control of the media, ban rightwing propaganda, create universal Wi-Fi, make college free, pay teachers well, make healthcare free, etc.
Sounds great! Where do I sign up?

Jameson’s answer is: at the Army recruiting station.

war-machine 

real citizen

Friday, August 26, 2016

Ghosts in the Bush

In 2014, Botswana introduced a nationwide hunting ban, but gave a special dispensation to fee-paying big game hunters, who flock to the northern Kalahari and the Okavango Delta in the extreme north of the country to shoot animals for sport.
Such a dispensation was not extended to the tribal peoples who actually live in these territories, who are accused of ‘poaching’ and face arrest, beatings and torture while tourists are welcomed into luxury hunting lodges.

shooting-bushmen-from-helicopters-in-botswana

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Syria- its not that complicated

“Everything we read about Syria in the US media is wrong. The reality is that the U.S. government is supporting armed extremist groups who are terrorizing the Syrian people and trying to destroy Syria’s secular state. In order to hide that ugly reality and push violent regime change the U.S. is conducting a psychological warfare campaign to demonize Syria’s president, Bashar al Assad. This is a classic tactic that veterans have seen over and over. It is shocking, however, to realize how willingly the media repeat this propaganda, and how many people believe it to be true.”
   --Gerry Condon, Veterans for Peace

clintonites-prepare-for-war-on-syria 

walking-through-aleppo 

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

gonna need some ice-nine

Professor Peter Wadhams (University of Cambridge) has a new book due for release September 1st, 2016, A Farewell to Ice, A Report from the Arctic (Publ. Allen Lane). According to a Guardian article, Wadhams’ book offers a new slant on the climate change controversy: 
“Because Peter Wadhams says what other scientists will not, he has been slandered, attacked and vilified by denialists and politicians who have advised caution or no-action. He and other polar experts have moved from being field researchers to being climate change pioneers in the vanguard of the most rapid and drastic change that has taken place on the planet in many thousands of years. This is not just an interesting change happening in a remote part of the world, he says, but a catastrophe for mankind.”

arctic-death-rattle 


Sunday, August 21, 2016

Forever Hip

The CBC's broadcast and livestreaming of The Tragically Hip: A National Celebration concert reached 11.7 million people on Saturday night, according to preliminary audience figures.
The commercial-free special presentation was carried live on radio and TV and was streamed live online via the CBC's website, apps, YouTube channel and Facebook page.
The show allowed people to watch and listen to the last concert of the iconic Canadian band's Man Machine Poem tour, from the group's hometown of Kingston, Ont. The tour was announced after lead singer Gord Downie revealed he has terminal brain cancer.


Friday, August 19, 2016

Deciding Whether To Kill You

"Whether or not President Obama has exercised his absolute power to kill anyone on the planet responsibly—and we have little foundation for judging because most of the relevant evidence remains secret—a precedent of limitless executive authority has been set which is truly frightening. It will lie around like a loaded weapon in the White House ready for use by any Caligula or Nero who is elected Commander In Chief. It is only a matter of time, as the 2016 presidential race portends."
   --Bruce Fein

obama's-protocol

Thursday, August 18, 2016

Assange

“Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip. But the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip”. – George Orwell, 1944
These words of Orwell can, it seems, be applied not only to journalists, but now also to millions of ‘consumers’ of the corporate media.

For anyone who believes that Julian Assange is a ‘rapist’ who is ‘evading justice’ and is ‘holed up at the embassy’ because he is a ‘coward’; indeed, anyone who focuses on the actions and personality of Assange instead of the content of the leaks published by his organization…for you the message is this: 

You will not realise it (yet) but you have been successfully co-opted into the propaganda efforts to deflect attention from the numerous, horrific, documented crimes of imperial interests and the deep corruption of major institutions and their top officials.  The people responsible for disseminating this propaganda will laugh at how they have successfully transformed you into a pack of animals baying for the blood of one man whose ‘crime’ has been to shine a spotlight on the corruption they are paid well to obscure.  They will chortle with delight at your almost complete lack of interest in the decades upon decades of mass murder, torture, rapes, oppression and illegal coups that have been carried out in your name with your taxes and with the help of officials you have voted for, while you focus your ire instead on one of the most obvious set-ups (that of Assange) ever…along with all the other tried-and-tested distractions.  The only thing that may astound even them is how easy it has been to manipulate you.

persecuting-assange 

Thursday, August 4, 2016

The Head Geezer speaks:

Clint Eastwood sharing his political opinions with Esquire on Donald Trump;  “He's onto something, because secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness, kissing up......That's the kiss-ass generation we're in right now. We're really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells. Just fucking get over it. It's a sad time in history.”

watchtower