Friday, September 30, 2016

the Alt Right

Most of history has treated fascism as a brief political movement defined by authoritarianism and a sort of “anti-philosophy,” but there are conscious social ideas that run at its core even if the associated populism are not as keyed into the philosophy. The Alt Right then represents those ideas becoming conscious, advocating for fascist politics in a 21st century, tech-dominated social technocratic society.

the-alt-right-and-the-new-american-fascism

Cowboys on Dope

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

12th Step

Sixty days. A year. Five years. A week. A day. An hour. Right now.
That’s the curse of addiction, those needles, inhalants, the entire barbarity of cheap booze shilled by the chosen ones, the money changers, all amortized and bundled debts in trans-capital, sold next to the playground, the trees cut down for billboards pronouncing sexual prowess and football hero-dom with the flick of the Mike’s Hard Cider or a fucking Bud.
   --Paul Haeder
never-a-12th-step-in-the-program-called-consumerism

Sunday, September 25, 2016

the golden age of bullshit

In some ways the meta-narrative is true–we are exceptional. Once we finished off the indigenous tribes and built the American economy on the backs of African slaves, the United States definitely had an exceptional advantage over other nations in terms of natural resources and favorable natural borders. And we built a terrifying military that could wreak more havoc and kill more people than any other military in history. On the positive side of the ledger, we have one of the more open societies in the world, and our constitution was unique in that it founded a nation on a proposition of rights inhering in a people, not a monarchy. It consolidated the insights of the Magna Carta in 1215 and the English Bill of Rights in 1689. In this way it was sui generis. Yet the very rights to which we ascribe our singularity are those that we deny our fellow man through the corporate-backed ideology of globalized free enterprise. This, if anything, is exceptional hypocrisy.
   --Jason Hirthler
the-golden-age-of-bullshit

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Methane Dreams

“Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing… Over a relatively small area we found more than 100 but over a wider area there should be thousands… We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some of the plumes were a kilometer or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal,”     
    --Igor Semiletov, International Arctic Research Centre, University of Alaska Fairbanks
vast-methane-plumes
is-the-greenhouse-gas-dragon-awakening?

Thursday, September 15, 2016

jobs are highly overrated!

Profits bring jobs, the capitalist devil whispers in our ears. Jobs! So you can overcome or avoid the misery of unemployment. Jobs! So you won’t fall behind on your mortgage, your credit card payments or your student loan. Jobs! So you will be able to buy ever more stuff that you don’t really need but somehow those great commercials convince you otherwise.
https://newcommuneist.com/

Everything you know is wrong

a retired Army major who had grown up in rural Minnesota and worked for years in farming and construction before becoming a computer technician for the army and later a military lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, ultimately serving as a defense lawyer for two Guanatanamo detainees. - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/everything-worldview-retired/#sthash.nAPzFcVp.dpuf
a retired Army major who had grown up in rural Minnesota and worked for years in farming and construction before becoming a computer technician for the army and later a military lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, ultimately serving as a defense lawyer for two Guanatanamo detainees. - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/everything-worldview-retired/#sthash.nAPzFcVp.dpuf
a retired Army major who had grown up in rural Minnesota and worked for years in farming and construction before becoming a computer technician for the army and later a military lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, ultimately serving as a defense lawyer for two Guanatanamo detainees. - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/everything-worldview-retired/#sthash.nAPzFcVp.dpuf
a retired Army major who had grown up in rural Minnesota and worked for years in farming and construction before becoming a computer technician for the army and later a military lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, ultimately serving as a defense lawyer for two Guanatanamo detainees. - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/everything-worldview-retired/#sthash.nAPzFcVp.dpuf




I met Guantanamo defense lawyer Todd Pierce last year in New York, and over lunch he offered a fully-formed critique of American foreign policy since 9/11:
- See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2016/08/everything-worldview-retired/#sthash.nAPzFcVp.dpuf 
“Everything that we have done since 9/11 is wrong. We are embarking on a totalitarian foreign policy that is a hallmark of how Hannah Arendt defines fascism... The false claims about radical Islam show how little we understand about ourselves or the Middle East.” 

--retired Army major Todd Pierce who had grown up in rural Minnesota and worked for years in farming and construction before becoming a computer technician for the army and later a military lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, ultimately serving as a defense lawyer for two Guanatanamo detainees.
everything, Part 1

everything, Part 2 

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

the Consolation of All Sorrows

The misreading of Russia’s geopolitical situation is especially sad because for the first time in many decades there is much to hope for in Moscow. Out of utopian misery has come the prospect of rebirth. It is as yet incipient. But I see great possibilities in it, in the many once-blighted churches now open and loved and full again, in the reappearance of symbols of pre-Bolshevik Russia, in the growth of a generation not stunted and pitted by poisoned air and food, nor twisted by Communist ethics. Many Russians will never recover from the cynicism they were taught, the mistrust, the contempt for religion and the foul cult of Comrade Pavlik. But their children can, and may. Why then, when so much of what we hoped for in the long Soviet period has come to pass, do we so actively seek their enmity? 
the-cold-war-is-over 

Sunday, September 11, 2016

global capitalist consensus reality

"In our brave new unipolar age (an age in which transnational Capitalism, and not “America,” or Russia, or China, or any other nation state, dominates the entire planet and determines what is and is not “reality”), there can be no more external enemies, because there isn’t any “outside” anymore. We’re all in here together now … in our global capitalist consensus reality, which the majority of people throughout the world are doing their best to accept and conform to."
   --C. J. Hopkins
how-america-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-war-on-terror

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Batavia

"America is the sum of a thousand and one little, individuated places, each with its own history and accent and stories. A politician who understands this will act in ways that protect and preserve these real places. He will ask the question that never gets injected into national debates over the wisdom of America’s constant wars — namely, What are the domestic costs? Loving his block, he will not wish to bomb Iraq. Loyal to a neighborhood, he will not send its young men and women across the sea to kill and die for causes wholly unrelated to local life."
    --Bill Kauffman

empire-versus-little-america

what the hell- built to spill

Normalized Deviance

“The gradual process through which unacceptable practice or standards become acceptable. As the deviant behavior is repeated without catastrophic results, it becomes the social norm for the organization.”

Until the American public, our political representatives and our neighbors around the world can come to grips with the normalization of deviance that is corrupting the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, the existential threats of nuclear war and escalating conventional war will persist and spread.

us-war-crimes-or-normalized-deviance 

Thursday, September 1, 2016

the revolution will not be televised

Poets Showing Up to the Revolution 
by Paul Haeder / February 14th, 2016
 
The Gil in Scott
Heron, this bull
shit white zionist
TV, drugs on the shelves
the rulers of the universe
1.4 percent, bloody
wars, inside and out
their books are number
one Oprah will
not be televised
without the point zero
one percent’s permission
superbowl shit with billionaire
Beyonce, Malcom x my ass
torn pages from shit
storm USA, one giant
snap chat, the revolution
will not be Facebooked
the rulers of Universe
will do the formularies
find those brain-sapping
compounds, TV or generation
triple xxx Prozac
they will rule their kingdom
compliant, white boys
girls with Hillary hair
they sing to the breeder
Bernie, his war is with anything
against the Israeli line
you name it zero one
they love satellites
nanotechnology, burrowing
mental-tapping genetically-
altered Ebola, anything for
masters of universe, they
cheer black lives matter
black brains bashed
emptying revolutionary
sinks,

Gil Scott Heron
revolution will be switched
onto app, the chosen few
like leeches, eating history
culling anyone against
the shit storm of junk
they produce
each stealth bomber
like a TV commercial
superbowl shit storm
Five-Zero, they wipe asses
with the scripts of yesteryear
drum the beat of war
boys and girls from Brooklyn
to Appalachia, these hedge-funders
are the revolution, the Che’s
the rotting reliance on the insipid
strumming of mirroring songs
they flee, focusing groups
these people run the numbers
get the economic principles
send little zits to college
so another billion suck
the crack pipe of chosen
consumerism, fear and faux
the democracy of not knowing
the revolution, it’s

Gil Scott
Heron, so old school, these
hyper botoxed queens Tweeting
everything we need to know
the revolution brother Gil . . . .

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and
skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised
…. Somehow this silly new world emptiness
ice cream the flavor of the month
flaccid people, they jump Ivy
League white girls, white boys
suited up for lawyering, for the
the end game, TV, cultural
pop, whores in the game
dread-thinking peeps
the drug is the television
electronic muzac
the drones run
on EE and Georgia
Tech computer engineers
be the Bezos, the Gate, the
Rahm and Chicago
we have poor academics
saying white male superiority
is white patriarchy (WASP)

but the chosen
few, the fear, the world
is their oyster, e coli
colitis, the entire
thing is, stars and race
somehow
the race is to the bottom
80 percent captured
by one, revolutionaries
their sycophants, their
broken shits
each six pack
billionaires laughing
pie face, lives
matter, revolutionary
road, the drive is
Mercedes, each drop
of oil the zone of Gaza
anything to seek
genocide, yet, the revolutionaries
will be televised, the Gil in Scott
will be the
revolution . . . .

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

watchtower