Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Tragically Hip

To make it our battle

The water from my tap smells like mildew
on oily rags.
When I drink it there is a moment when
I have to tell myself to swallow
or I will spit it out.
I boil water for my coffee
to get rid of the taste.
Every morning I take Duff for a long walk.
It’s cloudy and rainy today,
but through the clouds and rain
I can feel the Earth warming as the sun comes up.
I can smell the odor of the water treatment facility
a few blocks from where I live.
An aggressive smell, somewhat sweet,
like artificial fruit.
We don’t own our water.
It was bought
and now it’s sold back to us.
I know neighbors who don’t talk to each other anymore.
Some people got a couple thousand dollars,
some hundreds of thousands.
They put in a pipeline about two years ago.
It runs right under Stillwater Dam.
It crosses route 171 and then winds up a steep hill.
The trees, all clear cut and hauled away.
There was lots of talk about jobs,
until the pipeline moved far enough away
that they started replacing our locals
with other locals.
During my walk this morning with Duff
I think about what’s going on at Standing Ridge Sioux Reservation.
Harassed, intimidated, maced, gassed,
shot at with rubber bullets, dragged away from prayer ceremonies,
their teepees and tents pulled down. . . 
All because they are trying to protect the water.
How rarely our government prosecutes crimes committed by the wealthy.
Standing Rock? I talk to my neighbors. They say:
That’s a long way off.
They’re just trying to make it through another week
on less than minimum-wage jobs.
We walk past a big puddle that forms in the alley behind my house when it rains.
I stand there this morning, as I have many times before
and watch the puddles percolate from the gas
seeping through the Earth.
If you listen closely, they pop
with a happy sort of sound.
I guess we missed our chance when they came to frack.
When they laid the pipeline,
we missed our chance 
to make it our battle.

Monday, November 28, 2016

You have been Faked Out- 2

The Washington Post on Thursday night promoted the claims of a new, shadowy organization that smears dozens of U.S. news sites that are critical of U.S. foreign policy as being “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda.” The article by reporter Craig Timberg — headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” — cites a report by an anonymous website calling itself PropOrNot, which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.”

The Post should be very proud: It staked a major part of its news story on the unverified, untestable assertions of this laughable organization.

washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist

confessions-of-an-alleged-russian-propagandist

Sunday, November 27, 2016

You have been Faked Out

The mainstream media (MSM) has taken to blaming the election on an avalanche of “fake news.” An academic has produced a list of so-called fake news outlets; Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has vowed to crack down on fake news; President Obama lectured a somniferous German audience on the dangers of fact-free journalism and “demonizing” people or institutions.......

.......the strategy is nonetheless a threat, because it could easily serve as a pretext to silence alternative media and to more militantly police the internet. This could be the upshot of this election cycle—a serious move by the state to impose thought control on the web.
    --Jason Hirthler

all-the-news-fit-to-omit

Thursday, November 24, 2016

the future, not

“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!”

That’s how Richard B. Spencer saluted more than 200 attendees on Saturday, gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., for the annual conference of the National Policy Institute, which describes itself as “an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of  people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.”

richard-spencer

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

north dakota

"The attacks came as water protectors used a semi-truck to remove burnt military vehicles that police had chained to concrete barriers weeks ago, blocking traffic on Highway 1806. Water protectors’ efforts to clear the road and improve access to the camp for emergency services were met with tear gas, an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), stinger grenades, rubber bullets, and indiscriminate use of a water cannon with an air temperature of 26 degrees Fahrenheit. Some flares shot by law enforcement started grass fires which were ignored by the water cannons and had to be extinguished by water protectors. Law enforcement also shot down three media drones and targeted journalists with less lethal rounds."
fire-and-ice-another-ignored-outrage-at-standing-rock

Monday, November 21, 2016

across the sea with the powers-that-be

In 1975 Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam dared to try to assert his country’s autonomy. The CIA and MI6 made sure he paid the price.......

Sunday, November 20, 2016

FUTBAWL interlude- Nick Saban

Alabama beat the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, but Nick Saban’s mad!


Nick Saban sounds like my dad before he told me to grab a switch circa 1994. 

Saturday, November 19, 2016

all kinds of time

"I get a lot of groans for talking this way, especially at the kitchen table here in Oregon. Why are you always so depressing? That’s no way to motivate people! But regardless of how we speak about it, climate change is beyond control now. The time to act was 50 years ago. What some recent evidence of the way things are heading? Temperatures at the North Pole this week are 36 degrees higher than normal. The living planet will survive, though our species, speaking of hubris, likely won’t in the long term. Life on earth survived the Permian Extinction, when more than 98 percent of the species on the planet were wiped out almost overnight geologically speaking. From that extinction new forms of life emerged, evolving in wild new directions. See Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, which might be considered an uplifting book if your timeline is expansive enough."

--Jeffrey St. Clair

Black milk of daybreak, we drink it at evening

They would have us believe anything other than the truth: that everyone and everything will die; that all nations, ethnicities, religions and structures will fall away into rubble, into nothingness, and be forgotten; and that even the planet itself will be reduced to atoms and melt away, like black milk, into the cold deeps of empty space. And in the face of this truth, nothing matters ultimately but each specific, fleeting instance of individual being, the shape we give to each momentary coalescence of atomic particles into a particular human situation.
That's all we have. That's all there is. That's what we kill when we murder someone. That's what we strangle when we keep them down with our boot on their throat.
    --Chris Floyd
Broken-light: work-for-the-night-is-coming

Death Fugue
Paul Celan, 1920 - 1970


Black milk of morning we drink you at dusktime
we drink you at noontime and dawntime we drink you at night
we drink and drink
we scoop out a grave in the sky where it’s roomy to lie
There’s a man in this house who cultivates snakes and who writes
who writes when it’s nightfall nach Deutschland your golden hair Margareta 
he writes it and walks from the house and the stars all start flashing he whistles his
     dogs to draw near
whistles his Jews to appear starts us scooping a grave out of sand
he commands us to play for the dance

Black milk of morning we drink you at night
we drink you at dawntime and noontime we drink you at dusktime
we drink and drink
There’s a man in this house who cultivates snakes and who writes
who writes when it’s nightfall nach Deutschland your golden hair Margareta
your ashen hair Shulamite we scoop out a grave in the sky where it’s roomy to lie
He calls jab it deep in the soil you lot there you other men sing and play
he tugs at the sword in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue
jab your spades deeper you men you other men you others play up again for the dance

Black milk of morning we drink you at night
we drink you at noontime and dawntime we drink you at dusktime
we drink and drink
there’s a man in this house your golden hair Margareta
your ashen hair Shulamite he cultivates snakes

He calls play that death thing more sweetly Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland
he calls scrape that fiddle more darkly then hover like smoke in the air
then scoop out a grave in the clouds where it’s roomy to lie

Black milk of morning we drink you at night
we drink you at noontime Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland
we drink you at dusktime and dawntime we drink and drink
Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland his eye is blue
he shoots you with leaden bullets his aim is true
there’s a man in this house your golden hair Margareta
he sets his dogs on our trail he gives us a grave in the sky
he cultivates snakes and he dreams Death is a gang-boss aus Deutschland 

your golden hair Margareta
your ashen hair Shulamite

Friday, November 18, 2016

the long shadows

The real question is, finally, how do such grotesque immoral people control the government. Trump is picking from the same class of neo con hawk as Hillary planned to — Bob Corker replaces Michelle Flournoy. I don’t personally see much difference. Gingrich or Nuland? The same privately funded think tanks churn out these ghouls. The Enterprise Institute, CATO, the Heritage Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, The Brookings Institute, The Center for American Progress, The Rand Corporation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Hoover Institute. The list is pretty long. Whats pretty funny, but also revealing, is that think tanks labeled *liberal* (like Center for Strategic and International Studies) include members such as Madeleine Albright and Ehud Barak. The point is that the entirety of this gigantic bureaucratic apparatus, from Wall Street to the NGOs have been in the service, for sixty or seventy years, along with the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, and U.S. State Department, of destroying any socialist movements globally that happen to occur. And with squashing dissent domestically. And with disseminating a constant never ending stream of anti communist, and anti socialist propaganda, and with the dissemination of propaganda to label alternative views and values as crazy or fringe (the smearing of Stein/Baraka is the most recent clear example).
So forgive me if I can’t find it in me to care much about Trump. If protesting Trump expands to become a protest against neo liberalism, against militarism and war, and against white supremacy — then count me in. Or lets have some teach-ins. Until then we can all try to educate ourselves and others.
    --John Steppling

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Mose Allison, 1927 – 2016

If there was ever a year that killed more musical talent, I don’t want to know about it. Prince, Keith Emerson, Bowie, George Martin, Jimmy Haskell, Maurice White, Leonard Cohen, Leon Russell, Glenn Frey, Dan Hicks, Gato Barbieri, Merle Haggard, Bernie Worrell, Scotty Moore, Rob Wasserman, Pete Fountain, Bobby Hutcherson, John D. Loudermilk, Toots Thielemans, Pierre Boulez, Buckwheat Zydeco, Al Caiola. Two of the founding members of the Jefferson Airplane — Paul Kantner and Signe Toly Anderson — died on the same day at the same age. And now Mose Allison. The one thing we can learn from most of these people: to live a longer life, play a musical instrument.
mose-allison-goodbye-there-universe
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/mose-allison




Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Revolution A.D. 2020

In late 2012, Peter Turchin, a professor at the University of Connecticut made a startling claim, based on an analysis of revolutionary upheavals across history.
He found there are three social conditions in place shortly before all major outbreaks of social violence: an increase in the elite population; a decrease in the living standards of the masses; and huge levels of government indebtedness.
The statistical model his team developed suggested that, on this basis, a major wave of social upheaval and revolutionary violence is set to take place in the US in 2020. His model had no way to predict who would lead the charge; but this week's election gives an indication of how it is likely to unfold.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

the Cartoonist's view

Trump’s fascism will come about naturally, caused by the perfect storm of his ego, his CEO mentality, the politics and personalities of the men and women with whom he is surrounding himself, and a set of developments that are all but inevitable.

Canceling the next election? For these characters, it will be an easy call.


    --Ted Rall

donald-trump-is-a-fascist

Monday, November 14, 2016

moving on.....

Get over it folks. This is where we are at. Now its time to move on; one household, one street, one community.......
"Some of my students/kids have said they were disappointed when I'd posted I'd found a way to reconcile this. Here is why. Not because I 'believe' in it, and not because I think this is a 'good thing.' Its not. Its a fucking nightmare come true. But: this is who we are. This wasn't 'made.' This is what it is, what is HAS been. Only now we have the chance to see it with open - sober - eyes. See the horror death and destruction we've wrought on other cultures, the disrespect, hate and intolerance with which we face our neighbors (globally and locally). Hopefully: now is when we've 'bottomed-out' and realized WE - inside, ourselves - are not in any way 'exceptional,' but WE are the fucking problem. We can't deny, we can't whitewash..."   
    --Chairman Chad

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Leon: 1942-2016




Election Final

Having stealthily, assiduously cultivated and nurtured the most regressive, dim, and hateful elements in its Redneck Wing for decades, the CEO Wing gaped impotently as Dogpatch was appropriated by a vulgarian who spoke to peckerwoods directly, not in code.  He jettisoned the few Silverspooners and Coupon Clipper Bosses, stole their ground troops and mobilized their outrage.  He only succeeded then due to the universal rage of the working class that has been dealt out and bankrupted, its jobs and prospects stolen and its lives sunk, for the benefit of a tiny clique of professional criminals.

The Republican Party is done, killed because Trump grabbed its posse.


Democrats, confident of being lesser evils, opted for "selbstmord". After Occupy’s warning, exposes of record financial inequality and the rapid unravelling of democracy, one might have thought a show of fight against those evils would be mandatory, but no: they pre-selected the candidate who embodied them instead. As the long, impassioned cry went up across the country, from the young, working people, the ill and poor, disabled and elderly, for an old man who would be their champion, Party commissars chose to freeze out Bernie’s burn and go geriatrically into that good night. Then, when caught out in their shoddy chicanery, they Hitlered Putin.


The Democratic Party is done, dead of peritonitis from undigested hubris.

deplorables 1, empire 0




Saturday, November 12, 2016

Election post-mortem 3

Despite the transparent defects of the Clinton campaign, her bi-coastal minions were astonished at the results. As with Brexit, the media couldn’t understand the populist rage boiling beneath their lofty studio sets. Particularly the partisan mainstream media (MSM) that threw its full weight behind Clinton from the outset of the general campaign. Their strategy was typical of the liberal mindset, which principally cares about identity politics. The media aimed to destroy Trump by exposing his sexism and racism and sense of elite entitlement. The relentless smearing of Trump, the unearthed audio tapes, the timely advent of a phalanx of sexual accusers, and the haunting image of a Great Wall on the Mexican border–all of this “horrified” Starbucks America, the coastal enclaves of educated, profitably employed, and multi-cultural voters. They couldn’t understand how anyone could vote for Trump because they were only focused on multi-culturalism, which is the only message the Democratic Party has left. The top 10 to 20 percent of society, coasting along on the information economy, think it’s all about sexual politics and an outdated bible-based worldview. There’s plenty to that, but there’s a lot more to the authentic rage people feel about having their livelihoods ruined by an oligarchic state that sees them as riff raff–a reserve pool of cheap labor to be patronized every four years and otherwise ignored.

blaming-everybody

Friday, November 11, 2016

Election side note

Considering that corporate right-wing Democrats still blame Ralph Nader for Al Gore’s 2000 “loss” to George W. Bush (scare quotes due to the fact that newspaper recounts show that Gore actually won the state of Florida), it comes as little surprise to hear them blaming Green Party candidate Jill Stein for Hillary Clinton’s loss yesterday to Donald Trump.

Do a little arithmetic, however, and that line of argument is quickly exposed as bullshit.


what the hell- Bob Marley





Thursday, November 10, 2016

Election post-mortem 2

Dumbass Democrats. Congratulations, you played yourself!
"Well, who the hell are the Democrats going to blame now? The degree to which you scapegoat the Green Party or the white working-class is precisely the degree to which you are proving you will never learn a damn thing and are completely unable to lead this country.
If it wasn’t such a farce, I’d say it is King Lear redux."

    --Richard Moser

dumbass-democrats

Election post-mortem 1

an excellent column from our favorite playwright, John Steppling.....
Max Bialystock: "How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?!"
    --from Mel Brooks’ The Producers.
Trump was the perfect wrong play, wrong director, wrong cast. And he won. Springtime for Hitler is a hit. But something happened during the last month of this election. I suspect Clinton had it won after the first debate. So, how and why did the DNC clutch defeat from the jaws of victory? The answer is more complex than one can fully evaluate and dissect this soon, but one clear element is that much of that corporate wealth that owns America turned, finally, on Clinton. 

the-big-split

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Election Downer- 11/9

The jokes on you! and Hillary!

the most agonizingly-wretched campaign of all times is over, the ballots are counted, and the new president will be (insert joke here). The only thing that is certain is, we lose.  What a joke.



Monday, November 7, 2016

Election Countdown- 11/7

What is unfolding now is a scourge against the American people and this election marks the end of this illusion of democracy. Former Black Panther and imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal gives an astute analysis on the state of America. Calling it “the ultimate reality show”, he described how this U.S. Presidential election reflects “the fall of empire” and noted that “this is how democracies fall. History repeats itself, first time as tragedy, second time as farce.” Like the fall of the Roman Empire, these two faces on the ballot box remind us of plutocrats drunk with power who have their shaky inept hands close to the nuclear button.
    --Nozomi Hayase
the-political-charade-ends-the-real-battle-begins

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Election Countdown- 11/6.1

NBC News reported that US government hackers had penetrated “Russia’s electric grid, telecommunications networks, and the Kremlin’s command systems” to be ready to “hit back” in case Moscow tries to disrupt the US presidential vote on November 8.  

cia-prepping-for-possible-cyber-strike-against-russia

Election Countdown- 11/6

Finally, Trump will fly to the Moon, where he will hold his largest intergalactic rally ever at the Mare Crisium Teleportation Center at 8:00 p.m. MST.

trumps-marathon-includes-moon?

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Election Countdown- 11/5

The catastrophic failure of critical thought required for a white woman in America to support a rich, violent, misogynistic imbecile like Donald Trump is as mind boggling as imagining how an uneducated, disenfranchised white man falling out of the middle class would support someone who stole every dollar he didn’t inherit.  But this is what it is to be white, and Hillary Clinton’s oft repeated admonishments to the violence encouraged by Trump at his rallies as behavior not reflective of who we are is preposterous bullshit.  Of course, it’s who we are!  We are the most violent, delusional gun culture on the face of the planet and that deplorable sludge on the bottom of the most subterranean pipe of the American experiment is plentiful, thick and doesn’t take much to get stirred up.  We are that.
white

Friday, November 4, 2016

Election Countdown- 11/4

So if you’re content with the ‘lesser evil’ vote Hillary/
It’ll fan the very flames of discontent/
That are fueling fascist sentiments/
And personally I can’t wait to see/
How much more threatening the next Trump will be/
Or fuck it, vote Trump if you’re really feeling courageous/
I’ve always wanted to try living in the dark ages/
Ja kids, it’s great to witness history in the making/
But watching it repeat is even more entertaining


    --the Juice Media

With the election nearing, massive amounts of citizens are finally beginning to understand the dangerous and growing divisions, the serious sickness in our society. The mainstream media makes it appear that the battle between those on the right and left will be fought mainly on issues of identity politics and the wider “culture wars”. This is nonsense, of course. The real fault line lies between those brave and imaginative enough to join hands and build new forms of peaceful, sustainable, non-coercive societies, and those flailing souls stuck believing in the obsolete, failed models of the past, victims of centuries’ worth of indoctrination. There are those who wish to remain slaves to capitalism, to bigotry and warfare, and those yearning to break free.

the-great-divide

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Election Countdown- 11/3

"This is the only deal in town: outright, unvarnished right-wing rule, or simpering, cowardly 'moderate' management of a violent, rapacious system. That’s been the choice on offer since 1976. That’s the choice on offer today. The only difference is that the system has metastasized to a monstrous degree over the years: lacking any genuine opposition, the system has grown more violent, more rapacious........so now the nation swings from being ready to embrace a perceived leftist to the brink of voting in a bellicose rightist as it seeks the genuine change no one will give them. Of course, after the scorched-earth tactics of bipartisan neoliberalism and the inevitable moral degradation and brutalization that comes from year after year after year of vicious aggressive war, the choice for Trump is more nihilistic. It’s as if people believe positive change is no longer possible — so let’s tear everything down and see what happens. (This is the actual, open philosophy of the Breitbart gang, who are now directing Trump’s campaign.)"
    --Chris Floyd
barrel-bomb-the-cataclysmic-close-of-campaign-2016

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

the revolutionary view

“It is the task of radical thought, since the world is given to us in unintelligibility, to make it more unintelligible, more enigmatic, more fabulous.” 
― Jean Baudrillard

Almost no major US medium endorses Trump. The entire Wall Street capitalist class is against him. The Political Establishment of the two-branch one political-party system is against him. Most of the military and secret service elites are against him. Nearly all US’s European ally politicians and media are against him. So, from OUR standpoint there must be something good about him. “OUR” can be understood as revolutionary, radical left, or just those who do not want wars to escalate.    
    --Ron Ridenour
usa-elections-a-revolutionary-view


watchtower