Putin

"Only when we know for certain – and this takes a few seconds to understand – that Russia is being attacked we will deliver a counter strike. This would be a reciprocal counter strike. Why do I say ‘counter’? Because we will counter missiles flying towards us by sending a missile in the direction of an aggressor. Of course, this amounts to a global catastrophe but I would like to repeat that we cannot be the initiators of such a catastrophe because we have no provision for a pre-emptive strike. Yes, it looks like we are sitting on our hands and waiting until someone uses nuclear weapons against us. Well, yes, this is what it is. But then any aggressor should know that retaliation is inevitable and they will be annihilated. And we as the victims of an aggression, we as martyrs would go to paradise while they will simply perish because they won’t even have time to repent their sins."
    -- Vladimir Putin, Valdai International Discussion Club, Sochi, October 18, 2018

sins-without-recourse-beast-without-remorse

Craig Finn

post-history

History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. In the writing of history, a story without an argument fades into antiquarianism; an argument without a story risks pedantry. Writing history requires empathy, inquiry, and debate. It requires forswearing condescension, cant, and nostalgia. The past isn’t quaint. Much of it, in fact, is bleak.
    -- Jill Lepore

the-last-history-of-the-united-states

mojo

yeah

is Trump Hitler?

....let’s not suddenly get all squeamish about killing Hitler or … you know, whoever. Killing Hitlers, and other bogeymen, and innocent men, women, and children is as American as apple pie, not to mention an extremely profitable business. So what’s the problem here, exactly? Either Trump is Hitler or he isn’t Hitler. If he’s Hitler, and a traitorous Russian agent, like all those respected media sources, and those anonymous “Intelligence Community” sources, and those people on Twitter say he is, what the hell is taking so long? Why doesn’t somebody get in there and kill him? What good are all these black ops types if they can’t even save America from Hitler?
     -- cj hopkins

the-assassination-of-donald-trump

apeman

President Trump — who folks ought to stop calling president, as it confers too much respect — has chosen to (once again, as he seems to do daily) underscore just how “sub-human” he is, praising a gubernatorial candidate in Montana for body slamming a reporter. This on the heels of “investigations” into the complicity on the part of Saudi Arabia’s leader in the Khashoggi murder and dismemberment.
    -- Muhammad Othman

stanley-kowalski-for-president?

the head-chopper

I tell you what is the difference between #ISIS & #SaudiArabia practice:

    - #ISIS will never listen to music while beheading & dismembering their victim
    - #SaudiArabia, due to the moderate reformer MBS, listen to Music while cutting the body of #Khashoggi

---- Elijah J. Magnier, veteran War correspondent

saudis-stonewall

goin' to disneyland

More people are punching their tickets to their personal Disney Worlds out of fear of death and while sensing a moral decline with what Western Civilization has imposed on this planet.

talking-about-death-while-in-decadence

Melania

Throughout her career Hillary has been determined to prove that she can play the role of the male leader just as well as her male counterparts did. And Hillary, you are just as capable. Anyone who cannot see your capacity to push aside all forms of empathy and cynically calculate the most regressive forms of patriarchal oppression is a sexist bigot, I have no doubt about that. Melania sadly has kept the woefully outdated and sexist role of first lady intact. But Melania recognizes that one toxic male figure in her marriage is enough.
    -- Nick Pemberton

the-colonial-pantsuit-what-we-didnt-want-to-know-about-africa

bomb Iran- always been the plan

“If the president of the United States wants to take this nation to war, he can take this nation to war. And stopping that is incredibly difficult.”
    -- Kent Conrad, former Senator (D-ND)

“They are people just like us. Why don't we bomb ourselves instead”
    -- db desgnr, malcontent

Trump-has-put-us-on-path-to-war-with-Iran

through a lens, darkly

Quantum physicists, Sufi fakirs, and certain other esoterics understand what most of us don’t, namely, that there is no such thing as “the Truth,” or “Reality,” apart from our perception of it. The world, or “reality,” or whatever you want to call it, is more than happy to transform itself into any imaginable shape and form, based on the lens you are looking at it through. It’s like a trickster in that regard. Look at “reality” through a racist lens, and everything will make sense according to that logic. Look at it through a social justice lens, or a Judeo-Christian lens, or a Muslim lens, or a scientific or a Scientologist lens, or a historical materialist or capitalist lens (it really makes no difference at all) … and abracadabra! A new world is born!
    -- c.j. hopkins

who-doesnt-love-identity-politics?

Waterboys

check out the second song: Mad as the Mist and Snow

blue angels

"....only a severely degraded culture worships its own machines of death"
    -- Jeff Sher

worshipping

IPCC

"The IPCC report demonstrates that it is still possible to keep the climate relatively safe, provided we muster an unprecedented level of cooperation, extraordinary speed and heroic scale of action. But even with its description of the increasing impacts that lie ahead, the IPCC understates a key risk: that self-reinforcing feedback loops could push the climate system into chaos before we have time to tame our energy system, and the other sources of climate pollution."
    -- Nobel prize laureate Mario Molina

ipcc-report-much-much-much-more-terrifying

Dark Mountain

You come here because it’s a good way back from the frontline. You come here when you’re no longer sure where the lines are drawn, when the maps are shaken and old identities scattered. You come here when it’s time to reflect, to ground yourself again, or to catch the whispering of realities that get drowned out in the street-noise of the everyday world. Maybe you build a shelter for a while, sit around a campfire with strangers who feel like friends, and look back at the orange lights of civilisation: just now, they seem a long way away. But you are not made of granite, peat or heather.

    --Dougald Hine

ten-years-on-a-mountain

drive

red green, white

not too early.......

what about Amazon drones?

US authorities are now allowed to shoot down personal drones if they deem them to be a threat, thanks to a new bill which has been signed by President Donald Trump. But critics say the law could be easily abused.

us-shoot-down-private-drones

WW3 ALERT

It's in the air.....

world-war-3-reporting-escalates

Bono vs Waters

"Well, U2 is kicking off its tour in Berlin this week, and we’ve just had one of our more provocative ideas: during the show we’re going to wave a big, bright, blue EU flag…..to some of us it has become a radical act."
    -- Bono

"I've only ever written about one thing in my life, which is the fact that we, as human beings, have a responsibility to one another and that it's important that we empathize with others, that we organize society so that we all become happier and we all get the life we really want."
    -- Roger Waters

palestinian-rock-vs-euro-thrash-roger-waters-vs-bono

Taliban vs the F35B

Why did the US military have a vertical-take-off F-35B launched from an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean make an attack on a Taliban position in Afghanistan?

Let’s say one thing from the get-go:  It was not because it was the right weapons system for the job.

Designed as a fighter [the F35B] that can fly at Mach 1.6 speed (1199 mph) and be virtually invisible to enemy radar, which of course the Taliban fighters (whose top speed is a few miles per hour) in Afghanistan don’t even have, it is meant to be a sixth-generation fighter intended to assure US forces of air superiority against an advanced enemy with similar planes. The Taliban of course have zero planes or even anti-aircraft weapons. They are about as primitive an enemy as the US has ever confronted since the days of  Gen. Armstrong Custer (who as we know had problems winning even then).

    -- Dave Lindorff

the-f-35-just-attacked-the-taliban