War $$$

“we are prepared to fight and win” [Russia has] “chosen to be an adversary and poses a long-term existential threat.....This year’s budget request reflects our solemn commitment to the security of our allies and partners.”
   --General Philip Breedlove, commander of the US European Command

So up goes US military expenditure yet again, and the Pentagon’s generals and the Wall Street investors and the weapons manufacturers all over the United States rub their hands in delight. These snaky schemers are what the great President Eisenhower called the “military industrial complex” of seemingly patriotic Americans who, in the final essence, are America’s own worst enemy.   
   --Brian Cloughley

is-washington-preparing-for-war-against-russia? 

Let it Bern

So does [Sanders], after spending months hammering home the reality that Clinton is the bought-and-paid candidate of the the banks, the arms industry, the oil industry and the medical-industrial complex, and after enduring endless lies about his own record spouted by Clinton and her surrogates, go ahead and endorse her as the party’s standard bearer for the general election? Does he walk away and return quietly to Vermont? Or does he instead continue to fight for his “political revolution” by another route?
the-push-to-make-sanders-the-green-partys-candidate

God's Red Pencil

".....for the last seventy years all chemical and biological technologies, from genetic engineering to pesticides, have been built on a myth of precision and specificity. They have all been adopted under the pretense that they would function without side effects or unexpected complications. Yet the extraordinary disasters and repercussions of DDT, leaded paint, agent orange, atrazine, C8, asbestos, chlordane, PCBs, and so on, when all is said and done, have been stories of the steady unraveling of a founding myth of precision and specificity.

Nevertheless, with the help of industry propagandists, their friends in the media, even the United Nations, we are once again being preached the gospel of precision. But no matter how you look at it, precision is a fable and should be treated as such."

   --Jonathan Latham

Precision 

how many medals you got?

"....James P. Stevenson, has just written an essay analyzing yet another, little examined set of visual aids propping up the surrealism of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC).  His subject is the proliferation of glittering “been there, done that” decorations now adorning the chests of our senior military officers." warisboring.com
   --Chuck Spinney 

pentagon-gong-show

in Palestine

“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned … what is required, despite pessimism of the intellect, is optimism of the will.”
   -- Antonio Gramsci

.....nearly every Palestinian expresses a sure confidence in their eventual success, even if the time frame may be vague or long-delayed.  It is hard to find anyone here who accepts that the Zionist project is permanent, at least in its present form —  or that the liberation struggle will ultimately fail.

in-palestine 

threescore and ten

threescore years and ten the age of seventy as one's allotted span, with biblical allusion to Psalm 90:

You have set our iniquities before you,
    our secret sins in the light of your presence.
All our days pass away under your wrath;
    we finish our years with a moan.
Our days may come to seventy years,
    or eighty, if our strength endures; 
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
    for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

no-retirement-age-for-rebellion 

Prince

thanks to R. Beatty for the clip. Prince solo at 3:28

resistance is futile

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity....we repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure....

 "hey Bernie!" How are those numbers? Ha! Didn't do so well in your old Brooklyn neighborhood did you? Wonder why that is?"
   -- Hill


At least 126,000 voters in Brooklyn, New York, were purged from voter rolls. The purge seems to be a symptom of the state’s “closed primary” system, which forces voters to affiliate with a political party to vote. Yet, the disenfranchisement of so many voters in Brooklyn and in other parts of the state ahead of the primary on April 19 has most Democrats excusing what should be considered voter suppression.
   --Common Dreams, Copyright FDL Media Group ©, All Rights Reserved