Protecting the Status Quo

The demonstration called for Sunday, 17th June, in support of Julian Assange, is one of the most important and urgent for many years. Two days later, it will be six years since Julian was forced to take refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

If he steps outside the embassy, it’s more than likely he will face extradition to the United States on concocted charges of espionage. What this means is that he and WikiLeaks have performed an extraordinary public service by revealing the lies and crimes of great power. This is true journalism.--WSWS

If I have to see or listen to another halfwit denigrate Assange as some sort of enemy of America on corporate TV,  I'll slug that sonofabitch in the face.

That includes the entire American ruling class of dimwits and their blogging faithful.

You fucks, Chelsea, Snowden and Assange all did you a favor and you don't even fucking know it.

You know why?

Because you're stupid fucking jingoists.

Ha, ha, ha.  Gotcha!


TS

Burns Blew It

Many VFP members have first-hand knowledge of the broad anti-war movement, some as participants in the active-duty G.I. resistance where they conducted peaceful protests, sabotage and outright mutiny, and some in the civilian peace movement after their military service.  Nowhere in 18 hours of programming does the G.I. resistance movement merit mention and “instead of honoring the civilian peace movement for its accomplishments, activists are generally belittled as self-interested and self-indulgent, with stress on its supposed deep antagonism toward American soldiers,” the ad protests. 

VFP concludes its ad, just above an iconic photograph of protesting G.I.s holding a banner emblazoned with, “We won’t fight another rich man’s war,” by saying that if the Burns/Novick series is “crowned with an Emmy, this defective history of the Vietnam era will become required viewing for generations of young Americans—a seductive, but false, interpretation of events.”--MF

My take is Burns and his collaborator wrote and presented another mythology.  No Pentagon Papers, no examination of the interior of military resistance?

After resisting the war and then studying it in detail as an undergrad and beyond by delving into innumerable enlightened texts, such as Michael Herr's Dispatches, Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War and many others, I knew Burns had sold out.

This happens when you get a big contract from PBS to write a corporate-friendly version of reality.

Keep those donors away from the fires, tell more lies, and life goes on for the comfortable war-makers while the soothing myths expand many times over.

FWIW, I didn't bother with the doc.  I knew it would be awful.


TS

Kill List

Locked and loaded and able to kill anything that moves.

Regime change and the promotion of "democracy" around the world never had it so good.


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Recent Dishes from the RBP Kitchen

From the top, I found a deal on 2 1bs of boneless pork ribs. Parboiled for an hour, skillet-browned in butter with garlic and herbs.  Threw some BBQ sauce on those babies, mixed, served over rice, sprinkled with olive oil.  Bang!  Not as good as outdoors, but okay.

Next I boiled up my pasta, sauced it up with tomato, added cooked spinach (with onions, seasoned). Finished with olive oil...  Bingo!  It lacked something...andouille sausage perhaps?

Eggs scrambled soft, no meat.  Herb and garlic pots. No meat?  Hey, we're trying to stay healthy here at RBP... But wait, I finished it with ketchup?  Kapow! Thas' old school ain't it?  No BS.  Are you okay with that?


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Will Power and Glory

They ran the Indy 500 today. 

Sorry for Danica. She's earned her babe status no matter what.

My Indy story from 2014.


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Yep, Rep. Peter King is a Moron

King said he believes the anthem-protest movement is based on a falsehood, as was Nazism. The kneeling movement is based off a “lie” that there’s anti-black policing going on “and the statistics don’t show it,” King said.

“You shouldn’t be disrespecting the American flag no matter who you are,” he said.--Newsday

There is no "anti-black policing going on," right?

Not telling you anything you didn't already know of course, but Rep. Peter King is a dunce.

His home town on Long Island is 98% White.  Shit for brains.

King Whitey's District.  Every town has 11,000 people?  Bullshit.


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Yep, Perez is an Idiot

Cuomo, meanwhile, has secured endorsements from former Vice President Joe Biden as well as former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

In a series of tweets, comedian and writer Gabe Gonzalez said, "Perez has always placed party loyalty over progress," and concluded, "If the best Cuomo can do is muster Hillary, Biden, and Perez to endorse him, voters should seriously ask themselves whether he's the candidate to guide NY into the future."--JC

I think Democratic elites wouldn't mind another term of the Orangutan as long as it means they can continue to put up the fraudulent "resistance" as a talking point and maintain control of their corporate donations and the status quo.  It doesn't matter if they win or lose important governing positions, as long as they have their little dollop of power.  Their overall malfeasance sickens me.


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Known Fact

A key component is missing from the current controversial discussion surrounding football players and the national anthem. In the recent days of argument over whether NFL players have the right to protest racial inequality and systemic injustice in the United States, few have brought up the fact that less than a decade ago, professional football players didn’t even appear on the field during the national anthem.--EN

Like everything else in the U.S., patriotism is bought and sold on the open market. The sweetheart deals among major professional sports franchises and their billionaire owners and the Department of Defense are rich, concocted lies.

If a couple of international hoodlums like U.S. Sens. McClain and Flake are capable of ascertaining why this is a poor idea, you'd think even more people of questionable intellect might get the point.

Though their qualms sadly aren't focused on the moral aspects of this arrangement, budget talk is better than nothing.

The entire spectacle of what happens pre-game in virtually every major sporting event is a calculated charade, propaganda par excellence.

Any thinking athlete or fan feels the fraudulent nature of the "patriotic experience" at hand. The NFL "kneeling" protests are obviously emblematic of that.

There has never been a better running back or home-run slugging first baseman alive than the ones concocted by the jingoists for the purpose of exploitation--patriots number 1 and 2.

I don't care how much money professional athletes get paid for this nonsense, they're being used if they buy into the ruse--it's simply more stupid billionaire arrogance, and our prez is exemplar.

Here's your other reading for the weekend.


TS 

high concept

How to make a name for oneself in the art world? Every up-and-coming artist has to face that intimidating question in one way or another, but Robert Rauschenberg, now remembered as a leading light of the pop art movement, came up with a particularly memorable answer. When in 1953 he got the counterintuitive idea to make a drawing not by drawing, but by erasing, he at first tried erasing images he'd drawn himself. This brought him to the realization that not only should his erasing constitute more than half the process — "I wanted it to be the whole,” he later said — but that, to make a real artistic impact, he'd have to erase the work of someone important.--CM

The Human Eraser.


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Roth Dies at 85

The greatest American writer to never win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

For me he was spellbinding, in the same manner as Dostoevsky.  Every line was the truth as far as he knew it, even in his handling of irony.

RIP, Philip Roth.



TS

Chilean Poet

In review I've discovered he became something of a craze and sensation posthumously (the usual story), but a friend recently introduced me to the Chilean poet/novelist Roberto Bolano (1953-2003).

Give him a go if you haven't already.


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The Varieties of Atheism

John Gray is a self-described atheist who thinks that prominent advocates of atheism have made non-belief seem intolerant, uninspiring and dull. At the end of the first chapter of his new book, Seven Types of Atheism, he concludes that “the organised atheism of the present century is mostly a media phenomenon and best appreciated as a type of entertainment.”--PF

I found this to be an interesting read.

In other words there's a whole lotta dogma to go around.


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The Word

This is a doomed tactic, but one that is understandable. The leadership of the party, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez, are creations of corporate America. In an open and democratic political process, one not dominated by party elites and corporate money, these people would not hold political power. They know this. They would rather implode the entire system than give up their positions of privilege. And that, I fear, is what will happen. The idea that the Democratic Party is in any way a bulwark against despotism defies the last three decades of its political activity. It is the guarantor of despotism.--CH

As usual, Chris Hedges has the word.


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Haiku/RP Thomas

     
         











          her bare feet on the
                                                         
 plymouth dashboard dripping from

          a dip at the creek


          flathead roaring home

 vinyl beer and the fire chief
                       
          waiting at the door


         I like the smell of

 hot summer full of this girl

         lilac to the brain



--RP Thomas 



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Read and Give

The key component of this presidency is the same as that which has been inseparable from at least the majority of his predecessors. The main difference which is disgustingly and unavoidably central to Trump’s presidency is his vain, brutishly honest expression of his (and most presidents before him) lack of integrity between his words used to get elected and his actions after being elected. This slimy method of misrepresentation is made uniquely Trumpian by the crudeness of his interpretation, but his rudely indifferent wording is, perversely, a more  honest expression of what is the long established method of operations within the global corporetum known as the “USA.”--CTS

Good stuff here, and a boatload of more good stuff.


TS