Global
Los Angeles, June 15, 2017 – The Los Angeles Workers Center and Hollywood Progressive co-present the revolutionary classic Arsenal.
Reactionaries howl in outrage at Kathy Griffin’s photo of the comedienne holding a faux severed, bloody head of the president and against Shakespeare in the Park’s modern dress version of Julius Caesar, wherein the assassinated emperor is a Trump look-alike. Of course, these condemnations of exercises in free expression are spewed by the same cry babies waging holy war against whatever they perceive as “political correctness.” Trump and his minions denounce efforts to protect religious, ethnic and LGBTQ minorities from public insults and hate speech as infringements on their First Amendment right - but cry bloody murder whenever their sacred cows are mocked and raked over the coals.
The word, inappropriately uttered, has the news value of a bullet fired off at the mall. One word. It’s the ticking time bomb of American history. It pulsates with paradox.
I want to take a moment to honor at least that: the paradox. How come its meaning changes depending on who says it? Some Americans can say that word with a sort of joyous irony, indeed, find a triumphant sense of empowerment in its use, while others can’t say it even in solidarity without risking an avalanche of censure?
For the past many years and for many years to come, “extremism” has been unacceptable in U.S. politics. One must be in favor of more fossil fuel pipelines under certain strict conditions, not against them entirely. That would be extreme.
The moment when extremism becomes acceptable, or ceases to be extremism, will be the instant before the last human being breathes his or her last breath on a baked and ravaged planet. On that last breath may be the words: “I’ll be a leftist now, I suppose.”
Today, of course, one must be in favor of the good wars and against the bad ones — but not too much against the bad ones. One must not try to abolish war entirely. That would be extreme. So would be banning nuclear weapons.
But in that moment when we know that the nuclear missiles have been launched by the dozens, someone may have the presence of mind to mutter: “Perhaps banning them might have been sort of pragmatic after all. Of course it’s not something worth voting for a third party over. I loved you. Good bye.”
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's belief in
lying Vietnamese spies, "ghosts," "slicky boys" and "marketplace mush"
contributed to America losing its Vietnam War in 1975, according to
James Parker, the last CIA officer to evacuate Vietnam.
When asked in an interview about CIA-run Vietnamese spies who
fabricated information for the CIA's reports during the war, Mr.
Parker, 73, replied:
"Ah, the lying spy syndrome."
When the CIA operates in any country, "you cannot get intel [CIA
intelligence] operatives to stay in a battle zone for more than a
couple of years at a time, so the occupational problems of fabricators
was unavoidable.
"I was in Afghanistan [during] 2010 and 2011," Mr. Parker said,
describing one of his most recent CIA assignments.
"The best intel service there was probably the Israel Mossad,
wouldn't you think? Because they had been operating in that area for
years."
Worldwide, for the CIA, "it's hard to recruit spies, to find them,
hen was the last time we had a sitting president and a former FBI director calling each other liars? And something like 100 per cent of the population seems to believe that at least one of the accused liars is a real liar. That’s the new American normal.
The Comey circus produced a holiday atmosphere in DC, with bars open for business before the live hearings came on. And the TV audience for the Comey show was an apparently impressive 19 million-plus viewers. But that’s pallid next to the presidential inauguration’s 30 million-plus, or the Super Bowl’s typical 110 million-plus in the US. Here you may insert the appropriate comment about how these numbers reflect American priorities, with football being five times more engaging than a game where the republic is an underdog.
Laughter is a wonderful thing. It’s hard to get too much of it. But there may be something even more valuable — something that you may be better able to grasp than some of your elders.
When you’re able to see a failure in others, it can be an opportunity to spot other similar failures — even those that you may be, in some measure, sharing in.
Why do climate deniers deny? No two are identical, but a major factor for many of them seems to be, not an analysis of evidence but loyalty to a worldview. In this worldview it simply cannot be the case that people are destroying the earth. That’s not in the sacred texts. There’s no place for it in many careers or lifestyles designed around extraction, consumption, destruction, and “development” of the world. Accepting the obvious would be harder than denying it. So it is denied, or — by far preferable — simply ignored and avoided.
Donald Trump and New York governor Andrew Cuomo have joined forces in destroying our economy and environment.
While Trump wages global war on the climate, Cuomo demands a statewide bailout meant to keep failed nuke reactors on line until they melt and/or explode, Fukushima-style.
Trump and Cuomo are both apostles of radioactive obsolescence.
The global climate treaty Trump wants to break has been signed by every nation on Earth except Syria and Nicaragua (which wants stronger terms).
Trump is globalizing the US legacy of breaking 800 treaties with indigenous peoples.
Like America’s indigenous tribes, the nations of the world will never trust us again.
Trump has shredded our global standing, as Germany’s Angela Merkel (CEO of the world’s #4 economy) has pronounced us an unreliable trading partner and China (#2) moves to partner directly with the European Union.
As Trump sabotages the dollar, watch him blame our economic death spiral on Muslims, commies, immigrants, and people of color.
Trump’s wedge between the US and Germany is a dream come true for Putin’s petro-mafia.
There has been a lot of media coverage mostly written by Israelis or American Jews regarding Israel’s “victory” fifty years ago during the so-called Six Days War directed against its Arab neighbors but I have yet to see an account that mentions the fate of the U.S.S. Liberty. Nevertheless, the Liberty is not forgotten. This Thursday at noon at Arlington National Cemetery there will be a small gathering for the annual coming together with the survivors and friends of the most decorated ship in the history of the U.S. Navy, a victim of a particularly brutal and unprovoked attack by Israel that has been covered up for half a century by the powers that be in Washington.