Everything ‘wrong kind of green’ is marked Creative Commons, and bless their hearts for it. It also means that I can dispense with coloring their words blue; won’t that be nice? Take your choice from the menu: one, two, all…or none, of course. It would be a favor to me that if you comment, comment on one exposé at a time. It’ll make it simpler to read and answer shorter comments, for me, at any rate.
July 19, 2016: Cuba VP Leads Delegation To Nicaragua for the Anniversary Of Sandinista Revolution.
Tortilla con Sal, July 31, 2017, tagged the International Campaign to Destabilize Syria, Venezuela , The Soros Network/OSI, Whiteness & Aversive Racism
“The crumbling legitimacy of the US government and its allies in the European Union is reflected in the blatant false witness of Western news media and their NGOs.The United States government is currently applying sanctions to Cuba, Iran, Russia, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Last week, on July 27th the US Congress moved to include Nicaragua too. Apart from these sanctions, the US is also enforcing a variety of sanctions in relation to Belarus, Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, former Ukraine and Yemen. Some of those sanctions are supported by the UN but, in any case, US allies cooperate applying sanctions in a selective way to suit their own interests.
At the highest level, Western strategic thinking in general and US policy making in particular is intellectually and morally corrupt, narcissistic and irrational. Corrupt, because it is so deliberately intellectually ingrown and materially self-serving; narcissistic because it cannot engage other legitimate rationalities; irrational because it operates on the basis of “with us or against us” paranoia. The recent US Department of Defense report (Strategic Studies Institute) “At Our Own Peril“ is the clearest expression of that reality.
US planners really believe that following World War Two the US and its allies shaped and controlled a benign world order and that currently the US and its allies abide by and defend international law. They also assert they project a legitimate, truthful account of world events. Given these insane false beliefs underpinning Western strategic planning, actual and potential targets of Western aggression are bound to work out active measures and alliances based on realistic self-defense.
For the foreseeable future, demented Western foreign policy is in a stage of aggravated desperation as US policymakers adapt to what the DoD report says “can only be described as the early post-U.S. primacy epoch…..This new reality has far-reaching implications for American defense policy, strategy, planning, and risk calculation.”
Among the factors contributing to the new risk environment, the report highlights “the weaponization of information, disinformation, and disaffection.” US military leaders now believe they are already losing their long taken for granted global ideological dominance.
Bringing together progressive and revolutionary movements from across Latin America and the Caribbean, the recent Sao Paulo Forum in Nicaragua also recognized the fundamental importance of the West’s global psychological warfare campaign against the majority world. The Forum’s final declaration notes:
“We should create an anti-hegemonic cultural and communications front incorporating the initiatives of progressive governments as well as the efforts of progressive political forces and social movements, a true revolution is impossible if not accompanied by a deep cultural and communications revolution.”
In this context, reality has definitely caught up and overtaken the wishful rhetoric of the Western corporate elites, their carefully groomed governments, their inept, dysfunctional financial system and, perhaps most clearly of all, their dishonest, counterfeit media. In all of these arenas, strategic analysis, economic policy, news reporting, financial dealings, across the West Gresham’s Law has operated relentlessly, with bad practice forcing out good, progressively exposing the falsity and corruption of Western society under corporate capitalism. That falsity is most immediately obvious in Western information culture including not just mainstream and alternative media, but also reporting by governments and non-governmental organizations.
The crumbling legitimacy of the US government and its allies in the European Union is reflected in the blatant false witness of Western news media and the non-governmental organizations which have now largely displaced legitimate foreign news reporting. Few dispute that Western monopoly corporate interests, control and shape government policy as well as mainstream and alternative news media. Less self-evident is the way those elites and their proxies in government promote “the weaponization of information, disinformation, and disaffection” via humanitarian and human rights NGOs.
A few writers have exposed the role of NGOs in promoting the psychological warfare agenda of the United States and allied governments. Cory Morningstar, for example, has exposed the pro-NATO global political agenda of organizations like Avaaz and Presence. She argues, “the most vital purpose of the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC) has not been to destroy the ecocidal economic system that enslaves us while perpetuating and ensuring infinite wars. Rather, the key purpose of the NPIC is and has always been to protect this very system it purports to oppose from being dismantled. Hence the trillions of dollars pumped into the NPIC by the establishment.”
The campaigns led by NATO powers in 2011 against Ivory Coast, Libya, Syria share the same psy-warfare characteristics used against all the countries targeted by US sanctions. Right now, Venezuela is the target at the most vulnerable stage where a shift could happen very abruptly from current low-intensity NATO country covert, diplomatic, economic and media warfare to outright military aggression either direct or by proxy. Ever since the 2002 coup, opposition non governmental organizations have been key players in destabilizing Venezuela falsely exploiting the motifs of human rights, corruption. They have done so with consistent support from Western NGOs like Human Rights Watch, International Crisis Group, Transparency International and many others.
Alexander Soros and Silas Kpanan’Ayoung Siakor attend The Alexander Soros Foundation’s Global Witness ‘Unmasked’ Gala on July 7, 2012 in Bridgehampton, New York.” Source: Getty Images [Further reading].
“In Nicaragua’s case the decision to introduce the so called NICA Act applying economic sanctions against the country was preceded a month earlier by publication of a report from the Global Witness organization falsely alleging that Nicaragua is the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists. In 2016, Global Witness had a budget of over US$13 million, receiving US$3.4 million from the George Soros Open Society Foundation, US$1.5 million from Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network, US $840,000 from the Ford Foundation and over US$3 million from European NATO governments plus Sweden. The Global Witness Board and Advisory Board and CEO are all luminaries from the Western elite non-governmental sector.
Despite these tremendous material and human resources, the Global Witness report in relation to Nicaragua is inept, poorly researched and downright inaccurate, as occasional Guardian columnist John Perry, among others, has explained. In 2016, Global Witness brought out a similarly false account of problems in Nicaragua’s northern Caribbean Coast. But traditional reporting methods, like cross-checking sources or comparing competing accounts of events, are irrelevant for weaponized NATO country news media and the disinformation NGOs they increasingly rely on for foreign news. Now a decision has been taken by the US elites to attack Nicaragua, the campaign may well unfold with sanctions steadily being ratcheted up, damaging the same Nicaraguan people these phony Western advocates of human rights claim they want to protect.
That is what has happened to Cuba for well over 50 years. More recently, those same Western elites and their advocates have supported the corrupt oligarchs and Nazi shock forces who destroyed Ukraine. They supported equipping, supplying and training the organized crime gangs and pseudo-Islamist terrorists that destroyed Libya and Syria. They give support covering up the crimes of fascist Venezuelan paramilitaries setting people on fire and attacking hospitals and preschools, just as they did the massacre in the labor union building in Odessa in May 2014. Morally, intellectually, ethically the Western elites are worthy successors to their genocidal colonialist forebears using the same bogus claims of moral and cultural superiority to justify their crimes. The false witness of their media and their NGOs is a clear signal they know they have no legitimacy.”
Further reading: Nicaragua, libya360.wordpress.com
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Now this one’s quite long, but I’ll offer it for your consideration, or at least some portions of it, but he calls out a number of my pet peeve brands as bourgeois enablers. Klein’s tweet/s at the top I watched in close to real time.
‘Naomi Klein “resists” Trump by embracing bourgeois progressive politics’, the Leftist Critic, Aug. 4, 2017
“Recently, I read Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. It is a relatively quick read, only 273 pages long, much shorter than her This Changes Everything book a few years back. Even so, it has thirteen chapters, a conclusion, a postscript, and an introduction.
In the introduction to the book sets the theme: that Trump is applying “shock politics” to the US, trying to pull off a “domestic shock doctrine” against public institutions and “public interest.” She goes on to describe Trump’s reactionary advisers like Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner while claiming there is a “corporate takeover” in DC (there is actually a long trend of corporate control in America, so it’s not something new), with Trump forming a brand in and of himself. She, of course, stops short of calling Trump fascist, only describing him as anti-“democratic” (relying on the idea of bourgeois democracy) and drawing parallels to policies in Greece, after Hurricane Katrina, in Baghdad after 2003, and in Britain, which resemble “Trumpism.” As she states clearly, her book’s argument is that Trump is a culmination of the “worst trends” of the 20th century that have “used race as a weapon to advance brutal economic policies,” pioneered by Milton Friedman, and other “market fundamentalists.” She also seems optimistic, calling for “change so fundamental that today’s corporate takeover will be relegated to a historical footnote,” although the “change” she later explicates is not even close to being “fundamental,” challenging the Trump superbrand, as she puts it.
After a lackluster introduction with broad vagueness, Klein has a chapter that focuses on Trump the brand, noting that Trump won because of the electoral college, not the popular vote, with his victory as a “shock.” She adds that there is a “surge of authoritarian, xenophobic, far-right politics” in France, India, the Philippines, UK, and Turkey, implying that the morally corrupt socially democratic politics in the West is a “solution.” Also her usage of useless words like “authoritarian” which is often used to shame countries deemed as “communist” or “socialist,” regardless of whether they are or not, means that she is legitimizing this word as speech that’s fine, showing her lack of comprehension in this realm, to say the least. She goes on to talk about Trump’s “cabinet of billionaires and multibillionaires” like it something new (it’s not), and acts like Bernie Sanders was a savior who made Wall Street shake, celebrates “concessions” to Black Lives Matter and the “climate movement” by political elites. She further adds that Trump’s election is part of a backlash against social movements, with a supposed “takeover” benefiting capitalists and removing environmental protections, for example. Apart from this claptrap which shows that she does not have understanding for how the capitalist state functions, and had changed over time, is a part about branding.
She writes that starting in the 1980s companies like Nike and Apple, among many others, believes their fortunes were in branding with the concept that an idea or brand surrounding a company can connect with consumers, tying to a “profound human desire to be part of…a circle of belonging.” As a result, the product became (and was part of) the brand, meaning that this brand could be projected into “seemingly unconnected physical commodities.” Hence, products were produced at low price by subcontractors and contractors, with horrid work conditions in sweatshops. As a result, capitalist combines everywhere engaged in a brutal “race to the bottom” with complex supply chains involving contractors. As for Trump, after he had been a real estate developer for years he branded “high-end real estate” which could be a “single global luxury brand,” which was boosted by his show, The Apprentice, gaining revenue from “Trump-branded properties” with leasing his name, pulling in the dollars.”, yada, yada.
Much more on Klein calling out Herr T’s branding, branding…Trump’s pushing for more war, Trump worse than Obama, even. The Leftist Critic deconstructs Obama’s alleged legacy as eco-savior, calls out Klein’s desire to tweak capitalism (as if!). Yay-uss, Miz Klein, capitalism must be, should be fettered. Yep, he narrates her love for Bernie Sanders in many directions, offers her belief ‘that it was “important that a generation of kids grew up seeing Obama in the most powerful office of the world.” I do not understand why, realistically this is important, with Black entertainers and politicians already, as his Black face seems just be an invitation to internalize neoliberal values with a happy face.”
‘To be frank, she is being a cheerleader of Bernie, supporting HIS brand, now channeled through “Our Revolution” groups and his persona as inflated in bourgeois progressive media.’
[More chapter descriptions, bigly, bigly snip], then:
“There are a few words I have to say before closing out this article, Klein makes a good point about Trump as a brand but misses many other points because of her bourgeois progressivism. The major point she misses is obvious: she IS a brand. She is among the “heat vampire” including celebrated bourgeois progressives, like Rebecca Solnit and Chris Hayes, that Tarzie wrote about. As Luke Orsbourne wrote in December 2015, she had an “enormous following…best selling books, and perhaps most glaringly, the megaphone and media attention the Guardian had just given her to write her own piece of acquiescence,” condemning climate change marchers outside COP 21 that year, just like 350.org and others. Others added that her book slogan, for This Changes Everything, was “used to advance capital” which was pushed by the Ford Foundation and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and that she is part of a brand called 350.org/1Sky, which used the Obama brand in their anti-KXL campaign logo, allowing there to be a “pro-Obama, pro-Democrat veneer” to their logo, with their campaign reinforcing the illusion that “change” is still in front of us, reinforcing the thirst in society for “lies that enable the populace to continue to ignore reality…[and] disregard our collective role in it.” [snip]
“ANYTHING. In the end, we can read Klein’s claptrap if we want to (I don’t recommend it) but we should always remember she is a brand, a commodity, and a “heat vampire.”
(again, the rest is here.)
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‘Why Are All the Black Faces in Conservation in the Background?’ by Oyunga Pala, Aug 06, 2017 tagged Whiteness & Aversive Racism
“Nairobi National Park is the only park on earth bordering a capital city. It is the world’s wildlife capital and one afternoon in December 2016, it was celebrating 70 years of existence. Nairobi National park was the first gazetted park in the country, started in 1946. Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) was throwing an evening party in the park to commemorate the event. The small gathering, comprised conservationists, friends of Nairobi national park, assorted Kenyans who earn a living in the wildlife industry and uniformed KWS staffers who appeared to be attending more out of protocol than choice.
There was an air of resignation about the place. Out at the Impala observation point, a panoramic view of open savanna grassland, guests mingled awaiting the arrival of the dignitaries as the catering unit from the Ole Sereni hotel hurried about setting up.
The Impala viewpoint offers a compelling sight and I trained my eyes, trying to spot some wildlife. A few KWS staffers who were gathered all seemed to be taking a good long look into the horizon. One wildlife photographer, captured the sentiment with a nostalgic comment,
“This used to be the place to take the best pictures. Now instead of shooting animals, we will be shooting the SGR”.
There were few chuckles. Mostly at the inevitability of the Chinese built Standard Gauge Railway line changing the ecosystem of the park forever. I sensed a deep sense of failure among some KWS staffers, many voicing their concern in hushed tones, certain the park would not survive the onslaught of ‘development’.
The ceremony was running fashionably late and I bumped into former KWS director Juluis Kipng’etich, who is now the Uchumi CEO in the parking lot. Juluis Kipng’etich (Kip) was the poster child of Kenyan conservation during his tenure as director at Kenya Wildlife Service from 2005 to 2012 when he resigned to take up a position at Equity Bank.”
[forgive me, but I can’t bear to embed the photo of the disgusting mound of elephant tusks.]
“Kip was credited with transforming KWS from a malfunctioning organisation into a respected corporate brand. During my stint as the editor of the now defunct Adam magazine, we had Kipng’etich on the cover.
There was a vibrancy to Kip in the midst of the lethargy in public service that we had not witnessed previously. But what made him material for a cover story, was the refreshing face of a competent African, getting the conservation accolades for a change.
I was in attendance, when he unveiled a Heroes statue in memory of KWS officers who had died on the frontier. KWS was on the move then. Today, not so much. Kipng’etich was reflective when I asked him about the anniversary celebrations.
“It feels like we are attending a funeral”.
When the ceremony eventually started, the KWS director Kitili Mbathi anchored his address around a breakfast in the park special visit made by the Togolese president Faure Gnassingb’e and the special place Nairobi holds as the only city in the world with a national park. The guest of honour Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Prof Judy Wakhungu managed to deliver an optimistic speech without making a single reference to the impending railway line construction.
The audience listened, all too aware of the elephant in the room that everyone was pretending not to see.
I was the guest of Jim Justus Nyamu, the founder of the Elephant Neighbors Centre, who had become the face of a campaign dubbed “Ivory belongs To Elephants”. Nyamu was a former KWS elephant scientist and researcher whose primary job was reduced to counting elephants and tracking their movement. He eventually resigned to start his own organisation, once he realised the limitation of the existing conservation model.
The big beasts that had for centuries, roamed the country on dedicated paths were now in constant conflict with ordinary rural folk. The narrative of protecting elephants for tourist dollars was not persuasive among local people suffering loss of property and lives after encounters with elephants. There was a big disconnection with the reality of public in understanding the value of wildlife conservation but conservation could not left solely in the hands of the ‘experts’
People had to get involved. 70 per cent of the Kenya’s wildlife lie outside KWS parks and the service is stretched in capacity and resource. Jim was seeking to create a different model around the problem.
“The people who can make a real difference are the communities but no one is talking to them. Especially the children. They are the only ones who still have time to make a difference”.
So he decided to walk and talk to local people urging them to take ownership of their wildlife heritage and have a say. Jim has so far covered over 9000kms in Kenya, 900kms in the US, in addition to an epic 3200km foot journey across East Africa.”
The rest of the story is here, but allow me to tempt you with two more images. Bless Oyunga Pala and the authors of The Big Conservation Lie. ‘They poke large holes into the legacies of conservation stalwarts, Richard Leakey, George Adamson, Douglas-Hamilton, Dr. Daphne Sheldrick and Ian Craig.’
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
g’night. don’t let the devil getcha down. ;-)
OT:
Lee Fang (The Intercept) finds a nut:
https://theintercept.com/2017/08/09/atlas-network-alejandro-chafuen-libertarian-think-tank-latin-america-brazil/
oh, my, amigo. i dunno how to say this w/o sounding like a mean gurl, but ‘the intercept’ i a bridge too far for me, unless, of course, it’s to call out the imperialists there, and ‘pierre’ himself. yes, i used to like lee fang when dissident voice picked up his columns (and photo-journeys, iirc).
how about if i just read the wiki on atlas network and call it good? it’s not even all that long, thankfully. ;-)
Thus the “blind squirrel finds a nut” warning. A long take down of Atlas and US involvement in it. More than what’s in the Wikipedia and more pointed about US actions. Cost Pierre some bandwidth. Or not, if it’s still a bridge too far. It’s not like you’re naive about the site.
I’ve gotten to the point that most of what I see has specific agendas that are trying to spin what they are reporting.
Too much putting white hats and black hats on people who are just mixing it up for their fee and the little or big bucks.
In the midst of global realignment to a multipolar global system (at least if not on the way to something else), confusion and cluelessness and ambiguity are to be expected. Even Pepe Escobar has to manage access journalism in order to get stories. Openness to talking to him does not come without a specific narrative. So far he seems pretty transparent to the direction of that narrative which some of your bete noires do not always seem to do. Naomi Klein on Shock Doctrine was a helpful wake-up if only for the way she argued about the uses of catastrophe and failure to correct. My guess is that she is making the same argument about the failure to address climate change: it is a feature and a plan for someone’s agenda, not a bug. And not for just a replay of the same old version of the Contradictions of Capitalism rondo and gallop. (Which reminds me, I need to see if I can catch up with David Harvey’s newest in 3 weeks and also his Contradictions of Capitalism one from around 2012).
While I’m here, the issue of why all the black faces in the environmental movement are in the background has both a US answer and a global answer. The global answer is that the “developed world” (cough the Atlantic and North Pacific nations) don’t want black environmental agendas moved to the foreground for reasons of serious accountability. Just look at how accommodating the Aussies are to the folks from Nauru after Australian mining interests mined the phosphate and have been just as slow as most English settler colonialist countries at reducing the possibility of sea-level rising. Holding all climate refugees on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea–a huge humanitarian nightmare.
For the US, as I have been reminded by some black environmentalists who point me to Carolyn Finney, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors points out the conflicted meaning of the outdoors for African-Americans, especially the forested and swampy outdoors characteristic of the the Southeast. Or the outdoor open spaces in US major cities and who is and who isn’t considered normal to be there. Given our local wetlands preservation efforts and clean water activism, this is a very significant issue for us mostly white, somewhat more affluent, well-educated older people seeking to show people wildflowers and swamp forests and beaverdams and stream meanders and greenbrier thickets.
fiddlesticks; it looks like i owe you a response. my apologies. perhaps later this evening? i’ve had my head down composing a new diary and hadn’t checked emails. looks like an intriguing book, from the title.
yep, klein’s shock doctrine became a household idea; i even have a category here for that theme. ‘confessions of an economic hitman’ perkins told the story first, iirc. he, by the by, now operates a site he’s dubbed ‘spiritual capitalism’, lol.
dunno that i’ll avoid putting white hats, black hats on, but as for a media organization owned by the fascist, imperialist omidyar, if his stable of what, 99 ‘fearless investigative journalists’ don’t care to know who he is, and take his money…so be it. i just won’t give them a click unless it’s to read something that’s so outrageous the twittersphere takes notice. ‘follow the money’ is always good advice. rockefeller foundation, tides, et. al. funding mckibben and klein…oh, yeah, they stick to a gate-keeping agenda. oh, and shoot, if they’re just in it for the bucks, i don’t really care if they get published or not.
but thanks for ‘the nut’ capsule. morning news has trump threatening military action to ‘restore democracy’ in VZ. and north korea, but that’s old news, isn’t it? what.a.mouth.
now pepe, being an indy journalist, must pitch stories to different organizations? dunno how that works, but yes, sometimes for me it’s like: “they seek him here, they seek him there…that damned elusive…pimpernell!
good points on black ecologists globally, but that’s exactly what’s driven so many indigenous websites to spring up and report the grievous things afoot. haven’t checked any of these lately, but i do keep them on a blogging help list for when i remember. ;-) one of them, iirc, was said to have been compromised, though. and yes, i can just imagine that w/ your wetlands restoration projects…it is an issue locally.
http://intercontinentalcry.org/
http://www.indigenousaction.org/
http://www.defendersoftheland.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/
as it turns out it wasn’t so OT in the end, as per the first of the WKOG three bagsful (tortilla del sol). ‘Atlas identifies, screens and offers initial financial support to individuals and groups who want to create local think tanks in various countries.[1] Atlas provides assistance to think tanks that support private-property rights, limited government, the rule of law, and market economics.’, milton friedman, george will, et.al. so many latin american countries ‘teach’ the joys of free market capitalism to! oh, where does the time go?
on edit: similarly democracy now in the main, a well. ‘•War Crimes Expert Quits U.N. Syria Inquiry Citing Lack of Political Will for Justice; • Syrian-Palestinian Internet Activist Bassel Khartabil Killed by Assad Regime’
speaking of ‘brands’, wsws has a piece up with this at the start:
“This was the finding of a report issued last week by the anti-hunger charity Share Our Strength, based on a survey of 500 low-income parents and their teenage children in public schools. Some 325 teachers were also interviewed. “Low-income” was defined as at or below 185 percent of the official poverty line, or $45,417 a year for a family of four.” some 13 million in all.”
now i was taken aback at the numeric extrapolation with a mere 825 interviews, not that i don’t believe that there are far more hungry school kids in amerika. the site seems shocked that kids are hungry!
‘share our strength’ is NoKidHungry.org, nat’l spokesperson is ‘the dude’. and of course you meet ‘donate now’ comin’ in the door. ‘Every $10 you give can provide up to 100 meals for a child who is still facing hunger.’ wow, do they rub the coins together and the multiply? or are they ten cent meals?
so i checked out several of the tabs. core partners are citibank, arbys, walmart, and food netowork. the nat’l partners list is so long it’s on a scroll. sure, you can hold a bakesale, donate the proceeds, spread the word, raise $ in your community…or better yet! ‘Support Kids with a Big Night Out, When you attend one of No Kid Hungry’s famous culinary events, you’re not just in for a fabulous time; you’re helping kids in your community.’ sponsors: cysco, the glenlivet, open table, citibank, and food network. there are rules! ‘Culinary Events Terms & Conditions’ are hilarious, you can sign up for their internship programs. here’s their financial page. hmmmm, well, ya can hide a lot in those words. gawd’s blood; don’t ya hate a cynic? i do.
oh lord. at the last little religious outfit I was a part of, CSX donated something north of $10k (I forget, 12 or 15) toward the construction of a commercial kitchen, whose primary purpose, ostensibly, was to run a feeding program for the indigent.
google this: csx labor relations wsws
some tiny % of the money they save on fucking over “their” employees goes into the p/r of giving money to charity.
well there sure seemed to be some terms to parse (or not for the wealthy rubes) on that page. but 10 cent meals? i did do the a.rith.me.tic right, didn’t i? ‘the dude’s’ video had piano playing over his voice. was that the plan?
be back soon, gotta major mess goin’ here. Q: why does cleaning make such a mess…so often? A: clean more often, ya slut.
found here:
http://whateveritisimagainstit.blogspot.com/2017/08/today-100-august-9-1917-of-controlled.html
a reading w/images of S Sassoon’s “memorial tablet.”
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-40745507/i-died-in-hell-they-called-it-passchendaele
the garden & the tomb. look at all the effort that goes into beautifying the dead. and then look at how they died. and why.
the future is the images from the battlefield, not the lie of the memorial garden. Naomi klein & the big greens & ngo’s & HRW’s are there to distract everyone with a wreath-laying ceremony on capitalism’s momentarily well-tended battlefield memorials.
maybe OT, but if there is one advantageous (if not good) thing about Trump, it is his superego’s inability to control eruptions from his id. he has not the unctuousness to use pretty, yet absolutely vile, phrases like “all options on the table.” he hasn’t got that Harvard-Oxbridge anointing. In threatening NK so pitilessly, he only speaks what US policy is toward *the world*, a truth his class labors mightily to obfuscate at every turn. But, since his self, like all of ours, is not simply his own, his id cannot help but give voice to collective fears (ours) & wish fantasies (his & his class): the nuclear unconscious we all share & repress.
just what the fuck do murkin dumbasses think the US has a nuclear arsenal for?
and what’s the difference b/n a pile of elephant tusks in Kenya & the now 100 yr old trenches of Europe? why *must* China run a train thru that park in Kenya? if they don’t…
‘what greater glory could a man desire?’ words fail
but omg: AI’s tweets are bloody great!
a bee, a-bee, that’s all for now! oh, and sluttish: 2. a woman with low standards of cleanliness.
“the future is the images from the battlefield, not the lie of the memorial garden. Naomi klein & the big greens & ngo’s & HRW’s are there to distract everyone with a wreath-laying ceremony on capitalism’s momentarily well-tended battlefield memorials.” your mind works in wonderful and mysterious ways, nagelbett.
perhaps the white saviors in kenya will fashion poppies from the elephant ivory. but he’d said ‘chinese built’, so i dunno about the rest. okay. sigh; here it is, and yes, some chinese co. won the contract. but it’s even worse than just the railroad. progress for the middle class! (national geo w/ so many OMG photos)
tell me what the clip signifies as far as ‘if they don’t?
oh just that someone else will. if kenya (or “kenya”) is offering, someone will do it.
that last pic on nat geo w/the boys playing says it all don’t it? good luck keeping the elephants & birds off. the end of wildness. welcome to the middle class Kenyans!
yep, boys will play (although one may have been a gurl). but clerk douglas in the video, ‘letting the boys cry and enjoy some relief’. wish i knew what the song said…. ‘liebchen’ (sweetheart?) was all that was familiar to me. where’s herr von davidly, anyway? ;-)
but in the end, the everyday village kenyans…were thrust aside. as a aside: giraffes live there, and oh, i wish i could have see giraffes i the wild once. talk about a body built toward a food source! cervical vertebrae maybe a foot long each? oh, my, what a wonder they are. but oe day so many of the wild critters will only be seen…i zoos.
my try at remediating my sluttishness a wee bit has exhausted me; i’m out 4 the night. here’s tonight’s lullaby:
babylon (rastafarian for the great satan/western Imperium), hence, café babylon: