Open Thread WE 12 MAY 21
I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet.
- Hugo Chavez
Howdy. Just an observation here today. Whenever I hear the pundits and media describe the US in terms like : "richest nation on earth" or "the world's greatest democracy" or the POTUS as "the leader of the free world" my mind goes into a tumble. Old enough now to remember better times, both financially and socially, when portions of truth were more accessible and better understood.
Seems the heart and soul of our nation has been stolen by the corporate oligarchy and sold to the highest bidder internationally. It is menacing to think of earlier times when progression of ideas, expanding consciousness and social change were on the horizon .. only to see it being erased into the sunset of what was or could have been. Has anyone else noticed this demise? Sure, we read about these issues here a lot. What is a optimist to do with an existential crises in the works?
"The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now" - J. G. Ballard
"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments". - Michael Parenti
Credits
“AmeriCan’t” (2018) Alvaro Naddeo
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/category/art/
https://www.tentmaker.org/Quotes/america_falling_quotes.html
It's open thread time folks. Post way!
Comments
Don't believe this:
Meet Annalena Baerbock, the trampolinist giving Germany's Green party a bounce in the race to succeed Angela Merkel
That is what CNN wants you to believe. But Baerbock is not what she is made the public to believe. She snuffed out Robert Habeck, who was too morally soft-hearted to fight against her.
Robert Habeck is the brain, she is the the equivalent of the AOC-type of talking too much propaganda woman. Robert Habeck should have been the candidate.
Well, there is always something to get pissed about. I am done with the world. She will not deliver policies that I could support. But then who could do that anyhow.
Thanks for the OT.
https://www.euronews.com/
Good day Mimi
I guess it is heartening to hear your description of politics as kabuki theater also in Germany.
Hate to think the US is the only one. Funny how the media re-frames issues to fit a pre-determined script. Enjoy your mulchers!
"Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills?" Kahlil Gibran
'Morning QMS,
It does turn the stomach doesn't it, when TPTB spout all those Orwellian phrases about great this and great that. Many around the world know the farce for what it is and that the emperor has no clothes. It is a shame.
It does seem TPTB have pissed away the opportunities to try and make things better.
This article from BAR is very much along this same train of thought.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/usa-immoral-illegal-irredeemable-and-i...
Thanks for the OT, and as eyo says, good luck to all.
Here is an interview
with Raoul Peck whose new film Exterminate All the Brutes, is airing on HBO. I know JS highlighted this in the EB, but I thought this was a good interview. His previous film is, I Am Not Your Negro, and is about James Baldwin.
Since Truman created the CIA
The US has become increasingly evil...the world's biggest exporter of weapons, war, and violence.
I suspect Truman was selected for that purpose after TPTB got rid of Henry Wallace, who I expect would not have allowed the mafia branch of our gov't to be formed.
My hope is the US empire can collapse without WWIII.
We are having a cool spring here in the SE, and the tomatoes and peppers don't like it. On the other hand, the cabbage, greens, lettuce and such do.
Hope you all have a great day. Rain is lifting here and we're due several sunny days in a row.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
We have had some much needed
rain here. The plants look quenched.
Hola QMS, great picture. Temperature rising here -
100+ in the patio by our thermometer, corresponding to 80 weather report. Real number well over 80 but a bit under 100 for reasons. So today weather says 75 which means somewhere in the nineties or better, depending. Luckily we are experienced campers, so yesterday I did a pizza on the grill and today it will be chicken on the grill and sweet corn on the portable one-burner stove. Looks like we'll be mostly cooking outside for a few months now.except for bread making. We just barely got the garden started and suddenly we have to worry about stuff bolting. Sure could use less abrupt transitions.
Meanwhile there are nest cams keeping us distracted, we both watch the Condor cam in Hutton's Bowl ( https://www.allaboutbirds.org/cams/california-condor/ ) and the Cal falcons in the Campanile at Cal ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ooeTUYlflk ) - momentarily quiescent because they're banding the chicks today and my wife also watches a falcon nest atop SF's PG&E building and an Eagle nest up by Redding, CA. There is going to be a shitload of catch up to do around here in a week or two, deferred everything you can imagine.
Meanwhile I am lackadaisically building a sort of Haiku database using one of those fake sticky-note programs. So, apropos today's activities and blather I find myself preparing to add:
ANOTHER NEW YEAR
AND MANY ANOTHER
FLEDGLING
WITHOUT A NEST...
Issa
Time to get busy on the busywork of daily life, dabbling, doodling and "doing stuff".
Thanks for the OT
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
The lock upon my garden door's
an earwig? But first a message for the humans:
FUCK WAR!
STOP IT
I am losing my mind. Now where's that bottle of pHucamol? "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, then a frontal lobotomy." -- I can't remember
--
Yesterday noticed a pincer sticking out in a photo I took of a primrose, and realized it's probably earwigs chewing the longbean leaves every night. Here the camera focused beyond what is supposed to be a shiny new bean leaf this morning but instead all that's left is the skeleton. wah
bean peace
I am not looking forward to waging war on the earwigs now, already looked up how to poison or trap and drown them to death. great!
--- lucky shots
Today, 15:33 UTC
omg, 15:34 UTC
thanks, 16:15 UTC
RIP earwig
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earwig
16:17 UTC
Quit staring! Let a spider eat in peace. sheesh
Peace and Love
Good morning eyo. Fabulous shots and great
good fortune that you have a predator handy to take care of your earwigs.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Human interest
lynx spider , I think:
thanks, it looks like aSave the bees!
Huh, there are no webs. They hide and attack prey from the back, like a lynx cat, like that first lucky shot. I got bit by somethin' yesterday, but not by that thing. I think it was a mosquito, not sure. Itchy not sore.
Peace and Love
End of an era?
"If wishes were fishes, we'd all end in riches." --yet another idiom
Production to cease at Sebastiani Winery in downtown Sonoma
NOPE
Gallo lays off most Clos du Bois winery workers
SAME
Authorities clear homeless camp near downtown Santa Rosa in latest sweep
AS IT
SMART conductor honked horn multiple times before train struck, killed man
EVER WAS
Respect My Authoritah! Sorry, I don't recall.
Windsor requests grand jury involvement as Foppoli lashes out at recall effort
VOTE D! Save the beer.
/wine cave out
Peace and Love
In the truth is stranger than fiction department
from our local weekly..
Former RI house speaker Gordon Fox .. after serving 3 years in prison for bribery, wire fraud and tax evasion is doing a zoom meeting entitled "What I learned from my mistakes" which is (paid for) sponsored by the state legislative leaders foundation.
Somewhat explains why crooks get into politics.