Open Thread WE 8 MAR 23


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Voices of dissent will not be silenced

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There are a great many dissenting voices still in this world. Anti-war, climate advocates,
social and economic inequality proponents, corruption whistleblowers to name a few.
The pundits will editorialize about the lack of voices. The reality that 'class' ignores
is they are complicit in silencing shared awareness. And not weaving these issues into
a coherent whole. Distraction, divisiveness and disinformation are their tools.

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We have a long history of speakers going against establishment policies. Eugene Debs,
Malcolm X, Abbie Hoffman, Angela Davis, Ghandi. Most were imprisoned for their views.
Recently, the internet has opened a channel for dialogue on suppressed concepts. This
comes with another form of obfuscation in the form of NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS. Working in
secret to control thought and expression.

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The efforts of the state to squelch subversive opinions shows their perceived threat
to authoritarian rule. We have art, song, demonstrations, 'free speech zones', radical
writings and the power of millions of voices to keep the spirit of rebellion alive.

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This is an open thread, so feel free to express yourself on any topic you choose.
Freedom of speech is a hallmark of this site.

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Credits ~~

Wolf Defender - beaded mask by New Orleans artist
Big Chief Demond Melacon

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https://www.demondmelancon.com

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Lookout's picture

TPTB are pretty good at suppressing dissent because they control the media megaphone. Those who can think, see through the propaganda. Sadly most Americans are ill informed.

The streaming platform, Rumble, has been seeing a good deal of growth because of YT censorship. That's a good sign.

It is the last warm day for awhile. Yesterday was 80F. Rain and cooler weather on the way...maybe even a freeze next week.

Hope you all have a nice day. Thanks for the OT.

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10 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout

We are under 20 with the howl'n wind chills.
Glad to hear there is an alternative in Rumble.
Have seen some of their links, but didn't know what it was.

thanks!

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7 users have voted.

For those of you who do not receive his news letter, I think this one is good.

I have frequently quoted the words of William Burns, the former US Ambassador to Russia (and current CIA Director) in his February 2008 memorandum, “Nyet means Nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement Red Lines”

Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region.

So this is playing out in Georgia now as well. NATO continues to surround Russia and China
with ever more bases, weapons and destabilizing policies.

Perhaps a bit of dissent from Clare Daly is in order?

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@QMS It is following the Maidan Ukr scenario. When our morons in power (not in charge) find a path that seems to work for their benefits they'll chase after it until it quits breathing, then move on.

Lots of people are going to die. Lots of innocent people and practically no guilty ones. And no, I absolutely do not believe that there will be any retribution after death. That is little true compensation to those who need it the most in this life.

Like East Palestine and the generations of suffering.

I think Alex spoke of a player in the attempted overthrow of Belarus who was just convicted of corruption and subversion. May the Georgia traitors receive their just rewards... I'm sure there are lamp posts that can support some weight.

I watched a good part of Clare's first vid. I think the migrant issue is a dogwhistle and she should have avoided it. The distraction will take eyes off the prize. Like here where Byedone has flipped to try to get some of his opposition chasing after a different squirrel.

It's going to be a good day here. Finished my taxes yesterday. If someone manages to steal my return, I hope they pay what I owe.

(added on edit) I believe the pipeline thingy was done by Aquaman. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. It's as credible as the current message trying to debunk the Hersh report.

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smiley7's picture

Propaganda having a heyday, pushed by MSM and social media; please add to your list today's iteration of the Birch Society, led by the Koch enterprise especially in this country, although the movement is worldwide.

Fox example, for decades the Koch's have created think tanks, advocacy groups and purchased university chairs--growing their BS subtly in plain sight

"The Koch brothers are known for their strongly conservative politics and for their efforts to finance a network of advocacy groups whose goal is to move the country to the right."

Jane Mayer: The New Yorker
Americans for Prosperty--Koch and other billionaires--practically write the legislation at the state level, they own many legislators.

The Kock's created the Tea party in 2004 and fueled it around 2008 and swept state houses in elections by heavily bankrolling legislative candidates 1n 2010. Witnessed this first hand in the mountains of NC as i was an advocate and elected democratic official in our county and political journalist. District races that were up until 2010 run on average campaign coffers of $3,000, republicans and democrats alike had a sudden, unexpected turn of events.

Undercover, the Koch enterprise funded the 'citizen' republican candidates and quietly waited until the last two weeks before election day to spend $100,000 plus in hundreds of district campaigns resulting in republicans sweeping to majorities for the first time in decades across the country giving the far right the platform upon which they rule today.

More insidious and dangerous, imo, are their 'intellectual' White Paper 'deciminators' whose supposed authority on subjects-wide issues feed their right-wing press with mistruths, sometimes veiled, other times blatantly lending credence to conspiracies.

Often working together, these false intellectuals, experts, begin to boil up their propaganda in Europe in small presses, picked up eventually by Social Media and eventually Sinclair, Fox and so on.

Pure evil manipulation, a propaganda machine sophisticated digitally working together globally in broad daylight and i suspect with the secret services of a few countries, Obolensky and Manafort come to mind--Ukraine and USA.

In NC, Art Pope, dime-store king, and a former Board member of Americans for Prosperity, rules the legislator and after 2010 moved on our university system, donating money and by so doing purchased UNC chairs and greatly influences the Board of Governors of the consolidated UNC system having had his legislators push out moderate and liberal voices on the board. A shame upon shame what they have done to the system in a few years, tearing down centuries of work along the way. Same in elementary and primary schools.

Could go on and on here, but much to do today

Cheers for your continued work here and fair winds to you.

cataract edit Smile

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@smiley7

dark money in electioneering and it's over-arching influence in politics.
Buying politicians is nothing new, but these ideologies are sophisticated
and dangerous. Their agendas are generally cloaked in words that rhyme
with freedom, tho in no way relate to freedom of the people.

Government is portrayed as bad, except for a selected type which will
further the corporate interests.

Thanks for adding to the discussion and good luck with the eyes!

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@smiley7 , it's so nice to see you. It has been quite a while since you have stopped by. Hope you are doing well. I've missed your voice around here.

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smiley7's picture

@randtntx @randtntx

We've much to catch up on. Needless to say i hope you and family are well at this writing, i've missed you. Been fighting the devil in my back and the one outside but still one slower step ahead and facing a challenge that's goin to take all and more of my rolodex, wits, money and shoe labor, as lease running out and going home to mountains, finding an affordable bed to call my own. Happy about the choice to do so, missing my community of near 25 years.

Can't wait until you've the time to share what you've been and are up to.

Thanks for the heartfelt music, dear friend. Smile Smile Smile

edit to fix size of vid

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smiley7's picture

@smiley7

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@smiley7 , sounds good. Keep your endurance strong to outsmart and outlast all those devils. Sounds as if many of us are on a similar trajectory. There sure are a lot of devils out there. Who knew they were so persistent and ubiquitous?
I'm looking forward to catching up as well.
Wishing you all the best.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@smiley7
expose' since most folks are unaware of the machinations, activities and successes of the Kochs and their ilk. Thanks for posting.

Hang in there

be well and have a good one

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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 --

smiley7's picture

@enhydra lutris

best we can in our little spheres of this good universe.

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4 users have voted.

or two on polls, rona and the people being tired of it and moving on.

70%(roughly) of USstan population got jabbed, a Sizable proportion of those;
Vilified the unjabbed(neighbors, friends And family) as typhoid marys, the Unclean, carriers of diseases(like rats?)

Tried to get the unjabbed segragated, purged from society(Chomsky), cut off from from hospitals(late night), schools, grocery stores(no soup for YOU!) churches, etc. . .

Maybe what the polls indicate in Reality is that, perhaps, there Might be a tad bit of Guilt hanging subconsciously?
Maybe some Embarrassment for actions taken?
Maybe some Denial?
Maybe even some Remorse at having Been jabbed(adverse events, depending on age cohort, 1 in 600-900 for Survivors! dead folk tell no tales).
So of Course I’d expect folks would like to move on, put it behind them, look forward not back. And tell pollsters rona is like So yesterday.

Here’s the thing; the Jabbed won’t be Able to.
Not when your nephew drops dead on a playing field.
Not when your wife wakes up Dead Suddenly next to you.
When your neighbor that you smugly congratulated each other for taking said jab gets diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and is told they have 3-6 months to live.
Happening All Around us Now, in real time.

Excess mortality in the most jabbed countries In The WORLD is climbing(Ed Dowd)
nobody knows why, nobody seems to care, nobody has Any curiosity.

BUT! They Know it’s Not the JAB(safe AND effective)

Booster uptake DOWN
Excess mortality Still climbing

There is writing on that wall and I Just Can’t decypher it.
Yet.

I’ll loan you my glasses

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

ggersh's picture

sister, daughter, wife, who one day may be in this
situation, where the hospital fucked up most likely
cuz she didn't have insurance or didn't want to be
bothered.

Recently I was in the emergency room waiting for 7 hours
to be seen after being triaged promptly. 7 hours without
any kind of communication as to what was going on. I sorta
got pissed off at that and then asked the girl who took all the
bells and whistle for me to be seen what is going on in a not
so nice manner and then I noticed the sign where
you have to be extremely nice to these people just cuz
. And
this hospital is in a pretty nice community, so I can only
guess the treatment that the "deplorables" get when they go
to their local health insurance profit center.

I now think I know how they get treated and it isn't pretty by
any stretch of the imagination. How these pigs are still pigs
is beyond my paygrade. How the hospital did what it did is also
above my paygrade

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8 users have voted.

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Voices of dissent...we sure do need them because the status quo is so dysfunctional.

'Nother bunch of voices of dissent:
https://www.nationalnursesunited.org/press/cna-condemns-state-decision-t...

California Nurses Association (CNA) condemned today’s announcement by California Department of Public Health (CDPH) that mask and vaccine requirements would be lifted April 3 in the state’s health care settings, just eight days after California reached the grim toll of 100,000 Covid-19 deaths.

“In no uncertain terms, this is a failure of public health leadership,” said Bonnie Castillo, RN and executive director of California Nurses Association. “Abandoning these standards is a counterproductive and unscientific approach to curbing the spread and evolution of Covid-19. This decision endangers the health and safety of nurses and other health care workers, hurts their ability to access personal protective equipment from employers, and ultimately exacerbates the health care staffing crisis that political leaders have vowed to tackle.”

Once again it is the working people who pay the price for bad policy and the recklessness of the policy-makers. Obviously those in charge do not care about the people who actually do the work of this society. This is the same story we have just seen play out with the railroad workers. The ones who do the actual work were saying "wait, this situation is dangerous" but the ones in charge just said "so what, we don't care". What exactly does that mean when employers ensure that the work environment is dangerous to worker's health and even their lives? (Rhetorical question)

“This is an attack on frontline health care workers, who will now face greater risk of Covid-19 infections, reinfections, and long Covid,” said Cathy Kennedy, RN and president of California Nurses Association. “The more Covid infections someone has had, the more likely they are to develop long Covid. It’s surreal that political leaders would put nurses, patients, and community members at greater risk of developing chronic conditions like heart disease, stroke risk, diabetes, pulmonary embolism, cognitive impairment, and long-term immune dysfunction.”

Thanks for the OT, love the beaded mask.

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@randtntx
All I can think of is Cheech and Chong's "Fifi's In Heat" skit:
"Looks like dog shit." (sniff sniff)
"Smells like dog shit." (gobble gobble)
"Confirms my paranoid bigotry."
"IT'S THE SCIENCE!"

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On to Biden since 1973

@doh1304 , but Science doesn't always have to be equated with dog shit, sometimes Science is an actual honest endeavor.

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Cassiodorus's picture

Corroborating and disputing views are welcome.

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

studentofearth's picture

@Cassiodorus The number of information repackagers for MacGregor, Ritter, The Duran, etc - keeps growing. Alexander Mercouris opening statement the last few days in his videos has been addressing this issue.

Without date stamps on subjects in fast change the information can be misinterpreted by the viewer. Plus if content creators account is monetized there is some funding forwarded to the account holder. Using graphics instead of the participants is one of the signs.

The original is a minute longer - did not compare word for word to note alterations.

Col. MacGregor: Ukraine has been DESTROYED and there's nothing left | Redacted with Clayton Morris from 6 days ago (aprox March 2) Clayton is a good interviewer.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/08/iolq-m08.html

Yesterday, around 3 million workers went on strike and marched in cities across France on calls to “block the economy” and force a stop to President Emmanuel Macron’s pension cuts. This mass strike movement, the largest in France since the May-June 1968 general strike 55 years ago, has a historic character. A confrontation with revolutionary implications is emerging between the working class and the Macron government.

Workers in critical industries at the heart of the economy followed calls to bring the economy to a halt. The public sector, rail and mass transit, power stations and refineries, as well as auto, aerospace and shipbuilding all saw massive strikes. Students organized blockades at universities in Paris, Lyon and Rennes or sent delegations to march alongside striking workers. Today, strikes are continuing at refineries and fuel depots to cut off fuel to gas stations and to force Macron to capitulate.

Explosive anger is building up in the working class, far beyond even the millions who marched. Three-quarters of the French people oppose Macron’s cuts, which aim to divert tens of billions of euros from pensions to fund tax cuts for the rich and the €413 billion military build-up as France intensifies its participation in the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. Polls show fully six French people in 10 want strikers to block the economy to compel Macron to surrender.

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Monday. Lots of bathroom use.
Yesterday, the commode clogged.
Now, I was unsuccessful in in the unclogging process.
So, I asked my Husband Extraordinaire to come and solve the problem. He was hesitant, said he did not recall the task being contained in the Wedding Vows. I reminded him it was on Page 11, near the bottom of the page.
Now, I have to make a plan to get into the courthouse safely in the morning. My client is a wife who filed for a divorce, husband is making some noise about he would kill himself, that they would never be apart. Good grief.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

enhydra lutris's picture

Last nite of this am or something had my attention briefly deranged toward all the blah blah about Tucker Carlson and began a distracted ponderation of how an allegedly educated and informed population could be dragged into blathering day and night about such as he. Who cares, let him ramble, let him preach, lie, fabricate, creatively edit, etc. Him, Rash "the petilence" Limboid (is he still with us?), all of the politicians, talking heads and the like, who really cares?

Those in charge of narrative control, of course. They are desperate to constrain, confine, regulate and limit speech because they desperately need to maintain and sustain the manufactured consent for crimes past, present and future, the myths and the fnords both. So whilst I pondered this, I ran smack dab into big time confirmation -

https://boingboing.net/2023/03/08/u-s-senators-unveil-bill-that-would-ba...

They are desperate to ban anything that could present any alternative view of any prescribed view on anything, and most importantly, anything that could maybe conceal who was exposed to or authored any such. Since we have all these bogus, so-called "free trade agreements" we couch this shit in terms of sekurity and putative "foreign adversaries" who are the usual villians plus and any all villans to be named later, based onm the degree of their lackyhood or lack thereof. I will link the bill itself, very dense, I am good at reading law, but this piece of garbage glazed my eyes far too oftem per page for me to put up with it.

https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/3/f/3f2eaae6-09ad-49e1...

Please, otc, if you read this, take a crack at this burning bag of shit and give us all a read-out. Thanks in advance.

Everybody be well and have a good one

edit: included link to bills text

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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 --

Heads of CIA, FBI, National Intelligence testify on global threats to U.S. security

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Seems like things continue to get worse here in the US. As a former nurse, it is not uncommon to have patients like the older lady who keep coming in with the same complaints clogging up beds and resources. It's a sad state of affairs She likely doesn't have anywhere else to go Please don't judge them too harshly, as in my experience, nurses are constantly being forced to do more with less, even while the majority of the responsibility for patient outcomes falls on their shoulders. It's no wonder that nurses are leaving the field in droves right now. Hospitals have known for quite some time that there was going to be a nursing labor shortage due to the "great retirement," AND nurses are getting burnt out faster and faster these days. As far as I can tell, no one "in charge" has done much to try to remedy these problems. In fact, I would argue they have implemented policies that exacerbate the problem.

In addition to the healthcare mess, it is downright frightening that far too few people see the screws turning ever tighter from TPTB.

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If it was easy, everyone would do it.

usefewersyllables's picture

have our Constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of speech.

Just as long as we aren't stupid enough to actually try to *use* it in any mass-market public forum...

Erin Brockovich has been right for a long, long time. Hey, so was Karen Silkwood.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

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ggersh's picture

@humphrey @humphrey looks completely different than the one you posted

EDIT: I just noticed this was on 2 different days. Still one
had no flags the other had so many Uke flags

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

@humphrey

the printing machines are working overtime to scatter them across the landscape
to replace the soon to be defunct Ukrainian image
US hegemony chipping away at the edges

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@QMS

the difference between EU and NATO?
Neither Ukraine nor Georgia are members of either
organization. Hence, the expansive efforts to surround Rus
with NATO. The dangling carrot of EU inclusion is a smoke
screen, IMO.

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