Open Thread Monday 06-13-15


Good morning good people


Monday morning poetry:

Seeing the sunrise

if only I could always see it shine
could call it mine
be of humankind
meeting brilliant minds
gathering resources from the caves
painted before recorded time

ocar

mixing light
confusing truth
and the youth

brushing by
brushing by
brushing by

useless strokes burning coal
pocketing souls
numbers "untold."

Meet me,
I am coal!

Burn me
make 'em cold

"Bid" and vote

feel the stroke

YANK—Come on, youse guys! [He is turning to get coal when the whistle sounds again in a peremptory, irritating note. This drives YANK into a sudden fury. While the other men have turned full around and stopped dumfounded by the spectacle of MILDRED standing there in her white dress, YANK does not turn far enough to see her. Besides, his head is thrown back, he blinks upward through the murk trying to find the owner of the whistle, he brandishes his shovel murderously over his head in one hand, pounding on his chest, gorilla-like, with the other, shouting:] Toin off dat whistle! Come down outa dere, yuh yellow, brass-buttoned, Belfast bum, yuh! Come down and I’ll knock yer brains out! Yuh lousey, stinkin’, yellow mut of a Catholic-moiderin’ bastard! Come down and I’ll moider yuh! Pullin’ dat whistle on me, huh? I’ll show yuh! I’ll crash yer skull in! I’ll drive yer teet’ down yer troat! I’ll slam yer nose trou de back of yer head! I’ll cut yer guts out for a nickel, yuh lousey boob, yuh dirty, crummy, muck-eatin’ son of a—— [Suddenly he becomes conscious of all the other men staring at something directly behind his back. He whirls defensively with a snarling, murderous growl, crouching to spring, his lips drawn back over his teeth, his small eyes gleaming ferociously. He sees MILDRED, like a white apparition in the full light from the open furnace doors. He glares into her eyes, turned to stone. As for her, during his speech she has listened, paralyzed with horror, terror, her whole personality crushed, beaten in, collapsed, by the terrific impact of this unknown, abysmal brutality, naked and shameless. As she looks at his gorilla face, as his eyes bore into hers, she utters a low, choking cry and shrinks away from him, putting both hands up before her eyes to shut out the sight of his face, to protect her own. This startles YANK to a reaction. His mouth falls open, his eyes grow bewildered.]

MILDRED—[About to faint—to the ENGINEERS, who now have her one by each arm—whimperingly.] Take me away! Oh, the filthy beast! [She faints. They carry her quickly back, disappearing in the darkness at the left, rear. An iron door clangs shut. Rage and bewildered fury rush back on YANK. He feels himself insulted in some unknown fashion in the very heart of his pride. He roars:] God damn yuh! [And hurls his shovel after them at the door which has just closed. It hits the steel bulkhead with a clang and falls clattering on the steel floor. From overhead the whistle sounds again in a long, angry, insistent command.]

[Curtain]

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

gulfgal98's picture

Thank you for the nice poetry to start the day. Very nice day here this morning when we walked our three dogs. The summer running camps for high school kids have started at the college. Oh to be young again but wiser than I was back then. Smile

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

smiley7's picture

Glad you enjoyed the poetry. My son played Yank in a production of O'Neill's The Hairy Ape a few years ago and I was thinking of him and about how O'Neill's work rings powerfully true today.

I'm disappointed that I can't make the Moral Monday March in Winston-Salem today. Had planned to go, but life got in the way. Hopefully, we will get news from our many friends who are there.

Ditto to being young again. Enjoy our mountain splendor, these old Appalachians can soothe the soul in cool breezes like we have today.

up
0 users have voted.

Add Libya

Administration officials today report they are determined to launch a full-scale drone war against ISIS in Libya, including surveillance operations and potential strikes against ISIS forces on the ground in the North African country. All they need is a base.
up
0 users have voted.

Now where was that ISIS flag in the gay rights parade??? he he

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

It's started

Iraqi troops and Shi'ite Muslim militia forces attacked Islamic State fighters on several fronts on Monday in Anbar, the country's largest province, at the start of what is likely to be a long and fiercely contested offensive.
A spokesman for the joint operations command said the campaign, which began at dawn, brought together the army, mainly Shi'ite Hashid Shaabi militias, special forces, police and local Sunni Muslim tribal fighters.

There's just one little problem: it could make things even worse

While Fallujah's proximity to Baghdad, Iraq's capital, makes it strategically important for the Iraqi government, sending in militias that have been known to burn down Sunni villages might not pay off in the long run.
...
Shia militias have emerged as the most effective fighting force against ISIS in Iraq, but some say the Shia fighters aren't much better than the ISIS terrorists they're trying to expunge. (Others, however, have welcomed the Shia militias as the best option for helping Sunni tribal fighters drive ISIS out of Iraq.)

Shiraz Maher, a senior fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and himself a former extremist, pointed out that, like ISIS, the Shia militias train child soldiers:

up
0 users have voted.
smiley7's picture

up
0 users have voted.

At best the Shia militias will win a slow and bloody battle at Fallujah, probably complete with ethnic cleansing. At which point the whole thing will stall.
The final break-up of Iraq has already started. It's only a matter of time before it goes from de facto to official.

up
0 users have voted.

The only surprise here is which movies

Military chiefs at the Pentagon are gagging Hollywood when its science ­fiction blockbusters get uncomfortably close to the bone.
Directors are being forced to re-write scripts by the United States Department of Defense if the content is deemed ­inappropriate – and the big screen hits affected include Iron Man, Terminator Salvation, Transformers, King Kong and Superman: Man of Steel.
...
Even British shows have been affected. Channel 5’s Extraordinary Dogs needed Pentagon consent to feature dogs from the US army parachuting.
The files were released by the Hollywood-based Department of Defense Entertainment Liaison Office following a Freedom of Information request by Bath University’s Dr Matthew Alford.
Before 2002, the Pentagon’s input on films and TV shows was made public – but documents are now held in a private ­library collection.
Dr Alford said: “It is shocking that the Pentagon is poking its nose into a mind-boggling range of TV shows. Many have nothing to do with the military.
“It is alarming that the Pentagon keeps secret the changes it makes, leaving it open to accusations that it’s waging a pernicious PR campaign to recruit TV-addict kids and rewrite history.”
up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

each time I read something like this Open Thread, I regret to not have lived through the sixties and seventies in the US. I think I would understand so much more about all of you and the US, it would make me feel much more "at ease" to say anything here or elsewhere.

I am so distracted reading so many things at once and just grasping half of it, I always feel exhausted from it and want to run away.
But then I have this "do-not-quit" syndrome in me inoculated by well-meaning Americans, so I am still sticking around. Smile

Ok, on my way to accomplish something today, putting as dear NCTim suggested to me one step and foot at a time in front of each other. Have a good day.

up
0 users have voted.
smiley7's picture

I have written before that i think there must have been something special in the rain water around the turn of the 20th century for so many babies to have become geniuses later in their lives producing works, especially in literature, that profoundly impacted the minds of future generations. We hippies owe much to those giants who braved a less than open landscape "taking it to the 'man'...

up
0 users have voted.

Only a decade late

A representative of the US’s largest professional association of psychologists, which is in the throes of crisis after an independent review found it to be complicit in torture, has said psychologists should no longer participate in US detentions and interrogations.
Nadine Kaslow, a former president of the beleaguered American Psychological Association, told the Guardian that psychologists should no longer aid the military at Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere – in effect reversing more than a decade of institutional insistence that such participation was responsible and ethical.
The APA made Kaslow available to the Guardian to discuss a damning independent report into what it called the APA’s “collusion” with the US Department of Defense and its aid to the CIA for torture. Psychologists still operate at Guantánamo, as part of the detention facility’s behavioral-health unit.
up
0 users have voted.
mimi's picture

on the issue here with transcript. With

Stephen Soldz, professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis and co-founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology.

Jean Maria Arrigo, social psychologist and oral historian who participated in the 2005 APA task force that condoned psychologists’ involvement in enhanced interrogations, and later blew the whistle. She is a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology and established the APA PENS Debate Collection at University of Colorado at Boulder Archives.

up
0 users have voted.
gulfgal98's picture

up
0 users have voted.

Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

My pointing finger on my right hand is suffering from mouse syndrome. Way too much point and click.

Have a great day... still have chores to do so I'm off and away for a few...

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

smiley7's picture

Fun, mouse syndrome.

gjohnsit is putting meat on the open thread to chew. So much bs going on, especially in the ME. And over on JayRaye's journal, Rockefeller is headlined, another parallel to O'Neill's work against the one percent of old.

Guess you are safely down from the lake, enjoy the rest of today.

up
0 users have voted.
hecate's picture

& my favorite "Working Class":

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii0tzsp29KU]

up
0 users have voted.